Revived in the Eucharist With the Saints – Eucharist 2024

Summary

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The saints tell us of the importance of the Eucharist for our spiritual life. From the Eucharist, we receive the graced to do all God calls us to do.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“[T]he bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Jn. 6:51

1. In the Blessed Sacrament, we will receive everything we need from Our Lord. We can see from the writings of St. Faustina that He will even give us the grace to love others whom we find difficult to love. Who might God be calling to you love more faithfully by relying on His grace? 

2. St. Teresa of Calcutta said that we should be a Eucharistic presence in our darkened world. We should bring Jesus to our family, friends, neighbors, and others around us. Who can you be a Eucharistic presence to in your life?

3. St. John Vianney said that instead of looking about us, we should shut our eyes and open our hearts. We all struggle with distractions in prayer at times, but we can try to follow the advice of St. John Vianney. What kinds of distractions in prayer do you struggle with most often? How can you work on overcoming them?

4. Pope St. John Paul II said that the Eucharist gives us the strength to live a Christian life. Making time for Adoration is very important for our spiritual life. How can you fit more time for Adoration into your life?

Text:Revived in the Eucharist With the Saints

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Hello, my name is Donna Marie Cooper, O’ Boyle. You might know me from my shows on EWTN or from my books. I’m a Catholic wife, a mother, a grandmother, a speaker, a teacher, a friend. And I’m glad you’re here, and I feel very blessed to be here. Well, it’s a beautiful retreat. What a privilege and honor it is to be part of it. Let’s say a prayer, shall we?

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you. Dear Lord, for Your love. Thank you for gathering us here together. Thank you for the miracle of You in the Eucharist. Thank you Mother Mary, for being here. Please guide us and protect us St. Joseph, please help us to adore Jesus and Holy Spirit, please enlighten us, Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Story of Saint Faustina

You know, years ago my friend, a priest was driving in the car with his protestant minister friend, and they passed a Catholic church, and my friend blessed himself and his friend, the Protestant minister, asked him you know, why exactly do you do that when you pass a church? And my friend said, well, I believe as a Catholic, Jesus is in that church. And his friend said, wow, if I believed what you believe, I would stop the car. I would get out and I would run inside, drop to my knees, and I would never get up again. Wow. That gives us something to think about, doesn’t it? Pretty amazing. Well, I want to focus on some devoted saints, saints who are devoted to our Lord and the Eucharist, and they can teach us quite a bit;

So I want to share their wisdom with you. And I’ll start with Saint Faustina, someone I really love, a saint I really love, I write a lot about her and Divine Mercy. She was a the century saint, so we don’t have to dust off the history pages too much and to get to know her, but she was so down to earth and lovable. And Jesus entrusted her with the mammoth mission of Divine Mercy.

Now, Divine Mercy, as we know, is not a new revelation. God has always been merciful, always, but He saw fit that He would raise this simple Polish farm girl, Saint Faustina, turned nun turned Saint and a mystic and so many other things. He raised up this very simple girl to entrust her with this mission. So St. Faustina learned kind of the hard way, how to trust Jesus. She had a tough life, she had a lot of suffering, she was picked on by other sisters, but she has a lot to teach us. So just that little background about the Divine Mercy in her life and her mammoth mission to teach it to the world.

Receiving Strength From The Holy Communion

What I want to say about St. Faustina also, is that well, out of obedience she needed to write the diary. Jesus asked her to write the diary, her spiritual director asked her, it wasn’t that she wanted to draw attention to herself, Jesus told her to do so. So now we have that treasure trove to learn from. Well, in the diary, St. Faustina said so many times, numerous times, how the Eucharist, Jesus and the Eucharist sustained her in everything. That’s where she drew her strength from receiving Him in Holy Communion from even receiving Him spiritually in Holy Communion, and we’ll get into that, and also at adoration.

