See and Feel Jesus’ Presences

When we concentrate on the words of Jesus that we read in the Gospels, we are in His presence. We can walk with Him as He walks. We can listen to Him when He speaks. We can watch what He does. We can even, if we really concentrate, see the expression on His face, and his gestures; in short, see Him alive, a living, moving person in those pages, rather than just a succession of words.

    If one can come to feel this, then it is a good time to take a little while to talk to Jesus—talk to Him about what one has just read. This is one way to meditate.

    We cannot only feel his presence in the reading scripture but we also feel his presences when we receive Him into our very being when we take in our bodies his Body and Blood during the Sacrifice of the Mass.

    The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in principle, is the center of our Catholic faith which is in evangelical harmony with the Holy See, dioceses, parishes, and its members—this togetherness is, in my opinion, the nature of the church. We cannot function alone; we have to be in community worship and in intimacy with Christ.

    We know that the Sacred Host we receive at Mass is Jesus, the Son of God. We believe it firmly. But how this can be so is a mystery to the human mind. It is our gift of faith that is fortified by his words: “This is my Body, this is my Blood, do this in remembrance of me.” That assures us that we can believe in this mystery. The Mass is a reenactment of his sacrifice on the cross and His perpetual gift to us—the greatest gift God has giving us—His only Son. We should see Christ not only in the Mass this day but in our every day existence with one another, and with all creatures and nature. We need to be aware of our interdependence in the Christ that is in each of us. This, then, will elevate us to a pinnacle of glory when we come together at Mass, the life’s blood of our faith, because the Mass is Jesus. The entire Church, those who are faithfully in communion with the Church, acts through the liturgy and sacraments to carry on the teachings and example of Christ.

     As I was thinking about that, I remembered my feelings on Good Friday and Holy Saturday when we did not have Mass because we were commemorating, not Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, but the awfulness of His death and burial. Jesus was dead! He was in the tomb! Imagine the void, the dark emptiness that could have been ours now but for the moment of triumph when He bust forth from the tomb, gloriously alive!

    Let us never take our Mass for granted, nor let it grow routine. It is a precious gift, a gift purchased at a great price.