THE REAL PRESENCE

NEW YEAR WISHES TO OUR EUCHARISTIC LORD

Adveniat regnum tuum.
Thy kingdom come. (Luke xi. 2.)

I
MAY Thy kingdom come! May it spread far and wide: may it gain prestige; may it progress in every way! That is what we must wish our Lord on this New Year's Day. May He be known and loved by those who neither know nor love Him! May everyone complete in himself the work of the Incarnation and of the Redemption! And where is our Lord known and loved? Ah! How very small is the kingdom of Jesus Christ! So many of His rights and those of His Church have either been taken away or curtailed during the last three centuries! They drive out our Lord and deprive Him of His people and His churches. How numerous are these Eucharistic ruins!

So many nations have never had the Faith! How will our Lord establish His kingdom among them? One Saint could do it. Wish our Lord some good priests, some real apostles. That ought to be the constant object of our prayer. These poor infidels know neither their Heavenly Father, nor their tender Mother, nor their Savior Jesus; and we leave them in that sad plight! Oh! How inhuman of us! By our prayers let us help to spread our Lord's kingdom far and wide. Let us pray that the heathens may receive faith and may know their Savior; that the heretics and the schismatics may return to the fold and listen once more to the Good Shepherd's voice.

What is the state of Jesus Christ's kingdom among Catholics? Pray ceaselessly for the conversion of bad Catholics, who have hardly any faith left. Pray that those who have the faith may keep it. And you who have a family of your own, pray that all its members may remain steadfast in their faith; as long as they retain this remnant of union with our Lord, there is hope. While Judas remained with the Savior, he had at hand the opportunity and the means of salvation; one word from him would have been enough. But when he left our Lord, he was done for, and he rolled down to the very bottom of the abyss. Pray, therefore, earnestly for the preservation of their faith in at least one of the mysteries of Jesus Christ. I know that people often say: "It is better to be a good Protestant than a bad Catholic." That is not true. That would mean, at bottom, that one could be saved without the true faith. No! A bad Catholic remains a child of the family although he is a prodigal, and, however great a sinner he may be, he still has right to mercy. Through his faith a bad Catholic is nearer to God than a Protestant is; for he is a member of the household whereas the heretic is not; and how hard it is to make him become one!

To work for the preservation of the Faith, speak the language of a Christian, the language of faith. Transform the speech of the world. Through a sinful tolerance, we have allowed our Lord to be banished from customs, laws, and good manners; in a mixed social gathering one would not dare speak of Jesus Christ. Even among practical Christians we should seem peculiar if we spoke of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. There are so many, so the excuse goes, who do not fulfill their Easter duty or do not go to Mass that we are afraid to hurt the feelings of some guest, or even of the host, who may be one of them. There may be talk about religious art, moral truths, the beauties of religion; but about Jesus Christ, about the Eucharist, never. Well, change all that. Profess your faith openly. Be bold enough to say, "Our Lord Jesus Christ," never just "Christ"! We must prove our Lord's right to live and to rule in the language of society. It is a disgrace for Catholics to keep our Lord under a bushel the way they do. We must manifest Him everywhere. The one who professes his faith boldly and dares speak out the name of Jesus Christ, places himself in the power of his grace. In public, everybody must know what we believe.

The atheists broadcast their godless principles; they boast of their not believing in anything; and shall we be afraid to declare our faith and pronounce the name of our Divine Master? You must speak of Him in public; for these poor impious men are possessed by the devil, or at least obsessed. Well, against these devils use the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. If all the faithful took the resolution to speak fearlessly of our Lord, they would soon transform the world; they would get the people to think of Him naturally. The great day is dawning when the two armies will face each other. Eclecticism is gone, thank God! We must be good or bad; we must be for Jesus Christ or for Satan. Well, proclaim Jesus Christ and speak His name. His name is your standard; bear it nobly aloft. Lord come Iwithin you, in your soul. Our Lord is in you, but He has much to do before He can reign completely therein. You have been barely vanquished; our Lord's kingdom of peace and love is not yet estab- lished in you; the boundary lines are not yet all His; and what sovereign can rule supreme if he does not control all the frontiers of his state?

Get to know our Lord better. Study His life, His sacrifices, and His virtues in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Study His love. Instead of always remaining within ourselves, let us go up to Him; it is all very well to see ourselves in Him, but to see Him in us is better. Instead of attending to yourself, attend to our Lord and make Him grow in you. Think of Him; study Him in Himself; penetrate into Him. You will find the food of your life in Him; for He is great and infinite That is the broad and royal road to holiness and the way to the ennobling of our lives.

