"If people spent an hour a week in adoration, abortion would be ended."  Blessed Mother Teresa


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New Rules For Taking Communion Issued
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cath17.html
July 17, 2003, By Cathleen Falsani, Sun Times Religion Reporter

While the changes might seem minor, the first revisions the Vatican has made to the mass since 1975 will affect every Roman Catholic who walks forward for Communion.
Before they take the bread and wine (sic), they'll have to bow, as a sign of reverence for the Eucharist, the bread and wine Roman Catholics believe becomes the actual Body and Blood of Christ during the Mass.
Catholics also must be quieter during the Mass, sitting meditatively in silence before it begins, after the homily, and after they receive communion instead of chatting with neighbors, or whispering to the kids.
In a letter sent to every priest and deacon in the Chicago archdiocese, Cardinal Francis George asked that the revisions to The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the guide for how Mass should be celebrated by every Roman Catholic in the world, be in place in parishes throughout Cook and Lake counties by Nov. 30, the first Sunday in Advent, said Todd Williamson, director of the Office for Divine Worship. [Why wait so long!?]
The dioceses of Joliet and Gary, Ind., already have instituted the revisions, spokesmen said. The Vatican revisions to the Roman Missal were passed in 2000, but were written in Latin. Their English translation and special "adaptations" requested by the American bishops were not approved until last November, said Monsignor Anthony Sherman, associate director for the Secretariat for the Liturgy at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The idea of the revisions, however minor, is to make sure every Roman Catholic is celebrating Mass, the central event in their faith, the same way.
"This is the most important thing we do all week long,"Williamson said. "This is a great opportunity for parishes to renew their understanding and their appreciation of the Eucharist." Some critics wonder why Church leaders are focusing their energy on liturgical tinkering instead of working to restore the trust of Catholics disillusioned by the worst clergy sex abuse scandal in the history of the American church.
After recently listening to a liturgy expert from the U.S. bishops brief a group of Chicago priests about the importance of bowing before receiving the communion wafer, the Rev. William Kenneally, pastor of St. Gertrude parish on the far North Side, was so perturbed he preached a homily about it.
"If I was an actor and some director was insisting that my head should be turned this way, and I was missing my lines, I would just be thinking, 'Don't you understand what's important any more?' " Kenneally said.
The liturgy expert told the priests that"people don't respect the Eucharist like they used to," and "we should get people doing the same thing externally and this leads to internal unity," Kenneally recalled.
"I don't know what they're doing, if they're not watching people or what. People love the Eucharist. If they're trying to fix something, they should fix it by making sure there's always Eucharist for people, and that's about ordination," Kenneally said. "They're putting in a fix, like what they did in the scandals. They did a fix, and that's not fixing."
The Rev. Anthony Brankin, pastor of St. Thomas More parish on the Southwest Side where the Latin mass is still said at noon on Sunday, welcomes the revisions.
"There are no bigger fish to fry," Brankin said of the importance of the Mass. "If we do that right, then it's an indication that maybe everything will at least follow in some sense. If the act of worship . . . is out of control, is it not possible that everything else could be out of control?"


Neglect of Eucharistic Worship Seen as Compromising Church's Identity
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=37690
ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome
Zenit Code: ZE03062303, Date: 2003-06-23
According to President of Italian Center of Liturgical Action

PONTECORVO, Italy, JUNE 23, 2003 (ZENIT.org-Avvenire).- The abandonment of Eucharistic adoration, or ignorance of its importance, is a grave loss that compromises the very identity of the Church, says a bishop.
Bishop Luca Brandolini of Sora-Aquino-Pontecorvo, the president of the Italian Center of Liturgical Action, was commenting on John Paul II's encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia." In an interview with the newspaper Avvenire the bishop stressed the Pope's expression"eucharistic worship."
"Naturally, it encompasses the terms 'adoration' and 'contemplation,'" Bishop Brandolini explained. This "worship, in the specific Christian sense, namely, in 'Spirit and truth,' is defined above all as an interior attitude fruit of the presence-action of the Spirit, and is destined to manifest itself, according to the 'law of incarnation,' in authentic words and gestures that give life to the forms of personal and community prayer."
From this it follows that Eucharistic worship becomes an "experience of listening, contemplation, adoration, offering, dialogue and communion," he said.
He noted that John Paul II's encyclical reads: "The worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church" and is "an inexhaustible source of holiness."
The consequence derived from this is that "the abandonment or ignorance of this worship, as has happened in some places, especially outside of Italy, is a grave loss which, above all, compromises the ecclesial identity itself," he said.
Consequently, the bishop emphasized the need to relaunch Eucharistic worship in a way already provided in the 1967 instruction "Eucharisticum Mysterium" and in the "Rite of Eucharistic Worship" published in 1973.
John Paul II "exhorts the pastors not only to give personal witness, but also to encourage and promote the different forms of Eucharistic worship, also to maintain alive and to increase a 'tradition' that has produced fruits of holiness in the Church," said Bishop Brandolini.
As to the forms of worship, the bishop said that the encyclical places as the "inspiring principle" those that "express and favor the art of prayer, which in tradition and ecclesial experience is, essentially, dialogue ... a dialogue made up of listening to the Word of God and contemplation, which is favored through prolonged silence, the response of song and prayer -- of praise, thanksgiving and invocation."

