underconstruction

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, M.T.S.

Immaculate Heart Parish, Portland, Oregon, USA

Aurem Cordis™

The Little Flower in the Heart of Christ:

Reflections on St. Therese of Lisieux and the Holy Eucharist

Fellowship Association of St. Therese

www.Teresacharities.com

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, M.T.S.

Portland, Oregon

October 2005

St. Therese of Lisieux's resplendent and alluring poem "Living Bread

was undoubtedly inspired by her long hours of Adoration before the

Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. In it she writes:

Lord, let me hide in your face.

There, I'll no longer hear the world's vain noise.

Give me your love, keep me in your grace

Just for today.

Near your divine Heart, I forget all passing things.

I no longer dread the fears of the night.

Jesus, give me a place in your heart

Just for today.

Living Bread, Bread of Heaven, divine Eucharist,

0 Sacred Mystery! That love has brought forth ...

Come live in my heart, Jesus ...

Just for today.

Deign to unite me to you. Holy and Sacred Vine,

And my weak branch will give you its fruit,

And I'll be able to offer you a cluster of golden grapes

Lord, from today on. ...

When I first used this poem as part of Adoration, I gazed upon our

Lord and Savior—who is truly and really present in the Most Blessed

Sacrament of the Eucharist-and thought back to my wedding day, and to

the words Colleen said to me when we exchanged our vows—words that

the Lord seemed to be saying to me as I knelt before him: "I promise to

cherish and support you so that you may always grow; so that we may

grow together in love. I promise to love and treasure you all the days of

your life."

St. Therese knew the commitment of covenant love—which is not an

exchange of goods ("this is yours and this is mine") but an exchange of

persons ("I am your and you are mine"). Covenant love speaks to the fact

that built into the very nature of our being is the capacity for deeply

intimate and intensely personal communion with God.(cf. Genesis 1:12; 2:7.). God loves us by

giving us life, and the loving and life-giving dimensions of this relationship

are inseparable.(cf. 1 John 4:16) To try and separate them is like trying to divide the

Trinity! But we live in a culture that routinely and systematically separates

love from life, which leads to a culture of death. You need to look no

further than the horror of abortion and euthanasia to see that this is true.

St. Therese shows us in her simple, little way that loving and life-

giving communion means making a complete gift of ourselves to God, just

as Christ did on the Cross. "In order to be truly a victim of love", she says,

"we must give ourselves entirely. We shall be consumed by love to the

extent that we surrender ourselves to love." In using our freedom to unite

ourselves fully to Christ in his passion, death and resurrection, we are truly

being the persons who God created us to be, made in his image and

likeness.

But picking up our cross and following Christ means that we—like

the Little Flower—must be willing to offer ourselves in sacrifice, in

imitation of Jesus. Just as the Passover lamb was a young male without

blemish, our Lord Jesus Christ, only thirty-three years old—the Paschal

Lamb who is like us in all things but sin—became the most holy and perfect

sacrifice. Just as the blood of the lamb was shed among the people, the

soldier's lance pierced the side of Christ, from which blood and water

flowed. His precious blood covers us and the floodwaters of baptism

destroy the power of sin and death, so that we may be filled with the gift of

everlasting life through his resurrection. St. Therese knew all too well the

benefices that come with uniting our sufferings to Christ's, as she says in

her own words: "I want to suffer and even rejoice for love, for this is my

way of scattering flowers. Never a flower shall I find but its petals shall be

scattered for you; and all the while I will sing, yes, always sing, even when

gathering my roses in the midst of thorns; and the longer and sharper the

thorns may be, the sweeter shall be my song!"

St. Therese understood the integral connection between Penance and

the Eucharist. Her total trust in God's mercy is evidenced by her own

words: "Even if I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I

would go and cast myself in the arms of Jesus with a heart torn by

repentance, for I know how much He cherishes the prodigal child that

returns to Him." Through the Eucharist, God gives us His very life and we

can only give ourselves to Him in a way that is fully loving and life-giving

when we are able to say, "Yes, Lord, I want to receive you into myself; I

want you to create your life within me. I know, 0 Lord, that you love me

and I, in turn, want to show my love for you by doing your holy will in

receiving the graces given in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which

restores your saving grace in my soul; the grace that allows me to be

drawn more deeply into the heart of the Trinity."

St. Therese understood, in a very personal and profound way, that

the gift of the Eucharist comes to us at the Last Supper, when Christ begins

the priesthood, beautifully symbolized in the washing of the Apostles feet.

She even offers some words of wisdom to the Peter in all of us who resist

God's example of self-donating love: "In order to enjoy the merciful love of

Jesus, it is necessary to humiliate ourselves, to acknowledge our

nothingness, and this is a thing that many are unwilling to do. God wants

humility of heart. When He sees that we are convinced of our nothingness

... and appeal to Him, He stoops towards us and gives with divine

generosity." By washing their feet, Jesus shows us that the Eucharist is not

meant to be kept to ourselves: we must become living witnesses to the Real

Presence of Christ in fulfillment of our mission as Church: to go in peace to

love and to serve the Lord.

