Fr. Scott Haynes
As one approaches Mother Angelica’s Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Child Jesus stands holding in His hand, His Sacred Heart. The giving of His Heart to us represents, the giving of His pure, and perfect love in the Eucharist offered for us in the Mass. And this little Child took His flesh and blood from Mary.
The tiny Heart of God was formed within Her womb, and began to beat for love of mankind, in unison, with Her Immaculate Heart. The Blessed Virgin was first to praise, adore and love with grateful affection, the Heart of the hidden Jesus.
The body and blood of Her Son, including His Sacred Heart, would someday be offered to nourish sinful humanity in the Eucharist, but only to be sacrilegiously and irreverently pierced by ungrateful men, on the wood of the Cross. At the Last Supper, the first Mass, John leaned against the beating Heart of Jesus.
He too praised, adored, and loved with grateful affection the Heart of Christ. He heeded the Lord’s words, “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest,” and in return He received a meek and humble Heart, to receive the grace, to stand at the foot of the Cross, as He watched love from His wounded side.
However, Judas, the betrayer left the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist, to receive thirty pieces of silver. His heart not meek and humble, but prideful & wicked. What ingratitude! What irreverence! What sacrilege! What lack of love, to leave the presence of Christ only to betray Him in sin.
Today, the irreverence, sacrileges and indifference continue to afflict His meek and humble Eucharistic Heart. Today, the Eucharist is not sold for thirty pieces of silver but sold on an auction block on the Internet. Today, how many churches find hosts in hymnals, under pews, and even in the parking lot.
One hears with horror of Masses where the Precious Blood was consecrated in too great a quantity and then poured down the drain of the sacrarium after Mass. Sadly, there are many Catholics who unworthily and sacrilegiously receive Holy Communion after committing serious sins, without going to confession.
Pope Benedict XVI, in a Corpus Christi homily, said,
“The Risen One, present in the form of bread (The Eucharist), cannot be "eaten" as a simple piece of bread.”
The Eucharist is not bread! The Eucharist is not perishable food! The Eucharist is Jesus. The Eucharist is God! The Eucharist is love! The Most Holy Eucharist looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine, but it is really and truly Jesus Christ. And within the Eucharist is His beating Heart. St. Peter Julian Eymard said,
“The Divine Heart is living and palpitating in the Eucharist.”
St. John said, that it was in His love, God sent His only Son as expiation for our sins. Due to the many sacrileges, outrages, and indifference toward our Lord in the Eucharist, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, as she adored the Eucharist in a monstrance, and revealed His Sacred Heart.
Our Divine Lord said,
“Behold this Heart, which has so loved men, so much that it spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify to them its love. In return, the greater part of ingratitude, by reason of contempt, irreverence, sacrilege, and coldness that they show me in the sacrament of love.”
On every first Friday, our Lord desires, we go to confession, and receive Holy Communion, offering it, as an act of reparation for sins, which wound His Sacred Heart. Pope John Paul II in His Apostolic Letter, Mane Nobiscum Domine, wrote:
“The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be kind of a ‘magnet pole’ attracting an ever greater number of souls enamored of Him, ready to wait patiently, to hear His voice, and as it were, to sense the beating of His Heart.”
My dear friends, Come to the beating Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist! Come to His Heart, and make reparation for the sins of irreverence, ingratitude, and sacrilege! Come and offer Him praise, adoration, thanksgiving and love! Come to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, and He will give you rest! Come, spend an hour, to receive His love, from His beating Heart!
O Mother of the Heart of Jesus, who gave us His flesh and blood, and His beating Heart in the Eucharist, draw us to your Son, that we may make reparation, crying out in Eucharistic adoration,
“May the Heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament be praised adored and loved with grateful affection at every moment in all the tabernacles and in every adoration chapel, of the world, unto the end of time!”