Eucharistic Adoration

Why Eucharistic Adoration?
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All the sacraments are blessed! All the sacraments give us the grace of Jesus but this sacrament gives us Jesus himself. This is what we Catholics believe.

Why do we believe this? Not because some theologians say so, not even because the Church says so. We believe this for only one reason, because Jesus Christ says so, and we believe Him.

Many who try to follow Jesus do not believe this, as we Catholics do. This fact should not surprise us any. Jesus had the same problem with some of His own disciples. When Jesus first told His own followers that He would give His body and blood as food and drink as spiritual nourishment for the soul, many of His followers – His disciples – would not accept that. They could not believe Him, so they left Him. Jesus did not try to call them back. He didn't say, "Now, wait a minute! You misunderstood me! I was only talking symbolically". No! He let them go. If they could not believe Him, they could not be His disciples. It was that simple.

Then Jesus asked His apostles if they wanted to leave Him too. He was ready to let His apostles go also. We know that Peter, speaking for the group said, "Lord, to whom should we go? We know that you only, have the words of eternal life".

The apostles took Jesus at His word, and we do too.

This sacrament of the Holy Eucharist comes to us through the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass. This is evident because the Mass is the renewal of Jesus' death on the cross. In this sacrifice He gave up His human life, His physical body and blood, for our salvation. It was at the Last Supper that Jesus instituted the sacrament and sacrifice.

It was the night before He died. Jesus knew that He soon had to leave His friends. Friends He loved so much. He wanted to leave them something to remember Him by, but He did much better than that, He left Himself.

At the Last Supper, Jesus was looking ahead to the next day when He would die on the cross. This is why He said, "This is my body, which will be given up for you. This is my blood, which will be shed for you". Then He commanded "Do this in memory of me". We fulfill that command every day. As Jesus at the Last Supper was looking ahead to Calvary, so we in the sacrifice of the Mass, look back to Calvary.

This is why St. Paul could say: "When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord". It's the same sacrifice on the cross and in the Mass – the same sacrifice.

Jesus chose this very special way to remain here with us. It was not just an empty promise when Jesus said, "I will be with you all days, even to the end of the world". He meant that! Jesus remains here with us today in the Mass as our Savior, in Holy Communion, as our spiritual food and in our tabernacle as our friend. Jesus died on the cross to give us this sacrament of His presence among us. This is the sacrament of Jesus' love for us.

I like the way Blessed Mother Teresa put it. She said, "When we look at the cross, we know how much Jesus loved us. When we look at the tabernacle, we know how much Jesus loves us now".

Some Catholics think, that we can share in the Eucharist and gain grace from the Eucharist only in the Mass by receiving Holy Communion. This idea limits the power and the love of Jesus too much. Certainly participation in the sacrifice of the Mass and receiving Holy Communion is the most powerful source of grace for us, but it is not the only source of Eucharistic grace. After the sacrifice is completed, the sacrament continues on. Jesus, in His sacramental body and blood remains here with us as our friend, just as He promised. This is why Eucharistic Adoration is so important.

This is why we should visit our friend, Jesus, in the Blessed Sacrament, to return His love for us and to draw spiritual strength and nourishment and encouragement from that love.

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Some ask, "Can we really justify the luxury of spending time in private prayer? Wouldn't it be better to spend that time, say, visiting the sick"? To answer that question, let me turn again to Blessed Mother Teresa. You can see I'm a great fan of Blessed Mother Teresa, but then who isn't? The whole world knows that Blessed Mother Teresa's sisters devote their lives to seeking out and caring for the most helpless and abandoned of the poor, the sick and the homeless. Most of the world knows and admires the work of Mother Teresa's sisters, but I doubt that many know about the prayer life of their community. Each day, before they go out into the streets to find the sick and the dying, Blessed Mother Teresa's sisters spend two to three hours in prayer, assisting at Mass and in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Once a well-meaning critic asked Blessed Mother Teresa how she could justify her sisters' spending so much time in private prayer instead of using that time to serve the sick and the poor. Blessed Mother Teresa replied, "If my sisters did not spend so much time in prayer, they could not serve the sick and the poor at all". Their prayer before the Holy Eucharist is the source of the strength and all that is needed to carry out their extremely difficult apostolate.

