Jesús, pan de vida

Quien come de este pan vivirá eternamente

La Virgen María engendró a Jesucristo, lo estrechó entre sus brazos, lo envolvió en pañales y lo colmó de sus cuidados de madre. Es el mismo Jesús del que nosotros recibimos ahora el cuerpo y la sangre en el sacramento del altar. Esta es la verdad de la fe católica, esto es lo que enseña fielmente la Iglesia.

Ninguna lengua llegará a glorificar debidamente a aquella de quien nació el mediador entre Dios y los hombres. No hay elogio humano que esté a la altura de aquella que llevó en sus purísimas entrañas el fruto que alimenta nuestras almas, aquel que da testimonio de sí mismo con estas palabras: Yo soy el Pan vivo que ha bajado del cielo; quien come de este pan vivirá eternamente. En efecto, los que hemos sido desterrados del paraíso de las delicias a causa de un alimento somos devueltos a los gozos del paraíso por un alimento. Eva comió de la manzana y fuimos condenados a un ayuno eterno. María nos da el Pan de vida y somos invitados al banquete eterno.

San Pedro Damián

Sermón 45: PL 144, 743-747.

Ermitaño y después obispo, es doctor de la Iglesia (1007-1072).

Jesús, pan de vida

Yo soy el Pan de vida

Cuando Cristo dice de sí mismo, refiriéndose al pan: Este es mi cuerpo, ¿quién dudará? Y cuando afirma: Esta es mi sangre, ¿quién vacilará? Te es dado su cuerpo bajo la forma de pan y su sangre bajo la forma de vino para que, participando en el cuerpo y en la sangre de Cristo, formes con él un solo cuerpo y una sola sangre. Así nos convertimos en «portadores de Cristo», «cristóforos». Su cuerpo y su sangre se diluyen en nuestros miembros. Así nos hacemos partícipes de su naturaleza divina. En otro tiempo, conversando con los judíos, Cristo les decía: Si no coméis la carne del Hijo del hombre y no bebéis su sangre, no tendréis vida en vosotros. Si el pan y el vino son puramente naturales a tus ojos, no te quedes en esto. Si tus sentidos te extravían, deja que la fe te asegure.

Cuando te acercas, pues, para recibir el Cuerpo de Cristo, no te acerques distraído, extendiendo las palmas de las manos con los dedos separados, sino, como se va a posar el Rey sobre tu mano derecha, hazle un trono con tu mano izquierda y en el hueco de tu mano recibe el cuerpo de Cristo y responde: ¡Amén!

San Cirilo de Jerusalén

Catequesis bautismal, 22.

Obispo de Jerusalén,
autor de catequesis y predicaciones,
sufrió varios destierros. Es doctor de la Iglesia (315-386).

Belief that leads to eternal life

Dear Father, here I am at the close of my life, my soul at peace and my heart steady. In a few hours a new and eternal dawn will break for me, if our Lord judges me worthy to be counted among his children. In these last moments I can hardly help reviewing all the scenes of my past life in the radiance of the new light that is mine as I stand on the threshold of life. They are not sad, because they have led up to the love of Jesus, thus taking on a meaning I never suspected. Some are even happy, and here I am thinking of those hours I spent at the foot of the improvised altar in a prison cell, or the time passed in reading the spiritual books your goodness knew how to choose for me—always the best!

I owe you my heartfelt thanks, Father, for your perseverance in my regard, for your kindness and the care you have always taken for my soul’s welfare, ­nourishing it faithfully with its one need: our Lord Jesus Christ. I am trying to thank you at least in part here below, but although I may seem presumptuous in saying this, I cannot hide from you the fact that it is from heaven, whence all blessings flow, that I should like to be able to thank you.

I shall carry your name to heaven with me, written in my heart, and when the Lord allows me to cast a glance down to earth, I shall gaze into a dark little cell where a priest is celebrating the greatest of all possible sacrifices, uniting himself each day to crucified love, and then I shall ask our Lord to cast a gracious glance on his faithful minister and fill him with blessings. Peace be with you, my Father, and may the eternal light soon shine upon you also. 

Until we meet in God, 

Your humble and grateful sheep, Jacques.

Servant of God Jacques Fesch

El que cree en mi no morirá

El que cree en mi no morirá,
sino que obtendrá la vida eterna

¿Qué nos está diciendo, pues, la cruz de Cristo, que es en cierto sentido la última palabra de su mensaje y de su misión mesiánica? Y, sin embargo, esta no es aún la última palabra del Dios de la alianza: esa palabra será pronunciada en aquella alborada, cuando las mujeres primero y los apóstoles después, venidos al sepulcro de Cristo crucificado, verán la tumba vacía y proclamarán por vez primera: Ha resucitado. Ellos lo repetirán a los otros y serán testigos de Cristo resucitado…

Creer en el Hijo crucificado significa ver al Padre, significa creer que el amor está presente en el mundo y que este amor es más fuerte que toda clase de mal en que el hombre, la humanidad, el mundo están metidos. Creer en ese amor significa creer en la misericordia. En efecto, es esta la dimensión indispensable del amor, es como su segundo nombre y a la vez el modo específico de su revelación y actuación respecto a la realidad del mal presente en el mundo que afecta al hombre y lo asedia, que se insinúa asimismo en su corazón y puede hacerle perecer en la gehena.

San Juan Pablo II

Witnesses of Christ Victory

We cannot proceed from the perspective of a battle that has not already been won. All our cultural activities, whatever form, shape, topic they take, should have as a point of departure our own conviction, our own certainty that the cultural battle, if I may put it that way, has already been won by Christ….

If this is in any way, shape, or form true (and again we are in the midst of a season that proclaims its truth everywhere), then what are we afraid of? We are not engaged in any cultural battle because that battle has been won. All we have to do is give witness to that victory. But we cannot give convincing witness unless we experience the reality of that victory within our own lives and heart. Otherwise it is just words….

The real struggle begins in the heart, and so we must ask ourselves the question: Am I prepared to say before the evidence of my own heart that this is true, that Christ has indeed conquered? That the new life that he has made possible, totally unimaginable and unforeseen, is a reality? That I can have certain access to it? That it doesn’t depend on my moods and emotions, but that there are objective moments in space and time called the sacraments in which I come into contact with this new way of life, new way of thinking, new way of making judgments, new experiences of what is real? That that is not left to my intellectual efforts or capacities, but that it is pointed out to me in a simple baptism by the Church? That every Mass and any sacrament is like the sign at the house of Mary in Nazareth that has the well-known proclamation of the Gospel, Verbum caro factum est, “the Word became flesh,” but in that place there’s one little word added to it that’s different—hic, namely “here.” “Here the Word became flesh.” “Here.”

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete

Easter Sunday 2020

The Heartbeat of the Risen Lord

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. We can picture them as they went on their way. They walked like people going to a cemetery, with uncertain and weary steps, like those who find it hard to believe that this is how it all ended. We can picture their faces, pale and tearful. And their question: can Love have truly died?

Unlike the disciples, the women are present—just as they had been present as the Master breathed his last on the cross, and then, with Joseph of Arimathea, as he was laid in the tomb. Two women who did not run away, who remained steadfast…. And suddenly there was a great earthquake. Unexpectedly, those women felt a powerful tremor, as something or someone made the earth shake beneath their feet. Once again, someone came to tell them: Do not be afraid, but now adding: He has been raised as he said!…

The heartbeat of the Risen Lord is granted us as a gift, a present, a new horizon. The beating heart of the Risen Lord is given to us, and we are asked to give it in turn as a transforming force, as the leaven of a new humanity. In the resurrection, Christ rolled back the stone of the tomb, but he wants also to break down all the walls that keep us locked in our sterile pessimism…. That is what Easter calls us to proclaim: the heartbeat of the Risen Lord. Christ is alive! That is what quickened the pace of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. That is what made them return in haste to tell the news. That is what made them lay aside their mournful gait and sad looks. They returned to the city to meet up with the others.

Now that, like the two women, we have visited the tomb, I ask you to go back with them to the city. Let us all retrace our steps and change the look on our faces. Let us go back with them to tell the news…. In all those places where the grave seems to have the final word, where death seems the only way out. Let us go back to proclaim, to share, to reveal that it is true: the Lord is alive! He is living and he wants to rise again in all those faces that have buried hope, buried dreams, buried dignity…. Let us go, then. Let us allow ourselves to be surprised by this new dawn and by the newness that Christ alone can give. May we allow his tenderness and his love to guide our steps. May we allow the beating of his heart to quicken our faintness of heart.

Pope Francis

Why Christ is at the tomb

Speaking of Jesus, Paul writes, and he gave his life for me (Gal 2:20). Each of us can repeat those words of the apostle: for me.

My Jesus,

you have died for me,

how can I doubt your mercy?

And if I can believe in that mercy with a faith 

that teaches me that God has died for me,

how can I not risk everything to return such love?

For me…

Words that wipe away the solitude of the most lonely 

and give divine value

to every person despised by the world.

Words that fill every heart and make it overflow 

upon those who either do not know

or do not remember the Good News.

For me.

For me, Jesus, all those sufferings? 

For me that cry on the cross?

Surely, you will never give up on us.

You will do everything imaginable to save us 

if only because we have cost you so much.

You gave me divine life

just as my mother gave me human life. 

In every moment

you think of me alone,

as you do of each and every person.

This—more than anything in the world—

gives us the courage to live as Christians.

For me. Yes, for me.

And so, Lord,

for the years that remain, 

allow me also to say:

for you.

Servant of God Chiara Lubich

The appointed time and the goodness of God

Now that I am assisting as a minister at the altar, which you are soon going to approach, I must not cheat you out of the ministry or service of a sermon. I will do my best, for the love I have for you, to the extent that my age and my inexperience allow, and the fact that I am only a new recruit in the office I have been entrusted with….

