The National Eucharistic Revival is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is having an historic positive impact on the Catholic faith in this country. Nevertheless, there are some in the church who have been critical of this revival, claiming that it is putting exclusive attention on Eucharistic piety, adoration, and solemn processions, while ignoring the call to love our neighbor in concrete acts of charity.  But that is not true at all.
 
A strong, devotional Eucharistic spirituality is not comfortable navel-gazing. The profound experience of the love of God in holy Communion calls for a response.  We accept Christ’s love in the Eucharist, and then we are called to go and do something with it. From the very beginning, the U.S. Bishops have intended the Eucharistic Revival to increase both our love for the Eucharist and our love for one another. 
 
In his keynote address at the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Bishop Robert Barron said, “Your Christianity is not for you. Christianity is not a self-help program, something designed just to make us feel better ourselves. Your Christianity is for the world.”
 
There is an essential connection between our love of God and the loving assistance that we give to others. The holy sacrifice of the Mass makes the sacrifice of the cross present to all future ages. Jesus died on the cross in an act of total sacrificial love so that we might become better able to love as he loved. On the cross, Jesus poured out his life for us in agape love. As we receive him in the Eucharist, the capacity to give agape love grows in us. Furthermore, as we spend more time in his loving presence in Eucharistic adoration, we become changed. We become more capable of imitating his love and his sacrificial gift.
 
The First Letter of John says that if we see our brother and sister in need and we don’t help them through concrete action, then we really don’t have the love of God in us (see 1 Jn 3:17). “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20).
 
At the Last Supper, on Holy Thursday evening, the night before Jesus died, not only did he institute the Eucharist and the priesthood, but he also commanded us to humble service. He gave two commands to action at the Last Supper: the command to continue offering the Eucharist – “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19) and the command to wash one another’s feet – “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:14).
 
By washing the feet of his Apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus showed that there is an intimate connection between his command to celebrate the Eucharist and his command to wash one another’s feet. Jesus’ two key ritual actions at the Last Supper, the Eucharist and the foot-washing, represent two sides of the same coin of the Christian life.
 
Therefore, our Catholic Christian existence needs to include both sacrament and service. A Christian life that includes just one of them, without the other, is incomplete. At its best, our National Eucharistic Revival in the United States teaches that there is a link between dignified worship of Christ on the altar and service of Christ in the poor and needy.
 
Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a classic example of this. In the chapel of the convent of her sisters, on the wall behind the altar, she instructed them to paint the words “I thirst” near the crucifix and the tabernacle. That thirst has many layers of meaning. It is the physical thirst of Jesus as he hung upon the cross, and his personal thirst for our love, as well as the thirst of the poor who are served every day by the Missionaries of Charity.
 
Mother Teresa taught her sisters the intimate connection between profound devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the concrete action of picking up the poor and destitute off the streets of Calcutta and caring for their basic needs, trying to see Christ himself in the least of their brothers and sisters.
 
For us as Catholics in West Texas, we must strive to live out this intimate connection between receiving Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic liturgy and responding to him by serving our fellow human beings in love. The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, chapter 11, stated that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the entire Christian life.” That is, the Eucharist is both the origin from which all our Christian service flows and the highest point toward which it is directed. 
 
There is a dynamic interchange in the life of a Catholic Christian, going from life to liturgy and from liturgy to life. Each of these feeds into the other. The Eucharist really is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and our response to this great gift of the Eucharist must be to pour out ourselves in service to our brothers and sisters.
 
Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament in a more powerful way than anything else we do. We come to the liturgy to receive his presence, and then we are commissioned to carry his presence with us as we walk out the door of the church into our world that is so much in need of him.
 
After recognizing Our Lord in holy Communion, we must also recognize him in our neighbor in need. The same Catholic faith that enables us to recognize the true presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine of the holy Eucharist also allows us to recognize Christ in our neighbor, in the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the immigrant, the abused, the incarcerated, the sick, the elderly, and even the members of our own families.
 
In Bishop Robert Barron’s keynote address at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, he said that what becomes present in the Eucharist is Jesus’ body given up for others and Jesus’ blood poured out for others. The Eucharist is given to conform us to Christ who gives himself for the world. Therefore, our Catholic faith experience is more completely Eucharistic when we pour out ourselves generously for the good of our fellow human beings.
 
In summary, the Eucharist leads us to action in service of others, and our service to others leads us to the Eucharist.