Transcript

Well, thank you.

Well, God bless you all.

Thank you.

Will you still be standing when I finish tonight is the question.

Listen, I- I think I was just introduced.

Uh, I couldn't hear one thing back there.

I couldn't hear what they were saying.

There we go.

Well, listen, I- I really am delighted.

And what a wonderful crowd to see here, how many thousands have gathered here.

And that, to me, is a- just a wonderful indication of the importance of this Eucharistic revival.

And boy, you know, I want to echo what Bishop, uh, Felton said, I think I heard him say, Bishop Cousins, who has carried the ball so magnificently in this revival.

It's- it will culminate in Indianapolis, but what a beautiful expression of it here.

So congratulations to both these great churchmen who have sponsored our- our event tonight.

And when I was invited to come here, as- I think I heard them say, "As a fellow Minnesotan, how could I possibly say no to this?" Okay.

You know, when I was thinking about this talk, everybody, I've been speaking and writing a lot about the Eucharist the last couple years.

I've talked about meal, sacrifice, real presence, the mass.

But I thought, this evening really is focused on Eucharistic adoration.

So I want to talk about that for this brief presentation.

You know, to be honest with you, when I was coming of age as a young seminarian, even a young priest, Eucharistic adoration was kind of frowned upon.

It was seen as individualistic, as pietistic, not liturgical.

It distracted from the mass, et cetera.

All those arguments are silly, may I say, and I'll try to make that clear in the course of the talk.

But when I was a young guy, we were kind of discouraged from doing Eucharistic adoration.

You know who the great prophet was?

It was Archbishop Fulton J.

Sheen.

You know, my parents loved Fulton Sheen, and that's the generation he spoke to directly on radio and TV.

My father, who was never very effusive in his praise of religious people once said about Sheen, "I liked what he said.

I liked the way he said it." And that was true, I think, of a lot of people in their generation.

Well, as you know, Fulton J.

Sheen ended every talk he ever gave to priests with the recommendation of doing a holy hour before the blessed sacrament.

Now, as I say, Sheen's influence kind of skipped my generation, because he- we- before the internet and all that.

If he wasn't on radio or TV, we didn't see him.

He was someone our parents listened to.

But the wonderful thing is, and I discovered this when I was a teacher at Mundelein Seminary, the generation that I was teaching were very interested in Fulton Sheen.

They got it probably from EWTN, I think, was playing a lot of his old, uh, sermons.

But they picked up, believe me, his recommendation of doing the holy hour before the blessed sacrament.

And I'll- I'll say it with requisite humility, I really learned that from them.

I watched my own students do this practice of- of the holy hour, and so I began doing it and found it to be of enormous spiritual power.

I hope it's essential to this Eucharistic revival that we pick up Sheen's recommendation.

You know, with, um, all these wonderful bishops from, uh, the Twin Cities, about two weeks ago, I was up at Saint Paul Seminary to give a day of reflection to the community.

And all my seminarians from Winona Rochester are up there too, so I visited them.

And, uh, I was talking about the holy hour and one of the faculty reminded me at the break, "Well, you know, the chapel that you're speaking in at the seminary, young Fulton Sheen worshiped in this chapel and learned the discipline of the holy hour right here." And so I made a great point with the seminarians, "Don't forget the influence of this great man." So what's it all about, Eucharistic adoration?

My, uh, spiritual hero, Saint Thomas Aquinas, said that at the words of consecration, it's as though a great fire has now been kindled in a new place.

It's a beautiful image, I think.

There aren't, like, many Christs around the world, but the one great fire has been kindled in many different places.

When I was moving into my house in Rochester a couple years ago, house was still full of, you know, unopened boxes.

But the second I got the- the altar and the tabernacle in the chapel, I said, "I'm going to say mass." I said mass, and then I took some of the blood sacrament and reserved it in the tabernacle.

I kindled the fire there.

It's been burning in that place ever since.

This morning, I did my holy hour in that fiery presence.

Stay with that image from Aquinas of the fire.

Fire is light in a dark world.

What gives us direction, everybody, in this sinful world that- that often, you know, w- we lose our way, we stumble about?

What gives us direction but the fire of Christ?

I love this story I heard many years ago from a priest in San Francisco.

He said a middle-aged lady came to him and just, she had had no religion at all, no religious background at all, much less Catholicism.

