Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Photo by  Josh Applegate  on  Unsplash ) “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 Euchar...

"In last week's post , which explored t he 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....

"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 )

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-Ca...

[ 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 ador...

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 ch...

T hank 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 churc...

[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 n...

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Before instituting this Sacrament of love, He knew very well to how much scorn and contempt He was exposing Himself. O my Savior, why not remain in heaven after your return there! There, at least, the Angels will love you with a pure and perfect love: but in the Eucharist, the Jews will pierce you again with nails, wicked Christians will receive you unworthily, some without contrition, others without the wish to correct themselves, others perhaps with crime in their hearts.  He knows it: but all that does not hinder His love. “O city of Sion, exclaims the Lord, by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah (xii, 6) cry out, thrill with joy, because your God dwells in the midst of you.” Jesus Christ has chosen for Himself the humiliations and at this price has assured to us forever the happiness and benefit of His presence."                    ...

T hank 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 . Eucharistic Reflection - His Goal Is My Heart (Originally posted on July 28, 2012) (St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, NYC) “When Jesus remains in the quiet of the altar, in the tabernacle’s shadow, people in their blind carelessness let Him alone, they forget all about Him. And when He exposes Himself upon the altar, he is hurt to the Heart by the irreverence of so many who either have no faith at all or a faith that is very weak. When He goes through the streets in order to bring unspeakable blessings to His beloved children, He hears curses and blasphemies that make out of His errand of mercy another way of the cross. But in the midst of all these bitternesses one hope sustains Him – the hope of a place of refuge that will offer the love and peace He ...

"Who would agree to do what our Lord does? (Photo©Michael Seagriff) He institutes His Sacrament to be honored therein by man, and He is more insulted than honored; the bad Christians outnumber the good. Our Lord is taking in only losses. Why does He keep up this business? Who would want to run a business at a total loss? Ah! The saints who see and understand so much love and abasement must be seized with holy anger and feel indignant at seeing us so ungrateful! And the Father says to His Son: 'We must put a stop to this; You are getting nothing out of it. Your love is slighted; Your abasements are made nothing of. You are losing out on it; let us be done with it'. But our Lord will not listen. He stays on, He hopes, He contents Himself with the adoration and love of a few good souls. Oh, We at least, let us not fail Him! Does He not deserve by His abasements that we honor and love Him?" (St. Peter Julian Eymard from The Real Prese...