More and More Eucharistic Companionship

Divine Appeal Reflection - 43

Today, consider in Divine Appeal 43: "More and more remain with Me in the Sacrament of My Love."

In daily practice, remaining with Jesus begins by abandoning unrealistic ideas about prayer and accepting the truth of one’s life. Many souls believe they must first create silence, energy, or emotional readiness before approaching the Eucharist. Jesus overturns this logic by remaining vulnerable, quiet, and accessible. He does not wait for perfect conditions. He waits for hearts willing to come as they are. Scripture shows that God consistently enters ordinary time—walking with Israel, dwelling in tents, laboring in Nazareth (cf. Ex 33:7; Lk 2:51). The Catechism (CCC 1374) teaches that Christ is truly and substantially present in the Eucharist , meaning every life circumstance is worthy ground. Practically, remaining may mean stopping by the church for five minutes on the way home, arriving early for Mass instead of scrolling, or sitting briefly before the tabernacle without words. Parents remain amid noise; workers remain amid fatigue; students remain amid distraction. The habit matters more than the feeling. Saints like Francis de Sales insisted that devotion must be adapted to vocation. Remaining is not escape from routine but the quiet consecration of it. Over time, the soul learns that holiness grows not from availability of time, but from fidelity within limitation.

Remaining with Jesus slowly converts habits because it exposes the heart repeatedly to a Love that does not react, rush, or withdraw. Impatience yields to gentleness not through self-control alone, but through prolonged contact with Christ’s stillness. Anxiety softens when the soul regularly rests before the One who governs history without haste (cf. Mt 6:25–34). Self-assertion weakens as the heart kneels before a God who reigns from humility. The Catechism (CCC 1378) teaches that Eucharistic worship extends the fruits of Communion , even when prayer feels dry. Practically, this means remaining without trying to accomplish anything: choosing a posture, staying present, resisting the urge to leave when bored. A simple phrase—“Jesus, I am here”—is enough. Daily life trains these muscles of remaining: waiting in traffic, enduring interruptions, completing repetitive tasks. When these are interiorly offered, they become Eucharistic extensions. St. Thérèse learned holiness through repeated, small fidelities. Over time, the heart becomes less reactive. Responses slow. Charity becomes instinctive. Remaining reshapes the inner terrain, allowing Christ to form virtue where effort alone fails. The soul discovers that transformation occurs not by force, but by proximity.

Jesus remains so that no vocation is borne in solitude, for the Eucharist discloses a God who will not love from afar but chooses abiding nearness. The whole arc of Scripture converges toward Emmanuel—God-with-us (cf. Mt 1:23)—a promise not concluded at Bethlehem but fulfilled sacramentally in the Eucharist,(cf. CCC 1324) named the source and summit of Christian life . In this mystery, remaining becomes vocational formation from within. The mother learns to place hidden fatigue upon the paten of Christ’s self-offering (cf. Col 1:24). The priest learns to return to the tabernacle when words are exhausted and zeal thinned, drawing again from the Heart that first called him (cf. Jn 21:15–17). The laborer learns that effort, when united by intention, becomes prayer rising with the work of hands (cf. Gen 2:15; Ps 127:1). Remaining does not dissolve responsibility; it shares it, teaching the soul to work with Christ rather than for Him alone (cf. Mt 11:28–30). Thus Jesus ceases to be an appointment in time and becomes a Companion along the way (cf. Lk 24:15). Brief interior returns throughout the day—before a difficult word, during a long walk, at the threshold of labor—sustain this communion (cf. Neh 2:4). The Catechism teaches that the Eucharist commits us to concrete charity in daily life (cf. CCC 1397), and so remaining reshapes speech, labor, and response. A vocation matures when companionship with Christ becomes more real than isolation. Jesus remains not to simplify life, but to sanctify it from within, dwelling at its very center.

The most purifying form of remaining unfolds where prayer appears barren and time before God seems unredeemed, for here love is stripped of all supports except fidelity. Many withdraw at this threshold, mistaking silence for absence, yet it is precisely here that Jesus abides most intensely. In Gethsemane He did not ask His disciples to understand or to act, (cf. Mt 26:38–40) but only to remain and watch with Him in the hour of obscurity . This mystery continues sacramentally: to keep a vowed hour of adoration amid distraction, to linger in stillness after Communion rather than covering the silence with words, is to stand with Christ where redemption is silently wrought. The Catechism (cf. CCC 1392) affirms that Holy Communion preserves and deepens the life of grace independently of felt experience , for its efficacy rests in Christ’s gift, not the soul’s perception. Saint Teresa of Ávila taught that perseverance in dryness purifies intention, uproots self-seeking, and anchors trust in God alone. In daily life, remaining within monotony—unvaried labor, unrelieved tensions, prayers seemingly unanswered—becomes a Eucharistic vigil, a participation in Christ’s own waiting before the Father (cf. Heb 5:7–9). Jesus remains within unanswered prayer not as withdrawal but as invitation, teaching the soul to choose Presence over consolation (cf. Ps 131:1–2). Over time, hope is transfigured into quiet confidence, love stabilizes into obedience, and holiness reveals its true soil: not escape, but fidelity that consents to stay.

A soul that remains is led beyond devotion into participation, entering the inner cloister of the Eucharistic Christ where existence itself is slowly converted into adoration. Scripture unveils this mystery of abiding as the deepest form of election: Samuel lying in the sanctuary until the Voice shaped his identity (cf. 1 Sam 3:1–10), Mary guarding the Word in a silence that became fruitful for the world (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), the Beloved Disciple remaining beneath the Cross when love alone could still see (cf. Jn 19:25–27). Unaware of itself, such a soul becomes a living monstrance, bearing Christ into the lowlands of ordinary time,(cf. Ex 34:29–35) as Moses descended Sinai marked by glory he did not perceive . The Eucharist, proclaimed as a pledge of future glory (cf. CCC 1402), already performs its eschatological work in hiddenness, transfiguring long endurance into praise, obscurity into communion, and suffering accepted in silence into priestly offering (cf. Rom 12:1). This is the monastic wisdom extended to every vocation: to remain when consolation is withdrawn (cf. Ps 63:1–8), to watch with Christ in His hour of abandonment (cf. Mt 26:38–41), to dwell in Him so deeply that His abiding becomes one’s own life (cf. Jn 15:4–9). Christ remains in the Sacrament to reproduce His own fidelity within souls who consent to stay. Thus the contemplative soul becomes a hidden threshold where eternity touches time, (cf. Jn 13:1) silently witnessing that God has not withdrawn but abides—saving the world through love that remains unto the end .

Prayer

O Adorable Jesus, silent and faithful in the Sacrament of Your Love, teach my restless heart to remain. Convert my habits by Your Presence, my wounds by Your mercy, my vocation by Your companionship. Let me stay until love reshapes me, and through me, quietly touches the world. Amen

Sr. Anna Ali of the Most Holy Eucharist, intercede for us.