(Columnist’s note: The following is written primarily for Catholics who believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. And for all others who are open to this great mystery as well.)
Are we in touch with our greatest Yearning? Are we in touch with the deepest ache of our heart? Or is it covered over by superficial and surface satisfactions that never really reach our deepest ache?
And, what is our deepest ache? … Whether we are aware of it or not our greatest longing in the deepest core of our hearts is for deep communion of hearts with another. A communion that will allow us to experience being known and loved to the deepest recesses of who we are; and not just any love, but a love that is unconditional and Divine.
And, not only women have this longing, but men just as much. Why, today, are so many men falling into and becoming enslaved to pornography and sexual sin (and many women as well)? Precisely because of this ache of which I speak, which is not being satisfied in the right ways, and thus disorder abounds.
Why do so many not understand how God could expect us to live a pure and chaste life? Because, they aren’t addressing the deeper ache and going to the source of fulfillment.
We are created for a love that is so intimate and personal that it encompasses our whole being and allows us to experience total security.
But where can we find such love, without searching in vain?
There is but one place and it is the Heart of God… a Heart that He has allowed to become very tangible and available to us in a way that we will never fully comprehend in this life.
God longs for communion of heart with us more than we long for it with Him. And, thus He does everything to allow us total access to such a love relationship.
He remains with us, hidden under the appearance of bread and wine. “I am the living bread come down from Heaven! … Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life within you” (Jn 6:51, 53).
Our Almighty God, Creator of the whole Universe, has not only humbled Himself to take on our flesh, but He allowed us to kill Him brutally and afterwards still chose to remain with us as our food and drink.
Would we lower ourselves to become an ant, in order to help out a colony of ants in trouble? Much less become their food even after they had killed us? Yet God lowered Himself so much more than that, out of His love for us, to draw us into His Divinity.
He knew some would recognize Him; some would recognize the ache of the human heart for communion with our Creator.
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, where the Catholic Church honors and celebrates Jesus’ true presence in the Holy Eucharist (cf. Mk 14:22-26).
This Most Blessed Sacrament has made a profound impact on my life, in helping me to come to know God and His love ever more personally. It is the Most Holy Eucharist that satisfies the deep ache of my heart for love and communion. I could never express adequately in words all that I receive by spending time with Jesus in the Eucharist, and receiving Him daily in Holy Communion; for He is truly alive and in our midst, not only spiritually, but “Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.”
Pope John Paul II tells us, “God has placed in human hearts a hunger… which will be satisfied only by full union with Him. Eucharistic communion was given so that we might be ‘sated’ with God here on earth, in expectation of our complete fulfillment in heaven” (Mane Nobiscum Domini).
Jesus tells us through St. Margaret Mary, “My Eucharistic presence is truly my Sacred Heart living and beating among you.”
Our Hearts are created for communion of Hearts, primarily with God, but also with one another (at least in Heaven). God allows His Heart to remain among us, living and beating, in the Holy Eucharist. May we have the grace to recognize and turn to this Heart of Divine Love, from which flows the Blood and Water which quenches our greatest thirst.
+”Oh Sacrament Most Holy, Oh Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving, be every moment Thine!”
+Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, pray for us!+
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