SUMMARIZING THOUGHTS at the WORKSHOP on PRAYER BEFORE THE BLESSED SACRAMENT

by Paul Bernier, SSS

In September 2001, the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, which administer Emmanuel Magazine and the Center for Eucharistic Evanglizing, hosted a workshoip on Prayer Before the Blessed Sacrament. Ed Foley, Capuchin, Kenan Osborne, OFM and Norman Pelletier, SSS were the major speakers of this event. Paul Bernier, SSS and Ernest Falardeau, SSS were asked on the final day of the workshop to give a presentation organizing the thoughts of the week. Following are Fr. Bernier's summary points from the week and his year's of ministry.

As I begin these remarks, I am mindful of the comment made by Georges Clemenceau, then Premier of France, in regard to President Wilsons Fourteen Points. Wilson and his Fourteen Points! he is said to have snorted. Why God himself had only ten! Lest I cause my audience to feel the same in regard to these closing remarks, I will limit myself to ten points. In view of the richness of the presentations over the past three days, this somewhat brief presentation necessarily means that some things must be passed over. However, the following points seem to have been stressed by one or more of the speakers. I will try to draw out some conclusions that flow from each of these.

1) The Eucharist is a verb, not a noun; an action, not a thing

It is almost impossible to stress this too highly. In other words, the Eucharist is not so much about bread and wine as it is about the people who share that bread and wine in memory of Christ. The Eucharist is not a relic, not a static presence. It is the reality of a living encounter with the risen Lord which we enter into whenever we come together at Christs table. This is something that has been stressed more and more since the Vatican Council. In contrast, note the vocabulary that we had developed over the ages: I heard mass, or I went to mass. The Eucharist is not like going to a movie or a concert, or a sporting event. We are not supposed to be there simply watching something happening in the sanctuary as if we were there as spectators. Christ wants us all to be part of the liturgical action. It is the community which offers Eucharist. The essential action of the mass does not take place only in the sanctuary, but in the community of Christs body that is gathered to worship the Father in and through Christ. If we do not have this perspective, reservation of the Blessed Sacrament can tend to a piety which sees adoration more like venerating the relic of our long-gone Savior. The Eucharist is far more than a relic, however. It is true that Jesus is there. But we must ask what for? Why is Jesus present in the consecrated bread? The answer is simple: he is there to engage us. He is there to have us join in solidarity with him in the work of

salvation. Jesus does not come to us simply to make us feel good. He is there to make us be good. He comes to transform us so that we become fitting members of his Body here on earth. The tabernacle, then, or the monstrance, is meant to remind us of what the mass is all about. It gives us time to reflect and pray, in order to interiorize what we have just celebrated. It then becomes the true pause that refreshes, refreshing our way of thinking and our Christian imagination so that we see life the way Jesus saw it, and have the same basic commitment to the Father that he did. Unless we take time for prayer and reflection, the actual liturgical celebration can become routine, only an external ritual with little or no power to change our lives

2) Devotions are essential for the church

It has been noted that to a large extent, devotions of various kinds, whether this be to the saints, to the Blessed Virgin, or to the Holy Eucharist itself, tended to grow because the liturgy itself had ceased to nourish the life of the people. It may well be true that devotions grew because of bad liturgy and that is a cause for concern for us even today. Nevertheless, there will always be room for, and even a need for, various devotions to nourish Christian life. We need not focus only on the failure of many liturgies to speak to the people. It remains true that there is a big difference between liturgical and private prayer. The liturgy is the communal action of the entire body of Christ gathered to celebrate the reality of his selfgift to us. Liturgy is not private prayer. In fact, because it is communal, there is little or no place for private prayer. Not only is it not the time for our private devotions, but there is little time for personal and private interaction with Christ himself. Granted that the liturgy provides space for silences, viz during the introductory rites, before the opening prayer, after the readings, and after communion. In practice this tends to get overlooked, so that the mass can seem like one hurried ritual with little time for interiorization. For this reason, prayer before and after the mass is essential to prevent the celebration from becoming routine. Unless we reflect on the readings before and after the Sunday liturgies, for example, they will not penetrate us as they could, and we will not benefit as we should from the Liturgy of the Word. Unless we take time to ponder and thank Jesus for his gift of self to us in private prayer outside the time of celebration, we will have difficulty in allowing the Holy Spirit to touch and transform our lives so that we truly become one body, one spirit in Christ. There are two conclusions we might draw from this. The first is that we have to do whatever we can to make the mass come alive, to speak a meaningful word to people. To a certain extent, this applies mainly to priests and those who plan the celebrations. But it is also pertinent for members of liturgical teams. This demands attention, for there are no hard and fast rules in this regard, inasmuch as different congregations and people of various nationality backgrounds all have different needs. Nevertheless, whatever is needed to make the experience reverent, meaningful, and moving are essential. Liturgy needs to be inculturated; music must be appropriate; the dignity of those with more active roles in the celebration must all work together to make the liturgy speak to us of Christ. The second conclusion is that our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament must flow from the mass and lead back to it. As the Rule for the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament puts it: The celebration of the Lords memorial is the center of our personal and

community life. It is the basis for our understanding of the Eucharist as well as the inspiration of our prayer and ministry (#21). This requires that we learn how to pray eucharistically. We are speaking here of eucharistic prayer, not prayers. Eucharistic prayer does not require the recitation of this or that special prayer, novena or set of devotions. It is the ability to speak to God and Jesus as to a friend, heart to heart. That kind of prayer needs no words.

3) God took up human flesh because of his love for us

Fr. Osborne outlined two different Christologies for us. The first type, which has tended to dominate the last millennium, developed from the understanding that the Word became flesh because of sin. Here the emphasis is on the gravity of sin, and the necessity of a God-man offering his life to appease the injury done to Gods majesty by reason of the sinfulness of the world. Jesus came in order to atone for and make satisfaction for our sins. The emphasis here is on the suffering Christ, on Jesus as a victim for our salvation. This, however, is not the s.s.s. type of spirituality. Fr. Eymards Christology was focused not so much on Jesus death as on his birth. He stressed the Incarnation rather than the crucifixion, as well as on the prolongation of the Incarnation in the Eucharist. In this perspective, God took up human flesh not because of sin, but out of love for his creation. Love is what motivated everything that God has done and continues to do in our behalf. As the second number of our Rule points out, St. Peter Julian found an answer to the religious ignorance and indifference of his time in the love of God manifested in a special way in the gift of Christ in the Eucharist. This was the second Christology outlined by Fr. Osborne, and it is surely the one that should characterize a truly eucharistic spirituality. In point of fact, we might note that the New Testament itself supports mainly this second way of looking at the mystery of our salvation. The focus of the Gospels is not on the sufferings of Jesus. The impression that we get after reading the passion narratives is not, Poor Jesus; look at everything that he suffered for us! The passion of Jesus was more illustrative of the passionate love of Christ for God and for all his brothers and sisters. When we read St. Johns Gospel, Jesus almost seems to shrug off suffering as a minor nuisance at best. For John, Jesus reigns from the cross. It is the manifestation of his kingship. In the Scriptures, Jesus is not so much victim, as he is victor over sin and evil. He is also our exemplar, modeling for us what a fully human life should be. There are consequences here also for our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. For s.s.s. religious, there is something here which has direct bearing on how we should understand our prayer life, and on the changes that have taken place in our revised Rule of Life. In our efforts to be faithful to Fr. Eymards vision and to become fully eucharistic people, we need to unlearn some of the things we thought we knew. Fr. Caves historical work over the past 20 years has made it clear that, to a large extent, our understanding of the mind and practice of Fr. Eymard was filtered to us largely through the efforts of Fr. Tesniere. Fr. DeCuers also had a hand in this. In the Jansenistic France of the 19th century, the focus tended to be on sin and how this offended God. Wanting to make Eymard acceptable to the church in his day, DeCuers, and especially Tesniere, placed the main emphasis on the external service of adoration. Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament was seen as a royal cult to the king who gave his life for our salvation. We were matching presence with presence, and offering a service

