I Thirst for Your Love!

“If we but paused for a moment to consider attentively what takes place in this Sacrament of the Eucharist, I am sure that the thought of Christ’s love for us would transform the coldness of our hearts into a fire of love and gratitude.” — St. Angela of Foligno

“I am the food for grown men. Grow, and feed on me. Instead of transforming Me into yourself, you will be transformed into Me.”

St. Augustine

Learn to converse with Jesus and Mary as intimately as you converse with your good mother. Learn to render to our Lord a detailed account of your soul, of your life.

Know how to tell the Good God, what you think, what you desire, what you grieve over. Talk simply and artlessly with our Lord as if you held conversation with your own soul.

Be a child full of love and openheartedness toward this good Master. And in this labor of love do not speak all the time, but know how to remain silent at the feet of Jesus; find your joy in seeing Him, in contemplating Him, in listening to Him, and in realizing that you are in His Presence; the real language of love is rather interior than exterior.

(St. Peter Julian Eymard from A Eucharistic Handbook)

“Why is Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament? Jesus is in the Blessed Sacrament to cure me. I am ill with the fever of sin; I am covered with wounds; my soul is one hideous leprosy. My physician is here!

He comes, this Good Samaritan, to purify me, to strengthen me, to restore health to my soul.

Oh! How I need it! I have been suffering for so long; the wounds of my sins are so old; the habit of evil is so deeply set in me; and the temptations of every moment inflame these wounds so keenly and fan this fire of sin so unceasingly!

But, O Jesus, say one word, one only word to my soul…as You did to ‘the mother of Simon’s wife…in the grip of a violent fever’; to the centurion for his son desperately ill; to the leper by the wayside…and my soul shall be healed.”

From A Eucharistic Handbook by St. Peter Julian Eymard))

“There are many people who often make a good Communion and who will have the benefits of this in their souls, and in eternal life, supposing that by the grace of God they do not die in mortal sin; but yet they never know the outpourings of love and the innumerable graces that can come through the Blessed Sacrament.

This is because their approach remains superficial and they pass through life encumbered with very many daily venial sins. Their lives are apathetic and graceless, they are empty, unresponsive, cold and hindered by these many great obstacles.

What are these various obstacles which do them such indescribable harm, robbing them of their share in this precious treasure whose riches fill heaven and earth, and leaving them empty and aimless, as we can see every day in so many people? Notice this well: these obstacles are our daily venial sins, cooling the love of God which should glow in our hearts, distracting our love, driving out and hindering all our devotion, taking from us and chasing away all holy consolation, making God an unknown stranger to us.

Such sins, even if they do not kill all grace in us, do all this harm nevertheless; and though they are only venial sins in themselves, they make us apt, ready and inclined to lose grace and to fall into mortal sin.”

(From Spiritual Conferences by Johann Tauler, O.P.)

“Dear children, to receive the Sacrament worthily is the best and finest thing that we can do, but to come to it unworthily and unprepared is the most terrible and sorrowful of all things.”

(Johann Tauler, O.P. from Spiritual Conferences)

“Nourish your soul also on Holy Communion, which, is to say, the incarnation of divine love in you, and the actual source of it. Receive Communion in spite of everything; receive as often as you are allowed. You will tell me that you are not worthy of it: true, even the angels are not worthy; all our holiness cannot merit a single Communion in a lifetime. But you need it; you are frail, and it is a strengthening food; you wish to love God, and it is the Sacrament of love. Looking at it from this angle, we ought to receive Communion, if that were possible, at every hour of every day.”

St. Peter Julian Eymard from A Eucharistic Handbook

(Image Source)

“…Mary spent days and nights in the presence of the Divine Eucharist. That was her favorite dwelling place; for her beloved Jesus lived and reigned there. What a sweet and pleasant association of Son and Mother. Without the Eucharist, Mary could not have lived here below; with it, life was pleasant for her; she possessed Jesus; her state of life, her mission was adoration. The…years she spent in the Cenacle were like the twenty-four hours of the day; she spent them in the habitual exercise of adoration.

(St. Peter Julian Eymard from A Eucharistic Handbook)

In the Eucharist, Jesus exposes Himself without protection to the insults and outrages of the impious; and the number of His new executioners is very great.

St. Peter Julian Eymard

“Jesus I believe that You are really, truly and substantially present, Body, Blood Soul and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament.

I pray for those who not believe in You, do not adore You, do not hope in You and do not love You.

I pray for those who mock those who do believe in You, and for any of your priests for whom the Eucharist is not the the source and center of their lives.

I also pray, Lord, that You will forgive me for the many times I have acted in a manner inconsistent with these beliefs, and for the poor example I have set drawing people away from You rather than towards You.

I desire to receive You sacramentally, but since I cannot do so now , I ask that You come to me spiritually. I thank You Lord as if You have already come.

Never let me separate myself from You.”