Eucharistic Reflection - My Lord and My God!

"O marvelous Sacrament! How can I find words to praise You! You are the life of the soul, the medicament healing our wounds, our comforter when we are overburdened, the memorial of Jesus Christ, the proof of His love, the most precious precept of His testament, our companion in the pilgrimage of life, the joy sustaining us in our exile, the burning coal kindling the fire of divine love, the instrument of grace, the pledge of eternal bliss and the treasure of Christians," 

Ven. Louis of Granada, O.P.

Monday Musings - Dying In Peace

On Ash Wednesday we are asked to remember that "we are dust and until dust we shall return."

Lent is a perfect time to reflect on the current condition of our souls and the end of our lives-  if we are to better prepare ourselves to stand before the Throne of Justice when God summons us there.

Let us never forget the horror of so many souls who died during the worse of the COVID restrictions without the benefit of the Last Rites and without their loving family at their bedsides. 

We must also remember that so many in our own families know not what to do spiritually as a loved one approaches the end of life. 

It is for all these reasons, that a Lay Dominican I know asked to share some basic directions that anyone can easily follow as death approaches a loved one. That they be prepared spiritually to help is even more crucial given the fewer number of priests available to be present at death beds. 

This post and the following directive were prompted in large measure after their authors read The Art of Dying (Ars Moriendi), an “immensely popular and influential text of the Middle Ages,” translated with Introduction and Notes by Br. Columba Thomas, O.P., M.D. and a Forward by Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, SV. - a book both highly recommend:

Dying In Peace

To my beloved wife and family:

I love each of year dearly. Each of you have been the treasures of my earthly life. Thank you for the blessing each of you have been to me. It was my privilege to be your husband, Father and Pop Pop. I tried my best – that is all one can do. I thank God that He gave each of you to me. I am sorry that I failed you in so many ways but mostly by my poor example. I know there were too many times where my actions, inaction and words were not consistent with what I professed to believe. Forgive me for failing to fully form you in your Catholic Faith – the most important task God gives a soul.

Please demonstrate your love for me and your forgiveness for all the ways I may have failed each of you, by being sure you honor these wishes and make sure my spiritual (not physical) well-being is priority number one.

Call the priest for Last Sacraments as soon as it appears I am in serious illness. He is more important that a doctor.

Do everything you can to see that I receive the Last Sacraments. Be sure you ask the priest to extend an Apostolic Pardon to me. If no priest is available or you expect a long-delay before one can come, place a crucifix in my hand and you recite aloud in my presence the Apostolic Pardon prayer (see attached).

Our lives here on earth are intended to be a temporary journey towards the eternal life God offers each of us - an undeserved gift which we are free to accept or reject. Suffering is a part of physical death and preparation for eternal life. Any suffering God sends at my last days is for my eternal benefit. I accept that suffering. It is better to suffer for a short time here on this earth than for an extended time in Purgatory. Accept and respect my belief in that Truth.

Recite aloud in my presence, the Nicene Creed, especially if I am in pain.

Recite aloud in my presence, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy as many times as you can.

Recite the Rosary aloud in my presence frequently.

Upon my death, arrange for a Gregorian Series of Masses  for the repose of my soul.

Several times a year have a Mass offered for the repose of my soul.

Please do as I ask. I am totally dependent on your praying for God’s mercy on my soul. 

Finally, please accept God’s ever-present invitation to return to and authentically live out your Catholic Faith. He awaits each of you with open arms. This loving send-off must be followed at the time of your mother’s passing as well.

I will dearly miss you all. I love each of you so very much. 

Though none of us are worthy, may we be blessed to share eternity together in the Presence of Almighty God.

For the Glory of God and the salvation of souls!

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 23, 2023

Pondering Tidbits of Truth is my simple and inadequate way of providing nuggets of spiritual wisdom for you to chew on from time to time. 

Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen 

“If you have never before prayed to Mary, do so now. Can you not see that if Christ himself willed to be physically formed in her for nine months and then be spiritually formed by her for thirty years, it is to her that we must go to learn how to have Christ formed in us? Only she who raised Christ can raise a Christian.”

 (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross)

 

Father Donald Haggerty

“Many times in her life Mother Teresa repeated that the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist was inseparable from His presence concealed in the poor. The presence is  one presence, she constantly affirmed. The same Jesus who hides in the Sacrament is disguised in the distressing appearance of the poor man. As she prayed on her knees before that Host in Kolkata,  one wonders what may have passed through her heart and mind. In her saintly awareness, Jesus Christ on the floor of the Chapel was the same Christ lying sick and abandoned on dirty street corners and alleyways throughout the world. Our love for the Eucharist can only deepen as we receive Him in Mass only to go in search of Him in His concealed presence among the poor. This truth can be a great provocation after a conversion. A rhythm of seeking and finding Him in His Real Presence can extend outside the Mass to many unsuspected moments of the day if we open our eyes differently to the poor - in all the disguises of isolation.” 

(From Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into An Essential Encounter With God)

 

 

Catherine Doherty, Servant of God

“When we are in pain—physical, psychological, spiritual—we lift our pains into the Lord’s cupped hands (the pain of rejection is the hardest). It is like the water that is added to the wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Lord takes our pain, especially the pain of rejection, and He uses it to help others across the whole earth.” 

(From Cross of Rejection)

Eucharistic Reflection - Imagine His Gaze

“…whenever we pray it is good to begin by calling to mind the presence of God and how God looks at us. Try and imagine His gaze, His face. Spoiler alert: His gaze is always and only one of love. It is possible that His gaze of love will cause us pain if we are stuck in sin, or if we are conscious of any of our many betrayals. However, this feeling says more about us than about God. His gaze is one of love. His gaze can be one of purifying love if we allow it to be (cf. Luke 22: 61). Perhaps His gaze prompts us to go to confession so that we can hear the voice that accompanies that look of love: ‘I absolve you from your sins.’

