Saint Peter Julien Eymard -- Apostle of the Holy Eucharist

“Behold the Lamb of God.  Behold God Himself!  Adore Him!,” resound the words of St. Peter Julian Eymard who heralded the Presence of Christ as St. John the Baptist did over 1800 years before him.  He proclaimed to the people with heartfelt belief and emotion, “Jesus Christ is there!  Hence everybody to Him!”  From an early age the young French Saint exuded a tender love for the Eucharist.  When his mother was pregnant for young Peter Julian, she would go to adoration at the nearby Church and dedicate her son to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.  After his birth, she continued to bring him to adoration of the Holy Eucharist each day and when he was only four years old, he could be found praying there alone.  Like a young love going to meet their lover, St. Peter Julian Eymard ran to the Church to spend time with Jesus in the Sacred Host.  One day, having searched all over for the child, his half sister found him there kneeling on a stool behind the altar deep in prayer.   When she asked him what he was doing he replied, “Saying my prayers.  I am nearer to Jesus and I am listening to Him!” The Beautiful love and simplicity of this story are the hallmarks of St. Peter Julian Eymard’s spirituality and life.  “How happy I will be,” he wrote, “if I keep my heart free from attachment to anyone, and chained to Jesus, my God, alone... I will devote all my efforts to this end.... JESUS WAITS FOR US HERE WITH DIVINE LONGING St. Peter Julian Eymard Adore and visit Jesus, abandoned and forsaken by men in His Sacrament of Love. Man has time for everything except for visits to His Lord and God,   WHO IS WAITING AND LONGING FOR US in the Blessed Sacrament. The streets and places of entertainment are filled with people; the House of God is deserted.   Men flee from it; they are afraid of it. Ah! Poor Jesus!   Did you expect so much indifference from those You have redeemed, from Your friends, from Your children, from me? Sympathize with Jesus Who is betrayed, insulted, mocked, and crucified far more ignominiously in His Sacrament of Love than He was in the Garden of Olives, in Jerusalem, and on Calvary.   Those whom He has the most honored, loved, and enriched with His gifts and graces are the very ones who offend Him the most by their indifference. Offer up for this intention all that you have suffered during the day or week that Jesus may be loved and adored by all. Because we ourselves are unable to atone for so much wrong, we unite ourselves to the infinite merits of our Savior Jesus.   Receive His Divine Blood as it mystically flows from His Holy Wounds, and offer it to the Father in perfect atonement for the sins of the world. Take His sufferings and His prayer on the Cross and beg the Heavenly Father for pardon and mercy for all. Unite your reparation to that of the most Blessed Virgin at the foot of the Cross or the altar, and from the love of Jesus for His Divine Mother you will obtain everything.   With Mary Let us Adore Him! St. Peter Julian Eymard Mary devoted herself exclusively to the Eucharistic Glory of Jesus. She knew that it was the desire of the Eternal Father to make the Eucharist known, loved and served by all men; that need of Jesus’ Heart was to communicate to all men His gifts of grace and glory. She knew, too, that it was the mission of the Holy Spirit to extend and perfect in the hearts of men, the reign of Jesus Christ, and that the Church had been founded only to give Jesus to the world. All Mary’s desire, then, was to make Him known in His Sacrament. Her intense love for Jesus felt the need of expanding in this way, of consecrating itself - as a kind of relief, as it were - because of her own inability to glorify Him as much as she desired. Ever since Calvary, all men were her children. She loved them with a Mother’s tenderness and longed for their supreme good as for her own; therefore, she was consumed with the desire to make Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament known to all, to inflame all hearts with His love, to see them enchained to His loving service. To obtain this favor, Mary passed her time at the foot of the Most Adorable Sacrament, in prayer and penance. There she treated the world’s salvation. In her boundless zeal, she embraced the needs of the faithful everywhere, for all time to come, who would inherit the Holy Eucharist and be Its adorers... Her prayers converted countless souls, and as every conversion is the fruit of prayer, and since Mary’s prayer could meet no refusal, the Apostles had in this Mother of Mercy their most powerful helper. "Blessed is he for whom Mary prays!" Eucharistic adorers share Mary’s life and mission of prayer at the foot of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It is the most beautiful of all missions, and it holds no perils. It is the most holy, for in it all the virtues are practiced. It is, moreover, the most necessary to the Church, which has even more need of prayerful souls than of powerful preachers; of men of penance rather than men of eloquence.  Today more than ever have we need of men who, by their self-immolation, disarm the anger of God inflamed by the ever increasing crimes of nations. We must have souls who by their importunity re- open the treasures of grace which the indifference of the multitude has closed. We must have true adorers; that is to say, men of fervor and of sacrifice. When there are many such souls around their Divine Chief, God will be glorified, Jesus will be loved, and society will once more become Christian, conquered for Jesus Christ by the apostolate of Eucharistic prayer.   The following is a series of reflections from St. Peter Julian Eymard on the Feast of Corpus Christi: Every day comes from God. They unfailingly succeed one another through His loving kindness. God allows man six days of the week for his labor and his needs, but the seventh He reserves for Himself. Sunday is therefore more particularly the day of the Lord. But of all the days there is one which is, in a more excellent manner, the day of God and is called the day of God: Fete-Dieu, as the French put it, which, done literally into English, would read God's Feast Day.  