Mother Angelica Points to the Eucharist

I’m going to do something uncharacteristic today and participate in a news event without being hyper-connected to my phone. I’ll be at Mother Angelica’s Mass of Christian Burial in Hanceville, Alabama. There’s no photo taking or the like inside. Thanks be to God.

I happened upon this morning this meditation in a new collection called Praying with Mother Angelica from the late foundress of EWTN — “the global Catholic network.” It both focuses the mind on what she lived for and what she pointed people toward.

I live because of the Eucharist. There’s no prayer so high; there’s no ecstasy so sublime; there’s no work so great; there’s no suffering so severe; there’s nothing to compare with that moment when I and the Trinity – Almighty God through Jesus, Your Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit — are one. It is the greatest gift You could ever give us.

And yet in the moments before You instituted this most precious gift, Your apostles disputed who was the greatest. Lord God, help me to abandon the preoccupations that seem so important to me as I approach You in the Eucharist, as on Calvary.

You humbled Yourself by becoming man, by permitting Yourself to suffer, and now by masking Your unparalleled glory in the form of a small piece of bread — all so that I can have You inside me.

Lord God, if I truly appreciated the majestic humility of the Eucharist, if I fully grasped the opportunity to participate in Your very nature, it would change my life forever. Strengthen my love and my gratitude for this tremendous gift. Give me the faith to understand that the Eucharist makes everything possible.

This is what today is about. Even more than celebrating her life, celebrating He would gave her life, who was her heart and her strength and her salvation.