Homily delivered by Bishop Leo O’Reilly
to the Eucharistic Adoration Group
St. Clare’s Chapel, Cavan, 20th October 2010
The next couple of years will be a very important time to for us renew our faith as we prepare for the celebration of the International Eucharistic Congress, which will take place in Dublin in 2012, the 80th anniversary of the last Eucharistic Congress in 1932. The Congress will take place in the week from the 10th to 17th of June. It opens on the feast of Corpus Christi which is of course celebrated on Sunday nowadays, and it finishes the following Sunday. The Theme for the Congress is: Eucharist: Communion with Christ, Communion with each other.
Some people I have spoken to about the Eucharistic Congress said that with the way the Church is in Ireland we shouldn’t have a Eucharistic Congress at all. The Church has been wounded by scandals. Mass attendance is down, vocations to the priesthood are few, religious orders are dying out. This, they said, is not the time for a big, triumphalistic celebration.
I couldn’t agree more. It is not the time for triumphalism but for humility. But the Congress in 2012 will not be like the Congress in 1932, where Church and State pulled out all the stops to show that the newly independent Ireland was able to put on an international event with the best of them. It will not be like the visit of Pope John Paul in 1979 where the nation almost came to a standstill to follow the Pope’s progress from one venue to another. No, 2012 will be a more modest celebration. It will be on a smaller scale and the emphasis will be on renewing our faith in Christ’s presence among us in the Church. This is a time for the humble admission that if the Church is broke, only Christ can fix it. Only Christ can bring about the renewal that is needed so that the Church can once again be a witness to Christ’s love in our world. The Eucharistic Congress will be about turning to Christ, asking him to renew our faith and our Church and to show us the way to follow him today.
I said that the theme of the Congress is: “Eucharist: Communion with Christ, Communion with each other. Communion is a word with many meanings. The one we are most familiar with is when we receive Communion at Mass: Communion is the bread which we know by faith is the body and blood of Christ. But Communion has another meaning as well. We receive Communion in order to bring about communion, to experience communion. Communion in this second sense means ‘union with’. We receive the Eucharist so that we may be nourished by the body Christ and that we may be united to him and experience union with him , with one another and with God.
So Mass is not just another devotion or a private prayer. It is a celebration of the Christian community coming together to hear God’s Word and to offer God prayer and worship and song. It is done in memory of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus”, we say in the Acclamation. The Mass makes Christ’s sacrifice present once again. At the Mass we have the privilege of sharing Christ’s body as the disciples did at the Last Supper. We have the painful privilege of watching at the foot of the Cross with Mary and the Beloved Disciple. We have the joy of sharing in the resurrection.
The Gospel story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus has much to teach us about Communion:
- As the story begins we have a picture of disunity – the two disciples are leaving the others and heading off to Emmaus for no obvious reason. Their situation is not unlike our own in the Church today. Their faces were downcast. They are downhearted and disillusioned; their world has fallen apart and they don’t know where to go from here. Everything they had invested themselves in for years has ended in shame and disgrace. All they have left are hopes that were shattered: “We had hoped he would be the one to set Israel free”.
- They meet Jesus, but they don’t even recognise him. It never occurs to them that he could be present in this mess that they are in, that he could be found in the midst of this crisis. Again, not unlike ourselves. In the heat of the media firestorm after the Ryan or the Murphy reports came out, it was hard to believe that God was still with us. Hard to believe that Christ was with us precisely in the hurt and the anger and the shame we were feeling.
- But then Christ begins to speak and explain the scriptures to them. When they listen to his Word, to what he has to say to them, things begin to change. Later on they will look back and say: “did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road?”
- Finally, they share a meal with him and they recognise him in the breaking of the bread. They are united in sharing the bread with him. Their faith and hope are renewed. And their first priority to go back to be reunited with the disciples in Jerusalem and share this good news with them.
In that story we see the theme of the Congress in action. We see the human situations where we are divided and defeated. We see Christ entering our lives, speaking to us, bringing us together in the Eucharist, sharing his life with us, uniting us with himself and with each other. That’s the theme for us to reflect on and to act on over the next two years, Eucharist: Communion with Christ, Communion with one another.
