Via SSPX Asia.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dear brethren,
If there is a feast which ought to be dear to our hearts, to the heart of the priest, to the heart of the seminarian, to the hearts of the Catholic Faithful, it is indeed the Feast of the Most Blessed Sacrament. What in our holy religion is more grand, more beautiful, more divine than the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist? What could Our Lord Jesus Christ have done to manifest His charity, His love for us more efficaciously, more obviously, than by leaving us under the appearances of bread and wine His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity? These things we have just sung in the Epistle, in the Gradual, in the Alleluia, in the Gospel. We have affirmed our faith in the Holy Eucharist—this faith which today is turned to doubt, this faith which is turned to doubt by the attitude, by the lack of respect that men have for the Most Holy Eucharist, for Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself present under the appearances of bread and wine. We then should affirm more than ever our faith in the Most Holy Eucharist.
That is why we are happy to gather here today, around Jesus in the Eucharist, and to manifest to Him our faith in His Divinity, and our adoration. It is for this that already for centuries and centuries in the Church this custom, this tradition has existed, of adoring Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist publicly—in the villages, in the cities, in the small cities as in the great ones—in the religious houses and in monasteries. Everywhere the Eucharist is honored; everywhere on this day of the Feast of the Most Blessed Sacrament, or of Corpus Christi, the Most Blessed Sacrament is honored in a public manner. The Council of Trent declared that we must honor Our Lord Jesus Christ publicly so that those who see, and who observe the faith of Catholics in the Most Holy Eucharist, might be attracted as well by this homage rendered to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that finally they might believe in the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ present in this great Sacrament. And the Council of Trent added, Let those who refuse to admit the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ be struck, struck by a punishment of God—by the blinding of their hearts—if they refuse to honor Our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what the Council of Trent said, to encourage this custom and this tradition, already ancient, of honoring Our Lord Jesus Christ publicly in the streets of our cities, in the countryside, as we are doing here today. That is why in a little while we shall make the procession, with all our faith, repeating to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Yes, we believe, O Jesus, that You are present in the holy Sacrament. We believe it today twice, three times, four times as strongly, for all those who no longer believe, for those who despise You in Your Sacrament, for all those who commit sacrileges. We shall perform this act of faith, asking Our Lord Jesus Christ to increase our faith.
Read the complete sermon here.
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