My brothers and sisters in Christ, what you are about to receive, is it truly him or have you received only yourself? Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, I come to you today not with a message of my own invention, but with a tremor in my soul, a tremor born not of fear, but of a terrifying love for the most holy Eucharist.

We stand in these days at the very precipice of a great forgetting.

We have grown comfortable.

We have grown familiar.

We handle the divine as if it were common place.

We approach the altar of the most high God as we approach a common table.

And in this casualness, a great theft has occurred.

The theft of all before I can unveil the profound and urgent truth.

The Lord has laid upon my heart regarding the manner in which we must approach his most holy body and blood.

You must understand the gravity of this hour.

This is not a matter of mere discipline.

This is not a debate about preference or posture.

This is about the survival of faith in a world that seeks to reduce everything, even God, to a symbol.

Evil one’s greatest strategy in our time is not to attack the church from without, but to dilute her from within, to make the incredible seem ordinary, to make the sacred seem optional.

I implore you for the love of the one who hung upon the cross for you.

Listen with the ear of your heart.

What I will share comes from the deepest well of sacred tradition.

From the unbroken teaching of the apostles and the fathers, from the anguish of saints who trembled to draw near the altar.

If your soul stirs, if a holy fear begins to awaken within you, I ask you, do not let this moment pass.

Let this channel be a place of true restoration.

If you desire to see the face of God, to recover the sacred, to protect the Eucharist, then let your amen be heard.

In the comments below, write simply, I trust you, Lord.

Let it be your act of faith.

Subscribe to this channel not for my voice but so that together we may form a bastion of fidelity.

A digital sanctuary where truth is not compromised.

For what I am about to break down for you will shake the very foundations of a lukewarm faith.

We must begin at the beginning.

For in our time we have severed ourselves from our origins and a tree severed from its roots cannot live.

We rush forward imagining ourselves to be progressing when in truth we are merely wandering in circles of our own forgetfulness.

Let us return to the desert to the mountain to the moments where God etched his law upon the heart of creation itself.

Consider Moses the great liberator, the friend of God.

He is a shepherd tending the flock of his father-in-law.

An ordinary day, the sun beating upon the stone, the dust of the wilderness upon his sandals.

And then a bush burns yet is not consumed.

He turns aside.

He looks.

This is the first act, a turning away from his path, a decision to gaze upon the mystery.

And the voice comes from the flames.

Remove the sandals from your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

Beloved, let this command pierce the noise of our souls.

God does not first reveal a complex theology.

He institutes a posture.

Before a single word of the law is given, before the commandments are inscribed on stone, a physical, humiliating, practical act is demanded.

Remove your sandals.

Why? The sandal is that which separates man from the earth.

It is a tool of dominion, of travel, of work, of conquest.

It is stained with the dirt of the world’s roads.

To remove it is to lay aside your journey, your accomplishments, your protections.

It is to stand vulnerable with your naked flesh, touching the dust that God has declared holy.

It is an act of utter stripping, a confession that you bring nothing of the world’s prowess into this encounter.

The ground is holy, not because of its own nature, but because God is there.

His presence consecrates.

His presence separates.

His presence demands a barrier between the profane and the sacred.

And that barrier is your own willing humiliation, your own chosen poverty before him.

Now carry this forward in time.

The ark of the covenant, that dread throne of God’s mercy sea borne through the desert.

When it stumbled, when Usuza reached out his hand to steady it, a seemingly practical, helpful gesture, what happened? He was struck dead.

Why? The Lord was not a fragile object to be managed by human hands.

He had given precise instructions for its transport by the consecrated Levites using poles that would not touch the ark itself.

Oza’s sin was the sin of familiarity of forgetting the chasm that exists between the clean and the unclean, between the holy and the common.

He treated the ark as a piece of sacred furniture, not as the terrifying presence of the living God.

His story is not a cruel anecdote.

It is a eternal warning written in divine fire.

Do not presume to handle the holy with the hands of the profane or consider the temple in Jerusalem.

