9781644135945

The Light of the World
“If thou didst know the gift of God” ( Jn 4:10). How inestimably precious is the wealth of the
soul that has received Holy Communion! But such a soul must indeed be pure if it presumes to
receive this sacrament. “But let a man prove himself; and so let him eat of that bread and drink
of that chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to
himself, not discerning the body of the Lord” (Epistle).
The oftener we receive Holy Communion, the more we must die to the natural man, the
more we must be possessed by the spirit and the sentiments of Christ. The oftener we receive,
the more we must love, treasure, and seek what He loves, treasures, and seeks. Christ loves poverty,
prayer, insignificance in the eyes of the world, humility, simplicity, the cross, and sacrifice.
If we do not gradually come to love the things that He loved on earth and live as He lived while
on earth, must we not admit that our Holy Communions are not producing in us the fruit that
they should? Wherein lies the fault?
“He that seeth Me, seeth the Father” ( Jn 14:9). Christ is so intimately united with
the Father that he who sees the one sees the other. Since we receive Holy Communion
so frequently, must not, then, everyone who sees and hears us, see and hear Christ also?
Must they not recognize Christ in our manner of thinking, speaking, and acting? Must
they not through these our words and actions recognize Christ who lives, prays, works,
and suffers in us?
Prayer
O God, who in this wonderful sacrament has left us a memorial of Thy passion, grant us, we
beseech Thee, so to reverence the sacred mysteries of Thy body and blood that we may ever perceive
within us the fruit of Thy redemption. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
Friday
Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
The liturgy associates the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the feast of Corpus Christi
as a sort of continuation of the latter. The object of our worship on this feast is the physical
heart of the God-man together with the humanity and the divinity of Christ — the heart
of Jesus as a living member of this living organism. We adore the physical heart of Jesus as a
symbol and expression of Christ’s love for men, particularly in the redemption on the cross,
and as an expression of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. By the heart of Jesus we mean,
in the last analysis, the divine person of Jesus, which reveals His divine and human love for
us by the symbol of His Sacred Heart. The mysteries of the Incarnation, of the redemption,
of the coming of the Holy Ghost, of the final resurrection, and of our participation in the
life of God, depend ultimately on the mystery of the Savior’s love for us. All these mysteries
are embodied in the heart of Jesus, and we wish to honor and appreciate them more fully
on the feast of the Sacred Heart.
The concept which the liturgy presents of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is outlined for us in the
Introit, in the Gospel, and in the Preface of the Mass. “The thoughts of His heart are to all generations;
to deliver their souls from death and feed them in famine” (Introit). “Come to Me all
you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Alleluia). The Gospel leads us to the
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