Monday Musings - Lamentations and Praise!

As You know Lord, for much of my life, I rarely gave You any thought. You were not important to me. I went about my life without You, foolishly thinking I did not need You. I never considered how my disinterest in, and lack of love for You, made You feel. The audacity of a sinful creature to treat his Creator in such a despicable unloving way!

But that began to change, slowly.

Oh, how bitter I was when mom became ill and suffered so! How oblivious I was to being on the brink of eternal damnation when you sent people into my life to drag me back from the precipice.

Oh, how upset I became when I could not understand why my efforts to come closer to You were thwarted? Why I caused so much pain to those who loved me.

How often Lord did I scream out in anger and pain asking You. "Where have You had gone?" The more I prayed, the more I attempted to come closer to You, the further from You I felt.

I realize now Lord that You have never abandoned me. You have always been at my side. It is I who has refused to welcome You, to trust You, to rely totally upon You. It is I who failed to love You and those You placed in my life, as I ought and as You and they deserved.

Let me never forget Lord that you are always at my side, not as the official heavenly scorekeeper, but as a loving God. You are constantly gazing upon me, showering me with the graces I need to remain strong and offering Your mercy and forgiveness when I fail.

Thank you, Lord, for always inviting me to get up and start anew!

What a Treasure! What a Gift! What a God!

Lord, may I always trust in You!

Eucharistic Reflection - Let Us Go To The Most Holy Sacrament

“There are three things which cast my small understanding into an abyss of astonishment. The first is that the times and moments of our lives, being given to us to trade for the blessedness of a sweet eternity - this is the least of our thoughts. Further, without reflection about the brevity of our days, we do not realize that upon leaving this life we will be required to give an account for our smallest vanities. What will the soul who has spent its life among creatures do at that meeting? O dreadful misfortune! 

 

(Photo by Sylvain Brison on Unsplash)

The second thing which astounds me is that we live, breathe, are moved, and act within and in God, and meanwhile we are not at all focused on His presence and we live the majority of the time as if there were no God, without respect, without love, and without fear of His Majesty which is present.

The third is that having Jesus Christ really and truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament and, where He is, all three divine Persons, we are so little moved by the mystery of His divine love, which He communicates to us in all its immensity, and this, without reserve. Is it not loving us truly [for Him] to desire to be converted into food for the sake of incorporating us into Himself? So that we may become completely one with Him in the most ineffable and comprehensible manner? We search for relics, we want to see saints…Let us go to the Most Holy Sacrament, let us consume this adorable Host. We have not just next relics, but the source of all sanctity, who sanctifies us. We have eternal goodness itself instead of the saints, and we converse with Jesus Christ! Oh! Awesome mystery! Who can comprehend or understand this holy mystery without being seized with amazement

Here are the three methods by which I am overcome, seeing the terrible blindness of Christians. Acknowledge with me, through your own experience, that the cause of so many evils come from the very poor use we make of our senses, a miserable use which deprives us of an infinite grace. Do we not have reason to weep over our blindness? Let a soul pierced with these truths suffer from sorrow to see her divine Master so little known and almost not loved at all.”

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

 

Eucharistic Reflection - The Malice of Man

"In the Eucharist, Jesus exposes Himself without protection to the insults and outrages of the impious; and the number of his new executioners is very great. 

 

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

His goodness is disregarded and despised by a large number of bad Christians.

His Holiness is defiled by so many profanations and sacrileges and that by His own children and His best friends.

The indifference of Christians leaves Him alone, abandons Him in the Tabernacle, refuses His graces, neglects and even despises Communion and the Sacrifice of the Altar.

The malice of man goes so far as to deny His presence in the adorable Host, to trample it underfoot, to feed it to filthy beasts, and to use it in diabolical magic.

At the sight of so much ingratitude on the part of man, Jesus must have been troubled and unsettled for a moment before instituting the Eucharist.

There were so many reasons against it, the strongest of which was assuredly ingratitude. What a shame for Him to live among His own like a stranger unknown to them, to be forced to take flight and seek the hospitality of pagans, of savages...

Well, in view of such a sad and discouraging picture of things to come what was the Heart of Christ to do? Unable to win the heart of man, was His love to admit defeat? And since His Eucharist was bound to be useless for some was it worth His instituting it all?

But His love triumphed over all these sacrifices. 'No,' exclaimed Jesus, 'it will not be said that man can offend Me more than I can love Him. I will love Him in spite of his ingratitude and crimes. I, his King, will wait for him to visit Me. I, his Lord, will offer him My love before he offers Me his. I, his Savior, will be at his beck and call. I, his God, will give Myself entirely to him so that he may give himself entirely to Me and that I may give him with My love all the treasures of My goodness, all the magnificence of My glory; so that I may triumph in him and that he may triumph through Me. If there are so many as a few faithful hearts, if there's only one grateful and devoted soul, I will be compensated for all My sacrifices. I will institute the Eucharist for that one soul; I will rule supreme over the heart of at least one man.'

And our Lord then instituted the adorable Sacrament of His all to great love.”

 (St. Peter Julian Eymard from A Eucharistic Handbook)

Eucharistic Reflection - He Calls Us and Pursues Us

The heavenly host of angels cannot believe the ingratitude we sinful souls demonstrate to our ever-Present, loving, merciful and forgiving Lord:  

"For centuries, I have carried in My Heart a sorrowful cross. How many souls are there redeemed by My Blood, yet, definitely lost! Although destined to be consumed in the fires of My Love, they have already fallen by thousands into the terrible and avenging flames. Yet they belonged to Me!

Photo©Michael Seagriff

Listen to them. From the depths of hell, they curse the crib of Bethlehem, My poverty, and My appeals to the World. They curse the blood-stained Cross imprinted on their conscience. They curse My Church which offered them the treasures of Redemption. They curse My Eucharist, they who would have spent eternity in bliss if they had been nourished by the bread of immortality, which I offer them in the Blessed Sacrament.

Yet how many of these unfortunate souls like you came to kneel at My feet but afterwards, yielding to the world, chose for themselves their hell.

I called them constantly, I pursued them, I embraced them with the tenderness of a God, but one day they broke their chains, they pulled themselves violently away from My embrace, and in their mad frenzy, chose a sinful gratification at the price of endless woe!

At this very moment, they curse Me with a curse that will now be eternal! And, sorrow of sorrows, they were Mine! It was especially because of them, at the sight of their irrevocable loss, that My Heart was breaking in the Garden of Gethsemane, for they were all My children!

Look beloved souls! From the intensity of this unspeakable anguish, the Wound in My Heart is open and will remain open, yes, open, that you who love Me may find there superabundant life, a Heaven. Life eternal.

 (Twenty Holy Hours - Rev. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, SS.CC.)

 

[Excerpted from Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Reflections)