I Believe in You, Lord!

What Saint Thomas wrote on the union through grace can be applied even more to the Eucharistic union: “It is the beginning of eternal beatitude.”

The Lord Jesus told us, “He who eats this bread has eternal life.” Having received the same God, the blessed in heaven and the Christians on earth have the same life. True enough, the elect see God whereas we possess Him by means of faith. However, Communion, like seeing Him, gives Him to us immediately, completely, without any other intermediary or obstacle than that raised by our sins or our lukewarm attitude.

If our faith were lively enough to eliminate this tepidity and make much room; if our love were fervent enough to bring us to overcome all obstacles and prepare for the Host that same reception which the purification in purgatory prepares for the eternal vision, the effects would then be almost the same. Saturated with Eucharistic life, Christians would be transformed in God through Communion just as the elect are transformed by glory.

Does it not seem as though, taken by an adorable impatience, God cannot bring Himself to wait for the time when each one of us is to experience this blessed union? Love cannot wait to bring about this union which must not end. So He makes Himself bread, makes Himself wine. And He tells us: “I am the food of great souls; believe and eat, for you will not transform me into yourself as the food your body digests; it is you who will be transformed into me…. Come, my children, eat and drink. Be inebriated, my beloved ones!”

(M.-V. Bernadot)

O Jesus, how divine you are! You hold in your tabernacle all the delights of heaven that the world cannot appreciate. Oh my Jesus! I am humbled and confused before the abyss of the incomprehensible mystery of the Eucharist.

Only love has made you crush your holy Heart to such an extent. That is where my soul’s life resides, my heart’s only happiness; that is the source of all the virtues you reserve to those who come to you in good will.

I am in ecstasy; my reason is lost and confused in such a deep mystery. But what can I say about the Eucharist? I cannot express what I feel… O Jesus, you never satisfy me, when I receive you. You fill my being, and yet I still hunger for you.

Yet, you alone can fulfill my longing and my desires. The world has never given me the divine well-being I feel when I receive you in Holy Communion.

Yes, my Jesus, you and only you, are capable of filling all the recesses of my heart. The soul’s desires are infinite, and they can only be met by Someone infinite like you.

How beautiful Jesus is in the Eucharist! What would become of us without it? Why must the heart in love with God wait for the next Mass before receiving Him in this Blessed Sacrament? Why, between one Communion and the next, must we suffer so many hours of absence, in solitude, without the Beloved?

How long will we have to wait before being able to possess Him forever and endlessly, for all eternity? How will this come about? O my God, I lose my power of reasoning, my soul faints when I contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible divinity of the Eucharistic Jesus… He is heaven’s heaven. He is simply a Heart filled with love and pain.

I asked the Eucharistic Jesus what I could do to thank Him for the flood of graces He gives us in this Blessed Sacrament. He said to me: “When people come to visit me in the tabernacle every day, I want them to dry my tears, wiping my eyes with the love of their hearts.”

In the Eucharist, I see all that Jesus suffers and wishes to suffer for me. I have been so cruel to Him and He has been so loving to me. I contemplate Him in this adorable Sacrament through which He could destroy His enemies, crush them, and yet He does not do so. Instead, He suffers scorn and humiliations in silence.

O Lord, Lord, the heaven of my soul! Come into my heart with your Cross!

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: “If you only recognized the gift of God.” If you only knew all the love it holds from God. If you only knew all the treasures it contains, how fervently a prayer of thanksgiving would rise from your heart.

Help us to realize, O Jesus, the beauty, the richness of this gift of your royal generosity, so that, understanding it better, we may offer you more ardent expressions of gratitude.

O yes, how grateful we should be as we remember that this gift of the Eucharist is not a figure, a simple remembrance, but really your presence, O Lord our God, in truth and reality.

This gift, being you yourself, O Jesus, contains and offers us the Supreme Good, the infinite Good, God in the fullness of His being, His perfections, His love. Every Host is the whole of God.

This gift, being you yourself, O Jesus, contains and gives us this masterpiece which you are, that is, the Man-God with all His virtues and graces, with all the merits and satisfactions of His death on the cross.

This divine gift places in our hands the promises, the pledge and the very foretaste of celestial glory with all the necessary means to achieve it.

If we only recognized the treasure and the richness, the honor and the greatness of the adorable gift Jesus has given us, how happy we would be and with what manifestations of joy we would thank our divine King for His prodigality.

Praise and thanksgiving be given to God for the incredible gift He has given us in His kindness. By allowing us to participate in and receive the unique Sacrifice, He enables us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to become, together, participants in the life of the risen Son in whom all divisions have been done away with.

