CHRIST
SPEAKS
OF
THE EUCHARIST
†
– From the
Mystical
Revelations Given To Maria Valtorta –
— INTRODUCTORY NOTE
—
Reams
have been written by theologians and spiritual writers on the
Holy Eucharist, or Sacrifice of the Mass. Along with the Holy
Trinity
and the Incarnation, the Eucharist is one of the central
mysteries of the Christian Faith. Indeed, the Eucharist is itself a
daily re-Incarnation of the living Christ in the virginal hands of His
priest, as was His first Incarnation in
the virginal womb of the Blessed Virgin. This is and has always been
the
ancient perennial faith of Catholic Christians. And many of those
reams of paper have been written precisely to defend this ancient faith
against heresies down the ages that undermined or denied that the
Eucharist is the
real Presence of the risen, living Christ—Body, Blood, Soul and
Divinity. Indeed, at the very moment when Christ told His disciples of
His future gift of the Eucharist, and the need to eat His Body and
drink
His Blood, St. John tells us:
"...many of His disciples drew
back and no longer went about with Him" [Jn
6:60, 66].
And so, too, in our own day: a recent
Gallup poll
tells us that nearly 70 % of those who call themselves
"Catholic" have drawn back
and no longer go about with Him. They no longer believe that
the Eucharist is indeed the Body, Blood, Soul and
Divinity of the living , risen Christ, present under the
appearances of
bread and wine. Much of this loss of faith today is attributed to
the
irreverent, often illicit, and even invalid celebration of the
Eucharist by dissident priests and laity in this post-Vatican II era.
This sad situation has
understandably
stirred up a longing among the faithful for the reverence and
ritual fidelity of
the former Latin Tridentine Mass.
In the brief article presented here and specially translated for
this
web site from Valtorta's recently published [2006] Quadernetti collection
of
Christ's Dictations and Revelations, we have the Master's own view of
His Eucharist as He instituted It at the Last Supper the night
before He died. If this presentation in any way helps to
restore some of our reverence for and understanding of what the
Eucharist is and
was meant to be in the mind of Jesus, it will have served its purpose...
—Trans.
|
ON
THE EUCHARIST
JESUS :
Listen well, Maria, this is a
great
lesson
: The most proper name of
the Mass or Sacrifice of the Altar, as you all
now call it, is
the
"Breaking of
the Bread." First, because the Mass originated on
the evening of Holy Thursday. And secondly, because the Mass is the
perpetual remembrance of My love
which extends beyond that hour and that moment.
My Passion, Crucifixion and
Death were the
historical
hour and moment of My love, but
the Eucharist is the
always
of My love for all of you.The Mass is the immolation of the
Christ—contemplated not just in relation to the
material
consummation of My sacrifice
,
with My sufferings, wounds, beatings, crucifixion and
death
: caused by
men and willingly suffered by Me
in
obedience to My Father's Will for the salvation of the world. The Mass
is also the loving and willing immolation of a God: of the
Word
Who breaks Himself in order to give Himself as Bread, as Food for men,
humiliating Himself even more than by His death on a
Cross.
Nor is "humiliating" an improper word. Think, Maria, of those
who
sometimes receive Me, those into whom I descend
: I, God, the Pure, the Holy.
I
began at the table of the Last
Supper to fuse Myself with the sacrilegious, with sinners
, rebels against the Ten
Commandments of Sinai and My Two Commandments of love. I
began these fusions of Myself with sinners by descending into Judas.
Since then
, I
: the Saint of
saints, the Pure of the pure, the Most Perfect, have been "welcomed" by
impure lips
still warm with lust, by lips blaspheming My
Father, by homicidal hearts, by fevers of concupiscence
: by beings in whom there is
denial, heresy, commerce with Hell, all the rottenness of fallen man,
all the duplicity of false sentiments, all the calculating exhibition
of a
false
faith, which in them is not true faith. Only God, and
those with Him in Heaven, know the
horrors that
are consummated at the altar. And these horrors are much greater,
immensely
greater than the sacrilegious waves of Good Friday...
Yes, Maria.
The Mass is the Breaking of the Bread, the Eucharistic
sacrifice, which recalls the Sacrifice of Calvary. Because at the table
of the Last
Supper, already contemplating My immolated Body and My Blood shed
for men, I had said
: "This is
My
Body and this is My Blood, the Blood of the new eternal Testament which
will be shed
for you and for many for the
remission of sins." But the Mass is
above all
the sacrifice of My love, the remembrance and perpetuation of My
divinely, and therefore infinitely, insane love for men.