The love of God must be expressed and strengthened so that love of neighbor might flow from it.

One time when Blessed Mother Teresa was visiting in our country, a group of American women asked her what they could do to help her in her work. Blessed Mother Teresa replied, "The greatest help they could give her would be to spend one hour each week in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament". That is good advice for us too.

Sometimes those who object to Eucharistic adoration complain that adoration is too much "Jesus and I". They charge that adoration intends to be selfish, turning our thoughts and attention inward instead of reaching out to others. Again, an obvious response is to look at Blessed Mother Teresa's sisters and just to mention the time they spend in private prayer and adoration. I doubt that anyone can match their concern for their neighbor, especially for the most desperate of the abandoned. Who would dare to call their work selfish? Any pastor who has Eucharistic Adoration in his parish will testify that the regular adorers are among the most active members of his parish. From my own experience, preaching in many parishes, I know that active adorers are very often, also the most active pro-lifers in the parish. If we could get adoration going in every Catholic parish, perhaps we could at least get Catholics out of the business of killing babies.

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So finally we go back to our subject entitled: "Why Eucharistic Adoration"? Why should you spend time visiting with Jesus in the Eucharist, simply because Jesus himself, your best friend, invites you. He said it so warmly, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Come to me and I will refresh you". Who could refuse such an invitation from your very best friend? God Bless You.

Text adapted from  http://therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/whyadore.htm

God Bless
Nathan

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

This feast is celebrated in the Latin Church on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to solemnly commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist.

Of Maundy (Holy) Thursday commemorates this great event but this day, however, is in Holy Week, a season of sadness, during which the minds of the faithful are expected to be occupied with thoughts of the Lord's Passion. Moreover, so many other functions took place on this day that the principal event was almost lost sight of. This is mentioned as the chief reason for the introduction of the new feast, in the Bull "Transiturus."

 The instrument in the hand of Divine Providence was St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon, in Belgium. She was born in 1193 at Retines near Liège. Orphaned at an early age, she was educated by the Augustinian nuns of Mont Cornillon. Here she in time made her religious profession and later became superioress. Intrigues of various kinds several times drove her from her convent. She died 5 April, 1258, at the House of the Cistercian nuns at Fosses, and was buried at Villiers.

 Juliana, from her early youth, had a great veneration for the Blessed Sacrament, and always longed for a special feast in its honor. This desire is said to have been increased by a vision of the Church under the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a solemnity. She made known her ideas to Robert de Thorete, then Bishop of Liège, to the learned Dominican Hugh, later cardinal legate in the Netherlands, and to Jacques Pantaléon, at that time Archdeacon of Liège, afterwards Bishop of Verdun, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and finally Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert was favorably impressed, and, since bishops as yet had the right of ordering feasts for their dioceses, he called a synod in 1246 and ordered the celebration to be held in the following year, also, that a monk named John should write the Office for the occasion. The decree is preserved in Binterim (Denkwürdigkeiten, V, 1, 276), together with parts of the Office.

 Bishop Robert did not live to see the execution of his order, for he died 16 October, 1246; but the feast was celebrated for the first time by the canons of St. Martin at Liège. Jacques Pantaléon became pope 29 August, 1261. The recluse Eve, with whom Juliana had spent some time, and who was also a fervent adorer of the Holy Eucharist, now urged Henry of Guelders, Bishop of Liège, to request the pope to extend the celebration to the entire world. Urban IV, always an admirer of the feast, published the Bull "Transiturus" (8 September, 1264), in which, after having extolled the love of Our Savior as expressed in the Holy Eucharist, he ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi in the Thursday next after Trinity Sunday, at the same time granting many indulgences to the faithful for the attendance at Mass and at the Office. This Office, composed at the request of the pope by the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas, is one of the most beautiful in the Roman Breviary and has been admired even by Protestants.

