by Thomas A. Droleskey

We have many inestimable treasures made available to us through Holy Church. Our Lord instituted the sacerdotal priesthood at the Last Supper so as to channel forth in the sacraments the graces He would win for us by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. Most especially, obviously, men ordained to the priesthood have the great privilege of enfleshing Our Lord under the species of bread and wine in the Most Blessed Sacrament every time they celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Mere men are given the ability to speak ordinary words, which God Himself obeys to make Himself sacramentally present by the working of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, by the same humility which characterized His Incarnation in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb Our Lord humbles Himself again and again to make Himself incarnate in the Eucharist in each and every unbloody re-presentation of His one sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and in Truth which is the Mass.

Our Lord is not only present sacramentally in the celebration of the Mass, in which we receive His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity to nourish our weak and wounded souls. The same Lord Who was the prisoner of the tabernacle of Our Lady's womb awaits our adoration as the prisoner of love in tabernacles in Catholic churches and tabernacles in Catholic churches and chapels around the world. Second only to the Mass, there is no gift we have as Catholics that equals spending time with Our Beloved in His Real Presence. He is there beckoning us to adore Him, to make reparation for our sins, to pray for our own needs as well as for those of the whole world, and to offer Him profound thanksgiving for all of the supernatural and temporal helps He gives us each day. He gives us a fundamental foretaste of Heaven itself, where we will gave upon the glory of the Beatific Vision face-to-face if we persist in a state of sanctifying grace until the point of our dying breaths, by permitting us to contemplate Him as He is veiled under the appearance of the elements of this passing earth.

We are not alone when we spend time with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Even when no other human being is with us in a particular church or chapel as we pray to Our King of Kings and Lord of lords we are never alone there. Every soul in the Church Triumphant is there with us, starting with the Queen of All Saints, our dear Blessed Mother. Every angel is there with us. Yes, spending time with Our Lord in His Real Presence is more than a figurative foretaste of Heaven. All of the souls in Heaven are there with us as we pray, interceding for us that we will be faithful in our daily adoration of the God-Man Who awaits our acts of sacrifice to spend time with Him here as preparation for spending all eternity with Him in Heaven.

As countless spiritual writers have noted, there are infused graces which those who spend time before the Blessed Sacrament receive. Just as the physical Sun warms the planet and radiates through the darkest of clouds, so is it the case that the eternal Son of God made Man means to warm each one of us and to radiate His bright, burning love directly into our souls. In order to be Our Lord to all men we see and meet-and in order to see Him in other men-it is necessary to be with Him on a regular basis on our knees before the tabernacle or before His Real Presence solemnly exposed in a monstrance. It is thus very inspiring to see that even in the midst of the liturgical and theological revolutions that have devastated the Faith in the past four decades countless numbers of Catholics still have the sensus Catholicus to spend at least a few moments before the Blessed Sacrament every day. Imagine how many more people would be with Our Beloved if the revolutionaries had not disparaged belief in and adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Obviously, not everyone is able to adore Our Lord on a daily basis. It is frequently difficult for parents with young children to do so. That is why those who are single-or those married people whose children have grown up and moved out-must make profitable use of their time by arranging their schedules to spend at least a half hour every day, apart from Holy Mass itself, before our Eucharistic King. This is one of the ways in which the Mystical Body of Christ is built up: each supporting ligament, to paraphrase Saint Paul, builds up the other. Those who have the time to adore Our Lord are able to compensate for those who have less time and more responsibilities, remembering to pray by name for those who are impeded for one reason or another from being physically present before the tabernacle where Love Incarnate resides for our worship and for our spiritual strengthening.

The practice of regular Eucharistic adoration results in a building up of the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity that were flooded into our souls at the moment of our baptism. The more we develop the discipline that it takes to make good use of our time to habitually adore Our Lord in His Real Presence will be the more we are able to see the world a bit more clearly through the supernatural eyes of the true Faith. Indeed, the practice of regular Eucharistic adoration results in the enlightening of the intellect and the strengthening of the will, making us more willing and better able to bear the crosses we encounter in the course of daily living, to say nothing of the larger crosses that will come our way now and then. A soul that has been strengthened by the habit of Eucharistic adoration comes to understand that we who live in time and space are loved by the One Who lives outside of time and space, the One Who wants us to hope in the sufficiency of His ineffable grace to provide for all of spiritual and temporal needs (in addition to the needs of the Church in these troubling times).

The feast of Corpus Christi on Thursday, June 19, permits us an opportunity to reflect on our need for the Eucharist, both as our spiritual food and as the Object of our worship. A growing number of diocesan bishops, believe it or not, are actually participating in Corpus Christi processions, a powerful witness to the Catholic Faith in the midst of a self-absorbed world. Imagine what the state of the Church-and hence the state of the world-would look like if these processions were held on a monthly basis, and if more and more Catholics were invited by their pastors to spend time with their First Cause and Last End, Our Lord Himself.

As even our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, noted in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, there is a crisis of belief in the Real Presence. This crisis is directly tied to the theological and liturgical revolutions which have been underway for four decades now. It is interesting that the crisis that has devastated belief in the Real Presence and resulted in great sacrileges taking place in Catholic churches during Mass and in front of tabernacles outside of Mass is endemic to the Novus Ordo. Although there are regular diocesan priests who celebrate the new Mass and foster deep reverence for Our Lord in His Real Presence, inspiring their parishioners to become regularly adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament, it is nevertheless true that there has been no crisis of Faith in the Real Presence among traditional Catholics.

The Traditional Latin Mass, especially in those places where it is offered on a daily basis (as opposed to the weekly "indult" offerings) fosters belief in the Real Presence, vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated religious life, and the sense of permanence about First and Last Things that is supposed to be conveyed by the Holy Sacrifice. While the revolutionaries within the Church grind their teeth and tear their garments over the recrudescence of the glorious Mass that they thought they had destroyed forever, it is an indisputable fact that the growth of the Traditional Latin Mass is serving the cause of liturgical reverence and Eucharistic piety, which are the fundamental prerequisites for personal sanctity and social order.

As soldiers in the army of Christ, may Our Lady inspire each of us to have a greater love of the Mass and a greater devotion to adoring her Divine Son in His Real Presence. She wants each of us with her in Heaven. And may she, the Mother of Divine Grace, pray for her priests so that their love for Love Incarnate may help the flocks entrusted to their pastoral care to prepare for Heaven by knowing the foretaste of eternal glories that comes from spending time before the Blessed Sacrament.

O Sacrament most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine.

Originally published at Seattle Catholic