Prayer formulated by H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti on 23rd October 2005

Feast of the Mother of the Eucharist

Oh Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God One and Triune, we, at this time, bow in silent and reverent adoration before You to shout our faith in the two great mysteries that characterize Christianity: Unity and Trinity of God and You, Lord Jesus, true God and true Man truly present in the Eucharist. Oh Lord, here before us, truly and symbolically, are present all the realities that have filled, for thirty-four years, our life, Marisa’s and mine. You are there my Lord, You Father, You Son and You Holy Spirit; there is the Eucharist, the Mother of the Eucharist, truly present in body and soul beside her Son, represented for us, as we cannot see her because God's plans are yet to be realized, by the wonderful statue and by the relic I have laid at your feet. There is St. Joseph, the quiet man, but so eloquent for us for all the times that he brought the letters of God, the one who lived with his bride the torments of Calvary and was there present. Then there are the Eucharistic miracles, represented by the painting, and these are words of yours, my Lord, the greatest miracle of all the Church history. At the foot of the altar there is the representation of today's reality: the innocence, love and beauty of the Eucharist from where rivers and streams of living water that transform the desert in wonderful gardens flow, rich with colorful flowers and the ends of the earth that have been reached first by Mary’s action; here these flowers indicate that our Mother’s action, in a real and mysterious way, preceded and prepared her Son’s action. And finally, the bas-relief representing the Last Supper, where her, after You only, Jesus, was the greatest and most important character. At the institution of the Eucharist it was just right that the one You called Mother of the Eucharist would have been present to welcome you as she welcomed You at the time of Yes when you incarnated in her womb and when, on Christmas Eve, You were born, leaving her virgin and unharmed. Here my Lord, all these thoughts have flowed through my mind and I offer them to my brothers; There is an immense richness in all these thoughts and reflections for it is Your richness that is enriching our poverty, it is Your power that is sustaining our weakness, it is Your love that is erasing our selfishness. My Lord, if you had not been here with the Eucharistic presence, I ask myself and my brothers, what would we be now without You? It is a question where the answer must follow the silence of our own heart; what would be my life without Jesus the Eucharist and what is my life with Him today. My Lord, You are our God and we, Your children and Your creatures, raise our eyes to You and open our hearts to our intimacy mentioning all our problems and You, Jesus, always present, rests Your hand on our heart and give us, to our understanding, the light to better understand Your plans and especially to accept them even when they are hard on us. Make it possible, Oh Lord, that we may truly say with our heart "My God, Thy will be done" because sometimes the human resistance is felt, threatening to paralyze us and preventing us from saying these words. Only abandoning ourselves to You, or, as Dante says, in Your will, we will find our peace and our fulfillment. We bow before You and acknowledge You as our God and our Lord. Jesus the Eucharistic, take my words for what they are, I beg You, my Lord, revive your Church at Your earliest, You have instituted it, You have founded it. Unfortunately men are domineering it but the Church is Yours and Yours only and we priests and bishops can just serve it and not claim possession of it. My Lord, revive Your Church, make it return to the primitive spirit, do in such a way that today’s Christians have the virtues of the Christians of that time who welcomed your word through the education and teachings of the apostles they loved, breaking the Eucharistic bread, feeding on it and showing mutual love and were united in constant and perpetual prayer. In the today’s Church there is too much individualism, too much pride and too much filth, send Your Spirit to wash all these blemishes and to restore the face of the Church to that purity and gleam that was lost because of men’s guilt who betrayed and exploited it. Jesus, what else can I tell You but to bless each of us; bless our community, strengthens the good resolutions that are within us, support our will that is sometimes faltering under the weight of the cross; grant us Your peace, let us feel Your love and put into each one of us the ardent desire to be a witness of Your Word and of Your presence for Your glory, for the rebirth of the Church, for the salvation of souls and for our sanctification. Amen.