The Most Beautiful Gift

It is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from which my desire to know and to love God deepens. It is with the intimacy with Christ Himself that I get when I receive Him in the Eucharist that makes me conscious of my own sinfulness and my desperate need for Christ’s mercy. Drawn by the longing for this mercy, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass inflames the desire that I hold in my heart to grow ever closer to Him. The Holy Mass brings me in communion with Christ in the Eucharist, and my own spiritual life thrives from it.

It is the Eucharist from which I gain everything that I am to ever have, even in my ordinary everyday life. It is the Eucharist from which I draw my strength to live each day fully for Him and for Him alone. It is my silent daily prayer, in which I beg for Him to be present in my day to day life. In the words of St. Faustina, “This bread of the Strong gives me all the strength I need to carry on my mission and the courage to do whatever the Lord asks of me. The courage and strength that are in me are not of me, but of Him who lives in me - it is the Eucharist.”

Not only does the Holy Mass give me the strength I need to live as the saint that I am called to be, it deepens my understanding of the reason that I was created: to know and to love and serve God in every way that I am capable. But even more so, it creates a strong desire to go even deeper in my understanding of this. As I watch the priest raise the Host from the paten with the words “This is My Body,” something is placed in my heart to know more about the wonder in which I am partaking. And as he raises the cup and the words “Do this in remembrance of Me” are uttered from his lips, I know that I can stop at nothing until this desire is fulfilled.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass fills something in us that cannot be filled elsewhere. We were all created with a God-shaped hole in our hearts. We all have a constant desire to search for something to fulfill this emptiness that we have. We look everywhere that we know, yet if we try to fill ourselves by searching in the world we are going to be left empty handed. True happiness can not and does not come from the pleasures of the world. True happiness comes solely from the love of God. The most intimate and profound way that we can possibly experience this divine love is through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist is the sacrament of Divine Humility. In this sacrament, Jesus offers Himself down so that He can become our very food—our daily Bread for our journey to God. When I partake in this sacrament, I am able to experience firsthand what true humility is. God, in His utter greatness and immense power, brings Himself to become small so that we might be able to approach Him. In the words of St. Cyril of Alexandria: “If the power of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, Which is your God humbling and disguising Himself, will teach you humility.” Through Christ’s humble example in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I am brought to have a deeper understanding and to take in a greater intellect of how He gives Himself as a living example of what he wants from me as His follower.