Do This in Memory of Me: Make Wishes Come True

By: Laura Catherine Worhacz 

“I will come to bring you my Eucharistic wishes.” (Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Letter to MME Josephine Gourd, January 7, 1868)
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Dearest Eucharistic Family,
 
Happy and blessed New Year 2023! We begin the year in our Catholic Church mourning the loss of our brother, friend, mentor, and most significant title, Father, Pope Benedict XVI. He has left a mark of faith in our hearts, in our souls, and in our Holy Mother Church.
 
I was blessed to bring Holy Communion to the homebound after daily Mass this past week, to a dear sister in Christ. After praying and consuming the Sacred Host, she was weeping, mourning the loss of Pope Benedict XVI. I joined her in the tears and in the memories of our beloved Pope. Our conversation escalated into sharing all of the gifts of his life, the teachings, homilies, and encyclicals. More than mourning, we celebrated the blessing of a life well lived by reminiscing about our beloved Pope Benedict XVI.
 
“God is LOVE,”… so he began his pontificate. 

​“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). …We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (Pope Benedict XVI, God is LOVE)

​In this quote from Pope Benedict XVI, we find the Eucharistic wishes of Saint Peter Julian, a new horizon on our lives, a way to live in Heaven now through the grace of the Blessed Sacrament.
 
My fondest thoughts of our great theologian, Pope Benedict XVI, stream forth from his gentle yet firm spirit. Pope Benedict’s great work in giving us our Catechism grants us a place to go for truth and blessings, security in God’s love. A way to find faith by stirring the truth of God’s love in hearts, a family treasure.

​“It is part of love’s growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being “for ever”. Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time.” (Pope Benedict XVI, God is LOVE)

​In the Eucharistic wish, in its blessings, we can live in the higher dimension of life now. Jesus is with us, born of Mary and in a stable, with a Father hovering over Him in love.  
 
Love is a divine action; it shines forth from expressions of gifts…presence of love…gifts of self.

​“Only God knows the value and strength of his intercession, of his sacrifices offered for the good of the Church.” (Pope Francis regarding Pope Benedict XVI)

The NEW YEAR, 2023, calls us to evaluate our lives, our love, our faith, and our offering to our Lord.
 
Perhaps starting with the words of our Holy Father, Pope Francis will strengthen us to carry out our daily duties, assured that God is with us. God sees us and knows the value of our offering everything to him.
 
In the depths of our existence, we are affixed to Jesus from the Altar and His Incarnate Life in us. We carry this presence of GOD’S LOVE into our world through Holy Communion.
 
We are God’s tabernacle.
 
God is LOVE, and we are his disciples. Baptized in His mission to watch over the ones in the stable, bless them, love them and carry them home.
 
Pope Benedict’s smile will be with us forever. We will be nearest to him in the Eucharist. He will continue to speak to us there, teaching us the way of humility and how to bring Eucharistic wishes to others.

““If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). But this text hardly excludes the love of God as something impossible. On the contrary, the whole context of the passage quoted from the First Letter of John shows that such love is explicitly demanded. The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor is emphasized. One is so closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbor or hate him altogether. Saint John’s words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God.” (Pope Benedict XVI, God is LOVE)
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In his last words upon earth, let us cry out with our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, “GOD, I LOVE YOU!”
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Laura Catherine Worhacz

Laura Catherine Worhacz is a Lay Associate of the Blessed Sacrament and author of Consecration to Jesus Through Our Lady of The Blessed Sacrament. She is also the Director of Mothers of The Blessed Sacrament. She lives in Trinity, FL with her husband and their two daughters.