She knew nothing about its ritual or practice anything.

But she was searching for meaning, searching for something.He said to her, "Now, before I teach you anything, I want you to do something.

I'd like you to go into the church..." And he mentioned the local parish church.

And she, he said, "I'd like you to find this little red, um, flame, this little red, uh, lamp.

And I want you just to go as close as you can, and find a seat and sit there for 15 minutes.

Now, do that for a week then come back and see me." So she did, and she came back and said, uh, "Yeah, okay, I, I did it, uh, but I, I don't get it.

What does that red light mean?" He says, "Don't worry about it.

Just go back, I want you now to spend a half hour every day in front of that light." She came back the next week and she said, "I, I'm, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I just feel such peace when I sit in front of that little light." And it was only then that he revealed the secret of what that little lamp was indicating.

I've always loved that instinct.

Before he got to talking about the Eucharist, he just brought her to the fire.

He just brought her to the light.

Fire is heat against the cold.

Gosh, our secularized world today, I think especially of our young people, growing up in a world often without a sense of direction, purpose, meaning.

It's a cold place.

The Eucharist is warmth in a cold world.

Something else, if you're camping out in the, in the deep woods somewhere, that fire is light and it's heat, but it's also protection against predators, isn't it?

There are lots of enemies.

We know this in the spiritual order.

Some that we can see, some that we can't see.

What keeps them at bay?

The fire.

I think one of the best bits of spiritual advice I could give you is, everyone here, stay close to the fire.

At the words of consecration, it's as though fire is kindled in a new flame.

Christ becomes really and truly present.

Stay close.

Stay close to the light and to the fire.

Here's something Sheen said too about, um, the holy hour, spending time before the blessed sacrament.

He said, "I look at him and he looks at me." You know, he said, "You can say your prayers and pray the office, you can read the scriptures, you can, you can offer prayers of petition.

Terrific.

But at bottom what's happening when you're sitting there by the fire, I look at him and he looks at me." The way two friends can be silently in each other's presence without feeling the pressure of having to come up with the right words, having to say just the right thing.

Really good friends can just be in each other's presence.

So it is with the Eucharistic Lord.

Here's another Sheen image.

He says, "When I'm doing the holy hour, I'm like a loyal dog at his master's feet.

Maybe the master doesn't have any great tasks for me, maybe he's not calling me yet on some great adventure, but I'm there and I'm waiting and I'm available if he needs me." Good.

Good.

He also said, "It's like radiation therapy.

I'm in, I'm in the, the blazing light of the presence of Jesus.

And just being there, even if my mind's drifting a bit, even if I start thinking about, you know, my worries of the day, so what?

You're there by the fire." You know, everybody, so many of the saints, it, it practically is a common denominator of the saints, is this love for the Eucharistic Lord.

Think of John Henry Newman, another great intellectual hero of mine, one of the most brilliant men in the history of the church.

Newman writes these gorgeous prayers.

I've got them next to my chair when I'm before the blessed sacrament.

These gorgeous prayers to pray in the presence of Christ.

Saint Edith Stein, you know her story, don't you?

Edith Stein, born of a Jewish family, comes of age in the Jewish religion, but by the time she's about 20, she's drifted into atheism.

She becomes a student of philosophy, becomes one of the most brilliant philosophers of the 20th century.

And then she commences this beautiful, long journey back to faith.

One night, she reads Teresa of Avila's autobiography, and when she finished it, spent the entire night reading it, she put the book down and she said, "" In her journal.

"That is the truth." She comes to the Catholic faith, and before she becomes a religious, which she eventually does, when she's still a layperson, she lives with some sisters and she spends hours every day in Eucharistic adoration.

The nuns were so impressed, they, they built a special chair for her close to the tabernacle.

Hours and hours in the presence of the Eucharistic Lord.

In time, she becomes a Carmelite, and then you know the story, the Nazis came and they turned on, on Cat- Jews who'd become Catholics, and they took Edith Stein off to Auschwitz where she was put to death.

I agree with all of her biographers who say, what gave her strength to face her martyrdom were those hours upon hours in the presence of the fire.

Edith Stein loved the Eucharist.Jacques Maritain, maybe not a household name anymore, but one of the great Catholic intellectuals of the last century.

A French philosopher.

Maritain traveled the world, often came to this country, by the way.

I think he was in Collegeville a number of times.

