Meter 6-6-8-8-6

*****

Each loved one that we miss
Come visit in each Mass
We meet the saints and angels there
Around the Altar-table, where
We pray with those who’ve passed

No closer can we be
To loved ones now at rest
Than in His Eucharistic Gaze
The simple Host, our sight betrays
And hides a Humble Guest

His Body makes us whole
His Blood our passions quell
And where His Sacred Head is now
Are found His members, who resound
His rescuing from hell

Beyond the veil of bread
Through lenses of His grace
I see the face of Christ my Lord
And souls who while on earth adored
Within His warm embrace

*****

Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi are a married couple on their way to canonization. Heartbroken by Luigi’s passing, Maria was able to write a few months later: “Luigi is always and incessantly the love and inconsolable sorrow of each and all of us, yet he helps us, he is near to us, and he loves us as much and even more, if it is possible, than before. Little by little, he is present to me ever more, most of all, at Communion, before the altar.”

Regarding the background of Beyond the Eucharistic Veil, I wrote it after my mother Barbara passed in 2023. It was inspired by a comment my household brother shared with me in college (Franciscan University of Steubenville). He told me that after his sister died at age 17, He would find her in the adoration chapel, in the Sacred Host, recalling that if his sister was with and in Jesus, then she there in the Eucharistic Host. Christ the Head is connected to every member of His Body, the Church. Eucharistic Adoration and Mass brought him consolation in his grief, as it does for me today.