By, Fr. Louis Guardiola, C.P.M.
Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever felt depressed and suicidal? Do you think that no one cares for you or understands you? Do you think you can’t go on?
Jesus loves you, Jesus understands you, and Jesus cares for you from the infinite depths of His Divine spirit and Sacred Heart. Jesus waits for you to visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus understands your loneliness and despair. Jesus was betrayed and abandoned on the cross by His best friends, the Apostles, in His hour of supreme need and trial. Let us not do what the Apostles did, but share our needs, our concerns, our weaknesses and put our troubles before Jesus and His Sacred Heart that eternally throbs with love for you and me. Put your troubled sons and daughters, spouses, brothers and sisters, friends and grandchildren, each one before Jesus Himself and dedicate them to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and by extension to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Jesus is there, body and blood, soul and divinity, really, truly and substantially present before us. Jesus listens to us on His Eucharistic throne with a human ear and loves us with His Sacred human Heart.
Jesus is your God-friend. Jesus is my God-friend. Jesus will never betray you, Jesus will never hate you, Jesus will never separate Himself from you, and Jesus totally understands you. Jesus is your best friend; Jesus is my best friend, forever loving us with a love that is not of this world. God is love, and He who abides in love abides in God and God in Him.
When we adore Jesus exposed in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus dwells in us, lives in us in a very special way. We directly experience the comforting, consoling rays of His healing love and heart. He gives us directly the strength to go on, the courage to face our problems and the wisdom to know how to resolve them. Remember that the greatest saints and orators like St. Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Fulton Sheen did their most inspired work before the Blessed Sacrament. It was Bishop Fulton Sheen who established in the minds of the American clergy the necessity to spend one hour a day before the Blessed Sacrament to not only maximize, but also even to continue to persevere in their priestly vocation.
Do you recall the joy you experienced when in your loneliness an estranged son or daughter of yours came to visit you? The same joy a parent experiences from an unexpected visit is multiplied infinitely when we as His adopted sons and daughters in baptism visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament.
Jesus told the Apostles, “Could you not spend one hour with me?” in the garden of Gethsemane during His passion. Jesus tells us today, “Could you not spend one hour with me,” in this hour of the Church’s passion, this hour of scandal, dissensions, divisions, abortion, international terrorism, apostasy, etc., etc. Remember, fellow members of the Eucharistic Body of Christ: The Church is Christ. The Church is Jesus Christ extended into space and time.
I firmly believe that in Eucharistic adoration, whether it be one day a week, 40 hours or Perpetual Adoration, your hour of Eucharistic power, your hour of adoration, your hour of conference with the Lord of lords, the King of kings, really, truly and substantially present on His Eucharistic throne can and will change the world. I firmly believe that if every one of the billion plus Catholics in the world spent an hour one day a week before the Blessed Sacrament, every major crisis, every major scandal, abortion and acts of international terrorism would stop! Think about that!
There is power in numbers. We have the numbers and we have the Eucharistic power. We have the power of the very enfleshed love of God Himself, who redeemed us and the world, whose power of the resurrection continues today through the Eucharist that can and will totally transform the world. When we become Eucharistic adorers, we form an army, a Eucharistic army armed with the power of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, soul and divinity, the real, true and substantial presence of Jesus Christ that transformed the world in the Resurrection and continues to do so today through the Holy Eucharist. When we become Eucharistic adorers, we form an army, a Eucharistic army armed with the power of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ Himself. When we become Eucharistic adorers, Jesus unleashes through us His very real grace and presence outward to the entire world, so that the world itself can become a holy tabernacle of the Lord.
Can you not spend one hour with Jesus for the salvation of the world? We do not ask you to sign your life away. Indeed, we ask you to sign your name in the book of life through Eucharistic adoration. Jesus asks you as He asked the Apostles, to spend one hour with Him, to become an Apostle of the Eucharist, a member of His Eucharistic army. If you do, you will never be alone again. Instead, you will grow day by day more holy, more convicted, more assured in your faith, more steadfast in the knowledge that you are a member in solidarity with Jesus Christ Himself and millions of Eucharistic adorers throughout the world. When you spend one hour with Jesus you walk with Him as two of the disciples did on the road to Emmaus. When you spend one hour with Jesus, you walk arm in arm with the other members of the mystical Eucharistic Body who happen to adore Him throughout the world at that same hour.
Come and pray to Jesus. Recite your favorite prayers, do some meditative reading or just bask in the healing rays of Jesus before you. St. John of the Cross said, “One moment of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and more profitable to the whole Church than all the good works put together.” Imagine what an hour can do! Allow Jesus to work through you. By your presence, your prayers and your sacrifice, have Christ’s grace reach through you into your family, into your parish, into your community, into our country, and even into purgatory. There are different levels of commitment to Eucharistic adoration. If after choosing a day, an hour, you have to change it or even volunteer as a substitute, that’s possible. The Lord has given us 168 hours in the week. Surely we can give one back to Jesus.
Originally posted at: Knights of the Holy Eucharist