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Ave Maria Meditations

Let us be renewed so that we may thus attend the new feast of the new Lamb, for today we shall not be feasting on the flesh and blood of brute animals as the Jews did, but on God himself, on our Lord Jesus Christ who was sacrificed as our Passover. He is our new, completely sufficient, and rich banquet.

This banquet is new because of its nature; it is free from the staleness of sin, which is shown because it imparts its own newness to us if we eat it worthily. It is completely sufficient because Christ was sacrificed as the one true victim offered once for all in place of the many prefigurative and inadequate victims offered over and over in accordance with the Law. For although Christ is sacramentally offered, sacrificed, and broken daily on many altars, he was in fact sacrificed only once as the one true victim, for Christ, having risen from the dead, dies no more. And whereas the many sacrifices of the Jews – their sacrifices for sin, their peace offerings, their votive offerings, their victims – were insufficient, Christ is a sufficient sacrifice for everything and for everyone: to atone for sins, restore peace between God and humankind, win a hearing for human prayers, and overcome enemies.

Finally, this banquet is a rich one because our Lord Jesus Christ is, as it were, “fat” with the fullness of grace, charity, and mercy. He is the fatted calf which the father ordered to be slain when his son returned from the land of unlikeness. So now that we have been invited to this new, bountiful, and rich banquet, let us be careful to do as the wise man says: If you sit at a lavish table, know that you must prepare a sim­ilar one. Since we have been invited to the table of Christ, let us prepare a similar one for him: let us love him as he has loved us, humble ourselves for him as he humbled himself for us, and be ready to die for him as he died for us.

Ralph the Fervent  (+1101) was a priest in the diocese of Poitiers, France.

Homily #101010t ( 09min) Play – The first step to gratitude is awareness. Often we over look the Providence of God in our daily lives. Perfect thankfulness to God is found in the full participation in the Holy Eucharist.
Ave Maria! 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Mass: OF, – Readings:
1st: 2ki 5:14-17
Resp: psa 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
2nd: 2ti 2:8-13
Gsp: luk 17:11-19

Audio (MP3)

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Ave Maria Meditations

With each sacramental communion Jesus writes afresh the new law on our hearts. Here we touch upon an important point for the celebra­tion of the Eucharist…To participate in the Eucharist, to communicate with the body and blood of Christ, demands the liturgy of our life, a sharing in the passion of the Servant of God. In this participation our sufferings become “sacrifice” and so we can complete “in [our] flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).

It seems to me that this aspect of Eucharistic devotion has been somewhat obscured in the liturgical movement and that we ought to recover it. In the communion of suffering, sacra­mental communion is actualized; we enter into the riches of the Lord’s mercy, and from this compassion springs up anew the capacity to be merciful from which come the vocations which make mercy their aim and which are lacking today in the Church.

One final observation. If we have at length interpreted the connection between Supper and Cross, we have in fact all the time been speaking also of the Resurrection. Not only are Supper and Cross inseparable: Supper, Cross and Resurrec­tion form the one indivisible Paschal Mystery. The theology of the Cross is the Resurrection; therefore the Resurrection is the divine response and the divine interpretation of the Cross. The theology of the Cross is a paschal theology, a theology of joyous victory even in this valley of tears. We have shown that the Last Supper was the anticipation of the violent death of Jesus, and that the Cross without the Supper, the Supper without the reality of the Cross, would remain void. Now we have to add that the Last Supper also antic­ipates the Resurrection, the certainty that love is stronger than death. This act of love to the last is the transubstanti­ation of death, its radical transformation, the power of the Resurrection already present in the shadow of death.

The Supper without the Cross, the Cross without the Sup­per, would be void, but the two without the Resurrection would be the wreck of hope. The image of the pierced side, fount of water and blood, is also the image of the Resurrec­tion, of love stronger than death. In the Eucharist we receive this love – we receive the medicine of immortality. The Eu­charist guides us to the fount of true life, of invincible life, and shows us where and how true life is to be found – not in riches, not in having. Only if we follow Jesus on the way of His Cross do we find ourselves on the road to life.

Pope Benedict XVI: Journey to Easter

Ave Maria Meditations

Homily #100315 ( 07min) Play – We are called to have faith in the words our Lord has spoken, words that do not return empty. This is My Body…this is My Blood…
Ave Maria! Mass readings

Audio (MP3)

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Ave Maria Meditations

The Eucharistic sacrifice and the ordinary life of the Christian.

The Second Vatican Council reminds us that the sacrifice of the Cross and its sacramental renewal in the Mass are, apart from the difference in the manner of offering, one and the same sacrifice of praise, of thanksgiving, of propitiation and of satisfaction. The ends which Our Savior gave to His sacrifice on the Cross are usually summed up in these four.

The four ends of the Mass are achieved in different ways and to a different extent. The ends that refer directly to God, namely, adoration, praise and thanksgiving, are always produced infallibly and with all their infinite value, independently of our collaboration.  This is true even when the Mass is celebrated without the presence of a single member of the faithful, or, if there is one, if he assists in a distracted way. God, our Lord is praised infinitely every time the Eucharistic Sacrifice is celebrated, and thanksgiving is offered up which satisfies God fully. This oblation, says Saint Thomas, pleases God more than all the sins of the world offend him, since Christ himself is the actual Priest who offers, as well as being the actual victim who is offered in every Mass.

