How many Catholics easily do without the blessings of Christ the Eucharist! They enter a church and go directly to their favorite saint, forgetting the master of the house, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and leave the church without having even greeted him. Why? Because they do not know Jesus, and their faith in Him, present in the tabernacle, is so small that they do not give him importance and prefer his images to his living and real person among us. A lamentable error, which we must correct in ourselves and in those who are ignorant of such a great reality.
Once, someone said to Saint Teresa: If I could have lived in Jesus' time and had been able to talk to him and touch him and see him... my life would have been different. And she replied: But do we not have the same Jesus in the Eucharist? Why search for more? That is why, Saint Peter Eymard said: “There is Jesus. Therefore, we should all go to visit him daily.”
Many times, I have wondered what the world would be without the Eucharist, without the friend, God and man, Christ Jesus. I, personally, after having been able to enjoy his glorious presence in this sacrament, would feel that something was missing, our churches would seem empty to me without that sublime presence of Jesus the Eucharist. No one could fill that emptiness for me neither with all their oratory nor with all their prayer.
About three or four times I have visited Protestant churches, how cold it feels in them! They are only rooms full of chairs, like there are in any hotel, school or institution. There is God as in any place in the Universe, there one can pray as in any place in the world, but... Christ, the human divine friend, is not there. Did Christ come only to stay with us thirty-three years? He promised us: “I will be with you always until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). And he is fulfilling it not only as God, as when he says: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20); he is fulfilling it truly as man too, by staying in the Eucharist forever.
Therefore, what can we say to those who do not accept Christ the Eucharist? They are like those spouses who would only want to love each other by phone, believing that they do not need their physical presence. So are all those who believe they do not need the physical presence of Eucharistic Jesus to love him in fullness. Would we not have liked to live in the times of Christ and have known him and been his friends?
Father Ángel Peña