Peter John Cameron - Jesus Present Before Me: Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration

JESUS, PRESENT BEFORE ME

Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration

Father Peter John Cameron, O.P.

RESCRIPT

In accord with the Code of Canon Law , I hereby grant my permission to publish Jesus, Present Before Me: Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration.

Reverend Joseph R. Binzer

Vicar General

Archdiocese of Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio

March 26, 2008

The permission to publish is a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the permission to publish agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms 1991, 1986, 1970, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved.

Quotes are taken from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America (indicated as CCC ), 2nd ed. Copyright 1997 by United States Catholic ConferenceLibreria Editrice Vaticana.

Cover design by Jennifer Tibbits

Interior design by Jennifer Tibbits

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cameron, Peter John.

Jesus, present before me : meditations for Eucharistic adoration / Peter John Cameron.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-86716-857-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lords SupperAdorationMeditations. 2. Lords SupperCatholic Church. 3. Lords SupperMeditations. I. Title.

BX2233.C27 2008

242dc22

2008011976

ISBN: 978-0-86716-857-0

E-BOOK ISBN 978-1-61636-309-3

Copyright 2008, Peter John Cameron, o.p . All rights reserved.

Published by Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press

28 W. Liberty St.

Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.ServantBooks.org

For Sister Daniel Marie Fahey, O.Carm., (19272007), who spent her sixty-two years of consecrated life loving the suffering of the world with her love of the Eucharist.

CONTENTS

Day One | The Eucharist and the Human Hunger for God

Day Two | The Hunger of Our Lord

Day Three | A Presence We Can Approach

Day Four | The Eucharist as the Self of Christ

Day Five | The Eucharist and Adoration

Day Six | This Is My Body

Day Seven | The Preciousness of the Blood of Christ

Day Eight | The Eucharist as Communion

Day Nine | The Crushing Sense of Absence

Day Ten | A Begging for Love

Day Eleven | Eucharistic Sacrifice

Day Twelve | The Eucharist as Memorial

Day Thirteen | The Beauty of the Eucharist

Day Fourteen | The Eucharist as Communication

Day Fifteen | When We Feel Nothing

Day Sixteen | Guests of the Lamb

Day Seventeen | The Eucharist as Companion

Day Eighteen | Invisible Wonder

Day Nineteen | The Eucharistic Imagination of Jesus

Day Twenty | The Eucharist as Thanksgiving

Day Twenty-One | Eucharistic Worship

Day Twenty-Two | The Eucharist and Friendship

Day Twenty-Three | The Eucharist as Belonging

Day Twenty-Four | The Eucharist as the Bread of Life

Day Twenty-Five | The Encounter of the Eucharist

Day Twenty-Six | The Mingling of a Few Mere Drops

Day Twenty-Seven | The Eucharists True Nutrition

Day Twenty-Eight | The Fruit of the Blessed Virgin Marys Womb

Day Twenty-Nine | The Presence That Vanquishes Death

Day Thirty | The Eucharist and Good Friday

The Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Birth of Jesus

The Presentation of the Lord

The Finding in the Temple

The Luminous Mysteries

The Baptism of the Lord

The Wedding Feast at Cana

The Preaching of the Kingdom of God

The Transfiguration

The Institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Agony in the Garden

The Scourging

The Crowning With Thorns

Jesus Takes Up His Cross

The Crucifixion

The Glorious Mysteries

The Resurrection

The Ascension

The Descent of the Holy Spirit

The Assumption

The Coronation of Mary

Eucharistic Colloquy

Eucharistic Litany Based on Sacramentum Caritatis

Via Eucharistiae The Way of the Eucharist

PRAYER TO BEGIN EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

Loving Father, your beloved Son has told us, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him (John 6:44). Thank you for drawing me here to the Eucharistic presence of Christ your Son. Thank you for allowing me to come close to the One who has come close to us in the Eucharistwho has become our companion on the way to you. Accept my sacrifice of prayer and the adoration I offer to your Son in the Blessed Sacrament. Unworthy though I am, I come to behold Jesus Christ in this Sacrament of Charity, moved by the certainty that anyone who sees Jesus sees the Father. What impels me to this place is the same hunger that sent the starving Prodigal Son back to the embrace of his father. I come begging for a new beginning. Like those present at the feeding of the five thousand, I have nothing to offer you except my nothingness. But I look to your Son and join him in the thanks he offers to you. I come before the presence of your Son filled with an attitude of expectation. All my life, my heart has cried out with the psalmist, Lower your heavens and come down! (see Psalm 144:5). With unimaginable mercy you have answered that plea. I have been made for this presence. May I never be without wonder before the miracle of Jesus present in the Eucharist. Let me relive the surprise of the attraction of Christ. Give me eyes to see beyond all appearances. Make me attentive to the encounter you offer me in this Sacrament. Please help me to offer this time of adoration with all my heart, without becoming weary or distracted. United with the Mother of God, may I ardently adore the Fruit of Marys womb so that my life may become fruitful in the way that best pleases you and that gives you unending glory. I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS FOR EACH DAY OF THE MONTH

Day One

The Eucharist and the Human Hunger for God

Word of God

O God, you are my Godfor you I long! For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts. (Psalm 63:2)

Meditation

To be human is to be needy. To be human is to be caught up in a constant search for Something More, the Something More that will satisfy every yearning, every longing, every desire inside us. In fact, the more we realize just how limited we are, the more we see how our whole existence points to something beyond ourselves. In that Beyond is our meaning, our goal. This pining is what moves the psalmist to cry out, God, it is you for whom I long! For you my body yearns!

To be human is to be hungry. But how can the psalmist be so sure that God is the answer? The Catechism tells us that the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself ( CCC , 27). God himself places the desire for him in our hearts, and God himself prompts our hearts to cry out to him filled with the expectation of an Answer.

Surrendering ourselves to Mysterythe Mystery of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in what appears to be a piece of breadis the most reasonable thing we can do. Because we were made for this Mystery. We know it deep inside ourselves. It is the way chosen by God to draw us unceasingly to himself. Someone once wrote that the most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.1 Amazingly, those are the words of Albert Einstein. And if a man so given to science was willing to admit the indispensable need to be religious before Mystery, then we need have no doubt about what we are doing as we come before the tabernacle or the monstrance in worship.