Fr. Groeschel on Eucharistic Devotion

Excerpt from "In the Presence of Our Lord: The History, Theology and Psychology of Eucharistic Devotion" by Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR and James Monti (1997) Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division:

Eucharistic devotions of all kinds are coming back. A legitimate question is why. One may give many reasons, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (if you are pleased by this comeback) to the decline of society (if you are not pleased). There is, I think, a historical reason that needs to be considered-especially by those interested in the pastoral life of the Church. We live in very lonely times. Modern people have more solitude in their lives than people did in the past. With the virtual end of the extended family, with the modern preference for privacy, with the solitude in the midst of a crowd that one sees as an obvious necessity in the multitudes of large cities-people spend much less time interacting in a personal way with one another. The impersonal one-way communication of the media now substitutes for the shared recreation and cultural activities of the past. One might compare the lively paintings of farm life in Pieter Bruegel or the friendly taverns of the Dutch masters to the lonely but commonplace urban scenes of Edward Hopper to get some sense of the loneliness of our times. There are still great public events where people experience each other with shared feelings, and they range from papal visits to rock concerts-but all in all we live in lonely times, and it appears that the coming age of virtual reality is even more likely to be an age of the solitary.

It should be no surprise then that the mysterious and personal presence of Christ should have a profound human appeal. Nor need there be any fear that this devotion could lead to any kind of spiritual isolation, so long as we carefully keep the Eucharistic Presence linked with the Paschal Mystery, which encompasses all men and women, and with Holy Communion, which draws together all the faithful disciples of Christ (page 173).