Eucharistic Reflection - The Eucharist Unites Us To Jesus Christ

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

"A saint used to say that we were God-bearers. It is really true because at the moment of receiving the Blessed Eucharist, and as long as the Sacred Species subsist, Jesus Christ is substantially present with His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in our body and our soul. 

We are thus tabernacles, living ciboria of Jesus Christ. What are You doing, O my Savior, during this quarter of an hour, when You deign to dwell in me; when You are in contact with my body and my soul? I cure you of your spiritual laziness, strive to draw you into My Heart; I set you on fire with flames of love for God and for your brethren. 

O mystery of condescension and of divine love! Give me O Jesus, an understanding and relish of it."

                                                     (St. John Marie Vianney from  The Eucharistic Meditations of the Cure D'Ars)

Monday Musings - Wake Up Slumbering Souls! Wake Up!

[The sad reality of our times is that so very few of us love God as we ought and as He deserves. For the most part, He remains abandoned and ignored as a prisoner in the tabernacles of His Churches. It is my hope that by sharing the Introduction from my most recent book, Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Reflections, hearts will be changed and more of us will re-discover and treasure a greater reverence and appreciation for the Gift of our Lord's Presence here among us]:

Have you ever loved someone so much that you could hardly wait to hear from them, speak with them and see them? How often have you looked forward to a visit from someone you deeply love only to have that person not come? How hurt have you felt when you were ignored and your love not returned?

Imagine then how God - Who is Love – Who loves us more than words can describe - feels when we fail to demonstrate our love for Him. He waits, hour after hour in our churches, behind locked tabernacle doors, as a Prisoner of Love, just to hear our voices and see our faces.

Few of us come to be with Him. Many no longer believe He is really and substantially present in the Sacred Eucharist. For all practical purposes, He is abandoned, ignored and disrespected.

This despite the fact that: God the Father on Mount Tabor commanded Peter, James, John and all who would later hear of Jesus’ Transfiguration to listen to His Son.; that Jesus Himself later scolded the same three apostles for their failure to watch one hour with Him; and His Blessed Mother directed the servants at Cana and all who would later learn of this miracle to do whatever
Jesus tells them.

We have not listened to God the Father. We have not obeyed His Son.  We have not heeded the Blessed Mother.We have taken God for granted. We have failed to love our Lord as we ought and as He deserves.Despite our deafness and disobedience, Jesus never gives up on us. From time to time, He prompts others to “shake things up”. This book attempts to do just that. 

As you read and ponder the quotations in this book, may you recognize, as Father Bruno Shah, O.P. suggested to me, two distinct voices – “the prophet calling Israel back to fidelity AND the sweet Mother inviting us to trust in Her Son.”

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Worth Revisiting - Feeling Incomplete?

Thank you, Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb for  hosting Catholic bloggers at Worth Revisiting.

It is a privilege for us to share our work with you and your readers each week. Stop by for a visit now.

 

Monday Musings - Feeling Incomplete?

(Originally published on March 12, 2018)

“I feel so incomplete,” the Pastor announced at the end of Mass.

The parish we had visited during a recent trip (not the one depicted below) had been holding Stations of the Cross during Lent in their newly constructed Church even though the physical Stations of the Cross had not yet arrived or been mounted on the Church walls.

“The Stations are coming,” Father assured his congregation. “We won’t be looking at empty walls much longer.”

I understood that sentiment and how having the physical Stations would enhance that prayerful devotion.

But…

Monday Musings - Feeling Incomplete?

“I feel so incomplete,” the Pastor announced at the end of Mass.

The parish we had visited during a recent trip (not the one depicted below) had been holding Stations of the Cross during Lent in their newly constructed Church even though the physical Stations of the Cross had not yet arrived or been mounted on the Church walls.

“The Stations are coming,” Father assured his congregation. “We won’t be looking at empty walls much longer.”

I understood that sentiment and how having the physical Stations would enhance that prayerful devotion.

But…

Was there not a far more compelling reason for all of us to feel incomplete?

 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Worth Revisiting - Divine Prisoner of Love

Thank you Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for  hosting Catholic bloggers at Worth Revisiting. It is a privilege for us to share our work with you and your readers.  

 

Stop by for a visit now. 

Here is my contribution:

Eucharistic Reflection - Divine Prisoner of Love

(Originally published November 12, 2013)

 

 

(St.Agatha's, Canastota, NY)

“O Jesus, Divine Prisoner of Love, when I consider Your love and how You emptied Yourself for me, my senses deaden. You hide Your inconceivable majesty and lower Yourself to miserable me. O king of Glory, though You hide Your beauty, yet the eye of my soul rends the veil. I see the angelic choirs giving You honor without cease, and all the heavenly Powers praising You without cease, and without cease they are saying: Holy, Holy, Holy.

Eucharistic Reflection - Of Mute and Silent Tabernacles and Lifeless Hosts

“We ministers of the Lord, for whom the Tabernacle has become mute and silent, the stone of consecration cold, the Host a venerable, but lifeless, memento: have been unable to turn souls from their evil How could we ever draw them out of the mire or forbidden pleasures?

And yet we have talked to them about the joys of religion and of good conscience. But because we have not known how to slake our own thirst at the living waters of the Lamb, we have mumbled and stuttered in our attempts to portray those ineffable joys, the very desire of which would have shattered the chains of the triple concupiscence much more effectively than all our thundering tirades about hell…Our lips have been unable to speak the language of the Heart of Him Who loves men, because our converse with Him has been as infrequent as it has been cold.

Let us not try to shift all the blame onto the profoundly demoralized state of society. After all, we have only to look, for example, at the effect on completely de-Christianized parishes of the presence of sensible, active, devoted, capable priests, but priests who were, above all, lovers of the Eucharist.”

(From  The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)