Purity Needed for Those Who Receive the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus

"Oh, if we could only understand Who is that God

Whom we receive in Holy Communion,

then what purity of heart we would bring to Him!"

~ St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi  ~

St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi: Daily Visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament

St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi (1566-1607) was a Carmelite nun from the age of seventeen. She recommended to busy people in the world to take time out each day for praying before the Holy Eucharist. "A friend,she wrote, "will visit a friend in the morning to wish him a good day, in the evening, a good night, taking also an opportunity to converse with him during the day. In like manner, make visits to Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, if your duties permit it. It is especially at the foot of the altar that one prays well. In all your visits to our Savior, frequently offer His Precious Blood to the Eternal Father. You will find these visits very conducive to increase in you divine love."

~ Excerpt from: The History of Eucharistic Adoration by John A. Hardon, S.J. ~

St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi: Reparation for Offenses Committed Against Jesus

"O what a wonderful and intimate union is established between the soul and You, O lovable Lord, when it receives You in the Holy Eucharist! Then the soul becomes one with You, provided it is well disposed by the practice of the virtues, to imitate what You did in the course of Your life, Passion, and death.

~ St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi ~

After she had been sick for two months, the doctors gave her up for lost, whence the superiors /the prioress, Sister Victoria Contugi, and the mistress of novices, Sister Evangelist del Giocondo/ decided to have her make her holy profession. This was done on the 27th day of May, 1584, during the morning of /the feast of/ the Most Holy Trinity» (Breve Ragguaglio, pp. 90-2).

Mary Magdalen made her profession «on a cot arranged before the altar of the Virgin» (Processes, I p. 44) and was then immediately brought back to the infirmary. From that moment on there began a surprising period of ecstasies; every day after Communion she remained ecstatic for two or three hours. Sometimes she had new and repeated excesses of love during the day as well, with the renewal of the divine favors. The experience lasted uninterruptedly for forty days, during which the following mystical phenomena occurred and should be remembered: a vision of the drama of the Passion (especially noteworthy is that of June 8), the exchange of her heart with that of Jesus (June 10), the first invisible impression of the stigmata (June 28). Moreover, on July 6 she received the crown of thorns from Our Lord, in the presence of St. Catherine of Siena and of St. Augustine; and she was to suffer the mysterious pain of the crown for the rest of her life.

She was cured on July 16 at the intercession of the Blessed Mary Bagnesi; and subsequently the life of Mary Magdalen became a succession of visions, ecstasies, other mystical phenomena, penances and trials. On the evening of March 24, 1585, the vigil of the Annunciation, St. Augustine wrote the words «Verbum caro factum est» /The Word was made flesh/ on her heart. On April 15 the invisible stigmata were imprinted on her soul permanently; on the 28th she received a ring from Jesus, the seal of her mystical espousal with Him. On Friday, May 17, she had the longest of any of her ecstasies until then. It began on the afternoon of Friday and was prolonged for forty hours, until the following Sunday morning. On the 21st she received the Lord's command to take only bread and water as nourishment, except on Sundays and holydays, on which days she would be able to take «Lenten foods.» Furthermore, Jesus ordered her to rest only five hours a day, on a straw mattress, in satisfaction, for the offenses that are committed against Him» (II, p. 877 /III, 285/). (Source)