Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Photo by Laura Allen on Unsplash ) What is so hard, so heart-wrenching and so painful? The lack of belief in, and reverence for, Our Lord and Savior, really and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament! So relatively few Catholics believe this fundamental and essential Truth of our Faith. Only a scant minority treasure this most Precious Gift. For the most part, we have abandoned, ignored and disrespected our imprisoned Lord. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) Many souls were denied access to Him from the outset of this pandemic. I, and many others, fear that few are the Adoration Chapels which chose to close, that will ever fully reopen. Knowing this lack of belief to be true, should not our primary catechetical focus be on re-establishing a sense of awe, amazement, belief in, and excitement for, our Eucharistic Lord? You would think so, wouldn’t you? But let me share just two recent experiences that shed some doubt on that expectation. The first public Mas...

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) "A God – greatness, power, richness itself- reduces Himself to nothing for us in the Host, and we think no more of it than one would of something commonplace and ordinary. O stupidity! Oh, the ingratitude of men! One does not think of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and, yet, is this not, of all mysteries, the most divine, of all marvels the most prodigious, the most inconceivable? What has one said of this divine mystery up until the present that in any way approaches the reality of it? What are the most learned men’s discourses next to what it is in truth? No, no, there is not a tongue that would know how to express the grandeurs, the riches hidden in our tabernacles. It is an abyss impenetrable to the human spirit. You Yourself, O God, reveal to some privileged soul the secret of this mystery, and put Your spirit within her, that she might speak of it worthily, for, in truth, we know nothing of it.” ( Venerable Catherine Mectilde de Bar f rom Th...