Have any Favorite Eucharistic Prayers?

We will soon be publishing a Eucharistic Prayerbook, and we’d love to consider including your favorites. We are looking for prayers appropriate for times of Adoration, Preparation for Communion, and Thanksgiving after Communion. Please include source and copyright info if possible. Send to vinny@mercysong.com or post on the 7 Secrets of the Eucharist group page.

Remain in My Love

What a blessing this morning, on the Feast of the Assumption, to read a 40-page pastoral letter on the Eucharist, “Remain in My Love,” written by Fr. Ted Dudzinski, a busy pastor in Kokomo, IN to be distributed to his parishoners! So great to know there are priests shepherding their flocks so well! Here’s a section from the end where he summarizes the role of Mary as our model and guide in learning how to respond fruitfully to the great gift of the Eucharist.

“Her constant ‘yes’ to God throughout her life meant that she was always ready to contemplate the face of her Son. She who pondered in her heart the love of God (manifest in Jesus’ birth, hidden life, public ministry, death and resurrection), now spends all eternity gazing upon her Son in heaven. Her assumption into heaven demonstrates the path laid out for all of us who love her Son. If we spend our lives in this world contemplating Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, we too, will spend all eternity face-to-face with Him. Let us abide in His love both in time and in eternity.”
1 Cf. Luke 2:19

Doubly Loved

Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Readings: Acts 3:11-26; Lk 24:35-48

It is really I. Touch me and see. Lk 24:39

The theme of recognizing Christ continues in today’s Gospel. After Jesus had vanished from their sight, the two disciples had rushed back to Jerusalem, “where they found the Eleven and the rest of the company assembled” (Lk 24: 33.) While they were recounting the story of “how they had come to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread,” suddenly “Jesus himself stood in their midst” (Lk 24:36).
How does the group react? They panic. Why? Because they think they’re seeing a ghost. They’ve seen bodies raised from the dead before, but this is different. This body still looks human, but has obvious spiritual qualities, too, and doesn’t seem limited by the laws of nature. Jesus in His risen, glorified body can show up or vanish when and where He wishes and even walk through locked doors!
So Jesus has to reassure them that they’re not seeing an apparition, but that He’s really present with them. Imagine hearing Him say this to you from the Eucharist: “Look at My hands and feet; it is really I. Touch Me, and see” (Lk 24:39).
Jesus is really present in the Eucharist; alive as God and alive as a human man. What does that mean? It means that in the Eucharist you are doubly loved. As God, Jesus has always loved you. But now, with His human will completely united with His divine will, He loves you in His full humanity, too. From the Eucharist, He looks at you with His human eyes, thinks about you with His human mind, loves you with His human heart. And His loving, living presence is as real as it was to that first group of Christians in Jerusalem.

Thank you, Jesus, for this awesome gift of the Eucharist. Forgive me, Lord, for any times I have failed to recognize You, treating you as an object instead of a living person.

Are you a fair face?

I heard a homily awhile back that really hit me. It was one of those times where I felt like the priest was talking directly to my heart, and at a time when I was trying not to be annoyed at the church I was in and the people I was with! (Ever notice that Catholic churches unfortunately aren’t always the most welcoming places, and that many times it seems the people want to be anywhere but there?) It grabbed my attention because it wasn’t the take I would have thought of for a homily on that Gospel.

The passage (Mt. 11:2-5 or Lk. 7:18-22) was the one where John the Baptist is sitting in prison, and he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask Him if He is the Messiah, the one they’ve been waiting for, or if they should look for another. Jesus basically says to them, “Go and tell John” and then He proceeds to list the things that are happening. “The blind see, the lame walk…” and so on. I remember being astounded when I first started studying Scripture in college and realized that this comes directly from passages in Isaiah where it says that all these things would come to pass when the Messiah came. (esp. Is.61:1)What Jesus is saying to John (who of course knew his Old Testament) is, “Remember this prophecy? It’s being fulfilled through me now. Yes, I am He.”

What the priest focused on, however, was John in the dark, having to ask through his disciples. Here he is apart from everyone, not seeing Jesus anymore who is now out preaching and performing miracles, and John wants to know if Jesus is THE ONE. “Do I have it right? Have I prepared the way for He who is to come?”

Maybe he was really doubting. I mean, he hears of what’s happening outside and maybe, as some say, it doesn’t exactly fit his expectation of what the Messiah would be like. Maybe more than anything he wanted his disciples to hear the answer…who knows. But what is important here is that this does happen in our life. We don’t see Jesus before us the way He was then…laying His hands on the sick, giving words of comfort to the downtrodden. And we don’t always understand why God acts the way He does, why He allows certain things in our life and in the world.

