Eucharistic Reflection - Love Him

"At this time in history, with news crashing on upon us from every side - mostly bad news, and some of it frankly scandalous in the extreme, as it reveals the callous complicity with, approbation of, and dedication to evil on the part of many in the hierarchy of the Church, who were supposed to be our guides to holiness and our models of it - nothing could be better than for us to go regularly before the Lord in Adoration. 

Fair weather or foul, super-busy or at loose ends, it doesn't matter; this is what we should be doing for our Church, for our clergy, for ourselves. This is what Our Lord is waiting for: a sign from us, an unmistakable sign, that we love Him for His own sake, and above all things on earth. When enough of us are taking real steps to love Him in exactly this way - with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole strength - we may then count on a new flood of graces inundating the Church."

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

PAUSE AND PONDER: What is preventing me from spending an hour of Adoration with our loving Lord each week? Aside from participation in Sunday Mass, what could possibly be more important or needed? Is not God waiting for me?

(These questions follow Dr. Kwasniewski's reflection in Pondering Tidbits of Truth, Volume 6).

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).

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Bask In The Sun of God's Love

I ran across the following reflection of Father Willie Doyle, S.J. which Dr. Peter Kwasniewski included in his new and powerful book, The Holy Bread of Eternal Life - Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety. This is a book that belongs in the hands and hearts of everyone claiming to be Catholic: 

Photo©Michael Seagriff

"Try basking in the sun of God's love, that is, quietly kneeling before the tabernacle. as you would sit enjoying the warm sunshine, not trying to do anything, except love Him; but realizing that, during all the time you are at His feet, more especially when dry and cold, grace is dropping down upon your soul and you are growing fast in holiness.

I think the best of all prayers is just to kneel quietly and let Jesus pour Himself into your soul."

(From To Raise The Fallen: A Selection of The War Letters, Prayers and Spiritual Writings of Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J.)