It is your infinite love alone, O my God, that could have invented such a magnificent gift; it alone could accomplish it, sustain and perpetuate it, always as real, as plenary or absolute as it was in the very first hour, for this Gift is forever, in the same way that it is boundless.

We can receive this bread, this gift of God, again and again, every day with the same plenitude, the same reality as the first time.

In all honesty, it is not a gift, it is the total surrender of God to man! Could it not be said, O Jesus, that, in this present, you desired to exhaust all the richness of a sovereign power in the service of a regal Love? Yes, all is love on your part.

May our love, O divine Savior, be as royal, our gratitude just as sovereign. You have given yourself to us so many times already, and you will come back to us with just as much generosity every day of our life until the very last.

Thank you, O Eucharistic Jesus, for all these Communions which give us the Blessed Trinity in its entirety, in order to have us participate in its divine nature.

Lord Jesus, you said, “Ask and you shall receive; knock and it shall be opened to you.” Firmly believing that our requests will be granted, we ask you especially for the grace of a holy death. After the example of Mary, in an upsurge of love and the desire to be united with your eternal felicity, grant that we may soar to your side, so as to adore you and thank you for ever and ever. Grant that, at the end of this life, we may contemplate you in heaven, glorify you and love you with the angels, our holy patrons and all the saints in heaven. Amen.

“O Trinity! Eternal Trinity! O Fire! O abyss of Love! Flame of Love! Was it not sufficient for you to have created us in your image and likeness, that we be reborn to grace through the blood of your Son? Did you still have to give us the entire Trinity as nourishment? Your love for us desired this, O eternal Trinity.

Not only did you give your incarnate Word in the Redemption and the Eucharist, but you also gave all of yourself out of love for your creature. Yes, the soul possesses you because you are the supreme Goodness!”

(Saint Catherine of Siena)

“To sustain its physical strength, the body needs food. The needy who cannot procure food for themselves must beg it from the rich. They usually ask for bread. Without bread, life is impossible.

You are poor people who need nourishment for your souls. To your poverty, I have given the Eucharistic Bread. It nourishes the marrow of your soul, gives vitality to the spirit, sustains your spiritual strength, increases the power of all the intellectual faculties, for where there is a vigorous vitality, there is also mental vitality.

A healthy diet infuses good health. True food infuses true life. Holy food gives rise to holiness. Divine nourishment gives God.

But besides being poor, you are sick and weak, not only of that weakness that comes from a lack of food and which ends when we eat, but weak because of the illnesses that exhaust you. Your soul suffers from so many illnesses. The Evil One has inoculated you with so many germs to produce these illnesses. He who is sick and weak needs not only bread, but wine as well.

In my Eucharist I have left you the two signs which your destitute nature and your weakness from illness need: the bread that nourishes and the wine that strengthens.

I could have communicated myself to you without exterior signs. I can do so. But you are too weighed down to understand the spiritual. Your external senses need to see. Your soul, your heart, your spirit give way when faced with visible and palpable forms.

This is so true that when you finally believe that I am in the Eucharist and that you receive me in the host, the vast majority of you, do not accept the infusion in you of the Spirit from whom come the desires, the lights and the impetus to accomplish good deeds.

If you believed with the strength worthy of the Mystery, you would, when you receive me, feel life entering in you. When I come close to you, you would feel yourself burning as though you were next to a hot furnace. My presence in you would plunge you in an ecstasy that would whisk the depths of your spirit into a rapture of Paradise.

To the one who turns to me crying for help, imitating the faith of the crowds in Galilee, I will communicate myself to him not only with my Body and my Blood but also with my charity, my intellect, my strength, my will, my perfection, my Essence.

I will be present in the soul that comes to me as I am in Heaven within the Father’s bosom, from whom I proceed, generating the Spirit who is love and the height of perfection.”

(Jesus’ message to Maria Valtorta)

O Jesus, we join in Mary’s ardent faith when she received you in her womb, that faith that rendered her blessed and which began the Work of the Redemption.

We too believe with the most ardent and liveliest faith. We believe in your love in the Blessed Sacrament. We believe in the mercy and tenderness of your Heart. We believe, but intensify and strengthen our faith even more.

During this adoration, during this day, and during our entire life, may we be enlivened by a burning and active faith that will render us most respectful in your presence, sincere in our love for you, open in our devotedness to our neighbor.

Through the firmness and vitality of our faith, we would like to make amends for so many Communions in which we ourselves received you with a languishing faith, without respect and love, for so many Communions in which others sadden you by their weak faith, wound you through their disbelief or even gravely offend you by their sacrileges.

O Jesus, in the name of the admiration and joy you experienced when, in the Gospel, you witnessed the great faith of the centurion and the Canaanite woman, grant that we may go to you as do the souls that have a strong faith. Amen.