Renew Your Relationship With the Eucharistic Jesus
In my opinion, the Catholic Church is currently facing a significant problem: the loss of faith in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. During Holy Communion, the priest presents the sacred Host and declares, “The Body of Christ.” When you respond with “Amen,” it is not just a ritualistic response, but rather an affirmation of the truth of the declaration. By saying “Amen,” you are acknowledging before God that you believe that the bread and wine you receive are, in fact, the Body and Blood of Christ in disguise.
The Holy Eucharist is the greatest of the seven sacraments because in it we are receiving not just the grace of Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ Himself. The Eucharist is “the source and summit of Christian life.” Without Christ’s Eucharistic Presence, the Catholic Church is just another Christian denomination among thousands.
We must make an important distinction in regard to the ways in which God is present. Obviously, God is present everywhere; He is omnipresent. But, in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus Christ is uniquely present. He is not only spiritually present: He is also substantially and bodily present. In the Most Blessed Sacrament, He is present in His divinity and His humanity! By the Will of God the Father, the sacred humanity of Christ is the greatest source of graces, blessings, strength, divine assistance, and consolation given for our lives – for those who believe!
The Mass is the one, supreme, eternal act of worship of the Son of God. The Mass is the mystical renewal and re-presentation of Our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary. It is Calvary made present again, where the merits of His Passion and death are applied to our lives. This means that all the graces and all the blessings and all the power that flow from His Sacrifice are all applied to our lives and for our needs, the needs of the entire Church, and the needs of the whole world.
The Mass is the miracle in which Jesus calls Christians of every age and every time and every nation to be present at the Last Supper and, in a mystical way, to come to Calvary to stand at the foot of the cross, to relive the hour of His Passion, and to be fed with the Bread from Heaven that becomes His Sacred Body by the power of God’s Word. We’re saved by the Blood of the Lamb and nourished by eating the Flesh of the Lamb as we continue on our spiritual journey to the True Promised Land, which is God’s Heavenly Kingdom.
The Holy Eucharist is God with us and among us; He is the Source of all graces. When we come before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and trust in the power of prayer, we draw strength from His inexhaustible strength. We draw power from His inexhaustible power. We draw peace from His inexhaustible peace. He is the one who makes all our prayers and all our efforts bear fruit.
It has always been true to say that every one of us needs to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The summit of that personal relationship with Christ is when we are united with Him spiritually and physically in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood – in Holy Communion, where Jesus is present to us in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Remember this, and never forget it: It just can’t get any more personal than that.
