“Behold the Lamb of God. Behold God Himself! Adore Him!,” resound the words of St. Peter Julian Eymard who heralded the Presence of Christ as St. John the Baptist did over 1800 years before him. He proclaimed to the people with heartfelt belief and emotion, “Jesus Christ is there! Hence everybody to Him!”
From an early age the young French Saint exuded a tender love for the Eucharist. When his mother was pregnant for young Peter Julian, she would go to adoration at the nearby Church and dedicate her son to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. After his birth, she continued to bring him to adoration of the Holy Eucharist each day and when he was only four years old, he could be found praying there alone. Like a young love going to meet their lover, St. Peter Julian Eymard ran to the Church to spend time with Jesus in the Sacred Host. One day, having searched all over for the child, his half sister found him there kneeling on a stool behind the altar deep in prayer. When she asked him what he was doing he replied, “Saying my prayers. I am nearer to Jesus and I am listening to Him!” The Beautiful love and simplicity of this story are the hallmarks of St. Peter Julian Eymard’s spirituality and life. “How happy I will be,” he wrote, “if I keep my heart free from attachment to anyone, and chained to Jesus, my God, alone… I will devote all my efforts to this end….I will go before the Blessed Sacrament, and there sign these resolutions with my blood.”
Upon becoming a priest Fr. Eymard entered the Marist order. Yet, over the course of the next ten years, . . .Our Blessed Mother led him into deeper unity with her Eucharistic Son. He wrote “I feel a very strong attraction towards the Eucharist. It was never so strong before. This attraction impels me to bring everybody to love Our Lord and to preach only Christ, and Christ in the Eucharist.” Faithfully, he stormed heaven with prayers for discernment and the answer came. Jesus spoke these words to his heart, “Ask permission to establish religious society of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament.”
As he began working for the foundation of such a society, Pope Pius IX said, “I am convinced that this work comes from God. The Church needs it. Every means should be taken to make the Eucharist known.” A year later St. Peter Julian presented the matter to several Bishops who replied, “God’s will has manifested itself too clearly in favor of this Eucharistic undertaking. The Lord Himself has settles the matter. You must devote yourself to this Work without delay.” A few years later, his order was given official approval from Rome. With great fervor the Saint writes “People call me founder; but I have not founded anything, neither have I invented anything new. You cannot invent the Eucharist, or public worship, or adoration.”
The mission of the Fathers, then, was to inflame the world with the “burning coal of the Eucharist.” For he writes that “we shall have Exposition everyday. That will be a continuous heaven!” St. Peter Julian Eymard’s message to the faithful echoes that of St. John the Baptist, “There hath stood One in the midst of you Whom you know not!” And, “He must increase, and I must decrease! Nothing for me, everything for Him!”
For as St. Peter Julian wrote with resurgent wisdom and power:
“The spread of the Eucharistic Kingdom of Christ is necessary for the salvation of society.
The Eucharist is the life not only of the individual Christian, but of nations as well. We
know well that an age flourishes or degenerates in accordance with its worship of the
divine Eucharist. It is the life and measure of its faith, charity, and virtue. The Eucharist is not only for personal piety; it is essential to social life, for it is the very life of the world.
We must take Christ from the solitude of His tabernacle, so that He may place Himself
at the head of Christian society, to guide and save it. We must build stately palaces, royal
thrones, organize a court of faithful servants, a family of friends and a host of adorers and
apostles. Such a public and solemn protestation of our faith in the kingship of Christ, in the reality of His sacramental presence is a prime necessity of our day.”
The words of this Eucharistic apostle ring loud and clear in our world today. Will we work to spread the Kingdom of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament?
Will we set the world on fire through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration of Him.
Whether our world “flourishes or degenerates” depends upon our response to the call of this great lover of Christ to honor and adore the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. For He is waiting… He is here.
With St. Peter Julian Eymard, Apostle of the Eucharist, let us proclaim,
“Today solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is the grace and need of our time.
Society will be restored and renewed when all its members group themselves around our Emmanuel.”
And, “Adore and visit Jesus, abandoned and forsaken by men in His Sacrament of Love.
Man has time for everything except for visits to His Lord and God,
WHO IS WAITING AND LONGING FOR US in the Blessed Sacrament.”Then we will have answered the call of Our Mother and lead all souls to her Eucharistic Son. For as St. Peter Julian prayed, “Pray for us, O Virgin Immaculate, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. That the Eucharistic Kingdom of Jesus Christ may come among us!”
