‘Lift up your hearts’ – The light and power of the Eucharist

Addressing priests, Saint Teresa of Calcutta once said, “Priest of God, celebrate this Mass as if it was your first Mass, your last Mass and your only Mass.”

“Each time the priest prays Mass, he lifts up peoples’ hearts to the Lord. And with them the entire universe is lifted up to God in prayer.”

Those words came from the homily of Father Christopher Tran, who serves as the pastor of Saint Wenceslaus Catholic Church in Prague and Saint Michael Catholic Church in Meeker, as well as rector of the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague. 

“The Sacrament of the Eucharist isn’t an option for Catholics,” Father Tran said. “Whoever isn’t nourished by Jesus’ flesh, will not have strength to fight against temptations of the devil and the world. It is impossible for those who have ignored the Eucharist to remain faithful to Christ until the end.”

“The Eucharist is our light,” Father Tran stressed in presenting the importance of the Eucharist. He said his zeal to ignite people to lift up their hearts to the Lord goes back to his teenage years and his distressing 1980 escape from his home country Vietnam, which had been taken over by the communists. 

Along with 76 other Vietnamese refugees, on a 36-foot long and 6-foot wide boat, he spent seven days and nights without food and water on the ocean, praying aloud the Rosary with 11 other Catholic young people under the deck of the boat, lifting up their hearts to God and Mary in a desperate yet faithful and trusting prayer for help and protection. 

On the brink of the sixth and seventh day, caught in a raging storm with the boat leaking, in the darkness of the night and their hope for survival almost gone, the 76-year-old Buddhist captain Cao Dat shouted out loud, “The light! … we see a light!” which turned out to be a lighthouse on an Indonesian island. 

“When I was in the seminary, and the studies, strategies and tests were stressful and overwhelming, I used to go to pray before the Blessed Sacrament,” Father Tran said. 

“There, in the darkness of the chapel, I always found Jesus and the perpetual light burning at the tabernacle. I always found consolation and hope to continue and persevere in my priestly formation. The darkness of the chapel together with the perpetual light reminded me of that dark night on the boat as a 15-years old and the captain’s call ‘We see a light!’ … our sign of hope.

“Jesus is our Light. Jesus is our only hope.”

He has been passionately preaching about the Eucharist as the light for Catholics in the midst of their life struggles and the darkness of the contemporary times, encouraging the faithful to bring their sorrows to Jesus and lift up their hearts. 

As the priest raises his wide-open hands in prayer at the altar during the Eucharist, he invites the community to similarly open their hearts wide and place all worries and concerns in God’s hands, following Saint Augustine’s prayer, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

“Along with our thanksgiving, and the bread and wine offered on the altar, Jesus invites us to seek the things above … to set our good ‘ambition’ on the splendors of heaven.

“Lift up your hearts (Sursum corda) is a powerful invitation to believers to raise their minds and hearts to ‘the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help,’ as the Book of Hebrews (4:16) teaches us,” said Father Tran.

Forty-four years since his escape from Vietnam, with 800,000 Vietnamese people officially reported as lost on the ocean during that time, he considers himself and his companions truly blessed. 

Their witness of faith on the boat and lifting up their hearts to Jesus and Mary in a vocal prayer ignited others and resulted in a conversion of the Buddhist captain who became Catholic after arrival on the U.S. land. 

“God can use us to provide opportunities for others to believe in Christ,” Father Tran said. “We shall always be ready to be God’s instruments in preaching the Good News to people with our words, actions and by lifting up our hearts in prayer to the Lord.”

Jad Ziolkowska is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.