Eucharistic Reflection - How Much Our Lord Loves Us!

               But we must remember that, however great and ineffable

is all that our Lord has done for our salvation, the love which has led Him to do it is still greater than all, because it is infinite — and as if this love could not be satisfied, so long as there remained a miracle it had not wrought, He institutes the adorable Sacrament of the Altar, the sum of all His wonders.

 

He truly lives with us until the end of the world. He gives Himself to us, under the appearances of bread and wine. He makes His flesh and blood the nourishment of our souls, in order to unite Himself more closely to us, or rather to unite us more closely to Him. Can we then be possessed of reason, and not be deeply moved at the mere recital of this marvel? Can we still retain any feeling of humanity, and not be all inflamed with love for Jesus Christ, at the sight of such a benefit?

 

A God feels tenderness for man, takes delight in him, and is solicitous about him! A God desires to unite Himself to us, and desires it to such an extent as to annihilate and immolate Himself daily, and to wish that we should feed upon Him every day, without being in the least changed, either by the indifference, the disgust, or the contempt of those who never receive Him, or by the coldness and the faults of those who receive Him often!

 

Finally, He remains upon our Altars, shut up within the Tabernacle, and this everyday, and at all hours of the day. Are not these manifest proofs of the love which Jesus Christ has for us? Are they not motives powerful enough to oblige us to love Him? Ungrateful as we are, since it is for us alone that all these wonders have been wrought, what are we to think?

 

Does not Jesus Christ, dwelling on our Altars, deserve to be honored by us? Does He not show us love sufficient to merit a return of love? "Woe and anathema to him, who, after all this, does not love Jesus Christ.”

 

To say the truth, said a great servant of God, could anything shake my faith in the Blessed Eucharist, I should not doubt of the infinite power which Almighty God displays therein, but rather of the excessive love which God shows towards us. How what was bread, becomes flesh, without ceasing to appear bread; how the Body of Jesus Christ is at the same time in several places; how He can be contained in an almost indivisible space; to all these wonders I have nothing to answer, but that God can do all things.

 

But if I am asked, how can it be, that God can love a creature so weak and miserable as man; and that He can love him ardently and to such an excess; that He can love him as He has loved him. I confess that I have no other answer to give, but that this is a truth which is above my comprehension; that the love which Jesus Christ bears us, is an excessive love, an ineffable love, an incomprehensible love, a love which ought to cause admiration and surprise in every reasonable man.

 

(From Devotion To The Sacred Heart of Jesus by Father John Croiset, S.J.)