"The Church draws her
life from the Eucharist. This truth does not
simply express a daily experience of faith,
but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of
the Church.". -Are you making the Eucharist
the center of your life and faith? How?...
"They devoted
themselves to the Apostles' teaching and
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the
prayers" (2:42). The "breaking of the bread"
refers to the Eucharist. Two thousand years
later, we continue to relive that primordial
image of the Church. At every celebration of
the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back
to the paschal Triduum: to the events of the
evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper
and to what followed it.". -In "going
back in time," and deeper into our Holy
Tradition, are you advancing and in holiness
and Christ-Life?
"This varied scenario
of celebrations of the Eucharist has given me
a powerful experience of its universal and, so
to speak, cosmic character. Yes, cosmic!
Because even when it is celebrated on the
humble altar of a country church, the
Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on
the altar of the world. It unites heaven and
earth. It embraces and permeates all
creation.". -Love Jesus Who made creation and
comes into it in Communion.
"In many places,
adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is also an
important daily practice and becomes an
inexhaustible source of holiness.". -Go into a
church and sit quietly before Him: Listen
"Unfortunately,
alongside these lights, there are also
shadows. In some places the practice of
Eucharistic adoration has been almost
completely abandoned. In various parts of the
Church abuses have occurred, leading to
confusion with regard to sound faith and
Catholic doctrine concerning this wonderful
sacrament. At times one encounters an
extremely reductive understanding of the
Eucharistic mystery. Stripped of its
sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it
were simply a fraternal banquet. Furthermore,
the necessity of the ministerial priesthood,
grounded in apostolic succession, is at times
obscured and the sacramental nature of the
Eucharist is reduced to its mere effectiveness
as a form of proclamation.". -Pray for priests
and leaders of the Church to protect and
promote the beauty of the priesthood and
Eucharist...
"The Eucharist is
indelibly marked by the event of the Lord's
passion and death, of which it is not only a
reminder but the sacramental re-presentation.
It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated
down the ages. Nor does it remain confined to
the past, since 'all that Christ is - all that
he did and suffered for all men - participates
in the divine eternity, and so transcends all
times. Jesus did not simply state that what he
was giving them to eat and drink was his body
and his blood; he also expressed its
sacrificial meaning and made sacramentally
present his sacrifice which would soon be
offered on the Cross for the salvation of all.
The sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic
mystery cannot therefore be understood as
something separate, independent of the Cross
or only indirectly referring to the sacrifice
of Calvary. "The Eucharistic Sacrifice makes
present not only the mystery of the Saviour's
passion and death, but also the mystery of the
resurrection which crowned his sacrifice." .
-He gave His life that we might have more
abundant life. Seek Him more.
"Saint Ambrose
reminded the newly-initiated that the
Eucharist applies the event of the
resurrection to their lives: 'Today Christ is
yours, yet each day he rises again for you'.
Saint Ephrem writes: 'He called the bread his
living body and he filled it with himself and
his Spirit... He who eats it with faith, eats
Fire and Spirit... Take and eat this, all of
you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it
is truly my body and whoever eats it will have
eternal life'. With the Eucharist we digest,
as it were, the 'secret' of the resurrection.
For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch
rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as 'a
medicine of immortality, an antidote to
death'. -How can you recall the Lord's
resurrection at Mass?
"The Eucharist is
truly a glimpse of heaven appearing on earth.
It is a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem
which pierces the clouds of our history and
lights up our journey." -Love Heaven more by
loving the Ladder to and from Heaven-Jesus
Christ.
"From the perpetuation
of the sacrifice of the Cross and her
communion with the body and blood of Christ in
the Eucharist, the Church draws the spiritual
power needed to carry out her mission. The
Eucharist thus appears as both the source and
the summit of all evangelization, since its
goal is the communion of mankind with Christ
and in him with the Father and the Holy
Spirit.". -The saving graces you receive
should lead you to serve others.
"The worship of the
Eucharist outside of the Mass is of
inestimable value for the life of the Church.