When we suffer, when we feel alone, when we don’t feel God’s presence the way we’d like or don’t understand something, we can start to wonder, is there meaning to all of this? Is my faith in God well placed? Do I have it right? What if I am truly alone? And Jesus says through this passage to John and to us, “I am He. My presence is real and my love is active in the world, though you do not see me right now, though you do not understand it all.”

One of the main points of the homily became the fact that often it is through others good works and “fair faces” that we recognize and experience God. I thought his expression was cute because…well, who says fair faces? But as I looked around I thought it was an apt description. All around me, in the very people I had felt alienated from a bit earlier, were fair faces. All of a sudden my heart was opened and my expectations of what things should be were left behind. I saw the sweet old women who smile with their eyes of wisdom, teens trying to find their way in a society that doesn’t support their morals…all around me children of God who are in their imperfect, wounded way, bearing Christ to me, if I but have the eyes to see Him.

When Mary (speaking of fair faces) said her “Fiat” (her “yes”) to the angel Gabriel, she became the first to have God “take flesh” in her. She then went immediately to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who at the sound of Mary’s voice felt the babe in her womb (John the Baptist!) “leap for joy.” (Lk.1:44) In the Eucharist, Jesus has given us the great gift of remaining with us here on earth, fully present to us under the veil of bread and wine. When we receive Him in Holy Communion and say our “Amen,” we are saying, “Fiat, let it be done. Jesus, take flesh in me that I might become like You, that I might carry You out from here and bear You to a world in need.” This is how we conquer our doubts, this is how we become Christ for others. Hopefully, if we allow ourselves to be transformed by Him, even our voice will witness to His presence.

Be encouraged, look for God in the unexpected, draw near to Him in the Eucharist.

~ Erin Flynn

7 Secrets of the Eucharist

Greetings & blessings!

December 8 has always been a special day to me; first because it’s the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and also because it’s my birthday. This year, Our Lady gave me a surprise birthday gift: my new book, 7 SECRETS OF THE EUCHARIST arrived from the printer several days ahead of schedule.

So, in this post, I’d like to share with you a short excerpt from the book.

THE EUCHARIST IS ALIVE
“When I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, my hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul, but souls do not even pay attention to me. They leave me to myself and busy themselves with other things. … They treat me as a dead object” (St. Faustina, Diary, 1385).

The Eucharist is alive. If a stranger who knew nothing about the Eucharist were to watch the way we receive, would he know this? When you and I approach the Eucharist, does it look like we believe we are about to take into our bodies the living person, Jesus Christ, true God and true man?

How many times, Lord, have I forgotten that the Eucharist is alive! As I wait in line to receive you each day, am I thinking about how much you want to unite yourself with me? Am I seeing your hands filled with graces you want to give me? Am I filled with awe and gratitude that you love me so much as to actually want to come to me in this incredibly intimate way?

Or am I distracted, busy with other thoughts, preoccupied with myself and my agendas for the day? How many times, Jesus, have I made you sad, mindlessly receiving you into my body, into my heart, with no love and no recognition of your love? How many times have I treated you as a dead object?

The Host that we receive is not a thing! It’s not a wafer! It’s not bread! It’s a person – and He’s alive!

… This is not the dead Christ locked in a moment of time on the cross. This is the complete and eternal Christ, the Christ who was born of the Virgin, who came into our midst, suffered, died, was raised from the dead, and is now fully alive in heaven, where He reigns in glory.

“The flesh of the Son of Man, given as food,” explains Pope John Paul II, “is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, #18).

… And the Catechism of the Catholic

Church adds: “Under the consecrated species of bread and wine, Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner” (#1415).

It is this living and glorious Christ who complains to St. Faustina:

“Oh, how painful it is to me that souls so seldom unite themselves to me in Holy Communion. I wait for souls and they are indifferent toward me. I love them tenderly and sincerely and they distrust me. I want to lavish my graces on them and they do not want to accept them. They treat me as a dead object, whereas my heart is full of love and mercy” (St. Faustina,, Diary, 1447).

The Eucharist is not a thing. It is not a dead object. It is Christ, and He is fully alive. Receiving Him with this awareness, we become more fully alive, so that we can say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20 RSV).

“I am the living bread. … Whoever eats this bread will live forever.

…

Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (Jn 6: 51, 57).

“My heart is drawn there where my God is hiding. It is my living God though a veil hides Him” (St. Faustina, Diary, 1591).

I hope you enjoyed this little excerpt and that our “hidden” Lord will Lead you closer and closer to His Eucharistic Heart during this Advent and Christmas season.