Where Thy Glory Dwells

This was the finest church in Mount Carbon, PA

(cf. Wikimedia Commons)

This is Who made it so

(as featured in the Diocese of Allentown)

Since seventh grade (1988-89) I have played the organ for church, as often as five times a weekend. At first an occasional substitute, finally I reached out to local parishes for regular work, and soon I was picked up by the former St. Francis DeSales Parish in Mount Carbon, suburb of Pottsville.

The sacristan, Kathleen Glaser, called herself the “Assistant Pastor,” and certainly knew as much about the building and community as any assistant. We had many colorful chats before Mass. When Kathleen died, the pastor, now-retired Father Edward B. Connolly, designed her memorial card. Beneath her photo was Psalm 26:8, which reads, “O Lord, I love the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwells.”

In June 2019, I became pastor of Saints Peter and Paul in Lehighton. In my first visit to the vestibule, I spied above the entrance to the nave that same Bible verse, which connected me to those early experiences that kept me off the streets and in the sanctuary. Upon reaching my seventh assignment in 18 years of priestly ministry, I knew I was home, where God’s glory dwells.

The pandemic is the latest of many changes over these decades. Now 70% of Catholics do not regularly attend Mass in otherwise normal times, and only 25% believe that Jesus is truly, really, and substantially present under the appearances of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist. These facts prompted Allentown Bishop Alfred A. Schlert to declare this 60th Diocesan Anniversary the “Year of the Real Presence” (yearofrealpresence.org).

Catholics know Christ abides and feeds in many ways, as the Second Vatican Council told us: in the proclaimed Scriptures, in the priest, and in the assembly, but most tangibly in the Holy Eucharist, where His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity pitch their tent among us.

Our new parish Society of Saint Vincent de Paul ritually recalls how Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered (Matthew 18:20). Saint Teresa of Calcutta often said the needy are among Jesus’ “most distressing disguises”: it can be as hard to see Him in our suffering brothers and sisters as in the consecrated bread and wine. But Mother Teresa’s sisters adore the Eucharistic Lord each day before serving Him in the streets, and our SVDP Conference has chosen to begin our meetings in the same way.

The Missionaries of Charity and the Saint Vincent de Paul Society embody another principle from the same Second Vatican Council: the Sacred Liturgy is the “Source and Summit of the Church’s life and activity”: Christ is everywhere because He is present unmistakably, most intimately, in the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Mass. We take His Real Presence in the Mass to the real people and situations of our lives, which in turn we offer alongside the bread and wine that becomes Him in the Mass.

It makes you wonder, though: if Jesus is here, why isn’t everyone else? Other faiths are asking the same of their own adherents. A global pandemic accounts for the current dearth of ritual involvement, but the “real absence” is nothing new to any religious body; even secular organizations have been reporting diminished returns over the years. In defense of their defection, some have cited God’s ubiquity when choosing to “worship in nature” or to follow some ersatz deity who makes no demands upon their conduct or allows them to worship on their own terms.

Sacred and secular alike, feeling the fatigue and isolation of these days, can take to their lips the author of the Letter to the Hebrews: “We should not stay away from our assembly, as is the custom of some, but encourage one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near” (10:25). What day? The Day of the Lord, Whose Presence is real and revealing and worthy of reverence.

“This Is My Body”

This article appeared in the April 15, 2021 issue of the AD Times, the newspaper of the Diocese of Allentown. Read more about our diocesan goings-on at allentowndiocese.org and ad-today.com.

Bishop Schlert has declared this a diocesan “Year of the Real Presence”: a motive for exceeding gratitude. We note meanwhile the real absence of so many, before and since the onset of the global pandemic. We beg the Lord for the grandest possible reunion this side of eternity, where and while we still happen to be.

Recall how, before Judas handed Jesus over, Jesus pre-emptively handed Himself over, saying “This is My Body” (Mark 14:22). This phrase seems to epitomize the spirt of this special year and just about everything there is to being Catholic.

The immediate and crucial context of the statement was, of course, Eucharistic: the bread and wine of Passover became a New Meal, sealed in the love-offering of the God-Man on the Cross. Jesus never offered a more literal declaration. Grammarians call “is” the copulative verb, because it joins subject and predicate. Bread and wine do not “represent,” “symbolize” or “suggest” His Presence-made-palatable to us: they are He.

Our Lord could utter those words on the night before He died because His mother Mary had lovingly consented to the angel’s invitation to bring Him into the world. In every human respect Our Lady was the first to say, “This is my body,” when she offered herself body and soul to the Holy Spirit’s creative action.

From the streets of Caesarea Philippi to the halls of heaven, Jesus has looked out upon this ragtag bunch and declared, “This is my body”: My Mystical Body, the Church. Since the apostles’ time, fellow disciples and leaders sometimes bewilder, yet what’s more a marvel? The Incarnation still alights upon our altars, pulpits and confessionals, and in every place where prayers, works, joys, and sufferings transform the world and pierce the clouds.

Then there is the furnace of the Christian vocation, considered precisely in the ways spouses, priests and consecrated religious “offer [their] bodies as a spiritual sacrifice”(Romans 12:1). Every well-lived example can say to its counterpart, “This is my body,” when, for example, spouses give themselves without reservation in the one-flesh union of sex, or when a priest attends to the sick and dying.

At the Consecration of the Precious Blood, sometimes I will look up at the chalice, see my reflection and then look down to the faithful. That intimate moment prompts a prophecy cited in the New Testament: “Here I am, and the children God has given me” (Isaiah 8:18; cf. Hebrews 2:13). I cannot be any closer to you, for this is my body – Christ’s Body – distinct from yet united to me.

Sounds romantic, but it must translate into daily life.

It’s easy to become a “bachelor who plays God.” Husbands and wives also can collapse into such a cavalier condition. The sexual realm is not the only possible domain of human degradation, but it’s the one that hurts the most. There’s no comfortable compromise: either a body is “given up for,” or it is not.

Our bodies, given up, convey love with exquisite splendor. Witness Catholic participation in education and healthcare; behold the beauty of our sacred music and architecture. Faithful, lifelong, heroic commitments compel like any well-articulated doctrine.

The Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostolic Succession, the interiority of the spousal embrace, and the lived exteriority of beauty, goodness, and truth: this is Real Presence that can unite us as God intends.