Devotion for today: Dear Lord, I surrender myself to You

Here is a prayer we can all say to bring ourselves into total union with Jesus. It is taken from the book Full of Grace by Johnnette S. Benkovic, Servant Press, 2004. As you say this prayer, close your eyes and place yourself in front of Jesus.

Dear Jesus, in my journey through life,

 I have pridefully followed paths that have led me away from You.

I repent of my sins and I long to come home to You.

Inspired by Your Holy Spirit, I confess that You are the only begotten Son of God.

I ask You to be the Lord of my life.

Forgive me my sins as I surrender myself to Your healing love.

You are the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Strengthen me as I seek to place my feet in Your footsteps.

Thank you for your grace which has brought me home to You 

today. Amen.

Devotion for today: united to Christ, united to my neighbor

Pope Benedict XVI captures the essence of the word “communion” in this selection from his work, “On the Way to Jesus Christ.” Not only are we united to Jesus when we receive Holy Communion, we are united to each other:

We all “eat” the same man, not only the same thing; in this we all are wrested from our self-enclosed individuality and drawn into a greater one. We all are assimilated into Christ, and so through communion with Christ we are also identified with one another, identical and one in him, members of one another. To be in communion with Christ is by its very nature to be in communion with one another as well. No more are we alongside one another, each for himself, rather, everyone else who goes to communion is for me, so to speak, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (cf. Gen 2:23).

A true spirituality of communion, therefore, together with its Christological depth, necessarily has a social character also …. For this reason, in my prayers at communion I must, on the one hand, look totally toward Christ, allowing myself to be transformed by hi and, as needed, to be consumed in the fire of his love. But precisely for this reason I must always realize also that he joins me in this way with every other communicant – with the one next to me, whom I may not like very much; but also with those who are far away, whether in Asia, Africa, America or some other place. By becoming one with them, I must learn to open myself toward them and to become involved in their situations. This is the test of the authenticity of my love for Christ.

Whenever I am united with Christ, I am also united with my neighbor, and this unity does not end at the communion rail; rather, it is just beginning there. It comes alive, becomes flesh and blood, in everyday experience of being with others and standing by others. Thus the individual element in my going to communion is inseparably interwoven with my membership in the Church and my dependence upon her life.

An Act of Love: O my God, I love you above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because you are all-good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of you. I forgive all who have injured me, and I ask pardon of all whom I have injured.

Devotion for today: The Eucharistic Bread, "a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death"

Here are some excerpts from  John Paul II’s  encyclical letter
ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA (Life from the Eucharist) presented on Holy Thursday, April 17, 2003, to help us realize the power and beauty of the gift of the Eucharist.

Inward union with Christ

The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the Lord's body and blood are received in Communion.

The Eucharistic Sacrifice is intrinsically directed to the inward union of the faithful with Christ through Communion; we receive the very One who offered Himself for us, we receive His body which He gave up for us on the Cross and His blood which He “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). We are reminded of His words: “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me will live because of Me” (Jn 6:57).

 Jesus Himself reassures us that this union, which He compares to that of the life of the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet, in which Christ offers Himself as our nourishment. When for the first time Jesus spoke of this food, His listeners were astonished and bewildered, which forced the Master to emphasize the objective truth of His words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life within you” (Jn 6:53). This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).

Through our Communion in His body and blood, Christ also grants us His Spirit. Saint Ephrem writes: “He called the bread His living body, and He filled it with Himself and His Spirit... He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit... Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly My body and whoever eats it will have eternal life.”

Foretaste of Heaven

The acclamation of the assembly following the consecration appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological thrust which marks the celebration of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): “until You come in glory.” The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory.” In the Eucharist, everything speaks of confident waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn 6:54).

This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is His body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death.”