Ego Eimi - It Is I

Falling in Eucharistic Love

Many readers will know Fr de Malleray of the Fraternity of St Peter from his tireless work for souls in Reading, Warrington, and elsewhere. He has also found time to write this intriguing, popular work on the Blessed Sacrament, which engages the reader with anecdotes, literary parallels, and history, while setting out a great deal of very useful material on Eucharistic theology and the Traditional Mass.

It is a popular, rather than a technical, work, but in his engaging way Fr de Malleray brings out the significance of all sorts of details which will interest and edify even the most well-informed Catholic reader: the punctuation of the words of Consecration; the ‘canonical fingers’ of St Isaac Jogues which were cut off by his Iroquois captors; the difference in significance between the celebrant’s genuflection before the elevation and his genuflection after it.
The Blessed Sacrament lies at the very centre of Catholic spiritual life. Fr de Malleray takes our understanding of this to a new level, discussing the opening words of the ‘Preparatory Prayers’: ‘Judge, me, O God’.

‘In Holy Communion, Jesus, the cornerstone, is a touchstone, revealing our moral fulfilment. Such is our prayer then, altogether contrite and blissful. We ask God made Man, Jesus Christ, our Victim and our Judge, to deign to come within us according to His will and make us now such as He wishes to find us at the hour of our death. Holy Communion is our judgment already enacted. When scorned or carelessly or unfaithfully received, it condemns us. When received in the right dispositions of humility and trust, it leads us into the open arms of the One Whom we revered as our Judge, and Who embraces us as our Saviour.’