Get Jesus
Lesson 12
Get Jesus
Live as if Jesus truly is your way,
your truth, and your life.
Question 12
How is Jesus “the way, and the truth, and the life?”
Thomas answers that . . .
“The way, it has been said, is Christ himself, so he says, ‘I am the way.’ This is indeed true, for, as stated in Romans (Rom. 5:2), it is through him that we have access to the Father. . . . Because this way is not separated from its destination but united to it, he adds, ‘and the truth, and the life.’ So Christ is at once both the way and the destination. He is the way by reason of his human nature, and the destination because of his divinity. Therefore, as human, he says, ‘I am the way”; as God, he adds, ‘and the truth, and the life.’ ”
— St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, chapter14, lecture 2
The Way
During my years in the atheistic wilderness, I so admired a quotation from atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) Thus Spoke Zarathustra that I included it in an early book I wrote about strength training and bodybuilding. It ran as follows:
This is my way; where is yours — thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way — that does not exist.
That was quite a heady saying from the pen of the son of a Lutheran minister and quite a shame that it struck this poorly catechized young Catholic as so profound. It wasn’t until my early forties that I encountered a much more sublime and “angelic” philosopher who showed me that “the way” really, truly does exist, and His name is Jesus Christ!
Nietzsche’s professed lack of any one way truly struck a chord with the burgeoning modernist mind and continues to help to deform it in our day. If it reminds you of the all-too-common moral relativism of our day, you are all too correct. Nietzsche wrote in the late 1800s that the most profound line in the whole Bible was Pontius Pilate’s question to Christ, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In our day, many modern people effectively combine both of Nietzsche’s misguided insights as they boldly declare the absolute doctrine of relativism: “This is my truth; where is yours? For the truth — that does not exist.” Setting aside what should be the obvious self-contradiction — in that to declare there is no objective truth is in itself a declaration that one’s statement is true — this idea is alive, though unwell, and widespread in these turbulent times, times in which so many have lost their way precisely because they have lost the way.
Got All of Jesus?
At the same time atheistic thinkers were disparaging and discarding the way of Christ, modern thinkers within the Church were increasingly discarding the parts of Christ that did not line up well with their way of thinking. In the early twentieth century, some modernist theologians, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, discarded their belief in the supernatural and the miraculous and sought for a “historical Jesus” who was essentially only a man and a great moral teacher. In a sense, this was nothing new. The Church had battled the Arian heresy, which denied Christ’s divinity, back in the fourth century. Others, then and in our time, may not openly question Christ’s divinity but seek to shape His teachings to fit their ways of thinking, discarding “harsh sayings” or “truth bombs,” as they are sometimes called, from His moral lessons, such as the need to repent of sins at the risk of hell, or the indissolubility of marriage, or Christ’s deep mystical teaching that we must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood to have eternal life. Modernists teach a soft, malleable Christ who is quite content to let us do our own thing as we define and redefine our own ways. We can see their divisive fruits in the ever-growing fragmentation of Protestant sects and in some sectors within the Catholic Church where every moral and theological teaching would seem to be up for grabs by our modern, enlightened minds.
Some devout Christians of various persuasions in our time ask the simple question, so pithy and apt for bumper stickers — Got Jesus? Well, I believe St. Thomas “got Jesus,” all of Jesus, in His fullness, like few people before him or since, making him a most valuable guide to living out our last life lesson of really getting Jesus.
The Alpha and the Omega
Jesus said He is “the Alpha and the Omega,” the A and the Z, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13). Thomas crafted his Summa Theologica with this profound theme in mind. The three major “parts” are devoted to God, man, and Christ, respectively, and are interrelated in an overarching exitus-reditus (out from God, back to God) theme. From God flows all creation, including man, who is made in His image and likeness. This is the stuff of Part I. Part II (subdivided into two smaller parts: I-II and II-II), focuses on man’s journey back to God through an examination of moral living and virtue. Part III completes man’s ultimate return to God via the way, who is Christ and the Church He established.