Anyway.

Maritain, despite his world travels, was based in Paris, and when he was home, he would often journey at night up to Montmartre, a beautiful hill that overlooks Paris.

At the top of which is the great Church of Sacré-Coeur, the Sacred Heart.

And there, Jacques Maritain, the great philosopher would spend the entire night in Eucharistic adoration.

The Blessed Sacrament, by the way, has been adored continually in that church since the late 19th century.

Jacques Maritain would spend entire nights in vigil.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

When I went to the mother house there many years ago, it's very moving.

It's, it's a very simple kind of open room and there's the tabernacle, and you can still see in the corner there's this hyperrealistic statue of Mother Teresa in her characteristic pose, kind of crouching like this in prayer.

It's how she would spend, everybody, hour upon hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

What gave her strength to do her world-changing work but those hours of prayer, that time spent by the fire?

I don't know if you know the story about, um, Dorothy Day, which, which I love.

The founders of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Nobody in the 20th century was more devoted to the poor, nobody was more given to the social gospel and she lived among the hungry and the marginalized and the poor.

But Dorothy Day was just as committed to the Mass, to benediction, to the, to rosaries, to all these different forms of prayer, and above all, the Eucharist.

Here's the story that I love.

In the late '60s, there was a young kind of idealistic priest came to visit her, and while he was there, he said mass for her and her little community.

And he thought he was being very hip and cool, and he took a coffee mug off the shelf, and he used it for the chalice for mass.

He finished mass and Dorothy Day, you know, thanked him.

But then once he left, she carefully purified that cup, put it in a towel, took out a hammer, and then she broke it up into pieces, went out in the backyard and she buried it.

And her friend said, "Dorothy, what are you doing?" She said, "That cup held the blood of Christ.

I can't, I can't imagine using it again as a coffee mug." What gave strength to her great work among the poor was her love for the Eucharist.

Just a couple more of the stories of saints.

Uh, John Paul II, the great Karol Wojtyła.

I got this one, um, from the horse's mouth.

I had the, I had the privilege to live with Cardinal George of Chicago for about five years.

And Cardinal George had in his house three wonderful sisters, they were Albertine Sisters from Kraków, Poland.

And the eldest of them was called Sister Theodosia, and she knew Karol Wojtyła because he used to come to their convent in, uh, Kraków when he was archbishop there.

Well, one day, he'd come to pray.

He loved their chapel.

And one day, uh, he went into the chapel, and then like an hour or so later, one of the sisters said, "Have you seen the, the Cardinal?" And so she went into the chapel and she looked around, "No, no he's not here." So they kind of wondered and then they finally said, "Sister Theodosia, could you check again?" So in she goes to the chapel, and this time she went up around the pews to the front, and there she saw Karol Wojtyła spread eagle on the ground.

He would pray in that attitude in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

Where did John Paul II's strength come from?

His world-changing strength?

It came from staying close to the fire.

Just one more, and I'm going to use this to transition into the second part of my talk.

My spiritual hero, Saint Thomas Aquinas.

At the hearings of...

for his canonization, his assistant who was still alive said, "First of all, Thomas Aquinas got far more of his ideas from prayer than he did from thought." One of the most brilliant minds, of course, in the history of the Church.

But he got his ideas, his friend said, more from his prayer than from his thought.

And then he added this, he said, "Thomas would often go into the chapel, and he would rest his head on the tabernacle, as though asking for inspiration." Where did Thomas's power come from?

He stayed close to the fire.

Can I stay with Thomas Aquinas because where I'm going to lead us is to this great hymn that we're going to sing, I'm pretty sure later on this evening at the end of our benediction.

When I was in Rome last October, I was there for the synod on synodality, and synods are, synods are a lot of work, may I say.

The day begins at about 8:30, it ends at 7:30 PM, and they work you from Monday through Saturday....

no kidding.

You get one day off for five weeks.

So the synod's a workout.

So at the very end, I played hooky one day, and I'll admit that.

Don't, don't tell the Pope, but I did.

I played hooky one day.

I went with a Dominican friend of mine, Father Paul Murray.

He's a wonderful spiritual figure himself.

And our destination was the Church of San Domenico, the great Church of Saint Dominic in Naples, so a couple hours south of Rome.

And we get to the church, and, and our goal was a side chapel of that church, because Thomas Aquinas stayed at the Dominican house there in the 1270s, the very end of his life.

