Monday Musings - Do You Really Believe?

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We appreciate the ongoing efforts of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to foster greater awe, amazement and belief in our Lord’s Real and Substantial Presence here among us in the Eucharist. 

The number of Eucharistic processions that have taken place throughout this nation have been heartening. The excellent homilies, posts, videos and testimonies of priests, religious and lay Catholics that our bishops have shared on social media have also been inspiring - no doubt countless souls have been touched.

We pray that the Church’s current efforts are reaching not just the choir but the millions of non-believing Catholics and former Catholics who inhabit this great nation.

How are we going to assess the success of these efforts?

Simple: If those professing to be Catholic believe that God is really, truly and substantially present in the consecrated hosts in our tabernacles, they will flock to be with Him – He who loves them and awaits their visit. They would never miss Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

The reverent silence in our Churches evidencing such belief would be apparent and deafening. Parishes would increase the opportunities for hungry souls to make Holy Hours and adore their Lord. True believers would never leave Him abandoned and alone. Our Churches would never be empty! Someone would always be with our Lord, every hour of every day. 

Every parish in the world would have chapels of Perpetual  Eucharistic Adoration - the dream and request of our late and beloved St. John Paul II. 

Does this describe the Eucharistic Revival which you are experiencing in your parish? If not, there are more souls to reach - more work to be done.

 

Eucharistic Reflection - The Best Hour

"Blessed opportunities to be with our Lord in Eucharistic Adoration are the best hours spent when it comes to healing a broken heart, a wounded soul. I find that when I am in my darkest hours, I run to the Adoration Chapel. There is no other comfort our earthly home can provide to soothe my soul when I am wounded. It is truly a privilege to be able to just go to the Chapel, where God resides, and be able to “stop in” for a visit, any day, any time, and find my dearest and best Friend waiting for me. Who could ask for anything more?

Time in Adoration is also the best place to go when discerning God’s providence. I find myself going there automatically when I need to know what God wants of me when I am making big decisions in life. It is an anointed time to be with God. He can reach my heart and mind in a way that breaks through the distractions I encounter when I talk to Him most anywhere else. It seems to me that He leads my mind in directions I cannot seem to go any other time. The best ideas and plans come to me in Adoration in prayer. When I go forth, and act on the direction I receive in prayer at Adoration, it is almost always the perfect plan or idea. Thanks be to God!..."

(Ms. Katrina Johnson, OP, from Godhead Here In Hiding Whom I Adore - Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration)

Eucharistic Reflection - Oh, The Blindness of Souls!

“Oh! How I pity the blindness of souls who do not know God, who are weary and bored in His holy presence, who are not moved to reverence by His greatness!... The heavens and earth are full of the majesty of His glory and we do not think about it. We do not give ourselves to that adorable fullness in order to have a share in it.

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash)

 

What pains me most is that during the most precious moments of our lives, those for prayer, we allow our souls to remain without attention, without respect, without vigilance, and without love toward a Majesty so adorable. Alas! If we were before an earthly monarch, what would our disposition be? But for a God of infinite greatness, holiness, and majesty we do not have the fortitude to wait in His divine presence for one hour with reverence. If we knew the importance of the loss we bring about through our fault, we would weep tears of blood. But we are in the darkness, our senses cast us into the blindness and our faith is as if it annihilated. What will we do in eternity if one hour of prayer wearies us?”

 (From The Breviary of Fire- Letters by Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament)

Eucharistic Reflection - Enter The Divine Wound In His Side

"How pleasing it is to be near Our Lord Who loves us so much; to be in the shadow of Him Who is the Light of the World and Who enlightens the darkness of our minds!

 

Photo©Michael Seagriff

Shutting out the world with its illusions and deceptions, let us come close, very close to the divine Reality, Jesus, let us draw near to His Sacred Heart, that paradise of delights. The good Master is there, barely a step away. He is calling us. 

With boundless confidence pray Him to turn His eyes from our faults and during this Holy Hour, to open wide to us the Divine Wound in His Side. Let us enter there without fear, for it is a divine spring whose power ransoms poor sinners, sanctifies the just, alleviates great sorrows of life and drives away the fear of death." 

(From Twenty Holy Hours)

Worth Revisiting - Imagine!

