Have You Had Your "Hour of Power" Today?

Pope John Paul II, throughout his pontificate, has directed the Church’s preparation for a twofold celebration. First, for the Jubilee Year 2000, commemorating two thousand years from the time of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Second, for the Church’s entrance into the beginning of the Third Christian Millennium. At the heart of this double celebration is devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the very center of Catholic life.

In both his teachings and his personal life, the Holy Father has directed us to focus on a Eucharistic-centered spirituality. Every Catholic needs the vitality, wisdom, and strength that come forth from Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. This is especially so for anyone answering the Lord’s call to become an apologist and evangelist in the New Evangelization. The goal of the New Evangelization is to bring people to an encounter with the living Christ. Whether it’s a person’s first encounter (conversion), or return encounter (reversion), or daily encounter (on-going conversion), for every true Catholic the process will end up at the Tabernacle.

Let’s use the example of the Apostle Andrew to illustrate an encounter with the living Christ. When St. Andrew first appears in the Gospel story, he and another unnamed disciple (traditionally, the Apostle John ) are disciples of St. John the Baptist. When they hear the Baptist announce Jesus as the “Lamb of God,” they leave John and begin to follow Jesus.

Seeing them following Him, the Lord turns around and asks them, “What are you looking for?”

“Where are You staying?” they respond.

“Come and see,” Jesus answers.

So they go to see where He is lodging and stay with Him that day. (This might be viewed as the first “holy hour plus.”) What follows?
The first thing St. Andrew does is to seek out his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah!” Then he brings him to Jesus (see John 1:41-42). Now, how would St. Andrew have known who Jesus was unless the Baptist had first pointed Him out and then he himself had spent time in a personal encounter with Jesus?
Furthermore, how would he have known where to bring his brother, unless he knew from personal experience where Jesus could be found?

Once he brought him to Jesus, the Lord took over St. Peter’s formation in discipleship. Our own “living encounter” with Jesus — especially in a Eucharistic Holy Hour — will have similar effects for us!

Someone who understood the importance of the Eucharistic Holy Hour for his life and ministry was Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, one of the twentieth century’s greatest apologists and evangelists. He made a “holy hour” daily for over fifty years, despite a very demanding schedule and worldwide travel. He called it fittingly “the Hour of Power!”

I spoke to a former secretary of his at the National Office for the Propagation of the Faith in New York City, where he was director for sixteen years. She said he always made his “holy hour” before the Blessed Sacrament after breakfast. (In one of his retreat conferences, Archbishop Sheen gave as practical advice that “no one should ever try to make a holy hour until after they’ve had their first cup of coffee!”)

He then spent additional time near the chapel where he did his writing, drawing his inspiration from Our Lord in the Eucharist. That is why, when people congratulated him for his fine speaking and writing, telling him that he was very talented, he always answered that he had no such talent. He said the power of his words, written and spoken, came from Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

What will the “Hour of Power” do for us as evangelists and apologists? First, we deepen our personal encounter with Christ Himself. He becomes more real to us! It increases our faith.

Faith, as we read in Hebrews 11:1, has two aspects: believing and entrusting. As belief, faith is “the conviction about the things we do not see.” We do not see Christ in the Holy Eucharist with the eyes of our body; only with the eyes of our faith do we know and believe He is really present — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas in the beautiful hymn Tantum Ergo, “Faith will tell us Christ is present, when our human senses fail.” As a form of entrusting ourselves, faith is “a confident assurance concerning what we hope for.”

Once our faith moves us to believe in Jesus’ real presence in the Blessed Sacrament, we also experience a growing desire to have Him loved by others, even by the whole world. Like St. Andrew, after our personal stay with Jesus, we will lose no time going out and working to bring others — family, friends, strangers, yes, even enemies of the Church — to Jesus, ultimately in the Eucharist. 

None of us can introduce someone to a person we don’t know, or at most don’t know where to find. If we are rooted in Eucharistic devotion, we know who Jesus is and where we can always find Him. As someone once put it, the measure of our holiness and effectiveness with others is the degree to which God becomes real in our lives. And where can Jesus become more real for us than in the Blessed Sacrament?

When we are before our Eucharistic Lord, we can ask that He anoint our words, written and spoken, that they might convey the convincing power of the Holy Spirit and not simply the wisdom of men (see 1 Cor. 2:4-5). Furthermore, we must plead with Jesus for those to whom we minister in order to dispose them to receive the message of Christ and His Church.

Using the parable of the sower as a guide (see Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23), we must ask Jesus to soften the hard hearts (the “footpath” souls), strengthen those who are weak and inconsistent (the “rocky soil” souls), and set free those held back by sinful attachments and addictions (the “weed-infested” souls). After all, the seed always has great potential for a thirty-, sixty-, even hundred-percent increase; but the soil where it lands makes all the difference.

Archbishop Sheen used to say that the “Hour of Power” drives out from our hearts any feeling of spiritual mediocrity, laziness, indifference, and fear. The fire of love in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus will set our own hearts on fire with ardent love for Him. Then we will go with courage and conviction to bring the whole world to Jesus. Then will Jesus’ desire come closer to fulfillment: “I have come to light a fire on the earth! How I wish the blaze were ignited!” (Luke 12:49 NAB).

Jesus told St. Faustina there were two thrones of His mercy in the world. One is the Tabernacle, the other is the confessional! Jesus in the Eucharist sustains our work of evangelization by giving us the power of the Holy Spirit.

Just as a power tool disconnected from its power source won’t work, so the evangelist disconnected from his Eucharistic Lord becomes ineffective. Today, countless demands and activities of all sorts can easily sweep the apologist along so that he gets “disconnected” from the Lord. He needs daily to recharge the batteries of his life and ministry during the “Hour of Power.” He must maintain his own living relationship with Jesus, to assure himself that, like the great apostle St. Paul, he does not get rejected after preaching and witnessing to others! 

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Fr. Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R. is a priest of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal: St. Felix Friary, 15 Trinity Plaza, Yonkers, NY 10701, 914-476-7279; http://www.ministryalliance.com/YouthEvang/fortunaweb.htm.