That masterpiece of Solomon, its entire structure was a pedagogy of all.

the outer courts for the Gentiles, the court of women, the court of Israel for Jewish men, the court of the priest, the holy place, and finally veiled in thick cloth and darkness, the holy of holies.

A progression of increasing exclusivity, not born of human prejudice, but of divine pedagogy.

One did not casually amble into God’s presence.

One was admitted step by painful step through a series of gates and barriers.

Each one teaching the same lesson.

You are not yet ready.

You must be purified.

You must draw near with caution.

And only the high priest once a year after elaborate rituals of washing and sacrifice, his garments bearing bells and a rope tied around his ankle, lest he be struck dead in God’s presence, would dare to enter that inner sanctum to offer blood for the sins of the people.

This, my dear children, is the immutable grammar of heaven.

This is the pattern woven into the very fabric of creation and covenant long be all the world took flesh.

God is a consuming fire.

His love is an infinite majestic holiness that cannot coexist with the stain of our casual sin.

His mercy is not a dismissal of this holiness but his most profound expression on the cross.

To forget this foundational law, the law of the sacred separation is to build our entire spiritual life on a foundation of sand.

It is to invite the disaster of Usuza into our very sanctuaries, into our very hands.

We have forgotten what it means to tremble.

We have banished holy fear and called it liberation.

But I ask you, if this was the necessary preparation for the prophets and priests of the old covenant who saw but shadows and promises, what then must be our preparation? We upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

We who are called to approach not a burning bush, not a veiled ark, not a symbolic inner chamber, but the very fountain of holiness himself hidden under the simple species of bread.

What stripping, what awe, what purification must now be ours.

The pattern was set in stone and cloud and fire.

It has not been abolished.

It has been brought to its terrifying, glorious fulfillment.

And to understand that fulfillment is to understand the crisis that now lies before us.

The choice between a communion that is life and a communion that is judgment.

And so from the shadow and promise of the law, we are catapulted into the blinding scandalous light of the gospel.

The word became flesh.

The God who commanded Moses to remove his sandals.

The presence who dwelt in unapproachable light behind the veil now dwells among us.

He pitches his tent in our midst.

Does this then annihilate the holy fear? Does the incarnation make the unapproachable suddenly common place? Does the fact that he took the form of a servant, a crying infant, a weary traveler mean that we may now treat him as our peer? Beloved, this is the devil’s most subtle deception of the modern age to use the overwhelming charity of God’s condescension as a pretext for our own arrogance.

No.

A thousand times no.

The coming of Christ does not lower God to our level of casual familiarity.

It raises our encounter with him to an intensity, a intimacy so profound that it requires an even greater purity, a more profound awe.

Look, look with the eyes of faith at the scenes the gospel paints for us.

At the annunciation the Archangel Gabriel does not slap the Virgin Mary on the back as a comrade.

He stands before her and declares, “Hail, full of grace.

The Lord is with you.

” And she is greatly troubled.

She is not comforted by a cozy feeling.

She is thrown into a holy perplexity by this greeting.

Her immaculate heart, the purest vessel ever created, trembles at the proximity of the divine message.

Her question, how can this be, is not doubt, it is the stammer of a creature faced with a mystery too vast for her understanding.

And her fear, let it be done to me, according to your word, is the most courageous act of surrender in history.

A siren C possible only because she first acknowledged the infinite gap between her littleness and the Almighty’s plan.

She bows.

She consents.

She becomes the ark of the new covenant.

But she never presumes.

See the unborn John the Baptist hidden in the dark womb of Elizabeth.

At the sound of Mary’s voice, the voice of the godbearer, what does he do? He does not simply turn.

He leaps.

He leaps for joy.

The first act of adoration for the incarnate word is a convulsion of ecstasy in the darkness of a womb.

From before birth, the presence of Christ in his mother provokes a visceral bodily recognition that is pure joy mixed with holy tremor.

Then come the shepherds startled from their watch by the glory of the Lord shining round about them.

The first word of the angel be not afraid.

Why must he say this? Because the natural human response to the breaking in of the celestial is terror.

