We Need to Bring Back Forty Hours

With the end of the National Eucharistic Congress as the capstone of the three-year Eucharistic Renewal, the question follows: What comes next? The entire exercise initially originated as a response to results of a 2019 Pew survey that suggested a majority of Catholics do not understand what the Church teaches about the Eucharist. I am not sure that catechetical illiteracy has been remedied, but at least there was an effort to restore in parishes a greater sense of the Eucharist, primarily through Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Hours, and the like. 

That’s not to say that the approach was not without its critics. Commentators in places like the National Catholic Reporter and the Jesuit America often lamented the adoration-focus of the Renewal process. They wanted instead to see an amplified focus on “social justice,” arguing that the Eucharist should drive us toward such social and community reform.

Having watched during my adult years the implosion of the Society of Jesus as it pushed “faith that does justice”—a pursuit that has resulted in colleges and universities becoming “in the Jesuit tradition” even in lead faculties like theology and philosophy because there are no actual Jesuits to staff them—I applaud the bishops for resisting doing what arguably led us to our current situation. As Einstein observed (and a good part of the current Vatican denies), “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome” is the definition of insanity.

So, back to the opening question: What comes next?

Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass (e.g., Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament) went into desuetude in the years right after Vatican II, in part driven by the theological radicals that simplistically declared, “Jesus said, ‘take and eat,’ not ‘take and look.’” The just-concluded Eucharistic Renewal gave such devotion a booster shot, although it should be admitted that numerous parishes and dioceses had already recovered those practices even long before Pew’s warning signals.  

I propose a recovery of “Forty Hours Devotion,” preferably on at least an inter-parish, if not diocese-wide, scale.

For those unfamiliar, “Forty Hours Devotion” was a practice of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament over forty hours, usually over three consecutive days—for example, Sunday after the last morning Mass and all day Monday and Tuesday. Long hours of adoration were usually concluded on each of the three evenings with a guest priest preaching on some select topic, be it the Eucharist or morality, and opportunities for Confession, usually involving a variety of guest confessors. “Forty hours” was an allusion to the amount of time Jesus was said to have spent in the tomb from Good Friday afternoon until Easter Sunday morning.

Modern Forty Hours Devotion was popularized by St. Charles Borromeo in the 16th century, although variants of prolonged (or even “perpetual”) adoration had long preceded the Milanese saint. By the early 20th century, it was the practice in some dioceses to coordinate “Forty Hours” in such a way that there was always some parish (or at least some parish in a given week) where the devotion was celebrated. I remember as a 1960s kid, for example, seeing the schedule in the newspaper of our then-Trenton Diocese.  

Like Adoration in general, “Forty Hours” disappeared in many parishes in the post-Vatican II era, though—like Adoration—recent years have seen its renaissance. I would strongly suggest dioceses go back to the early practice of coordinating a “year-round Forty Hours” in their parishes (though, with today’s “lock-and-leave” bishops closing churches, some dioceses may be hard-pressed to find 52 parishes).   I would strongly suggest dioceses go back to the early practice of coordinating a “year-round Forty Hours” in their parishes.Tweet This

I want dioceses to take over this function because (a) dioceses are the most likely venues of sufficient scale to plan year-round, parish-level adoration; (b) they should already have some bureaucratic structure in place from the current “Eucharistic Renewal” to support this effort; (c) those structures can better coordinate not just schedules but the theological and logistical support to make “Forty Hours” most effective.

As mentioned above, traditional Forty Hours usually culminated in an evening service involving Vespers, preaching, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament (often followed by hearing Confessions as long as there were penitents). That “preaching” function is what I refer to as “theological.” The homily at Sunday Mass is supposed to explicate and apply the readings of the day. Once upon a time, priests used Sunday sermons to treat a particular series of issues—such as the Ten Commandments or the seven sacraments—akin to adult continuing education.  

If Sunday homilies focus on the lectionary, when and where does a priest systematically address these other issues? We also used to tackle that in “parish missions,” but these are generally infrequent. We cannot limit the task to voluntarily-attended adult education lectures: we see the religious illiteracy spawned by that approach. The Forty Hours devotion, especially if coordinated theologically, would allow a systematic exploration of some religious topic or set a common agenda—for example, “Eucharist as Sacrifice: What Does That Mean?” By “logistical support” I mean the practical question of helping inform and amass a critical number of priests to join in a parish’s “Forty Hours” as to make it a local celebration (and provide a variety of confessors).

Ongoing celebration of Forty Hours in a diocese provides an opportunity to continue the Eucharistic (and theological) catechesis and spiritual formation that the Eucharistic Renewal tried to launch. With modern transportation, it’s likely that a well-coordinated diocesan effort could bring out people in a particular area to neighboring parishes several times a year, reinforcing consciousness of the Eucharist as “source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen Gentium, 11).  

It would be a mistake to imagine that the Renewal that culminated in this summer’s Eucharistic Congress can check the box as “assignment done.” It is better to think of them as efforts to launch an ongoing Eucharistic orientation to the local (i.e., diocesan- and parish-level) Church. Ensconcing and systematizing the celebration of Forty Hours Devotion seems one way of doing this.