Many feasts, many graces...

Eucharistic thoughts from four 'family members'

(including a Doctor of the Church and a Pope),

on their FEAST DAY today...

 

Saints are like the light of the stars, which still

reaches the earth long after being extinguished.

Saints touch us by radiating the light of Christ

to us through their life and deeds.  (Anonymous)

 

 

The classic expression of faith in the Real Presence was drafted by Pope Gregory VII in a Eucharistic Creed that leaves no room for compromise.

"I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration there is present the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin and offered up for the salvation of the world, being hung on the cross and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and there is present the true blood of Christ which flowed from His side. They are present not only by means of a sign and of the efficacy of the sacrament, but also in the very reality and truth of their nature and substance(Council of Rome, February 11,1079)."

His teachings on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, in response to Berengarius, made Church history and began a Eucharistic Renaissance in the Church which included Eucharistic Adoration. His teaching was so great that it was quoted verbatim in Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Encyclical  “Mysterium Fedei”.

 

Pope St Gregory VII

Medieval Reformer

Italy ~ 1073-1085

Feast Day - May 25

 

 

Though he did not want the office of Pope, his electors praised him as

“a devout man … mighty in human and divine knowledge, a distinguished lover

of equity and justice, a man firm in adversity and temperate in prosperity.”

 

Pope St Gregory VII, ora pro nobis!

 

 

 

"If you could only understand

the value of one Holy Communion! 

A single Communion

should make us other Christs!"

 

 

St Madeleine Sophie Barat

Foundress of Society of the Sacred Heart

France ~ 1779-1865

FEAST DAY - May 25

 

  

St Madeleine Sophie Barat, ora pro nobis!

 

 

"All graces are contained in you, O Jesus,

in the Eucharist, our celestial Food! 

What more can a soul wish when it has within itself

the One who contains everything?...Because I have

and possess this great wonder, I do not

long for, want, or desire any other!"

 

 

  St Mary Magdalene de Pazzi

Carmelite nun

Italy ~ 1566-1607

FEAST DAY - May 25

 

 

 

St Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, ora pro nobis!

 

 

 

"I have devoted my energies to the study of the Scriptures, observing monastic discipline,

and singing the daily services in church; study,

teaching, and writing have always been my delight."

 

 

Venerable Bede

Monk, scholar, teacher

Doctor of the Church

England ~ 672-735

FEAST DAY - May 25

 

 

 

St Bede, ora pro nobis!

 

OF INTEREST:  Bede was the greatest scholar of his time in the Western Church. He regarded his theological writings as his most important work (especially Biblical commentaries), but his fame in later centuries rests primarily on his writings about history.  St Bede was one of the first to propose a calendar that would reckon the years backward and forward from the "birth of Christ" (BC and AD).