Deepening Our Love of Jesus:
We all desire to deepen our love for Jesus. A while ago, I came across a beautiful insight about finding the Real Presence of Christ. We can find Him at the Holy Mass and in the tabernacle, but we may also find Jesus in others.
Blessed Vladimir Ghika, a Romanian priest, was killed in hatred of the faith in Bucharest in 1954. He bequeathed to us a particularly beautiful French text titled: La liturgie du Prochain (The Liturgy of Our Neighbor). A central theme of the text is that benefiting the poor means “celebrating the encounter of Jesus with Jesus.”
Blessed Vladimir on the Eucharist:
Vladimir wrote: “A twofold and mysterious liturgy: the poor person sees Christ come to him under the species of the one who helps him and the benefactor sees the suffering Christ appearing in the poor over whom he stoops. However, for this very reason it is a single liturgy. In fact, if the gesture is properly made, on both sides there is only Christ: Christ the Savior moves towards the Suffering Christ, and they are integrated in the Risen and glorious Christ in the act of blessing”. Basically, he added, “it is a matter of extending Mass throughout the day and throughout the world, like a concentric wave that ripples outwards from Eucharistic Communion in the morning.”
Jesus is Precious:
Nothing is more precious to Catholics than the Real Presence of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Our loved ones, alive and dead, are also precious. If we are parents, our children are particularly precious, especially infants in their innocence. Pope Pius XI refers to them as “the sacred altars of God” in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. Our little ones are icons of the Eucharistic love of Christ in our life.
We don’t idolize or worship them but we do adore them just as we seek to adore the Lord on our altars. As the Lord Jesus gazes on us with love from the altar, our children gaze at us at times with that divine love. There once was a saintly old man in the parish church of St John Vianney of Ars. He used to spend hours on end before the Blessed Sacrament. He said when the holy cure asked him what he did all day; “Le bon Dieu m’aveuse, et J’aveuse le Bon Dieu.” – The Good Lord looks at me and I look at the Good Lord. Cherishing our loved ones, especially our precious little ones is easier as we deepen our devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
Look At Precious a Bit Differently:
A friend of mine and I have been collaborating with on finding ways to re-assert the rights of parents. Parents are the primary educators of their children. Wave after wave of menacing sex education being forced upon our children. Sadly these education tactics are willingly embraced by schools, even Christian ones. Because of this, we need to look at things differently.
My friend sent this:
Precious could also be dubbed P R E C I O U S: Parents are Reliable Educators of Children In Our Unhinged Society …
“We need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name.”
(Paragraph 58 of Evangelium Vitae)
