This feast (Corpus Christi) goes back to the thirteenth century. First established in the diocese of Liége, it was extended to the entire Church in 1264 by Pope Urban IV.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the beautiful Adoro te devote, latens Deitas ... I devoutly adore You, hidden Deity. We do not see the Godhead in the Eucharist with our eyes, nor taste Him with our mouths. But we do see Him in faith, taste Him in faith, receive Him in faith.

To see in faith is greater than seeing with our eyes. Our eyes can only perceive what is before us in physical form. Our eyes do not have the power to understand, to appreciate, to comprehend the meaning of things or persons. They can size, but not measure the significance of what is the reality of the Eucharist. We can only do that by faith.

What we receive looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine, feels like bread and wine, but it is not bread and wine. Our modern world would like us to believe that if it looks like X, tastes like X, walks like X, it must be X. Not so when we deal with the Eucharist.

Every Mass is a miracle of God's coming to us in a most intimate form. Usually when we eat food, our bodies transform it into our very selves. This food is the opposite. This food transforms us into God.

Of course we must add that this cannot happen without our cooperation. God's sanctifying grace is like a present we receive. We must accept the grace and then unwrap the present and use its gifts. The Eucharist is no different. We must use the grace given by allowing Jesus to change us more and more into His likeness. Jesus tells us, "Abide in Me, as I do in you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. You are my friends. Abide in my love" (John 15:4; 9; 15).

Every time we visit Him in the Eucharist, every time we receive Him in Communion we make this more possible. And there is always more. We can never exhaust the fullness of God. The Eucharist can only bring us more and more into Him. "He has waited for us: at His feet we have reaffirmed our highest ideals and have abandoned all our worries - those things that may have overwhelmed us at times - into His hands" (Fernandez).

We are most blest with our parish's commitment to Perpetual Adoration. Let us make a renewed personal commitment to visit Him in the Eucharist and to attend a daily Mass each week. We can never get enough of Jesus.