The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires
I appeal to you therefore by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.(Rom 12 and 13}
Jesus, we all have places in our hearts and in our histories that have been hurting for a long time. Some wounds might be self-inflicted, but the wounds caused by others tend to cut most deeply. At the same time, there is also a sacred place in each of us where we can be alone with You and the whole Trinity. The most powerful healing can begin by bringing those painful places into relationship with You, Who love us infinitely. And right now, You are herewith us in all Your power and glory in the Eucharist. Nothing is lacking in Your Presence with us. It can be hard to open tender places in our hearts. You respect us and You honor our experience through Your offer of healing. We are here together and here with the communion of Saints, and we lean on each other for support as we seek to open our hearts to you. We want to be gentle with ourselves and allow the Holy Spirit to descend with all the gentleness of the dewfall onto our thirsty hearts. We pray for courage now as we hold all the hurting places in our hearts before Your loving gaze.
[Note: The following meditation can help to prepare your heart to receive the Lord’s healing power, or you can go straight into the Litany]
Close your eyes (if you are comfortable doing so) Take a deep breath. Breathe in the Holy Spirit…Come, Holy Spirit Breathe out negativity Breathe in the Holy Spirit…Come, Holy Spirit Breathe out all that is not of Him Notice your heartbeat Each heartbeat is a gift God wants you He made you. He knit you together with love, with His own hands in your mother’s womb You are a masterpiece of His loving creativity He has chosen you He sees you He gazes on you with love He delights in you
Now I want to invite you on a journey of healing and reconciliation. Jesus wants to lift you up to see your whole life through His eyes of healing and hope.
Try to zoom out, letting yourself be lifted up away from the details He wants to lift you up so you can see your whole life from your conception in your mother’s womb to this very moment. He is lovingly drawing near to you with the Father. There is only love. Together He looks on your whole life with you. He looks on you and your whole life with love. Through your whole life there is a golden thread of goodness. You are made in His image. Even where there are deep sorrows, the Holy Spirit weaves a golden thread of goodness. As you look together on your life You may see some darker moments, clouded moments, harder moments. Some of those moments might be too hard to enter into right now and that is ok. There are some sins and failures. There are times of weakness. There are times you were hurt. He wants to bring healing to your whole life: healing for your hurts, healing for your failures. He has only compassion for you, loving care. He honors you and wants to protect you. Try to open your heart to Jesus’s healing love. If any of these heart movements are difficult, that’s ok. You can still let Jesus draw close.
Please repeat after me:
Jesus, I believe in you. Jesus, I believe in your Real Presence in the Eucharist. Jesus, I believe you are here with me. Jesus, I believe you are in my heart. Jesus, I believe in your love for me. Jesus, I believe your love is greater than every sin. Jesus, I believe your love is greater than all evil. Jesus, I believe your love can free me from my sin. Let’s practice the response several times: Jesus, heal my heart with Your love For the times I’ve felt abandoned… For the times I’ve been betrayed… For the times I’ve been rejected… For the times I’ve been forgotten… For the times I’ve been disappointed… For the times I’ve been let down by the Church… For the times I’ve been lonely… For the times I’ve been desperate… For the times I’ve been lost… For the times I’ve been dejected… For the times I’ve been used… For the times I’ve been neglected… For the times I’ve been starved for love… For the times I’ve been deprived of affirmation… For the times I’ve lost my way… For the times I’ve gone astray… For the times I’ve made the wrong choice…
the response is: Jesus, come close to me.
Whenever I feel unseen… Whenever I feel ignored… Whenever I feel unimportant… Whenever I feel useless… Whenever I feel alone… Whenever I feel abandoned… Whenever I feel like it would be better if I didn’t exist… Whenever I feel misunderstood… Whenever I feel used… Whenever I feel forgotten… Whenever I feel angry… Whenever I feel anxious… Whenever I feel depressed… Whenever I feel envious… Whenever I feel lustful… Whenever I feel afraid…
the response is: Please forgive me, Jesus
For the times I’ve used others… For the times I’ve failed to see… For the times I’ve hardened my heart to a person in need… For the times I’ve failed to do the right thing… For the times I’ve given in to peer pressure… For the times I’ve lied when someone needed me to tell the truth… For the times I’ve looked away when someone needed my help… For the times I’ve closed my ears to the cries of the helpless… For the times I’ve chosen comfort over courage… For the times I’ve turned my back on someone who was hurting… For the times I’ve ignored my feelings… For the times I’ve silenced the cry of my heart… For the times I haven’t been Your mercy for others… For the times I’ve invalidated my own feelings… For the times I’ve believed the lies of others… For the times I’ve repeated the lies of others… For the times I’ve suppressed righteous anger… For the times I’ve given up in despair… For the times I’ve failed to share You with someone who needed You… For the times I’ve wrongly hid my faith from others… For the times I’ve misrepresented You in my words and actions… For the times I’ve caused scandal by my words or actions… For the times I’ve brought hatred instead of love… For the times I’ve brought division instead of peace… For the times I’ve brought gossip instead of charity… For the times I’ve torn down when I could have built up…
the response is: Jesus, help me to believe
When I doubt the power of Your love… When I doubt Your love for me… When I struggle to trust… When I doubt that I am worthy of love… When I doubt that I have a place in anyone’s heart… When I wonder if I am enough… When I doubt I have what it takes… When I feel helpless… When I feel useless… When I doubt that I have anything to offer… When I doubt that I can make a change… When I doubt that my efforts matter… When I feel hopeless… When I want to give up on my neighbor… When I want to give up on my enemy… When I want to give up on the Church… When I want to give up on myself… When I want to give up on You, Jesus…
Jesus I need you. Jesus I trust in you. Jesus I love you.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Make my heart like unto yours.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Good Shepherd who rescues the lost. You are the Divine Physician who heals the sick. You are the Savior Who washes away our sin in your Blood. You are the Beloved Son who shares your sonship with us along with the love of the Father. We know that even if we do not feel it, you will continue this work of healing in our hearts. We trust that you love us and desire our wholeness and flourishing. Fill each of our hearts as we worship you and receive You in all your love in this Holy Eucharist. We make this prayer in your Name, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Benedictine Father Boniface Hicks, a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was holding the Eucharist in a golden monstrance that shimmered as the spotlights tracked its progress through the crowded floor.
