33 Days to Eucharistic Glory

A Reflection from Father Bandura

What do you consider to be important when you begin a new journey? There are probably many good answers that can be given. I believe that in any journey or task one takes, it is important to always ask, “What is my next step?” To reach the goal, a “next step” must be made, even if it is a small step forward. As I reflect upon our parish, I am overjoyed with the growth our community has experienced, the dedication you make as parishioners in so many ways, the new members we have so warmly welcomed, and the success we have experienced in our recent undertakings. I am grateful in my daily prayer to God for His many blessings and for each of you, the members of this parish family. In my prayer, after offering Christ praise it is next accompanied with the question, “Lord, how can we continue to offer you our love and glorify your name?” Simply said, “God, what is the next step for us as a parish?”

I want to invite you to put this question into the larger context by considering what makes our Church unique, both the Catholic Church and the local church here of St. James, when you compare it to the bigger picture of all the other churches out there. If you consider that there are currently 45,000 different denominations of Christianity in the world (shocking!) what makes us unique from all the other churches on every other street corner? The answer may come with many different insights, but at the top of the list is the very fact that we as Catholics have the Eucharist-Jesus Christ-the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega-truly present-Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. He is the difference, and how we accept Christ in the Eucharist daily as the center of our lives makes us unique.

The Reality of the situation -  Unfortunately, many Catholics in the pews struggle to understand the teaching that the Eucharist given in Holy Communion is the very Body and Blood of our Lord. It is not just a symbol, but the gift of our Christ who gave His life on the cross for us. This miracle that takes place at each Mass is called transubstantiation. Maybe it is not that we don’t believe, but we become distracted from this powerful gift that we are privileged to receive.

Here is the invite -  Beginning May 21,  2025 I am asking each of you (individuals, as a family, as a group of friends) to commit to making a 33-day journey to consecration to Christ in the Eucharist. We will use the book given to each of you at Easter called33 Days to Eucharistic Glory.  What is the commitment? For 33 Days we will prepare together to consecrate (an unconditional act of surrender) ourselves and our parish to Christ in the Eucharist. What must I do? Make the commitment of reading and reflecting each day, for 33 days on the short reading given to us in the book, 33 Days to Eucharistic Glory. On June 21st and 22nd, the weekend we celebrate the Most Holy Blood and Blood of Christ, we will end Mass with Eucharistic Adoration and together make our consecration to the Lord.

What is this consecration intended to do? -  A consecration to God, which has a great history in our Church dating back to the time of the Israelites, is a practice given to us by God who throughout history invited his wandering children to turn back to Him. A consecration is a period (typically 33 days) in which we prepare to give our lives more fully to God. This consecration will invite us to consider how Christ gives himself fully to us through the Eucharist and how He is calling us to a deeper reception of Him when we come to Holy Mass. Be prepared if you begin this journey to find renewal in your relationship with others; ignite a new curiosity about yourself; transform the way you think about money and the things of the world; refocus your professional life; liberate you from many of your fears, doubts, and anxieties; make you aware of the hopes and dreams God has placed in your heart; and breathe new life into your appreciation for the genius of Catholicism.

Get ready by reading the introduction to the book,33 Days to Eucharistic Glory, which you received at Easter. If you need a copy, just ask the ushers at Mass, and they will give you one, or stop by the office.  Continued blessings, and I look forward to making this journey with you.                  Father Bandura

The Catholic Church in America has been in crisis for decades. This is an uncomfortable truth, but one that will not change unless we face it.

Crisis of Faith - Modern Catholics are experiencing a crisis of faith. Materialism and secularism have been eroding the faith of Catholics for decades. The result is most starkly recognized in the research that shows only 31 percent of Catholics in the United States believe Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. Here are a few more statistics that reveal the depth and breadth of this crisis:

• More than fifty million Catholics in the United States have stopped practicing their faith over the past thirty years.
• More than half of all American adults raised Catholic (52 percent) have now left the Church. Only 8 percent say returning to the Catholic Church is something they could imagine doing.
• We have closed a Catholic parish in the United States every three days for the past thirty-five years.
• We have closed a Catholic school in the United States every four days for the past twenty-five years.
• Over the past fifty years we have lost a Catholic priest from active service every day in the United States due to retirement, death, men who have left the priesthood voluntarily or those who have been removed.
• In 1973 there were 58,000 priests in the United States, the average age was thirty-five, and only 10 percent were over the age of sixty-five. Today there are 37,000 priests in the United States, the average age is sixty-four, and 40 percent are over the age of sixty-five.
• 3,500 parishes in the United States are now without a resident priest.

These numbers are real, but statistics are cold. Behind each of these vast numbers is a human being, and a soul, and a family, often a marriage, and more often than that, parents who suffer wondering why their child no longer goes to Mass and what went wrong along the way.

We have all been impacted personally by these statistics. But there is another aspect for us to keep in mind as we chart a path forward. I tried to capture it more than twenty years ago, in the opening line of the first edition of Rediscover Catholicism: “The Church (like so many other things in life) is not so much something we inherit from generations past, or take over from our predecessors, as it is something on loan to us from future generations.”

The Catholic Church is on loan to us from future generations. The negative trends above are only part of the picture. Wherever the Catholic faith is authentically lived out, the genius of Catholicism still has the power to attract people of all ages and help them make sense of life.

In 2014 in the United States there were 708,979 infant baptisms, 44,544 adult baptisms, and 70,117 adults received into Full Communion. Even more encouraging is the data which shows that 43 percent of people who consider themselves cultural-Catholics (Catholic but not practicing) say they can imagine returning to the Catholic Church in the future.

We need to forge the kind of future that will bring them back.  It is easy to be critical, and it is even easier to become overwhelmed by the challenges we face. But we all have some responsibility here, and we all have a role to play in renewing the Church in our place and time. In order to reflect upon our role and responsibility, I invite you to reflect upon this question: There are 1.2 billion Catholics on the planet: What would the Catholic Church be like if we multiplied your life by 1.2 billion?

Catholicism has not lost its power to transform lives. Yet, people are abandoning Catholicism at an alarming rate in Europe and the United States, and this is not a new trend. And so, I raise the question: What are we going to do about it?

The key to answering that question is one piece of data that is more significant than all the data we have reflected upon collectively so far.

(Sources: Pew Research Center, USCCB, CARA, The Dynamic Catholic Institute, and U.S. Census Bureau. Where data is not current year, the year shown is the latest data available)