Eucharistic Reflection - Don't Take Away His Real Presence!

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Our Lord is in the Blessed Sacrament to receive from men the same homages He received from those who had the happiness of coming close to Him during His mortal life. He is there in order to give everybody the opportunity to render personal homage to His Sacred humanity; if that were the only end and justification of the Eucharist, we should still deem ourselves most fortunate to be enabled thereby to fulfill our Christian duties towards our Lord in person.

If you take away the Real Presence, how will you render to His sacred humanity the respect and honor it is entitled to?

Moreover, since our Lord as man is only in heaven and in the Most Blessed Sacrament, it is through the Eucharist that we can come close to our living Savior in person, see Him and converse with Him.

Through this sacramental presence we go to our Lord directly and come to Him as during His mortal life. How unfortunate it would be if, in order to honor the humanity of Jesus Christ, our memory had to travel back nineteen centuries. That would satisfy our mind, but could we render an exterior homage to a past that is so far away? We would content ourselves with giving thanks without participating in the mysteries.

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But now we may come and adore like the shepherds and prostrate ourselves like the Magi. We no longer have to deplore our not having been at Bethlehem or on Calvary. 

In fact to adore well, we must keep in mind that Jesus, present in the Eucharist, glorifies and continues therein all the mysteries and virtues of His mortal life; that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ past, present and future; that the Eucharist is the last development of the Incarnation and mortal life of the Savior; that Jesus Christ gives us therein all the graces; that all truths tend to the Eucharist, and the final word on everything is the Eucharist, since It is Jesus Christ.

(St Peter Julian Eymard from In The Light of the Monstrance)