Here at the Abbey, just as we’re just noticing the first signs of drifting leaves and slipping temperatures, it’s already time for fall break. Students have traveled home, classes have passed the midterm crunch, and several things have paused momentarily, including the weekday Adoration that runs throughout our academic year.

As someone who works on campus year-round, I tend to forget about fall break, at least until its natural consequences crop up… so when I stopped into the St. Joseph Adoration Chapel this Wednesday, at first I wondered why Our Lord was still closed in the tabernacle. And while it was a lovely, quiet visit – and certainly He was no less present than when visibly throned in the monstrance – those few minutes of prayer raised a question: Why is it such a gift to see Him, when His Eucharistic form embodies, too, a kind of hiddenness, at least to physical sight?

The question, in its way, brought to mind a liturgical moment and a particular word, about which I’ve wondered off and on… “behold.”

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” Just before Communion, the priest speaks these words as he lifts the Host, to which we, as a congregation, respond: “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” Yet even before we borrow the Centurion’s words, there is something about the call to “behold” that invites an act of faith, and even makes it natural to address Christ directly in the Eucharist.

Vision-centered verbs don’t tend to have particularly bold or active connotations. “Behold,” however, seems to reach out with intention and directness, not even requiring a preposition to engage the object or clarify its relation to the viewer. We look “at” or “over” or “through” something, but we “behold” the thing itself. The word seems to leap us toward something significant, focusing our attention with epiphanic intensity. So, when the priest says, “Behold the Lamb of God” and lifts the Eucharist up before the congregation, the liturgy itself is urging us to hold Christ actively in our vision, fixing our gaze on Him with all our attention and will. It is an affirmation, a silent Amen that is essentially an act of contemplation.

Of course, we can turn to God in contemplation at any place and time. Because He is present to us in so many merciful and mysterious ways, every beauty and suffering can be an invitation to turn our gaze to Him in faith.

But in the realm of earthly contemplation, the Eucharist – and Adoration – invites an encounter unlike any other. Here, with Christ’s characteristically profligate generosity, He makes Himself not only present but also visible, and not only visible, but visible in mystery.

Because Christ’s Body and Blood retain the appearances of bread and wine, willingly “beholding” the Lord we love in what seems like a wafer of bread is choosing to go out in faith to meet His promise, His Word: that this is His Body, given for us.

When we look to the Eucharist, we really are looking at God. And yet, He is present in a way that does not obviate, but directly invites, the act of faith which draws us more deeply into relationship with Him. He comes to meet us in our need and at the same time allows us the opportunity to respond in freedom and will.

“Behold the Lamb of God.” Placing our full confidence in Christ, we can turn our gaze to Him. Just as contemplation is never a truly static act, “beholding” the Lamb becomes much more than a silent statement of what we believe – because we are turning our eyes to the One who loves us, who is so deeply present to us in mystery and fact, and who will never disappoint our trust.

Let’s rejoice to behold Him in sacrament today – and one day in the perfect vision of His Love. Alleluia!

This week the Church marked both the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. And while this pairing has always felt natural, I’d never paused to consider, before, the more-than-surface relationship between them. This week, however, the readings from Monday’s feast and Tuesday’s memorial have stuck with me, and I’m beginning to realize that together they offer an invitation to a deeper identity with Christ.

Monday’s first reading presents salvation history in microcosm. The Israelites complain against the Lord, a plague of serpents infests their camp, they repent, and God instructs Moses to lift up a bronze serpent in the desert. Anyone suffering the venomous snakebite can look at this bronze figure – the sign of their punishment transformed to a terrible mystery of mercy – and live. In the Gospel that follows, Christ references this story in explicit connection to being lifted up, Himself, “so that everyone who believes in [the Son of Man] may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

Together, these readings draw our gaze to the Cross, the sign of our guilt and our salvation by the grace of God. They ask us to acknowledge our own sins and fix our eyes on our Savior, recognizing that salvation history continues to work itself out in our lives and in the sacramental life of the Church, the Body of Christ. But with Tuesday’s Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Body of Christ comes into focus even more explicitly, with St. Paul stating: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ… you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it” (1 Cor 12:12, 27).

Always before, I saw Our Lady of Sorrows primarily as an onlooker, however affected by the pain she observed. I knew that Christ entrusted His mother to us on Calvary, that she prays for us and points us toward her Son at all times. But as the readings remind us, we are members of the Body of Christ, and as a consequence, her presence at His sacrifice, together with St. John and the holy women, becomes something more. It becomes a sign of our participation in His Passion.

Christ saved us. Christ alone. But by the incomparable mystery and mercy of His divine Love, He draws us into this act and its glorious reward, each so far beyond our human capacities. Just as Mary is, in a real way, the first Christian, she is also the first to suffer with Him and to unite her human suffering, her human love, with His. The Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows reminds us to place ourselves at the foot of the Cross, not as bystanders, but as members of Christ’s Body.

We are all called to carry our crosses. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross promises that the Way of the Cross leads, in Christ, to resurrection. But the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows follows to remind us that we are never alone. There is no dimension of human suffering that Christ’s Passion does not embrace and sanctify. We are the Body of Christ; we are called to love with His Love, as Mary did: to recognize His sufferings in those of our brothers and sisters and not to turn away. Christ is with us. Hope in Him.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Every Catholic Church has an altar lamp. Mounted or suspended near the tabernacle, it remains lit at all times of the day or night, signaling Christ’s eucharistic presence within.

Given its ubiquity, of course, the lamp isn’t something we usually focus on, especially when the sanctuary is well lit for Mass. We might glance toward it in an unfamiliar church, especially if the tabernacle isn’t immediately visible, but then we tend to forget about it. After all, it’s meant to direct our attention to God, to His presence in a holy place, not to hold our eye in itself.

But last week, when I stepped inside Mary Help of Christians Basilica outside of the scheduled liturgical times, most of the lights were out and the church was dim and quiet. And in the low light of that space, the small red flame was impossible to miss, marking the alcove where the tabernacle waited. And even though it told me what I knew, the lamp, its vividness in the dusk interior, was somehow still a pronounced comfort, straight through the dark.

The fact is that sometimes, even though we believe, we can’t see clearly. Sometimes we can’t make out the tabernacle we know is there. When the dark obscures God’s presence in our lives, we may not feel consolation or hear answers, but God never leaves us alone. The altar lamp is there to make explicit what we know by faith — and to remind us, in the very act of this reminding, not only that God, Emmanuel, is here with us but also that He speaks signs of His presence in humble, common, and continual ways we often take for granted.

The altar lamp in Mary Help of Christians Basilica, like the altar lamp in every Catholic Church around the world, burns faithfully. Our monastic sacristan, Br. Gabriel, replaces the candle each time it burns low, and in doing so, he not only maintains this gentle sign of signs but also embodies it by his watchful care. His patient service, too, becomes a reminder.

In the same way, your Christian witness – even in the smallest, most ordinary things you do to remain faithful to your families, your friends, and those God has placed in your life – are signs of His presence. You won’t often know when these lamps cut through the dark of someone else’s struggles. But they do.

May God give each of us the grace to recognize the many signs of His love, His presence, and His faithfulness in our lives. May He give us the grace to be these signs for others. And may we always rejoice in things visible and invisible.