It is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie
close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple
(cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love
present in his heart. If in our time
Christians must be distinguished above all by
the "art of prayer", how can we not feel a
renewed need to spend time in spiritual
converse, in silent adoration, in heartfelt
love before Christ present in the Most Holy
Sacrament?...Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who
wrote: 'Of all devotions, that of adoring
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest
after the sacraments, the one dearest to God
and the one most helpful to us'. -Make special
attempts to honor Him in devotion, esp. after
communion.
"As I have pointed out
on other occasions, the phrase in persona
Christi 'means more than offering 'in the name
of' or 'in the place of' Christ. In persona
means in specific sacramental identification
with the eternal High Priest who is the author
and principal subject of this sacrifice of
his, a sacrifice in which, in truth, nobody
can take his place. We can understand, then,
how important it is for the spiritual life of
the priest, as well as for the good of the
Church and the world, that priests follow the
Council's recommendation to celebrate the
Eucharist daily. Their daily activity will
thus become truly Eucharistic". -Help your
priest to more readily identity with Jesus,
the High Priest-they need your help!...
"As the Second Vatican
Council teaches - 'no Christian community can
be built up unless it has its basis and centre
in the celebration of the most Holy
Eucharist'. They have a responsibility,
therefore, to keep alive in the community a
genuine "hunger" for the Eucharist. it is good
to cultivate in our hearts a constant desire
for the sacrament of the Eucharist. This was
the origin of the practice of 'spiritual
communion', which has happily been established
in the Church for centuries. ". -Pray for
First communicants and converts.
"the Catechism of the
Catholic Church rightly stipulates that
'anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive
the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming
to communion'..-Confess your sins.
"Every celebration of
the Eucharist is performed in union not only
with the proper Bishop, but also with the
Pope, with the episcopal order, with all the
clergy, and with the entire people. Every
valid celebration of the Eucharist expresses
this universal communion with Peter and with
the whole Church. ". -Pray for your mother-the
Church.
"With this heightened
sense of mystery, we understand how the faith
of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist
has found historical expression not only in
the demand for an interior disposition of
devotion, but also in outward forms meant to
evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event
being celebrated. This led progressively to
the development of a particular form of
regulating the Eucharistic liturgy.". -The
essence of the Mass never changes, however
some forms do to bring others to Jesus.
". as in Rublėv's
famous depiction of the Trinity, a profoundly
Eucharistic Church in which the presence of
the mystery of Christ in the broken bread is
as it were immersed in the ineffable unity of
the three divine Persons, making of the Church
herself an "icon" of the Trinity.". -Plunge
into the Trinity's love...
"It must be lamented
that, especially in the years following the
post-conciliar liturgical reform, as a result
of a misguided sense of creativity and
adaptation there have been a number of abuses
which have been a source of suffering for
many. A certain reaction against "formalism"
has led some, especially in certain regions,
to consider the "forms" chosen by the Church's
great liturgical tradition and her Magisterium
as non-binding and to introduce unauthorized
innovations which are often completely
inappropriate.". -Gently help priests to
celebrate authentically.
"If we wish to
rediscover in all its richness the profound
relationship between the Church and the
Eucharist, we cannot neglect Mary, Mother and
model of the Church. .Mary is a 'woman of the
Eucharist' in her whole life...Mysterium fidei!
If the Eucharist is a mystery of faith which
so greatly transcends our understanding as to
call for sheer abandonment to the word of God,
then there can be no one like Mary to act as
our support and guide in acquiring this
disposition. In a certain sense Mary lived her
Eucharistic faith even before the institution
of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she
offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation
of God's Word.". -In venerating Mary you
worship God.
"And is not the
enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated
the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him
in her arms that unparalleled model of love
which should inspire us every time we receive
Eucharistic communion?" where time and space
in some way "merge" and the drama of Golgotha
is re-presented in a living way, thus
revealing its mysterious "contemporaneity.
Every commitment to holiness, every activity
aimed at carrying out the Church's mission,
every work of pastoral planning, must draw the
strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery
and in turn be directed to that mystery as its
culmination.". Make the mass the center of
your life-Heaven pouring into your soul!