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Ave Maria Meditations

With all the many things that could be said about the Apostle of Divine Mercy, St. Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament, let us look at this beautiful litany of love to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament composed by the Saint.

Prayer of St. Faustina While in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament:

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained the testament of God’s mercy for us, and especially for poor sinners.

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus as proof of infinite mercy for us, and especially to poor sinners.

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained life eternal and of infinite mercy, dispensed in abundance to us and especially to poor sinners.

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained the mercy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit toward us, and especially toward poor sinners.

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained the infinite price of mercy which will compensate for all our debts, and especially those of poor sinners.

O Blessed Host, in whom is contained the fountain of living water which springs from infinite mercy for us, and especially for poor sinners.

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Ave Maria Meditations

“CHARITY is a much more important virtue, and more agreeable to God, than Austerity.”

“LITURGY is the ritual and language which the Church employs to help us RE-LIVE the Mysteries of Christ.”

“It is not our PERFECTION (i.e. Good Deeds) which DAZZLE God, since He is surrounded by shining Angels.  No!  It is our MISERY, our POVERTY, our avowed UNWORTHINESS, which draws down his Mercy upon us, and brings us his ATTENTION.”

“MERCY is love in the face of misery; if there were no misery there would be no mercy.  The Angels declare God’s holiness; but as for us, we shall be in heaven the lilving witnesses of Divine Mercy; in crowning our works, God crowns the gift of His mercy.”

“No one can say: Holiness is not for me.  God wills us to be saints for His glory and our joy.  God does not mock us.  When God says to us, “Be perfect”, He knows all that He is asking of us, yet at the same time He requires nothing beyond our power, when we rely on His grace”
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Ave Maria Meditations

excerpts from ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA:

On the Eucharist in its relationship to the Church

Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II, April 2003

The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church. In a variety of ways she joyfully experiences the constant fulfillment of the promise: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20), but in the Holy Eucharist, through the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, she rejoices in this presence with unique intensity…The Second Vatican Council rightly proclaimed that the Eucharistic sacrifice is “the source and summit of the Christian life.  For the most holy Eucharist contains the Church’s entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our Passover and living Bread. Through his own flesh, now made living and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, he offers life to men”. Consequently the gaze of the church is constantly turned to her Lord, present in the Sacrament of the Altar, in which she discovers the full manifestation of his boundless love.

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Ave Maria Meditations

August 1st: St. Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorist Order

SAINT ALPHONSUS LIGUORI Bishop and Doctor of the Church (1696-1787)

An Act of Spiritual Communion

My Jesus, I believe that You are truly in the Blessed Sacrament. I love You above all things and I long for you in my soul. Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart as though You have already come. I embrace You and unite myself entirely to you; never permit me to be separated from You!

I say that it is the will of God that all graces should come to us by the hands of Mary. Sooner would heaven and earth be destroyed than would Mary fail to assist anyone who asks for her help, provided he does so with a good intention and with confidence in her.

To learn more of this good doctor, continue on…

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The Mystery of Faith: TRANSUBSTANTIATION

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The words of Our Lord cannot be watered down: the ­bread which I

shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.

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This is the mystery of Faith, we proclaim immediately after the

Consecration at Mass. It has been and is the touchstone of the Catholic

faith. By transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine are no

longer common bread and common drink, but rather the sign of

something sacred and the sign of spiritual food. But they take on a

new expressive­ness and a new purpose for the very reason that they

contain a new reality: which we are right to call ’ontological’. For

beneath these appearances there is no longer what was there before

but something quitedifferent, since on the conver­sion of the bread and

wine’s substance, or nature, into the Body and Blood of Christ,

nothing is left of the bread and wine but the appearances alone.

Beneath these appearances Christ is present whole and entire, bodily

present too, in his physical reality although not in the manner in

which bodies are present in a place.

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We look at Jesus present in the Tabernacle, perhaps just a few yards

away, and we tell him that we know, through faith, that he is present.

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May 17^th: St. Paschal Baylon (1540-1592)

Patron of Eucharistic Congresses

This Franciscan lay brother had an extraordinary love for Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament. This humble brother, devoted to prayer, would gather alms with a Rosary in one hand and God in his heart. He also fostered a special devotion to the Blessed Mother. This simple brother, who never learned to read or write, was instructed by God and was sought out for his counsel. It is said that even while in the fields, when he heard the bells announcing the consecration at the Holy Sacrifice, the Blessed Sacrament was shown to him in a monstrance held by angels for his adoration.

PRAYER:

O God, who didst adorn the Blessed Paschal, Thy confessor, with a wonderful love for the mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, mercifully grant that we may draw from the Divine Banquet the same fullness of spirit that he did. Who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.

St. Paschal, help us in our devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and to Mary, our Mother.