And when they find the child, do they hoist him upon their shoulders? Do they handle him? The scripture is silent on such actions.

They find the child with Mary and Joseph and they make known the same told them.

They are witnesses struck with wonder.

Consider the magi, wise men from the east, seekers of truth.

After a long journey, guided by a star, they enter the house.

They see the child with Mary’s mother.

What is their response? They fell down and worshiped him.

Prostration, the posture of the desert, before the burning bush, now performed before a toddler in a poor house.

They did not offer handshake.

They pressed their foreheads to the floor.

They understood in the wisdom granted them that this child was king of the universe.

Their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrr are gifts for a sovereign, a god, and a sacrifice.

Every gesture is coded with worship.

And what of Peter the rock? After the miraculous draft of fishes, a sign of Christ’s lordship over creation, Peter does not congratulate him.

He does not say, “Well done, Rabbi.

” He falls at Jesus’ knees and cries out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh Lord.

” He sees the holiness, and in its light, he sees his own scene with devastating clarity.

The proximity of the divine does not breed comfort.

It breeds a crisis of conscience that is the necessary prelude to conversion.

Finally, the transfiguration on the mountain.

The veil of Christ’s humanity is pulled back for a moment, and the apostles see his glory, his face shining like the sun, his garments white as light.

They hear the voice of the father.

Do they cheer? Do they take notes? They are terrified.

They fall on their faces.

They are overcome by a holy dread.

This is the pattern, the unbroken pattern of the New Testament.

Every true encounter with Christ in his divinity provokes not a relaxed companionship but awe fear, frustration and a cry of unworthiness.

This then is the terrifying truth of the incarnation.

God has come unimaginably close.

So close that he can be touched.

But this nearness is more dangerous, more demanding.

M or inspiring than the distant thunder of Sinai.

To touch the hem of his garment with faith healed the woman with a hemorrhage, but to receive him into our very bodies.

Christ offered himself in anticipation of the next day’s physical offering on Golgatha at every mass since the priest acting in persona Christie capitus in the person of Christ the head represents that same single sacrifice making it truly present on our altars.

The bread and wine do not merely symbolize a past event through the words of consecration spoken by the priest.

They become the very victim of that event offered a new.

This is why the priesthood is not an administrative function.

It is an onlogical configuration to Christ the high priest.

It is a sacred separation, a consecration unto this one terrible and glorious task to offer the spotless lamb to the father and who at that first mass received the consecrated elements from the hands of Christ.

Only those who had just been ordained.

only those who had undergone the ritual of the washing of the feet, a ritual not of hygiene but of a sacramental purification for their priestly ministry.

Judas had left the betrayer could not receive.

Even among the 11, the reception was intimately tied to their priestly ordination.

This establishes a pattern, a profound truth.

The most holy eucharist is the food of sacrifice given within the context of sacrifice by the ministers of that sacrifice.

It is the fruit of the cross.

To receive it is to be grafted into the very dynamic of Christ’s self-oblation.

It is to say amen not only to his presence but to his sacrifice.

It is to unite our own lives, our own sufferings, our own small offerings to his perfect offering to the father.

This is why St.

Paul writing to the Corinthians does not speak of the Eucharist in terms of community building or fraternal agape.

He speaks with a severity that should stop our hearts.

He rebukes them for their divisions, for treating the Lord’s supper as their own private supper, some eating lavishly while others go hungry.

And then he delivers the thunderous warning.

Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaining the body and blood of the Lord.

Let these words echo in the chambers of your soul.

guilty of profaining the body and blood of the Lord.

He continues, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself and then the chilling physical consequence.

” That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.

Discern the body.

What does this mean? It means to recognize with the full force of faith that this is not bread.

This is the body.

the same bodyb born of Mary scorched at the pillar crucified on the cross risen from the tomb.

To discern is to make a judgment of faith that separates the sacred reality from the sensible appearance.

It is the opposite of casualness.

It is the awakening of awe.

If the apostles at the first mass received as newly ordained priests having their feet washed in a sign of their sacramental ministry, if St.