St. Peter Julian Eymard – Apostle of Eucharistic Love – pray for us, lead us to the heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Inflame the world with love for the Divine Son who is waiting to be loved, in our midst.
St. Peter Julian Eymard Eucharistic Quotes:
“Words cannot express the perfection of his adoration. If Saint John leaped in the womb at the approach of Mary, what feelings must have coursed through Joseph during those six months when he had at his side and under his very eyes the hidden God! If the father of Origen used to kiss his child during the night and adore the Holy Spirit living within Him, can we doubt that Joseph must often have adored Jesus hidden in the pure tabernacle of Mary? How fervent that adoration must have been: My Lord and my God, behold your servant! No one can describe the adoration of this noble soul. He saw nothing, yet he believed; his faith had to pierce the virginal veil of Mary. So likewise with you! Under the veil of the Sacred Species your faith must see our Lord. Ask St. Joseph for his Lively, constant faith.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“At Nazareth Joseph’s days were filled with work which necessarily took him away at times from his Infant God. During these hours Mary replaced him, but when evening brought him home again, he would pass the entire night in adoration, never tiring, only too happy for the chance to contemplate the hidden riches of Jesus’ divinity. For he pierced the rough garments the Child wore, until his faith touched the Sacred Heart. In profound adoration he united himself to the special grace of each one of the events in the life of Jesus. He adored our Lord in His hidden life and in His Passion and Death; he adored in advance the Eucharistic Christ in His tabernacles: there was nothing that our Lord could hide from Saint Joseph. Among the graces which Jesus gave to His foster-father — and He flooded him with the graces attached to every one of His mysteries — is that special to an adorer of the Blessed Sacrament. That is the one we must ask of St. Joseph. Have confidence, strong confidence in him. Take him as the patron and the model of your life of adoration.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“THOUGHT FROM FATHER FABER – St. Joseph worshiped Jesus as no saint before had done. From his deep, calm soul he poured out a very ocean of love – tenderest love, humblest love, love shrinking from being like the Father’s love, yet also daring to be like it as Mary’s had been like the conjoined loves of Father and of Spirit, as she was Mother and Spouse conjoined. No angel might love Jesus as Joseph loved Him, as Joseph was bound to love Him. No temporal love but Mary’s could be more like an eternal love than the love of Joseph for the Child, because of its likeness to the love of the everlasting Father. Aside from the Blessed Virgin, Saint Joseph was the first and most perfect adorer of Our Lord.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“We have close to us as much as Joseph had at Nazareth; we have our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, but our poor eyes fail to see Him. Let us once become interior souls and we shall immediately see. In no better way can we enter into the Heart of our Lord than through Saint Joseph. Jesus and Mary are eager to pay the debts which they owe him for his devoted care of them, and their greatest pleasure is to fulfill his least desire. Let him, then, lead you by hand into the interior sanctuary of Jesus Eucharistic.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“We cannot help but marvel at the faith of Saint Joseph. Tormenting doubts harass his soul and he is on the point of leaving Mary. But an angel appears to him and all his doubts and fears vanish. On the angel’s word He accepts the mystery of the Incarnation. In the ensuing years his faith was to be frequently put to the test. At Bethlehem he had to content himself with a stable for a home where the Incarnate Word might be born. Soon after, he was forced to flee in order to save the Infant God, and when later he returned to the tiny village of Nazareth it was to live there unknown and in dire poverty. All these trials only tempered his faith. Although he sees only the Child’s wretchedness and poverty, his faith pierces the shroud and uncovers the hidden God within this weak baby frame. Because his faith was so strong, Joseph’s mind and heart bowed in perfect adoration. Imitate his faith as you kneel before the humble Christ annihilated in the Eucharist. Pierce the veil which covers this furnace of love and adore the hidden God. At the same time respect the veil of love and make the immolation of your mind and heart your most beautiful homage of faith.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
JESUS WAITS FOR US HERE WITH DIVINE LONGING
St. Peter Julian Eymard
Adore and visit Jesus, abandoned and forsaken
by men in His Sacrament of Love.
Man has time for everything
except for visits to His Lord and God,
WHO IS WAITING AND LONGING FOR US
in the Blessed Sacrament.
The streets and places of entertainment
are filled with people;
the House of God is deserted.
Men flee from it; they are afraid of it.
Ah! Poor Jesus!
Did you expect so much indifference
from those You have redeemed,
from Your friends, from Your children, from me?
Sympathize with Jesus Who is betrayed,
insulted, mocked, and crucified far more ignominiously
in His Sacrament of Love than He was
in the Garden of Olives, in Jerusalem, and on Calvary.
