VI — MYSTERY OF LOVE

Presence of God. — O Jesus, grant me to recognize and respond to your infinite love that moved You to make Yourself our food and our drink.

Meditation

1 — All God’s action in favor of men is an action of love; it resolves itself into an immense mystery of love that brings Him, the highest and infinite Good, to raise man up to Himself, making him a sharer in his divine nature and communicating to him his life. Precisely to communicate divine life to men, to unite men to God, the Word became incarnate; and in his Person Divinity was united to humanity in the fullest and most perfect way: it was united directly to the Most Holy Humanity of Jesus and, through this, to the whole human race. By virtue of the Incarnation of the Word, every man - precisely by means of the grace merited by the Incarnate Word - has the right to call Jesus his brother, to call God his Father, and to aspire to union with Him. The way of union with God is thus opened to man: the Son of God, by becoming incarnate and then dying on the Cross, not only removed the obstacles to this union, but provided all the means for it; indeed, He Himself became the way: by uniting himself to Him, man will unite himself to God. And it is precisely here that the love of Jesus, surpassing every measure, willed to find the means to unite Himself to each one of us in the most intimate, most personal way, and He did so through the Eucharist. By making Himself our food, Jesus makes us one thing with Him and thus communicates to us in the most direct way his divine life, his union with the Father, with the Trinity. In the Incarnation, the Son of God, by taking our flesh, united Himself once and for all to the human race; in the Eucharist, the Son of God made man continues to unite Himself to each individual man. We thus understand how the Eucharist, according to the thought of the holy Fathers, can truly “be considered as a continuation and an extension of the Incarnation: by it the substance of the Incarnate Word is united to each man” (Mirae caritatis).

2 — The plan of infinite love, which wills to unite men to God, which wills to communicate to them divine nature and life, finds its ultimate and highest realization in the Eucharist. In the consecrated Host, in fact, we have not only the Body, Blood, and Soul of Christ, but we also have his Divinity as Son of God and therefore the whole Divinity. What more powerful means could God have found to unite us to Himself, to make us sharers in his nature and his life? What food could be more life-giving than the Body of Christ which, by reason of its personal union with the Word, is the source of life and grace? By giving Himself to us as food, Jesus nourishes us with his substance, assimilates us to Himself, and personally communicates divine life to us. Through the other sacraments too Jesus gives us grace and therefore communicates divine life to us, but in them there is only his action, that is, at the moment when the sacrament is accomplished - for example, in the act by which the priest absolves us from sins - Jesus, by his operative power, produces grace in us. In the Eucharist, instead, there is Jesus Himself, made sacrament, who comes personally into us in the integrity of his Person as God-Man. Receiving the holy Host, we do not have only Christ’s action in our soul, but we have his Person really, physically present; we do not have only an increase of grace, but Jesus, the source of grace; we do not have only a new participation in divine life, but we have the Incarnate Word who draws us with Himself into the bosom of Divinity.

Moreover, whereas material food is assimilated by the one who eats it and is transformed into his body and blood, Jesus, life-giving food, has the power to assimilate to Himself those who feed on Him and to transform them into Himself. “The communion of the Body and Blood of Christ,” says St. Leo, “aims at nothing other than changing us into what we eat,” and St. John Chrysostom specifies: “Christ has united Himself to us in such a way as to blend his body with ours, so that we are one thing with Him... and this belongs properly to those who love ardently.”

Colloquy

“O eternal Trinity! O fire and abyss of charity! what profit came to You from our redemption? None, since You have no need of us, You who are our God. To whom did this profit come? Only to man. O inestimable charity, just as You gave Yourself wholly to us, all God and all Man, so You wholly left Yourself to us as food, so that while we are pilgrims in this life we may not fail from weariness, but may be strengthened by You, heavenly Food. O man, what has your God left you? He has left you all of Himself, all God and all Man, veiled under that whiteness of bread. O fire of love! was it not enough for You to have created us in your image and likeness and recreated us in grace through the Blood of your Son, without giving us all of Yourself, God, divine Essence, as food? Who constrained You? Nothing other than your charity. And just as You did not send and give only the Word for our redemption, so You did not leave only Him to us as food, but, as mad with love for your creature, the whole divine Essence. And not only this, O Lord: You give Yourself to us, but by feeding us with this divine Food, You make us strong with your power against the battles of demons, against the insults of creatures, against the rebellion of our flesh, against every anguish and tribulation from whatever side they come.

“O Food of angels, highest and eternal purity, You require and desire such purity in the soul that receives You in this most sweet Sacrament that, were it possible, even the Angels themselves would have to purify themselves before so great a mystery. And how shall my soul be purified? In the fire of your charity, O eternal God, washing its face in the Blood of your only-begotten Son. O my poor soul, how do you go to so great a mystery without sufficient purification? Therefore I will strip myself of the fetid garment of my will and clothe myself, O Lord, with your eternal will!” (St. Catherine of Siena).