You know, when she was given her religious name it made her name a bit longer. She wasn’t any longer Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, but she was Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, of the most Blessed Sacrament. So even in her name was expressed her connection with her love for Jesus in the Eucharist. And Saint Faustina would write in her diary, “The most solemn moment of my life is the moment when I receive Holy Communion.” And she also said, “I fear life on days when I do not receive Holy Communion, but from the tabernacle, I draw strength.” And she knew she needed to receive Jesus in order to have that strength to do what she was called to do. Each of us in our own walk of life need Jesus too, for whatever it is He’s asking us to do in our walk of life.

What Is Your Roadmap?

Now, changing gears just for a moment, I have a question. What is that roadmap that we need to navigate this pilgrimage through life? What is that roadmap? We can call it, you know, something else, a instruction booklet, but it’s an important instruction booklet. Simply put that is, that would be the greatest commandment and the second greatest commandment, right? To love God and love our neighbor, very simply put, kind of easy, right? Just those, those two things we need to accomplish in this lifetime. Love God, love our neighbor.

On Loving Our Neighbor

Maybe not so easy, maybe the second part isn’t so easy, the loving the neighbor part. But isn’t it there within the relationships and the encounters where we work out our salvation, right? In the nitty gritty details of life, that’s where God has us work out our salvation within those relationships, within helping our neighbor, serving our neighbor and our walks of life. So that’s why I thought I’d start off with that.

You know what our job is, on this pilgrimage through life to love God, to love our neighbor. Where do we get the strength to do what God calls us to do? Same as Saint Faustina, same as the other saints, same as all of the other Catholics in the world. Jesus, to receive Jesus sacramentally spiritually and to adore Him in the blessed sacrament; and that is where we will receive everything that we need. Without Jesus, we can’t accomplish anything, and we’ll run out of steam very fast.

So again, Jesus in the Eucharist taught St. Faustina so much, but He also taught her how to love her neighbor because there were people in her life you would think she lived in a convent, it was easy, you know, lots of graces, of course there were graces; but God gives us people too who will, you know, kind of pick on us or contradict us or even harm us in some way. And so Jesus told her, she is to pray for these people. She is to pray for them, pray for their, all of us are to pray for our enemies, we see this in scripture. And Jesus told Faustina that she should treat these people with love. You know, so learning to love our neighbor is a process. It’s a process for all of us, because it wasn’t until close to the end of the diary that she said to Jesus that she could now love these people with the pure love of Jesus receiving all of that from Him throughout her life, throughout her short life; she died at years of age just like Jesus was. But Jesus kindled that pure love in her heart, just like He does for us. One time Jesus told Faustina, “But I want to tell you that eternal life must begin already here on earth through Holy Communion. Each Holy Communion makes you more capable of communing with God throughout eternity.”

 Pretty powerful, if we even had that one paragraph to meditate upon for a whole retreat, weekend or whatever time, we have to meditate on those words of Jesus, we need to, you know, think about that. Holy Communion makes you more capable of communing with God throughout eternity. So, so much happens to us when we receive our Lord, when He comes to us in Holy Communion. And let’s not forget how Jesus feeds us, like I mentioned earlier, just in at least three ways, sacramentally, spiritually, and during adoration, He feeds our hearts and souls and bodies. When Saint Faustina was a little girl, she received spiritual communion just all on her own. She figured out how to do that because there was just one church dress to be shared among the three daughters at the time. And so she would unite her heart and soul to the, the prayers of the mass and ask her spiritual communion. So we can do that as well.

St. John Vianney, I’m sure you know him, powerful saint, great saint, great preacher. He, used to ask for spiritual communion every quarter of an hour. And the reason being is that every time he heard the clock chime, he would ask Jesus for spiritual communion. Wow! I’m trying to train myself to remember to, to ask more often for spiritual communion because it with a, you know, a sincere heart, our Lord comes to us in spiritual communion.; so we can ask Him. Now, Saint Faustina would write in her diary, it is only in eternity that we shall know the great mystery affected in us by Holy Communion.

