Feast of Thanksgiving


The word Eucharist is the Greek word for thanksgiving. While here in the United States, we celebrate a national Thanksgiving Day, today our Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi. In a very real way, this is the Church's Thanksgiving Day. In it we celebrate the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We worship and give thanks for His Eucharistic Presence.
So many do not believe that Christ is present in the Eucharist, or in some ways seem to forget that He is there. Today's feast is a wonderful reminder of the awesome gift we have been given by a God who loves us so much that He remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament.
He waits for each of us in this sacrament. If you have never done so, spend a few minutes or more if you can, with Him. Receive Him worthily in Holy Communion with as much love and devotion as your human heart can muster. If we give just a little, He will do the rest.
So as we celebrate this feast of God's greatest gift to us today, let us love and adore Him as He so desires and deserves.

"But just as He stood quietly among His apostles in the amazing beauty of His resurrection, and said, handle Me and see, so does He abide with us in the Blessed Sacrament, that we may get to know Him, to outlive our tremulous agitation, and the novelty of our surprise, and to grow familiar with Him, if we can, as our life-long Guest. There we can bring our sorrows and cares and necessities at all hours... We can choose our own time, and our visit can be as short or as long as duties permit or as love desires. There is unction and a power in the mere silent companionship of the Blessed Sacrament which is beyond all words... The ways of visiting the Blessed Sacrament must be as various as the souls of men. Some love to go there to listen; some to speak; some to confess to Him as if He were their priest; some to examine their consciences, as before their judge; some to do homage as to their king; some to study Him as their Doctor and Prophet: some to find shelter as with their Creator. Some rejoice in His Divinity, others in His Sacred Humanity, others in the mysteries of the season. Some visit Him on different days by His different titles, as God, Father, Brother, Shepherd, Head of the Church, and the like. Some visit to adore, some to intercede, some to petition, some to return thanks, some to get consolation; but all visit Him to love and, to all who visit Him in love, He is a power of heavenly grace and a fountain of many goods, no single one of which the whole created universe could either merit or confer."
The Blessed Sacrament
Fr. Frederick William Faber, D.D.




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