“Without the sacraments of the Church, primarily the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper as it is sometimes called, I certainly do not think that I could go on.” — Servant of God Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day admits in her diary that she does not always approach the Eucharist “with need, or joy, or thanksgiving.” But her decades-long routine of daily Mass was for her as natural as taking food. Without the Eucharist, she doubted whether she could carry on. Like any meal, the Eucharist sustains. We need the Bread of Life to nourish our souls, to give us strength. The Eucharist nourishes us because it bestows upon us a share of God’s own inner life. As Jesus says in the Gospel, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (Jn 6:57). The Lord’s Supper is the meal of divine life, the feast of grace, feeding our hungry souls.
LET US PRAY
Lord Jesus, in the Eucharist you give us a share of the life of the Father. Nourish my weary soul, that sustained by your grace I will always have the strength to go on. Amen.
PRAYER TO THE EUCHARIST
O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion, grant us, we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of your Body and Blood that we may always experience in ourselves the fruits of your redemption. Who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
-Collect for the Feast of Corpus Christi, composed by St. Thomas Aquinas