THE WORLD'S GREATEST SECRET
John Mathias Haffert
table of contents
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REPARATION
Perhaps one reason we have
radically condensed the material in this book is because we wanted to speed to
this moment when we are about to recall a little-remembered but most touching
fact about the Last Supper during which Christ gave Himself to the world. It
was illustrated, during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in a most graphic way. A
group of pilgrims had climbed Mt. Zion to visit the Cenacle in Jerusalem. The
room was very plain. The Jews, with more tolerance than we Christians might
show if the holiest place of another religion were over the holiest place of
our own, kept the room in repair and open to pilgrims. But the floor was
covered with dust. The priest who headed the group of twenty-one Christians
asked them to gather in a circle in the approximate area where Christ washed
the Apostles' feet, celebrated the Passover and instituted the Eucharist.
"The floor is too dirty for all of us to recline as the apostles
did," he said, "but would one of you like to volunteer? " Then
the priest proceeded to recline in the dust himself, and a volunteer,
following that lead, did likewise. "That's right" Father said to his
floor companion. "If Christ were in the center of the table you, at His
side, would naturally recline just as you have done."
2 The
group, the priest went on'. "Re- Then addressing - I the Gospels about
the beloved disciple member reading in able next to the Master? At one point
in the meal he actually rested his head on the Lord's in the meal he ac e two
men lie here, our heads almost breast. Now as w shift my position, as I would
naturally touch. If I slightly, a long meal, it would be easy for the do in
the course of his head on my chest." man next to me to rest 0 position to
Here he drew the volunteer's head in the demonstrate. That was the first act
of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, " he declared. Suddenly in that
room of sacred memories the past sprang to life and became for the moment the
pulsing present. The wonder of Christ's Sacred Heart beating with love for man
beneath John's head became something that everybody there could almost feel
and hear. How near, how approachable, how lovable Christ is' John acknowledged
Christ as the Master, yet this apostle had dared to inch over and rest his
head the Master's familiarly upon he's heart! John had evidence that Christ
was the Miracle-Worker. John had been on Mt. Tabor when Christ, transfigured
with dazzling light, had spoken with the prophets Moses and Elijah- John had
heard the awesome voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Sort .
" indeed, John had heard Christ Say, and had believed the words: "I
and the Father are one." Yet this apostle dared such intimacy! Yes,
Christ was lovable and approachable. Every person in that room, gazing at the
two men on the floor, was convinced. But there we were after only a moment,
slipping back into the past tense!
3 Why are we mortals so
prone to think of Christ as someone w ho lived in the long ago only? Why can't
we always sustain our awareness of how approachable Christ is? The words He
used centuries ago are for now as well as for then and for every bit of time.
The things He did centuries ago are for now as well as for then and for every
bit of time. The life He lived centuries ago He actually lives in His eternal
present at every moment in every tabernacle in the world. Today each of us, by
the reception of Communion, can in effect step into the place of the beloved
apostle. Each of us can rest his head on the Sacred Heart. Is it any wonder
then that in our own time we should be so forcefully reminded of the Eucharist
as we were in the miracle at Fatima, and previously in the appearance of
Christ - coming forth from the monstrance - to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque*
in a little chapel in France? Is it any wonder, when so many millions of
persons in the world today have refused His loving invitation to come to Him
in the Eucharist that He appears out of the monstrance to complain?
"Behold the heart that has so loved men," He told the saint.
"In return: . . ingratitude... contempt in the Sacrament of Love."
Since saints crop up everywhere in these pages like dandelions in the spring,
some readers may well ask how People who are not saints but who are at least
struggling to keep a foothold on the straight and narrow should express
devotion to the Eucharist. Aside from receiving communion frequently, which is
paramount, is there any special pious practice that they can cultivate?
4 When a certain man asked
himself that question on day, it seemed to him that instantly he had a clear
answer in the Sacred Heart Devotion,* a devotion of reparation to Christ for
the indifference of so many Christians. At the time, the man was in the little
chapel in Prayer leMonial, France, where three hundred years ago Christ
appeared from the Eucharist to speak to the Visitation nun, Sister Margaret
Mary. He told her of the love of His Heart for men and of their indifference
to Him, and fie asked for comfort and for reparation. As this man was
conjuring up the scene in his imagination, an old priest entered the sanctuary
and held up the monstrance with the Host to give Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament to those in the chapel. Then, about t replace the Host in the
tabernacle, he turned to the small knot of worshippers in the pews and, with
tears in It, eyes, said: "Why, oh, why would Our Lord have to appear to
ask us to make reparation to Him?" Why indeed! The Sacred Heart devotion
and devotion to the Eucharist are logically intertwined. No wonder that little
chapel in Parayle-Monial, where formal devotion to the Sacred Heart began, has
become a center of Eucharistic devotion. It seems appropriate that here in
this same chapel we given the inspiration for two of the most dramatic
Eucharistic practices of our day: To Emilie Ta I humble laywoman, came the
idea of Eucharistic Congresses;* to Father Mateo came the idea of the "En
thronement of the Sacred Heart"' in the home, and chain of a million
hours of adoration of Christ in the Eucharist around the world.
