Jerome Kiley /

I recently passed by the seminary where I was for 2 years, about 12 or more years ago. One day, they asked seminarians what they think would attract men to becoming priests. All the other guys wrote the usual things like, promote it, promote prayer for priests, promote going to sacraments an discernment, visiting seminaries etc. Those aren’t bad things, but I just wrote one thing, which I’ll paraphrase because it’s been so long!: give yourself to loving service of the laity, that the laity might blossom.

See, if you just live your real vocation, the right people will want to be like you. People who want to give themselves to God and serving others will have an example to say “yes” to. Those that really have the call to shepherd will recognize it in you, and it will be called forward from within them. The right people will follow for the right reasons.

Just be a true shepherd.

I shop for groceries in a small market where there’s a bulletin board. People post all types of things, including services and events in this city neighborhood. In the middle of the posts about services was a flyer for an event about Eucharistic miracles. Relics would be there. Talks about Eucharistic miracles. Where were the services for peoples’ lives?

The church in the US is having a Eucharistic revival. From what I can see, it’s one of those typical church programs: focused inside the church and on the sacraments and the clergy. In the church we have the sacrament of the Eucharist, monstrances, clergy, relics. We have events and meetings and websites. And we do a lot of talks, processions, and looking at things.  A lot of thinking about and looking at and talking about.

But, not a lot of living in the wide swarth of ordinary life that spreads across this wonderful earth.

But it’s not too late.

For over 20 years, I have spent time most every day with the Eucharist in prayer. Alongside of that, I go out into the streets, out into the valleys of society like hospitals, poor places, prisons, immigrant locations, elderly care facilities, out into the subways, out into the neighborhoods, to parishes, to friends, to work, to my apartment. And I go to Ecuador to certain places of poverty and simple life and special people. I dialogue in prayer, and go out, go down on the scale of popular society, to share the life and love I’ve received from Jesus, especially in the Eucharist. So that others in all those places might have live, and bloom together.

All this from a guy who lobbied for, and was voted, “most conservative” in high school, who built an engineering career around MIT and life with his white friends, lived in the most exclusive part of Boston, who would tell homeless people to “get a job”. Who had tinges of racial and ethnic pride. Who was near the top of the social mountain, on the inside of the “good life”.

I don’t do processions, or talks.

I don’t bring the monstrance around to people.

I *am* a living monstrance.

I don’t just build bridges, or turn barriers to bridges.

I *was* a barrier, and now I *am* a bridge.

And I don’t make websites about Eucharistic miracles.

I *am* a Eucharistic miracle.

You know what I think? I think people are into the talks and processions when they’re not *being* the monstrance. When they’re not *being* the Eucharistic miracles. I see it as a way to placate a nagging conscience that’s calling out to let go of the attachments that keep people from really following the grace. I see it as a passive admission of failure to actually be the eucharistic miracle that people need. Instead of facing it with God, the clergy lead a big cover-up game of “playing church”, and it has no effect. But the example and witness of being a true Eucharistic miracle is a thousand times more potent than processions, talks, ceremonies, and websites.  And a thousand times more costly.

If the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, and you really believe it, then you will become it. You are what you eat. And people will believe because of you, your life, who you become. You won’t need to promote the Eucharist with propaganda, processions, your life will be enough and point the way. You’ll be the Eucharistic miracle, and people will respond.

If you want people to come to the Eucharist, you can’t just play church. No, it will cost you your whole life. You have to give others a living example, in the flesh, of what it does to you. Then, people will say, “wow”. Then, people will want to come and have what you have.

Don’t talk about it, pump it up, process it around.

No “playing church”.

Just one thing is necessary:

Become a true shepherd.

Be a true Eucharistic miracle.

“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the true shepherd. A true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (Jn 10:10-11)