Category: Eucharist

Christ comes from Heaven to Host: We Must Meet Him There

He came unto His own—that is, He comes as far as He can—from heaven to the Host, and down to the altar rails. Further He cannot come.  The rest of the way must be ours.

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

X
Neglect

He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
(John i. II.)

 

How strange it seems, O Lord! For You had been promised so long.  You had been so ardently desired by the best and noblest of our race; so gloriously prefigured, so set forth in prophecy, as to awaken the keenest expectation and enkindle the most glowing love. How was it, then, that Your own received You not?  How is it that even now You come unto Your own and are not welcomed, are not wanted, are left alone, not through the night only—that perhaps was to be expected—but through the long day hours, with Your so-called friends, and the weary and the heavy laden within a stone’s throw of Your door? Ah, Lord, the outrage and the sacrilege that mark the hatred of Your enemies are less to be wondered at, less to be deplored, than the coldness of those You call Your own.  You are not given to complain.  But when along the ages a meek remonstrance does break upon the silence, it is always the same—the protest wrung from You by the desertion of those You love.  “Behold…my familiar friends also are departed from me…My brethren have passed by me”(Job vi).  “Do you now believe?  Behold…you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone” (John xvi).  How Your Heart felt the desolation of abandonment; how, to speak human language, You feel it still—You made known in that cry of unrequited love, “Behold this Heart which has so loved men and is so little loved by them.”

Who would have thought that God could upbraid so tenderly, or that men could hear such reproach without being touched and won!  If not to make great sacrifices for Him, if not to give up all, at least to go a few steps in order to keep Him company in His loneliness, and sympathise with Him in His sorrows—surely He might have looked for this!

Dearest Lord, one would have expected You to be in such request upon the altar; expected that there would be crowding and crushing in Your presence as in the days of Your earthly life; that we should be seen flocking to You early and late, to show our appreciation of Your love, and to pour out our troubles into Your willing ear.  Where is our faith to leave You thus deserted?  “Do you believe?  Behold you shall be scattered every one to his own, and shall leave Me alone.”

He came unto His own—that is, He comes as far as He can—from heaven to the Host, and down to the altar rails. Further He cannot come.  The rest of the way must be ours. We must meet Him there in Holy Communion, or His loving journey to us will have been in vain.  He will not force our free will.  But He does so want to come.  Shall we disappoint Him? Oh, if our own love will not draw us to Him, at least let us have compassion on His!  If we think ourselves at liberty to deprive ourselves of our communions, surely we are not free to deprive Him of His.

You long, O Lover of my soul, to come to me.  Your delights are to be with me, cold, inhospitable as I am.  Come, then; come, Lord Jesus, and in satisfying Your own desire, enkindle mine.

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

 

 

Lord, Come and See!

Come to my heart, this dull cold heart of mine,
All irresponsive to a love divine;
What lacks it to become Thy hallowed shrine?  
Lord, come and see!  

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

IX
Lord, Come and See!

(John xi. 34)

 

Come to my heart as unto Bethl’hem’s grot,
A hovel-home that love despises not:
Can love transform it to a pleasant spot?
Lord, come and see!

Come to my heart as once to Bethany:
A brother’s grave is there, and piteously
Are tears and supplication calling Thee:
Lord, come and see!

How flocked of yore unto Thy blessed feet
The sick, the sad, Thy mercy to entreat!
I too have needs Thy pitying eye to meet:
Lord, come and see!

Come, lay Thy hand upon each leprous stain;
Come with Thy word of might the fiend to chain;
The open festering sore, the hidden pain,
Lord, come and see!

Come to my heart, this dull cold heart of mine,
All irresponsive to a love divine;
What lacks it to become Thy hallowed shrine?
Lord, come and see!

Happier by far than in the olden days
Judea’s glorious Temple—what delays
Its song and sacrifice, its prayer and praise?
Lord, come and see!

Perchance, like Temple Courts, doth sinful stain,
The world’s loud trafficking, the greed of gain
Thy Father’s house, the house of prayer profane:
Lord, come and see!

Come, Holy One, I yield myself to Thee;
E’en scourge in hand, come, Lord and Love, to me.
What change shall make me Thine, Thine utterly?
Lord, come and see!

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

 

 

Make My Heart Perfectly at Ease With You, Lord

What should I have to say were I in the presence of the one I love best in the world; with whom I am quite at my ease; my friend par excellence; to whom my trials, difficulties, character, the secrets of my soul are known…

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

VIII
Looking Through the Lattices

(Cant. ii. 9.)