You might note a parallel with this book’s life lessons. Life lesson one, on accepting only the best, made clear from the very beginning that our final end or goal is to get back to the God who made us and to share in eternal life with Him. Life lessons two through eleven examine ten key things we can do while on earth to fulfill that goal and get back to God. This chapter’s last life lesson addresses the final, ultimate, necessary means to reach our goal of God in heaven by embracing God the Savior, who came down to earth for our sake. This pattern, like the words of Scripture, also reveals that the Jesus Christ of our last life lesson, our Omega so to speak, was also our Alpha, right there at the beginning. When we get back to God, through Christ, we get back to Christ as well, since “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1–3). To see Christ only as a man is to fail to see the Word who is God, to miss both the Alpha and the Omega. Indeed, as St. Thomas wrote so well, in our introductory quotation, Christ is not only the way, but the destination! Let’s turn to Thomas, then, for some insights on how we can embrace the way and the destination with a human face who can lead us to the divine face of God.
The King Who Conquered the Queen of the Vices
We have looked briefly at Christ as the way (and the destination) through our clear Thomistic lenses. Of course, Christ declared that His is not only the way, but also “the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Thomas wrote that Christ lived the kind of life He did on earth to fulfill the three main ends of his Incarnation.
1. He came to proclaim the truth: “He says Himself (John 18:27): “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth.” For that reason, he lived a social, public life, interacting with and teaching others.
2. Secondly, says Thomas, Christ came to free us from sin: “According to 1 Tim. 1:35: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (III, 40, 1). Therefore, Christ did not live a solitary life, but as St. John Chrysostom notes, Christ went out in search of sinners like a shepherd searching for lost sheep or a physician making his rounds.
3. “He came that by Him we might have access to God, as it is written (Rom. 5:2)” (III, 40, 1).120
Christ came both to show us the good news of His truth and to help us pulverize the sins that keep us from His truth. Since He searches like a shepherd for us lost sheep, it would behoove us to cry out “Baa!” to Him and seek Him out as well. Since He comes to us like a physician making his rounds, it would behoove us to follow His prescription when He tells us, as He told the woman caught in adultery, “Do not sin again” (John 8:11).
Aristotle once said that as virtues hone in on the bull’s-eye and hit the target square on, there are many ways, through a myriad of vices and sins, that we can miss it by a mile. In our previous sections on sin for each of our life lessons, we’ve seen many examples of the kinds of sins that can draw us away from the target of limited happiness on earth and total bliss with God in heaven.
We have seen, too, how Thomas, following Pope St. Gregory the Great, notes that the seven capital vices of sloth, envy, avarice, vainglory, gluttony, lust, and wrath, are particularly “deadly” because they can lead us to the kinds of mortal sins that bring death to the soul, and yet the two great saints considered one vice even more deadly than the “seven deadly sins,” since it can give birth to all seven and all of their progeny too. This they called “the queen of the vices,” and this queen’s name is Pride.
Pride has been with us here on earth since Adam and Eve chose to follow their desires rather than the will of God, but it existed even before that in heaven when Satan declared to God, “Non serviam!” (I will not serve!) In our day, though, pride is attaining a very powerful ascendancy where formerly Christian cultures are becoming increasingly secularized. Man is, in essence, increasingly consciously choosing himself over God, enthroning his own will, and casting God aside as irrelevant or nonexistent.
Lust, for example, deriving from our natural desires for the procreation of the species, has been with us always and has always required struggle and restraint. But now, as never before, popular culture and media, and indeed, even some Christian religious denominations, glorify lust and strive to promote and sell every form of sexual sin as a proper expression of our sexuality, regardless of the damage to countless families and to the destruction of millions of unborn children through the abortion industry, which profits from sins against chastity by charging fees for violations of the fifth commandment. Ignorance and weakness certainly play a role here, which is why young would-be mothers and fathers facing an unexpected pregnancy need to be educated, supported, loved, and shown the value of every life. Their ignorance and weakness would not result in a death, however, if it were not for the educated and powerful providers of abortion, who willfully decide that they, and not God, are the arbiters of the value or lack thereof, of a human life. The whole modern Culture of Death, as Pope St. John Paul II called it, could not survive without the pride of its promoters and profiteers.