He was working on the third part of his great Summa Theologiae, his theological masterpiece.

And the section he was working on was the one on the Eucharist, greatest of the sacraments.

And now this is the greatest mind in the history of the church, trying to make sense, trying to theologize about the greatest sacrament.

So Thomas finished his text, which today we recognize as a, as a unsurpassed masterpiece.

But he wasn't satisfied.

He thought he hadn't done justice to the blessed sacrament.

And so he took the text, and they say he literally put it at the, at the foot of the cross, as if asking for judgment.

And there, there was...

It's a little icon of the cross, and that's what he saw, and that's where he put the text.

And the story, maybe you know, and this was witnessed by Dominican brothers of his.

The story is that from the cross came a voice, "Thomas, venis grapsisti de me." Of course, Jesus spoke Latin to Thomas Aquinas.

"Thomas, you've written well of me.

What would you have as a reward?" To which the great Aquinas responds, "Non nisi te, nomine." "I'll have nothing except you, Lord." We- I went to that chapel because I wanted to be there and I wanted to pray there.

So Father Paul and I and some friends said mass at that side chapel where the Lord spoke to Thomas Aquinas, and where he responded...

By the way, if the Lord ever asks you that question, that's the right answer.

Don't, don't say you want a Maserati or something, you know?

But you know, I love, I loved so many things about it that I made that my Episcopal motto.

So when you're- you become a bishop, you choose a motto, and I chose that, "Non nisi te, nomine." Because I think that's the way we feel in the presence of the blessed sacrament, isn't it?

"Lord, uh, there's no place I'd rather be.

There's, there's nothing else I want.

I'm not looking for wealth and power and honor.

I'm not looking for that.

Non nisi te, nomine.

I'm looking for nothing except you, Lord." Think of Thomas's line there when you're in the presence of the blessed sacrament.

Now, go back 10 years earlier in the life of Aquinas.

We're now back in the 1260s, and Thomas finds himself not in Naples, but in the beautiful little town of Orvieto.

I'm not sure anyone that's been a, a European traveler, if you go to Rome, it's only about an hour north of Rome by car or train, and it's a lovely town.

One of the most beautiful cathedrals, period, in Europe, I think, is in Orvieto.

But Thomas Aquinas was there in the 1260s because he was traveling in the entourage of the Pope, Urban IV.

The popes would kind of move around the towns around Rome in those days.

So Thomas finds himself in Orvieto.

Well, right at this time, there's a, uh, a figure named Peter Prague, he's a priest.

He's on pilgrimage from Prague to Rome.

Why?

Because he's going through a spiritual crisis.

He's entertaining doubts about the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, and he wants to go to Rome on pilgrimage to try to resolve these doubts.

So Peter Prague is saying mass in Bolsena.

It's a little town not far from Orvieto.

And at the consecration, he elevates the host.

This is a man, again, entertaining doubts about the real presence.

And blood ran from the host copiously onto his hands, and from his hands onto the corporal.

Well, of course, he was overwhelmed and those with him were overwhelmed, so they gathered up the corporal and they raced to Orvieto where the pope was, 'cause they wanted to show him this remarkable relic, this remarkable miracle.

By the way, you can still see it when you go to Orvieto.

They'll show you the corporal of Bolsena, still there, stained with blood.

Well, Pope Urban IV was so impressed, he was so moved by the story, he decides to initiate, inaugurate a feast in the church, which we still celebrate to this day, called Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and the Blood of Christ.

This Eucharistic miracle gave rise to this Eucharistic celebration.

Well, Urban IV decides to celebrate this feast, we need a liturgical office....

I mean, antiphons and hymns and texts and poems and so on.

And so he turns to this brilliant mystical Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, and he says, "I'd like you to write the office for Corpus Christi." And so Thomas, accustomed to writing theological literature, writes a poetic and spiritual masterpiece.

And we still pray and sing these words to the present day.

At the close of this evening, we will pray and sing some of them.

The great central hymn, the great central text of the office is called the Pange Lingua.

What I want to do just very briefly is look at a few lines from the Pange Lingua, because it beautifully expresses Thomas' Eucharistic theology, and I think tells us why, like him, we want to spend time before the fire.

Here's how it starts, "Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium." That means, "Sing, my tongue, of the mystery of the glorious body." Now, here's what I love as that poem begins.