 

But meanwhile the Beloved is behind the wall.  And He is there with all the sympathy for our difficulty which His perfect knowledge of it enables Him to have. “Jesus…needed not that any man should tell Him…for He knew what was in man”(john ii).  He knows the weariness of praying on against apparently unanswered prayer; against the pain of physical restlessness, the labour of thought, the irksomeness of concentration, the perpetual gathering together of the forces that are playing truant in a thousand fields, recalled for a brief space only to be off again more wayward for their capture. All this He knows.  And our remedy is to remember that He knows it.  He Who has appointed prayer to be the channel of grace, means such prayer as we can bring Him. He does not ask impossibilities.  He does not place us amid distracting work all day long and expect us to shut it out by an effort of will the moment we kneel down to pray. Nor even to shut it out by repeated efforts.  He would have us turn our distractions and weariness not so much into matter for self-reproach, or humiliation even, as into a loving, trustful plea for His pity and His help.  This is prayer.  Lay the tired brain, the strained muscles, the aching head—lay them all down at His feet without a word, just for His eye to rest on and His Heart to help and heal.

There are times when physical lassitude, cold or heat, an importunate thought, a trial with its sting still fresh, baffles every effort to fix the mind on the subject of prayer, and concentrates the whole attention on what for the moment is all-absorbing.  Times harder still to manage, when mind and heart are so absolutely vacant and callous that there is no rousing them to action.  This reflection will sometimes be helpful then: What should I have to say were I in the presence of the one I love best in the world; with whom I am quite at my ease; my friend par excellence; to whom my trials, difficulties, character, the secrets of my soul are known; that one in whose concerns and welfare I take the deepest interest; whose plans and views are mine, discussed again and again together; in whose company time flies and the hour for parting comes too soon—what should I find to say?

Say it, make an effort to say it to Him Who is in the tabernacle yonder.

O Jesus, hidden God, more friendly than a brother(Prov. xviii), I believe most firmly that You are present, a few feet only from where I kneel. You are behind that little wall, listening for every word of confidence, and love, and thanksgiving, and praise.  Listening when my heart is free to pour itself out to You as the brook to the river in the days of spring.  Listening more tenderly when the stream is ice-bound; when I kneel before You troubled, wearied, anxious about many things—about many souls perhaps—yet dry and hard, without a word to say. Make my heart so perfectly at ease with You, O Lord, that it may be able to turn to You even in its coldness and inertness; to confide to You naturally all that most intimately concerns it; to be content with this, when discontented with all else, with self most of all—that You know all men and need not that any should give testimony of man, for You know what is in man (john ii). 

 

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

 

 

Don’t Shy from Adoration Because You Get Distracted in Prayer – Take Your Cares to Your Lord!

Some of us, maybe, are deterred from visiting our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament by a false conception of what a visit should be.  We suppose that the occupations which fill our heads and our hands from morning till night must all be laid aside at the church door and sternly forbidden entrance, much in the same way as we bid our dog lie down in the porch and wait for us. 

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

V
What Things?


“Art Thou a stranger and hast not known the things that have
been done in these days?” To whom He said: “What things?”
(Luke xxiv. 18, 19.)

 

Some of us, may-be, are deterred from visiting our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament by a false conception of what a visit should be.  We suppose that the occupations which fill our heads and our hands from morning till night must all be laid aside at the church door and sternly forbidden entrance, much in the same way as we bid our dog lie down in the porch and wait for us.  We read that St. Bernard thus dismissed all secular thoughts, and we conclude—though his biographer does not say so—that they returned at the end of his prayer, and not before. Self-mastery such as this demands an effort to which few of us feel equal.  Do what they will, the mind of the doctor and the lawyer will run more or less upon their anxious cases, the student’s head will be full of his examination, the mother’s of her household cares.  These thoughts, if indeliberate, will be at least persistent, and if quite deliberate will become sinful.  In either case they render prayer an impossibility—hence we stay away.

Now do we find this view of prayer borne out by the practice of God’s servants?  Of David in perplexity and trouble we read: “And the Philistines coming spread themselves in the valley of Raphaim.  And David consulted the Lord, saying: Shall I go up to the Philistines? and wilt Thou deliver them into my hand?  And the Lord said to David: Go up, for I will surely deliver the Philistines into thy hand…And the Philistines came up again…And David consulted the Lord: Shall I go up against the Philistines?…He answered: Go not up against them.”(2 Kings v. ) 

Of David in a mood of joy and thankfulness we are told: “And King David came and sat before the Lord, and said: Who am I, O Lord God, that Thou shouldst give such things to me?” (1 Par. xvii.)  

See, too, the simplicity and confidence of Ezechias on receiving the threatening message of Sennacherib: “And Ezechias took the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it, and went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.”(Isa. xxxvii.) 

