Homily on the Eucharist
Gospel according to Saint John, ch. 6, vv. 51-59
After feeding the crowd with 5 loaves and 2 fish, Jesus said: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; the bread that I will give is my flesh, given so that the world may have life." At this the Jews began to argue among themselves. Jesus told them: "Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. And just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so also whoever feeds on me will live because of me." This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is quite different from the one your fathers ate; they died, but whoever eats of this bread will live forever.
Father Émilien Tardif
Homily by Father Émilien Tardif
This evening, we have wanted to celebrate the Eucharist with the liturgy of the Blessed Sacrament to remind us all together of the importance of the Eucharist.
It is through the Eucharist that the Church is going to be renewed. Because the Eucharist is Jesus of Nazareth, risen, living and true — it is nothing else. It is not a symbolic presence of Jesus that we have acclaimed in the sacred host. This afternoon, it is a real presence. Saint Augustine once said: God is all-powerful and he could create a thousand worlds even greater, even more beautiful than the present world. And despite all his power and all his majesty, God can do nothing greater than the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is the risen Jesus. And after the consecration at Mass, the priest says: This is the mystery of our faith.
It is a great mystery of the Love of God
It is a great mystery of the Love of God, who wanted to remain in our midst as living bread come down from heaven. And when Jesus was preparing his apostles for this great manifestation of the Love of God, in the first year of his public life, a few days before the Jewish Passover, Jesus performed his first miracle by changing water into wine at Cana in Galilee. And Jesus says in his Gospel: "And Jesus manifested his Glory and his disciples believed in him." He manifested his Glory by changing water into wine, and he increased the faith of his disciples. At the same time, still a few days before the Jewish Passover, Jesus performed the great miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. With 5 loaves and 2 fish, he gave food to more than 5,000 people, and they all ate to satiety.
And then Jesus sent his Apostles to gather up the pieces of bread that were left; and the Apostles went off with their baskets, and the twelve filled their baskets with the pieces of bread that were left. One of the preachers who was here, Father Ravary, told the children one day that, at the multiplication of the loaves, since 12 baskets of bread were left, the Virgin Mary must have eaten bread pudding for two months. I do not believe it myself, because it is a Jean Ravary story. He says that the Virgin Mary said to Jesus: when you perform a great miracle, take your measurements. And he cannot take measurements because he is infinite; he is not limited like us. So when he changed water into wine, he had six water jars filled, each with a capacity of 100 litres of water, and he changed the water into wine. That made 600 litres of good wine to close a wedding.
And there were some who had the impression that Jesus, since it was his first miracle, had made a mistake. It is not that, because he is infinite, and when Jesus does something he does it in abundance. When he performed the multiplication of the loaves, 12 baskets of bread were left. And there Jesus was preparing the hearts of his disciples to help them welcome the greatest of his miracles. And in the course of the year, in a preaching, he told them: "I will give you my flesh to eat and my blood to drink." And that was the great trial for the faith of his disciples. There were some who had believed in Jesus up until that day. And from that day on, a whole group drifted away from Jesus. They found it too much to take. When Jesus told them: "I will give you my body to eat and my blood to drink," there were some who left.
Father Émilien Tardif and adoration
He is the Savior
And then Jesus asked the Apostles: "Will you also abandon me?" And it was then that Peter gave this answer: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; if we abandon you, Jesus, where shall we go to seek our salvation?" In the occult sciences, in the Eastern sects, in the new age! Where do we go to seek our salvation?......And in the name of Jesus every knee bends, in heaven, on earth and under the earth. And every soul proclaims: Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father. We too must proclaim it. And Jesus is present in the Eucharist. He is the Lord of his Church. He is the Savior.
And he said: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me." There is no other way. There is no other name in heaven by which we must be saved. So Peter made this profession of faith: Lord, to whom shall we go; you have the words of eternal life. And in the third year of his public life, still at the same date, three days before the Jewish Passover, on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper, Jesus took the bread and the wine. He had prepared this great miracle by preparing the hearts of his disciples with the water changed into wine and with the multiplication of the loaves.
Then he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: "Take this, all of you, and eat of it; this is my body." He took the cup of wine, blessed it and said: "Take this, all of you, and drink from it; this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant which will be poured out for you and for the multitude for the forgiveness of sins."
It is there that Jesus performed his greatest miracle by changing the bread and wine into his body and his blood. And he said to his Apostles: "Do this in memory of me." He was giving his Apostles that extraordinary power to transform the bread and the wine into his body and his blood. And it is that which we celebrate this evening. It is in memory of Jesus, who died, who rose again and who gave us his Spirit, that we are able this evening to celebrate this Eucharist. And the Eucharist is truly a sacrament of healing. It is an extraordinary sacrament, the great manifestation of the Love of God. And we believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist because we believe in the word of Jesus, because we know that Jesus is the Truth and the Life. He cannot be mistaken.
Adoration chapel of Miami
Around the Eucharist
And to help our lack of faith down through the centuries, Jesus has multiplied signs and wonders to help us believe in the reality of the Eucharist. He has multiplied loaves all over the world. We see in the history of the Church prestigious manifestations around the Eucharist. And in this healing ministry, we see that it is above all with the presence of the Eucharist that we receive great blessings. It is Jesus who is present in the Eucharist, and it is he who blesses the sick. Of course he gives this charism of healing by the power of his Spirit. And personally, I have seen more healings in the celebration of the Eucharist with the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar, during the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, than in all other gatherings.
The Lord wants to help us believe that he is truly there, present in the Eucharist. When we read the history of Lourdes, of the Marian shrine of Lourdes, we see that the most beautiful healings at Lourdes throughout all these years, since the apparition of the Immaculate Virgin, took place above all during the procession with the Blessed Sacrament. And today, during the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, we know there are people who received their healing during the passing of Jesus present in the Eucharist. He passed along the roads of Galilee, he blessed the sick and healed many sick people, and he continues to pass by doing good.
And Jesus does not heal only to give us back our physical health; in many cases, this healing goes much further. There are people who receive a physical healing, and that physical healing challenges them and calls them to live a deeper life of faith, a life of prayer. There are conversions that begin with a physical healing. There are conversions that begin with an inner healing. The Lord is the Lord of his Spirit, and he acts with the power of his Love. And when he touches bodies, he also touches hearts.
I recall that last year in Miami we held a Marian Congress where I preached with Slavko, a Father from Medjugorje. In the amphitheatre we had 5,000 people gathered for a 3-day Marian Congress, where we began with the messages of the Virgin of Medjugorje, the Queen of Peace, and where we commented on the importance of prayer and fasting for peace in the world.
Carlos began to walk again.
And during that Congress we also had Eucharists for the sick, as we have this evening. Among the many sick people who accompanied us there was a man named Carlos who had a cancerous tumour on the brain. And that very advanced tumour had caused paralysis in him. He could no longer walk alone. It had caused blindness; he had lost his sight. And for some weeks he had become deaf. That tumour affected him painfully. And his wife had brought him to the Mass for the sick in a wheelchair.
And Carlos did not see, he no longer heard, and he did not walk alone. And during the celebration of the Eucharist for the sick, the Lord manifested his Glory in an extraordinary way. Carlos began to see again. He was very happy. He said: I am beginning to see again. In the course of the vigil, the same evening, he began to hear. So there was joy in the house. And in the course of the week, Carlos began to walk again.
And the Lord healed that cancerous tumour completely over the course of the following month. It was in April. And Carlos began to give his testimony, and his testimony was very powerful because he not only told of his physical healing; in his testimony he told us that before falling ill he had not been baptized. He was a man who had not had a Christian family to guide him; he had not received baptism. And after his healing, his first concern, along with his wife's desire as well, was to prepare himself to receive the sacrament of baptism.
They had a beautiful celebration with the charismatic group, the prayer group, and Carlos received the sacrament of baptism. Then he received the sacrament of confirmation. And he prepared himself with his wife to receive the sacrament of marriage, for they had been married only civilly. And Carlos prepared himself to make his first communion. It was joy in the house. So he received baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of marriage. His marriage was blessed and he made his first communion. And he testified in many prayer groups.
The Eucharist and Father Émilien Tardif
One day, in the course of the year, he went to the Dominican Republic, to La Romana, where a retreat was being held, and we invited Carlos to give his testimony. He was there with his wife; he explained himself and gave a very beautiful and very complete testimony: a healing of a cancerous tumour, which had enabled him to recover his sight; he could hear again, he could walk again, and it led him to receive baptism, the Eucharist and Christian marriage. And that was last February.
https://youtu.be/nn4b_XAVeaI
Charismatic Congress
And this year I went to preach at the charismatic congress in Miami in the month of May, and to my great surprise I learned that Carlos had just died. He had a minor illness, apparently not too complicated. He had a stomach ailment; he entered the clinic in the month of May, and he took a medication that was too strong for him. And after a few days Carlos died in the peace of the Lord after receiving the Eucharist. And that challenged all of us. We asked ourselves how it is that the Lord healed him and then comes to take him so quickly.;And his wife was there at the charismatic congress with her two little girls and her little boy, who was born a few days before the death of Carlos.
And so we asked the wife if she wanted to give us her testimony. She gave a very beautiful testimony. She was dressed in black, in mourning; she told us that she thanked the Lord for having healed Carlos of a cancerous tumour, because that healing allowed him to meet Jesus, to receive baptism, to make his first communion, and we were able to receive the sacrament of marriage. And I thank the Lord for having healed Carlos in order to prepare him to receive all those sacraments in his life.
And she told us in her testimony: I know very well that Jesus also healed Lazarus. He raised him from the tomb; afterwards Lazarus died, and the sick people Jesus healed during his public life also died. The only one who rose so as not to die is Jesus. He holds in his hands the keys of death, the Apocalypse tells us. He is the firstborn from among the dead, and he promises us that we too will all rise on the last day.
And when he speaks to us of the resurrection, he tells us: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." The Eucharist is a sacrament that gives us an assurance of eternal life. There are some among you who have a life insurance policy that the family will receive on the day of your death, but the Eucharist is an assurance for eternal life, far greater than a life insurance policy.
"And whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." So it is a sacrament of healing in which the Lord manifests his Glory, his Power, very often during the Eucharist. And it is also a sacrament that prepares us to receive our inheritance of eternal life. When I look at the healing of Carlos, whom I knew well, it challenges us a great deal. There are sometimes people who ask for a physical healing or an inner healing but who are not concerned about the spiritual healing, which is the great healing. If one is healed physically, that can give 10 years. My healing, for me, has already lasted 19 years, and I thank the Lord for it, for we know well that a healing is not eternal; it is a physical healing.
A spiritual healing,
But if one receives a spiritual healing, that is for eternal life. That is why this evening I invite you not to hope only for your physical healing. But there is a deacon named Philippe who will pray after communion for inner healing. The healing of the emotional wounds of the heart, which are at the root of our sorrows, our aggressiveness, our fears, our anxieties, is very important. And it is an important healing, the inner healing, and the Lord also wants to heal you physically. But ask above all for spiritual healing. May this retreat be for you a personal encounter with Jesus, as the disciples of Emmaus experienced; an encounter with open eyes and a beating heart, when Jesus, after journeying with them, entered their little house at Emmaus and sat at table with them.
And we say in the Gospel that he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened and they recognized him. It was the second eucharist in the history of the world. The first took place on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper, and the second Jesus celebrated with the disciples of Emmaus on Holy Thursday. He did the same thing he had done at the Last Supper. And already the Eucharist was a sacrament of healing.
They who were deeply wounded in their hearts — they were so wounded that the wound caused by the death of Jesus blinded them so much that the Gospel tells us Jesus himself appeared in their midst and their eyes were unable to recognize him. They were blinded because they were wounded by the death of Jesus. But Jesus celebrated the Eucharist with them, and just at the moment when he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, their eyes were opened — just at the moment of communion.
And Jesus disappeared from before them. He no longer needed to remain there in a visible way. He was present in the consecrated bread, and it is that same Jesus who remains present for us in the consecrated bread. And we are going to ask him this evening especially for deep inner healings, the healing of the soul that Jesus gives us, a sincere repentance for all the faults of our life, and that he give us his forgiveness. And then of course we are going to ask him also to manifest his Glory by healing other sick people in their bodies, by healing wounded hearts. He came to heal wounded hearts; he came to bind up our wounds, and that is what Jesus does in our midst. He came to give us life, and life in abundance.
He gives us his life in the Eucharist
And he gives us his life in the Eucharist. And how many other signs in the course of the history of the Church we have seen to help us believe in the reality of the Eucharist. How beautiful it was this morning to see the manifestation of faith! I myself thank the Lord to see that you keep a living faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. And before receiving communion, you are going to say: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but say only the word and I shall be healed. If you truly believe in the word you are going to say before communion, our celebration will be transformed into a celebration filled with wonders, because the Lord fulfils his word: "Say only the word, and I shall be healed." I want to be healed in my soul, in my heart and in my body, and Jesus wants to give life in abundance.
