This past week I have really been reflecting on how my life has been transformed. And how grateful I am for the community of beautiful people I have around me everyday. With that I have also been reflecting on the immense love I have for each member within it. This love is not by my own merit but from the Eucharist, from Jesus himself, from a real encounter I had with him.
The encounter I experienced was so personal and though years ago, it still is very much a part of my life still today. In short, the encounter transformed me, and that experience gave me a burning desire for others to have an opportunity to experience Jesus in the same way I had. To experience his love, mercy, and forgiveness.
You see, years back one night I laid prostrate in front of the Blessed Sacrament alone, crying, and screaming because I felt that I had been forsaken. I was in a pit of dark sin and temptations that haunted me since I was a young girl. I was broken and had been ripped apart by what the world had offered me. I felt like I had no one that cared or loved me. But then in the midst of my dramatic childlike tantrum, I heard the words “Stop crying, it has been long enough my dear, get up and follow me, I need you, I love you”! In an instant my tears, fears and sadness were gone. There is really no human reality in which as mortals we can ever fully understand what happen, so I will not bother trying to convince you. However, by faith I believe it was a mystical experience, an experience of being transported to some higher reality, because that night I saw Jesus’s face, I felt him touch me. This encounter changed my life forever, and every encounter since, be it, through receiving communion or during adoration or through serving His beloved Poor in Peru has been for me, an intimate encounter with Jesus.
Jesus, knew my faults, my sins, and every time I denied him. Yet he came to me and picked me up off the floor, He held me and whispered in my ear just how much he loves me. He asked nothing in return from me, nor did he find me not worthy of His love.
This encounter I had with “The Lord, who breaks no one, yet allows himself to be broken. The Lord who does not demand sacrifices, but sacrifices himself, freely giving himself to me”, asking nothing from me, was incredible and Divine. He held me and loved me and gave me new life in him and invited me to follow him.
There was a burning desire in my heart to tell others of my experience and found that my personal experience of love and healing that I had with Jesus in the Eucharist was not just for me to keep for myself but to share with others. When he told me to stop crying and invited me to follow him, he was inviting me to share my experience of His living presence in the Eucharist to those who are suffering, sick, held captive by sin, and forgotten. He invited me to share His love with others.
It has been said that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life! (CCC1324) And Pope John Paul II said, we should feel the missionary spirit, we should feel “sent as missionaries of the Eucharist" to carry to every environment the great gift received.”
Perhaps to better understand we should reflect on the words of the Archbishop of India, Telesphore Toppo, who wrote about the effects and the mandate we receive at the sacrifice of the Mass “We are sent out into the world to make the symbols of the Eucharistic worship become realities of a Eucharistic life. We go out into the world after the Eucharist challenged by the word of God, prophetically charged by the Spirit of the risen Lord and committed to work for the transformation of the world. This is the meaning of the phrase: We proclaim your death O Lord, until you come. That is, we are going out to continue the work of Christ to bring about the Kingdom of God where Divine love will be translated into human love, where Divine life will be manifested in communion, where creation will be transformed into a new earth and new heaven in which all the peoples of the world will live as brothers and sisters. The Eucharist empowers us to do this. This is the ultimate goal of all our Eucharistic celebrations”.
So, this week as we the Universal Church we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body, and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi, (depending where you are in the world it could have been celebrated this past Thursday, the 1st Thursday after Trinity Sunday or like here in Peru it is celebrated on the 1st Sunday following Trinity Sunday). It is only fitting to say by the power of the Eucharist we are called to go out and bring the Jesus we have so intimately experienced and known personally, to others who do not yet know Him. We are called to go out with enthusiasm, without fear, without counting the cost, and with courage and a boldness within us, telling our testimonies from the rooftops, so all will know what Jesus has done for us in our own lives! Not by our own merit do we set out, but by the power of the Eucharist, we are to become tabernacles in procession to those in need of His love.
Mission Post: Santa Maria Magdalena's Home
Caserio Santa Clara, Amazonas, Peru
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Santa Maria Magdalena's Home
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| My 1st year in the mission field in 2018, I saw this done by one of our missionaries at our 1st mission post and had to recreate it and incorporate it into our ministries. |
This past Thursday we had a special adoration here at Santa Maria Magdalena’s home for the Feast of Corpus Christi. The night began with testimonies and teaching about Eucharist Miracles, followed by a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, starting with mediation on Mother Mary as the very 1st Tabernacle than the procession took us to the Chapel in where we meditated on Jesus’s presence before us, offering himself to us, his humble poor, so that we may taste the sweetness of his love, mercy and experience if we dare to choose such a divine life with Him and in Him. Knowing full well that He will inflame our hearts in such a way that we become tabernacles in procession to those who need His love and mercy.