After processing down the stadium’s central aisle, and then placing the monstrance on the altar, the priest knelt before the Eucharist. “Jesus, we come before you, that you might heal our hearts, that you might meet us right where we are,” he prayed.
“Each of us have places in our hearts and in our histories that have been hurting for a long time,” said Father Boniface. “There is a sacred place in each of us where we can be alone with you, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The most powerful healing can begin by bringing those places into relationship with the one who loves us infinitely: you, Jesus.”
Father Boniface, an experienced retreat-master, led attendees through a series of prayers of repentance and renunciation, with the congregation repeating phrases of love for Jesus, and asking for his healing of each one’s sin, hurt and brokenness.
After those prayers, the monstrance was lifted from its stand on the altar, and Father Boniface wrapped his golden vestment around its base. As he slowly processed through the stadium’s main floor, people bowed and crossed themselves as Jesus in the Eucharist passed in their midst. Some wept, others reached their arms towards the Eucharist and parents held babies in their arms or helped their young ones kneel quietly with their eyes fixed on the Blessed Sacrament.
“Jesus, I trust in you,” the musicians sang.
When Father Boniface returned to the altar, he led Benediction, ending with the final prayer: “May the heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen.”
The revival evening also featured moving testimonies of healing, including that of Paula Umana, a former tennis player who was ranked first in Central America and later became quadriplegic after the birth of her fifth child due to a nervous system disorder.
I wish O Lord to receive You with the purity, humility and devotion with which Your most Holy Mother received You, in the spirit and fervor of all the saints.
Amen
Gaze upon him, consider him, contemplate him as you desire to imitate him.
– St Clare of Assisi
We must visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament a hundred thousand times a day.
– St Francis de Sales
When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host, you understand how much Jesus loves you now.
– St Teresa of Calcutta
In the Eucharist, “unlike any other sacrament, the mystery (of communion) is so perfect that it brings us to the heights of every good thing: Here is the ultimate goal of every human desire, because here we attain God and God joins himself to us in the most perfect union.” Precisely for this reason it is good to cultivate in our hearts a constant desire for the sacrament of the Eucharist. This was the origin of the practice of “spiritual communion,” which has happily been established in the Church for centuries and recommended by saints who were masters of the spiritual life. St. Teresa of Jesus wrote: “When you do not receive communion and you do not attend Mass, you can make a spiritual communion, which is a most beneficial practice; by it the love of God will be greatly impressed on you”
– Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia
From a homily at the canonization of Saint Maria Goretti
From Maria’s story carefree children and young people with their zest for life can learn not to be led astray by attractive pleasures which are not only ephemeral and empty but also sinful. Instead they can fix their sights on achieving Christian moral perfection, however difficult and hazardous that course may prove. With determination and God’s help all of us can attain that goal by persistent effort and prayer.
So let us all, with God’s grace, strive to reach the goal that the example of the virgin martyr, Saint Maria Goretti, sets before us. Through her prayers to the Redeemer may all of us, each in his own way, joyfully try to follow the inspiring example of Maria Goretti who now enjoys eternal happiness in heaven.
Trust in God, be faithful, and trust in God!
My God, you are the source of innocence, of purity, and you have given young Maria Goretti the grace of martyrdom; please give us, thanks to her intercession, the courage for respecting your commandments like that girl who received the right reward to have defended her virginity till the death.
St Pope John Paull II on the beatification of Pier Giorgio Frassati,
“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15).
In our century, Pier Giorgio Frassati, whom I have the joy of declaring Blessed today in the name of the Church, incarnated these words of St. Peter in his own life. The power of the Spirit of Truth, united to Christ, made him a modern witness to the hope which springs from the Gospel and to the grace of salvation which works in human hearts.
Thus he became a living witness and courageous defender of this hope in the name of Christian youth of the twentieth century.
Faith and charity, the true driving forces of his existence, made him active and diligent in the milieu in which he lived, in his family and school, in the university and society; they transformed him into a joyful, enthusiastic apostle of Christ, a passionate follower of his message and charity.
The secret of his apostolic zeal and holiness is to be sought in the ascetical and spiritual journey which he traveled; in prayer, in persevering adoration, even at night, of the Blessed Sacrament, in his thirst for the Word of God, which he sought in Biblical texts; in the peaceful acceptance of life’s difficulties, in family life as well; in chastity lived as a cheerful, uncompromising discipline; in his daily love of silence and life’s “ordinariness.”
