Archive

Receiving Communion is not like picturing with the imagination, as when we reflect upon the Lord on the cross or in other episodes of the Passion, when we picture within ourselves how things happened to Him in the past. In Communion the event is happening now, and it is entirely true.

Under the old law, the altar of sacrifice was to be hollow within. It is the will of God that the soul should be empty of all created things, and thus become a fitting altar for the King of heaven.

Once after receiving Communion I was given understanding of how the Father receives within our soul the most holy Body of Christ, and of how I know and have seen that these divine Persons are present, and of how pleasing to the Father this offering of His Son is.

The Lord is patient and has great mercy. In His economy He knows how to profit even by our faults, if we deposit them on His altar.

His blood is the curtain through which we enter into the Holiest of Holies, the Divine Life. In baptism and in the sacrament of reconciliation, his blood cleanses us of our sins, opens our eyes to eternal light, our ears to hearing God's word. It opens our lips to sing his praise, to pray in expiation, in petition, in thanksgiving, all of which are but varying forms of adoration, i.e., of the creature's homage to the Almighty and All-benevolent One.

Therefore the whole perpetual sacrificial offering of Christ at the cross, in the holy Mass, and in the eternal glory of heaven can be conceived as a single great thanksgiving as Eucharist: as gratitude for creation, salvation, and consummation. Christ presents himself in the name of all creation, whose prototype he is and to which he descended to renew it from the inside out and lead it to perfection. But he also calls upon the entire created world itself, united with him, to give the Creator the tribute of thanks that is his due.

Pray that the best portion of your life may not be overshadowed by idle fears. We have only life's brief moments to spend for the glory of God, and well does Satan know it. That is why he employs every ruse to make us consume them in useless labour. Dear sister, go often to Holy Communion, go very often-that is your one remedy.

Our Redeemer, ever present in the most Blessed Sacrament, extends His hand to everyone. He opens His heart and says, 'Come to Me, all of You.'

I'd like to make souls understand that the Eucharist is heaven, given because "heaven is only a tabernacle without doors, a Eucharist without veils, a communion without end.

As the earthly body has need of daily bread, so the divine life in us demands continual nourishment. "This is the bread of life come down from heaven." And each day in us, who make it become our daily bread, is accomplished the mystery of Christmas, the Incarnation of the Word.

When Jesus made in me His dwelling place,
When God took possession of my heart,
So well that since that hour,
Since that mysterious colloquy,
That divine and delicious meeting,
I have aspired to nothing else but to give my life
In order to return a bit of His great love
To the Beloved of the Eucharist
Who reposed in my feeble heart,
Inundating it with all of his favors.

So I will go to the altar of God. Here it is not a question of my minute petty affairs, but of the great offering of reconciliation. I may participate in that, purify myself and be made happy, and lay myself with all my doings and troubles along with the sacrifice on the altar.