“Wheresoever the body shall be, thither will the eagles also be gathered together” Luke 17:37

 

But a few short days with the Saints of God show us whence they draw their strength.  They, the great eagles of the Church militant, are ever gathered wheresoever the saving Body of their God is.  In the days when the memory of the swift, visible visit of our Lord was still fresh in all men’s minds and the world’s anger against His followers was still young, the hunted Roman folk, hid deep beneath the shielding earth, knelt about the Body of their murdered King and nerved their hearts to run the race through death to glory.  The stalwart missionaries of old journeyed a far into the twilight lands of heathendom to the peoples that sat in darkness, and single-handed led the captives of Satan back to Christ.  And their strength?  It was won at the altar of God whereat they stood and drank the Blood that inebriated their souls with the unconquerable love of the living Christ. 

But we need not go to former days.  Look around us upon those saintly men and women who are fighting shoulder to shoulder the great fight of life.  In the dim light of morning when the east is scarce fringed with the dawn, their footfalls ring upon the vacant pavement as they hurry to greet their sacramental God in Holy Communion.  While the world is yet asleep they keep the “watches of the saints” and feast upon the Bread that sinews their arms and strengthens their hearts to battle on in this sin-stained world.  Look at those silent forms:  a father, whose fingers are gnarled and bent with toil but in whose eyes shines the light of another world; a mother, strong in the strength of her saintly will to teach her little ones to love the Lord she loves so well.  Young men and women too are there, whose grace-lit faces tell of souls kept clean and pure amid the world’s foul atmosphere.

Where too does that great host of priests and religious, our brethren in our Lord, staunch pillars of their God’s own Church, gain courage and might to win Heaven, not for themselves alone, but for myriads of weak, fainting souls?  Ask the young teacher whose patience is strained to the breaking at the persistent ignorance of giddy youth; ask the aged porter whose hands have grown hard and whose steps have tottered unto weariness answering those who knock at the door of God’s servants; ask the many silent forms that flit about upon noiseless errands of study or household work, ask them one and all what makes their life worth living.  And for answer?  Go to the chapel at break of day, at the high noon, at the closing hours of even-tide and see the eagles gathered about the Body of their God.  Life without the sacramental presence of our God would be life without light, life without joy, life without meaning

O dear Lord Jesus, what an unworthy companion of the Saints am I!  How hard do I not find it to make Your home my home!  I grow weary of Your Sacred Presence and tire of Your gentle company.  Oh, I cannot hide it from Your eyes!  But weary not of my childish restlessness.  For I love You, Lord, even as fretful child loves gentlest mother.  And did ever mother bear with childish whims as You?

“Give me, O priest, my daily bread

And fill for my lips the cup;

For famished my soul till I seem as dead!

Good priest, let me eat and sup.

 

Give me, O priest, my Heavenly Food

And the journey I will not dread;

What if tomorrow He bring my rood,

When tonight He hath broke me Bread?