Meditation for the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 19, 2025: The Eucharist
Excerpt from the book Meditations for all the Days of the Year
The Eucharist
Preparation
As one sole day is not sufficient for the study of the great mystery of the Eucharist, which is honored on Holy Thursday, the Church consecrates to it another feast with an octave, in which she displays, in honor of this ineffable mystery, all the pomp associated with her ceremonies. In order to enter into her spirit, we will meditate today:
On the excellence of the gift made to us by Jesus Christ in giving us the Eucharist.
The perpetuity of this gift.
We will then make the resolutions:
To revive in our souls, during the present feast and its octave, love towards the Holy Eucharist.
To perform our communions better and also our visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. John: “Jesus having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” (John 13:1)
Let us adore the immense love of Jesus Christ in giving us the Eucharist. He loved us from the beginning of time, in the long premeditations of eternity. He loved us when creating us, when preserving us, when becoming incarnate, at His birth in the crib and at His death on the cross, but He loved us incomparably more when instituting the Eucharist; it is therein, says St. John, that His love reached its extremest limits (John 13:1). Let us adore, let us praise, let us bless, let us love so much love, and let us beg Him to enable us to understand it.
First Point
The Excellence of the Gift which Jesus Christ Makes us in Giving us the Eucharist.
The excellence of the gift is shown in the very words of the Savior Himself, “Take and eat” Jesus Christ said, “this is My body;” and what I have just done by words, “do ye” also, my apostles, you and your successors forever (Luke 22:191). Could there be a more excellent gift? Let us meditate upon all the words of this donation:
“This is My body,” the Saviour said; that is to say, the same body which was born in the crib and which died upon the cross; the same which ascended to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, where it is the joy of the angels, the glory of Paradise, and the bliss of all the blessed; and there is here not only the glorious body of Jesus Christ, there is also His blood, His soul, His divinity, which are inseparable from it; so that, when I communicate, paradise is within me, and the whole of heaven is within my heart.
“This is My body,” I believe it, Lord, because Thou hast said so, Thou who art the Holy and the True; I believe it as I believe in the existence of God, and I pity the heretic, who, measuring by his own littleness of heart the immense charity of God, is determined to see only the figure of the body there where Thou hast said that it was of a truth Thy body.
“Take and eat,” What a new kind of food to be nourished with a God, to incorporate a God, to become the living tabernacle! — “Do what I have just done;” that is to say, take bread, say like Me, “This is My body” and at that very moment it will be My body, even as I said at the creation, Let light be, and light was. It will be My body, in the hands of every priest without exception, because the power I confide to you is imperishable; the course of ages cannot exhaust its fecundity. It will be My body in all places: called upon by you into the most humble dwelling, I will descend there in as I will into the most superb basilica; and the very moment which will have seen you pronounce the sacred words will see me in your hands.
It will not matter how many millions of priests call upon Me at one and the same moment on all the different points of the globe; I will multiply the miracle by millions, multiplying My presence everywhere, whole and entire upon every altar, whole and entire in every host, whole and entire in every visible particle of each host.
O Jesus, how great is Thy love, how ineffable the excellence of Thy gift! and what an evil heart should I have if I did not love Thee with my whole soul!
Second Point
The Perpetuity of the Gift which Jesus Christ Makes us in Giving us the Eucharist.
All other gifts, even all the other sacraments, are but temporary; the Eucharist alone has the privilege of perpetuity. It is a gift of every moment of the day and of the night; at the moment and in the degree in which the sacrifice ceases on one portion of the globe it begins again in another; whilst our hemisphere is asleep, the other hemisphere is awake, and the priests who are there hold in their hands the Victim of the sins of the world; and when the sun, declining towards the horizon, returns to us, Jesus Christ comes back with it, to immolate Himself upon our altars, so that our heavenly Father always sees the Divine Mediator, suspended, as it were, between heaven and earth to avert the blows of His justice and to call down upon us the effusions of His mercy.
More admirable still is the permanence of the Eucharist as a sacrament. The sacrifice having been consummated, Jesus Christ remains with us day and night, always ready to receive us and to bestow on us His graces, always in adoration before His Father, always at prayer for us, always offering Himself in sacrifice for our salvation and for that of the whole world (Offertory of the Mass). Even when we forget Him, He thinks of us; even when we offend Him, He immolates Himself for us; when we have trials, He is in His tabernacle ready to console us; when we are weak, He is there to strengthen us; when our courage gives way and we are cast down, He is there to raise us up again; He cries to us without ceasing: “Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” (Matthew 11:28).
O ineffable love! how just and right it is that I should live only by love for Thee!
Meditations for All the Days of the Year, Vol. 3 by Reverend M. Hamon, S. S. (Benzinger Brothers, 1894, pages 231-235).
“And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me.” — Luke 22:19