A Living Tabernacle

So all throughout her diary, she talks about how much Jesus sustained her, how often, He would nourish her and give her every single thing she needed. And without Him, she felt she could hardly survive. She had such a important task in life and she absolutely needed Jesus. You know, she would often see the Divine Mercy raise the red and the pale raise emanate from the sacred host that’d come right out of the host when she was in the chapel at times, or when she received or at adoration; and a couple of times she would see these rays go out over the whole world from the sacred host, Jesus blessing the world. And she learned a profound truth about Holy communion, she learned that she actually became a living tabernacle of our Lord, because she learned that Holy communion stayed with her until the next Holy Communion. So that the time she couldn’t get to the chapel due to illness or whatever reason, well for her, it was just due to illness, she couldn’t go, she would unite her heart with our Lord and she would adore Him right within her own heart and soul; that’s pretty powerful. It reminds me of, you know, being that living tabernacle.

One time, Saint Philip Neri saw a woman leaving mass after she received Holy Communion, but before the final blessing, she was just going out of the church. So St. Philip Neri sent two altar servers with lighted candles to accompany her because she was in fact, a living tabernacle. Something for us to think about.

A Desire From Jesus

I do have to share something that Jesus told St. Faustina That is pretty sad, but we should know it. He said, “I desire to unite.” Well, the first part is, is nice, but so just listen, please. “I desire to unite myself with human souls. My great delight is to unite myself with souls. Know my daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, my hands are full of all kinds of graces, which I want to give to the soul, but souls do not even pay any attention to me. They leave me to myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that the souls do not recognize love, they treat me as a dead object.” Hmm, wow. Very, very sad indeed. You know, to know that this is what happens. And I must point out, He’s talking about the ungrateful hearts of the people who receive Him in Holy Communion. Many, many people receive Him in this way, these people could even be part of that % of believers in the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. But they don’t care enough, they don’t care enough to be attentive to the fact that it is Jesus that they’re receiving. And it’s sad for Jesus, and it should be sad for all of us. So we can pray for those people and we can pray for our own souls that we can be more worthy to receive Jesus and receive Him more lovingly, try to make up for the ones that don’t really care. So something to think about for sure. And I, I thank Saint Faustina very much that she was obedient to writing her diary, because now we have this treasure trove to learn from because Jesus said so many things to her and we can learn from them. And many of them were about the Holy Eucharist and His true presence in the Sacred host.

St. Teresa of Calcutta

Now, another modern day, Saint I’ll mention is someone I was blessed to know, mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Calcutta. She had a beautiful devotion to Jesus, of course, very much so, and also to the blessed mother. In fact, she gave me this blessed, miraculous medal I’m wearing. It got so worn and broken, I had to put it in that locket that’s why it’s in there. But she said, “Every Holy Communion fills us with Jesus.” And she told her sisters, “and we must with Our Lady go in haste to give Him to others.” And she said, “It’s the same Jesus whom she received and whom we receive at mass.” And then she goes further and she explains, “As soon as Mary received Him, she went with haste to give Him to John for us. Also, as soon as we receive Jesus and Holy Communion, let us go in haze to give Him to our sisters, to our poor, to the sick, to the dying, to the lepers, to the unwanted, to the unloved. By this we make Jesus present in the world today.”

Wow, Well we can follow Mother Teresa’s advice and example, we certainly can! We’re not going to be, you know, necessarily taking care of lepers or, people that she would take care of. But God puts all these people in our own lives whom He wants us to care for, you know, our family members, neighbors, friends, strangers; so we can also be that presence. And I like to say we should be a Eucharistic presence in our darkened world today by receiving our Lord, by spending time with our Lord in adoration, we can bring Him to others. You know, we might be the only person in someone’s life, a complete stranger you meet and we can bring His presence to them. So we pray for those opportunities and God makes sure they unfold in our lives. I’m absolutely sure about that.