A common complaint is that daily worries and anxieties so invade our minds that our prayer has no chance.  But is this our feeling about a talk with a trusty friend—a man of sound judgment, wide experience and influence, on whose interest in all that concerns us we can count with certainty?  Should we say: “I had half an hour with him this morning, but my mind was so full of that affair I could find nothing to say”; or: “I had it all out with him this morning, and am ever so much better already”?

Why not deal thus familiarly with our best Friend?  If Ezechias could spread out his letter before the Lord in that old Temple, which was but a shadow of the better things to come, why may not we carry our good news and our bad before the pitying human Heart of Christ, with us all days on purpose to hear every day—and, if we will, every hour of the day—all we have to tell Him, and hearing all, to help in all?

Had our Lord said to us: “I will prosper any spiritual concerns that you commend to Me, but really you must look after your own temporal affairs, and I shall count it an irreverence if you bring such things into My presence”—had He said this, there might be some excuse for the pains we take to shut Him out of the cares and business of everyday life.

But has He said this, or does all we know of Him go to prove the exact contrary?  Did He count it an irreverence when the sick were thrust upon Him at every step; when a paralytic let down from the roof and laid at His feet stopped His teaching; when messengers came one upon another to draw Him here and there for some temporal need: “Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick”(John xi); “Lord, come down before that my son die” (Ibid. iv)? Did He refuse the invitation at Cana?  And if, for a brief space, He delayed the miracle designed from all eternity to manifest His tender interest in the joys as well as in the sorrows of home life, was it not obviously to show how Mary’s heart beat in unison with His, and to honour His Mother’s prayer?

“Lord, come and see,” said the weeping sisters as they led the way to the grave.  Look at Him between them, listening now to one, now to the other, as they tell the history of the past three days—how they had watched and waited for Him, and counted on His coming, and He came not. See their tearful eyes.  See the eager Heart, longing for the moment when He may reward their trust and turn their mourning into gladness.

What should we have felt and said that day at Bethany if, after raising Lazarus, He had turned to us and made Himself our listener, placing Himself, as was His wont, at the complete disposal of the one who wanted Him?  Should we have felt shy of trying to interest Him in the details of our life, in our little joys and troubles?  Or would our hearts have opened out to Him, and simply emptied themselves in His presence?

Do we want an ideal visit to Christ?  Let us seek it in Nicodemus’ talks by night; in the centurion’s urgent pleading for his servant; in the unburdening of soul that we see in Zaccheus and in the sisters at Bethany. And let us frame our own visits on such models.  If a big worry threatens to invade prayer, why not take it straight away into prayer, giving it the place and time it wants, making it the subject-matter of our intercourse with God, and so turning a hindrance into a help!

Of course we must do all this with reverence and a certain amount of watchfulness, or our prayer will be no prayer at all, but distraction pure and simple.  But if we put our case before our Lord and talk it over with Him, representing our difficulty, asking His advice, listening to His whispered word in answer, our time of prayer will be what He wants it to be—a time of rest, and light, and strength.

Some may say that this so-called prayer is very unsupernatural, and that the results of such a compromise between prayer and distraction will not be very satisfactory. It may be so; we can only reply that there are times without number when this is the only method of getting results at all, and that our Lord’s method of dealing with His own and theirs with Him was eminently natural. 

No, surely, our difficulty is not due to want of sympathy on the part of Christ our Lord.  It can only come from our failing to recognise the full purpose of the Incarnation and its bearing on every detail of human life.  Had His act of Redemption been His one motive in coming amongst us, He might have come straight from His throne at the right hand of the Father to the cross on Calvary.  But the proof of love greater than which no man can give did not satisfy Him.  He wanted, as “Firstborn amongst many brethren,”(Rom. viii) as Head of the human family, to place Himself in intimate communication with it on every side—to touch, as far as might be, every point, every experience of human life, entering personally into its mysteries of joy, and fear, and love, and sorrow.  And so we have the years of infancy and childhood and youth, and—precious above all— the blessed years of the public life, when “the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us,”(Acts i.) proving by every word and act His desire to be associated with us His brethren, His right to His name of predilection—the Son of Man. 

He it is Whom we find waiting for us when our turn comes to pass across the short stage of life on earth.  He calls us to Him, calls us by our name, one by one.  He bids us take Him to our hearts as the nearest and dearest of our friends, Who alone can stand by us when all others fail.  He bids us cultivate His friendship, and try it and prove it.  And He promises that we shall find Him what all have found Him who have put their trust in Him—what Martha and Mary, and Paul and Bernard, and Teresa and Margaret Mary have found Him—the “Faithful and True,”(Apoc. xix)  “Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day: and the same for ever.”(3 Heb. xiii) 

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

When Jesus Speaks from the Tabernacle

There will be no more visitors for Me today, none through the long hours of the night.  Stay with Me because it is towards evening.

