Luceat!

Today, we in the United States experience more hours of daylight than any other day of the calendar year. The sun, which rises and sets in the sky as the “light of the world”, touches our lives more this day than on any other day.

In the narrative thread of my personal Salvation History, June 21st is also the day when I was first touched by THE light of the world, the person of Jesus Christ, as he is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Blessed Sacrament. Kneeling under a red and white striped tent on campus at Fransiscan University of Steubenville at a High School Youth Conference, I met my Lord in the Eucharist in a way that was entirely new to my experience.

I had been raised Catholic, attended Catholic school for eight years, and had been present at hundreds of masses up until this point. But somehow, as father processed through the crowd with the monstrance, I experienced a moment of profound grace; by the power of the Holy Spirit, I knew with convication that Jesus Christ was present in the Eucharist. I knew that he had a plan for my life. I knew that everything I had been taught about my Catholic faith was true beyond the bounds of mere intellectual conviction. But more than anything, I knew in the deepest recesses of my soul that I was loved - and the person that loved me was none other than Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity - and that he was right there in front of me, reaching out to my heart in the form of a tiny white host.

And from that moment, my life was never the same. I knew that I was loved, and this changed everything. I was saved from so many of the heartaches experienced by my peers who turned to the counterfeits of alcohol and unhealthy relationships - I had been led directly to the source and summit of all human longing - Trinitarian Love present in our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

So on the tenth anniversary of that first June 21st, I am overcome with gratitude to Our Lord, and so honored to be chosen to serve him in this way. I say with St. Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Ephesians 1:3-4)

“The greatest love story ever told is contained in a tiny white host.” Fulton Sheen