II
MOREOVER, you must console our Lord. He expects consolation from you and will receive it with pleasure. Ask Him to prepare good priests for Himself; priests who are apostolic and zealous for the salvation of souls: priests who are the glory of their age and who present God with kingdoms. Beg Him to take ownership of everything, and to be not only a Savior, -----that supposes nothing but sacrifice,-----but a King, and a King of peace with absolute power. Console Him for His being so little treated as a King in His Own kingdom. Alas Lour Lord is vanquished! In Heaven He is an all-powerful Ruler Who commands Saints and Angels and is faithfully obeyed. Not so here below. Men,-----the children He ransomed,-----have got the best of Him. He no longer rules over Catholic peoples. Let us establish His kingdom in us at least, and work at restoring it everywhere.

Fine monuments mean much less to our Lord than do our hearts; He wants our hearts. And since the nations have driven Him out, let us raise Him a throne on the altar of our hearts. Certain barbarians conferred royalty on a man by lifting him up on their shields; let us proclaim Jesus Eucharistic our King by lifting Him up on our hearts and by serving Him with fidelity and devotedness.

Ah! How fond our Lord is of our hearts! How He longs for them! He pleads for them like a beggar! He begs, He implores, He insists. He has already been refused a hundred times; it does not matter; He keeps holding out His hand. But really, to persist in begging after so many rebuffs is to disgrace oneself! We ought to die for shame at the thought our Lord is reduced to beg thus without receiving from anyone the alms He asks for. What outrages He submits to in His quest of our hearts! He seeks in a special way the Catholics, the devout souls, the religious who do not want to give Him their whole heart. Our Lord wants the whole of it. His love for us is the only reason for this ardent quest and the only interest He has in it. Out of two hundred million Catholics, how many love Him with the affection of a friend? How many live of His love, of a love that springs from the heart? If at least those who dedicate themselves to a life of piety, His children, His religious, His virgins, belonged to Him unreservedly! . . . But after letting Him take one step into their hearts they set an obstacle across His path; they give Him this and refuse Him that. Our Lord wants everything and demands everything. He keeps on waiting without ever giving way to discouragement.

Let us then love Him for our own sakes. Let us love Him for those who do not love Him, for our relatives and our friends. Let us pay our family's debt and our countIY's. That is what all the Saints do; they thus imitate our Lord Who loves His Father for all men and becomes surety for the whole world.

May our Lord, the gentle Savior Who loves us so much, become at long last the King, the Master, and the Spouse of our soul! Is it really possible that we do not love our Lord so much as we do our relatives, our friends, our own selves? But we must be bewitched!

No doubt, if we could do it all at once, if we could payoff the whole debt of love by a single act, we would be willing to do so; but we must be constantly giving ourselves and we lack the needed courage for that. This proves to a certainty and beyond doubt that we do not truly love Him. How we grieve our Lord thereby! Mothers have been known to die of the grief caused them by unworthy sons. Were it not for the fact that our Lord is now immortal by nature, He would have died of grief a thousand times since He has been confined in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Had He not been sustained by a miracle in the Garden of Olives, He would have died at the sight of the sins He had to expiate. Here He is in a glorified state; but in His works and in His love, He is very much humiliated. Tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus! "Touched inwardly with sorrow of heart."

Console then our Lord's love. Man always finds someone who responds to his love; but what about our Lord?

Console Him for the ingrC1.titude of all sinners and, above all, for your own ingratitude. Sympathize with Him over the desertions of His unfaithful ministers and of His corrupt spouses. This is something so hideous that it should be kept hidden.

Think about it at His feet and console Him for it. The treason of Judas alone must have made our Lord shed tears of blood. We could never be happy if we knew everything that grieves our Lord, and no priest would ever want to consecrate Him if He were still in His human state and accessible to sorrow. Fortunately His love alone bears the weight of all these outrages, and He can die now no more!

What distresses me is the fact that devout souls, the spouses Jesus Christ reserves for Himself in the world, always leave perfection to religious; "I am not bound to that. I have not taken the vows of perfection." The truth is that they have not the courage to love. Love is the same everywhere, and you can love more in your state of life than a religious in his. His state is more perfect in itself, but your love can surpass his.

Come, let the kingdom of Jesus Christ be established in you! Public Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament is God's last grace to man. After Exposition, there is only Heaven or Hell. Man is attracted to what glitters. Our Lord has ascended a throne; He can be seen and is radiant. We no longer have any excuse. If we forsake our Lord, if we pass by Him without amending our lives, our Lord will go away, and we shall be done for forever.

Serve our Lord, therefore, and console Him; light the fire of His love wherever it is not yet burning; work at the establishment of His reign of love. Adveniat regnum tuum, regnum amoris. "May Thy kingdom come, Thy kingdom of love!"

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