Trinity Sunday June 15
Preface of the Holy Trinity
With your only Son and the Holy Spirit, you are one God, you are one Lord, not in a single person but one substance in three persons. What we believe of your glory, because you have revealed it, we believe equally of your Son and of the Holy Spirit; and when we proclaim our faith in the eternal and true God, we simultaneously adore each of the persons, in their unique nature and equal majesty.
Our relationship with the Heart of Christ is then transformed under the impulse of the Spirit who directs us towards the Father, the paternal source of life and the supreme origin of grace. Christ does not desire that we stop at Him. The love of Christ is a “revelation of the Father’s mercy.” His desire is that, driven by the Spirit who springs from his heart, “with Him and in Him” we may go to the Father. Glory is addressed to the Father “through” Christ, “with” Christ and “in” Christ. Saint John Paul II taught that “the Heart of the Savior invites us to return to the love of the Father which is the source of all authentic love.” This is precisely what the Holy Spirit seeks to cultivate in our hearts by coming to us from the Heart of Christ. This is why the liturgy, under the life-giving action of the Spirit, always turns to the Father from the risen Heart of Christ.” Dilexit Nos 77
Action: I pray an Our Father very slowly, as if I were saying it with Jesus himself at my side.
Monday, June 16
Towards the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament
Devotion to the Heart of Christ reappears in the spiritual journey
of many saints, each very different from the other, and this devotion takes on new aspects in each of them. Saint Vincent de Paul, for example, said that what God wants is the heart: “God asks primarily for the heart, the heart, and it is the most important thing. Why is it that someone who has nothing will deserve more than someone who has great possessions that they renounce? Because someone who has nothing goes there with more affection; and this is what God particularly wants…” This implies agreeing to unite one’s heart to that of Christ: “A woman who does all she can to put her heart in a state of being united to that of Our Lord, […] what blessing must she not hope for from God.” Dilexit Nos. 148
Action
I take real time for a heart-to-heart with the Lord, taking care to be silent and let Him speak to me.
Tuesday, June 17
Our cooperation can allow God’s power and love to spread in our lives and in the world, while rejection or indifference can prevent it. (…) Our refusal or indifference limit the effects of his power and the fruitfulness of his love in us. If he does not find trust and openness in me, his love is deprived—because he himself wants it that way—of its extension in my life, which is unique and cannot be repeated, and in the world where he calls me to make it present. This does not come from any weakness on his part but from his infinite freedom, his paradoxical power, and the perfection of his love for each of us. Dilexit Nos. 192-193
Action
I ask the Lord’s forgiveness for all the times my indifference or rejection have prevented His power and love from flowing in me, or through me. If I can, I will confess. If I am unable to do so today, I will confess before the end of the month.
Wednesday, June 18
The Sacred Heart is the innermost self of Jesus giving itself. And that is the Eucharist: Jesus offers himself to the Father as a sacrifice. Saint John Chrysostom said: “When you approach the cup of blood, it is as if you were coming to drink from the source of the Heart of Jesus.” And Mother Teresa: “When we contemplate the Heart of Jesus, we see how much he loved us in his passion; when we contemplate the Eucharist, we see how much he loves us today.”
Fr. Etienne Kern, in the magazine He is Alive! No. 361
1 Cor 11:23-26
Brothers and sisters: I myself received what came from the Lord and passed it on to you: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
After supper, he did the same with the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. As often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.”
So then, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Action
I am making an effort to go to Mass today and I am suggesting that someone go with me. I give food to someone who is hungry: a homeless person on the street, or I bring a meal or cake to a lonely neighbor.
Thursday, June 19
Blessed Sacrament Sequence
Zion, celebrate your Savior, sing of your leader and your shepherd with hymns and songs.
As long as you can, you must dare, for he surpasses your praises, you cannot praise him too much.
The living Bread, the Bread of life, is offered today as the object of your praises.
At the sacred meal of the Last Supper, it is true that he was given to the group of twelve brothers.
Let us praise him with full and strong voices, let the joy of our hearts be joyful and radiant!
This is indeed the solemn day on which we celebrate the first institution of this divine banquet.