of perpetual adoration. Interestingly, Fr. DeCuers refused to turn his back on the Blessed Sacrament; he even used to walk backwards out of chapel (bumping into pews and people in doing so!). This was all seen as an expression of the virtue of religion. Thats why we were never supposed to sit during our periods of adoration, and why kneelers were placed in the sanctuary in all our churches for us to use for our prayer. Fr. Cave makes it clear that for Fr. Eymard true to his Christology grew in his understanding of the Eucharist, and came to understand that the dominant virtue of a eucharistic soul was an attitude of gratitude and disinterested love. This led him to the vow which he made of the gift of [his] self to Christ. Eymard was aware that in the economy of salvation, all was truly gift. God and Jesus gave themselves to us out of love, a purely gratuitous gift. Aware of that, the only proper response is one of gratitude and love. There is an important consequence of this for our prayer, and it is reflected in our Rule of Life. Prayer is not viewed mainly as a witness to our faith in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Hence the primary focus for us is no longer on the external cult, or on duration (e.g. seeing a special importance in having someone there 24 hours a day). Rather, the emphasis is on the depth and quality of the prayer itself. If it is easier to pray sitting down, for example, then it is far better to sit than to kneel and spend the hour thinking more of our aching knees than of Christ himself. What counts is the extent to which our prayer takes us into the mind and heart of Christ.

4) Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament flows from the nature of the Mass
In 19th-century France, more than 200 religious congregations were founded that had some form of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Most of these have since disappeared. Fr. Eymard was moved to found our congregation because he was not satisfied with the dominant trend at his time which put the primary emphasis on the idea of reparation, (especially for the excesses of the French Revolution). He sensed that fully eucharistic prayer required more than this. What he suggested to us is that our prayer should proceed according to what he called the four ends of the sacrifice of the mass. This reminds us that there are four great movement or aspects of prayer during the eucharistic liturgy. Fr. Pelletier linked these to Fr. Eymards motto: Adveniat Regnum Tuum Eucharisticum (Thy Eucharistic Kingdom Come!). This yielded four words: Adoration, Reparation, Thanksgiving, Entreaty. The words dont matter; others sometimes speak in terms of adoration, gratitude, reparation and intercession or petition. What does matter is the importance of realizing that the Eucharist is more than making reparation to God, just as it is more than simply presenting God with a long list of prayer intentions. The mass, in fact, is more about worshiping God, i.e. adoring and praising him for his goodness to us. It is also and this reality gave the Eucharist its very name thanksgiving, letting the whole world know everything that God has done for us (eucharistia = thanksgiving in Greek). A eucharistic people is a grateful people. Awareness of these four great movement of the Eucharist itself will help us to appreciate more fully what the mass is all about and at the same time give us direction for our prayer. In the first place, it will help us to see mass for what it truly is: a memorial of everything that God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ. The entire Eucharistic Prayer

stresses this. In the introduction to the Preface, we are exhorted to give thanks to the Lord our God, and we respond with, It is right to give God thanks and praise. The preface then goes on to focus that thanks and praise, depending on the season or feast that we are celebrating. And the Eucharistic Prayer is a continuing reminder of the depth of Christs love in his willingness to lay down his life. Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends. These same four movements should also characterize our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Again, it is not so much the idea of saying certain prayers, as it is having the four basic attitudes of the Eucharist itself inform our entire prayer. (We speak of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, but this can inform all prayer, whether done in church or at home.) What this does is give us a basic method of prayer. Whether reflecting on a particular mystery of our faith, or on a passage of Scripture, we can reflect on it from four different perspectives: adoring and praising God for his goodness in our behalf, thanking him for having redeemed us in Christ, making reparation for our own infidelity and lack of appreciation over the years, and ending with heartfelt petitions for Gods continued grace and favor. This will help ground us liturgically, giving us a liturgical heart, as it were. This also prevents our prayer becoming pagan as it were. Jesus warned us about rattling on like the pagans do. By linking our prayer with the eucharistic liturgy, we ground ourselves in the prayer life of the entire church and this makes all the difference.

