Is our faith for real?

“It’s all very nice,” someone once said to me as I waited for a flight, “all this talk about God and his love. But is it real? Isn’t it just a lot of nice ideas?”

Well, my airport interlocutor at least gave me something to work with. She allowed that talk about God and faith is “very nice” – not everyone thinks so. But she also wondered if “God talk” refers to something or to someone real.

By the grace of the Holy Spirit, something Pope Francis often says popped into my mind: “Realities are greater than ideas.” It’s not that the Holy Father disrespects ideas, especially good ideas. But what he wants us to focus on are the realities to which good ideas point and which they describe.

So, I said to my partner in conversation, “If you think the faith is just about ideas, I don’t blame you for not being interested. After all, the world is drowning in ideas – good, bad and indifferent.”

“Go on,” she said inquisitively. I was only too happy to do so.

“Life has become a battleground of ideas, and a lot of people are trying hard to get us to accept their ideas. Some peddle ideologies, a way of looking at life that claims to explain it all – but it never succeeds. If I thought that I were in the idea business,” I added, “I’d move on and try to do something useful.”

She looked me in the eye and said, “How do you know it’s real?” I could have offered her a philosophical proof for God’s existence and other arguments that point to God’s reality. Instead, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I answered simply, “I meet Jesus at Mass, in Holy Communion. Here is where I experience his love for real.”

I thought I had lost her. But she persisted: “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said. “I’ve staked my life on it. The Lord didn’t just leave us with ideas or a formula or a sales pitch. Jesus promised to remain with us until the end of time and the Eucharist is the main way he keeps his promise. He is truly present. The bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Sharing in the Eucharist, we share in Jesus’ gift of self on the Cross.”

She thanked me for being willing to talk with her as we boarded the aircraft. I didn’t see her again but have often wondered if I had helped her on her faith journey. I hope so. I pray so.

Leading others to encounter the eucharistic Lord, discovering the wisdom and redemptive power of his Word, and entering into the reality of Christ’s sacrifice of love as we receive his true Body and Blood – this is why I am a Christian and this is why I am a priest. I live by this daily encounter with the eucharistic Lord and my mission in life is to encourage as many people as I can to experience the truth and reality of the Lord’s love for us.

It’s no secret that in recent years many Catholics have absented themselves from the Eucharist and there are many reasons for this. But none of these reasons outweighs the depth, the beauty and the reality of Christ’s Presence and his power to change our lives by his transformative love.

This month, the first National Eucharistic Congress in the United States since 1941 will take place in Indianapolis. Many from the archdiocese will attend and many more took part in the regional pilgrimage that came through Maryland in June. All this is part of the great National Eucharistic Revival in which the Church in the United States has engaged in for the last three years. The whole point of it is this: the reality of Christ’s Presence is greater than ideas about God or Christ or religion. The Eucharist is our primary point of encounter.

My hope and prayer is that many in the archdiocese will rediscover and recover their eucharistic faith and that those who have remained close to the eucharistic Lord will encourage family members, friends and colleagues to return to Mass, there to encounter the Risen Lord, whose love is stronger than sin and more powerful than death.

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