Each morning, my husband reads to me from a little book entitled Eucharistic Gems – Daily Wisdom on the Blessed Sacrament. As many of you may know, The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has initiated a multi-year “National Eucharistic Revival” as a way of helping Catholics rediscover the greatest Sacrament of all the sacraments: the Holy Eucharist.
This little book is intended to be an aid to this revival, a daily devotional and inspiring accompaniment on a year-long journey. The Revival will come and go, but the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament will always remain in the tabernacles of Catholic churches around the world. What better way, then, to make sure there always remains an ongoing fruit of the Eucharistic Revival than to have a book that offers timeless daily quotes on the Eucharist.
Eucharistic Gems is intended to be a book that can be read and reread for years to come, thus, keeping the Eucharistic Revival in our hearts!
Today’s Eucharistic Gem had a profound effect on me. Fulton Sheen’s words caused my heart to open up to a deeper understanding of this well-known story of “no room at the inn” and it seems fitting to share it with you on this eve of our Savior’s Birth as we contemplate the true meaning of Christmas.
So submissive was he to her care that the door that slammed in her face in Bethlehem also slammed on him. If there was no room for her in the inn, then there was no room for him. As she was the ciborium (a chalice-like vessel used to contain the Blessed Sacrament) before he was born, so she was his monstrance after Bethlehem. To her fell the happy lot of exposing, in the chapel of a stable, the “Blessed Sacrament,” the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. She enthroned him for adoration before Wise Men and shepherds, before the very simple and the very learned.
— Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
