October 19 - To be a living Eucharist
After publishing The Infinite Love in the Divine Eucharist in 1822, Pauline had resolutely turned towards Jesus celebrated in the Eucharistic Liturgy and with whom she had an intimate bond. The Eucharist was very important for Pauline Marie Jaricot. Although she was not an academic theologian, she knew how to share with others her feelings of union with Jesus in the Eucharist, the universal mission of the Church to offer salvation to the world. She would happily share her Christian sensitivity, her intimate bond with Jesus who was everything to her.
For Pauline, Jesus is to our soul what salt is to meat that we want to preserve. The divine Eucharist preserves our will from the corruption of sin and preserves us for eternal life. He welcomes me as his child every day to his table. He allows me to exchange my weakness for his strength, my lowliness for his greatness, my anger for his gentleness, my corruption for his holiness, my nothingness for his divinity, my folly, my darkness, my ignorance, for his wisdom, his light, his truth. Moreover, if I desire I can, if I want to, because he allows me to, lose myself in him and receive him in me instead of myself. (Joseph Servel, Another face, op. Cit., p. 149-150).
At times, Pauline sees the Christian as two people fighting, one being the child of a slave that is of sinful Eve and the other being the son of the free woman, Mary, the son of the Church through Jesus Christ. The son of the slave must be cast out of the house, so that the heir of the promises may occupy the whole place, to grow up in Jesus Christ. In fact, "the wheat must undergo great preparation and work before it is fit for the sacrifice of our altars; yet it is not capable, in spite of such preparation, of becoming the body of Jesus Christ without a miracle that destroys it and substitutes the Savior for it... In the same way, I must undergo great preparation, great work, in order to become living bread pleasing to the Lord; but all my preparation will be nothing by itself: it will be necessary that the sword of Jesus Christ destroy me in order to substitute himself in my own place, so that I may accomplish his purposes. (Joseph Servel, Another face, op. Cit., p. 150).
Pauline emphasizes the sacred character of the Eucharist, sensitive as she is to the beauty that surrounds the liturgy as well as the sacred interior design of churches. For her, what is important is adorning our inner house, our heart, the place where Christ will dwell. The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost (Lk 19:5-9). To contemplate the Eucharist is to contemplate the love of Christ for all people. Is not the heart of Christ the center of the mystery of God's love? The heart that loves men and women, no matter how far from holiness they may be, is the heart that gives itself up in sacrifice for the salvation of all, the heart from which all the graces we receive flow.
God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). Through Eucharistic communion, Christ lives in us, mysteriously animating our being and our actions from within, while respecting our freedom. It is both a transforming union and an intimate dialogue, in which our freedom impels us to become truly what we receive, what we deeply are, children of God and brothers of Jesus Christ. (Mgr François Duthel, Postulator of the Cause of Canonisation of Pauline Jaricot, Introduction , in Pauline Jaricot, L'Amour infini dans la divine Eucharistie, Paris, Mame, 2005, p. 11-34, p. 31 for the quote). The Eucharist is not a commonplace meal; it is the memorial of Christ's sacrifice. "The Mass must be placed at the center of Christian life and every effort must be made in every community to ensure that it is celebrated in a dignified manner. (John Paul II, Mane nobiscum Domine, n ° 17).
The Eucharist brings us back to Calvary, the place of Christ's saving passion, where the blood and water flowed, signs of baptism and the Eucharist, sacraments of our salvation and the commitment of our God's for the salvation of all. We are invited, as Christ asked during the Last Supper (Lk 22:19), to do this in memory of him, to make him present in the proclamation of the Word, listening to him speak to us and in receiving his body and blood, for he becomes real food. Each one can say to Jesus at the moment of consecration: Lord, you are here, I love you. I thank you for your presence and for your love. Give me your word and your bread, this nourishment that alone can fill my inner hunger and make the desert of my heart bloom again. (Bishop François Duthel, "Introduction", in Pauline Jaricot, L’Amour infini dans la divine Eucharistie, op. Cit., p. 31-32). Faced with such a mystery of love, we are invited to recognize our littleness, our sin, to discover how much God loves us and how far God goes to save us. The love of Christ covers a multitude of sins and invites the sinner to conversion, relying only on the goodness of the Lord. It is in this sense that Pauline invites us to question ourselves on our practice of the sacrament of Penance, which must be situated within the framework of divine grace and love.
Pauline often calls us to penance, to search for a purified heart so as to welcome more wholeheartedly the Body of the Lord Jesus, dead and risen. She is so confident in the infinite Love of God celebrated in the Eucharist that she puts her points out those aspects that seem most important to her: sacrifice, real presence, banquet or communion. In the intimate exchange with Jesus, that one has just received in communion we are invited to live the Eucharist in all its aspects, whatever the door of entry we choose. Indeed, we must examine ourselves before eating the bread of life and drinking from the cup (1 Cor 11:27-29). We must purify ourselves through an examination of conscience and enter into a process of forgiveness and purification so that our whole being is truly the temple prepared to receive the Body of the Lord. (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 61).
Even if one may have the impression that in Pauline’s meditation on the Eucharist the Resurrection, ecclesial communion and the Spirit of Pentecost are not sufficiently emphasized, it is worth noting the importance that Pauline gives to the Eucharist and to Christian mission. Is not the missionary spirit born of the Eucharist, of the risen Lord who sends out on mission? Is not the Spirit given so that all disciples become aware of their missionary responsibility? We are invited to share with the poor the table of the word and the table of bread, the Eucharist. We are invited to serve charity, love of God, love of neighbor, by articulating our spiritual commitment to the needs of the poor. The Eucharist sends us back to faith in Christ, dead and Risen, to the sacrifice he made out of love (Phil 2:5-11) to save the many, to communion and service, following Christ who came to serve and give his life as a ransom for the many (Mk 10:45).