Any sins become far more deadly when openly flaunted through pride, but Christ came as a King who conquered the queen of the vices along with the Lord of Hell, who tries to keep her enthroned in our hearts. He would have us do the same, and He told us how two virtues above all others can help us conquer all kinds of sins.
The Ultimate in Godly Virtues and Gifts
We saw in chapter 11 how every canonized saint displayed heroic virtues in the service of God and neighbor. Of course, the main reason we should imitate saints is that they became saintly and virtuous by imitating Christ. They help us imitate Christ by showing us how a Christ-centered life is possible anywhere in the world, at any time in history. So, wherever we are sitting, and whenever we happen to read this, Christ calls out to you and me, as He did to all the saints, to take up our crosses and follow Him to heaven. The crosses we bear will elicit all manner of virtues, but let’s zoom in again on two virtues above all others that Christ not only extols but desires to help us acquire.
Jesus extols humility. St. Paul wrote that Christ “humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). Jesus declared, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Matt. 11:29–30). We have seen already how humility, lowliness of heart, is the foundation of appropriate self-love, a love that recognizes both the limits of our own sinfulness and the limitless power of God’s graces, so that we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us (see Phil. 4:13).
Humility is meek in counting others better than ourselves, in turning the other cheek when insulted, in giving our cloak as well to the person who wants our coat. Indeed, “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Though meek, the virtue of humility is anything but weak. Christ, though humble and meek, showed unequalled manly fortitude in bearing the physical pains of His Crucifixion, and in His forceful display of righteous indignation in driving the money-changers from the Temple with a whip of chords when they had turned his “Father’s house into a house of trade” (John 2:16).
If humility is the lowly but sturdy foundation of the cathedral of virtue, charity is the crowning cross at its apex. Jesus showed His humility in taking on our humanity; He remained fully God all the while, and as St. John makes clear, “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Here again, we recall from our second life lesson how Thomas explained that Jesus’ law is the law of love; how in our fifth life lesson we saw how St. Aelred explained that Christ’s yoke is the yoke of charity, which makes our brother’s and sister’s burdens light for us; and how we saw in life lesson seven that our love must always go out to sinners. Christ, the God who is love, can truly be found in some way in every one our twelve Thomistic life lessons, since Thomas knew so well that Christ is indeed “Via, Veritas, et Vita” (the way, the truth, and the life).
We should bear in mind, too, that while Christ in His humanity perfected every virtue, Isaiah prophesized: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, and the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11:1–3). Isaiah prophesized how Jesus Christ would receive most completely the seven spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit. Recall that, through virtues, our wills and passions are guided by right human reason. When we open ourselves to the workings of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are guided by the divine stirrings of the Holy Spirit Himself. Christ had both a human will and a divine omnipotent will, and they were always completely aligned (III, 18), making Him the ultimate model of the complete and harmonious utilization of the virtues and the gifts.
Talking to Christ in His Words and in Our Own
We have already considered aplenty in these pages the words Christ gave us to pray in the Our Father, but He provided many other lessons for us on prayer too, both in His words and in His actions. Thomas wrote a question of four articles entitled “Of Christ’s Prayer” (III, 21). In the first article, he explains how it was “becoming” or fitting for Christ to pray because “the Divine and human wills are distinct in Christ, and the human will of itself is not efficacious enough to do what it wishes, except by Divine power, hence to pray belongs to Christ as man and as having a human will” (III, 21, 1). If Christ’s human will needed prayer, how much more does our own!
In addressing another issue quite relevant to our prayer lives, Thomas notes in the third article that while Christ prayed for others, He also prayed for Himself, and He did so in two ways. When He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that the chalice of His Passion might pass from Him (Matt. 26:39), He expressed the desire of his sensual nature and simple will as a human being. When He prayed for the glory of His Resurrection (John 17:1), he expressed the desire of His deliberate will guided by reason. Thomas explains that Jesus prayed to His Father to provide us an example of prayer and of the fact that His Father is the author of both His human and His eternal divine natures. Jesus also prayed to give thanks for what He had received in His human nature (Matt. 26:27; John 11:41) and prayers that include petitions for gifts He had not yet received in His human nature, such as the glory of His body (John 17:1). Per Thomas: “And in this He gave us an example, that we should give thanks for the benefits received, and ask in prayer for those we have not as yet.”
