In Chapter 12 of The Catholic Mass, Bishop Athanasius Schneider offers a long quote from St. Peter Julian Eymard, Apostle of the Eucharist. One could meditate on this passage every Sunday before Mass without exhausting its richness.The Eucharist, according to the Council of Trent, is a divine antidote that delivers us from common faults and preserves us from mortal sin....Jesus comes to us to destroy the vestiges of our sins, to counteract our evil tendencies, and to prevent the Devil from re-establishing his power over us.
Of course, we have an obligation to approach the table of the Lord with a proper disposition, ensuring to the degree possible that we are in the state of grace so as not to commit a sacrilege by inviting the immaculate Lord into a literal cesspool. But when we are properly disposed, the Eucharist diminishes all the temptations that plague us and helps us overcome those venial sins that often become habitual and hard to root out.
Holy Communion is more than a rememdy; it is a force that gieves us powerful assistance in attaining goodness, virtue, and holiness....How attractive the learning of virtue becomes through Communion. How easy is humility when we have seen the God of glory humble Himself so far as to come to a heart so poor, a mind so ignorant, a body so miserable! How easy is kindness when we are moved by the loving kindness of Jesus in giving Himself to us in the goodness of His Heart....How sweet do penance, self-mortification, and sacrifice become when we have received the crucified Jesus!
In these difficult days when those in the Church seem at war with one another, Holy Communion offers a respite:
Communion is also peace. Jesus is the God of peace....With one word, Jesus quiets the tempest; with one glance He scatters and lays low our enemies....O happy moment of Connunion, which makes us forget our exile and its miseries! O sweet repose of the soul on the very Heart of Jesus! This good Master knows very well that we need to tast the seetness of love now and then! One cannot be always on the Calvary of suffering, nor in the thick of the battle. The child needs the mother's bosom; the Christian, the Heart of Jesus....After all, happiness begets love; we love only that which gives happiness.
Seek no farther, then. The Savior has placed this divine happiness neither in the different virtues nor His other mysteries, but solely within Himself. To taste His joy to the full, we must receive Him as our Food.
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| "So I opened my mouth and he fed me the scroll." Ezekiel 3:2 |
How can we not receive the Lord of the universe on our knees and on the tongue like a child being fed by its mother or like Ezekiel who "opened [his] mouth" to receive the scroll. (Ezekiel 3:2) Wasn't Ezekiel being fed by the angel, as a prefigurement of each of us receiving the "Word made flesh," the bread of angels. To be fed is a sign of belovedness. The mother feeds her precious child. Lovers feed one another in a tender sign of their devotion. The sick and suffering are often fed when they are too helpless to feed themselves.
Should we not show our absolute dependence on God by humbly receiving on the tongue and on our knees when possible?
Let us receive our Lord humbly with joy and reverence and rest in the hollow of His hand.
"The Eucharist, according to the Council of Trent, is a divine antidote that delivers us from common faults and preserves us from mortal sin..."
ReplyDeleteThat's why all those priests commit mortal sin molesting kids. The euchatist is not magic. Its just to remember Hesus. But if you don't really care like those priests don't, then remembering him does not preserve from mortal sin.
ReplyDeleteChild sex abuse is horrible. Even one case is too many and those who commit it should be punished to the highest extent of the law.
If you look at the statistics, however, fewer than 6% of Catholic priests committed abuse. Even one case is too much, but note that you hear almost nothing about the MILLIONS of children in public schools molested by teachers and other workers who are protected by the unions and the mainstream media.
It's almost impossible to get the statistics for public school teachers molesting their students because of bias. There is almost no national coverage of the cases unlike the 24/7 coverage of priest abusers. Why is that do you think?
Fortunately, the magnitude of the crimes in public schools is starting to come out and it dwarfs the situation in the Catholic Church.
Of course it's true that a sinful priest who is living a lie will simply make his situation worse by offering the Mass in the state of mortal sin. But a person who is striving to do God's will grows in virtue when he hears Mass worthily and receives the Eucharist in the state of grace.
I presume you are a Protestant since you think the Eucharist is just about "remember(ing) Jesus." That's not what Catholic believe. He is truly present: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. The Mass is the unbloody re-enactment of Calvary. It is like being in a time machine transported back to that moment of Christ's passion and death.
Anyone really interested in ending child sex abuse should focus on the public schools were sex grooming and molesting is rampant.
Here's just one article on the sex abuse issue in the public schools:
https://www.westernjournal.com/parent-nightmare-public-schools-sex-abuse-100x-greater-catholic-church-report/
And a bit from it:
“According to that research, the scale of sexual abuse in the public schools is nearly 100 times greater than that of the Catholic Church.”
Why does nobody know that? Bias and hatred of the Catholic Church perhaps?