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

IV
The Son of Man


“I also have a heart as well as you.”
(Mark x. 38, 39.)

 

 

Our Lord does quite simply what some of us are too proud to do.  He owns to the yearning felt by every human heart for the sympathy of its kind. He speaks plainly of His desire to share His joy and sorrows with His friends, and is at no pains to conceal His need of their support, His gratitude for their devotedness, His distress at their unfaithfulness and desertion.  “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me: that they may see My glory.”(John xvii)  “You are they who have continued with Me in My temptations.”(Luke xxii)  “My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with Me…Could you not watch one hour with Me?”(Matt xxvi)  “The hour cometh…that you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone.”(John xvi) 

He comes to a weak woman for her compassion and her help.  He asks her to spread abroad among His friends the words in which He unburdened His heart to her, and beg them to come and bear Him company in His life of solitude and neglect.  To each one of us He says from the tabernacle: “Stay you here, and watch with Me…Could you not watch one hour with Me?” Or if not one hour, one quarter?

Stay with Me because I am going to offer My morning sacrifice, and men are too busy to assist at the oblation of Myself for them.

Stay with Me for a few moments at midday, when the glare of the world and its rush and its din are fiercest. Turn off the crowded pavement into the quiet church, “Come apart…and rest a little.”(Mark vi) 

Stay with Me because it is towards evening and the day is now far spent.  There will be no more visitors for Me today, none through the long hours of the night.  Stay with Me because it is towards evening.

O Lover of men, so lonely, so forsaken, if Your object in staying with us day and night was to win our love, have You not failed? Has it been worth Your while to work miracle after miracle to produce Your Real Presence upon the altar?  Have I made it worth Your while to be there for me?   Jesus, dear Jesus, I bury my face in my hands; I know of no heart more ungrateful, more callous than my own.  I have been miserably unmindful of Your Presence here for me. I have let self, pleasure, troubles even—anything and everything furnish an excuse for keeping away from You and neglecting You in that sacramental life which is lived here for me.

 

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

What Can We Promise in Response to Our Lord?

“Can you come after Me by taking up your cross daily— the cross I have laid upon you to liken you to Myself?” 

As we continue our Thursday Lenten meditation series for adoration, join us in reading Chapter III of Mother Mary Loyola’s Coram Sanctissimo.

 

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

III
“Possumus.”
[We can.]

“Can you drink of the chalice that I drink of?” “We can.”
(Mark x. 38, 39.)

 

Far back in the ages before the world was, “in the beginning,” I hear the Eternal Father treating with His co-equal Son about my redemption:

“Canst Thou for that soul and for its salvation go down from heaven and be made man?”

And the Divine Word answered: “I can.”

“Canst Thou live a life of thirty-three years, toiling and teaching and instituting Divine means for its salvation, and end that life of hardship and suffering by a death of pain and shame?”

“I can.”

“Canst Thou perpetuate that Incarnation and annihilation even to the end of time; hiding Thyself under the form of bread in order to meet it on its entrance into life, to be its companion, its refuge, its food all the days of its pilgrimage?”

“I can.”

“And when, O Lover of that soul, it shall meet Thy love, Thy advances, Thy sacrifices as Thou knowest it will meet them, canst Thou bear with it still, supporting its coldness, its waywardness, its indifference, its ingratitude?”

And Jesus said, “I can.”

And now my Redeemer turns to question me in my turn:

“Can you for the sake of your salvation co-operate with Me and turn to your own profit all I have done and am ready to do for you, resolving to avoid everything that would imperil the great work we have undertaken—all grievous sin and all venial sin that leads to mortal?”

What can I answer but, “O Lord, I can”—?

“Can you, as some return for My love, find it in your heart to avoid not only sin, but the infidelities which impede My work in your soul, obstruct My grace and hinder union between us?”

What is my answer now?

“Can you, with the eye of faith, see Me in My suffering members—the poor, the sick, the outcast, the unprotected, the little helpless children—and for My sake sacrifice leisure, or ease, or worldly means to succour and serve them?”

“Give me the faith, Lord, to recognise You in all these, and in the strength of that faith, I can.”

“Can you come after Me by taking up your cross daily— the cross I have laid upon you to liken you to Myself?”

“Yes, Lord, for beneath will be the everlasting arms.  You will not leave me alone, and with Your help, I can.”

“Can you uphold My cause in the face of ridicule and disgrace—ready, if not glad, to suffer reproach for My name?”