 The death of Pope Urban IV (2 October, 1264), shortly after the publication of the decree, somewhat impeded the spread of the festival. Clement V again took the matter in hand and, at the General Council of Vienne (1311), once more ordered the adoption of the feast. He published a new decree which embodied that of Urban IV. John XXII, successor of Clement V, urged its observance.

 Neither decree speaks of the theophoric procession as a feature of the celebration. This procession, already held in some places, was endowed with indulgences by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV.

 The feast had been accepted in 1306 at Cologne; Worms adopted it in 1315; Strasburg in 1316. In England it was introduced from Belgium between 1320 and 1325. In the United States and some other countries the solemnity is held on the Sunday after Trinity.

 In the Greek Church the feast of Corpus Christi is known in the calendars of the Syrians, Armenians, Copts, Melchites, and the Ruthenians of Galicia, Calabria, and Sicily.

 

Text adapted from:  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04390b.htm

Corpus Cristi

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, previously known as the feast of Corpus Cristi (Latin for Body of Christ) has its origins in France and was extended to the whole Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264 following an instance of a Eucharistic miracle.  A miracle was most commonly performed by God for the purpose of convincing the listeners of the authority of the messenger.  We find many examples of these miracles in the Bible where these individuals, who are sent directly by God where God performs these supernatural signs through the messengers to prove that they were indeed speaking God’s Word.  Examples like in the Book of Exodus where we find Moses performing miracle upon miracle to convince the Pharaoh to release the Jewish people. Convincing the crowds of his authority was significant if they were to listen to him and so Jesus too performed many miracles that they would “believe [his] deeds, in order that [his listeners] may know once and for all that the Father is in [him] and that [he is] in the Father.” (John 10:37-38)

And so this miracle that a doubting priest contemporary to Pope Urban IV proved to this priest that the consecrated bread and wine did indeed become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ just as Jesus said it was at the Last Supper when he pronounced the words of consecration. He lifted up the bread and said: “Take it; this is my body.” It was no longer ordinary bread and wine but truly His Body and Blood.  So we do in fact have extra-ordinary events, by that I mean unexplainable by scientific means, that prove the message of the True Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist.  But as the Lord said to ‘doubting’ Thomas in John 20, verse 29, when he finally touched the wounds of Christ and believed: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”  Many have done just that, they have believed even when their senses tell them otherwise.  We find in the writings of the early Christians, people throughout history who believed in the actual presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. 

It makes perfect sense to believe in the True Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist since the words of Jesus himself tells us so.  He raises a piece of bread and says “this is my Body” and earlier on in his ministry Jesus also said of the bread of life that the bread we are to eat is His flesh, he said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”(John 6:51)  The flesh that Jesus gave up for the life of the world was true flesh and the bread that Jesus tells us that we are to eat is this same flesh, His flesh.

Paul also warns anyone who partakes of the Eucharist in an unworthy manner that he is guilty of sinning against the Body and Blood of the Lord (1 Cor 11:27) because “anyone who eats [the bread] and drinks [the wine] without discerning the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (1 Cor 11:29)  How can one discern the body of the Lord if it’s not the body of the Lord?  To discern it as the body of the Lord means that the bread is, in fact, the body of the Lord.

And so, if one partakes of the Body and Blood of our Lord in an unworthy manner, ie with mortal sin on his soul then my advice to him  is to abstain from receiving until he has a chance to have his sins forgiven by going to confession.  Otherwise you are bringing judgment upon yourself and putting the salvation of your own soul at risk.  Paul explains it this way: “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have [died].” (1 Cor 11:30)

Prepared by a St-Denis parishoner