Men, Ministry, and Our Eucharistic Call

How do we define our vocation as Catholic men? What does it mean to discover who we are as believers and how we are meant to live out Christ’s call in our lives? For the past 15 years, the Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference has been answering this question by pointing men to Christ and the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, and sending us forth to act out this holy encounter with the God-man in our everyday lives. This unique approach to ministry has helped thousands of men understand more deeply their manly commission to serve others within the incarnational realm of the Catholic faith.

In my case, I have discovered through the road of suffering – much of it of my own making – how our Savior has molded my heart around the gifts he has given me. Through the grace of Christ’s presence in my life I have been slowly and faithfully formed into a man of words; and my love for the Eucharist has grown like a fire within me, shaping the way I share myself with the world.

This is why this year’s conference is particularly meaningful to me. It is the grace-filled culmination of all the lessons learned over the many years, the holy conclusion to the mentoring ministry of this annual event. All our devotion to God, our understanding of his doctrines, and our participation in the Church, must be lifted up to the source and summit of our faith – the Eucharist.


A Conversionary Call, the Embodiment of Empathy

The Eucharist is the blessed sign that celebrates our salvation and nourishes our ministries as men. As we move along this journey of life, growing in the knowledge of Christ’s incarnational love, drinking in the sacramental grace that awakens our convictions and inspires our actions, we slowly learn to become broken bread and poured out wine, offerings of love to our fellow human beings. We come to terms with the grace we receive in our salvation. We see with eternal eyes that the heavenly gifts we have been given are part of the Savior’s call to empty ourselves in service to others.

One grace I have received that truly humbles me is my empathetic spirit. It allows me to see into others’ hearts, reading their joys and sorrows, their aspirations and their fears, as they struggle to find their place in the world. It can become a deep burden to experience these emotions and share them within my soul. But this is what incarnational living is all about. We are called to enter the lives of others, taking on the fleshy wounds of their humanity, in order to walk the road to the cross with them, so that they may find their rest in Christ alone.

Just as Jesus took on flesh and walked the dusty roads of this world in order to reveal the Father to us, we are called to put on the skin of others, experience their earthly pain, and offer the love of the One who offers us his very Body and Blood as our heavenly food. Through sacramental grace, we become to others the face, hands, and feet of Christ, walking with them on their journey home.


The Deeper Language of Kingdom Love

We are strengthened by the Eucharist to speak a deeper language into the lives of others, to break through their woundedness so that we may reveal to them the beauty of the brokenness of the cross. Like the Eucharist, we must show others the wonder of the language of incarnational love. We must speak of the sacramental journey of salvation as a past event, a present reality, and a future hope, an ongoing reality of being and becoming, that makes us more like Christ moment to moment, for our entire lifetime.

Whatever particular ministry the Holy Spirit imparts to us, we are called to find ways to empower others to live with spiritual intentionality and biblical conviction, embracing the Church and her sacraments as the embodiment of true Kingdom living. We must show how the sacrifice of Christ takes our brokenness and transforms us into a people whose relationships mirror the love among the members of the Trinity. Every word and action must become an offering of love to the Father, a transformational experience of sanctification, as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, winning the world for Jesus and becoming the perfect Bride of Christ within the Church he founded in love.


Poetry, Transformation, and Sacramental Surrender

I have always considered myself more of a poet than an apologist. There is a power to poetic writing that allows the reader to grasp the truths of the faith on a level that speaks both to the soul and the mind. The Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference has helped to develop my gift, not only by giving me opportunities to write for the website, but by bringing me brothers who have walked with me, encouraging my apostolate and nurturing the connections between what God is doing in my own life and the ways in which I may have an impact on the lives of others. When my thoughts spill out from my heart to the keyboard, I know I am making a connection to the heart of each reader, forming a bond that flows from the commonality of our shared faith in Christ. The Spirit that groans within my spirit speaks sacramentally to the other person in a way that goes beyond the words I write.

This is the same delicate dance of grace that works itself out to become a teaching moment that we as Catholic men offer to others, touching their lives with the story of our own soul transformation that expresses itself in all we say and do. The conference has taught me and so many others what this holy wrestling match of inner surrender means in terms of how it strengthens others and leads them along the road of salvation, sometimes one stumbling step at a time. We become living signs of the holy give-and-take that unfolds in our lives and spills out to touch the lives of others.

All of this is embodied in the Eucharist, our celebration of the sacrifice of Christ, who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many. Our participation in the sacrament helps us to flesh out the reality that our vocation is an experience of self-surrender and a gentle outgrowth of sacramental grace, offered to others in love. Through our incarnational encounter with Jesus, our souls are stripped of their arrogance so that what is left behind is a genuine representation of God’s love, a true sacramental sign of salvation to those who are lost.


Profiles in Christ-like Character

Through my involvement with the Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference, I have learned to share the vision of the joys and struggles of Catholic manhood. I have discovered just how powerful the incarnational love of Christ can be. My personal apostolate has become a free-will sacramental offering of grace. It has allowed me to immerse myself in others’ lives, taking time to get to know them through their words and their work, so that I may see the miracle of transformation God is revealing in their lives. I see how the Savior shapes our Catholic character, empowers our actions, molds us into witnesses, and inspires us to leave a lasting legacy in this world.

