KENDALL PARK, NJ, May 28 — At the end of a 17 mile Eucharistic procession and pilgrimage through the Diocese of Metuchen, Father Roger Landry, chaplain to the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, gave a reflection during Eucharistic adoration at St. Augustine of Canterbury Parish in Kendall Park.
The reflection was entitled "The Eucharistic Path of Holiness."
If Wheaties was once marketed as the "breakfast of champions," the Holy Eucharist is indeed the "food of saints," he said. There's no greatest path to holiness that receiving, and entering into Holy Communion, with God himself.
In his talk, Father Landry focused on the four pillars of the parish phase of the Eucharistic Revival, illustrating that pillar by referring to one saint.
For the pillar on reinvigorating worship at Mass, he mentioned St. John Paul II, to whom the parishioners of St. Augustine's have a great devotion, with multiple statues and first class relics of the 264th pope. St. John Paul II helps us to understand how every Mass is celebrated, as John Paul wrote, on the "altar of the cosmos" and that must leave us with "Eucharistic amazement," phrases taken from the saint's writings in the last year of his life, during which he declared a Year of the Eucharist.
For the pillar on personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, especially in prayerful Eucharistic adoration, Landry highlighted St. Manuel Gonzalez (1877-1940), a Spanish bishop knows as the "Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle," who spent his priestly and episcopal life trying to dedicate himself to the needs and desires of Jesus in the Eucharist and help others to do the same.
With regard to the charity of passing the faith on to others, he highlighted the patronness of the eastern route of the Eucharistic pilgrimage, St. Elizabeth Seton, who, after her own conversion to the Catholic faith based largely on her being drawn toward the Real Presence, she sought to pass on to others that gift, first her children, then to other girls, and finally to her daughters in the religious institute of the Sisters of Charity she helped to found.
For the fourth pillar, mission, Fr. Landry pointed to the example of Blessed Carlo Acutis, whose miracle for canonization was accepted by Pope Francis last Friday. Once Carlo grasped the reality of Christ's self-gift in the Eucharist, it wasn't enough for him to receive him every day and make time for visits and adoration. He wanted his friends, family, classmates and the whole world to know of this gift, building a website to do so that would eventually be featured in the Vatican during his lifetime (1991-2006) and lead to panels that would travel all over the world.
At the beginning of his talk, the priest of the Diocese of Fall River and Chaplain to Catholics at Columbia University mentioned some of the lessons of the pilgrimage during the day.
When Jesus summons us to follow him, he said, sometimes the journey is not easy, but we're buoyed by Jesus' presence with us not to mention inspired by others in the Church journeying with us. The grueling nature of a pilgrimage under the sun, he said, might have led some of the pilgrims to drop out along the way, but he said they helped each other to make it and were assisted by other members of the Church, like the Knights of Columbus water stations, throughout.
That is a beautiful image of how the Church journeys together in the Eucharistic path of sanctity, he stated.
To listen to Father Landry's reflection, click here.
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