HELEN ZUBALIK
STAFF WRITER
A small but lively bunch of students gathered in the Fireside Lounge on Wednesday, Nov. 7, to hear about the important role of the Eucharist and adoration in evangelization.
In a talk titled “The Eucharist and Adoration: Why Adoration is so Important for Evangelization,” Sister Maria Gemma Salyer of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration gave an inspiring talk about the power of adoration and how it transforms people into better servants of Christ through evangelization.
Salyer began by reading excerpts from the writings of Caryll Houselander, a lay woman and Catholic mystic. She spoke on Houselander’s concept of “unconscious Christs,” which she described as Christ being present in every person, no matter what walk of life he or she comes from.
This is significant for evangelization, according to Salyer, because it is not any human person who evangelizes other people, but Christ himself. She called on the audience to become more like Christ by abandoning themselves to the Lord and never underestimating the power of suffering.
Salyer said that evangelization is the fruit of deep prayer; through adoration and the Eucharist, one begins to see Christ through the eyes of faith, and by extension, one sees his or her brothers and sisters as “unconscious Christs.”
Quoting “Gaudium et Spes,” Sister elaborated on the point that Christ evangelizes through man. “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. Christ, … by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear,” reads the pastoral constitution.
An especially significant point that Salyer noted was that one does not necessarily get to see the endings of the lives he or she touches through evangelization. She emphasized that just planting the seed of faith in a person is powerful and that Christ works through certain people to bring other people close to him.
After a brief Q&A session, the audience was eager to applaud the joyful, charismatic sister for her poignant and dynamic words.
The talk was hosted by the Fishers of Men household.