Paul warns that improper reception is a profonation that brings spiritual and physical judgment.

Then what must we conclude about our own preparation? About the state of our soul, about the manner in which we approach the Lord has drawn nearer than ever, hidden under the humblest of veils.

But this nearness is a furnace of holiness.

To reach into a furnace with unprepared hands is not intimacy.

It is catastrophe.

The patterns of the upper room teach us that the gift of the eukarist is inseparable from the priesthood, from sacrifice, and from a most solemn warning.

How then in our parishes today have we allowed this awesome, fearful mystery to be treated as a common thing? The lines have blurred.

The sense of sacrifice has faded.

And in this fog, a great peril silently grows.

Therefore, armed with this terrifying knowledge, that the Eucharist is the very sacrifice of Calvary, that to receive unworthily is to profane the body and blood of the Lord.

We must now with trembling hearts examine the practical disciplines the church in her wisdom as a loving mother and guardian of the deposit of faith as established to protect us from this profanation.

These are not mere customs.

They are not liturggical preferences.

They are the guardrails on the narrow path that leads to life.

The dikes holding back the flood of our own casual indifference.

To dismantle them under the banners of accessibility or modernity is not an act of pastoral charity.

It is an act of spiritual sabotage.

It is to remove the remove your sandal sign from the threshold of the holy of holies.

First and most fundamental is the state of the soul.

One must be in a state of sanctifying grace.

To approach the altar with mortal sin upon the soul is to enact a lie of cosmic proportions.

It is to say amen to the covenant while one’s heart is in open rebellion against the covenant giver.

It is to embrace the fire of love while clutching the eyes of hatred, impurity or grave injustice.

This is why the church from the earliest centuries insisted upon the sacrament of reconciliation before communion for those conscious of grave sin.

This is the first and greatest law of reverence, an honest heart.

It is the echo of Peter’s cry, “Depart from me, oh Lord, for I am a sinful man.

” But with this crucial difference, we do not tell him to depart.

We allow his mercy in confession to purify us, so that we may dare to invite him in.

To ignore this is to make a mockery of the cross as if the blood poured out there was not powerful enough or important enough to necessitate our repentance before receiving its source.

Second, the Eucharistic fast.

For at least 1 hour before receiving Holy Communion, we abstain from all food and drink, say for water and medicine, in an age of constant snacking and instant gratification.

This small sacrifice, seems almost quaint, but it is a profound bodily prayer.

It is a language of anticipation.

It is our flesh crying out, I hunger for you alone.

It creates a space of emptiness of void that only he can fill.

It is a practical physical act of discernment teaching our bodies that this food is so generous in a category of its own.

It is not a continuation of our breakfast.

It is the end of all our hunger.

To neglect the fast is to dull the edge of our expectation.

to tell our bodies that this is just another thing to consume on the journey.

But third, we come to the visible crisis, the point of rupture where the internal disposition crashes against external practice, the manner of reception.

For centuries, the universal practice in the Latin church codified in her law and reflecting her deepest theological instinct was to receive the consecrated host on the tongue while kneeling.

This was no accident of history.

Kneeling is the posture of adoration.

It is the posture of the creature before the creator, the subject before the king, the leper before the healer.

It is a silent bodily proclamation.

You are Lord and I am not.

To receive on the tongue is the act of a child, utterly dependent, incapable of feeding oneself the food of eternal life.

It is the posture of receptivity, not of taking.

It declares that this is a gift descending from above, placed upon our tongues by the consecrated hand of the priest who stands at that moment in persona Christi.

The communicant does not grasp.

He or she is fed.

The contemporary practice of receiving in the hand introduced as uh pastoral concession in some regions has unleashed a tsunami of loss.

We must look at the fruits as our lord commanded.

Where has this practice led? It has led to a casualness indistinguishable from receiving a piece of ordinary bread.

It has led to a horrifying lack of care for the sacred particles which are themselves the whole body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.

Particles fall to the floor, are brushed away or lost.

The act itself suggests a sense of ownership of taking communion rather than receiving the Lord.

