- action: sorrow/grief and reparation for the contempt/indifference/ingratitude/indignities/outrages (Cross and Eucharist)
- why: immense love which Jesus has for us, shown in the Eucharist
- symbol: Sacred Heart (source of love). Worthy of adoration, but taken here figuratively.
- fruit: ardent love for Jesus
Revealing His Heart to [St. Margaret Mary] He said: "Behold this Heart which has so loved men as to spare Itself nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, to testify to them Its love, and in return I receive nothing but ingratitude from the grater part of men by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges, and coldness which they have for Me in this Sacrament of My love; but what is still more painful is that it is hearts consecrated to Me that treat Me thus.
Ingratitude
However incredible may appear the love which the Son of God shows us in the Adorable Eucharist, there is something else yet more surprising. It is the ingratitude with which we repay so great a love.
If Jesus Christ allows Himself to be given even to those who do not love Him, and would have Himself carried to dying persons who never condescended to visit Him in their lifetime ... what will He not do for faithful servants...
The ardent love, the tender devotion, and the lively faith with which we communicate must be a mark of our sincere desire to repair, as far as we can, the coldness, the incredulity, and the irreverence with which so many have communicated. Moved with sensible grief at seeing Jesus Christ so little loved, and even outraged in the adorable Eucharist, we must receive Him as an angry God, Whom we wish to appease
how few, even of those, who flatter themselves they are faithful to Jesus Christ, come to the foot of our Altars, to spend some time in His company: and to how many, might Jesus Christ make daily this reproof: Could you not watch one hour with Me? What answer could I make, oh Lord, who lose so many hours in foolish amusements, and diversions of vanity?
[Blessed Claude de la Colombiere] had no sooner considered the sentiments full of tenderness that Jesus Christ has for us in the Blessed Sacrament...that he could no longer think without grieving of the horrible outrages which Jesus Christ suffers at the hands of heretics and of the strange contempt with which even the generality of Catholics treat Jesus Christ in this august Sacrament. p60
Priests
Alas, one would say, to see some Priests at the Altar, that the Body of Jesus Christ, Which they hold in their hands, is some mere instrument which they are using to perform some trivial ceremonies. As they often feel nothing but indifference for Jesus Christ, the time which they employ in offering this august sacrifice is often very short. They pass from some profane occupation to the Altar, and often from the Altar to amusements and profane employments. Mass would seem to be some task which they learn to go through boldly, without thinking of it, and as it were from habit, by means of going through it repeatedly. They hold the Body of Jesus Christ in their hands with as little feeling as they hold the Missal. This negligence, coldness, and insensibility show too plainly the little esteem they entertain for this adorable Body, or at least the incomprehensible blindness in which they live.
is incomprehensible and surprising to see a Priest at the Altar without gravity, devotion, or modesty...
A Priest at the Altar is the mediator between God and men. He treats with Almighty God in the name of the whole Church. He offers to Him a sacrifice... capable of cancelling all the sins of men... And yet, are there not to be found Priests... who even, at the Altar, dishonor the sanctity of their ministry by their want of devotion?
has not a Priest ... who after offering this adorable sacrifice several thousand times, is not more devout, but is perhaps even more imperfect than before he was a Priest, reason to fear the formidable judgments of God?
Though the virtue of the solitaries that lived in the time of St. J. Chrysostom had attained a great height of perfection, and the greater number possessed the gift of working miracles, yet their virtue, says the Saint, is as far inferior to that which is fitting and necessary for the state of Priests
If the Priest thoroughly understands the excellence of his state, and the sublime sanctity of his ministry, he would never approach the Altar but with a holy awe, nor depart from it without infinite gratitude.
A Priest ought to do nothing but with the thought that he has to say Mass, or that he has said it.
The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (TAN Books)
John Croiset, S.J.
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