“My Presence in the Eucharist”: TLIG Malibu, CA  in the Serra Retreat Center owned/operated by the Franciscans

Oct 2017

Serra Retreat Center – Set in a monastery in Malibu, California, on land owned by a rich family that went bankrupt. In 1942 they sold the land and castle to the Franciscans. Since 1943 the monastery has been a retreat house. It began as a men’s retreat house, with retreats only for men, then came women, now people of all faiths or no faith come for spiritual renewal. There is a peace that is tangible here. People feel that and are deeply touched. People from all over the world come here for retreats.

Fr. John Corbett:

I took the kindergarteners or 1^st graders into the church, and I was talking to them about God, and I asked them, “do you want to hold God?” They said, “of course!” they were all excited to hold God! So I brought them into the sanctuary of the church, and I unlocked the tabernacle, and I took a Host from the ciborium, and I had one of the little children hold out his hand and I put The Host in his hand. And I said, “now you’re holding God”. And the child was SO excited, and all the other children around him were so excited, they believed INSTANTLY that they were holding God in their little hands! So why as adults do we have such a doubtful faith when it comes to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We have to remember The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, first of all there have been Eucharistic miracles, the bread and the wine have been changed into Blood and Flesh from a Living Human Heart, one not too long ago happened. A LIVING Human Heart! We must always remember as we approach the Blessed Sacrament that there is a Heartbeat IN the Blessed Sacrament, it is not an inanimate piece of bread, but it is Christ Himself Whose Heart is beating for US!

Jo Ann Miller

I was at noon Mass, and I had just received the Eucharist, and after Mass the priest came to the altar and we were going to have Adoration in the Church, and he was very reverent and just did a beautiful job of putting Jesus up on the altar, and it took a long time and usually they don’t take that long. I was contemplating Jesus in the Eucharist and I thought, “The God that created the WHOLE universe, is WITHIN me, right this minute!” and I thought, wow, I’ve never thought of it exactly like that. The God of the whole of creation is within me, feeding me, nourishing me, Food for my journey. That’s what it is, it is His way of being with us, like He said He would be with us forever. He’s so Smart, He figured out we have the Most Favorite Thing, we have the Bread of Life and It will feed us on our journey, back to Him. I opened the book (TLIG messages) just because, and I look and it was the message from Oct 12, 1989:

Contemplative Adoration

October 12, 1989

Lord, I thank You for saving me. I love You and I adore You and You only, my God.

ah, let Me hear this often, let your heart speak to Me; come and meditate on Me, meditate on He who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, come to contemplative adoration, for this is what pleases Me; I and you, you and I, face to face in total silence; I, revealing My Beauty to you, and you, praising Me;

learn that My Heart languishes after every soul; I have now taken you back to Me, but how many more souls will I have to bring back!

come and rest in My Heart and allow Me to rest in yours, Love loves you;

Lord! how I love You, how I desire You, how I thirst for You, how I need You!

free at last! 1

(Here I squealed with joy!)

1 Jesus said this with great joy!

Tim

I read the message, the daily message (from True Life in God) and I was absolutely knocked out when I read the message, He (Jesus) spoke to me in volumes! And I read it again and it spoke to me another way. Every time I read it (the TLIG messages) it does that to me and I thought, oh My God, the Eucharist, because a lot of people take the Eucharist for granted and some even don’t believe in the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and I thought, we should have a retreat on it, and reflect and really pray on it, and really that is what we are doing here. Christ is Present, the Holy Spirit is Present, at every Mass, but we are experiencing it here in a wonderful way.

Vanessa

The question that has been put to me is: what does the Holy Eucharist mean to me?

Well for most of my life I did not know about the Holy Eucharist because I was a Protestant. At some point I felt like I was searching for more than what I knew and what I had learned in the church that I was going to, so I started seeking, what is the best church, the right church, where did the Lord want me to be to serve Him the best? How could I be closer to Him? Eventually I ran across information for the Catholic Church and True Life in God. After I started reading the messages, I could just feel…I knew that God was speaking and I needed, I needed more. And because He wanted us to partake of the Eucharist and venerate His Mother and do some other things, I knew that I needed to be Catholic. I felt that I really wanted to participate and partake of the Sacraments. And The Holy Eucharist was, to me, the most important part, specifically when the Bible talks about “eating His (Jesus’) Body, and drinking His Blood” in the book of John, I just knew that it was VERY very important. So, I became Catholic, and I think it is the wonderful, the most glorious thing in the world, that God, would give Himself to us in that way. So, the Eucharist has become extremely important for me, and I just can’t imagine living a life without it.