Deepertruth: The Eucharist and the Supernatural Life

The Founder of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, Saint Peter Julian Eymard, states:

How is it that Our Lord is so little loved in the Eucharist? One reason is that we do not speak enough of It and that we insist only on faith in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, instead of speaking about His life and His love therein, instead of calling attention to the sacrifices which His love imposes upon Him—in a word, instead of showing Jesus Christ in the Eucharist with the personal and special love He has for each one of us. How many among the best Catholics never pay a visit of devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament to speak with Him from their heart, to tell Him of their love. They do not love Our Lord in the Eucharist, because they do not know Him well enough.

Yes, more Catholics, including priest and religious, are not more devoted to the Eucharist because they do not understand the life and love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. How important it is not only to believe in what the Church tells us God has revealed, but to understand what we believe. It is because of this lack of understanding of what the Eucharist is that people who are otherwise good Catholics are so pathetically wanting in devotion to the Eucharist.

As a backdrop for this meditation, we may use two passages from the Gospel of Saint John. To grasp the meaning of these passages is to come closer to a realization of not only that the Eucharist exists but also what the Eucharist really is. In the first, John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that those who believe in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.”(John 3:16). Behind the Incarnation, and therefore behind the Eucharist, is the breathtaking, inevitable love of God.