In connecting to the mystery of Christ’s overflowing love to his people, I see how our Lord has broken their hardened hearts through his sacrifice, awakened the joy of their salvation, and formed them as instruments of grace to be poured out into the lives of others through their individual ministries. In the simplest terms, through the grace God expresses through my ministry, they receive the freedom to share their true sacramental selves and become a sacrificial, Eucharistic offering to a hurting world waiting for healing, wholeness, and rest.


The Sacrament of the Ordinary and our Sacred Stories

Through the love shown each year through the conference, the beauty of Christ’s sacramental love continually manifests itself to us in the day-to-day comings and goings of our ordinary lives. Our trials expose the limits of our strength, the moments of beauty we experience reveal the generosity of the God who has given us wives and children, family and friends, homes and jobs, and so much more than we could ever deserve. As we make our minds, our bodies, and our hearts living sacrifices, we experience the peace that passes understanding, in discovering all the ways in which God works all things to the good for those whom he has called.

In this sacramental approach to Kingdom living, we witness the steps of growth taking place in our lives and the lives of others as we work out our salvation from faith to faith. Together we share in the thousand little triumphs that take place on the journey as we develop as men within this family of faith. We hold each other accountable, and support one another when circumstances overwhelm us and drive us toward despair. Through it all, we continue to pour ourselves into other men’s lives as the Holy Spirit reveals the signs of God’s perfect love in Christ. Our walk along the narrow way reveals the sacramental nature of our relationship to the One who took on flesh and gave his life for us.

These moments of perfect mercy turn themselves into sacramental stories, incarnational sharing that expresses the essence of what it means to be part of a people who pour love into the lives of others. The grace given to us by our baptism and strengthened by the Eucharist carries us through the wilderness of this world. Because we have made our Exodus through the desert of sorrow and sin by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God and have come to the table to receive the Bread of Life, we become what we receive. In the journey that continually refines us and the food that truly satisfies us we are transformed into living signs of God’s eternal love.


The Overwhelming Nature of the Eucharist

There is a sorrowful aspect to our encounter with Christ that often overwhelms us. The more we venture into the inner rooms of our souls, the more Christ reveals his sacramental strength to us through the consuming fire that exposes the scars of sin and brings up painful memories we have yet to release to the cloud of divine non-remembrance. These are the areas of our salvation we are still working out, and often we may feel we cannot bear their weight through the time of our spiritual cleansing.

Still, we know that joy awaits us at the altar of sacrifice. The peace of heaven comes only through the pain of the cross. Through the sacramental grace of Christ, our spiritual trials strengthen us in how we are led from the valleys of pain and sorrow to a mountaintop of conviction and hope. This transformation then manifests itself in the love we show to others. In becoming humble and vulnerable before our Father, we receive the healing that transforms us from faith to faith. It allows us to empathize with others and walk with them on their own journeys of overwhelming sorrow and joy.

Perhaps the greatest joy of the Eucharist is that we become like Jeremiah, our souls burning with the conviction and conversion that must spill out into the lives of others as we see the journey through to the end. We are brought to a place where we witness with greater clarity not only our sinfulness and our profound need for the God’s perfect love, but the incomprehensible grace that allows us to overcome our poisoned past and find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in our service to others in Christ’s name.

But this is the nature of what it means to be caught up in the love of Jesus, to be broken by grace and lifted up to a place where the truth of God’s sacramental love burns away the stubble to reveal the precious gold that manifests itself through our ministries. Our longing for wholeness comes to express itself as grace in order for the Gospel message to take on the Eucharistic character of the One who saves us through the cross.


What a Joyful Burden It Is

This journey I have taken to become a man of words mirrors so well the journey God’s people have taken since the beginning. So too do all our ministries. As men lay bare our brokenness and the mercy that spoke itself into the world, we see that the divine price paid for our redemption makes the trials we face seem light indeed. In the Eucharist, we recognize that the grace that enables our ministries can overwhelm us, even as it makes us into better men. This joyful reality flows out to reach others for the Kingdom of God.

The Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference calls men to run the race with joy, singing a sweet song of salvation with the words that flow from the wellspring of God’s grace revealed in the sacramental love of Christ. We see that our holy burden for the Gospel shapes the lives of others as it shapes our own spirits. The revelations that flow into our minds and hearts through the Eucharist transform us like a seed dying in the soil to be raised up as a new creation, bearing fruit in the light of God’s perfect love.

To be able to touch the Savior through our ordinary lives reveals the wonderful story of salvation in the incarnation. As we live out our apostolate, we see Jesus, who live out his story to its fulfillment at the cross. Each time we receive the Eucharist, it becomes a blessed encounter with the One who has taught us through his own humility, just how much God loves the world. We rejoice in the reality that God can use each of us, sinners saved by grace, to share a message of hope with a weary world.

I hope my words have moved a few people along the way to the Kingdom. I hope too that your own ministries have and will continue to lead others as well. I pray that your participation in this year’s Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference will give you a greater appreciation for the Eucharist and empower you to share Christ’s love with others through every word and action that grace inspires. May God bless you as you discover the path to salvation in the way you express how God is speaking his love into your lives.