Here's Thomas Aquinas, the greatest intellectual in the history of the church.

Nobody used words more, more, uh, effectively than Aquinas.

No one, no one could articulate the mysteries more fully than Aquinas, and yet this great song begins, "Sing.

Sing, my tongue." Why is it, friends, that up and down the centuries in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, we still sing and we gesture and we genuflect on one knee, sometimes on two, that we put ourselves, like Karol Wojtyla, spread eagle on the ground?

Why do we send incense billowing upward?

Because we know that our puny words, yet even the great words of a Thomas Aquinas, can't begin to articulate the depth of this mysterium, this mystery.

We have to search for a kind of language beyond language, sort of poetry beyond poetry as we honor this mystery.

How beautiful in a way that in the presence of the sacrament during our holy hour, we fall silent finally.

Here's how the second verse of the Pange Lingua begins, "Nobis datus, nobis natus ex intacta Virgine." That means, "Given to us, born for us from the Immaculate Virgin." Who loves Mary in this room?

Here's something Thomas Aquinas saw and all the great mystics see it too.

When the second person of the Blessed Trinity took to himself a human nature, He took His flesh from the Virgin Mary, which is why there's a connection between the Eucharist, which is the body of Christ sacramentally present, and Mary, the mother of God.

You can't approach Mary without being led to the Eucharist.

You can't be in the presence of the Eucharist without being lading- being led back to Mary.

Now, that's, that's talk for another night.

We could do a whole thing on that relationship.

But I just want you to see that.

There's a, always a Mariological connection when we're talking about the flesh of Jesus, which we are in- inescapably doing when we talk about the Eucharist.

Here's how the next verse begins, "In suprema nocte coena." That means, "In the night of that Last Supper." But there's a kind of delicious ambiguity in Latin when you say, "Suprema cena." It means last, but also means supreme, greatest.

In the night of that last and greatest supper, what does Jesus do?

Thomas then says, "Recumbens cum fratribus.

Reclining with his brothers." Stay with that image everybody.

It's beautiful, I think.

The Last Supper, the Passover meal, Jesus reclining in intimate connection with his brothers.

That's the Mass, everybody.

That's the Mass.

That's Jesus and the first priests.

But in that beautiful intimacy of the Last Supper, that's what we're meant to experience at the Mass.

What's happening at the Passover Supper?

Thomas says, "Observing all of the appropriate legalities." What's meant here is he's a good Jew following the demands of the Passover Supper, all of the demands of the Passover rituals.

What was that?

The lamb whose blood poured out provided protection from death, the lamb whose flesh is sacrificed and then consumed.

Christ is the lamb.

Christ is the Passover.

The blood not just of a, of an animal, but now His own blood providing protection for us from sin and death....

not just the flesh of, of this animal sacrificed, but his own flesh sacrificed on the cross.

Not just the flesh of this animal given to us to eat, but listen to how he puts this in this very simple but direct Latin.

.

So on this, on this night of the Last Supper, reclining with his, with his brothers, performing the Passover rituals.

Now .

He gives Himself by His own hands.

What do we consume, everybody, at the Mass, but the flesh of Christ?

We eat and drink His body and His blood.

We incorporate Him.

You wonder now, as Thomas Aquinas did, as all the great theologians have, "Okay, I get it.

But what does that mean?

And how does that work?" Look how the next verse begins, .

It's gorgeous Latin by the way, 'cause Latin has that quality of expressing things very succinctly in just a handful of words.

It means Word Made Flesh, .

, True Bread, , becomes by His word flesh.

Ah, it, it's a whole Eucharistic theology expressed in beautiful pithy poetic Latin.

Let's take it step-by-step.

Who is Jesus?

Oh, a great teacher.

To heck with that.

Who is Jesus?

Oh, a great spiritual master.

We had a thousand of those.

Who is Jesus?

Oh, a guru.

He's like a Sufi mystic.

Who cares if that's all he is?

Who cares?

Go on Oprah, read the latest book on spirituality, if that's what you want.

That's not who He is.

.

.

He's the Word Made Flesh.

He's the Word Made Flesh.

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

Not one more human figure among many.

Who cares if that's all he is?

But He's the very Word of God made flesh.

What does the Word of God do?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And through that Word, all things came to be.

Go back now to the beginning of the Bible.

