Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation : Irreverence

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Eucharistic Reflection - Be Sensitive To These Signs of The Time

“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 - Let Us Be Real About Eucharistic Revival - Part II

"In last week's post, which explored the dishonor accorded the sacredness of the Mass, I asked: "How can we expect the current efforts toward Eucharistic Revival to bear fruit when we have not addressed the real and obvious reasons why so few Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament?

This week I invite you to read the following post on lack of reverent silence and sacredness within our Churches. Are there any specific Revival efforts planned to catechize and instruct souls as to how they should conduct themselves while in the Presence of God?

Without Reverent Silence Nothing Else We Do Will Be of Any Value

A Forgotten Truth: "The Blessed Sacrament is that Presence which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be, holy." - St. John Henry Cardinal Newman:

A Catholic Church must be unlike any other building in the world because God resides there. A Catholic Church is holy ground. All who enter must conduct themselves in a manner consistent with being in the Presence of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We must enter, remain and exit it in reverent and total silence. God deserves nothing less.

In far too many of our Catholic parishes we have lost the sense of the sacred and an appreciation for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that are both essential for fostering and maintaining a belief in the Real Presence. We have forgotten how to pray. We have forgotten how to act while we are in Church and no one teaches or corrects us. Many ignore He Who is Love to engage in inane chatter on topics more appropriately discussed at social and sporting events. The actions and demeanor of so many souls are inconsistent with one who professes to believe that Jesus Christ is really and truly present on the altar and in their hands.

You can read this post in its entirety here .

Eucharistic Reflection - Reverence In Church

"And meanwhile, for the most part, we come to church without reverence, without love of God, without knowing even what we have come to do. Some let their minds and hearts dwell on a thousand worldly matters. Others are there reluctantly and are bored. There are some who scarcely kneel whilst a God pours out His precious Blood for their pardon, lastly others are in such haste to leave the church, they do not wait for the priest to come down from the altar. My God what little love Your children have for You, or rather, how they scorn You! Indeed, what a spirit of frivolity and distraction appears when people are in church. Some sleep, others converse together, and nearly everyone is taken up with what he has to do."

(From THE EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS OF THE CURÉ D’ARS)

Monday Musings - The Synodal Journey

Am I understanding this correctly?

Catholics have been poorly catechized for more than five decades. They do not know their Faith and very few practice it. Their spiritual shepherds (for the most part) have not taught them the Faith.

Polls indicate that the majority of those claiming to be "Catholic" actually reject many of the Church’s teachings on such fundamental issues as the Real Presence of our Lord in the Sacred Eucharist, attendance at Sunday Mass, abortion, artificial insemination, contraception, euthanasia, the family, active homosexual lifestyle, same sex marriage and transgenderism.

Yet these same shepherds who have failed to teach, fraternally correct or defend the fundamental Truths of our Catholic Faith are now going to listen to, and to seek the opinion of, “Catholics” who don’t know their faith, don’t live or practice their Faith, and even publicly oppose the teachings of the Catholic Church. They will also "listen" to the viewpoints of non-Catholics and atheists. Is this a wise and prudent path to follow?

Since when do teachers seek to be taught by their students or by those who know nothing of the subject matter being reviewed? Reminds me of the parable of the blind man in Luke 6:39: "A person who is blind cannot guide another who is blind, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit?".

Our bishops are embarking on this journey in order to discern “the direction in which [God] wants to lead” His Church and how we are “to empty ourselves, to free ourselves from all that is worldly, including our inward-looking and outworn pastoral models”.

Truth is not arrived at by seeking some type of consensus among disparate groups and individuals. Jesus Christ is the Truth. The Deposit of Faith already exists. We need but follow Him and It.

Does it shock you to be told that our reliance for more than two thousand years upon the clear example, teaching and guidance of our Lord, our sacred liturgies and the exemplary lives of countless saints, was misguided, is outdated and of little or no value to Catholics today?

This simple man must ask: Have we gone absolutely mad? How many souls will be lost for all eternity over the next few years as we travel down this rabbit hole? Just look at the rotten fruit and confusion being generated by the German Synod.

Rather than making that error, let us do three simple things certain to revitalize our Faith:

- Acknowledge that it is God and God alone Who will transform us and His Church. We need only to humble ourselves, get down on our knees and ask.

- Restore reverent silence and a sense of the sacred within our Church buildings at all times and most especially during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and

- Unlock our Church doors and invite everyone professing to be Catholic to spend time on their knees, visiting and adoring God Almighty, present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

It will be a much shorter and more fruitful journey.

Eucharistic Reflection - "The Desensitization to the Most Holy Eucharist"

[What follows is one of the many painful but necessary Truths to ponder if we are to to re-establish awe, amazement, and belief in, and reverence for, our loving Lord physically present in the Holy Eucharist.]

(Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, ms. 993, Folio 158v)

"…we did not wake up one fine day in 2016 and find ourselves suddenly confronted with Eucharistic sacrilege being promoted from on high. It was a long, slow process that led to this moment. It consisted in the gradual dilution of the sacredness of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Blessed Sacrament at its heart, with institutionally tolerated sacrilege along the way. Fifty years of desacralization has ended in the temerity of contradicting the entire Catholic tradition about the most holy of all of the Church’s mysteries.