So Mother Theresa, another thing I want to mention about her is she would often preach that she and her sisters absolutely needed to receive the broken body of Jesus. You know, the broken bread of Jesus in the host, in the Eucharist at morning mass, in order to have the strength, the courage, the love, everything they needed to then go out and take care of the broken bodies of the poor. So, wow, so it’s the same with us. Not that we’re going to be taking people out of the gutters and pulling maggots out of them. You know, people that were left for dead in the gutters. So sad, but the work that she did was so amazing, but we have our own work. God gives us our own work, and we need Him in the Eucharist so that we can go forward and take care of the people that God puts in our lives. The Eucharist is essential for every single one of us. So our time receiving our Lord in adoration, whether it’s Jesus is in the tabernacle, hidden in the tabernacle, or exposing the monstrance, we can spend that time with Him and receive so much from Him.

Visiting the Blessed Sacrament

Now, St. John Bosco had said, “Make frequent visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and the devil will be powerless against you.” Yes, we should do that. St. Peter Julian Eymard, a lover of the blessed sacrament, said “The Eucharist is the supreme proof of the love of Jesus. After this, there is nothing more but heaven itself.” And that is so true. I want to mention just quickly that adoration doesn’t automatically translate to an hour of time that we go and we see Jesus because I think some people shy away from going because they think they don’t have enough time, or they think they can’t adore our Lord because their parish doesn’t have the blessed sacrament exposed and the monstrance. We adore our Lord whether He is in the tabernacle or in the monstrance. And so we should go whenever we can, even for or minutes because God works on our heart so much in that bit of time, on the way to work, on the way to the store, on the way home, make the time, carve the time out. But also don’t be afraid to just go for a short period of time and cry your heart out to, to Jesus. Pour your heart out, tell Him everything, ask for His love and tenderness and mercy and grace and blessing, and He will give it to you. He’s waiting, He’s waiting there for our visits.

Okay, so now with regard to adoration, I want to mention that St. Alfonsus Liguori, he was often in ecstasy after receiving Holy Communion or when he was in adoration. And he said, “In one quarter of an hour, would you spend before Jesus in the blessed sacrament you attain more than in all the good works of the rest of the day.” Wow. I’ll just share something really quickly, just sort of lighthearted, but true because, it has to do with, a very holy man and Jesus.

Venerable Fulton Sheen’s Commitment to Holy Hour

Well, you know, Venerable Fulton Sheen, he made a commitment on the day of his ordination to do a daily holy hour, He would call it his hour of power. So every day he would fit it in, he traveled a lot, he would still try to fit it in. It was challenging with train schedules and different things. And so one time he talked about a particular time of being with Jesus in adoration. Okay? So he said, “I was so tired. I sat down at PM too tired to kneel and went to sleep. I slept perfectly until PM I said to the good Lord, did I make a holy hour? The answer came back, yes, that’s the way the apostles made their first one.”

Remember, remember that? So, wow, that’s pretty, pretty interesting. And Sheen gives us some really good advice. He said, “The best time to make a holy hour is in the morning early before the day sets traps for us.” Well, we might not be able to go out first thing in the morning, all of us. But you know, in certain walks of life we can do that, but whenever we can, the earlier the better possibly because maybe we won’t be so tired and worry about worrying about falling asleep, whatever we can manage, our Lord will be so happy to see us.

St. Francisco’s Story

I want to mention St. Francisco, you know, one of the very young Fatima visionaries, and he truly understood Jesus and the Eucharist. So after the visits from the Angel of Peace in , followed by our Lady of Fatima’s visits in , little Francisco devoted the rest of his life to adoration. He would steal away to the church to go to whom he called his hidden Jesus, because he wanted to make up for all the hurt that God felt, with what was the indifferent beliefs of the people at the time. And he wanted to console our Lord. He received that special charism to console our Lord. you know, we can learn from this little boy, You know how much we can, how much, Oh, it just touches my heart so much. St. Francisco and St. Jacinta too, her tender heart.

But St. Francisco, he was on his deathbed and, you know, dying from that terrible disease from which he suffered so terribly. He asked his little sister, now, St. Jacinta and his older cousin, Sister Lucia, what were his sins in his short little life, he was years old. What did he do, he wanted to be sure he confessed everything to the priest so that he can receive Holy Communion worthily on his deathbed. Wow, we can learn so much from children, the innocent hearts of children, the pure hearts. So that’s why I wanted to share that with you. You know, that little pure intention, wanting to know just everything he might have done wrong. Wow. A little boy so in love with Jesus and Mary.