As for that prayer to the Father in the garden in which Christ asked that the chalice of His Passion might pass from Him, we will recall that He immediately followed with “nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). This raises interesting questions if Christ’s human and divine wills are perfectly aligned, and Thomas provides several interesting answers from Sts. Hilary, Jerome, Dionysius of Alexandria, Ambrose, Augustine, and John Chrysostom.
Thomas concludes that if we understand it according to Hilary, Christ prayed that the chalice might “pass from Him” to other future martyrs who would imitate Him with unfailing hope, or that He would not be overcome with fear of His Passion, or that death would not hold Him, and in these interpretations, Christ’s prayer was indeed completely fulfilled. Ambrose, Augustine, and John Chrysostom agreed that Christ prayed that prayer “as man, being reluctant to die according to His natural will.” Still, this does not mean that Christ’s human and divine wills were not aligned, “because His reason which formed the petition did not desire its fulfillment, but for our instruction, it was His will to make known to us His natural will and the movement of His sensuality, which was His as a man.” Further, in the reply to a fourth objection: “When He says, I shall cry and Thou wilt not hear, we must take this as referring to the desire of sensuality, which shunned death. But He is heard as to the desire of His reason, as stated above.”
Please note well how even in this intense and sorrowful prayer for Himself, a prayer during which He experienced what physicians call hematidrosis, the sweating of blood (Luke 22:44), His thoughts also reached out to us, in teaching us how to pray. Thomas considered Christ “the most excellent of teachers,” who taught not through His writings, but in “that manner of teaching whereby His doctrines are imprinted on the hearts of His hearers,” and “as one having power” through the words and deeds of His life (III, 42, 4, citing Matt. 7:29).
With this idea in mind, if we heed this life lesson and seek to “get Jesus” through prayer, whenever we read the Gospels, we should be on high alert for the many valuable lessons Christ teaches about prayer in His words and deeds, from His days of fasting and prayer in the desert, to His kneeling in prayer in reverence for the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the words He gave us to pray, to His simple words of advice that we should all heed every day: “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).
Of course, we can pray to Christ, as well as to the Father, and I’ll close this section with brief excerpts from ancient and beautiful Christ-centered prayers composed by two great saints. The first is attributed to the man who brought the Holy Trinity to the Emerald Isle. Inspired by the words of Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” our first saint prays as follows:
Christ with me
Christ before me
Christ behind me
Christ in me
Christ beneath me
Christ above me
Christ on my right
Christ on my left
Christ when I lie down
Christ when I sit down
Christ when I arise
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today through a mighty strength
the invocation of the Trinity
through belief in the threeness,
through confession of the oneness
of the Creator of Creation.121
Our second excerpt from a Christ-centered prayer is from a most angelic saint we all know so well:
Devoutly I adore You, hidden Deity,
Under these appearances concealed.
To You my heart surrenders self
For seeing You, all else must yield. . . .
Jesus, whom I see enveiled,
What I desire, when will it be?
Beholding Your fair face revealed,
Your glory shall I be blessed to see.
Amen.122
Feeling God Cleave to Your Innermost Parts
Do you ever hear Christians of various denominations talk about the importance of establishing “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”? Well, Thomas would agree that is the most important relationship, indeed, the most important thing in all the world and in heaven, the direct goal of our first and last life lessons, and the goal that all of our life lessons serve. When I hear this phrase from non-Catholics, my thoughts often go to our great communion of saints. Every one of our canonized saints has established a relationship with Christ in the most profound and personal way. Still, there is another sense in which all of us as Catholics are blessed to establish a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” indeed, to “get Jesus,” indeed, all of Jesus, in a most miraculous and intimate way, a way that Christ Himself established for us, a way that every ordained priest makes available to us while acting in the person of Christ in a mysterious way that exceeds our understanding but has been explained as sublimely as humanly possible by our own Angelic Doctor.