In the beginning, God says, "Let there be light." And there was light.

God says, "Let the earth come forth." And so it happened.

God said, "Let the animals multiply upon the earth." And so it happened.

The point is in that beautiful poetry in Genesis, that God by His speech makes things real.

See, look, if someone asked me tomorrow, "Hey, how did it go at Bemidji?" And I say, "Oh, it was terrific.

There were like, you know, 3,000 people in this arena, and..." Well, my speech isn't changing reality.

It's just describing reality.

Right?

But sometimes even our puny speech can change reality.

The baseball player is running, is, is y- you know, rounding second base and slides into third base, and the umpire properly, you know, delegated says, "Safe." Well, he's safe, wh- whether you like it or not, whether you disagree or not.

He's safe.

The umpire's words have, have changed the game.

Or if you say to somebody, you know, some, some wounding word, that can change them forever.

Or, or turn that around, you say some wonderfully encouraging word, that can set their life on a different path.

So even our words can change reality.

But think of God's Word.

God's Word makes things what they are.

God speaks and so things are.

That's why , the Word become flesh when He says, .

One of those three beautiful times the gospel has you remember his Aramaic.

.

Little girl, get up.

Well, by God, she gets up.

When he says, "Lazarus, come out," the dead man comes out.

"My son, your sins are forgiven." And by God, they're forgiven.

What God says is.

What God says is.

, the Word Made Flesh, takes , True Bread, , by His Word, .

Makes it flesh.

Why do we say after the consecration, "This is not bread anymore.

This is not wine anymore"?...

because Jesus said so.

And I don't mean that in some trivial way.

I mean it in this deeply biblical sense.

God speaks things into being, and therefore Thomas Aquinas, who wrote this great beautiful poem, speaks in that marvelous section of the Summa Theologiae of transubstantiation, that the very substance of the bread and wine, that is to say their deepest reality, changes, changes into the deepest reality of the body and blood of Jesus.

That's our great Eucharistic mystery, everybody, Jesus reclining with his brothers, identifying himself as the Passover lamb, but now gives himself to them by his own hand.

And so he does at every Mass.

So he does at every Mass.

Just one more, then I'll stop.

I've got eight minutes.

Okay.

Um, the ones we're going to sing tonight, the very familiar ones .

Therefore, such a sacrament, , such a sacrament, , we venerate like Karol Wojtyla , falling down.

Think about something here, fellow Catholics.

Um, I, just a few weeks ago, blessed the chrism oil and the oils were- and the oil of catechumens, right?

At the chrism mass.

And those oils go out to our various parishes and they're used at baptisms and confirmations, et cetera.

The anointing of the sick.

Those sacramental signs do indeed carry, Thomas Aquinas said, the virtus Christi.

That means the power of Christ.

So when you're baptizing, when you're confirming, when you're anointing the sick, indeed the power of Christ is communicated by these sacramental signs.

But, but fellow Catholics, you know this.

I wouldn't think, I would ne- never think of bowing down and worshiping the baptismal water.

Would I?

Would I ever think of going to the ambry at my parish and bowing down and worshiping the oil?

Well, no, of course not.

The- they're sacramental bearers of the virtus Christi, the power of Christ.

But Thomas Aquinas says, "The Eucharist alone is not just the virtus Christi, it's ipse Christus." That means Christ Himself, Christ Himself, Christ Himself.

Which is why, yes indeed, .

Yes, indeed, we bow down to worship this sacrament.

Do you see why, everybody, we're having this Eucharistic revival?

I was chair of the committee, and then, and then Bishop Drew followed me, chair of the evangelization committee.

When I read that Pew Forum study that said only 30% or so of Catholics believe in the real presence, that's when I said, "Hey, brothers, I think we gotta do something about this.

We've got to remind our own people of the power of this sacrament, of the centrality of the sacrament.

We've got to call them back to a worship indeed of this sacrament." Think about that, everybody, tonight now as we bring this evening to its prayerful conclusion, and we focus ourselves around this great sacrament that all the saints have loved.

Think of Karol Wojtyla, spread eagle on the ground before the sacrament, bowing down to worship.

In that we find what Vatican II called the source and summit of the Christian life.

In its light and its heat, we find the direction we need, we find the warmth that we need, we find the protection from our enemies.

Stay close to that fire, everybody.

And God bless you.