Although coronavirus precautions have forced families and friends to be socially distant from one another, the faithful will always be close to Jesus through the Eucharist, Cardinal Wilton Gregory said.
“The Eucharist allows us to have an intimate relationship with Christ, and through that intimate relationship with Christ, we are invited to be close to one another,” Cardinal Gregory said during an April 9 Mass at Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland.
The cardinal was the principal celebrant of the Mass for students at the Jesuit-sponsored all-boys Catholic high school. The Mass had limited in-person attendance, and was streamed live on the school’s Facebook page. “Some are here with us in this chapel and some are watching online, but we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord,” the cardinal noted.
Speaking of Jesus’s appearances to the disciples after His resurrection, Cardinal Gregory said Jesus “wants us to know that in His risen glory, He continues to have a relationship with us … and that is very life sustaining for us.”
“That is what Jesus wanted – to be close to His disciples. He appears to them (after His resurrection), He dines with them, He wants to bond with them,” Cardinal Gregory said. He added that just as Jesus sought to be close to His disciples, “He invites us to an intimate union with the Lord.”
Lamenting that “COVID has changed all of our lives in so many different ways, and it has limited the way we can be physically present with one another,” the cardinal noted “we want to be physically close to the people we love, and that is one of the challenges this environment has given us.”
“One of the things this COVID has done is put a distance between our physical contact with one another,” Cardinal Gregory said. “As we pray for the end to this disease, hopefully once our masks are down and once the danger of infection is no longer there, we can again be close to one another.”
During the Mass, prayers were offered for “an end to the pandemic and for those working to mitigate its effect.”
Cardinal Gregory also asked the students to consider the story of Thomas, the Apostle who doubted the resurrection of Jesus. “Don’t be so stubborn. Don’t be so unwilling to believe,” he urged the students.
At the end of the Mass, students proclaimed Cardinal Gregory an honorary member of Georgetown Prep’s Class of 2021 and presented him with an honorary diploma.
“What a great and wonderful place this is,” Cardinal Gregory said. “It is a particular joy for me to be here at this happy moment in the Octave of Easter.”