Those whom He has the most honored, loved,
and enriched with His gifts and graces
are the very ones who offend Him the most
by their indifference.
Offer up for this intention all that you have suffered
during the day or week
that Jesus may be loved and adored by all.
Because we ourselves are unable to atone for
so much wrong,
we unite ourselves
to the infinite merits of our Savior Jesus.
Receive His Divine Blood
as it mystically flows from His Holy Wounds,
and offer it to the Father
in perfect atonement for the sins of the world.
Take His sufferings
and His prayer on the Cross
and beg the Heavenly Father
for pardon and mercy for all.
Unite your reparation
to that of the most Blessed Virgin
at the foot of the Cross or the altar,
and from the love of Jesus for His Divine Mother
you will obtain everything.
With Mary Let us Adore Him!
St. Peter Julian Eymard
Mary devoted herself exclusively to the Eucharistic Glory of Jesus. She knew that it was the desire of the Eternal Father to make the Eucharist known, loved and served by all men; that need of Jesus’ Heart was to communicate to all men His gifts of grace and glory. She knew, too, that it was the mission of the Holy Spirit to extend and perfect in the hearts of men, the reign of Jesus Christ, and that the Church had been founded only to give Jesus to the world.
All Mary’s desire, then, was to make Him known in His Sacrament. Her intense love for Jesus felt the need of expanding in this way, of consecrating itself – as a kind of relief, as it were – because of her own inability to glorify Him as much as she desired.
Ever since Calvary, all men were her children. She loved them with a Mother’s tenderness and longed for their supreme good as for her own; therefore, she was consumed with the desire to make Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament known to all, to inflame all hearts with His love, to see them enchained to His loving service.
To obtain this favor, Mary passed her time at the foot of the Most Adorable Sacrament, in prayer and penance. There she treated the world’s salvation. In her boundless zeal, she embraced the needs of the faithful everywhere, for all time to come, who would inherit the Holy Eucharist and be Its adorers… Her prayers converted countless souls, and as every conversion is the fruit of prayer, and since Mary’s prayer could meet no refusal, the Apostles had in this Mother of Mercy their most powerful helper. “Blessed is he for whom Mary prays!”
Eucharistic adorers share Mary’s life and mission of prayer at the foot of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It is the most beautiful of all missions, and it holds no perils. It is the most holy, for in it all the virtues are practiced. It is, moreover, the most necessary to the Church, which has even more need of prayerful souls than of powerful preachers; of men of penance rather than men of eloquence. Today more than ever have we need of men who, by their self-immolation, disarm the anger of God inflamed by the ever increasing crimes of nations. We must have souls who by their importunity re- open the treasures of grace which the indifference of the multitude has closed. We must have true adorers; that is to say, men of fervor and of sacrifice. When there are many such souls around their Divine Chief, God will be glorified, Jesus will be loved, and society will once more become Christian, conquered for Jesus Christ by the apostolate of Eucharistic prayer.
“Today solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is the grace and need of our time. Society will be restored and renewed when all its members group themselves around our Emmanuel.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
St. Peter Julian Eymard said: “Let us never forget that an age prospers or dwindles in proportion to its devotion to the Holy Eucharist. This is the measure of its spiritual life and its faith, of its charity and its virtue.”
– From Saint Peter Julian Eymard: Apostle of the Eucharist:
“Father Col, an intrepid defender of the Faith during the French Revolution and the pastor of Bourg-d’Oisans where these good people were married [M/M Eymard], had foretold to them that they would have a son who would become a priest and founder of the Order of the Blessed Sacrament.
During the months she bore Peter Julian, Mrs. Eymard used to visit the parish church and offer him to the hidden God of the tabernacle.”
Thirty years later, Father Eymard had tears in his eyes as he spoke of his first Holy Communion. “When I pressed Jesus to my heart, I said to Him: ‘I will be a priest. I promise You!’ …Oh, what graces Our Lord gave me then! Yes, I believe my conversion at that time was sincere and perfect.”
– from Saint Peter Julian Eymard: Apostle of the Eucharist
“How happy I will be if I keep my heart free from attachment to anyone, and chained to Jesus, my God, alone… I will devote all my efforts to this end… I will go before the Blessed Sacrament, and there sign these resolutions with my blood.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“If we did not have the adorable Eucharist here below, Jesus our God-with-us, this earth would be much too sad, this life too hard, and time too long. We must be grateful to the divine goodness for having left us this hidden Jesus, this pillar of cloud and fire in this desert,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“In one day the Eucharist will make you produce more for the glory of God than a whole lifetime without it.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“To be possessed by Jesus and to possess Him – that is the perfect reign of Love.”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Moreover, on Calvary, men had become her children; she loved them with all the tenderness of a mother, and wanted their sovereign good as much as her own. That is why she was so eager to make Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament known to all, to enkindle all hearts with His love, to see them all bound and chained at His loving service, to group them into a …
Eucharistic Guard of Honor, a court of faithful and devoted adorers.
