CV NEWS FEED // Amid a period of Eucharistic revival across the country, Catholic schools need the Eucharist more than ever, according to a recent essay.
Dr. Timothy O’Malley, author and academic director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, wrote that every Catholic school has a “Eucharistic vocation,” but that calling is something that is easily misunderstood by educators at the schools.
According to O’Malley, fulfilling a school’s Eucharistic vocation goes beyond simply celebrating Mass for the students every day—it means that the Eucharist has to penetrate every aspect of life during the day, building community and teaching the Gospel.
“Eucharistic worship … is intended to shape a whole life. Through Christ’s sacrifice, which is given at Mass, I am invited to make of my life a return gift back to the Father through the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit,” O’Malley wrote. “Nothing human is to be left behind.”
“The implications for the Catholic school should be patent,” he continued. “Study, friendships, sports, communal life, whatever initiation into human culture that is performed in the life of the school can find a place in the Eucharistic worship of the school.”
O’Malley also wrote that a school Mass is not a “private devotional activity,” but rather a “prophetic vision of the school’s mission.”
Through attending Mass, students and educators alike give thanks, remember God’s goodness, contemplate, encounter God personally, and build community. These are all factors that are integral to a Catholic education, O’Malley argued.
“[O]ne of the dangers of forming communities in our age is that said communities are formed primarily around ideologies, which tend to exclude someone from that community,” O’Malley wrote. “You are out of the community because you are not wealthy. You are out of the community because you have a disability. You are out of the community because you are not from this neighborhood.”
He continued:
But in receiving the Eucharist, we are invited to another way of viewing communion: all are welcome, because all are called to the supper of the Lamb.
We love one another, not because we have written a mission statement that says we should, but because God first loved us.
O’Malley added that embracing the Eucharist makes the mission of a Catholic school clearer. Through the Eucharist, educators are able to better develop the curriculum, lead students in worship, and shape the life and community of the school.
“When that mission is understood more deeply, every Catholic educator will be able to adopt the maxim of St. Irenaeus: the Eucharist shapes our way of thinking, and our way of thinking conforms to the Eucharistic mystery,” O’Malley concluded.
The post Expert: Catholic schools have a ‘Eucharistic Vocation’ appeared first on CatholicVote org.