5 It was in a confessional
of this chapel that Margaret Mary first told Father Claude Colombiere, S.J.:
when I was kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, suddenly I saw
Our Lord come from the monstrance and stand before the altar. Through His robe
I saw His heart surrounded by fire and He told me: 'Be. hold, the heart which
has so loved men. It has spared nothing... In return I receive from most
people only in gratitude by irreverence and sacrilege, by coldness, be
contempt for me and the Sacrament of Love."' After long and exhaustive
study, far more detailed perhaps than that of any court trial in which an
accuse( person's life might be at stake, the Church finally and officially
accepted the apparition as genuine. Over two( centuries later, in our own day,
the nun was canonized and the priest beatified. The Eucharistic Christ Who had
stepped from the monstrance asked Margaret Mary, among other things to
establish the practice of spending one hour before the Blessed Sacrament in
prayer, the so-called Holy Hour From then on she herself kept prayerful vigil
from eleven o'clock to midnight on the eve of the first Friday of ever3 month.
She would meditate on the desolation that Christ felt when abandoned by His
Apostles, when He suffered excruciating mental and physical anguish in the
Garden of Gethsemane. Thus she prepared in a special way to receive a
Communion of reparation on the following morning, the first Friday of the
month. The practice at least of the First Friday Communion 11 (though not
always of the Holy Hour) has become very widespread. On that day of the month
the churches are filed and the Masses well attended around the entire
globe.
6 After Christ's revelations
to Saint Margaret Mary, Saint Peter Julian Eymard founded the Congregation of
the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament and launched the Eucharistic League. The
nation of France, in final acknowledgment of St. Margaret Mary's revelation,
built the National Shrine of the Sacred Heart on the highest hill in Paris,
Montmartre, for perpetual adoration of the Eucharist. The white sugar-loaf
towers of Sacre Coeur dominate the city. In Rome the practice of the Forty
Hours, another Eucharistic devotion, was extended to so many churches that the
act of homage to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament begins in a different
church somewhere in the city one right after the other, all year long.
Obviously this close association of the Eucharist with the Sacred Heart
devotion, which developed after the apparitions in Paray-le-Monial, does not
imply that only the Heart of Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament.
Clearly "the Heart of Christ" is a metaphorical expression similar
to the expression "I love you with all my heart. I I In essence, Christ
came from the monstrance at Paray-le-Monial to whisper this to each of us.
Pope Pius XII, whose Mediator Dei is considered by some a more precise modern
definition of the Eucharist than the decrees of Vatican Council 11, also wrote
Hauriefis Aquas (1956) on devotion to the Sacred Heart. A Professor of Dogma
at the University of Fribourg says: "It should be made required reading
for everybody who feels enthusiasm for the liturgy for it is an example of
translating a popular devotion into terms of integral Christian Piety."'
But presuming that the average reader is now learning of the Eucharistic
Liturgy for the first time, we cannot go into the subject in detail.
7 But why was it ever
necessary for Christ to have resorted to such a petty miracle as His
appearance to Sister Margaret Mary to reaffirm the greatest love that the
world has ever known? Some readers might object to the word "petty"
to describe the miracle of Christ's appearance out of the Eucharist. But by
contrast to the miracle of the Eucharist itself this appearance (and others
like it) is quite small, and it is also a reproach. He said: "My
daughter, I come into your heart. Through your person may you atone for the
offenses which I received from lukewarm and slothful hearts which do not honor
Me in the Sacrament." He asked her to make known through her confessor
that He promised to those who would make a Communion of reparation on nine
consecutive First Fridays the grace of a happy death. Several million
Christians in the world today have made the nine First Fridays.* Often they
now also make the First Saturdays* (a similar devotion predicted at Fatirna
and requested at Pontevedra), and many go on to become daily communicants.