5) Symbolism is important!
If the mass is ever to speak powerfully to us of Christs loving obedience, we will have to pay more attention to symbolism. Unfortunately, as a church, we have become used to sacramental minimalism. So much so is this true that, as Fr. Osborne mentioned, people can tell us that they like sisters mass better than fathers, when they are forced to have a eucharistic service without a priest. They cannot tell the difference between a mass and a communion service because for years we have taken the minimum allowed by Canon law and made that standard practice. Instead of trying to make the symbols come alive and carry us by their power, we have reduced them to their canonical minimums. Thus, we have accustomed people to receiving communion from the tabernacle rather than from the sacrifice. We use wafers that no one would ever mistake for bread and call them bread. We tell people to eat and drink but do not offer them the chalice. We say This is my blood over wine that looks more like water. We wash our hands by pouring a few drops of water over thumb and forefinger. In baptism we bury people with Christ by allowing a bit of water to trickle over foreheads. At the end of the preface we invite people to join with the angels and saints in their triumphant hymn of praise, and mumble Holy, holy holy. We tell them to Go, the mass is ended, and in the next breath insist that they stay to sing another hymn. People arent bothered by things like this in the least, unfortunately, because they have become accustomed to them. We have inured them to sloppy liturgy. If the priest is to symbolize Jesus taking, blessing, breaking and distributing, would it not be important to have people bring the gifts to the altar, so that the priest might bless them in a well crafted Eucharistic Prayer, break them in a visible fraction rite, and return them transformed in communion to the faithful? If we invite the community to pray (Let us pray...) would it not be wise to give them time to do so before jumping in with the

official prayer of the church? Unfortunately, all the things we do are taken for granted. And thats sad. As regards prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, Fr. Pelletier asked us to reflect on the difference between having exposition with a monstrance placed on a throne and, perhaps, having the host placed over a chalice on the altar where the mass was just celebrated. The exposition itself is a symbol, and how we conduct the exposition says something to those who come. The question that needs to be raised is what exactly are we saying? The theology are we expressing by our actions and practices is what seeps into the subconscious. If our prayer is to flow from and lead back to the liturgy, the manner in which we pray makes a difference. It should be a psychological reminder of the Eucharist we have so recently celebrated. It should cause us to remember what Jesus did for us during his lifetime, and especially by his willingness to lay down his life. Exposition also provides us a physical focal point. Instead of using some mantra to keep us centered on Christ, we can simply look at the host, and it should be a powerful reminder of the fact that we live surrounded by Gods love.

6) Active participation is the keynote of Vatican II liturgy

Prior to Vatican II, when we spoke of the real presence, we understood only one thing: the presence of Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine. The Council, however, reminded us that there were various ways in which Christ was really present to his church. The chief of these other modes is the presence of Christ wherever two or three are gathered in his name to celebrate the Eucharist. That is why when we gather we are not there as individuals. We are not simply several hundred autonomous souls, each doing our own thing, praying to God. No. we are there as one family; we make up the one body of Christ. The importance of active participation is something almost taken for granted today. How we participate does make a difference. And we instinctively know this. Furthermore, our active presence helps our brothers and sisters to recognize who they are as Christs body. As St. Augustine said, It is our own mystery that we place on the altar. We say amen to what we are. Our ability to play our proper roles in the liturgical celebration lifts the whole from being simply the external fulfillment of an obligation to being the common action of Christs family. We are thus able to help one another on the way to salvation. If we try to carry this attitude into the practice of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, perhaps we might experiment more with the possibility of some forms of communal prayer, especially if there are several people there at the same time. Perhaps, especially if there are only four or five, we might even try some form of shared prayer, reflecting together on what the Eucharist means to us, or on some passage of the Scriptures. Liturgical prayer means that we are never there alone, lost in our own cocoon, oblivious to any and all who might be around us. This is true of the mass; it is also true of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Our prayer must carry an awareness of those with and for whom we are praying. If our simply being there is a help to their faith and devotion, how much more an active concern for them before and after the celebration or the prayer.

7) Is it adoration, or eucharistic prayer?

We speak quite easily of adoration, or of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. In a sense, with everything that has been said at this conference, adoration is a limited word. It is only one of the four ends of the sacrifice of the Mass. If we use it exclusively, we can limit our focus and narrow our vision. Our eucharistic prayer then would be limited to its cultic expression in solemn exposition. And a focus on the cult and the service of adoration (all expressions of the virtue of religion) could lead us to downplay the importance of thanksgiving, of learning to discern Gods loving hand in our everyday lives. I mention this only to remind you that eucharistic prayer doesnt require exposition. It doesnt even need tabernacles. It can be done at home, or even on the street. It doesnt require a setting, or any special words. Its a way of prayer, a spirit and attitude flowing from the Eucharist. The goal of all prayer is not that we pray in certain places, or that we put in a certain amount of time. Rather, it is that we become a eucharistic people, a community which is shaped and informed by the mind and heart of Christ as this is expressed and celebrated in each Eucharist.

8) If Eucharist is a verb, eucharistic prayer should be active as well

Back in our novitiate days we used to be told, in regard to prayer in the middle of the night, that it didnt matter whether we were sleepy or not; even asleep, we were giving glory to God by our being there. Physical presence was all that really mattered. Im not really sure how much glory we give to God if we are present simply as lumps of clay when we are supposed to be praying. But perhaps we should ask how we think of our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Do we focus just on the fact that Jesus is present (helpless, cold, lonely, etc.) and feel that it is important to match his presence with our own? The eucharistic presence is an interpersonal presence. Jesus wants us to enter into a dynamic relationship with him as alive, thinking, loving beings. It is a presence calling and inviting us into union with himself. The implications of this are that the Christian life which is ours, so aptly symbolized and deepened in communion, makes us of one mind and heart with Christ. This implies solidarity with Jesus in his mission of salvation. It requires that the sensitize ourselves so that the need and pain of others touch our hearts as they did the heart of Christ. The touchstone of all true prayer is not how good it makes us feel, how virtuous or pious. Rather, it is whether or not it leads to justice. The Gospels tell us that many times Jesus insisted that we would be known by our fruits, and that his disciples were expected to go out and bear fruit, fruit that would last. Prayer is a living encounter where we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into the reality of Christs own self-gift, and allow his sense of vocation, his total commitment to God to inspire us to a like commitment to living as true sisters and brothers of Jesus. This implies working for justice, and for a world where all can live as brothers and sisters, members of one human family loved and redeemed by God.

9) Exposition is more than a backdrop for private devotions

Years ago, at an early morning Mass, my greetings (The Lord be with you! and even the sign of the cross) were met with cold silence. Close to 50 people in the church were all involved in doing their own thing. Some were saying the rosary, others had heads

