Eucharistic Reflection - Who Shall Dare To Assign Limits To The Omnipotence of God?

 

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

“You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me speak of the Mass as a stupendous work. But what tongue, human or angelic, may ever describe a power so immeasurable as that exercised by the simplest priest in Mass? And who could ever have imagined that the voice of man, which by nature has not the power even to raise a straw from the ground, should obtain through grace a power so stupendous as to bring from Heaven to earth the Son of God? It is a greater power than that which would be required to change the place of mountains, to dry up seas, and to turn around the heavens; it even emulates, in a certain manner, that first fiat with which God brought all things out of nothing, and in some sort would seem to surpass that other fiat with which the sweet Virgin drew down into her bosom the Eternal Word. She did nothing else than supply matter for the body of Christ - made indeed from her most pure blood, but not by her, in the sense of her own potential act. 

But altogether different, and most marvelous, is the sacramental manner in which the voice of the priest, operating as the instrument of Christ, reproduces Him, and does so as often as he consecrates. The Blessed Giovanni Buono made this truth…in some sort comprehensible to a hermit, his companion, who was unable to imagine how the words of a priest could be allowed such power as to change the substance of bread into the Body of Jesus Christ, and the substance of wine into His blood, and who, unhappily, had consented to the devilish suggestions of doubt.

The good servant of God, perceiving this man’s error, conducted him to a fountain, took thence a cup of water, and gave it to him to drink. He, when he had drunk of it, declared that during his whole life he had never tasted a wine so pleasant. Then Giovanni Buono said, ‘Do not you now feel, my dear brother, the marvelous truth? If through means of me, a miserable man, water is changed into wine by Divine power, how much more ought you to believe that, through means of the words of God - for the priest only uses the words instituted for the purpose by God Himself - the bread and wine are converted into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ? Who shall dare to assign limits to the omnipotence of God?’ This so effectually enlightened the hermit that, banishing every doubt from his mind, he did great penance for his sin.

Let us have but a little faith, a little living faith, and we should confess that the mighty and admirable things contained in this adorable sacrifice are without number; nor will it then seem too strange to us to behold the marvel repeated continually - the thrice-holy humanity of Jesus multiplying itself in thousands and thousands of places, enjoying, so to speak, a kind of infinity denied to every other body, and reserved to it alone through the merit of His life, sacrificed to the Most High.”

(St. Leonard of Port Maurice from The Hidden Treasure)