Bulletin Announcement: “Jesus will be present next Sunday at the 11 a.m. service.” How exciting would it be to go to church Sunday morning and to be in the real presence of Jesus.
If you have ever been in love you know that it is not boring. The one you love is not boring, and being in his or her presence is something you seek and find exciting. And God is love. What could be more exciting than to be in the presence of perfect Love?
And Jesus is present where two or more are gathered in His name (Matthew 18:20). And the presence in the eucharist is a miracle that unfolds at every mass celebrated. That’s an actual miracle. And Jesus is present in the word and speaks to us.
“I am the living bread” (John 6:51). In 1263 Father Peter of Prague raised the sacred host and blood started to trickle over his hands and on to the altar. The church recognized the miracle in due time and Urban IV instituted the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Five hundred years earlier in Lanciano, Italy, the host turned into real flesh. Later scientific studies revealed it was flesh from a human heart, the same blood type as the blood on the Shroud of Turin.
In Kathryn Lopez’s A Father’s Guide to Holiness: the BeDADitudes, she says: “If your kids are telling you that prayer is boring, it’s because you’ve just taught them to say words into space for no good reason. Introduce them to a God who really cares about what’s going in their lives. Teach them to talk to Him as if He was a real person who loved them more than anything. Because that’s what He is.
“Most parents drag their kids to church and think they’ve done their bit. That would be like dragging your kids to grandma’s house but making them sit in the basement and never letting them meet grandma and then complaining when they didn’t want to go. When your kids actually meet Jesus, they won’t be bored.”
A little girl was praying in church and an adult observing her wondered if something was wrong. “What prayer are you saying?” asked the adult.
“I was just loving Jesus,” responded the girl.
Now that child did get the message from her parents and through God’s grace.
Next Sunday Jesus will indeed be present at the worship in your church. If we have our hearts and ears open we will be in touch with the miraculous nature of our worship.
Miracles surrounding the eucharist are so near to today’s church. Take the parish of Saint Mary in Buenos Aires in 1996. The eucharist began bleeding when consecrated and part of it became human tissue.
After intense studies, it was found that the tissue was part of a heart. The tissue revealed further that it belonged to a person who had gone through intense pain, putting immense strain on the heart, and that the heart had been stabbed in the left side. This should have killed the person, but the tissue showed signs of being ‘alive’. (Internet source)
And an interesting fact: the archbishop who commissioned the research was none other than the now Pope Francis.
