One.
It’s an interesting word.
As I’ve sought God’s voice and desire for this third year of Eucharistic Revival, this word has carried a special revelation.
Mother Teresa once said, “We need to be woven with the Eucharist; we need that oneness. We need to become so one with Jesus that we can also be broken, that the people can eat us, that we can be truly spent, like Jesus spent himself. That’s why Jesus made himself the Bread of Life.”
Oneness.
We often think of “one” as a number, but it also signifies unity. The Eucharistic life calls us to embody both meanings—being fully integrated within ourselves and fully given to others.
In his book Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, Colman O’Neill, OP, describes receiving the Eucharist as a communal act. When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, it’s not merely a personal act—it can never be! For Communion to fulfill what Jesus desired, we must embrace all who receive it—the entire Body of Christ.
When Christ gave himself at the Last Supper, he did so without reservation. His gift emptied him, and it was a promise that he would “go to the end” to be with us—all the way through Calvary and the Resurrection. In the appearance of bread and wine, Jesus concealed the treasure of his entire self, sharing both his humanity and divinity.
How do we receive this gift? I’m still learning, but I know it involves living a Eucharistic life—a life in which we are loved, filled through prayer, and truly poured out for others.
For the other—One.
I shared my full story in an article published by Our Sunday Visitor, but I experienced this in a profound way in my own life in 2020 when I battled COVID. It was a sobering time for my whole family as I struggled for life in a coma. I encountered my lowliness and vulnerability in a whole new way during my illness. However, something incredible happened: while I was in a coma, in the silence of my heart, God drew my attention to him in his Eucharistic body. Through these moving experiences—feeling close to God in prayer and through those who loved and walked with me during that time—I experienced, in a deeply intimate way, the oneness of my life and how it is united with both the One who is greater than all of us and with you.
The Year of Mission invites us to live out this oneness with renewed vigor. Some of us may have had powerful encounters over the past two years—whether through our diocese, our parish, or the 10th National Eucharistic Congress—but this year we’re being called to go “further up and farther in” to the mystery of God’s Eucharistic life. We need to pray and fast. We need to commit to spending time with Jesus in his Eucharistic Presence so that we might become his living Body in the world. Even if it is only 5–10 minutes a day, we must gain our life from him, our personality from him, our everything from him.
This year, we extend the invitation to “Walk with One,” recognizing that each of us has received a gift, an inheritance. Each of us has a story, and each of us has been given the capacity to be a conduit of God’s love and presence to those we encounter in everyday life.
Can I ask? Who do you already walk with? Who do you want to walk with? Who needs love? Who is God inviting you to bring to our Eucharistic table, to feast upon the goodness we’ve received in his undying love and presence?
I invite you to pray on this when you visit him next. Allow him to fill you and show you the way to becoming like himself, poured out for the life of the world.
So “that all might be one.”
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The National Eucharistic Congress, Inc. was founded in 2022 by the U.S. bishops in direct response to the need for National Eucharistic Revival. It exists to bring the world into a living relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist, and it accomplishes such a mission through world-class events, innovational pilgrimages, and exceptional spiritual formation.