The horizontal dimension, the community has eclipsed the vertical, the adorable.

I tell you, with all the urgency of a father watching his children walk toward a cliff, this practice, however well-intentioned this origins, has been a gateway to immeasurable irreverence.

It has contributed to the loss of faith in the real presence itself.

When you can handle him like a snack, how can you believe he is your God? The time for comfortable compromise is over.

The hour demands a clear, courageous return to the universal sign of adoration, kneeling, and communion on the tongue.

This is not a regression.

It is a prophetic witness in a world that denies all kingship and all worship.

It is a bodily cry of faith against the tide of unbelief.

It is the public recovery of the remove your sandals command for our age.

But to implement this, to embrace this requires that we understand the full concrete implications, it requires a revolution of the heart that manifests in our posture.

For if we kneel only with our bodies but not with our souls, we age, a gain nothing.

Yet if we refuse to kneel with our bodies, what does that say about the posture of our souls? The external and internal are linked.

One teaches the other.

And from this point of practice, we must now confront the most urgent question of all.

What does this mean for you today? As you prepare to approach the altar, how must your entire approach to the mass be transformed? From the moment you awaken to the moment you return home, the practical restoration begins now.

And so, beloved flock, we arrive at the decisive moment.

Not the moment of listening, but the moment of conversion.

Not the moment of understanding, but the moment of action.

What then must we do? We must undertake with the zeal of saints and the humility of children.

A great work of restoration.

This is not a program proposed by a man.

It is a summons from heaven itself echoing through the crisis of our time.

It begins not in the sanctuary but in the secret chamber of your own heart.

It begins not with changing the world, but with allowing God to change you.

From this day forward, let your approach to the holy mass be transformed.

Let it no longer be an item on a list, a social obligation, a habitual hour.

Let it become the orienting pole of your entire week, the sun around which your life orbits.

When Sunday approaches or when you go to daily mass, begin your preparation from the night before.

Examine your conscience with a light that is both severe and merciful.

Ask the Holy Spirit to shine upon the shadows of your soul.

If there is mortal sin, do not dare to approach the altar without first seeking the tribunal of mercy in confession.

To do otherwise is to trample the cross.

Go to the priests, kneel in that confessional, and unbburden your soul.

Hear the words of absolution spoken with the very authority of Christ and know that the chasm has been bridged that you have been made clean.

This is the non-negotiable foundation.

A soul in a state of grace is a temple ready for its god.

A soul in mortal sin is a ruin.

And to bring the architect into a ruin is an offense against both the architect and the dignity of the temple.

On the morning of mass, observe the fast with a joyful heart.

Let the gentle pang of hunger be a constant bodily prayer.

Come, Lord Jesus, be my food.

As you dress, dress with modesty and respect.

You are going to a royal court to a divine appointment.

What you wear speaks to your inner disposition.

When you enter the church, do not chatter.

Do not rush to a pew.

Genule deeply with profound intentionality before the tabernacle where our Lord dwells.

Then kneel.

Knee and be silent.

Pour out your soul before him.

Tell him your unworthiness.

Tell him your longing.

Tell him of your need.

Beg for the grace of all.

This time of preparation is not an optional prelute.

It is the essential gathering of your scattered self so that you may be truly present body and soul for the sacred mysteries during the mass itself.

Participate in OT with noisy exterior activity but with the profound interior activity of worship.

Unite your heart to the priest at the altar.

See in him Christ the high priest.

At the moment of the consecration when the bells ring, bow low.

Pierce the veil with the eyes of your faith and see on that altar Calvary made present.

See the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

Whisper with the centurion whose words must become the cry of your heart.

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

Mean it.

Let it be torn from the depths of your being.

Then comes the moment of holy communion, processed forward with somnity, with your eyes cast down, your hands folded in prayer.

If it is possible in your parish, and I urge you with all my fatherly heart to seek this out if it is not the custom, kneel at the altar rail, let your kneeling be a public testament of faith in a world that refuses to kneel to anyone or anything.

