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The Time After Pentecost
“I will love Thee, O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer”
(Introit). Such must be our reply to God’s love in the Holy Eucharist. “In this we have known
the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us” (Epistle). He laid down His life
for us once in a bloody manner on the cross, and He continues to do so daily in an unbloody
manner in the Eucharist. Should we also not love Him from the depths of our hearts? “I will
sing to the Lord, who giveth me good things; and I will sing to the name of the Lord the Most
High” (Communion), who remains here below with us in the Holy Eucharist, and who gives
Himself to us as our food.
There are many who remain cold and unresponsive to His love. They have been invited
to the delightful banquet of the Eucharist, but they excuse themselves on the pretext that they
have more important things to attend to. How mistaken is their estimate of the value of the
Eucharist! They lack a vital and living faith.
But there are many who present themselves for the banquet which the Lord has prepared
for them, but who approach in a manner that is mechanical and casual. They approach without
the ardor which would make their Communions fruitful; they lack that living faith, that deep
veneration, and that ardent longing to be united with the Lord in a most intimate union and
to be filled with His life.
Prayer
Grant, O Lord, that we may have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name, for Thou never
ceasest to direct and govern by Thy grace those whom Thou instructest in the steadfastness of
Thy love. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Monday after Corpus Christi
“This is My body which shall be delivered for you. . . . This chalice is the new testament in My
blood” (Epistle). With these words our Lord established the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The
blood “which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Mt 26:28) is, in the words of
Holy Scripture, a sacrificial offering, a true and efficacious sacrifice. The celebration of Mass is
the offering which Christ makes of Himself to the Father.
The victim which is offered to God in the Holy Sacrifice is Christ our Lord. Just as He once
offered Himself to the Father on the cross in a bloody manner and with unspeakable pain and
suffering, so now He offers Himself to the Father in an unbloody manner in the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, as the glorified and impassible Lord now triumphant over all suffering. This
second offering truly contains Christ Himself with all His inexhaustible capacity for offering
homage and praise to God. This sacrifice is infinite in its power to obtain grace from God,
pardon for sins, and forgiveness for offenses. Christ offers to His Father His sacred body, His
most precious blood, the life which He lived while upon earth, the merits He obtained, the
virtues He practiced, His sufferings and His death. He includes in His sacrifice every action
that He performed from the moment of His entrance into this world, together with the prayers
He said and the sufferings He endured. He offers a “pure victim, a spotless victim,” which the
Father has found most pleasing. Ever since the time of Cain and Abel, men have built altars
and sacrificed their victims upon them, for they knew they were guilty of sin and separated
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