Text of the Eucharistic adoration of November 22, 2015

Our Lord Jesus Christ King of Universe

Dear Jesus the Eucharist, our strength and our support, first of all, as taught by our Bishop, we would like to thank You for the opportunity You are giving us to be before Your wonderful presence. Today the Church invokes You as Christ the King; your being King is not due to wealth, strength of armies or power because Yours is a Crown of thorns, interlaced with love and pain, death and life, joy and sadness. You are a King who humbled himself to the death on the cross to give us salvation and true life to all men. On this feast day we invoke Your name and ask for help for the world You have created, now more than ever, a dark, unsettled and unsettling world. You came into the world to bring light but darkness rejected You. Now we plead with You to disperse the darkness and the beacon of hope may shine again. That beacon is the Church that for a long time now seems increasingly adrift. Only a clean, authentic Church, soaked in Your love, Jesus the Eucharist, can transmit Your message of life to all people of the Earth. Turn your gaze of infinite love to the great pain of this world in tears and inspire joy and hope in the hearts of all Your children. Sustain this little flock of Yours, sometimes exhausted and tried but, at the same time, strong because of Your presence so that each of us may give testimony of You simply through our daily actions. We know that You are close to us, that You love with a great love all Your creatures and each day we acknowledge Your presence both in the small and large events of everyday life. Thank you Lord for the strength You give us. "I am the light of the world; He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but will have the light of life". (Jn 8:12)

Thy Kingdom come

Jesus often spoke of his Kingdom in the Gospels, in the Lord's Prayer and in private revelation, calling it the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven. He has never given a precise explanation but He preferred to show us, through symbols and parables, as something extremely precious and every human being wants to take possession of it, once he knows about it: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Mt 13:44).

His Excellency Mons. Claudio Gatti explains the sentence "Thy Kingdom come" in the Our Father in this way: "the Kingdom has nothing to do with social or extra-social institutions; the Kingdom indicates the redeeming intervention of God; in this prayer we see the anxiety of all men and of all humanity turning to God and asking that this salvation, fulfilled by Christ, could be extended to all humanity. Man is calling for salvation, and that it may extend to all people, in any period of history".

The Kingdom of Heaven is a plan of mercy, grace, even if for men, sometimes, it means sacrifice and renunciation, but above all it is a plan of great joy prepared and given by God to us. God did not consider too high a price the life of His son for our lives. For this reason, every time a soul converts there is a twofold joy: that of the soul and that of God, who is eagerly awaiting that all His creatures come back to Him.

How many times have we heard this sentence that Jesus uttered: "repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 4:17). What does repent or convert means? Occasionally our Bishop, so we may better understand, smilingly would say: "To convert means to change our big head, as they say in Rome!" Conversion represents a radical change in our mentality, our way of life, the total delivery of ourselves to Jesus Christ, a total renewal in our being. Then, every time we recite the Our Father, each of us is asking our Lord to be part of His Kingdom, that is, to fully make his will and to do so with the simplicity and purity of children: "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt 18:3).

Jesus is King

In the Gospel dialogue between Pilate and Jesus, just before he was going to be crucified, the Roman Prefect asked: "so you are a King?” Jesus answered: "You say that I am a King. To this end I was born, and for this I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice". Jesus for the first time, in the presence of Pilate, admits he is King and this admission becomes the reason for his death sentence. A fictitious reason, an excuse which will remain engraved forever on a sign posted on the cross of our Lord, as was prescribed by the rules of Roman law. Jesus is a misunderstood and incomprehensible King speaking of love and justice, rather than war and prevarication, forgiveness instead of revenge. An unacceptable and rejected King, then and now. Nothing has changed over the centuries. Today as yesterday, the name of God is used to fight wars and overwhelm other peoples. In a world where the law of the jungle prevails, a King like Christ can only be inconvenient. The way of thinking and acting of Jesus is very far from that of men; his reign, in fact, is realized in this world but is not of this world, for it does not adopt its logic.

There are many ways to be King on this earth. Jesus is King but also every man is called to be like that. Jesus the King is King of what? Is King of truth and justice, of Holiness and grace, peace and love, meekness and humility of heart, as we recite in today’s preface. This royalty is not imposed with revolutions or force of arms, but rather through the force of his spiritual beauty. It attracts and draws to it. Of such royalty, which is that of Christ, we all are in need.

I came to serve

"Whoever wants to be your leader must be your servant. Whoever wants to be first must serve the rest of you like a slave. Follow my example: Even the Son of Man did not come for people to serve him. He came to serve others and to give his life to save many people". (Mk 10:43-45)

Our Lord is asking us to love each other and serving one another. This is the life style God is offering us, there is no other way. Inside the Church the spirit of service is carried out respecting our own role and that of others, according to the gifts, the received call and the abilities God has bestowed on us and placing our necessities behind the needs of our brothers and sisters. St. Paul says: "To each of us, however, was given the grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. And he gave some to be Apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, others to be pastors and teachers, to prepare the brothers to accomplish the Ministry".

God, throughout history, has chosen special souls so they may contribute to the completion of some missions, so they may participate in the implementation of His divine plan.

Our Bishop and our sister Marisa are fervent examples of this call from our Lord, they are real testimony how, in imitation of Christ, priests and consecrated souls should serve God and their neighbor. By choosing them God gave a great gift to the Church, but the men in the highest echelons of the hierarchy did not welcome them, actually they tried, on several occasions, to kill them both physically and morally, for the very reason that these two creatures loved Jesus the Eucharist, the Church and their brothers up to the point to give their life, they were "eaten by the souls", embodying perfectly, but separately, the role of priest and victim that our Lord, as He is God, embodies indivisibly within Himself.