One LA-IAF Workshop

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

St. Brigid Catholic Church
Los Angeles, California
March 12, 2024

Thank you very much and good afternoon to everyone!

So my dear friends, it’s great to be with all of you. I’m honored by your invitation to share some thoughts this afternoon as they have a dialogue with all of you. I think that’s a wonderful way to learn from each other and try to see what else we can do to serve the people of God here in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

But first, I want to thank all of you for everything you are doing, in so many areas, to serve the poor and the sick and to help our brothers and sisters in need.

We are called to be our brother’s keeper, as Pope Francis often reminds us, and to bear one another’s burdens.

You all are a great witness to that. So thank you very much! By your compassion and works of mercy you are helping to make this truly a City of the Angels and “One LA.”

So you have asked me to talk today about the national Eucharistic Revival and its relevance to our work for justice and human dignity. It’s a big subject. So are you ready for a three hour talk? That was a joke, don’t worry.

It’s also an important subject, an important aspect that we need to talk about. And I think it’s important for us to reflect on this beautiful connection between the Eucharistic Revival and the social justice that we are committed to live.

So it is important because it goes to the heart of our faith and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. 

So let me start with one of my favorite stories from the life of St. Mother Teresa.

You probably know this story — one day, St. Mother Teresa found an old woman lying on the streets of Calcutta. She was homeless, mentally ill, and in a lot of pain.

Mother Teresa took her in, but all the while the woman was yelling and cursing. At one point she asked St. Mother Teresa: “Why are you doing this? Who taught you?”

Mother Teresa replied: “My God taught me.”

This calmed the woman down a little bit, and she asked: “Who is this God?” 

Mother Teresa responded: “You know my God. My God is called Love.”

I like to tell this story because it teaches us a beautiful lesson about compassion for the poor.

It also tells us about the heart of God, about the Eucharist, and about our commitments as believers.

As Mother Teresa said: our God is called love.

And our God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to share in our humanity, in the reality of our everyday lives.

And out of love, as we know, Jesus laid down his life on the cross for us, for each one of us, and for every person who was ever born or ever will be born.

The Eucharist is the sacrament of his great love.

Jesus left us the Eucharist so that we would never forget what he has done for us and how much he loves us. And he left us the Eucharist so that we would never forget the new commandment that he gave us: that we love one another, as he has loved us.

And my dear friends, this is what the national Eucharistic Revival is all about.

The Catholic bishops of this country want to awaken in us a new awareness of the reality of Jesus and his love, and a new awareness of the beautiful life of love that he calls us to.

So this revival is not a program or a series of events. It’s about making a new conversion to Jesus.

The Eucharistic revival calls us to open our hearts once again to the Lord. It calls us to renew our love for him and our dedication to serve him in our neighbors and to build God’s kingdom on earth.

Jesus said: “The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”¹

That’s what he was doing on the cross. He was offering up his Body and Blood as a gift — to set us free from sin, to save us from death, and to call us to a new life walking with him, following him.

In every Eucharist, Jesus comes again to give his Body and Blood for us, in the form of bread and wine. He comes to be near to us, to feed us, to be our daily bread, to nourish and strengthen us on our journey through this world.

You know sometimes when we think about the celebration of the Holy Mass, we just think about well I have to go there because I have to be there every Sunday, or I like to be there because this or that other reason.

Really what is happening is that God is showing us his love in the celebration of the Eucharist, to the point that he’s present there for us.

So from the time of the apostles, there has always been a close connection between the Eucharist and Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, especially the poor.

One of the oldest Church documents outside the New Testament is called “The Teaching of the Apostles.” It dates to the early third century, and it contains this beautiful line: “Widows and orphans are to be revered like the altar.”

I was thinking our Eucharistic faith is summed up in this beautiful line.

When we celebrate the Eucharist and we participate in the celebration of Holy Mass, we are loving our brothers and sisters.

So as we venerate the Lord’s living presence in the bread and wine at the altar, we venerate his living presence in the most vulnerable members of our society. 

This is the deep meaning of Jesus’ incarnation. He came into this world and took on human flesh for this reason: to reveal God’s love for every man and every woman.

