Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Source: Wikemedia Commons ) “The Divine Lover in the tabernacle longs to diffuse His life. If we are to resemble Him, then love, which is His life, must so burn within us as to set on fire the world around us. "I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?"' Christ wishes us to create or renew this life in others. To be His true disciples, we must not possess our sacramen­tal God selfishly, but, like Him, we must willingly and gener­ously sacrifice ourselves, be other Christs, in the unrestrained, perfect development and diffusion of His life of love. As love acts and reacts, our charity, especially toward those who need it most, through daily, thoughtful kindness, through a delicate anticipation, and, if possible, through relief of their wants - through spending ourselves and being spent for them - will determine the extent of our love of Christ and His love of us. The God of love cannot abide in a soul where there is no love...

(Tabernacle-St. Agatha's Canastota, NY) “In our visits to the Divine Solitary, we can with intense de­votion prepare ourselves to receive Him sacramentally. Poor, wretched, miserable, blind, and naked, we cannot alone make ourselves fit for the reception of our God. He must clothe our souls with the wedding garment of divine grace, and adorn them with virtue. As we kneel before the Eucharistic Savior, the Eternal Fa­ther will draw us closer to His Divine Son. Christ will so influ­ence us as to bring out the best that is in us. The Holy Spirit will calm us with the peace of God, and thus remove the ob­stacles to our loving advance in intimate conversation with the sacramental King. Our very nearness to Christ will dispel our diffidence at the thought of too hasty an approach to the God who has found sin among the angels. Breathing the spiri­tual air of the tabernacle, illumining our souls with the light reflected from His earthly dwelling, strengthening our wills...

    "Of ourselves, we cannot communicate worthily. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. Even though we approach the altar free from mortal sin, He must sharpen our spiritual apprehen­sion and inflame our love to intense ardor, that Christ may find in us a more beautiful habitation every time we receive Him. The sacramental God has a divine right to expect on our part after each Holy Communion an intensification of our gradual growth into His likeness. As often as we receive Him, He would have us burn with the desire for greater progress in virtue that will manifest itself in an irrevocable detachment from the world and a more unselfish love of Him, grounded on the conviction of our nothingness and consequent sore need of Him.   With greater joy will He abide in us if He beholds us by degrees assimilating His life, resembling Him in virtue by more complete conformity to His will. Christ will unite Him­self most intimately with us if we are constant in ...

“…the sacramental Savior…abides on every altar as the Author and Finisher of our sanctification. We behold Him there no longer bruised and battered for our sins; no longer is there any visible evidence of the untold mental anguish, the agonizing physical pain, or the bitter desolation which He underwent to redeem us. But in the Holy Eucharist, He is the object of man’s indifference and neglect. Although He conquered sin by His death and Resurrection, He is still within the range of the sinner’s power to insult and outrage Him…   Great then and urgent is the need of reparation on our part for the pain of which the Eucharistic King is the daily silent Victim. Calm and restful though our gratitude may be in our moments of adoration, we must never forget the studied neglect, the worldliness of His wayward children, but rather strive persistently with all our powers to comfort Him in His sacramental lowliness, while the storm of sin set in motion by the thoughtlessness, if no...