The “hidden Deity” to whom Thomas prays, the Deity present in such a way that “sight and touch and taste here fail; hearing only can be believed,”123 is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, truly present in the sacrament of the Eucharist. In the hymns he composed for the feast of Corpus Christi, Thomas is the elegant poet of the Eucharist, and in the Summa Theologica, III, 73-83, he is its sublime theologian, indeed, the “Eucharistic Doctor.” Thomas wrote nearly a hundred pages on the Eucharist in the Summa (in double-column print), and I hope you’ll peruse them someday. For now, we’ll take just a few peeks to give you a taste of his nuggets of wisdom.
In question 74, Thomas addresses the ostensibly mundane issue of the material elements of the Eucharist and provides us insights such as these:
It is appropriate that bread and wine are used in this sacrament because Christ himself instituted the sacrament with bread and wine (Matt. 26). And as for four more figurative reasons: (1) water is used in Baptism for spiritual cleansing, and since the Eucharist feeds us spiritually, bread and drink are appropriate, (2) during Christ’s Passion his blood was separated from his body, and in the Eucharist “the bread is received apart as the sacrament of the body and the wine as the sacrament of the blood,” (3) in terms of effect, as St. Ambrose wrote, “Christ’s body is offered under the species of bread for the health of the body; and the blood under the species of wine for the health of the soul, according to Lev. 17:14; The life of the animal (Vulgate — of all flesh) is in the blood, and (4), as to the effect with regard to the whole Church, which is made up of many believers, just as bread is composed of many grains, and wine flows from many grapes, as the gloss observes on 1 Cor. 10:17: We being many are . . . one body, etc.” (74, 1)
Further, Christ has compared himself both to a grain of wheat (John 12:24) and to the vine (John 15:1; cited in 74, 2).
Water is mixed with the wine because Christ probably did so in keeping with the Jewish custom of the time; “hence it is written (Prov. 9:5): Drink the wine I have mixed for you.” Further, Pope Alexander I emphasized that both blood and water flowed from Christ’s side in the Passion, and Pope Julius wrote “the people are signified by the water, but Christ’s blood by the wine. Therefore when water is mixed with the wine in the chalice, the people is made one with Christ.” Moreover, St. Ambrose wrote of another “effect of this sacrament, which is the entering into everlasting life; hence: The water flows into the chalice, and springs forth unto everlasting life.” Ambrose also noted that while the Eucharist was prefigured by Melchisedech’s offering of bread and wine, “so likewise it is signified by the water which flowed from the rock in the desert according to 1 Cor. 10:4: But they drank of the spiritual rock which came after them.” Finally, the water of baptism absolves while the water of the Eucharist refreshes “according to Psalm 22:3: He hath brought me up on the water of refreshment, and since bread is made with water and flour, “therefore, since water is mixed with the wine, neither is without the water.” (74, 6)
In the following nine questions of seventy articles, Thomas really gets into the heart and the soul (not to mention the Body, Blood, and Divinity) of the sacrament of the Eucharist. I’ll provide here merely the tersest of summaries of a few of the most striking highlights.
Thomas makes crystal clear, through multiple arguments from Scripture and the Church Fathers, that the body of Christ is in the sacrament of the Eucharist “in very truth,” and not “merely as in a figure or sign.” He cites Berengarius of Tours (ca. 999–1088) as the first to devise the heresy that Christ’s Body and Blood are present in the Eucharist only as a spiritual sign (a belief now held by most non-Catholic Christians, and indeed by some within the Church). Among more intriguing, moving defenses of Christ’s Real Presence, Thomas cites Matthew, John — and Aristotle! Recall that Christ told us while on earth, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Aristotle wrote that a special feature of friendship is that friends live together. Thomas notes that Christ promised His bodily presence to us as a reward at the close of the age, “saying (Matt. 24:28): Where the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.” Still, even during our pilgrimage on earth He provides us with His bodily presence through the Eucharist. In John 6:57 “he says: He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him. Hence, this sacrament is the sign of extreme charity, and the uplifter of our hope, from such familiar union of Christ with us” (III, 75, 1).