How To Tackle Distractions In Prayer

Well, I want to touch upon just even quickly, distractions in prayer. You know we have that trouble, all of us, no matter our intention, we go to adoration and you know, our mind wanders. We have a mind after all, we’re not a robot. So it’s hard to just shut it off and just tune straight in, right? So we might have, we might be worrying about what we’re making for dinner or who we have to pick up or, you know, or we remember we’re hungry because our stomach starts growling. But in these times, we can ask Mother Mary, you know, the blessed mother, ask her, help me stay awake help me to be attentive. Help me to focus and ask your guardian angel as well. And they will absolutely help you.

St. John Vianney had said, “When we are before the blessed sacrament, instead of looking about us, let us shut our eyes and open our hearts, and the good God will open his what delight we find in forgetting ourselves that we may seek God.” Saint John Vianney preach so much on the Eucharist, and he would point to the tabernacle so passionately and say He is there during his homilies. And I’d like to share with you a true compelling story with regard to the Eucharist.

But before I tell you the story, I want to mention my friend, servant of God, Father John Hardon, who was my spiritual director and friend, and actually my daughter’s godfather. Well, and if you don’t know him, look him up. He has written so much and he’s a very, very holy soul, and he did work behind the scenes for the Holy See. Anyway, his name is Father John Hardon, and he said, “Christ is here in the Eucharist to work miracles”, to work miracles. And then he posed a question and he said, “Why don’t we have more miracles?” And he answered his own question. And he said, “We don’t have enough faith.” “We don’t have enough faith.” Remember, Jesus didn’t perform miracles every place, remember there were places where the people lacked faith. And then Father Hardon said, “We cannot expect miracles if we do not live our faith.” And he gave examples of places that have moved the tabernacle from the center of the church over to a side. And, you know, different things that take us away from putting Jesus at the center of our lives. So we need to live our faith, where is our faith? Remember, we can pray for an increase in faith, that beautiful virtue that was given to us at our baptism; we need to pray for an increase in faith, and our increase in faith will help others along the way, so let’s pray for that. Now, I want to share this story.

The Power of The Eucharist

Not too long ago, there was a priest celebrating Mass, Holy Mass, in Africa when armed terrorists stormed into the Mass. Now this priest decided not to stop the Mass, but he continued with the Mass, what a faith filled priest. And at the moment of consecration, all of the armed terrorists fell to the floor as if they were slain. The miracle of the Eucharist, the miracle at consecration, the power in the Eucharist, the power of Jesus, the power of faith. And all of those men took lessons in the Catholic faith, afterward and became Catholic. And this is a true story, it’s just really amazing.

There are so many miracles, so many Eucharistic miracles, and if we had time, I could go into more of them, but many have been documented, many involved blood or tissue or Jesus alive in the host. Of course, He’s alive in every host, but it means seeing Him in that way. Hosts going through the air in some cases. and levitation, St. Joseph Cupertino levitating in front of the Blessed Sacraments, St. Clair Assisi walking forward with the Blessed Sacrament and the enemies flying in the opposite direction. There’s so much we can say about the miracles and the Eucharist, and I’m sure you’ve heard of blessed Carla Acutis, who in his young life, he died at , documented the known Eucharistic miracles up until that time. So you can look that up and see about those miracles. But the important thing to remember is, well, every single Eucharistic miracle is a miracle. But every eucharistic miracle is not going to be visible or involving blood or involving tissue. Most Eucharistic miracles are invisible and that is because Jesus is working on your heart, Jesus is healing your weary and wounded heart. Those are really amazing miracles, and I can say that Jesus healed my wounded heart. I lived a crazy life in many respects, I had a crooked journey, different things going on in my life.