Jesus taught us that he would be present in the bread and wine at the altar, but also in the flesh and blood of our neighbors, especially the poor and suffering. He told us: “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”²

So my friends, this is how we are called to live — loving and revering Jesus in the Eucharist and putting our love into living action in reverent service to the poor.

So every Sunday, every day that we go to Mass, we have to really think about the example of Jesus and how we’re supposed to see Jesus in every single person that we deal with.

One of my favorite holy women is the Servant of God Dorothy Day, you know her but she was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement.

She lived for nearly fifty years serving the poorest of the poor in New York City.

In her writings, she describes in detail what her daily life was like. Serving the most difficult of the homeless, men and women broken in body and spirit: the mentally ill, those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Dorothy Day, as we know, shared in their poverty, lived with them under the cruelest of conditions.

And she once wrote: “If we hadn’t got Christ’s own words for it, it would seem raving lunacy to believe that if I offer a bed and food and hospitality to some man or woman or child … that my guest is Christ. … There are no halos already glowing around their heads — at least none that human eyes can see.”³

Dorothy Day lived from the Eucharist, which she received every day.

And when we think about how she was able to do everything she did. She went all over the country; she came to Los Angeles a number of times and she was serving the poor for a long long time. Why was she able to do it?

Daily Mass. Receiving the Eucharist every single day. 

And the Eucharist gave her new eyes to see. Not human eyes, but Christ’s eyes. As she found Jesus Christ in the bread and wine at the altar, she was able to see him in everybody she served. 

So, like her, there are so many saints in the life of the Church, in the history of the Church — so many beautiful saints who really centered their lives in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and then they went to serve the poor and the needy, the homeless and the sick.  

It’s amazing and we need to think more about it because it’s easy to just think well they were just wonderful people. Well where they got their strength to be able to do everything that they did — from the Eucharist. From the real presence of Jesus in receiving Holy Communion every day.

So, let me just conclude with a question: From seeing the life and the stories of the saints and how they lived for the Eucharist and loved Jesus in the poor. So, what does all this mean for us, for you and for me?

The Catechism says: “The Eucharist commits us to the poor.”⁴ That’s the truth. It’s in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

So my dear friends, our faith does not separate from the cares of the world. Just the opposite.

Jesus calls us to follow him ever more deeply into the heart of the world, into the mystery of human suffering and pain, the mystery of poverty and injustice.

He calls us to feed and clothe him in the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked. He calls us to visit him in the sick and the prisoner, and to welcome him in the migrant and the refugee. Jesus calls us to work for a world that is more merciful, and where everyone is able to lead a life worthy of human dignity.

And it is true that all of us are involved in this beautiful work every day. So the point to remember, in my opinion, is this: we are not only doing works of charity or social justice.

Our love for the poor is an act of faith and worship. When we serve the poor and vulnerable, we serve Jesus.

St. Mother Teresa was right: Our God is called love. And our God calls us to be the servants of his love in the world.

Mother Teresa used to say: “Our lives are woven with Jesus in the Eucharist. In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread; in our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ. ‘I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, I was homeless.’”

So I think it’s clear to see the relationship between the Eucharistic Revival, that is bringing us to the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and the beauty of our ministry to the people in need.

So the more that we love Jesus in the Eucharist, the more that we are able to love the people that are close to us and especially ones that have any type of needs.

So this is what the national Eucharistic Revival is all about. It’s about bringing us closer to Jesus and bringing us closer to the service of the people in need. That’s what it’s all about.

So I think that’s how we understand this process of the national Eucharistic Revival. Actually, originally it was the idea of one of the committees of the USCCB and I think Bishop Robert Barron was part of that. And then at some point, for whatever reason, my brother bishops were nice enough to elect my president for the conference of bishops — I’m not sure that I was happy with that, because I have a small diocese to run. Well it’s small, kind of.

But it was a great honor for me. So it was a blessing for me to be a part of the decision to make — to start this National Eucharistic Revival and every time that I was thinking about that, I was thinking that this was going to make a huge difference in the life of the Church in the United States. Because, as I was saying this afternoon: the more that we are closer to Jesus in the Eucharist, the more that we grow in our love for Jesus and also our brothers and sisters.

So let us revere Jesus at the altar and in the poor and the orphan, and in every one of our neighbors, especially those most in need.

So thank you very much for listening. And God bless you all!