CORPUS CHRISTI (B)

Charles de Foucauld, known to us as Brother Charles of Jesus, was a dynamic man who, after an idle & dissolute youth spent in Paris , became a unique blend of soldier, explorer, mystic & hermit living most of his later life in the North African desert. He had a devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, spending many hours in prayer before It, & his spirituality can be summed up in a Prayer of Abandonment which he himself wrote. It goes as follows:

“Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, & in all your creatures – I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hand I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you Lord, & so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, & with boundless confidence, for you are my father.”

This prayer shows that each of us is the object of an awesome love – a kind of love we can barely imagine because we have never experienced it in our human dealings. In fact, we might well question it – how could this possibly be? Perhaps the words of Fr.
Ed Farrell can help us on this point:

“Each of us is worthy of a little adoration. God ‘adores’ us far more than we can adore God. God gives Himself to us in a way we do not & cannot give ourselves to God. God loves us as we have never been able to love one another.”

If all this seems a bit much, perhaps it is because we haven’t spent enough time on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration. If it seems too good to be true, it may well be because our perspective has been so distorted by the values of the world that we are blind to the reality of something literally staring us in the face.

The next time we are depressed & feeling sorry for ourselves, remember the Mass & all the trouble our divine Lord had to go through to make it possible, & yes, STILL goes through! Not only His Passion, which is awesome enough, but the trouble he goes to get people to answer His call to the priesthood, & the many saints He has raised up for His Church over the centuries. What greater compliment could any human being receive than this: “The Lord of wind & sea, became a babe in Palestine , & lives today in bread & wine.” – Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate of England .

You see, whenever we kneel or genuflect or bow before the Blessed Sacrament, it is but a small token of our gratitude for such an enormous gift which defies our imagination! It is only because He gives Himself to us without reserve & with boundless confidence that we even DARE to hope, to know real joy, & to call Him “abba,” the Aramaic word for "daddy". AMEN!