“In Him Who strengtheneth me, Lord, I can.”

“Can you bear to be overlooked, set at naught, despised by the world as one at variance with its principles, as following another leader?  Can you bear the taunt: ‘And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth’ —? ”

“Look on me, Lord, in hours of trial as You looked on Peter, and sustained by that glance, I can.”

“Can you drink still deeper of My chalice—the chalice I drained for you—bearing with constancy desolation of spirit and the hiding of the Father’s Face, content to serve Him for Himself rather than for His gifts?”

“In union, O my Lord, with Your desolate soul on Calvary, I can.”

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

Lord, Teach me to Praise You

Do this for me, O dearest Lord.  Praise does not come easily to these lips of mine. The cares of life, and its failures, and its pains; heaviness of soul, and the weight of the corruptible body, with all the engrossingness of self, wring my heart dry of praise. 

As we continue our Thursday Lenten meditation series for adoration, join us in reading Chapter II of Mother Mary Loyola’s Coram Sanctissimo.

 

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

II
Praise 

Give praise to our God, all ye His servants, and you
that fear Him, little and great. (Apoc. xix. 5.)

When heaven is opened for an instant it is to let out a burst of praise.  “Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke ii.)  “Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power!”(Apoc. iv.) “The Lamb that was slain, is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction…To Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction and honour and glory and power for ever and ever.” (Ibid. v)

We lift up our heads; we are rapt. It is an unexpected strain from fatherland that catches the exile’s ear and thrills through every fibre of his being.  It finds an affinity, that burst of praise, in every human soul on which the sense of exile weighs.  For it is the strain to which every soul is attuned by the very fact of its creation.  The language of praise is our mother-tongue. Gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle [For you, moaning and weeping in this vale of tears] was no part of God’s original design for us.  We took the golden harps out of His hand and strained and broke the strings, and now the notes are plaintive when not discordant.  But Christ has restored all things. He has brought back our joy by taking our sorrow on Himself.  Because here on earth He prayed “with a strong cry and tears” (Heb. v.) the song of praise is to be put again upon our lips. Yet a little while and “God shall wipe away all tears…and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more” (Appoc. xxi).  He is here upon the altar, waiting to catch up the faint accents of my praise, and bear them with His own before the throne of God.

Do this for me, O dearest Lord.  Praise does not come easily to these lips of mine.  The cares of life, and its failures, and its pains; heaviness of soul, and the weight of the corruptible body, with all the engrossingness of self, wring my heart dry of praise.  A sudden revelation of Your goodness in the removal of a trial, or the advent of an unlooked-for joy, will lighten it for a moment and lift it up to You in benediction.  Yet even this impulse of thankful love is weak and cannot long sustain itself, and I fall again humbled at Your feet, to feel how little I can do and say even at my best.  As to the pure praise of heaven—free of all thought of self, where self is drowned in the glad, triumphant, all-absorbing sense of Your greatness, and grandeur, and all-sufficingness—of this I know nothing.  Yet it is the language of my country, the tongue I shall speak for ever—should I not be learning it here in time?  A language may be learned in a foreign land though the accent we only catch on its own soil.

Often and often, dear Master, I say to You with the Twelve, “Teach me to pray.” I say to You now, “Teach me to praise.” Teach me that highest, purest prayer which will be the incense rising for ever from my heart when other prayer has ceased.

Fuller and richer every hour grows the heavenly harmony, as part after part is taken up by the blessed choristers arriving from earth and purgatory.  But for whom are reserved the richest notes in the anthem, entoned with human voice by Christ Himself?  Surely for those who have practised that praise even here in hac lacrymarum valle [in this vale of tears].  Whose hearts have never been allowed, even in exile, to forget the tongue of fatherland. Which have leaped up day by day in the Gloria in excelsis and the Magnificat, in the Benedictus and the Te Deum. Which have persisted in praise when the heart was weighted heaviest; when doubt, repining, rebellion even, sought to stifle its voice.  They heard the call:  “Arise, give praise in the night” (Lament. ii.). And answered: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job i).  It is this praise in the night that sounds sweetest in the ear of God.  It is of these His faithful servants that He says: “They shall praise Me in the land of their captivity, and shall be mindful of My name” (Baruch ii).

What wonder that their song shall be sweetest in the City of Peace; that their voices shall mingle more intimately than the rest with hers whose heart was singing Ecce ancilla—even in its agony—with His Who, having sung a hymn, went forth to Calvary!

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

If God is Our Best Friend, Why do We Treat Him Like a Doormat?

He wants our intercourse with Him to be perfectly free; nothing studied, nothing strained.  He desires to have us as we are, no less than as we would be. 

coram sanctissimo

Coram Sanctissimo
by Mother Mary Loyola

I
Visits 

Go to Him early in the morning, and let thy foot wear the steps of His doors.
(Ecclus. vi. 36.)

How careful we are to observe the courtesies of life! How uneasy till such social duties are discharged! In the making and returning of calls, how fidgety if hindered, how sensible that delay demands apology!

And this where mere acquaintances are concerned.  But what when there is question of a friend, a benefactor, one devoted to us and to our interests?  If formal visits are here uncalled for, it is only because our heart needs no prompting. Uninvited, inconsiderately often, we come and go, “wearing the steps of his doors.”

And our best of friends—do we treat Him thus?—as affectionately, as familiarly?  If not, why not?  Is He not among the benefactors whose gifts deserve thanks, the friends whose feelings have to be considered, the acquaintances, at least, whose attentions must be acknowledged?  Is it because He puts Himself so completely at our disposal that He is to be neglected?  Or because He is King of kings that He is to be considered outside the circle where courtesy is exacted?

Ah, Lord, how unmindful we are of what is due to You! How unmindful I am of Your unfailing devotedness to me! Sent into this world as into a strange neighbourhood, I found You waiting to receive me, to make me welcome, to offer Your services, to show me all manner of graceful kindness.  You have thrown open Your house to me.  You invite me to Your table. You press upon me Your gifts: “All ye that thirst, come to the waters…Come, buy wine and milk without money and without any price” (Isa. lv.). “Come to Me and I will refresh you” (Matt. xi.). “Him that cometh to Me, I will not cast out” (John vi. ).  You make use of every motive to draw me to Yourself; yet have to complain after all: “You will not come to Me that you may have life” (Ibid v.).

“They began all at once to make excuse.  I have bought a farm…I pray thee, hold me excused.  I have bought five yoke of oxen…I pray thee, hold me excused.  I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come” (Luke xiv.). 

Thus it was long ago; thus it is now.  We have time for other duties—for our correspondence, our shopping, our afternoon calls on other more favoured friends.  But no time for a visit to Him.  Is it so far then to the nearest church?  So far that He may well accept the distance as sufficient reason for our absence, except at times when attendance is of obligation?  Can I urge home duties and necessary occupations, when I see who those are that can and do find time to visit Him?

O my Lord, why these wretched subterfuges with You, “the God of truth”? (Psa. xxx.)  Why not fall at Your feet and own that it is not distance, nor lack of leisure, nor any reasonable plea that keeps me from You, but simply and solely the want of love?  It is a reason I could not give to any other friend.  I should have to find some other pretext with which to colour my neglect.  But with You there need be no dissembling.  Your friendship stands alone in the perfect frankness and confidence permissible on both sides.  We may own to being cold and half-unwilling visitors, yet we are not, for that, unwelcome.  The petulance, the selfishness, the waywardness of our moods that in the very interest of other friendships call for self-restraint, may show themselves in all their ugliness before the All-pitying, the Friend “more friendly than a brother,”(Prov. xviii)  whom nothing can shock, disgust, estrange.

He wants our intercourse with Him to be perfectly free; nothing studied, nothing strained.  He desires to have us as we are, no less than as we would be.  He wants to be taken into our confidence, to be let into the secret chambers of our souls, into which we only peep ourselves at stated times and with half-averted glance.  He would share in the interests and troubles of the moment; be called upon for sympathy in every event, great or small, that interrupts the even flow of our home life or of our inner life; take part in every experience, whether of sorrow or of joy.  The soldier off to the front, the baby with its broken toy, the girl with her first secret, no less than the wife, the mother, the priest, with their burdened hearts— He wants them all.  He sees us going off here and there for help, and comfort, and counsel.  He hears our feet as they hurry past His door to wear the doorsteps of other friends, and He calls to us in those tones divine in their tenderness of reproach: “You will not come to Me.  My people have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living water,and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. ii.).  

How long, O Lord, how long?  When shall we wake up to the reality of Your Presence in our midst, and to the purpose of that Presence?  We would die for it if need be, and yet we heed it not. Shall I wait till it is brought home to me by the remorse of my last hour, or by the long, long hours of purgatory?  Oh, why did I not make use of my Emmanuel, my God with me, whilst I had time, “whilst He was in the way with me”? (Matt. v.) Why during my dream-life down there did I not realise the need of Him that is the one need in this real life of eternity?

A child at catechism said: “Won’t it be dreadful for those who don’t believe in the Real Presence to find at Judgment that it was real, that our Lord was there after all!  Even if they didn’t know any better, and so it was not their fault, and our Lord is not angry with them—I think they will be so dreadfully sorry all the same.”

But if these will be sorry, what will be the case of those who did know, and neglected Him? Those to whom He will say, “So long a time have I been with you,and you have not known Me!”(John xiv. ) “I was daily with you in the temple.” (Luke xxii.)

Lord Jesus, let not that be my bitterest thought in purgatory, that land of bitter thoughts.  It is time that Your love should be returned, that I should make amends for the past, that I should hasten to You with my sorrow and my love.

Go to Him early in the morning.  Is daily Mass an impossibility in my case?  He waits for me there, to offer, for me and with me, His sacrifice and mine for the interests we share together.

And let thy feet wear the steps of His doors. More especially in the afternoon or evening, when the church is quiet and He is left all alone.  With a little goodwill and ingenuity could I not include a visit to Him in my weekly, if not in my daily programme?  Could I not so arrange my calls to other friends as to leave a few moments for my dearest and my best?  How blessed a remembrance, when He is brought to my doors at the last, to be my viaticum, that in life I was faithful to the duties of friendship and wore the steps of His doors!

O blessed, self-sufficing God
Athirst for me,
Coming a beggar to my door
All suppliantly,
Craving with meek persistence alms
Of my poor heart,
A thought, a word of sympathy—how sweet,
How sweet Thou art!  

And must Thou knock and ever knock
Till life is flown,
Seeking vain entrance to a heart
That is Thine own? 
Or wilt Thou rather work this hour
Such change in me
That hither I may come “wearing Thy steps”
Athirst for Thee!  

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

Eucharistic Adoration: The Development of a Devotion

The custom of honouring the Eucharistic presence of Christ our Lord by paying “Visits” to the Blessed Sacrament may be quoted as one of the most conspicuous examples of development in the devotional practice of the Catholic Church. 

If you are looking for thought-provoking meditations for Eucharistic Adoration this Lent, look no further! Beginning with this lovely preface today (Ash Wednesday), from hereafter each Thursday throughout Lent we will post a chapter from Coram Sanctissimo, a simple yet profound work by Mother Mary Loyola, first published in 1902. If you’ve ever wondered over the practice of Eucharistic Adoration, be sure to read on!

 

coram sanctissimo

In this Preface to Coram Sanctissimo by Mother Mary Loyola,
Herbert Thurston, S.J., introduces this beautiful book of meditations for Eucharistic Adoration by first discussing the development of the devotion.

Coram Sanctissimo

Preface

The custom of honouring the Eucharistic presence of Christ our Lord by paying “Visits” to the Blessed Sacrament may be quoted as one of the most conspicuous examples of development in the devotional practice of the Catholic Church.  Down to the latter part of the Middle Ages such an usage seems to have been entirely unknown.  As far as regards England, the late Father Bridgett, if I mistake not, says that in all the researches made by him while compiling his History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain he had not come across one clear example of a visit to the Blessed Sacrament in pre-Reformation times.  Even on the Continent the idea of any extra-liturgical cultus of the Blessed Eucharist seems to have grown up very tardily. There were many saints as late as the fifteenth century—say, for example, St. Frances of Rome, whose lives show no trace of such a conception, though nothing could be more strongly emphasised than their devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion.  It is remarkable to notice that even St. Ignatius Loyola, in the book of the Spiritual Exercises, when directing attention to the abiding presence of God with His creatures as a motive for awakening love, says not a word of the Blessed Sacrament.  One must not, of course, press the negative argument too far.  No prudent man would infer in this latter case that the practice of visiting churches to commune with our Lord in the Tabernacle was unknown in the sixteenth century, but it is reasonable to conclude that the uninterrupted Eucharistic presence of God with His people did not then play the same conspicuous part in the devotional life of the faithful that it does in our day.

This late and gradual development of a devotion, which seems to us now so natural and so unmistakably involved in premises that all men accepted, is certainly a remarkable fact. Even to the present day the Greek Church, though its belief in transubstantiation is no less explicit than our own, has never drawn the inference that our Lord has come in the Blessed Sacrament to be our companion and refuge as well as our food.  It seems to have been part of the Divine dispensation, in this as in some other matters, to hold men’s eyes that they should not know Him.  Throughout the long centuries our forefathers seem to have regarded the Eucharistic presence as if Christ had wished to preserve His incognito while He dwelt amongst them, or as if He were sleeping as of old in the bark of Peter and would rebuke the want of faith of those who too importunately disturbed His repose.  But surely we are right in thinking that if they so apprehended God’s purpose in remaining on our altars, their appreciation of His boon was but inchoative and imperfect.  To us now it seems so obvious that the work of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was not meant to be intermittent, limited to the time of Mass and Holy Communion, that it is hard to believe that Christians who truly recognised this presence in their midst can ever have conceived otherwise.  Perhaps we may draw the lesson that if the fulness of understanding were long delayed in so plain a matter, it is not surprising that in other dogmas and practices which justify themselves less obviously, there may be developments in the Church’s teaching not suspected or at least not clearly apprehended by our forefathers in the faith.