Open your mouth, extend your tongue, close your eyes, be a child, helpless, expectant, utterly receptive.

Do not reach.

Be fed.

Receive the Lord of glory on your tongue from the hand of his priest.

Feel the gentle touch of the host upon your flesh.

Then with the God of the universe upon your tongue, close your mouth, make the sign of the cross, and return to your place in silent stunned adoration.

This is the most sacred time of all.

Do not waste it looking around.

Do not flip through a himnel.

Kneel again if you are able.

Bow your head.

Close your eyes.

Go inward.

He is there within you.

The King of Kings is a guest in your soul.

Speak to him.

Listen to him.

Pour out your love, your gratitude, your sorrow, your hopes.

This is the most intimate union possible on this earth.

Protect this silence with the ferocity of a mother protecting her child.

Let the thanksgiving last for long minutes after mass has ended.

Do not rush out.

The world can wait.

It has waited for 2,000 years.

It can wait a few minutes more.

Furthermore, I implore you for a life of eucharistic adoration outside of mass.

Go whenever you can and kneel before the blessed sacrament exposed in the monstrance.

There you will learn the language you have forgotten.

There in that silent radiant gaze, you will learn what it means to be still and know that he is God.

You will learn that worship is not about what you get but about what you give.

Your time, your attention, your love.

Before the host, you will see your own life in its true proportion.

Your anxieties will shrink.

Your sins will be revealed in his light as the pathetic things they are.

Your heart will slowly surely be reordered.

You will fall in love with the beauty of holiness.

And from that love, your reception of communion will become what it is meant to be.

A fiery union, a moment of ecstasy and awe.

The war in our time, I repeat, is a war against the real presence.

It is fought not with armies but with indifference.

It is advanc asked by those who would reduce the Eucharist to a symbol of community, a sign of togetherness, a mere memorial.

They speak of inclusivity, but they exclude the Lord himself from his own dignity.

They want a Christ who affirms but never judges, who feeds but never demands, who is a friend but never a king.

This is not the Christ of the Gospels.

This is an idol of our own making.

We must be soldiers of reverence.

We must be guardians of the sacred.

With every genulection, with every moment of silent preparation, with every reception on the tongue while kneeling, we fire a salvo against the forces of desacralization.

We proclaim with our bodies.

This is my God.

I believe, I adore, I trust, I love.

Look to the book of Revelation, to the heavenly liturgy.

That is a pattern for our own.

What do you see? You see the 24 elders, the four living creatures, the myriads of angels, all the saints.

They do not stand in a circle holding hands.

They fall prostrate before the throne and before the lamb.

They cast their crowns down.

They veil their faces.

Their ceaseless cry is holy, holy, holy.

This is our destination.

This is the eternal reality breaking into our time.

Let your communion here on earth be a foretaste of that eternal adoration.

Let us recover the shock, the awe, the trembling joy of those who know they are handling God.

Begin today.

Do not wait for another to go first.

Be the spark of this renewal in your parish, in your family, with gentleness, with charity, but with unshakable conviction.

Live this truth.

Speak of it with love.

If you are criticized, bear it patiently for the love of him who was crucified.

This is the narrow path.

It is the path of the saints.

It is the path that leads to life.

May the most holy Virgin Mary, the woman of the Eucharist, who carried the Lord in her womb with perfect purity and adored him in her arms with perfect love, guide you.

May she teach you the fiat of reception, the silent wonder of thanksgiving.

May St.

John, who rested his head on the heart of Christ at the last supper, obtained for you the intimacy of true adoration.

May the martyrs who died for the eukarist inspire in you a courage that does not compromise.

Go now in peace, but do not go back to sleep.

You have been given a solemn charge.

You are the custodians of the greatest treasure of the universe.

Guard it with your life.

Worship him in spirit and in truth.

Let your life become a continuous eukarist, a living sacrifice of praise.

And on the last day, when you stand before that same Lord, no longer under a veil, but in the blinding clarity of his glory, may you hear those words for which our whole existence longs.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your Lord.

Amen.