By Bishop Greg Kelly
Special to The Texas Catholic
It is a very moving experience to be in a stadium with 50,000 other Catholics, many from the Diocese of Dallas, including at least four priests (Fathers Edwin Leonard, Michael Likoudis, Kevin Wilwert, and Russ Mower) and to hear the familiar voices and instruments of David and Lauren Moore for the opening event on Wednesday night. As one speaker said: “it is good to be here.” It is indeed good to be here and to pray and to think about the Eucharist and great generosity of Christ, how he offers himself for us in very moment, and in profound way in the Eucharist.
The address of our Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christoph Pierre, stands out. He asked: What is Eucharistic Revival? How will we know we are experiencing it? He emphasized that the revival must extend beyond devotional expression and open us to an encounter with Christ as he comes to us in the rest of our lives, to see him everywhere, in every encounter with others, and to see others as he sees them. He said that we should seek to build bridges to others, since he himself built the first bridge: to us! We should also be aware of his Real Presence in the assembly who gathers, who struggle to connect with him, to build bridges there, and to be ready to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit, to be willing to go where he leads us and not be so stuck on our own plans; and to ask him to reveal the places of resistance in our hearts.
The other highlight of the first day was an address by Cardinal Timothy Dolan from New York, this earlier in the day at a Day of Reflection for bishops. He emphasized the importance of the invisible, reminding us that we walk by faith not by sight, and that the invisible is more important and more enduring. This is especially important to remember as we live in a world with increasingly fewer visible supports for faith, a world that sees only the visible as real, Our faith bears witness to this invisible world and we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us and who support us in ways that we scarcely see.
I saw quoted in a blog post by Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, the concluding paragraph from a 19th century novel by George Eliot, Middlemarch. Of the principal character in the book: Dorothea, which means “God’s gift”, the novel’s author writes:
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature…spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Gregory Kelly, V.G.
Bishop Greg Kelly is the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Dallas.