As things are, no devout Catholic would wish to be deprived of the privilege of drawing near to our Saviour in the Tabernacle and making Him the daily confidant of hopes and fears, of joys and troubles.  But what distresses many pious souls is that having Him ready and willing to listen they should so often find themselves tongue-tied in His presence.  The set forms of prayer which they know by heart are worn threadbare by routine, and books too often prove stiff and artificial.  The heart has many wants and longings, but hardly knows how to put them into words.  In such a case real help, I think, is likely to be found in this very miscellaneous collection of musings, self-arraignments, out-pourings of spirit, to which the authoress has given the apt name of Coram Sanctissimo, “in the presence of the Most Holy.” They are not intended to be taken in rotation, or to be used every day, but there are times when a troubled worshipper, turning over the leaves, may light upon something here which will chime in with his mood and will make the task of prayer more easy to him.  And if for one or another the thoughts of this little book may serve to break the ice and to render the soul for the nonce more at home in that holy presence, I feel sure that the authoress will consider the labour spent in writing it to have been abundantly repaid.

It will be noticed that in the pages which follow verse finds a place as well as prose. It would not be fair to let this go forth to the world without stating that it has been written, so to speak, under protest, and that without strong encouragement Mother Mary Loyola would hardly have suffered it to see the light.  Although the verses are perhaps unequal, I do not in any way repent the share I have had in urging the writer to let them stand.  It would have been worth a greater risk of failure and a longer expenditure of time to have secured even a few such happy lines as may be read for instance in the chapter headed “In Silence and in Hope,” describing St. Mary Magdalen:—

She came with her crushing memories,
She came with her secret fears,
She brought Him her hidden misery
And her bitter, burning tears.

Or again:—

Absorbed in her loving ministries
She knelt at His feet apart,
The scandal of every eye save one
That soundeth the secret heart.  

The verses at best are only an experiment.  They were written in each case for the sake of the thought, not of the metrical form, and if the authoress could have found, as she long endeavoured to do, any suitable religious poetry which expressed kindred ideas, and which would have afforded that variety which is meant to be characteristic of this little booklet, she would have been glad, I know, to escape the seeming presumption of appearing as a writer of verse.  But I do not think that the many friends who use and appreciate Mother Loyola’s Confession and Communion and her other devotional books will be disappointed in anything which may meet their eye in this new effort of her pen.

Herbert Thurston, S.J.
11th September, 1900

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!

Before the Most Holy – A Lenten Meditation Series

As you make preparations for Lent, perhaps you plan to carve out some time for Eucharistic Adoration. If so, we invite you to join us in reading a wonderful book by Mother Mary Loyola. 

As you make preparations for Lent, perhaps you plan to carve out some time for Eucharistic Adoration. If so,  we invite you to join us in reading a wonderful book by Mother Mary Loyola.

If you’ve followed my posts at all, whether here or at spiritualdirection.com, you know that Mother Mary Loyola is one of my favorite spiritual writers. Beginning with The King of the Golden City (a children’s book) many years ago, I have eagerly sought her work. Imagine how thrilled I was to learncoram sanctissimo
that St. Augustine Academy Press has beautifully reprinted all her books, that pilgrims in the 21st Century might be as blessed as those in her own generation.

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Pelican’s Breast is so excited to share excerpts from Mother Mary Loyola’s book, Coram Sanctissimo (Before the Most Holy). With 40 chapters, intended as reflection for 40 hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, this book beautifully lends itself to Lenten contemplation. As we humble ourselves before the Almighty, offering from the depths of our hearts acts of repentance, prayer and fasting, we can be inspired by the words of Mother Mary Loyola, whose sole desire is to draw us ever closer to Him.

On Ash Wednesday I will post the Preface, and then every Thursday throughout Lent,  – and perhaps thereafter – I will post one chapter from Coram Sanctissimo. I pray it will give you much fodder for thought as you approach Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. No doubt time spent with the insightful words of Mother Mary Loyola will help you to grow in humility and love, two great virtues necessary for true sacrifice.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you so much to St. Augustine Academy Press for cooperating with this endeavor! If you are interested in this or other works by Mother Mary Loyola (as well as many other great books for spiritual growth and meditation), please check out their website.You will find many wonderful treasures from which to choose!
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