Discovering the heart of Jesus in the Eucharist

A few months after King James II and King Wiliam of Orange faced off each other on the banks of the river Boyne in July of 1690, a saintly French nun, St Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), the great apostle of the Sacred Heart, was approaching the end of her earthly pilgrimage. 

For her journey, the Eucharist was the privileged place of encounter with the loving Heart of Christ. It was while she was in prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament that she experienced in a special way the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  St Margaret Mary believed that Christ had entrusted her with the mission of spreading devotion to his Sacred Heart throughout the Church. Our Lord also inspired her to promote the practice of the ‘Holy Hour’ -  a period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in union with Jesus' agony in Gethsemane. This practice remains one of the most important forms of Eucharistic devotion in the Church after the Mass.

The Lord within: St Teresa of Ávila on Holy Communion

By Peter Paul Rubens - Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank

Today is the memorial of the great Carmelite Saint, contemplative and Doctor of the Church, St Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582). In the turbulence of the Protestant Reformation that pulled Europe apart in 16^th Century, Teresa saw a life of prayer, fidelity to the Church and devotion to Christ in the Eucharist as essential to the renewal of the Church. The Eucharist occupies a privileged place within Teresa's broader Christ-centred spirituality and life of what we refer to as mental prayer. Her reform of Carmel stressed:  frequent participation at Mass together with a life ordered towards greater union with Christ. In her great work, The Interior Castle, she describes how the soul journeys toward complete union with God.  In language typical of her writing and speaking, she urged her sisters to receive the Lord in Holy Communion in the following terms:

When you receive the Lord, since you have His Person present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul.

A practical guide to Eucharistic Adoration

In which sacrament are the mystery and saving fruits of Christ's Incarnation, earthly ministry, passion, death and resurrection most fully made present and given to us? The answer is the Eucharist..  Writing in the Introduction to the Devout Life, Saint, Doctor and bishop St Francis de Sales (1567-1622) describes  the Mass as the sun of the spiritual exercises – the centre and heart of Christian faith and life.  For him, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a prolongation of our participation in the Eucharist. He writes of participation in the Mass in these words:

Saint Chrysostom says that the Angels crowd around it in adoration, and if we are found together with them, united in one intention, we cannot but be most favourably influenced by such society. Moreover, all the heavenly choirs of the Church triumphant, as well as those of the Church militant, are joined to our Dear Lord in this divine act, so that with Him, in Him, and by Him, they may win the favour of God the Father, and obtain His Mercy for us.

Nature lessons

This morning, prompted by the excellent resource of Aleteia’s daily prayer, I meditated on a short passage from the Book of Job (12:7-10):

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;  ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.  Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?  In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

The phrase that remained with me was verse 10:

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

Earlier in September I reflected on the work of Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and his remarkable piece of work entitled The Mass on the World.  I commented on his ConsistentEucharistic Thread in a number of posts in early September.  The Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, in Francis of Assisi: A Model for Human Liberation (Orbis, 2006), draws on Thomas of Celano’s Second Life to show how St Francis recognised creation as kin.

We are often inclined to grasp, use, dominate and discard the materials of Earth, yet Scripture and Francis invite us to see creatures as God’s work, held in his hand. We share genetic kinship with other creatures, though human beings stand above them in dignity as made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-28; LaudatoSi’ #90).

The theologian Sr Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, in Ask the Beasts (Bloomsbury, 2014), whose title comes from Job 12:7, uses the term ‘deep incarnation’, a phrase coined in 2001 by the Danish Lutheran Niels Henrik Gregersen. Fr Richard Rohr has drawn on her work in one of his recent daily mediations, Creation as kin, She writes:

The flesh that the Word of God became as a particular human being is part of the tree of evolving life on earth, which in turn is part of the vast body of the cosmos….

In John 1:14 (‘the Word became flesh’), God became one of us and, at the same time, in solidarity with the whole created order.  He assumed our nature (Catechismof the Catholic Church 464-469). In John 6:51-58, that same flesh given in the Eucharist unites us to Christ and to one another (CCC #1396). Pope Francis sees the Eucharist as ‘the living centre of the universe’ (Laudato Si’ #236).

If every living thing is held in God’s hand along with the breath of every human being, as Job says, how much more should we value unborn human life? Jesus says we are ‘of more value than many sparrows’ (Mt 10:29-31).  Concern for creation cannot be reconciled with justifying abortion (see also CCC#2270-2274).  In Laudato Si’ #120, the late Pope Francis reminds us that:

Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.

 

The millennial saint

Twenty years ago, this day, a 15-year old Italian boy died of leukaemia.  Born in 1991, St Carlo Acutis had a great love for Jesus in the Eucharist. He enjoyed football, computers, friends, films and ordinary teenage life. Yet he built his life around daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration and prayer.

He used his technical skills to document all known Eucharistic miracles. His devotion to the Eucharist inspired all those around him and enabled him to leave behind a beautiful testimony of his love for the Eucharist: his Eucharistic miracle website.

For Carlo, holiness was not primarily about extraordinary penances or mystical experiences. It was about frequent and loving union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. He saw the Eucharist as the direct route to friendship with Jesus and ultimately to eternal life.

It is only beginning

Sunday 11 October 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Isaiah 25:6-10 Psalm 23 (22) Philippians 4:12-14 Matthew 22:1-14

(See also Luke 14:15-25)

Meditatio:

“For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14)

Commentary:

At first hearing, the parable of the wedding banquet can be unsettling. The king's reaction to those who reject his invitation seems harsh to modern ears. Yet we would be mistaken if we were to read this simply as a story about an angry earthly ruler. Jesus often uses vivid and challenging images to awaken us to the seriousness of God's invitation and the tragedy of refusing it. The focus of the parable is not so much divine vengeance but divine generosity.

The invitation is extraordinary. In the first reading, Isaiah gives us a vision of the Lord preparing ‘a feast of rich food and well-aged wines’ for all peoples. On that holy mountain God promises to destroy death itself and wipe away every tear. The banquet is a sign of salvation, communion and joy. In Psalm 23, the Lord, the Good Shepherd, prepares a table before us and leads us through even the darkest valley. We need not be afraid, for he is with us. The Gospel wedding feast, Isaiah's banquet and the psalmist's table all point towards the same reality: God's desire to share his own life with his people.

Praying with the body at Mass

 

We are, thank God, material as well as spiritual beings.  In praying alone or with others our bodily posture matters. 

The postures and gestures we adopt at Mass are not merely matters of etiquette. They are part of the Church's wisdom, teaching us to pray with our whole body, mind and soul. We stand in reverence, sit in attentive listening and kneel in adoration. Far from being rivals, body and soul are companions in worship. Our outward actions can help to shape our inner disposition and open us more fully to the grace of the Eucharist.

As we gather around the altar, we do not come as isolated individuals but as members of the Body of Christ. By praying, singing, listening, standing, sitting and kneeling together, we express visibly the communion that Christ creates among us. The gestures of the Mass are therefore not simply habits inherited from the past; they are signs of faith in the living Lord who speaks to us in his Word and gives himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament.