VALPARAISO – Spotlighting the Word of God featured in the opening third of the Holy Mass, keynote speaker Father Frank DeSiano, CSP opened a three-day Eucharistic Mission at St. Paul by suggesting that Catholics should hear Scripture readings as “God calling us to discipleship and conversion.
“There is a call for us to be attentive to the Word and make it a powerful experience in our lives,” added Father DeSiano, president of Paulist Evangelization Ministries in Washington, D.C. and a Eucharistic preacher named by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, keynote speaker for the mission, which included morning and evening sessions April 23-25, both in English and Spanish. Each day focused on a different part of the Mass and its importance to the Eucharist.
“I like to learn more about my faith, especially the Eucharist,” said Karen Horvatich, a retired special needs teacher and St. Paul parishioner as she followed Father DeSiano’s lead by introducing herself to those seated around her at the beginning of the prayer service.
“The aim of this mission is for people to grow in their appreciation of the Eucharist and their mission as disciples,” explained Joe DeFrier, coordinator of Adult Faith Formation for St. Paul. “Because of the National Eucharistic Revival, we have been offering different programming on the Eucharist for the past two years.”
DeFrier said he expects a number of St. Paul parishioners will attend the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this July, so they have a heightened interest in the Eucharist and its importance to their lives.
“The Word of God is the Word we accept, and the Word we find hard to accept,” said Father DeSiano as a way of explaining the difficulty Christians have with Scripture. “We Catholics are so frightened of the Bible because our experience with the Word of God is so supplemental to our worship. The Bible is 1,300 pages, written in Hebrew … it's a difficult book (to read), with too much death and historical detail that we don’t know.”
Offering a bit of history about the Mass, Father DeSiano noted that an expansion of the first part of the Mass “was one of the first things that came out of the Second Vatican Council. When the Mass was in Latin, the priest would read the Gospel while facing the wall and that was the Word of God for us. We had so little awareness that God was calling us in the Word.”
To bring the people closer to the Word of God and its importance to their faith and discipleship, Father DeSiano processed to the altar with a copy of the Bible and invited the congregation to step up individually and reverence it with a bow or a touch.
The service “was a reminder that we need, as Father Frank said, to be the only Bible that some people might read,” said Dana Trudeau, a St. Paul parishioner from Valparaiso. If that is the case, he added, “They should read about love and compassion.”
Terry Adler, also a St. Paul parishioner from Valparaiso, said he attended the mission in an effort “to keep enlightening your life. You can’t be stagnant.
“You’ve got to keep spreading the Word,” Adler said he learned from Father DeSiano. “My life has to show Christ in all I do. Living the right way (is important), because people are always watching, listening and hearing us.”
Ron Biggs, of Westville and a St. Paul parishioner, said he came to the mission “to see what it was all about” and found Father DeSiano’s approach to the readings interesting. “I try to demonstrate my faith; I’m not afraid to make the sign of the cross in a restaurant and show that I am a faith-filled person,” he added.
“I know I’m broken, but I’m always trying to educate myself about my religion,” said Lori Gilliana, of St. Paul and a Valparaiso resident. “You need to fill your life with things that take you in the right direction – a lot of things pull you away, but you need to remember that every day is a new day and even when you make mistakes, you can change.”
“The Word is not a word that we should keep in a book,” said Father DeSiano. “We should live it, we should reveal it. We should be the Word.”
Caption: Father Frank DeSiano, of Washinton, DC, president of the Paulist Fathers and one of the Eucharist preachers named by the USCCB, holds the Bible for Tina Pysh and Kristin Kantrowski to reverence during the first session of a three-day Eucharistic Mission hosted by St. Paul in Valparaiso on April 23. Morning and evening sessions were held with four speakers, folloiwed by fellowship. (Marlene A. Zloza photo)