THE REAL PRESENCE
by
Saint Peter Julian Eymard
Founder, Blessed Sacrament Fathers
THE EUCHARIST, OUR WAY
Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita.
I am the way, and the truth, and the life. (John xiv. 6.)
OUR Lord uttered these words while He was still among men, but He meant them to reach far beyond the short span of His human life. They belong to all ages; He can still repeat them in the Blessed Sacrament with as much truth as in Judea.
In the spiritual life we come upon certain artificial roads and crossroads which we are free to follow for some time and abandon later on. But our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is the unchanging way to holiness.
He is the means as well as the model. It would avail us little to know the way if by His example He did not also teach us to follow it, We can go to Heaven only by participating in our Lord's life. Baptism infuses this life into us; the other Sacraments strengthen it. It consists specially in the practice and imitation of our Savior's virtues.
To imitate these virtues we must see our Lord Himself practicing them. We must follow Him in all the details of His sacrifices and labors,-----which we must accept in order to establish His virtues in us. His virtues are His words translated into practical life, and His precepts translated into action. To attain perfection we must get down to the details of His virtues; for there can be no perfection without attention to detail. Non est perfectum nisi particulare. The Eternal Word wanted to reconcile us to His Father. But since in Heaven He could not practice the human virtues, which imply struggle and sacrifice, He became Man, He took the tools of man and handled them for man to see; and since in Heaven, to which He has returned in a glorified state, He cannot exercise our virtues of patience, poverty, and, humility, He has made Himself Sacrament to continue being our model.
Our Lord's Eucharistic virtues are no longer the result of a free choice; and consequently, their acts are not meritorious. He has taken them as a form of existence, as a garment. Formerly He performed the acts of these virtues; now He has donned them as His exterior mode of being. On earth He was humble and suffered humiliations; now He reigns in glory, but in a state and under the appearances of humility in the Blessed Sacrament.
The virtues are inseparably bound to Him as His mode of being. In contemplating Him we see His virtues and we learn how to practice the acts of these same virtues. Do away with His Eucharistic humiliations, and the sacramental state ceases. Do away with His Eucharistic poverty, and let a magnificent escort accompany Him; His majesty will overwhelm us, but there will be no more love. Love proves itself by self-abasement.
In the Eucharist He practices patience and forgiveness of injuries still more than He did on Calvary. On Calvary His executioners did not know Him; but we do, and we insult Him just the same. In the Eucharist He pleads for so many deicidal cities that have outlawed Him. Were it not for this plea for pardon, the Sacrament of love would cease to exist as such, and stern justice would surround and defend His outraged Royalty.
In the Eucharist He no longer performs the acts of virtues, but He has assumed them as His form of existence. We must make the acts and thus, in a way, complete our Lord. He thereby becomes one mystical person with us. We are His acting members, His Body, of which He is the Head and the Heart; so that He can say, "I still live." We complete and perpetuate Him.
In the Blessed Sacrament therefore Jesus is the model of every virtue. We shall study a few of them in detail. There is nothing so beautiful as the Eucharist. But only the pious souls who have the habit of receiving Communion and of meditating are able to understand it. The rest can make nothing of it.
Few people think of the virtues, of the life or of the state of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. We treat Him like a statue; we live under the impression He is there merely to forgive our sins and listen to our prayers. That is a wrong viewpoint. Our Lord lives and acts in the Eucharist. Look at Him, study Him. and imitate Him. Those who do not find Him in the Eucharist must go back eighteen centuries, read the Gospel, and fill in its intimate details. They miss the sweetness of our Lord's words as actually spoken: "I am your Way, today; I Myself am your Way!"
Without doubt, truth never fails, and the Gospel is an immortal book. But how laborious it is for one to be always going back to the past! And that for a mere mental representation obtained at the cost of effort and fatigue. It is a more speculative way, but less of a help to virtue. Only in the Eucharist are virtues easily acquired and sustained.
Let us then remember that our Lord is in the Blessed Sacrament not merely to distribute His graces but above all to be our Way and our Model.
A mother educates her child through her presence, through a secret correspondence that exists between her heart and that of her child. The mere sound of her voice thrills the heart of her child, whereas strangers fail to make any impression at all.
We shall have the life of our Lord in us only if we live under His inspiration and receive our education from Him.
Men may show you the way of acquiring virtues, but no one other than our Lord can give them to you and see to the education of your soul. Moses and Joshua led their people, but they themselves were led by the pillar of fire. In the same way a director merely repeats our Lord's orders to you. He consults our Lord and looks for Him in you. He tries to discover the particular grace and inclinations our Lord has deposited in your soul. In order to know you, he seeks to know our Lord in you. He directs you according to the predominant grace in you, which he fosters and which he adapts to your life under the guidance of the Supreme Director of souls. He has only to repeat His orders. Well, our Lord is in the Blessed Sacrament for everybody and not only for directors of souls. Everybody can see Him and consult Him therein. Watch Him practice virtue, and you will know what you have to do.
When you read the Gospel, transport it into the Eucharist, and from the Eucharist into yourself. Your power of understanding will then be much greater and the meaning of the Gospel much clearer; for you shall have before your very eyes the continuation of what you are reading. For our Lord, Who is our model, is likewise the Light that manifests Him as model and shows us His perfections.
Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is His own Light, His own means of being known, just as the sun is itself its own proof. To make Himself known, He has only to show Himself. We need not resort to reasoning to understand that; a child does not have to discourse with itself to recognize its parents. Our Lord manifests Himself through the reality of His presence as parents do.
But as we grow to know His voice better, and our hearts become more detached and more in sympathy with Him, our Lord reveals Himself in a clearer light and with an intimacy known only to those who love Him. He gives the soul a Divine conviction which overshadows the light of human reason. Look at Mary Magdalen: one word from Jesus, and she recognized Him. He acts the same way in the Blessed Sacrament: He speaks only one word, but a word that rings in our very hearts: "It is I! . . ." And we sense His presence, we believe in it more firmly than if we were to see Him with our eyes.
This Eucharistic manifestation must be the starting point of all the actions of our life.. All our virtues must come from the Eucharist. For instance, you wish to practice humility: see how Jesus practices it in the Blessed Sacrament. Start with this knowledge, this Eucharistic light, and then go to the Crib if you wish, or to Calvary. Your going thither will be easier because it is natural for the mind to proceed from the known to the unknown. In the Blessed Sacrament you have our Lord's humility right before your eyes. It will be much easier for you to conclude from His actual humility to that of His birth or of any other circumstance in His life.
Follow the same process for the other virtues; it makes the Gospel less difficult to understand.
Our Lord speaks to us through His exterior mode of being. He can, better than anyone else, explain and make us understand His words and His mysteries. He moreover gives us the grace of enjoying them while understanding them. We are no longer in search of the mine; we have found it and are actually exploiting it.
Thus through the Eucharist only may we realize all the force and actuality of the Savior's words: "I am the way." Ego sum via.
Let our sole spiritual concern be to contemplate the Eucharist and find in it the example of what we have to do in every circumstance of our Christian life.
That is what constitutes and fosters our life of union with our Eucharistic Lord; that is how we become eucharistic in our life and attain holiness through our Eucharistic grace.
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