The Formula For Salvation Is In Both  Eucharist And High Praises To Christ

By Michael H. Brown

[adapted from Michael Brown's Secrets of the Eucharist (in our bookstore)

The formula of salvation was given at the Last Supper. Pray. Have faith. Love as Jesus loved. Be as humble as Christ was when He washed the feet of His disciples.

This, it is indicated, will lead to a pleasant afterlife.

This is the safest way. The narrow gate.

Serve others. Serve God. Praise God. Love your Creator with all your heart.

Love the Trinity. Love the Holy Spirit. Love Christ.

If you do nothing else in life, love well. Love and suffer well. Love as Jesus loved on the Cross.

Praise Him every day. Praise the Lord. When we praise and adore God, when we glorify Jesus, when our love is proven by how we endure our trials, we are invoking God in the most powerful fashion and can feel the peace of His love.

That's the essential message of the Gospels, and it comes to life during the Eucharist. It comes to life when we adore God by starting Mass with a responsorial psalm. I don't think there are many prayers superior to the praises in the Book of Psalms:: "Praise the Lord in His sanctuary," say the final ones. "Praise Him in the firmament of His strength. Praise Him for His mighty deeds, praise Him for His sovereign majesty. Praise Him with the blast of the trumpet, praise Him with lyre and harp, praise Him with timbrel and dance, praise Him with strings and pipe. Praise Him with sounding cymbals, praise Him with clanging cymbals, let everything that has breath praise the Lord!"

I remember when I returned to an active Catholic faith how powerful it was to thank and praise God. God is worthy of all praise and thanks. He is so good! He is so merciful! Suffering is nothing compared to eternal joy. How can we thank Him enough for the afterlife? How can we thank Him enough for eternity? With Christ, joy is always the end result. Calvary is the door to Resurrection. When there is attack and oppression, when there are concerns and obsessions, when there is anxiety, a litany of praise -- whether read from the----- or in spontaneous prayer -- is immediately comforting. Such prayers take on all the more force when said before the Blessed Sacrament. Many were the saints who spent hours at a time -- literally ten or twenty hours -- in front of the Blessed Sacrament, enraptured with heaven, adoring God. They didn't notice anything in the chapel but the Blessed Sacrament. You could have taken the stoles from their shoulders or raised a din and they would not have taken much notice. They were in the reality of Adoration. And that's why they were so free of evil. Just as he can't remain in the presence of love and humility, neither can the devil remain within earshot of praises to God.

The rays from the Eucharist are arrows against the wiles of Satan.