Deepertruth: Devotion to the Holy Eucharist AdvancesDevotion to Jesus' Person

Devotion to the Holy Eucharist AdvancesDevotion to Jesus' Person

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Most Catholics take for granted the intimate relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart. They have come to associate the practice of the nine First Fridays, when Holy Communion is received, with the promises of our Savior to St. Margaret Mary for the grace of a happy death. They have also come to associate the liturgical feast of the Sacred Heart soon after the Eucharistic feast of Corpus Christi. Then, too, we have such expressions as the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, and the invocation of the Sacred Heart after Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

These and similar associations are commonplace in Catholic piety. So it is not surprising that, if a person were asked if there is any connection between the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist, he would spontaneously say, "Why, yes. I'm sure there must be." But he would most likely not be able to explain any more.

There are several ways we could approach this subject and prove, as it were, that the two mysteries are intimately related.

We might, for example, trace the historical relation of the apparitions of Christ to Margaret Mary with her own great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. She would spend hours lost in adoration before the tabernacle, often rapt in ecstasy so that sometimes she had to be physically shaken to bring her back to secular consciousness, as we might say.

There is also the remarkable fact that all of Christ's appearances to His saint were when she knelt before the Eucharist. He would literally replace the Sacrament on the altar when He showed His physical heart to this devoted mystic, as much as to say, "When you see the Eucharist, you see me; and when you see me, you behold my Sacred Heart."