To obtain that grace, Mary carried out a perpetual mission of prayer and of penance in the presence of the Most Holy and Adorable Eucharist, pleading for the salvation of a world redeemed by Divine Blood and, in her boundless zeal, including the needs of the faithful of every age and place who would ever share in the heritage of the Divine Eucharist,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Jesus has prepared not just one Host, but one for everyday of our life. The Hosts for us are ready. Let us not forfeit even one of them,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Love cannot triumph unless it becomes the one passion of our life. Without such passion we may produce isolated acts of love; but our life is not really won over or consecrated to an ideal.
“Until we have a passionate love for our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament we shall accomplish nothing,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“The Eucharist is the supreme proof of the love of Jesus. After this, there is nothing more but Heaven itself,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“The Eucharist is the link that binds the Christian family together. Take away the Eucharist and you have no brotherliness left,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Give thanks therefore to God the Father for having given you His divine Son not only as Brother in the Incarnation, as Teacher of truth, and as Savior on the Cross, but especially as your Eucharist, your bread of life, your heaven already begun.”
“Thank the Holy Ghost for continuing, through the priests, to produce Him daily on the altar, as He did the first time in Mary’s virginal womb.”
“Let your thanksgiving ascend to the throne of the Lamb, to the Hidden God as a sweet-smelling incense, as the most beautiful hymn of your soul, as the purest and tenderest love of your heart.”
“Thank Him in all humility of heart, like Saint Elizabeth in the presence of Mary and the Word Incarnate; thank Him with the vibrant ardor of Saint John the Baptist when he felt the closeness of his divine Master, hidden like himself in His mother’s womb; thank Him with the joy and generosity of Zacheus when he received the visit of Jesus in his house; thank Him with the Holy Church and the heavenly court.”
“In order that your thanksgiving may never cease and go on forever increasing, do what is done in heaven. Consider the goodness, the beauty ever old and ever new of the God of the Eucharist, Who for our sake is consumed and reborn without ceasing on the altar,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“I try to rekindle the fire of the Holy Eucharist,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Eucharistic adoration is the greatest of actions. To adore is to share the life of Mary on earth when she adored the Word Incarnate in her virginal womb, when she adored Him in the Crib, on Calvary, in the divine Eucharist,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“The Eucharist began at Bethlehem in Mary’s arms. It was she who brought to humanity the Bread for which it was famishing, and which alone can nourish it. She it was who took care of that Bread for us. It was she who nourished the Lamb whose life-giving Flesh we feed upon,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“The shepherds – simple souls – came to adore the Infant Savior. Mary rejoiced at seeing their homage and willing offerings they made to her Jesus… How happy is the loving soul when it has found Jesus with Mary, His Mother! They who know the Tabernacle where He dwells, they who receive Him into their souls, know that His conversation is full of divine sweetness, His consolation ravishing, His peace superabundant, and the familiarity of His love and His Heart ineffable,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
…”The Eucharist completes the restoration begun in the Crib. Make merry therefore on this beautiful day, on which the sun of the Eucharist is rising. Let your gratitude never separate the Crib from the Altar, the Word made flesh from the God-Man made Bread of Life in the Most Blessed Sacrament,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
“Happy is the soul that knows how to find Jesus in the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in all things!,”
– St. Peter Julian Eymard
New Year Wishes to Our Eucharistic Lord
St. Peter Julian Eymard:
May Thy kingdom come! May it spread far and wide; may it gain prestige; may it progress in every way! That is what we must wish our Lord on this New Year’s Day. May He be known and loved by those who neither know or love Him! May everyone complete in himself the work of the Incarnation and of the Redemption!
And where is our Lord known and loved? Ah! How very small is the kingdom of Jesus Christ! So many of His rights and those of His Church have either been taken away or curtailed during the last three centuries! They drive out our Lord and deprive Him of His people and His churches. How numerous are these Eucharistic ruins!