The abandonment of Eucharistic adoration, or ignorance of its importance, is a grave loss that compromises the very identity of the Church.


Living a Eucharistic Life
Bishop’s Message from Most Rev. Joseph N. Perry

As conscientious Catholics we are seeking to live authentically the Christian life. We are constantly searching for what more we can do to be close to God. For this reason we find Eucharistic Adoration valuable. Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is a precious opportunity we have to be close to Christ and thereby discover sustenance and direction for our lives.You cannot be an adorer for long without noticing and others noticing change in your life. Eucharist is meant to not only sustain us as food from heaven but also to empower us to do great things for God and his Church. And doing great things for God and his Church means that we become better mothers and fathers, better sons and daughters, better students, better priests and religious. God desires our holiness more than we know. Living as faithful disciples of Jesus is about a way of life grounded in practices of faith that nurture virtue in us.

I recall hearing a brother bishop mention that when teenagers or young adults tell him that they get nothing out of the Mass he finds it is often simply a matter of a lack of proper catechesis and faith practice. He suggests to the teenager or young person to commit themselves to go to Mass with the same parish for six months. And during that same consecutive six-month period, work as a volunteer weekly in a parish soup kitchen or meal program for the poor.

Now, if the young person carries out his instructions to the letter, the bishop finds they will come to understand what it means to be Catholic. Perhaps, they begin the exercise out of skepticism but eventually the rhythm of the practices will redirect their hearts and they will see the Mass for the miracle of grace it is, namely, the most miraculous intervention in our lives this side of Heaven.

The bishop is right. You see, young people are often not seeking so much theory about our faith as they are seeking a way of life. Certain practices and the beliefs that form our actions constitute this way of life. Christian life is a way of being that is inextricably linked to certain ways of acting. A combination of practice with communal worship and service to the poor help young people understand who Jesus is - the poor, suffering servant -and, therefore, helps them understand the Catholic way of life from the inside.

Intentionally engaging in the practices of Eucharist and service, young people discover that God embraces them in these ordinary actions. They come to understand that our daily lives are all tangled up with the things God is doing in the world. Eucharist will make sense to them. Worship and service are activities that nurture and bring together the liturgies of the Word and Eucharist with the liturgy of the world.

The same is true for adult Catholics.

Spiritual practices require commitment and regularity if they are to transform us. Spiritual practices like attending Mass, days of reflection, and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament are journeys, not day trips into the realm of the sacred. They are not hobbies or occasional exercises that depend on our moods or our latest interests. They demand a personal discipline, a personal stick-to-itiveness.

Spiritual practices require commitment, the deliberate setting aside of time to do them regularly. Examples include reading Scripture ten minutes a day, worshipping every Sunday with our parish, spending an hour before the Blessed Sacrament, or praying a daily rosary.

Spiritual practices give us direction to our cooperative enterprises like showing up every Saturday afternoon to work at a soup kitchen; becoming involved in the lobbying efforts of Pax Christi; Amnesty International, or the Pro-Life movement; getting involved with the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul ministries to the poor; or becoming a participant in activities that commingle us with people of other races and backgrounds. This way we begin to shed from our consciousness the thought patterns, assumptions, and prejudices that plague society and form barriers in our social lives.

Spiritual practices and Catholic action do not require changes in others but instead demand changes in us: regarding our use of time, our finances, our resources, our prayer, our thought patterns. We begin to do and think as saints would do and think.

Catholic culture illustrates well this combination of worship and action. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen is known to have spent an hour a day before the Blessed Sacrament. He believed this spiritual practice gave sustenance to his ministerial actions as priest and bishop.

So too for us, our adoration before the Blessed Eucharist is an action that reminds us about the combination of bringing together our faith practices and Catholic action that change our lives and ultimately transform the world.

Eucharist is about worship and change: changing the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus; changing people – you and me – so that our lives can transform the world in the vision and hope of Jesus. The Church reminds us that Eucharist is something to adore and to feed upon and something to be lived all at the same time.

It is not by accident that Jesus gave us the Eucharist the evening before his action of emptying himself in ignominious death so that we might have life.

During the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass, we hear the words, “This is my body, which is given up for you. This is my blood which is poured out for you.” Then we hear, “Do this in memory of me.” What is this “this” that we are referring to, “this action?” It is Jesus’ own giving of self. We are to imitate Jesus’ self-giving, represented in the action of the bread of his body being broken and the wine of his blood being poured out.

When we take and receive, we say “amen” to imitating Jesus’ gift of self. When we adore, we are in awe only to be empowered to go out and do as he did.

Simply put, after adoration we must do something !Eucharist as action means that we will imitate Jesus’ self-giving by loving God above all else and by loving others as Jesus loves them. The action of Eucharist means that we are willing to die to ourselves and give our lives in service to others, being broken and poured out just like the elements of bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus.

And once broken and poured out, we return to adore once again only to go out and repeat the same action of being broken and poured out in the manner in which God may require of us.