‘E very Sunday for me it’s hard,” former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi wrote in Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning, a 2008 collection edited by Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Robert Kennedy. Frequently self-described as some variation of an “ardent practicing Catholic,” Pelosi’s difficulty was with the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life,” Vatican Council II said. The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes: “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.”
Though Carrie Underwood is not a Catholic, the background music to this next bit from the Catechism could be her “Temporary Home,” in which she sings: “This is our temporary home / It’s not where we belong / Windows in rooms that we’re passin’ through / This is just a stop, on the way to where we’re going / I’m not afraid because I know this is our / Temporary home.” (I think of this part of the song during every conversation, debate, or news story on assisted suicide and the practical realities of what religious faith looks like in the challenges we all encounter.) Underwood continues: “Old man, hospital bed / The room is filled with people he loves / And he whispers don’t cry for me / I’ll see you all someday.”
What the Catechism says is: “By the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all. . . . In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: ‘Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.’”
If you believe that about the Eucharist — core to Catholic faith — you would want to share it, wouldn’t you? If you believe it, there couldn’t be more awesome news. Which is why this summer there will be a Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. And currently, there are pilgrims walking with the Eucharistic Lord throughout the U.S. on the way there. Years ago, the Magnificat Foundation hosted a Eucharistic procession through Center City, Philadelphia. I was running ahead of it to take photos for social media. People who encountered it asked questions. One was: “What are they protesting?” I tried to give a Sunday-school lesson in response. The next day, I recounted the exchange to the then-editor of the monthly Magnificat, Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., and he had the perfect answer. “Did you tell them? Sin.” Another friend of mine, Father Roger Landry — who is the Catholic chaplain at the Merton Institute at Columbia University and the author of Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God — is walking from New Haven to Indianapolis right now (the journey is expected to take 65 days) with the prayer that a single person is converted to adoring Jesus — for even one, it would be worth it. His deepest heart’s desire for the pilgrimage, though, is a true revival for the nation.
The Eucharistic pilgrimage could be Christmas in July. Remember the third verse of “Joy to the World”? It might be considered a bummer, reminding us of darkness, but it’s not, because of the eternal light of salvation history: “No more let sins and sorrows grow, / nor thorns infest the ground; / He comes to make His blessings flow / far as the curse is found, / far as the curse is found, / far as, far as, the curse is found.”
In Being Catholic Now, Pelosi described a young granddaughter’s excitement about receiving First Communion. The girl’s mother insisted, “Yes, the host and the wine represent the body and blood of Christ.” The First Communicant corrected her: “Not represent. It is the body and blood of Christ.”
Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan spoke this spring at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, home base of the seminarians from the U.S. and of other English-speakers. She was asked to advise them on what people in the pews might need to hear most in their future homilies. The basics, was her answer, delivering her remark with great love for the Church. Don’t try to be overly clever. Talk about what Catholics believe, she said.
There are people (of all or no political persuasions, by the way) who go to Sunday Mass but don’t quite know why.
Or, as Pelosi put it about her own struggle: “My granddaughter was buying into it, okay. But it is hard. Every Sunday for me it’s hard. Christ had died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Now think of it, we say that every week.” She continued: “Do I really believe he’s coming again? Yes, I believe he’s coming again. Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. This is my body, this is my blood. They’re asking a lot. In my era, we didn’t question any of it.”
Given the latest registration numbers for the Tenth National Eucharistic Congress, it will be possible to fill the Lucas Oil Stadium — whose capacity is nearly 70,000. It won’t be for politics during a presidential-election year. It won’t be for entertainment in a culture insatiably devouring live-streams and binge-watching “content.” It will be all about God and what that means for us. It’ll be for discovering, rediscovering, and “upgrading” faith, as Father Landry says. It’ll be about experiencing, regardless of one’s level of faith, the awe that Pelosi’s granddaughter had during her First Communion. It can even be ecumenical. For Christians, may it light a fire for a new Pentecost. For everyone else, may it be an occasion for reflection and renewal: What do I claim to believe? Do I? How can I, more and more?
I can’t participate in person, on the road and off, as I had hoped. But one night, early into the pilgrimage, I heard a song flowing in from an open Manhattan window. “Jesus, my Lord, my love, my all. How can I love thee as I ought?” (Definitely an improvement on the usual soundscape of traffic, horns, and expletives.) It’s a question for beatitudinal revolution that could benefit us all.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.