At convocation, priests focus on Eucharistic Rites
MIDWAY — Priests of the Diocese of Salt Lake City gathered Oct. 9-12 at the Homestead Resort in Midway for a series of presentations on the Eucharist by Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB.
Abbot Jeremy for many years taught theology at Sant’ Anselmo in Rome and at Mount Angel Seminary, where many diocesan seminarians are enrolled. In 2016 he was elected the 12th abbot of the Mount Angel community, but he continues to teach a class there each semester. He also serves on various Vatican commissions. He has been a consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship since 2005, and is the author of several books.
Knowing that this year would be in the midst of the three-year Eucharistic Revival called for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the diocesan board for ongoing formation for priests wanted to focus the convocation on the Eucharist, said Fr. Martin Diaz, the board’s chairman and rector of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The abbot was chosen to address the convocation because of his expertise on the liturgy, Fr. Diaz added.
The three-year National Eucharistic Revival was called last year by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops “to restore understanding and devotion to this great mystery here in the United States by helping us renew our worship of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist,” states https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/.
Abbot Jeremy presented seven talks under the title “A Mystagogy of the Eucharistic Rites: Understanding the Mass More Deeply.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines “mystagogy” as “a liturgical catechesis which aims to initiate people into the mystery of Christ.”
The Eucharist “is a mystery that can’t be exhausted,” so the abbot offered the priests “in this year of Eucharistic Revival how we can speak to our people more effectively about the Eucharist,” the abbot said in an interview.
In his presentations, he offered “some fresh tools” for the priests “to lead their communities more effectively in the entire [Eucharistic] rite and to be able to preach about it more effectively,” he said.
His presentations explored four parts of the Mass, and he suggested to the priests “that you could do something of the same for your own people in your parishes as part of the Eucharistic Revival.”
“I want to suggest to you that the Real Presence [of Christ in the Eucharist] is a very dynamic presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; not a static presence of Christ in the Eucharist but a very dynamic presence, and a presence that cannot be understood at depth without understanding how the whole Eucharistic Rite unfolds,” he said.
His presentations covered several aspects of the Eucharistic Rite, including the proclamation of the Word, the Presentation of the Gifts, the Eucharistic Prayer and the Communion Rite.
At Communion, “as the Son empties his body and blood into us, the Spirit is lavished upon us. This is where we become one body, one spirit in Christ, and the Spirit accompanies this gift in his own self-emptying; he accompanies it in such a way that with divine help in us we can in fact begin to grasp and understand the gift that we are receiving,” he said, pointing out that this understanding cannot come from human intellect alone. “We need divine help, and the divine help is given us. And I am reminding you of that because we tend not to pick it up and use it.”
“The notion of oneness of the assembly is essential to understanding correctly what we’re saying here,” he added. “The reception of Communion is not merely the coincidental juxtaposition of so many individual believers, each of whom is sacramentally united with the Lord in his body and blood. It is also all of those individuals being constituted as one body being made to be one body united in the body’s head, Christ, and animated by the one Spirit, who has raised this body from the dead. In this oneness, which is accompanied by the reception of Communion and in the sign that is thus made, we can see in the Church the sign or the image of the Holy Trinity of many who are one.”
After attending the talks, Fr. Diaz said he thinks Abbot Jeremy “has a rich understanding of what is going on in the words and actions” of the Mass. The rector already has passed on some of what he heard from the abbot. In his Oct. 15 weekly message to cathedral parishioners, Fr. Diaz included some of Abbot Jeremy’s reflections on the Bringing of the Gifts to the Altar.
© Copyright 2025 The Diocese of Salt Lake City. All rights reserved.
Stay Connected With Us