Benediction takes place in Lucas Oil Stadium during the Wednesday evening opening session at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis on July 17, 2024. RILEY GREIF | WKC
As we enter the third year of the Eucharistic Revival, let us go out on mission
My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Go in peace. Go forth, the Mass is ended. Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life. Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.
To all to these commendations we instinctively reply, “Thanks be to God.”
I once heard a retreat master, speaking of the Holy Mass, suggest that an appropriate “send-off” from Mass might be: “The Mass never ends. Go in peace.”
As we begin the final year of the three-year Eucharistic Revival in the Catholic Church of the United States, that message might be a good one to carry with us. We should have a mindset that we are always renewed and revived by the Eucharist. In turn, as Catholics, we should constantly see the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of Christian life.
The focus of this third year of Eucharistic Revival is Mission. We must remind ourselves and challenge ourselves to know the Great Commission of Jesus Christ: Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.
Just last month more than 50,000 Catholics gathered in Indianapolis for the 10th Eucharistic Congress, the first in our country since the bicentennial year of 1976. That Congress was held in Philadelphia as part of the United States bicentennial celebration. This Eucharistic Congress completed the second year of this current revival.
The National Eucharistic Pilgrimages had approached Indianapolis from four corners of our nation. The southern route procession passed though the Diocese of Owensboro June 30-July 3. Processions and special celebrations marked that passage and more than a thousand people shared locally in those events.
As we begin this third year of revival, the Church should look with fresh eyes on the Great Commission of Jesus. We have extended our diocesan Acts 2:42 small faith-sharing groups who will begin to meet in September and continue through next May.
I want to review one of my video reflections offered last year in my series of meditations on parts of the Mass. I reflected upon the Consecration narrative in the Mass where we recall the words of Jesus as he takes the bread at the Last Supper: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.
Then taking the chalice, Jesus said: Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Summing up the rich blessing just offered to his disciples, Jesus extended this gift for all ages and times: Do this memory of me.
So, three commends: Take and eat; Take and drink; and Do this in memory of me.
The evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke recount the Last Supper narrative very similarly. John, however, accentuates a facet of that supper not recorded by the other three. John notes that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at that Last Supper. And he instructed them: If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.
The figurative action of Jesus to wash his disciples’ feet is a Eucharistic action. From this flows a command equal to taking and eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of Jesus. This command is very much Mission-oriented. Herein is found the meaning of the retreat master who suggested that the Mass does not end but it continues whenever we, in the name of Jesus, wash feet, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, and comfort the dying. The Mass does not end but continues when we instruct others in the faith, when we act on behalf of justice, and when we welcome the stranger into our midst.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
May God bless you always!
Most Reverend William F. Medley
Diocese of Owensboro
Originally printed in the August 2024 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