We are going to continue our celebration by praying for one another so that this evening we may all receive that spiritual healing which we so much need. So that all may receive the inner healing they need to transform their lives, and that the Lord may heal many sick people. And to those who are not healed this evening, because in his plan of love he has something different for them, we are going to ask Jesus to give them the strength so that they never become discouraged and so that they know how to offer their sufferings, uniting them to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, to give them a redemptive value.
Blessed are you, Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament, and thank you for having given us this great sacrament of your Love!
His writings
Jesus has made me a witness
PRESENTATION
We cannot keep silent before what we have seen and heard. It is right, worthy and necessary to raise our voice and proclaim to the whole world some of the wonders the Lord has done.
These pages are the praise and thanksgiving of all those who, in one way or another, have received the grace of God along this ministry of Evangelization that was accompanied by signs, miracles and healings.
This is not a book, but a testimony. The Gospel, before being written, was proclaimed and lived. Behind these pages there is the proclamation of the one who evangelizes, which beats like a heart; we can almost perceive his voice, but above all we can meet the one who is the Gospel itself: Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and always. It is he who is at the centre of these pages. Father Émilien is only the little donkey of Palm Sunday; he had the good fortune to carry Jesus across the five continents. Like the little donkey of Bethphage, he received the flowered capes of Tahiti or the prison and Congolese persecutions. What matters is not the clay vessel, but the treasure it holds, namely: Jesus Christ.
of healings but of evangelization. It is a cry that rises up, filling with hope those who dare to believe that this same Jesus, who died on the Cross, has risen and is alive and therefore that everything is possible. What is surprising that our God should work wonders, since he is a wonderful God?
In short, what these pages need least is an introduction or presentation.
José H. Prado Flores, Mexico City, 24 June 1983, Feast of Saint John the Baptist
Jesus is the Messiah
Father Emiliano Tardif was a Missionary of the Sacred Heart in the Dominican Republic. Stricken with pulmonary tuberculosis, he was healed by the Lord in 1973; since then he has not ceased to travel the world to proclaim that Jesus is alive and that he is the Messiah. His first book, Jesus has made me a witness, has been translated into 14 languages and distributed in more than half a million copies. He did evangelization in 72 countries, and died on 8 June 1999 while preaching a retreat for priests at Cordoba in Argentina.
Even today the Lord continues his work of healing and salvation throughout the whole world, and the proclamation of his Word is accompanied by signs and wonders. Such is the testimony of the author who, responding to the call of John Paul II, does not hesitate to affirm: "We do not need a new Gospel but a new evangelization. We are approaching the year 2000. It is the hour to evangelize, and to evangelize united."
Mbandaka, Zaire: an eight-year-old child, blind from birth, recovers her sight and discovers her mother for the first time: "Oh, Mama, how beautiful you are!"... Cordes, France: a woman paralyzed for seven years by a hyperalgesic sciatica rises from her stretcher. In thanksgiving she makes a pilgrimage of 287.5 km by bicycle... Querétaro, Mexico: a thirty-eight-year-old woman, deprived of all auditory organ in her left ear following two trepanations, feels a great warmth and begins to hear perfectly...
Around the world without a suitcase, Father Émilien Tardif
The Charismatic Renewal
The Catholic Charismatic Renewal today gathers sixty million people throughout the world. Sixty million people whose Christian faith has been renewed and transformed. Despite the crises of the moment, it is a new springtime that the Church is experiencing.
Yes, asserts Father Tardif, Jesus is alive! And he continues even today to give us signs and to work healings. For faith is not a mere superficial morality, a golden frame around a spiritual emptiness. It must set the whole being ablaze in the joy and fire of the Love of God.
Father Émilien Tardif, like the little donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, preaches the Gospel on the five continents. In his own way he actualizes this word of Christ: "You will receive a power, that of the Holy Spirit who will descend upon you. You will then be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1, 8-9.). This power of the Holy Spirit is expressed, in Father Tardif, by an astonishing charism of prayer for the sick. This work tells how, wherever he preaches, crowds gather to pray and praise the Lord.
And Jesus acts and sometimes heals. The love that is stronger than death: these pages are the testimony of it. Father Émilien Tardif, m.s.c., Canadian, is a missionary in the Dominican Republic where he is in charge of a training centre for evangelization. The exercise of his preaching ministry leads him each year to travel through many countries across the world. His first book, Jesus has made me his witness (more than a million copies), has been translated into eighteen languages.
This book is available from Éditions de l'Emmanuel