July 1, 2026
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will meditate to-morrow on the manner of visiting the Blessed Sacrament, and we shall see that we must bring to it: 1st, exterior devotion; 2d, interior devotion. We will then make the resolution to bring this double devotion to our visits, and our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Psalmist: “How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!” (Ps. Ixxxiii. 2.)
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ always present in His tabernacle, there to receive our adorations and to give us audience every moment during the day and the night that we come to visit Him. Oh, how much so great love merits all our thanks and all our homage! “Come, let us adore and fall down and weep before the Lord” (Ps. xciv. 6).
FIRST POINT
On Exterior Devotion in our Visits to the Blessed Sacrament
This exterior devotion seems only a secondary thing, and yet it is fundamental. If the exterior is not religious, the demeanor recollected, the eyes kept under restraint, the whole deportment modest, the visit will, of necessity, be fruitless and bad. If we permit ourselves to look at what is in the church, at what is going on, at those who come and go, we shall think of all these things, of all these persons, and God will be forgotten. If, lastly, we permit ourselves to indulge in a shameless exterior, negligent, free and familiar, marked by an unconcerned air, a word said to our neighbor, the whole of our interior will soon become as careless as our exterior, and we shall have no energy for prayer, we shall not think either of the lofty majesty in whose presence we stand, nor of the legions of adoring angels which surround us, nor of the immense needs which we have to expose for ourselves and for the whole Church; and far from this visit being a profit to us, it will be converted into a double sin, a sin against Jesus Christ, to whom we have been wanting in reverence, and a sin against our neighbor, whom we shall have scandalized.
SECOND POINT
On Interior Devotion in our Visits to the Blessed Sacrament
First, in going to make it a visit we must prepare ourselves by recollection and a holy joy at the thought that we are going to spend a few moments in Paradise, in the company of Our Lord and of His angels. Arrived in presence of the Sacrament, we must do three things: render our homage, present our requests, and study the Eucharistic life of Jesus Christ in order to imitate it. 1st. Render our homage; and in order to do so, we must speak to Our Lord in all simplicity; tell Him just what our heart inspires us to do, whether they are joys or sorrows, and if we do not know what to say to Him, to express to Him, with simplicity, our powerlessness to keep ourselves very humble in His presence, feeling ourselves but too much honored to be suffered to appear before Him; to offer to Him the most pure and fervent homage of the legions of angels who surround His tabernacle, and to protest to Him that we love Him and desire to love Him always more and more; that we adore Him as our Lord and our God, that we thank Him for His presence in our midst, for innumerable communions and numberless Sacrifices, and for all the graces of which the Eucharist is the source. If, in the midst of these effusions of our heart, it pleases Our Lord to give us some good thoughts, some pious sentiments, we must listen to Him in silence, receive with great reverence and affectionate gratitude whatever He may deign to say to us, and endeavor to make it take root in us through meditation; then we must offer to Our Lord all that we have, and all that we are, and unite ourselves with all the homage He renders to His Father, like all the angels of heaven by the eternal Amen of Paradise. 2d. We pass from thence to the presentation of our requests, and like a poor man at the feet of one who is rich, we pray for our own needs, for the needs of persons in whom we are interested, and the needs of the whole Church, for the conversion of sinners, for the sanctification of the just, and we present these requests accompanied with a great desire that God should everywhere be sanctified, that His reign should extend over all hearts, and that everywhere His holy will should be respected. 3d. Thence we pass on to the study of the Eucharistic life of Our Saviour, of His perfect religion towards God, His Father, His charity, meekness, and patience towards His neighbor, His humility and His mortification in regard to Himself: we then draw from these considerations strong resolutions to conform our life to the many beautiful examples He sets before us; and we fix upon some acts of this new life which ought to be the fruit of our visit. Lastly, when our visit is over, we leave our heart in the holy ciborium with the divine Host, that it may there continue its adorations, its love, and its good resolutions. Then we watch over our interior and over all our senses, so that distractions do not make us lose what we have gathered together of graces, of fervor, and of holy resolutions. Is it thus that we make our visits to the Blessed Sacrament?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.