Our Lord also wanted to show the clear and lasting connection

between the sacrament of his Body and Blood and the ministry of priest.

The Little Flower knew that Christ willed that it be through the male

priesthood that we receive the Eucharist, that we touch that possibility-

even if only for a moment—where we are as intimately one with God as

humanly possible while here on Earth. St. Therese lovingly and humbly

submitted herself to the Church's authority, knowing that the vocation

given to her by God was simply to love, saying, "I feel in me the vocation

of the Priest. I have the vocation of the Apostle... . Charity gave me the

key to my vocation. I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this

Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love comprised all

vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and

places... in a word, that it was eternal! Then in the excess of my delirious

joy, I cried out: 0 Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it...My

vocation is Love!"

The lesson that St. Therese teaches us—and that the Lord Jesus gives

us the power to understand and to live through the Holy Eucharist—is that

whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever our life asks of us, wherever it

takes us, each one is us is called to be holy.(From a homily given by Most Rev. Joseph P. Delaney, Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, on October 1, 1997, in celebration of the Centenary of the Death of St. Therese.)

In receiving the Body and

Blood of Our Savior, we "must look totally toward Christ, allowing

ourselves to be transformed by him ... to be burned by the enveloping fire

of his love."( Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Eucharist, Communion, and Solidarity", Issued 2 June 2002 [article on-line];available from http://www.petersnet.net/research/retrieve_full.cfm?RecNum=4554 (Internet, accessed 7April 2003).

It is through the Eucharist that Christ unites us organically

with every other person receiving him—everyone from the person next to

me whom I may not like very much, to other Catholics around the world:

in the West Indies, the Philippines, Vietnam, Africa, Europe, or in any

other place.( |bid) In becoming one with our brothers and sisters through the

Eucharistic Christ, we must learn to open ourselves to them and involve

ourselves in their situations.( |bid )This is the proof of the authenticity of our

love for Christ: if we are united with Christ then we are together with our

neighbor.( |bid ) "This unity is not limited to the moment of receiving

communion: it only begins there." This solidarity of communion "only

becomes life, becomes flesh and blood, in the everyday experience of

sharing our lives" with everyone we meet. ( |bid )

Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta—named after St. Therese—once

said, "We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist. . . Jesus has made

Himself the Bread of Life to give us life. Night and day. He is there. If you

really want to grow in love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that

Adoration." St. Therese emphasizes that we unite ourselves and, in fact,

lose ourselves in the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection through

our own daily sacrifices: "Our mission is to forget ourselves, to annihilate

ourselves. We are so insignificant and, yet, Jesus wants the salvation of

our souls to depend on our sacrifices, on our love."

The reality of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, as Mother Theresa

and St. Therese so beautifully reminds us, is at the heart and soul of what it

means to be Catholic. The Eucharist is the principal source of strength and

nourishment for our souls precisely because it is Christ himself whom we

receive. The power of the Eucharistic Christ—present at the Holy Sacrifice

of the Mass and in Adoration—gives us the perseverance and fortitude to

stand up to the convictions and truths of our faith: to be the disciples that

Christ calls us to be. The Eucharist is not just important to evangelization:

the Eucharist is evangelization!

My brothers and sisters in Christ, the Eucharist exists to make us the

Body of Christ, to make us the sacramental representation of Jesus Christ

on earth. Our being changed into Christ is what the Eucharist is all about,

and "because of this, the unity of the Church has a greater depth than any

human union could ever hope to achieve ... The Eucharist is the intimacy

of the union of each person with the Lord."( Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Eucharist, Communion, and Solidarity.) Thus , it is in eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ that we truly become what we

receive; and in receiving the Eucharistic Christ, we receive the grace that

gives us the lasting courage, ardent faith, and spiritual fortitude of Saint

Therese of the Child Jesus.

"Over one hundred years ago, St. Therese of Lisieux found great

peace alone in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and in her own little

way became a model of how to love, trust, and surrender oneself to the

God who loves us."(St. Therese of Lisieux, of the Child Jesus", [article on-line]; available from

http://www.therealpresence.org/flower.htm (Internet, accessed 11 October 2005).

As my time before the Blessed Sacrament was

drawing to an end, and as I mediated on St. Therese while gazing upon the

Eucharistic face of Jesus, my thoughts returned to my wedding day and to

the words I spoke to Colleen when we exchanged our vows—words that I

now offered to the Lord: "I promise my unending love and devotion for the

rest of my life ... to share all that I have, all that I am, and all that I will be."

The Little Flower in the Heart of Christ: Reflections on St. Therese of Lisieux & the Holy Eucharist®

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, M.T.S.

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