The Institution Of The Eucharist

Fruit Of The Mystery: Adoration

The following meditations are provided to assist you while praying the Holy Rosary. It is offered in a format where a question is posed to lead the meditation and then is followed by an answer below it.  It may be more helpful to grow in your meditation skills if you try to contemplate the question while praying this decade of the Rosary, and view the possible answer upon completing the prayers for the Mystery.

The meditations below offer possible answers to questions regarding these Mysteries.  Because the Wisdom of God is infinite, there are limitless insights that one may gain from meditating repeatedly upon the questions surrounding these Mysteries.  There are no wrong or right answers when praying the Holy Rosary in this way.  We are simply seeking to be inspired in our understanding of who Jesus is and how much He loves us, as the Holy Spirit gently guides us through reflective prayer.

For many reasons it may be difficult to engage our minds to enter into meditating on the Mysteries at hand.  An alternative option is to simply meditate upon the meaning of the core prayers of the Holy Rosary as you are praying them.  You may find these reflections on the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be prayers to be helpful during these times.

Food and Drink

1.  Why does Jesus choose to manifest Himself to us through physical food and drink?

Our primary and greatest weakness as humans, which the evil one first attacked, is our appetite.  We see this with Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit.  It is for this reason that Jesus chooses to offer us His Body and Blood as real food and drink.  In His great love and compassion for our human weakness He literally offers Himself to be our sustenance and strength.  He desires more than else to become our all in all, and sustain us in our greatest and most vulnerable needs.  What an incredibly wonderful Savior indeed!

2.  How does Jesus become our spiritual food and drink?

Jesus becomes our spiritual nourishment by offering us a share in His Divinity.  By filling us with His love and real presence in the Eucharist, our hearts enter into communion with His Most Sacred Heart, and we are strengthened by His virtues to live Holy lives.  By forming us into His likeness, all who receive Him partake in this communion of the Divine life and become united as one Body with Christ as the Head.  It is in the Eucharistic celebration that Heaven begins to become a reality, as those on earth join with those in Heaven who now dwell eternally united to Christ.  Truly we see the Kingdom of Heaven unfold before us, where God’s love is all in all. 

The Priesthood

The Eucharist and the priesthood are inseparable.  Without the Eucharist the priest would have no sacrifice to offer, and without the priest we would not have anyone to consecrate the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.  Thus we see that the priesthood and the Eucharist must have been instituted together as Sacraments during the Last Supper.   

Object Lesson

1.  Why does Jesus wash His disciples feet before the last supper?

One of Jesus’ most powerful and successful tools as the greatest teacher that ever lived was that of object lessons (a physical example) followed by instruction.  To illustrate most clearly what the Eucharist was before instituting it as a Sacrament, Jesus strips down spiritually in all humility and then physically strips down to wash His disciples’ feet.  The lesson: In His Divinity He freely chooses to humbly serve others, and is thus exalted by the Father who is Eternal Divinity.  The Instruction: When we receive the Divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist, we must freely choose in all humility the role of servant to others.  Then we too will be exalted by the Father. It is by approaching all that we do with humility and loving kindness, that we reveal the presence of the Lord in our midst. 

3.   2.  What does the Eucharist teach us about the Eternal Wedding Banquet?

Heaven is often compared in Scripture to an eternal wedding banquet.  When we consider what Scripture teaches us about marriage, it can be summarized by two becoming one.  That is, there is such an intimate union formed between the bride and groom that they no longer exist as individuals, but live only for God’s Will to love each other without end.  This is the exact meaning of receiving the Eucharist.  As we consume the Eucharist, the Love of Christ literally consumes us; Jesus unites so intimately with our hearts, that He nourishes our weakness with His strength and slowly heals our brokenness to be formed in His likeness.  The more often we receive the Eucharist, the more this union is realized and this eternal banquet actually begins to occur here on earth.

Adoration

1.  Did Jesus leave the Eucharist behind because He wanted us to adore Him?

Jesus never seeks glory for Himself, but Our Father alone.  The love in Jesus’ Most Sacred Heart is completely selfless.   We see this clearly in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  The Eucharist was not given to us to only to adore Him for sacrificing His life for us; but through love in its purest form, it was selflessly instituted by Jesus so that we might realize His unspeakable adoration for us.  As His brothers and sisters, and God’s children He literally adored us more than His life itself.  Humbly, in the Eucharist, He still remains waiting to adore us in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  How do we respond?

Before we can truly and fully adore Jesus in the Eucharist, we must first realize that He has reduced Himself to such a simple form in the Sacred Host.  He does this to show us in all humility how much He first adores us.  Then modeling ourselves after Him, we must lower ourselves in all humility to reverently worship the Lord of all Creation in this Sacrament.  When coming before His real presence to receive Him in Holy Communion, or even upon entering a Church where He is placed awaiting us in the tabernacle, we must be mindful to always be reverent and respectful of this most humble gesture of love.

