Ave Maria Meditations
In honor of St. Peter Julian Eymard, the founder of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers whose Feast Day is August 2nd, we present this prayer composed by a priest but one we can all embrace. On this First Friday of the month, can we spend an hour with Jesus at the Blessed Sacrament or Tabernacle?
You do not yet understand the value and the meaning of what you are doing when you abide in adoration before My Eucharistic Face. You are participating in a divine work, in a work of grace. You are before Me as an empty vessel to be filled with the power and sweetness of the Holy Spirit, that souls might drink of My Love and, drinking, see that My Love is sweeter than any earthly delight.
You are before Me as the intercessor in whose soul the Holy Spirit is sighing with ineffable groanings, and obtaining from My Father, through Me, all that the Father desires to give My priests in this world and in the next.
You are the reparator opening yourself to receive the love that so many others ignore, refuse, or treat with indifference, coldness, and disdain. By offering yourself to Me in an adoration of reparation, you console My Eucharistic Heart, which burns with love and so desires to fill souls with My tender mercy.
When you are before Me, you are the privileged friend of My Heart, keeping Me company in My loneliness and allowing Me to share with you My sorrows, My grieving over sin, and My designs for a priesthood made pure and radiant with holiness.
When you are before Me, you are with Me a victim of love, handed over and bound to remain at your place before the altar with no desires or plans other than to love, to adore, to make reparation, and to (re)present all priests in a prayer that simple, and confident, and life-changing.
When you are in adoration before My Eucharistic Face, you are not idle; you are working in a way far more efficacious than any human undertaking can be. This is your work and it is My work in you. This is a work that many will criticize and not understand. You are here in a divinely active collaboration with Me, who from the Sacrament of My Love, continue My priestly mediation before the Father on behalf of poor sinners.
Never doubt of the value of your hours of adoration. It is this that I have asked you to do, and I will draw from your presence in the sanctuary a great good and a superabundance of graces for My priests.
From In Sinu Iesu, The Journal of a Priest