So many nations have never had the Faith! How will our Lord establish His kingdom among them? One saint could do it. Wish our Lord some good priests, some real apostles. That ought to be the constant object of our prayer…
To work for the preservation of the Faith, speak the language of a Christian, the language of faith. Transform the speech of the world. Through a sinful tolerance, we have allowed our Lord to be banished from customs, laws, and good manners; in a mixed social gathering one would not dare speak of Jesus Christ. Even among practical Christians we should seem peculiar if we spoke of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament… There may be talk about religious art, moral truths, the beauties of religion; but about Jesus Christ, about the Eucharist, never.
Well, change all that. Profess your faith openly. Be bold enough to say, “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” never just “Christ”! We must prove our Lord’s right to live and to rule in the language of society. It is a disgrace for Catholics to keep our Lord under a bushel the way that they do. We must manifest Him everywhere. The one who professes his faith boldly and dares speak out the name of Jesus Christ, places himself in the power of His grace. In public, everybody must know what we believe.
…Finally, may the kingdom of our Lord come within you, in your soul. Our Lord is in you, but He has much to do before He can reign completely therein. You have been barely vanquished; our Lord’s kingdom of peace and love is not yet established in you; the boundary lines are not yet all His; and what sovereign can rule supreme if he does not control all the frontiers of his state?
Get to know our Lord better. Study His life, His sacrifices, and His virtues in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Study His love. Instead of always remaining within ourselves, let us go up to Him; it is all very well to see ourselves in Him, but to see Him in us is better. Instead of attending to yourself, attend to our Lord and make Him grow in you. Think of Him; study Him in Himself; penetrate into Him. You will find the food of your life in Him; for He is great and infinite. That is the broad and royal road to holiness and the way to the ennobling of our lives.
Moreover, you must console our Lord. He expects consolation from you and will receive it with pleasure. Ask Him to prepare good priests for Himself; priests who are apostolic and zealous for the salvation of souls; priests who are the glory of their age and who present God with kingdoms. Beg Him to take ownership of everything, and to be not only a Savior, – that supposes nothing but sacrifice, – but a King, and a King of peace with absolute power. Console Him for His being so little treated as a King in His own kingdom. Alas! Our Lord is vanquished! In heaven He is an all-powerful Ruler Who commands saints and angels and is faithfully obeyed. Not so here below. Men, – the children He ransomed, – have got the best of Him. He no longer rules over Catholic peoples. Let us establish His kingdom in us at least, and work at restoring it everywhere.
Fine monuments mean much less to our Lord than do our hearts. And since the nations have driven Him out, let us raise Him a throne on the altar of our hearts… Let us proclaim Jesus Eucharistic our King by lifting Him up on our hearts and by serving Him with fidelity and devotedness.
Ah! How fond our Lord is of our hearts! How He longs for them! He pleads for them like a beggar! He begs, He implores, He insists. He has already been refused a hundred times; it does not matter; He keeps holding out His hand. …What outrages He submits to in His quest for our hearts! He seeks in a special way the Catholics, the devout souls, the religious who do not want to give Him their whole heart. Our Lord wants the whole of it. His love for us is the only reason for this ardent quest and the only interest He has in it. Out of two hundred million Catholics, how many love Him with the affection of a friend? How many live of His love, of a love that springs from the heart?
Let us then love Him for our own sakes. Let us love Him for those who do not love Him, for our relatives and our friends. Let us pay our family’s debt and our country’s. That is what all the saints do; they thus imitate our Lord Who loves His Father for all men and becomes surety for the whole world.
May our Lord, the gentle Savior Who loves us so much, become at long last the King, the Master, and the Spouse of our soul!
“Come, let the kingdom of Jesus Christ be established in you! Public Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament is God’s last grace to man. After Exposition, there is only heaven or hell. Man is attracted to what glitters. Our Lord has ascended a throne; He can be seen and is radiant. We no longer have any excuse. If we forsake our Lord, if we pass by Him without amending our lives, our Lord will go away, and we shall be done for forever. “Serve our Lord, therefore, and console Him; light the fire of His love wherever it is not yet burning; work at the establishment of His reign of love. Adveniat regnum tuum, regnum amoris. “May Thy kingdom come, Thy kingdom of love!”
“Do you wish to learn the secret of true Eucharistic prayer? Consider, then, all the mysteries in the light of the Blessed Sacrament. It is a divine prism through which they can all be studied. The Holy Eucharist is, indeed, ‘Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today, and the same forever’ (Heb 13:8). In this Sacrament He glorifies all the mysteries of His life and prolongs, as it were, the exercise of all His virtues. The Eucharist is, in a word, the great Mystery of our faith to which all Catholic truths lead,”