You know, I thought I was going to have that straight road, you know, and but no, it became a crooked path. I was abandoned, I was all kinds of things abused. I was held captive by a man, a troubled man with automatic weapons. I was held at gunpoint, Jesus saved me, Jesus saved me, He sure did. And afterward He healed me too, He healed my troubled heart, that’s, you know, go to Jesus. He, He wants to heal your heart, He wants to heal the weariness in you, and, He is a God of miracles. So please, please go to Him.

And you know, Saint John Paul II had said “From the Eucharist, come strength to live the Christian life and zeal to share that life with others.” That’s what we are to do in this, this life, right? To be nourished by God, by Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. And to bring that, miracle to others, to bring that love and mercy. God calls us to be merciful people, to turn to His mercy, to repent from our sins, to turn to His Divine Mercy and to become merciful people. That’s how we’re going to make a difference in this world. You know, one by one, one on one, mother Theresa teaches that to us as well. You know, she didn’t jump up on the nearest table and start preaching the Gospel. Each person was Jesus to her, each person was important to her, and that is how God wants us to live our lives; you know, the people in our midst. So we need to be strengthened by our Lord and the Eucharist so that we could do the work that God calls us to do and it happens in very ordinary ways. You know, we don’t even have to go looking for it, God makes it all happen, it’ll unfolds in our lives we just need to be attentive and prayerful.

I Thirst

Now, mother Theresa said, and I’m going to conclude in just a moment. She said, “Our lives must be woven around the Eucharist. We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist, the moment we do something breaks.” But importantly, and this is so important, I want to share with you, she said, “The Eucharist is even more than receiving.” She said, the Eucharist involves, and I’ll quote “More than just receiving, it also involves satisfying the hunger of Christ. He says, come to me. He’s hungry for souls. Nowhere does the Gospel say, go away, but always come to me.” She said, and Mother Theresa made sure that in every, chaplain, all of the convents all around the world, and I’ve been to many of them, the word, two powerful words are painted on the wall beside the tabernacle. And it’s, “I thirst”.

Because she wanted everyone to come there to know, you know, to thirst for Jesus, yes, but incredibly that He thirst for us, He thirst for the salvation of souls. He loves us so very much, so we can ponder these words, these words that Jesus uttered for us when He was dying on the cross for our salvation. “I thirst.” He thirst for the, for the love of souls, for the salvation of souls. So, wow, so much happens when we go to see Jesus in the blessed sacrament. And Mother Theresa said, “The time you spend with Jesus in the blessed sacrament is the best time that you will spend on earth.” Wow.

It sure is. And I’m so happy to be in this time of history. You know, craziness, it’s so many things that we can be afraid to go out the door each day, but no, we have to, to have hope. And we have our Lord. And we’re in this time of Eucharistic revival so we can pray for the opportunity to be that eucharistic presence to someone near us. You know, someone to the world. And we can be through prayer and God’s grace, so we need this hope in our world today. We’re surely in the best of company with the saints. So call upon them, ask them to help you in your Eucharistic devotion, ask them to help you on your spiritual path.

Ask Saint Joseph

And you know, Saint Peter Julian Eymard had said, “Aside from the blessed virgin, St. Joseph was the first and most perfect adore of the Lord.” I wanted to tell you that because we could turn to St. Joseph, ask him, ask the blessed mother, ask the angels and saints. And St. Eymard also said, “Because his faith was so strong, Joseph’s mind and heart bowed in perfect adoration imitate his faith as you kneel before the humble Christ annihilated in the Eucharist.” Finally, St. John Paul II gives us encouraging words he said, “Let us take our place, dear brothers and sisters at the School of the Saints, who are the great interpreters of true Eucharistic piety. In them, the theology of the Eucharist takes on all the splendor of a lived reality, it becomes contagious. And in a manner of speaking, it warms our hearts.” Wow.

Closing Prayer

I encourage you to go see Jesus. He thirsts for you. He thirsts for you. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you. Dear Lord Jesus, we love you. We need you. Please have mercy on us and on the whole world. We want to satiate your thirst for the love of souls. Amen. And In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed our visit. Thank you for joining me. You know, we are united in prayer. We are, God bless you. God love you.

About Donna – Marie Cooper O’Boyle

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