buried in prayer books. Still others were lighting vigil lights or praying to various saints. Somewhat frustrated, during the homily I asked them, What are you doing here? Our theology tells us that we are all gathered here at the banquet of the Lord, where he feeds us both with his word and with his flesh. And all of you seem to have brought your own lunch! Many of us come to church to do our own thing rather than enter into what Christ himself is doing. An expression of this during prayer before the Blessed Sacrament exposed would be to make the exposition, then proceed to recite the rosary, some novena or other, and fill up our time with prayer to anyone other than Jesus. This is not to say that any of these things are bad. But it does raise the question of why we are having exposition of the Blessed Sacrament if our attention is immediately diverted elsewhere. I must confess to being rather bemused in one parish where there was exposition before the morning mass. A good 100 people or more joined loudly in reciting the rosary, and chose as benediction hymn, Mother dear, O pray for me. I did wonder then whether this was the best way to guide all those people into a deeper understanding of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. The purpose of eucharistic prayer is to make us adorers in spirit and truth, as Fr. Eymard loved to say. It is to make us more intensely aware of the meaning of the eucharistic mystery and how this was intended by Christ to build up and form the church. I might add here, as an aside, that (in my own less-than-humble opinion) I often question the movement afoot these days to have perpetual adoration in many of our parishes. If perpetual adoration works, fine! But I wonder how many parishes have no eucharistic prayer because they cannot get the 336 people needed to have perpetual exposition. I also wonder what we are doing to educate those people who do come in at the various hours how to pray in a better way and to appreciate more fully what they are doing. And I ponder whether many parishes might not do as well or better with daily or weekly periods of prolonged and guided prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. What is important and needed is whether we are teaching the faithful how to become a prayerful people, how to become truly eucharistic souls, filled with the love of Christ and neighbor which should be the hallmark of a true disciple.

10) Adoration is joining Christ in his worship of the Father

At each mass, during the words of institution, we recall Christs injunction, Do this in memory of me. This memory, or (to use a technical Greek word) anamnesis, is an important aspect of liturgical prayer. Jesus was not asking us simply to have a long historical memory, or not to forget what he had done for us. When we gather together as his body and recall what he did for us the night before he died as well as on the cross, we situate ourselves once again in Gods saving actions. God, in a sense, actualizes for us once again what took place in time long ago. Gods action in and through Christ are not bound by time or place. Sacramentally, we can enter once more into this reality so that its grace can touch our lives as well. This is what makes our worship so important. Because it means that we are not alone. In a very real way we join Christ in his adoration of the Father. We become one with him. We are truly his body. Note that all our liturgical prayers are couched in the plural. It is always we who are praying to God, never simply I. We pray not only as a community, with all our sisters and brothers gathered with us; we pray in and through Christ, in the

unity made possible by the Holy Spirit. This is what gives our prayer its value, as well as its power. Let me introduce somewhat of a parenthesis here. One of the members in this workshop objected (and quite rightly) to the facile use of the expression Christs kingdom, or his eucharistic kingdom. It is true that the Scriptures never speak of Christs kingdom, nor do they reveal Jesus as thinking of any kingdom as being his. The kingdom belongs only to God. Actually, a more precise translation of the Scriptures here would be to speak of Gods reign, or sovereignty. We must acknowledge that the phrase They eucharistic kingdom come! is an Eymardian expression. It is a shortcut, really, a way of expressing our hope that Gods kingdom come. It also expresses our willingness to join with Jesus in helping to create the conditions which will facilitate the coming of that kingdom. It is also a realization that the chief means that God uses, or hopes to use, in establishing his reign here on earth is a people, a community. And, because of our sacramental belief and piety, we are convinced that this means a eucharistic people. We can affirm this because the Eucharist is at the heart of the church. And, as we have been saying these past four days, Eucharist is not primarily about bread and wine. It is about that people who gather to share that bread and wine in memory of Christ. This goes far beyond historical memory, as we mentioned above. It is an act of deep solidarity with Christ. We join at his table precisely as members of his body. There we are fed at the table of his word. We are not only instructed by that word, but challenged by it as well to live out our Christian lives in a more intense and effective way. We are then strengthened at the table of Christs flesh so that we can go forth to work and pray that the kingdom for which Jesus himself lived and died might become more of a reality in our own lifetime. I hope that this summary helps to bring together some of the chief ideas that have been running through these past few days. Obviously the main speakers were able to give a far more extended historical and theological development to each of these. Perhaps, however, by putting them together in this way, you will be able to grasp the logic behind what was said, and nourish your own lives and practice because of them.

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