The Eucharist: God’s Greatest Gift
Hispanic Ministry / Felix Navarette
What is the power of the Eucharist in your life?
(En Espanol)
The Eucharist is everything, and without him I have nothing!
Since my childhood, faith has been an essential part of my life, I remember attending church frequently, and visiting Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament’s chapel accompanied by my grandmother, who continues to be a source of inspiration to me despite not being physically among us. She introduced me to eucharistic adoration on Thursdays every week. There began a love story that will have no end.
In the relationship that God wants to maintain with us—even knowing that he does not obtain any benefit—there is, in a certain way, a kind of mutual thirst. It’s there on our part toward him, as an almost instinctive response, typical of our mortal nature, as also from him to us. In the latter case, God not only wants to communicate or reveal his lordship to us, he also seeks to dwell among us and remain forever under the appearance of bread.
The words of St. Thomas Aquinas in his well-known hymn “Adoro te devote” perfectly describe the feeling that wells up in my heart when I contemplate the presence of Jesus in the sacred host. This experience of “submitting the heart completely and surrendering completely when contemplating him” has been a great help in my adult life, both in the development of my vocation as a husband and father of four children, and in the exercise of my ministry through the last 12 years.
That help has especially been apparent in the moments of tribulation when everything seemed to collapse around me. All hope seemed to be extinguished after my wife seriously suffered the consequences of medical negligence during the birth of our youngest son, which left her in intensive care for a week and having to stay almost a month in the hospital. Although that situation seemed to be a slow ordeal, and in the face of not very encouraging prognoses, God acted miraculously, as he sometimes does.
Leaving many people speechless, my wife recovered her health after dozens of procedures. What happened? How did that occur? Well, during all this time that seemed not to pass, in the moments that I could escape from the hospital, I visited Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in a nearby chapel. My prayer consisted of two things: the recovery of my wife, and the spiritual strength that I needed to move forward. And Jesus listened to me, I’m sure of that!
All that time in his presence was an opportunity for comfort and renewal. I remember it as if it were yesterday, even though almost nine years have passed since that opportunity in which Jesus wanted to make himself known more deeply to us. How great is God!
How do we stay standing in the midst of difficulties? Where does the strength to move forward come from? How are we so resilient? These are very common questions of our limited humanity. Amid such questions and our humanity, the Eucharist is food for the soul.
Pope Urban IV expressed that reality in the bull that instituted the feast of Corpus Christi: “The Eucharist truly restores and nourishes, it satisfies to the highest degree not the body, but the heart; not the flesh, but the spirit; not the viscera but the soul.”
Meanwhile, if in my life there is suffering, sadness or anxiety, the recipe will always be the same: frequently consume a small piece of bread that is transformed into the body of Christ—and give up completely. It’s practical, personal and powerful.
(Felix Navarette is the coordinator of Hispanic ministry in the archdiocese.) †