Art Credit: Saint Paschal Baylon Adoring the Blessed Sacrament (Detail) by Claude Francois (1615-1685); Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access)
The 10th National Eucharistic Congress is scheduled to take place July 17-21 in Indianapolis. One of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage routes is through the Omaha Archdiocese with a Mass at St. Cecilia’s Cathedral June 23. We are in the midst of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival to help Catholics “revive our understanding of and devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist!” It is exactly what our saint of the day, St. Paschal Baylon, would have approved because he is the patron saint of Eucharistic Congresses.
St. Paschal lived in Spain from 1540-1592 during the Golden Age of the Church in Spain. He was a shepherd during his youth and became a Franciscan friar at the age of 24. As such he was a cook, gardener, beggar, and porter. “He is best remembered, however, as a contemplative and a mystic who experienced ecstatic visions during extended periods of prayer before the Holy Eucharist. It was the joy of his life to pray in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.” Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him the patron saint of Eucharistic Congresses, calling him the “seraph of the Eucharist”: “Now, in the glorious ranks of those, the ardor of whose piety towards the great Mystery of the faith was more evident and overflowing, Paschal Baylon holds a most prominent place; for, being gifted with a soul which aspired above all things to Heaven, he embraced a severer mode of life, entering the Order of Minors of the Strict Observance, and from the contemplation of the Holy Eucharist he derived that science and wisdom which placed him, though formerly an unpolished and illiterate man, in a position to solve the most difficult questions of the faith.”
Let us pray before the tabernacle and adore Our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. St. Paschal Baylon, pray for us!
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