Thank you, Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. It is a privilege to share our work with you and your followers.

My contribution this week follows:

Imagine

(Originally posted on  May 28, 2011)

 

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Imagine what we, our families, our priests, our Church, our communities and our world would be like if the Eucharist was, in fact, the source, center and summit of our daily lives!

The following two men have something significant to share with all of us, be we lay men and women, priests or religious, about the value of Eucharistic Adoration. May our spiritual journey and desire for holiness be enriched by reading and reflecting on what they have said.

Father James M. Sullivan, O.P. – “Adoration is not just one more thing to do, like going to the store, the doctor, etc.  It is an encounter with Christ.  His love changes and orders our life.”

Fulton Sheen, Servant of God – “The priest should think of the practice of the daily Holy Hour, as something to continue for his whole life…the daily Holy Hour gives us wisdom…The mind of the priest who lives close to the tabernacle door gains a special illumination.  The priest's mind and heart are best guided when they seek the Eucharistic Lord at dawn…Daily exigencies demand a daily Holy Hour…Vitamins cannot be stored up.  Spiritual energy has to be renewed; today's strength must come from the Lord today.  Thus the monotony of life is broken, and there comes to the priest new power for each day's apostolate.  The Holy Hour each day also destroys in the priest forebodings and worries about the future.  Kneeling before the Eucharistic Lord, he receives the rations for each day's march, worrying not at all about tomorrow...The Holy Hour should be a daily event because our crosses are daily, not weekly…These daily crosses will sour us, sear our souls and make us bitter, unless we turn them into crucifixes; and how can that be done except by seeing them as coming from the Lord?  That we can do only if we are with Him.  The Holy Hour may be a sacrifice, but the Lord does not make the week the unit of sacrifice.  He tells us our cross is daily.”

Yes, let us imagine…

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 28, 2019

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 Fulton J. Sheen

The Church believes that a holy hour spent before the Blessed Sacrament does more good for the well-being of the world than whole days spent in talking about progress to the utter oblivion of the fact that the only true progress consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin; she believes that a penitent returning to God is of far more consequence than the cancellation of war debts; that an increase of sanctifying grace in a soul is of far more value than the increase of international credit; that a group of cloistered nuns in prayer are more effective in preserving world peace than a group of world politicians discussing peace to the forgetfulness of the Prince of Peace.

(From Manifestations of Christ)

Monday Musings - On Our Knees

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It is astonishing how hard-headed, stiff -necked and obstinate a people we Catholics and our leaders are. The answer to all that troubles our Church in these times is, has been, and always will be, to humble ourselves by spending time on our knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament and surrendering all that we do to our abandoned and imprisoned Lord. But most of us don't and won't.

The late St. John Paul II envisioned and urged that every parish have Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. Only a handful have accepted His challenge. 

Despite the demands on his time, this Saint spent multiple hours a day in Eucharistic Adoration - the essential fuel for living a holy life. He, like Venerable Fulton J Sheen, recommended that all priests make a daily Holy Hour.  For the most part, both men have been ignored.

In a recent article written by Monsignor Robert J. Dempsey and  published in Adoremus Bulletin, October, 2018 entitled "To Pray, Protect and Promote: The Bishop's Role in the Liturgical Life of the Church," the author highlights yet more advice given by John Paul II, to his brother bishops - which tragically they have failed to follow.

Citing John Paul II's 2003 Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores gregis, Msgr. Dempsey reminds us that our beloved Pope urged his bishops "to cultivate a love of the Holy Eucharist by devoting a 'fair part of his time' during the day to adoration before the tabernacle. In this way he allows his heart to be molded by the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his the sheep, and he can make constant intercession for his sheep".

How different our Church would be today if our Shepherds had heeded this advice. The only hope for them and our Church is that they do so now.

Eucharistic Reflection - Make A Deliberate Choice

"When someone spends time with Our Lord in the Eucharist, he or she makes a conscious and deliberate choice to belong to Christ entirely for that period, since the believer cannot be present to Christ through the mind alone or through the senses alone.

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Since the believer has put aside every other activity, sacrificed every lesser good which might have been accomplished in that hour for the greater good of lingering a time with Jesus, that person has made a very clear accounting of what in his or her life belongs by right to Christ. It is everything."

Bishop Edward J. Slattery