While I was at night adoration on Friday I offered a holy hour from Adoration by Fr. Frederick Reuter and was struck by one of the readings, from which the following extracts are taken.

"Take ye and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins ... having uttered these sacred and memorable words ... He would not, He could not, juggle with the meaning of human words, or with the understanding of His creatures, and anything like discussion on the matter, after Jesus has spoken, must have as its basis that blasphemous question of those at Capharnaum, the first heretics on the subject of the Blessed Eucharist - How can this man give us his flesh to eat? When God, when the Son of God, speaks, let even human reason decide whether it is for us to reverently accept His words, or begin to put limits of our own to the Divine Omnipotence. It is enough for us that Jesus has said it.

There are two things that no human power can ever overcome, and these two things are time and space. We cannot make the past present, we cannot make the distant near ... Time and space stand between the Gospel and ourselves, and no human hand can move those everlasting barriers. But in the institution of the Eucharist Jesus has leveled them to dust. And how? That consecration in the Supper-room in Jerusalem is separated from us by time, it was necessary to make it perpetual. It is separated from us by space, it was necessary to make it so common that it could be witnessed everywhere. These two miracles were effected by these six words, Do this in memory of Me. For, by these words Jesus made the consecration of the Holy Eucharist perpetual and made it common.

It is inconceivable that our Blessed Lord, having determined to institute the Holy Eucharist, might have consecrated just once at the Last Supper and left the memory of that sublime action to cheer the future generations of His Church ... Not for Apostles alone was this heavenly bread ... For Jesus has made His gift perpetual in His Church. He has made His gift common as the very elements that sustain our life.

And why has Jesus thus exhausted the resources of His wisdom and the treasures of His love? Why has He determined to remain with us everywhere and forever in this Sacrament of His Love? Why is Jesus present upon our altars? Is it that the Church may group around His sacramental throne everything of the beautiful and grand that human genius can imagine and human hand make manifest to sense? Is it that lights may blaze and incense burn, and the loving reverence of the human heart translate itself into music that touches us to tears? Is it that flowers may lend their perfume and their grace to the holiness of our tabernacles and that long processions of the faithful may wind down, as it were, through all the centuries, singing the Pangue lingua with unceasing voice that swells into ever-widening circles as kingdom after kingdom is added to the Church of God? Yes, it is for these purposes: but it is for more than these. It is for these - for all the ritual magnificence of the Church has grown out of and around the Blessed Sacrament, finding there its measure and its end. It is for more than these - for when the flowers bloom their fairest, and when the music is sweetest and most touching, fairer far than any flower that earth can grow, is the love that is throned upon the altar, and a voice sweeter than any earthly music is coming from the tabernacle whence Jesus speaks.

Why is Jesus present in the tabernacle? No need to tell you who gather so often around the altar. You know it with a knowledge that is widened by every Communion you receive, by every visit you make to the Blessed Sacrament.

These two things are the sole return He asks for the unimaginable prodigality of love that He has shown in this Holy Sacrament - to visit Him as He awaits in the silence of the tabernacle; to receive Him often in Holy Communion."