Monthly Devotion: Blessed Sacrament

CAN we love someone we do not even know? Can we love deeply someone we know only vaguely? Why is Jesus, the adorable, eternal and incarnate Wisdom loved so little if not because he is either too little known or not known at all? - St. Louis Marie de Montfort

APRIL, the first full month of the joyful season of spring, is devoted to the honor of Jesus present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. 

ALTHOUGH probably best know for his love of our Blessed Lady, another constant in the life and writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort is the adoration of God, particularly in the Sacrament of His Love. St. Louis, whose feast falls on Low Sunday this year, ever sought to make the unbounded love of God known and to inspire love in return. Of the Blessed Sacrament he writes in Love of Eternal Wisdom:

ETERNAL Wisdom, on the one hand, wished to prove his love for man by dying in his place in order to save him, but on the other hand, he could not bear the thought of leaving him. So he devised a marvellous way of dying and living at the same time, and of abiding with man until the end of time. So, in order fully to satisfy his love, he instituted the sacrament of Holy Eucharist and went to the extent of changing and overturning nature itself. He does not conceal himself under a sparkling diamond or some other precious stone, because he does not want to abide with man in an ostentatious manner. But he hides himself under the appearance of a small piece of bread - man's ordinary nourishment - so that when received he might enter the heart of man and there take his delight. Ardenter amantium hoc est - Those who love ardently act in this way. "O eternal Wisdom," says a saint, "O God who is truly lavish with himself in his desire to be with man."

Love to be humbled and being given scant respect, love the hidden life, love silence, be the silent one who offers Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, love divine Wisdom, love the Cross. - St. Louis Marie de Montfort to a Religious Sister