It’s the oldest and lamest and laziest journalist trick in the book — to talk to taxi drivers and use their comments and observations in a column. So, I don’t do that. I do occasionally, though, take Ubers and have conversations for the sake of evangelization — and then write about them in this column! In all seriousness, I talk to people because it’s the Christian thing to do. We can be — I have been — all too transactional with people who help us in our lives. In my case, it’s not so much because of the monetary transaction but a perceived busyness. We should never be too busy not to encounter the person in front of us, even if his back is to us.
My most recent revelatory kind of conversation of this kind was with a driver from Lebanon. We talked about the challenging situation there, where his mom spends hours each day without electricity. I mentioned that I sometimes go to Our Lady of Lebanon, the Maronite cathedral in the area, for Sunday Mass. He shared his parish but added that he and his family watched Mass on Facebook that particular morning because it was cold.
He has young kids and has to make prudential judgments about what is best for them. And he has to provide for them. But I ached for him not receiving Jesus that Sunday. And I ached for those, who, because of earlier COVID restrictions, will now settle for virtual Mass.
My Uber conversation came shortly after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a document on the Eucharist and announced plans for a Eucharistic revival. In the past, I’ve attended beautiful national and international events — a Convocation for Catholic Leaders in Orlando, World Youth Day in Poland, a conference on ecclesia in America at the Vatican. All beautiful and worthy. But no one conference, no one event, is going to reach the people who do not sign up for such things — who don’t pay attention to “Church” things. Who don’t know the truth of the Real Presence. God may reach them through one of these initiatives or projects, but the most important thing for you and me to know is the power of our prayer and personal witness.
The bishops’ document, “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” includes a quote from Dorothy Day: “We go eat of this fruit of the tree of life because Jesus told us to. … He took upon himself our humanity that we might share in his divinity. We are nourished by his flesh that we may grow to be other Christs. I believe this literally, just as I believe the child is nourished by the milk from his mother’s breast.”
Sometimes, people are surprised by or have not noticed the Eucharistic faith of Dorothy Day. But it was her devotion to Our Eucharistic Lord that made all the work she did on behalf of the poor and sick and despised possible. That’s often missed with the saints we celebrate because of their good work.
Day’s comment was in response to a friend who shared that she no longer saw the point of daily Mass. If you are at the Liturgy of the Eucharist, you are present at Calvary. That fact has the power to change everything about our lives for the good.
During Mass that Sunday, because they were in my peripheral vision, a family sat at the consecration, as one of the pre-teen girls applied lip gloss. When the kiss of peace came, I turned around to a man on his phone.
I fear we have not shared the truth of our experience of the Faith, any and all of us who hang on for dear life to Jesus in the Eucharist. We cannot rely on a document or an event, so much as each of us sharing what we have in Jesus.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review.