The first major step was the allowance of Communion in the hand while standing - a sharp break from the deeply ingrained practice of many centuries of kneeling in adoration at the altar rail and receiving on the tongue, like a baby bird being fed by its parent (as we see in countless medieval depictions of the pelican that has wounded her breast in order to feed her chicks). This change had the obvious effect of making people think the Holy Eucharist wasn't so mysterious and holy after all. If you can just take it in your hand like ordinary food, it might as well be a potato chip distributed at a party. The sense of awe and reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament was systematically diminished and undermined through this Modernist reintroduction of an ancient practice that had long since been discontinued by the Church in her pastoral wisdom. Nor, as has been well documented, did the faithful themselves request the abolition of the custom of receiving on the tongue while kneeling; it was imposed by the self-styled “experts”.

(Peter Kwasniewski from The Holy Bread of Eternal Life - Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety).

Monday Musings - Brace for Persecution and Spiritual Combat.

Less than 25 per cent of Catholics who attend Sunday Mass, we have been told by pollsters, believe in the Real Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist. Even fewer ever visit Him during the week or outside of Sunday Mass - this despite our Lord's unending invitation that we come and quench His thirst for our love.

(Image Source - Wikimedia Commons)

For those who did believe and did visit Him prior to this extended time of isolation, quarantine and staying in place, the past weeks have been a very painful loss - now we have a taste of what our Lord has endured for centuries - being abandoned and treated irreverently.

There is much to say about the appropriateness or inappropriateness of not offering public Masses or the Sacraments and locking our Churches during these difficult times, but that will have to await another post at some future time.

Dan Burke, noted blogger and spiritual guide, who miraculously survived the corona virus, views these trying times as a chastisement from God in response to the irreverent and sacrilegious way in which His Church and His people have treated Him. He is not alone in that regard. We should not ignore what he has to say.

Such conduct, he argues, must not continue when our Church doors are unlocked. WE MUST REDISCOVER AND REINSTATE A SENSE OF THE SACRED IN OUR CHURCHES AND IN THE MANNER IN WHICH WE CELEBRATE THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS AND RECEIVE HIS MOST PRECIOUS BODY, BLOOD, SOUL AND DIVINITY. There had heretofore been opposition to doing these things and that hostility, Dan suggests, is likely to get worse before it gets better.

PLEASE take the time to read his two most recent posts on these crucial issues. Many believe that God spared His life to be sure this message was shared. You can find his articles here and here.

After your read them, pass them on to everyone you know.

Brace for an onslaught of persecution and spiritual combat the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. CLING TO THE EMBRACES OF OUR EUCHARISTIC LORD AND HIS MOST BLESSED MOTHER. PRAY THE ROSARY!!!

Worth Revisiting - Let Us Love God As We Ought And As He Deserves - Part I

Thank you 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.

I would like to share the first part of a two part post:

Let Us Love God As We Ought And As He Deserves - Part I

(Originally posted February 17, 2020)

[What follows is a slightly modified version of a presentation I made to the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapter of The Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday September 8, 2018]

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

God loves each and every one of us and is waiting for and thirsting for each of us to love Him in return.

My comments today and the reason I wrote and edited Stirring Slumbering Souls – 250 Eucharistic Reflections and I Thirst for Your Love is to address what I believe are the two most pressing problems in our Church today – the loss of the sense of the sacred in our churches AND the lack of belief in, and reverence for, our Eucharistic Lord!

I am a simple sinful man – too simple perhaps for some of you and no doubt more sinful than I ought to be. Just ask my wife and daughter. Second thought don’t.

But if God were to wait for only sinless and intellectual people to speak of Him, the world would be quite silent no doubt.

I cannot do justice to the magnificent Gift of the Eucharist. So, I will write from my heart, hoping the Holy Spirit will make up for all that is lacking in this post.

I am not writing simply to promote my books; I am asking God to use me to challenge and stir your souls.

Anything of value I might share today comes from God and to Him be the glory.

A Disclaimer: I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. The ideas I express today are my own and do no not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole.

I bet all of us have at different times of our lives gone so fast that we missed hearing or understanding God’s directions for our lives.

I am equally certain, the majority of us has often been too slow in responding to God’s promptings. Many of us have gotten lost and discouraged in our spiritual journey, not knowing what spiritual path might be best for us.

This I also know: We must treasure the Eucharist and make - It -make Him - the center of all our actions, thoughts and prayers.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

Listen and feel our Lord’s anguish and pain:

“I remain unknown. I am left alone. Even those who claim to profess the mystery of my Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar forsake Me. I am treated with a terrible indifference, with coldness, and with a lack of respect that causes the angels to weep because they cannot offer Me reparation for the coldness and indifference of human hearts. Only men can make reparation for men. What is lacking is the loving response of a human heart to My Eucharistic Heart, pierced, alive and beating in the Sacrament of the Altar. Only a human heart can make reparation for a human heart. For this reason, the angels are sorrowful.”

(The Soul of the Apostolate - Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.)

Monday Musings - Let Us Love God As We Ought And As He Deserves - Part I