For a college student, stability is a myth, a memory of childhood. 

Every year, college students move into a different dorm/house, friendships are often rocky, relationships come and go, classes and teachers only last for a semester, and schedules are temporary. 

Throw in the constant struggle of internships, changing majors and attempting to plan for post-college life, and stability becomes a foreign concept. 

Thus it is only a matter of time until students come face-to-face with this crisis of stability, as they search for something they can grasp in the tumultuous whirlwind of collegiate life. 

Like everyone, college students desire stability during this transient phase of life. 

In their search for stability, students resort to sometimes unhealthy forms, clinging to that which they believe they can control in an attempt to provide the stability that the heart longs for. 

In an ever-changing world, what remains constant? 

The cynic, quoting Benjamin Franklin, will say that the only two constants are “death and taxes.”

While those are certainly true, the Church presents a third constant: Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist.

Two thousand years ago, Christ gave the Church the greatest gift: his Body and Blood. 

Since that moment, priests and bishops have celebrated the Mass and uttered the same words that Christ said in the Upper Room, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body.”

This reality has not changed and will not change. 

The Eucharist is and will always be constant. 

At every moment, every day, priests around the world consecrate bread and wine, and it becomes the Body and Blood of God himself. 

What a gift, what an opportunity — to be able to receive God every single day. 

It has been through the Eucharist and attending daily Mass that I have found the consistency that can support me through the tumultuous upheavals of daily life. 

I am blessed to go to a college that offers three daily Mass times and 24/7 Eucharistic adoration, offering a plethora of opportunities to cultivate that stability within the Eucharist. Since freshman year, I have tried to embrace this blessing. 

And it has become that source of stability. Now, if I miss Mass, it feels like my day is lacking something. If I am struggling with concerns about friends or classes, Christ, through Mass or adoration, calms my nerves, settles my anxieties. 

At Mass, we are able to leave the anxieties and fear of the temporal world behind, as we enter into the divine mystery of the Eucharist. 

Thus, we leave transformed, refreshed by the gift of Christ’s Body and Blood. 

Day after day, we can return, finding comfort and stability in the solace of the adoration chapel or the beauty of the liturgy. 

In an ever-changing, chaotic world, the Eucharist is such a gift.