Denying Christ

1.  Why would Jesus tell Peter the details of his betrayal ahead of time? 

Jesus tells Peter of the betrayal in advance because He loves him and desires to strengthen him when he fails.  Consider what would have happened if Jesus did not forewarn Peter.  Peter would not have noticed the cock’s crowing and would be immersed in his guilt of abandoning the one whom he loved and adored in His time of greatest need.  But because Jesus had prepared him and assured him that He had prayed for him about it, Peter was able to realize the Mercy of Jesus was greater than his worst sins.  The same is true for us today.  Jesus knows all of the sins we have committed or will ever commit, but continues to call us to be loved and forgiven.  We too must rise above our sins and accept the Mercy and love of Our Lord.

Grace

1.  Does the degree of faith we have in the Eucharist impact the graces we receive from this Sacrament?

Without true knowledge or belief in what the Eucharist is- the real living presence of Jesus- we are not able to receive Its full graces or be sustained by Its powers.  Consider how after receiving the Cup and the Eucharist from Jesus’ blessed hands, Judas betrays Christ, and Peter and the disciples denied Jesus and fled in His most difficult times. Now consider after the disciples had their eyes opened to Jesus’ real presence in the breaking of the bread in Emmaus, how differently they would respond when their faith was strengthened and their eyes were opened.  After Jesus instructs them for 40 days before ascending to Heaven, and upon receiving the Holy Spirit and the gift of understanding, they would faithfully pray and break bread. They would consume the Body of Christ to become the Body of Christ for others.  Here they would receive the nourishment and strength they needed to carry out their mission of calling others into this Body.

The Miracle of the Eucharist

Consider the miracle that occurs within our very own human body each day.  If we were to eat six large meals a day, our body weight would increase as the food we consume would be turned into excess flesh and blood.  Now consider how much more powerful our Infinite, Majestic, Awesome God is than the simple human body He created.  Of course He can turn bread and wine into His Precious Body and Blood. Amen.

3.  Are there any miracles recorded by the Catholic Church that involve the Eucharist?

There are many Eucharistic miracles which have been authenticated by the Holy Catholic Church after investigation. Below are just two examples that have been recorded in Italy. 

“In the year 1263 a priest from Prague was in route to Rome making a pilgrimage asking God for help to strengthen his faith since he was having doubts about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Along the way he stopped in a Church in Bolsena 70 miles north of Rome. While celebrating Mass there, as he raised the host during the consecration, the bread turned into flesh and began to bleed. The drops of blood fell onto the small white cloth on the altar, called the corporal. The following year, 1264, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus, also known as the Feast of  Corpus Christi. The Pope asked St Thomas Aquinas, living at that time, to write hymns for the feast and he wrote two, better known as the Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris. That blood-stained corporal may still be seen in the Basilica of Orvieto north of Rome.”

“The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, also in Italy, took place several centuries earlier in the year 700 A.D.  A monk who feared he was losing his vocation was celebrating Mass, and during the consecration the host turned into flesh and the wine turned into blood. Despite the fact that this miracle took place around 1300 years ago you may still see the flesh in a monstrance which is exposed every day and the blood in a glass chalice.  The blood has congealed and is now seen as five clots in the glass chalice. In 1971 and 1981 a hospital laboratory tested the flesh and blood and discovered that the flesh is myocardium, that is heart muscular tissue.  This would imply that the flesh consists of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The blood type was discovered to be AB positive. In 1978 NASA scientists tested the blood on the Shroud of Turin and also found that it is of the blood type AB positive.  The Sudarium, which is the believed to be the Face Cloth of Christ that is mentioned in John 20:7, is also of the blood type AB positive.  Despite the fact that human flesh and blood should not have remained preserved for 1300 years the hospital lab tests found no trace of any preservatives. One final interesting point about the five blood clots in the chalice is that when you weigh one of them, it is the same weight as all five together, two of them together weigh the same as all five. In fact no matter what way you combine the blood clots individually or in a group to weigh them, they always weigh the same.  This would support our belief that Jesus is fully present in each particle of the Eucharist no matter how many times it is broken, or how large or small it is.”

The Celebration of the Sacrament  

Jesus came to this earth to show us the way back to the Father.  Even after He conquered sin and death by His Passion and Resurrection, we would still have to employ our free will to make good choices.  And though we celebrate the Eucharist to receive nourishment and strength for our moral decisions, we still participate in this Sacred Mystery with imperfections and sin marking our minds, bodies and souls.  While Jesus remained fully Human and fully Divine on earth, He celebrated the Mass in a most perfect and Holy manner so that we might be able to unite our imperfect humanity with His.  It is only when we unite our human words and actions with those of Jesus that our sacrifices become pleasing and wholly acceptable at the altar.  If Jesus celebrated this Sacrament after His Resurrection when His body was fully glorified, our humanity would not have been compatible to unite with His glory, and thus our sacrifices and offerings would have been incomplete.
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