
CV NEWS FEED // Bishop Andrew Cozzens told attendees at the FOCUS SEEK24 conference this week that the three-year-long National Eucharistic Revival is more than just a revival for the Church across the U.S.—it’s also intended to be an encounter with Jesus for every Catholic to discover their true identity in the Eucharist.
“God created you for a particular purpose,” Cozzens, the president of the National Eucharistic Congress, said in a talk titled “Why You Need A Eucharistic Revival.”
He continued:
All of us actually discover that purpose through the Eucharist, because the Eucharist reveals to the church and to ourselves who we are and who we’re then supposed to be … If you live a deep relationship with Jesus and the Eucharist, you’ll learn to see yourself and your lives and the world in which you live truly.
Cozzens said that for the Church to be renewed, every Catholic first has to be renewed by “the fire of Eucharistic love” burning in their hearts. He added that an individual renewal requires two things—discovering where true identity lies first, and then making a self-gift by surrendering to Christ.
“The problem is, we get the order of this wrong,” he said. “Most people look for their identity from what they do, or from how others accept them, whereas my security comes from when I know who I am before God.”
He continued:
This is why having a deep relationship with God is so essential to knowing and being able to be who you are, so that you’ll be able to be courageous in being who you are and saving the world.
Cozzens also said that encountering the Eucharist involves self-donation and suffering, as Christ did on the cross.
“Our world does not understand suffering,” he said. “And yet suffering is more and more a part of our world. The Eucharist actually wants to teach you the value of your suffering. And it wants to teach you that suffering can actually be one of the great gifts of life.”
He concluded:
There’s nothing that happens in your life that you can’t bring to the altar, and unite in Christ’s sacrifice, and find there a joy and reason to continue going. Now, of course, Jesus often wants to take away something, and it’s okay to ask him to do that. But also, he allows suffering to continue sometimes, so that we can learn to make our own lives an offering. My real hope is that this will cause you to decide to be part of the Eucharistic Revival.