[We] have no reason to believe that God is not almighty, just because the wicked do many things that are against his will. Because even when they do what he does not wish, he will himself do with them what he does wish. In no way, therefore, do they either change or defeat the will of the Almighty…. So he makes use of bad people in accordance, not with their warped will, but with his straight and true will…. Who could find the words to explain, or the praises to do justice to the immeasurable good conferred on us by the Passion of the Savior, in which his blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins? And yet this stupendous good was achieved through the malice of the devil [and] the traitor Judas. Nor does justice require that they should be rewarded for the good that God has conferred through them on the human race; rather it is just that punishment should be meted out to them, since their will was to do harm.

But just as we have been able to find a case which would be manifest even to us of how God has made good use even of the bad works of the devil…and the traitor Judas for our redemption and salvation, so too in the hidden and secret recesses of the whole of creation, which neither our eyes nor our minds are sharp enough to penetrate, God knows how he makes good use of the bad, so that in everything that comes to be and is accomplished in the world the will of the Almighty may be fulfilled.

Saint Augustine

Spending our lives on Jesus

Mary paid attention only to Jesus; to show respect to him, it did not seem extravagant to her to pour over him a whole vase of precious perfume. Some of those present murmured, Why this waste? Could not the ointment have been sold…and the price given to the poor?… Mary said nothing and made no excuses; completely absorbed in her adored Master, she continued her work of devotion and love.

Mary is the symbol of the soul in love with God, the soul who gives herself exclusively to him, consuming for him all that she is and all that she has. She is the symbol of those souls who give up, in whole or in part, exterior activity, in order to consecrate themselves more fully to the immediate service of God and to devote themselves to a life of more intimate union with him. This total consecration to the Lord is deemed wasteful by those who fail to understand it—although the same offering, if otherwise employed, would cause no complaint. If everything we are and have is his gift, can it be a waste to sacrifice it in his honor and, by so acting, to repair for the indifference of countless souls who seldom, if ever, think of him?

Money, time, strength, and even human lives spent in the immediate service of the Lord, far from being wasted, reach therein the perfection of their being…. Jesus himself then comes to Mary’s defense: Let her be, that she may keep this perfume against the day of my burial. In the name of all those who love, Mary gave the sacred Body of Jesus, before it was disfigured by the Passion, the ultimate homage of an ardent love and devotion.

Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, o.c.d.

The Via Crucis begins

Already in this mysterious moment of time, at the beginning of the Via Crucis, Christ has given himself to all those whom he will indwell through all the centuries to come. Already he has taken them to himself, made them one with himself. All manner of men and women and children—the rich and the poor, the famous and the infamous, saints and sinners—all who will be redeemed by his Passion are in Christ, and his heavenly Father sees them all as Christ, his Son in whom he is well pleased….

Jesus comes…to receive his cross. He comes to it gladly! This is a strange thing, for the cross is a symbol of shame, and it is to be his deathbed. Already he sees the very shape of his death in the widespread arms. From this moment he will be inseparable from it, until he dies on it. He will labor and struggle under the weight of it until the end comes. Yet Christ welcomes the cross. He embraces it, he takes it into his arms, as a man takes that which he loves into his arms. He lays his beautiful hands on it tenderly, those strong hands of a carpenter that are so familiar with the touch of wood….

It is a tremendous gesture showing all peoples his love for them openly, because this cross which he is receiving is their cross, not his; he is making it his own for love of them, taking their crosses and lifting the dead weight of them from the backs of humankind. That is why Christ receives the cross with joy and lays it to his heart. “Bear one another’s burdens,” he told us. Now he takes the burden of the whole world upon himself.

Caryll Houselander

The One whom the Father has consecrated

In order to understand Jesus, insofar as that is possible, one must perceive him as a reflection of the Father…. Jesus, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, ordered everything in his mortal life according to the will of his Father….

The love of Jesus for his Father is a priestly love: that is, a love which glorifies, a love which immolates itself, a love which redeems and saves; a love which reached its climactic fulfillment on Calvary and which perpetuates itself in the Mass and in souls. It is as though Jesus wished to fill heaven and earth, time and eternity with his love for the Father. The love of Jesus for his Father first overflowed in him and then was poured out over his entire Mystical Body. Our poor love is nothing more than the effect of that divine love of Jesus for his Father.

Following Jesus’ example, we will love the Father on behalf of all those souls who do not love him. We will make every effort so that the Father will not miss even a spark of that love. We will love him in union with Jesus. With a love that glorifies him. A love that immolates itself. A love that redeems and saves! We will love him with a love which finds, like the love of Jesus did, its crowning glory in the cross, in Christ’s sacrifice, which we should offer at every moment unceasingly to the Father, one with that divine Redeemer.

O heavenly Father, our love is in reality so very small and imperfect, so deficient and inconstant. But Jesus has loved you for us. The poor love that our hearts now offer you comes from the heart of your Son. Do you not recognize its fragrance, the unique perfume of Jesus? We love you, O heavenly Father, with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength. We cry out to you with the holy enthusiasm and abandonment to your will with which Jesus did, for that will was his food and his drink.

Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida