An edifying story is told of S. Pius of Pietrelcina. Late one night, he was praying in the monastery chapel when he thought he saw one of his fellow friars arranging the altar. He called out: “Fra’ Leone, what are you still doing up? It’s late! Go to bed!” But the voice that answered him was not Fra’ Leone’s. The unknown voice identified itself as that of a friar who had died many years since, having long ago passed his novitiate at the monastery where Padre Pio now lived. As a novice, it had been his duty to dress the altar, to clean and press the linens, to polish the candlesticks, and so on. This duty he fulfilled diligently; but he did so without duly reverencing the Blessed Sacrament reigning from its throne in the Tabernacle, often omitting even to genuflect as he passed, out of a misplaced desire to complete his assigned task as quickly as he could. Because of this, so many years after his death, he was still languishing in Purgatory, but had been given the grace of being permitted to appear to Padre Pio to beg his prayers. Deeply moved, and thinking himself generous, the saint immediately promised to say Mass for the friar’s soul first thing in the morning; but, to his great surprise, the apparition screamed at him, “How cruel you are!” before disappearing from view.
From this experience, S. Pius drew the valuable lesson that we ought never delay in offering up prayers and penances for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, since only a few hours’ wait until Mass could be said seemed to that departed friar an endless doom of agony. But there is another lesson, even more important, to be drawn, too, and if S. Pius failed to remark upon it, it is only because, in his sanctity, he had no need to learn it, comprehending it already. That lesson, of course, is the importance of reverence before the Blessed Sacrament.
This is one of the commonest attacks levelled against us by Protestants and others: that we pay such reverence to, as they call it, mere bread. But, as S. John Henry Newman preached in one of his sermons, “He who is at the right hand of God, manifests Himself in that Holy Sacrament as really and fully as if He were visibly there. […] Not gold or precious stones, pearls of great price or gold of Ophir, are to the eye of faith so radiant as those lowly elements which He, the Highest, is pleased to make the means of conveying to our hearts and bodies his own gracious self.” The Catechism of the Council of Trent lays out very clearly that “the true Body of Christ the Lord, the same that was born of the Virgin, […] is contained in this Sacrament.” Not on its own authority does it say so, nor on the personal or even pontifical authority of Pope S. Pius V., who promulgated it, but it refers in copious detail to the teachings of the Church Fathers, quoting S. Ambrose and S. Chrysostom, S. Augustine and S. Cyril. It refers, too, to the unanimous teaching of half a dozen Church Councils over as many centuries. In short, the Catechism makes clear that it has always been believed and taught by Holy Mother Church that Our Lord is truly and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament. Indeed, from time to time, it has pleased God to make this Real Presence more obvious, not only to the eye of faith, but to the cold, unfeeling eye of observation. The website created by the recently-beatified B. Carlo Acutis lists several dozen such documented Eucharistic Miracles over the centuries: the Host takes on the physical properties of human muscle tissue; the Precious Blood belongs to the AB+ blood group. That Real Presence in which we all must, and do, believe is, on these rare and beautiful occasions, made too plain to overlook or ignore.
When Our Lord walked upon the earth, as we read time and time again in the Gospels, men and women of all conditions, believing in him, fell down before him and worshipped him. Tonight, reigning from the Monstrance, or reigning from the Tabernacle at any other time, Our Lord is equally truly present. We owe him no less reverence than that.
By Mr. George P.M. Scott