We can also see the gaze of love and be comforted. Looking at our Eucharistic Lord and imagining His gaze should console us. What we see explicitly is the gift of Himself to us. The gift that reveals what love is. “Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:15) I lay down my life... no one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord (John 10:17-18). “Take eat... this is my body which is given for you’ (Matthew 26:27; Luke 22:19).

Father Justin Kizewski from Face to Face and Eye to Eye: A Reflection on Eucharistic Adoration, Adoremus Bulletin, January 2023 issue

 

 

Monday Musings - Yes, He Means Everything!

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Sitting Before the Lord

"The monstrance often resembles the sun with rays bursting from the center. Have you ever gone outside and turned your face toward the sun and soaked in its rays? I close my eyes and thrust out my chin and try to absorb the sun's warmth, light, and life-giving qualities.

This metaphor would dim eventually because you can spend too much time in the sun, but taking in moderate amounts of sun can teach us something about anytime we spend in front of Christ. We are changed. We are warmed, even baked, by the sun. Taking in the sun can be a Eucharistic image. Sitting before the Lord in the Eucharist, we are similarly changed, but spiritually speaking. We can receive greater hues of color and greater depths of warmth. Life abounds. We are like Moses on the mountain whose face was radiant or like Christ at the Transfiguration."

 (Father Justin Kizewski from Face to Face and Eye to Eye: A Reflection on Eucharistic Adoration, Adoremus Bulletin, January 2023 issue)

Monday Musings - Have We Become Too Complacent?

It is so easy to deceive and delude ourselves into thinking that we have been progressing in our spiritual lives. Thank God, someone like Father  Donald Haggerty comes along and forces us to open our eyes and take a closer look:

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

"If Jesus of Nazareth, our Lord and God, gave Himself to the death described in the Gospels, how is it that a disquiet does not register somewhere in the peaceful soul of someone who kneels head bowed before a crucifix after receiving Holy Communion at a Saturday evening vigil Mass and follows his act of piety in the next hour by an expensive meal, while a diseased child in sub-Sahara Africa sleeps restlessly in the long hours of this same night after finding nothing on a plate at dinner but the dust of a windswept desert?...

It may be that there is a direct correlation between the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the presence of the poor in any age. When the poor are ignored, when little thought of their sufferings intrudes into other lives, the crucifixion itself as the central event in history is obscured. Callousness toward the one is an indifference to the other."

(Father Donald Haggerty from Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter with God)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 9, 2023

Pondering Tidbits of Truth is my simple and inadequate way of providing nuggets of spiritual wisdom for you to chew on from time to time.

John Cardinal O’Connor

“I believe that suffering is of the essence of the priesthood. The priest is preeminently a man of sacrifice...It has always impressed me that even His risen body was scarred with the wounds of the crucifixion. I cannot imagine an unscarred priest, a priest without wounds, because I cannot imagine an unscared Christ.”

(From his September 8, 1989 Pastoral letter on the priesthood, titled, Always a Priest, Always Present)

Richard Rolle

 “If you will be well with GOD, and have grace to rule your life, and come to the joy of love: this name JESUS, fasten it so fast in your heart that it come never out of your thought. And when you speak to Him, and through custom say, JESUS, it shall be in Your ear, joy; in Your mouth, honey; and in Your heart, melody: for men shall think joy to hear that name be named, sweetness to speak it, mirth and song to think it. If thou thinks (on) JESUS continually, and holds it firmly, it purges your sin, and kindles your heart; it clarifies your soul, it removes anger and does away slowness. It wounds in love and fulfills charity. It chases the devil and puts out dread. It opens heaven and makes a contemplative man. Have JESUS in mind, for that puts all vices and phantoms out from the lover.”

(From The Form Of Perfect Living And Other Prose Treatises)

 

Father Donald Haggerty

“The priests who will not go a day without an hour in silence before a tabernacle seem always to be the vibrant, faithful priests carrying a love for souls in their own souls.”

(From Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter With God)

 

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Be Sensitive To These Signs of The Time

(Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash)

“When we realize after a serious conversion the true holiness of the Eucharist, the presence of God Himself in the Host, there is bound to be a spiritual discomfort and unease in seeing at times the dishonor accorded the sacredness of the Mass. Fervent prayer at Mass can be an arduous task when challenged by casual priestly gestures, slapdash improvisations, banal comments.

With the rapid words and quick movements of some priests, it can be difficult to realize that an enormous event takes place with every consecration at Mass. The external displays are often hard to distinguish from an indifference to the transcendent mystery. The clerical disregard for the sacredness of the Mass, moreover, cannot be unlinked with the diminished faith in the real presence of the Eucharist among many Catholics. The almost universal reception of Holy Communion at weekend Masses raises precisely a question of real belief in the truth of the Eucharist. The phenomenon is a symptom of the privatization of faith in our time.

Relations with God, including the reception the Eucharist, have become for many people a matter of private determination, without reference to a wider body of shared Catholic discipline and belief. The likely prevalence of sacrilegious Communion, with perhaps no comparable precedent in history, surely contributes in turn to a slow bleeding within the Body of the Church during the current era. The uncertain, vague sense of the Eucharist is aligned inevitably with a reduced awareness of the person of Jesus Christ as true God and man.

A soul recently converted and drawn to the Eucharist will be sensitive to these signs of the times.”

(From Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into An Essential Encounter with God by Father Donald Haggerty)

Monday Musings - Holy Mass