That is truly the day which the Lord has made for Himself, for His own glory, and for the manifestation of His love. Corpus Christi! God's Feast Day! What a beautiful name! God's Feast Day and ours also!  Let us see in what way. This feast day of God, which the Church calls Festum sacratissimi Corporis Christi, "Feast of the most sacred Body of Christ," is the only day dedicated exclusively to the honor of His adorable Person, of His living presence in our midst. The other feasts commemorate some mystery of His past life; they are beautiful; they glorify God; and they are a rich source of graces for us. But after all they are only reminders, anniversaries of an already distant past, which relives only in our piety and devotion.  Our Savior is no longer personally present in those mysteries; He accomplished them once for all and left only His grace in them. But Corpus Christi is an actual mystery; the object of this feast is our Lord's Person, living and present in our midst. That is why the celebration of it has a character all its own. No relics or symbols of the past are exposed, but the very object of the feast, which is living. In the countries where God is free, see how all the people proclaim His presence, how they prostrate themselves before Him! The impious themselves tremble and bow the head; God is there! How glorious for our Lord's presence is this feast, on which all men acknowledge His presence and adore Him! ... Corpus Christi is also the most lovable of feast days. We were not present at all the mysteries of our Savior's life and death which we celebrate in the course of the year. We find joy in them because they are sources of grace. But on the feast of Corpus Christi we participate in the mystery itself, which takes place under our eyes.  This mystery is for us. There is a relation of life between Jesus living in the Sacrament and ourselves living in the midst of the world: a relation of body to body. For that reason this feast is not called simply the feast of our Lord, but the Feast of the Body of our Lord: Corpus Christi. Through this Body we touch Him; through it He is our Food, our Brother and our Guest. Feast of the Body of Jesus Christ: a name as full of love as it is unpretentious and well adapted to our misery! Our Lord asked for this feast so as to draw still closer to us, just as a father is desirous of being wished a happy birthday by his child in order to have a reason for giving him a more ardent proof of his paternal affection, and for granting him some special favor. ... Let this feast therefore be one of joy, and let us expect from it the most abundant blessings. All the hymns and canticles of this solemnity express the thought that on this day our Lord will show Himself more graciously than ever.  The Church, it seems, should have celebrated Corpus Christi on Holy Thursday, since the Eucharist was instituted on that day. But she could not have duly expressed her joy on that day of mourning; the Passion begins on Holy Thursday, and it is impossible to rejoice at the thought of death which predominates during the solemn days of Holy Week. Corpus Christi was also postponed until after the Ascension because sad farewells had still to be bidden and a painful separation effected. It was put off until after Pentecost so that, filled with the graces and joys of the Holy Ghost, we might be able to celebrate with all possible splendor the feast of the divine Bridegroom Who dwells among us. ... Corpus Christi is the most solemn feast of the Church. The Church is the Bride of our Lord in all His risen glory, not of Jesus Christ at His birth or His death; when these last two mysteries took place the Church was not yet in existence. Of course she follows her divine Bridegroom to the Crib and accompanies Him in His sufferings, but of these mysteries she has only the remembrance and grace. But Jesus Christ lives with His Church in His Sacrament. People who have never set foot inside one of her churches think she is widowed. They look upon her as a corpse, and upon her temples as places where only death and suffering are spoken of. But today the very ones who never attend her solemn festivals will see her in all her wealth and beauty, in a natural attractiveness which God, her Bridegroom, will enhance with His presence. What magnificence in the processions as they pass by!  What reverence in the faithful as they kneel down! The Church shows to everyone her Bridegroom in the radiant monstrance. Ah! Who today will presume to say she is widowed? Her friends are in adoration and her enemies tremble. Jesus shows Himself to all men; He gives His blessing to the good; He looks on sinners with compassion; He calls them and draws them to Himself. The Council of Trent calls this feast the triumph of faith, and rightly so. It is also the triumph of the Church through her divine Bridegroom. ... Lastly, Corpus Christi is our feast, we who are adorers of the Blessed Sacrament. The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament together with its affiliated societies exists for the sole purpose of honoring Jesus Christ with a continual feast of Corpus Christi. To prolong this feast throughout the entire year is the object of our life and happiness. We leave to other children of the Church the care of the poor, the healing of the physical and moral ills of afflicted humanity, and the administration of the Sacraments.  We are called only to perpetuate the feast of Corpus Christi. It is therefore the special feast of us religious. It is also your feast, my dear brethren. Have you not consecrated yourselves entirely to the service of the Most Blessed Sacrament? At night you withdraw and leave us to watch with our Lord. The proprieties demand it. But you leave your hearts at the feet of the divine King, and we can say that you spend your life here. Besides, when you receive Communion, do you not really celebrate Corpus Christi in your hearts? Oh! You know the joy and happiness Jesus brings with Him! I will go further and say that for souls who know how to receive Communion, there is only one feast day, that is Communion day.  They find therein the object of all the mysteries, the Being Who makes these mysteries and in Whose honor they are celebrated, whereas most Christians recall them only in a vague manner.