Devotion for today: Holy Fire

This week we will prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate the great feast of Corpus Christi on Sunday. We begin with a reflection from St. Faustina.

Scripture for meditation: John 6:48-51

“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

St. Faustina tells us: “All the good in me is due to Holy Communion. I owe everything to it. I feel that this holy fire has transformed me completely. Oh, how happy I am to be a dwelling place for You, O Lord! My heart is a temple in which You dwell continually…” “All the strength of my soul flows from the Blessed Sacrament. I spend all my free moments in conversation with Him. He is my Master.” “O Lamb of God, I do not know what to admire in You first: Your gentleness, Your hidden life, the emptying of Yourself for the sake of man, or the constant miracle of Your mercy [the Eucharist], which transforms souls and raises them up to eternal life.” (Diary of St. Faustina, 1392, 1404, 1584)

Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti comments: The Church has always believed in and defended the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper and later commissioned his apostles to continue his ministry by giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). In turn, the apostles ordained and commissioned bishops to continue Christ’s mission. This very same process of commissioning and ordaining has continued uninterrupted and will continue until the end of time. That unbroken connection between the apostles and today’s ordained priests is called “apostolic succession.” To priests is given the gift of consecrating ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Apostolic succession assures us that the Eucharist we receive truly is the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ – body, blood, soul and divinity. Today and every day, Jesus invites us to follow St. Faustina’s example and receive strength to lead sanctified lives from our reception of the Eucharist. Faustina wrote in her diary that if she did not receive our Lord in the Eucharist, she would “fall continually.” Just as she received all her “comfort” from Holy Communion, we can too, and we can declare along with her, “Jesus concealed in the Host is everything to me. From the tabernacle I draw strength, power, courage, and light. I would not know how to give glory to God if I did not have the Eucharist in my heart.”(Diary, 1037) (Praying with Faustina, the Word Among Us Press, 2008)

Prayer: Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all!
How can I love Thee as I ought?
And how revere this wondrous gift,
So far surpassing hope or thought?

Refrain:
Sweet Sacrament, we Thee adore!
Oh, make us love Thee more and more.
Oh, make us love Thee more and more.

2. Had I but Mary's sinless heart
With which to love Thee, dearest King,
Oh, with what ever fervent praise,
Thy goodness, Jesus, would I sing!
Refrain
3. Thy Body, Soul and Godhead, all!
O mystery of love divine!
I cannot compass all I have,
For all Thou hast and art is mine!
Refrain
4. Sound, then, His praises higher still,
And come, ye angels, to our aid;
For this is God, the very God
Who hath both men and angels made!
Refrain

My thoughts: We have so many thoughts to ponder today as we prepare for the great feast of Corpus Christi. St. Faustina reminds us that receiving Holy Communion is receiving the Holy Fire of God. As Jesus truly enters our bodies, He fills us with His passion and love for all mankind. We are to take the gift we have just received and become vessels of that fire, that passion, that love. If we are not transformed by the Eucharist, we are not fully aware of what it is we have just received. God has entered into us. Anything that God touches can never be the same. So it is with us. We must also remember today to pray for our priests, and especially, for our newly ordained priests. They must always have the Holy Fire to consecrate with reverence and passion, and to pass that fire of belief onto others. We must pray that our priests maintain their zeal and love for the Eucharist. They are the tradition and hope left to us by Christ through the Apostles. Finally, do we honestly view ourselves as “…a temple in which you dwell constantly”? Just as the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, so must we, too, be transformed into His body and blood. We must work on our ability to say to God, now that He dwells within us, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Our prayer to God: Today let us work on truly believing that although we may look the same on the outside, just as the host does, we are totally transformed by receiving Christ in the Eucharist, just as the host is transformed by the consecration of the priest. We can no longer play in the world’s playground as though we were “ordinary”. We are extraordinary – we are filled with Holy Fire!