Although it is possible that a Person can communicate thoughtlessly and
without deVotion, few People make the effort to communicate often without
Putting a certain amount of fervor into the act. Certainly it is logical to
suppose that God will reward a resin of fervor with more than enough grace at
the time of death to save his soul. (Whether or not he accepts that grace, as
is always the case, is of course up to him. We are free beings; we can either
accept or reject God's gifts.) The Promises have provided the incentive many
people need to go to Communion more often.
8 As we said earlier, the
First Friday devotion is very popular and the First Saturday devotion is
growing. it is lamentable that the Holy Hour devotion is not nearly so
popular, Few hear the plaint of Christ still echoing from the Garden of
Gethsemane on the night that He instituted the Eucharist, the night He made a
,lone prison a tabernacle, the night before He died. But His plaint can still
touch a sensitive heart: "Could you not "stay one hour with
me?" Has the Christian world forgotten those words He ,spoke to Peter,
James and John as He prayed just a ,sone's throw from them and saw passing
before His yes the evil of all time, the murders, the deceits, the cruelties,
the betrayals, the sacrileges, etc.? Why did He rise from His knees after a
time and go to the three who slept? Why did He awaken them to plead for their
company? Why did He beg them to resist the lure of sleep? Above all, why had
He chosen the three who most certainly knew He was God, the three whom He had
invited to witness Him transfigured on Tabor? And why did He go to them a
second time, and a third time? He was the same Christ Who knew that Lazarus
was dead and announced that fact to the Apostles before they came to Bethany.
He was the same Christ Who told the Samaritan woman at the well about her five
husbands. Yes, He knew that those chosen ones in Gethsemane would not be able
to resist sleep: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." So
what was the reason for accosting them as He did? Are not we modern believers
His reason, we who have lived or will live after that tragic night? In God's
eternal present, were His words not meant to reach us ones who share His
Eucharistic life, the life He had just begun a few hours before the agony in
Gethsemane, a life which His disciples did not fully understand?
9 Pope John Paul II, in his
encyclical Dominicae Ce (On the Mystery and Worship of Holy Eucharist), said t
worship of the Eucharist "must fill our churches a outside the timetable
of Masses." The Pope added: "Since the Eucharistic mystery was
instituted out of I and makes Christ sacramentally present, it is worthy
thanksgiving and worship. And this worship must be permitted in all our
encounters with the Blessed Sacrament both when we visit our churches and when
the Sac Species are taken to the sick and administered to the "Adoration
of Christ in this sacrament of love must a find expression in various forms of
Eucharistic devoted personal prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, hours
adoration, periods of exposition - short, prolonged, a annual (Forty Hours) -
Eucharistic benediction Eucharistic processions, Eucharistic congresses."
I Today there are some chosen ones who look at t empty churches where He is
neglected and alone, as o the rock of Gethsemane, and who hear His plaintive
words: "Could you not watch an hour with me?" Some give an hour a
day. Still others, following the saintly Father Mateo, give a prescribed hour
a month from their own homes as they turn their minds to the nearest
tabernacle. Some give an entire night to the morning of the First Saturday. In
1960, the Bishop of Fatima conferred with John XXIII, who had opened the
famous " 1960 secret of Fatima, and then sent a letter to all bishops of
the world asking for an All-Night Vigil of reparation to the Blessed Sacrament
on October 12-13 of that year.
10 Three hundred dioceses
joined around the world. Pope John sent a cable of blessing and thanks to all
who responded. Subsequently, the All-Night Vigil, promoted especially by The
Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima in the U.S., has been made by an increasing
number of generous souls. By 1980, tens of thousands were making the Vigils
from the First Friday evening (beginning with Mass of the Sacred Heart) to
First Saturday morning, closing with Mass of the Immaculate Heart. Concerning
this the present writer has another book titled Night of Love. There is one
thing everyone can and certainly should do ... something requiring no more
than thirty seconds a day: An offering in the morning (preferably at the
moment of waking) of all our works of the day in union with the Eucharistic
Sacrifice taking place in every part of the world. Pope John XXIII urged this
practice on everyone One of the last major things he did before his death was
to grant the highest privilege in the Pope's power to those who would offer
their sufferings daily, using any words they chose. A short time later he
granted the same to those who would offer their works. Some will be impatient
to participate personally in the Liturgy, to "eat the bread of
life." Some will add some hours of adoration. Some will give an entire
night. Some may even become Eucharistic apostles like those men tioned in
Chapter 13. But all can make a half-minute beginning. (See Blue Army, pp.
268-69.)
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