In II, 75, 4–8, Thomas describes the miracle of transubstantiation, whereby in the sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, while the accidents of the bread and wine, perceptible by our senses, continue to remain. As he noted in the first article of this question, “The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority. Hence, on Luke 22:19: This is My body, which shall be delivered up for you, Cyril says: Doubt not whether this be true: but take rather the Saviour’s words with faith, since He is the Truth, He lieth not.” In the fourth article, Thomas reminds doubters of the Real Presence, that while “every change wrought by nature entails a change in a particular thing’s form, God’s power is infinite, hence His action extends to the whole nature of being. Therefore, He can work not only formal conversion, so that diverse forms succeed each other in the same subject; but also the change of all being, so that, to wit, the whole substance of one thing can be changed into the whole substance of another” . . . as “the whole substance of bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood.”
Question 79 treats “Of the Effects of This Sacrament” in a full eight articles. These effects include the bestowal of grace, the attainment of glory, the forgiveness of venial sins, fortification against future sins, and, because this sacrament is also a sacrifice (recall our chapter on the Mass), the Eucharist also benefits others who do not receive it, because to them “it is beneficial by way of sacrifice, inasmuch as it is offered for their salvation.” Thomas notes that the fact that the Eucharist does not forgive mortal sins is made clear in the words of St. Paul. “It is written (1 Cor. 11:29): He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself; and a gloss of the same passage makes the following commentary: He eats and drinks unworthily who is in the state of sin, or who handles (the sacrament) irreverently; and such a one eats and drinks judgement, i.e., damnation unto himself.” May these words remind us to show the greatest reverence to the Eucharist and, if we are stained by mortal sin, to avail ourselves of the sacrament of Confession before we receive Communion.
In the sixth article of question 80, Thomas addresses head-on “Whether the Priest Ought to Deny the Body of Christ to the Sinner Seeking It.” Citing Augustine on the fact that all of us are sinners, the answer to that question in general is no. However, “a distinction must be made among sinners: some are secret; others are notorious, either from evidence of the fact, as public usurers, or public robbers, or from being denounced as evil men by some ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Therefore, Holy Communion ought not to be given to open sinners when they ask for it.” How relevant a statement for our turbulent times when self-proclaimed Catholic politicians who promote abortion of the unborn, and recently even death through neglect of the newly born children who survive attempted abortions, line up to receive the Holy Eucharist. Thankfully, some priests and bishops are aware of this important life lesson from St. Thomas Aquinas.124
Life Lesson 12 Summa
To “get Jesus” then, we must learn about Jesus through the Gospels and the teachings of the Church, fight against sin with His aid, build virtues and employ the Holy Spirit’s gifts as He modeled so perfectly for us, pray for His assistance in the words and ways He taught us, and partake worthily of the Eucharist, so that Jesus might abide in us, and we in Him, as He wants us to. Finally, may each one of us pray after every Communion, like the priest in the Traditional Latin Mass, that Christ’s Body and Blood that we have received will “adhaeret visceribus meis” (cleave to my innermost parts).
120 The full verse reads as follows: “Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2).
121 From St. Patrick’s elaborate, magnificent “Breastplate” prayer, available in full on many online sites.
122 The first and last stanzas of Adoro Te Devote, Latens Deitas (Devoutly I Adore You, Hidden Deity) in Anderson and Moser, The Aquinas Prayer Book, 97.
123 Ibid, 69. The “hearing” Thomas refers to refers primarily to the “hard saying” of the words that Christ spoke to His disciples in the “bread of life” narrative in John 6; for example, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (v. 54) and Christ’s words on the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–15; Luke 22:14–20), recapitulated by St. Paul (1 Cor. 11: 24–25) and at every Catholic Mass at the Consecration of the Eucharist.
124 I cannot help but point out the injustice here on the part of pro-abortion politicians who seek to continue to receive Communion. Christ told us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Abortion prevents the unborn child from ever having even a First Communion.