Prayers & Reflections for March 8

The Armor of God
Reflections and Prayers for Wartime

CHAPTER VII
The Eucharist

...Life demands more than a souvenir to sustain it, and if Christ is the very Life of Christians, then He must be more than a memory.

It would not be enough to tell the animal: "See the way the plant lives, let that be your example." If Christ is to be our Food and our Life, it is fitting that He be with us, for it is of the very nature of Life to be localized and definite.

The plant life which is the food of the animal does not dwell in some distant planet, and neither does Christ who is the Food of the Soul, dwell apart from us like an absentee landlord. He is with us, He is here, He has a dwelling.

The tabernacle is now de facto the localization of Life, and it is there and there only that the downcast eyes of sin find wealth of purging tears; only there, that the longings of hope are uplifted to look beyond the veil; only there, that the scourged heart that bleeds and bleeds afresh, at last breaks its silence in answer to the invitation: "Child, give Me thy Heart."

[Continued tomorrow]
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From:
The Armor of God
Reflections and Prayers for Wartime
by Rt. Rev. Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen
(C) 1943, P.J. Kenedy & Sons