Frequent thanksgiving should inform our daily behavior with the Lord, because we are surrounded by his care and favors: "we are flooded with grace." But there is one very extraordinary moment when the Lord fills us with his gifts, and here we should be particularly grateful: the thanksgiving that follows Mass.
Our dialogue with Jesus in those minutes should be particularly intimate, simple and joyful. There will be no lack of acts of adoration, petition, humility, atonement and thanksgiving. "The saints (...) have repeatedly told us that sacramental thanksgiving is for us the most precious moment of the spiritual life."
At such moments we must close the door of our heart to all that is not the Lord, however important it may be or appear to be. Sometimes we will be alone with Him and no words will be necessary; it will be enough for us to know that He is there, in our soul, and we in Him. It will be enough to be deeply grateful, happy, experiencing true friendship with the Friend. Nearby are the angels, who adore Him in our soul.... At that moment the soul is the most similar to Heaven in this world. How can we be thinking about other things...?
On other occasions we will make use of those prayers collected in devotionals, which have nourished the piety of generations of Christians for many centuries: Te Deum, Trium puerorum, Adoro te devote, Alma de Cristo..., and many others, which the saints and good Christians who have truly loved Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament have left us as nourishment for our piety.
"Love for Christ, who offers himself for us, impels us to know how to find, after Mass, a few minutes for a personal, intimate thanksgiving, which prolongs in the silence of the heart that other thanksgiving which is the Eucharist. How do we address him, how do we speak to him, how do we behave?
"The Christian life is not made up of rigid norms (...). I think, however, that on many occasions the nerve of our dialogue with Christ, of our thanksgiving after Holy Mass, can be the consideration that the Lord is, for us, King, Physician, Teacher, Friend".
King, because he has rescued us from sin and transferred us to the kingdom of light. We ask him to reign in our hearts, in the words we speak that day, in the work we have offered him, in our thoughts, in our every action.
In Communion we see Jesus as the Physician, and together with Him we find the remedy for all our illnesses. We come to Communion as the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed... came to him. And we do not forget that we have in our soul, at our disposal, the Source of all life. He is Life.
Jesus is the Teacher, and we recognize that He has words of eternal life..., and in us there is so much ignorance! He teaches without ceasing, but we must be attentive. If we were with our imagination, our memory, our senses scattered... we would not hear Him.
In Communion we contemplate the Friend, the true Friend, from whom we learn what friendship is. We tell him what happens to us, and we always find a word of encouragement, of consolation.... He understands us well. Let us think that he is with the same real presence with which he is in Heaven, that he is surrounded by angels? Sometimes we will ask our Guardian Angel for help: "Thank him for me, you know how to do it better". No creature like the Virgin, who carried the Son of God in her womb for nine months, can teach us how to treat him better in the thanksgiving of Communion. Let us go to her.