At this banquet of the new King, the Passover of the New Law puts an end to the old Passover.
The old order gives way to the new, reality drives out the shadow, and light, the night. What Christ did at the Last Supper, he commanded that we do in his memory after him.
Instructed by his holy precept, we consecrate the bread and the wine as a victim of salvation.
This is why Newman found in the Eucharist the living Heart of Jesus Christ, capable of liberating, of giving meaning to every moment, and of spreading true peace in man: “O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, you are hidden in the Holy
Holy Eucharist and you always beat for us. […] I adore you, therefore, with love and fear, with fervent affection and a submissive and resolute will. O my God, when you condescend to allow me to receive you, to eat and drink you, and to make me your dwelling place for a moment, oh! Make my heart beat in unison with yours. Purify it of all that is earthly, proud, and sensual, of all that is hard and cruel, of all lifelessness, all disorder, all perversity. Fill it with your presence, so that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the present time may have the power to trouble it; but that, in your love and in your fear, it may find peace.
Dilexit Nos. 26
Action
I unite myself to Jesus in Gethsemane and watch with him for an hour this evening. If possible, I pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
Friday, June 20
It is a dogma for Christians that bread is transformed into his body,
that wine becomes his blood.
What cannot be understood or seen, our faith dares to affirm, beyond the laws of nature.
Both of these species, which are only pure signs, veil
a divine reality.
His flesh nourishes, his blood waters, but the whole Christ remains
under each species.
He is received without breaking, rupturing, or dividing; he is received whole.
Whether one or a thousand receive communion, he gives himself to one as to the other, he nourishes without disappearing.
Good and bad consume him, but for a very different fate, for life or for death.
Death for sinners, life for the righteous; see: they take alike;
what a different result!
The proposal of Eucharistic Communion on the first Fridays of the month, for example, was a powerful message at a time when many people stopped receiving Communion because they lacked confidence in divine forgiveness and mercy, and considered Communion a sort of prize for the perfect. In this Jansenist context, the promotion of this practice did much good, helping us recognize in the Eucharist the close and gratuitous love of the Heart of Christ that calls us to union with Him. It would also do much good today for another reason: because amid the whirlwind of today’s world and our obsession with leisure, consumerism, entertainment, phones, and social media, we forget to nourish our lives with the power of the Eucharist. Dilexit Nos. 84
Action
I am making an effort to go to Mass today. I am praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy
Saturday, June 21
Blessed Sacrament Sequence
If we divide the species, do not hesitate, but remember that He is present
in a fragment as well as in the whole.
The sign alone is divided, Christ is in no way divided, neither His size nor His
state have diminished in any way.
Here it is, the bread of angels, it is the bread of man on the journey, the true bread
of God’s children, which cannot be thrown to the dogs.
It was announced in advance by Isaac in sacrifice, by the Paschal lamb
slain, by the manna of our fathers.
O Good Shepherd, our true bread, O Jesus, have mercy on us, nourish us
and protect us, show us eternal blessings in the land of the living. You who know all things and can do all things, you who nourish us on earth, lead us to the banquet in heaven and give us your inheritance, in the company of your saints. Amen.
Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires, 1996-2006 – He is Alive
No. 134
The professor was unaware that the sample I brought him came from a consecrated host. After studying it, he said to me: “The sample you brought me is a cardiac muscle, a myocardium, more precisely the left ventricle.” And he confirmed that my patient had suffered enormously. So I asked him, “Why do you say that?” “Because your patient has some thrombi, which at certain times prevent breathing and the supply of oxygen, tiring and causing the patient pain, since each suction must have been painful. He was probably the victim of a blow to the chest. Moreover, his heart was beating rapidly at the time you brought me the sample.” We found intact white blood cells, and these are only carried by the blood. Therefore, if there are white blood cells, it’s because at the time you brought me the sample, it was beating.” The professor then asked me whose sample it was, and when we told him it came from a consecrated host, he exclaimed, “I don’t believe so.” He was very impressed. “Doctor, at the time you brought me this sample, this heart was alive!”
Action
I pray for all those who do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the host. If I can, I receive communion today and offer this communion for them.