THE REAL PRESENCE

Saint Peter Julian Eymard
Founder, Blessed Sacrament Fathers

ADORATION IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH

Pater tales quaerit qui adorent eum . . . in spiritu et veritate.
The Father seeketh such to adore Him . . . in spirit and in truth. (John iv. 23.)

I
THE object of Eucharistic adoration is the Divine Person of our Lord Jesus Christ present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

He is living there. He wants us to speak to Him, and He will speak to us. Anybody may speak to our Lord. Is He not there for everybody? Does He not tell us, "Come ye all to Me"?

This conversation between the soul and our Lord is the true Eucharistic meditation, i. e., adoration.

The grace of it is given to everybody. In order, however, to succeed in it and avoid routine or dryness of mind and heart, adorers must seek inspiration in the grace of their vocation, in the various mysteries of the life of our Lord and of the Blessed Virgin, or in the virtues of the Saints. In this way they will honor and glorify the God of the Eucharist through the virtues of His mortal life as through those of all the Saints, of whose holiness He was the grace and end as He is now its crown of glory.

Look upon the hour of adoration assigned to you as an hour in Paradise. Go to your adoration as one would to Heaven, to the Divine banquet. You will then long for that hour and hail it with joy. Take delight in fostering a longing for it in your heart. Tell yourself, "In four hours, in two hours, in one hour, our Lord will give me an audience of grace and love. He has invited me; He is waiting! for me; He is longing for me."

When your hour is particularly difficult, rejoice all the more; your love will be greater for its suffering more. It is a privileged hour that will count for two.

When on account of illness, infirmity, or some other reason, you cannot make your hour, let your heart be saddened for a moment. Then in spirit imagine yourself at adoration in union with those who are actually adoring. On a bed of sickness, or on a journey, or at a task that detains you, be more recollected, and you will derive the same fruit as if you had been able to kneel at the feet of the good Master. That hour will be written down to your credit and perhaps even counted for two.

Go to our Lord just as you are. Be natural in your meditation. Use up your own stock of piety and love before resorting to books. Cherish the inexhaustible book of a humble love. It is all very well to take a pious book with you to regain control of yourself in case the mind wanders or the senses grow drowsy; but remember that our good Master prefers the poverty of our heart to the most sublime thoughts and affections borrowed from others.

You can be sure that our Lord wants our bean and not that of someone else. He wants the thought and prayer of that heart as the genuine expression of its love for Him.

It may be that we do not want to go to our Lord because we are ashamed of our misery and wretchedness: that is the fruit of subtle self-love, impatience, or cowardice. Our Lord prefers our helplessness to everything else; He is pleased with it and blesses it.

You are suffering from spiritual dryness? You can at least give glory to God's grace without which you can do nothing. Open your soul toward heaven just as a flower opens its petals at sunrise to receive the refreshing dew.

You are stricken with utter powerlessness; your mind is lost in darkness; your heart is crushed with the weight of its nothingness; your body is ailing. Offer Him the adoration He should expect from one so destitute; forget your poverty and abide in our Lord. Or again, present your poverty to Him that He may make it rich; that is a masterpiece worthy of His glory.

But you are in a state of temptation and of sadness; everything rebels in you; everything induces you to leave your adoration under the pretext that you are offending God, and that you are dishonoring rather than serving Him. Do not listen to that insidious temptation; you adore Him by resisting, by being loyal to Him against yourself. No, no, you are not displeasing Him. You are bringing joy to our Master Who is looking on and Who permitted Satan to upset you. He expects you to honor Him by remaining with Him to the last minute of the time you were to devote to Him. May confidence and simplicity and love bring you to adoration.

II
DO YOU wish to find happiness in love? Live continually under the influence of the goodness of Jesus Christ, a goodness ever renewed for you. Observe in Jesus the workings of His love on you. Contemplate the beauty of His virtues and the light of His love rather than the intensity of it. With us the fire of love soon burns out, but the truth of it remains.

Begin every one of your adoration hours with an act of love; bringing your soul under the influence of God will be a delight. If you begin with yourself, you will stop halfway; or if you begin with any virtue other than love, you are taking the wrong road. Does not a child kiss its mother before obeying her? The only door to the heart is love.

But do you want to be generous in your love? Speak to Love of itself; speak to Jesus of His Heavenly Father Whom He loves so much; speak to Him of the task He has undertaken for His Father's glory, and you will gladden His Heart, and He will love you all the more.

Speak to Jesus of His love for all men; that will make His Heart and yours expand with happiness and joy.

Speak to Jesus of His Blessed Mother whom He loved so much, and you will make Him experience anew the happiness of a good son. Speak to Him of His Saints in order to glorify His grace in them.

The real secret of love is, therefore, to forget oneself like Saint John Baptist in order to exalt and glorify the Lord Jesus.
True love looks not at what it gives but at what its Beloved deserves.

Jesus will thus be pleased with you and will speak to you of yourself. He will tell you His love for you, and your heart will open under the rays of this Sun just as a flower, dampened and chilled by the night air, opens under the rays of the sun. His gentle voice will penetrate your soul just as fire eats into combustible material. With the Spouse in the Canticle of Canticles you will say: "My soul melted with bliss when my Beloved spoke." Then, you will listen to Him in silence, or rather in love's most gentle and powerful action: you will become one with Him.

For what stands in strongest opposition to the growth of the grace of love in us if not that we are no sooner at the feet of our good Master than we straightway speak to Him of ourselves, of our sins, of our defects, and of our spiritual wretchedness? In other words, we tire our mind with the sight of our misery, we sadden our heart with the thought of our ingratitude and unfaithfulness. Sadness gives rise to distress, and distress to discouragement; and it is only after much humiliation, affliction, and suffering that we finally get out of this maze and recover our freedom before God. Do not therefore go about it that way any more. But since the first movement of the soul ordinarily determines what the whole action will be, direct this first movement to God and say to Him: "O my good Jesus, how happy and pleased I am to come to see Thee, to spend this hour with Thee and tell Thee my love! How kind of Thee to have invited me! How lovable Thou art to love such a poor creature as I am! Oh! yes, I really want to love Thee!"

Love has then opened the door to the Heart of Jesus; go in, love, and adore.

III
IN ORDER to adore well we must keep in mind that Jesus, present in the Eucharist, glorifies and continues therein all the mysteries and virtues of His mortal life.

We must keep in mind that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ past, present, and future; that the Eucharist is the last development of the Incarnation and mortal life of our Savior; that in the Eucharist Jesus Christ gives us every grace; that all truths tend to and end in the Eucharist; and that there is nothing more to be added when we have said, "The Eucharist," since it is Jesus Christ.

Let the Most Holy Eucharist therefore be the starting point of our meditations on the mysteries, virtues, and truths of our religion. The Eucharist is the focal point; the truths of religion are the rays. Let us start from the focus to go to the rays.

It is not difficult to find a relation between the birth of Jesus in the stable and His sacramental birth on the altar and in our hearts.

Who does not see that the hidden life of Nazareth is continued in the Divine Host of the tabernacle, and that the passion of the Man-God on Calvary is renewed in the Holy Sacrifice at every moment of the day and night, and all over the world?

Is not our Lord as meek and humble in His Sacrament as during His mortal life? Is He not always the Good Shepherd, the Divine Consoler, our bosom Friend?

Happy is the soul that knows how to find Jesus in the Eucharist, and in the Eucharist all things!

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