And it was the Breaking of the Bread (or "the
Mass" if you prefer) that you saw, Maria, in the vision of the
supplemental
Pasch, when
I
Myself, taught the Bishop of the Church of Christ, and the
Bishop
of
Jerusalem
: Peter, and James of
Alpheus, to celebrate it.
2
After the supper of the brothers
,
came the consumming of My Body and My Blood
: left by infinite
love in the
Food and Drink of salvation
.
By the grace of the Lord, My priests can summon that Body and Blood
from Heaven
; nor do the Body
and Blood refuse that priestly summons. They can summon It in
order to transubstantiate
3 the bread and wine into
the Body and
Blood of Jesus Christ—
therefore
into
Jesus Christ
:
alive, true, complete, present in the
consecrated Species, now transubstantiated
3
into the Holy Body and
Blood,
the
Soul of Jesus, and the Divinity of the Word of God, One with the Father
and with Love.
After
the fraternal agape,
4
came
union of their Divine
Brother with
His brothers of Earth, with the holy brothers
, among holy brothers whom love made
equal, though greater ones were there
:
the priests
; and with the
little ones
: the
faithful—union with Him Who knows only how to love, and Who asks love
and
union with his loved ones.
The need for instruction
:
one must keep present the fact that the
Apostles, deacons and priests of the first centuries of the Christian
era, were in the situation of instructing pagans, that is, those
who were truly illiterate in the Holy Religion. This need for
instruction caused additions to the Breaking of the Bread—Itself so
simple and brief. These additions instructed those who aspired to
Christianity how to enter into the Sheepfold of Christ
: by
knowing the Shepherd and Wisdom, by knowing the ancient and eternal
Law, and the Words of the Master. Hence the reading of the
apostolic epistles and the Gospel were introduced. In the first
times, just at the beginning, instead of those readings there was
direct
preaching
: that is, the
recounting of ancient times, or the verbal counsels of the apostles, or
else the verbal instruction of the sapiential books
. And so also there was the verbal
narration
of My works in the three years of My public life, and of My Birth,
Death
and Resurrection.
Later, as the Church was growing, there was an insufficient number of
true
eyewitnesses
—i.e., Apostles and
disciples—for the growing number of churches
. Moreover, though the disciples
were full of good will in repeating the episodes of My works and life,
they were still subject to man's shortcomings
: to
involuntary variations of these episodes, and to arbitrary
interpretations of them. Though this was done with a right
purpose, yet, it was done...humanly.
Hence, the Heads of the Priesthood wanted fixed texts to be read in the
Meetings, and then to be explained to the catechumens in that part
of the Meeting which preceded the Breaking of the Bread and the
praying of the
Our Father: just
as I intoned this Prayer at the First Breaking of the Bread, and also
at the second
supplemental
Pasch
2
—in
the
presence of the faithful, and
after
consuming the Species.
Truly, I had then made the Communion
precede the
Our Father. For
centuries now the opposite has been
done, and you believe, O men, that you do well. To do this is not
a sin, but reflect
: What
is the
Our Father? The prayer of
Jesus to the Father. The divine prayer which I taught to men. The
perfect
prayer. If there were only that prayer, and
nothing else but that were said
well, you would have all, O men, for your spirit and
for your flesh. And you would give to God that which pleases Him,
if you
lived the Our Father.
I had said
: "Our Father". With
every right I could say to the First Person
: "Father". But you,...although God
is your Father—you can say it with much less right. Because too
infrequently do you reflect in yourselves and in your works the divine
likeness to your Father. Sins and inclinations disfigure the
Father's image in you, sometimes even canceling it out.
But see
: I transfuse
Myself into you. I come into you. I assimilate Myself to you. I
deify
you at My contact
. I come in
the Species, and I am in you. And you—voice of man fused with the voice
of the Son of God, and your mind on fire from the love that I bring
with
Me, you are a sanctified altar (I speak of one who eats the Bread of
Heaven
without sacrilege) which sings and is fragrant from the Holocaust that
radiates upon it
: the
Body
of the Lamb of God—you can say "Father" to the Father, with every
right. For you have in you the Son of the Father and your Brother
. You can pray, knowing what
you say
. You can offer and ask
with perfect power
: I give you
My
Power
living in you.
A holy prayer,
the
Our Father: because
said at the moment that Grace
—the
Christ—makes of His Body and Blood your food
, just as He has
transubstantiated
3
the species of bread and wine into His Body and Blood, Soul and
Divinity. Thus
the Eucharistic
Species are
transformed into you
: into your
blood, into your flesh. You live from Me, even in your mortal flesh...
This is why Viaticum for the dying
is always Life, even if
sometimes it is not additional life added to one's finished life. This
is
why the Eucharist is the life in you that keeps
you alive, Maria, soul of Mine.
5
I am your oil that pours itself into the lamp of your exhausted body
and keeps you alive. I am your Physician. I am your Donor of blood. I
am
your Lord Who wants you
to be
: My lamp, My echo, in this spent,
cold, dark world, mute of blessed voices.
The other parts of the Mass
are adaptations, sometimes necessary, resulting from heresies that
emerged down the ages and had to be fought. Anxious
adaptations—oh! all good—these adaptations made by My servants. But
through man's own tendency
to amplify, tangle, and make things heavy, My servants added,
amplified, made
heavy, and even entangled—especially for little souls—the so beautiful,
simple,
initial Breaking of the Bread, and the catacomb Meetings so
divinely
inspired. But they did it wanting to
honor Me, to love Me and make Me loved. And
therefore
they did a good work, though one not necessary or useful
for
the Eucharistic Rite.
These adaptations are the superstructures from times of religious
peace. Do you think
that you Christians today are not in times of religious peace? just
because you are
calumniated and scorned? and because some priests fall under the fury
of a son of Satan? Oh! You do not know! When the times
prophesied have come, those who are believers at that time and know of
the present
times, will be able to say
:
"For
them there was peace
; for us
there is an atrocious war." And those superstructures will no longer be
possible. They will not withstand the catapults of Satan. Nor will the
faithful have time to redo them when they have fallen away.
But
the essential, the unchangeable will remain: the Breaking of the
Bread, the Meeting together of the faithful. Because those come from
Me, and from the Holy Spirit Who inspired the Apostles. And that which
comes from Us is eternal.
This is the lesson, Maria.
You will give these pages to the new Isaac,
6
just as they have been written under My Dictation, reserving for
yourself to copy them
afterward into the directions.
7
You will tell him [Isaac] to copy them with the typewriter and to send
you
the
copy for Rome, so that you may transcribe it or join it to the
directions.
7
Thus he will
see that I love him, and that when I dictate to you and give you the
strength to follow Me—sometimes I do not give it to you fully for My
own
inscrutable reasons—you do not err in one word.
And now rest in your double warmth
:
of love for Me, and fever for yourself.
5 Stay in
peace, soul of
Mine.
Home
________________________________________________________
—
NOTES —
1.
Maria
Valtorta, Quadernetti
(Edizioni Pisani /
Centro Editoriale Valtortiano
srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri (FR), Italia, 2006): 65-69.
2. This "supplemental Pasch" was a truncated form of the Paschal Meal
of Holy Thursday. Jesus celebrated this supplemental and
abbreviated form of the Pasch—after His
resurrection—for the disciples who were not present for the Holy
Thursday Pasch. See Maria Valtorta's vision of it as described in The Poem
of the Man-God, Trans.,
David G. Murray, (Edizioni
Pisani /
Centro Editoriale Valtortiano
srl, Via Po 95, 03036 Isola del Liri (FR), Italia, 1990), Vol. 5, No.
632, pp. 857-862.
3. "transubstantiate" —Here Christ uses, and thus endorses, the
traditional term of Catholic theology to describe the "change of the substance" of
the bread and wine into His Body and Blood, while the "accidents",
i.e., the appearance, taste, etc., of these elements remain unchanged
to human senses.
4. "agape": a frequent Greek
word in the New Testament meaning "love feast". It often included an
accompanying celebration of the Eucharist in the early Church.
5. In The Notebooks
1945-1950,
Ed., Emilio Pisani, Trans., David G. Murray, Centro Editoriale
Valtortiano (Isola del Liri, 1985, 2002), p.271, Christ lists seven of
the grave maladies which for 26 years afflicted the physical
"wreck" [Christ's term] which was Maria Valtorta. And yet, she was kept
alive for those 26 years by His miracle of power, enabling her to
record
over 15,000 hand-written pages of the many Revelations and
Dictations He gave to her for the Church of today.
6. "Isaac"—in this work
of The
Poem of the Man-God—is one of the 12 shepherds who
adored
the Christ-child at His Birth in Bethlehem, and who later became a
disciple. Christ here gives this name
of the "new Isaac" to Fr.
Conrad Berti, OSM, theologian and annotator of Valtorta's
Revelations. In the same way Christ also called Valtorta's
spiritual
director, Fr. Romuald Migliorini, OSM, the new brother "Lazarus" of Maria [= "Mary"] Valtorta
and her live-in friend, "Martha"
Diciotti, who cared for her during her 26 years as a paraplegic
invalid.
Hence Christ saw these three as the new "Martha, Mary, and
Lazarus" of
the Gospels.
7. There is no in indication in the Italian text as to what these
"directions" refer to. Perhaps they are earlier instructions given by
Christ to Valtorta concerning the disposition of her work.