June 7, 2026
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
After having seen how the perfect life of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist teaches us our duty towards God, we shall see to-morrow how it teaches us our duty: 1st, towards our neighbor; 2d, towards ourselves. Our resolution shall be: 1st, to imitate, in our relations with our neighbor, the charity, the meekness, and the patience of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament; 2d, to imitate as nearly as possible His spirit of mortification and humility. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of Our Saviour: “I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so do you also” (John xiii. 15).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Jesus Christ, addressing to us in the Eucharist the same words which He addressed to His apostles during His mortal life: “I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so do you also.” Oh, He is indeed the most finished model therein of a perfect life! Let us thank Him for the great example He has given us, and ask of Him grace to imitate it.
FIRST POINT
The Eucharist Teaches us our Duty towards our Neighbor
These duties may be reduced to three: to love, to bear with, to treat every one with gentleness. Now, Jesus Christ in the Eucharist performs these three duties perfectly. 1st. What love He shows towards men! He is employed in a continual exercise of charity, day and night praying for us, day and night immolating Himself for us, and soliciting our salvation with ineffable ardor of zeal. Is it thus that we love our brethren? Do we love them with a practical love, which occupies itself with their happiness, which avoids all that might give them pain, which seeks, at the price of our own comfort, all that could give them pleasure? with a generous love, which devotes itself to others, and does not draw back in presence of any sacrifice whatever? 2d. What patience Jesus exercises in the Blessed Sacrament! How He bears with coldness, with distractions, with negligence, with irreverence, even with profanations! It is thus that He teaches us to bear in others what displeases us—their want of consideration and attention, their defects, their faults, their temper. Where there is no endurance, there is no charity. 3d. What meekness Jesus shows in the Blessed Sacrament! During eighteen centuries He has borne with the abandonment of Christians who do not come to visit Him; with the blasphemies of the infidel who insults Him even in the sanctuary of His love; with the audacious sacrilege of thieves who have often taken Him out of the tabernacle, thrown Him into the dust, trodden Him under foot; and during all these eighteen hundred years He has never shown the slightest sign of displeasure. O calmness! O meekness! O benignity of my Saviour! How Thou dost condemn our vivacity and our impatience, our hardness and our impetuosities, our temper, which cannot bear to suffer anything! Thou mightest launch thunders from out Thy tabernacle, and nothing comes from thence except grace, mercy, and meekness.
SECOND POINT
The Eucharist Teaches us our Duties towards Ourselves
We owe it to ourselves to mortify and humiliate ourselves: 1st, to mortify ourselves in our self-will, which, if it were to be given up to its caprices and its inconstancies, would prove to be our ruin; in our senses, which would otherwise be a door open to all temptations, a source of dissipation and of sensuality; lastly, in our whole being, which, being thrown into disorder by original sin, tends always to avoid order; 2d, we owe it to ourselves to humble ourselves, by substituting for our self-love a sincere and profound humility, since it is written that pride is the root of all sin (Ecclus. x. 15). Now, what more beautiful model of mortification and of humility can we have than Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament? There self-will does not exist; we may do with Him what we will, we may shut Him in or we may expose Him, we may carry Him from one place to another; never does the hand which touches Him meet with the least resistance. Rather than make an act of self-will, He will allow Himself to fall into the dust, or will descend into a sacrilegious heart, side by side with the devil. In the Blessed Sacrament He makes no use of His senses; He has feet and does not walk, hands and He does not act, a tongue and He does not speak; it is a state of death in a living body. At the same time, what humility! He is really in the Blessed Sacrament the hidden God (Is. xlv. 15), present, and nothing is seen of Him, glorious as is a risen body, magnificent as God Himself; and the Eucharistic veils cover everything! There is nothing which announces a man, still less a God; only the material appearance of bread is seen. What a lesson for self-love and vanity, which desire to attract notice, to obtain esteem, and which revolt against a hidden life, humiliation, and forgetfulness!
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.