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Cardinal Wilton Gregory: Jesus' light will prevail
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By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald
INDIANAPOLIS – In society’s increasingly intense struggle between good and evil, Catholics need to cling to Jesus’ promise that he is the light of the world and will not abandon those who believe in him, Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory told thousands attending a July 19 Mass for the National Eucharistic Congress at Lucas Oil Stadium.
“Even today, there may be countless occasions when many people might feel that the primal darkness has indeed somehow managed to prevail over the light,” Cardinal Gregory said. “Our Eucharistic Congress seeks to reaffirm and to intensify the light that illuminates the truth of Christ's unique and enduring presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”
Recent surveys, Cardinal Gregory said, have “cast doubt” on the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. There have been other periods of church history where the eucharistic belief was challenged, he said.
“However, believing in Christ's genuine eucharistic presence must also prompt our equally important active response to that presence in charity in each of our lives, offered in service and blessed care for others,” Cardinal Gregory said. “Without that response, the sincerity of our earnest reverence for the Blessed Sacrament will fail to capture the essence of why Christ chooses to remain with us by way of this wondrous presence.
“The most prolonged and profound adoration moments will be inadequate unless they direct us to deeds of kindness toward others. This eucharistic gift must prompt us to live, as does the compassionate Christ, who chooses to remain in our midst under the forms of bread and wine.
“The highest forms and acts of charity, the determined pursuit of social justice and the genuine, compassionate outreach toward the poor and the neglected, generated from a belief in and as a response to Christ's eucharistic presence, is a spiritual journey. It is the light that comes from faith; the brilliance that comes as a response to that faith.”
The four eucharistic pilgrimages that preceded the 10th National Eucharistic Congress each had profound moments in which unsuspecting bystanders gazed at the Eucharist from the sidewalk or through office windows.
“(The pilgrimages) have allowed you to see many curious onlookers who might have gazed at you or may have directed questions to you about what you were hoping to achieve with this procession,” the cardinal said. “Those chance encounters were also opportunities for you to reflect on the reasons that brought about your participation in that journey of faith, a renewal and deepening of our acceptance of Christ's eucharistic presence in our midst.”
The pilgrimage routes also may have helped some “to think about their own forgotten or neglected faith heritage,” Cardinal Gregory said.
“Whatever it might have accomplished, it was well worth the trip along the journey,” he said. “You, no doubt, came face to face with a number of homeless people who frequently live on the streets, in parks, under bridges. They, too, are a genuine reflection of Christ himself as he reminds us of seeing them. May our hearts be softened and our eyes open to his genuine presence among the poor, carrying the eucharistic Christ through some of the depressed areas of our nation.”
Cardinal Gregory said the notion of making a pilgrimage goes back centuries, and he said the thousands who have journeyed the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain forged a deeper personal relationship with Christ. And, the recent U.S. pilgrims took Christ with them on the journey.
“You brought him along with yourselves in his eucharistic presence,” Cardinal Gregory said. “Jesus is on the pilgrimage journey, accompanying us and not merely as the end of the journey, but as one who travels the spiritual path along with us – like the Lord God once accompanied his people during their time in the desert.
“Christ will never leave us as we travel with him as sacrament and (our) ultimate goal. He is truly present in each step of our life as precious sacrament and enduring God. He stays with us as a companion and as food for the journey. He is the light of the world, and there is no darkness within him. God's work of separating light from darkness has Christ as the ultimate triumph. God, indeed, has separated darkness from light, and his son is the light.”
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