*Healing Grief Before The Eucharistic Host*

(Anyone who reads the following story from a friend of mine will be deeply touched. Please give it your time.)

I just want to relate an experience I had through using the Sacrament of Confession and praying to Jesus through the exposed Host, the Blessed Sacrament.

For 13 years I suffered heartbreaking guilt and turmoil over the death of my infant son, whom I will call "John". My son was four months old at the time of his death. He had died from a head injury caused by a car accident where he was with his father at the time, alone.

I was washing diapers and couldn’t stop to hold John, who was crying to be held. I had 23 diapers and needed to wash them every day. It took some time since we had one of those old wringer washing machines. His father, whom I will call "Thomas", said he would take him for a ride to calm him down. That was the reason I was not there when the accident occurred, and can’t say what truly happened.

Thomas said he hit a bump on the road, and that John fell to the car floor and must have hit his head. (This was before infant car seats were developed.) The car was fine and so was his father. John was the only one with a head injury. This, I thought was suspicious. I quickly developed a hatred for Thomas, thinking that he must have done something to our son. My suspicion was based on the fact that Thomas never wanted to have children and never enjoyed John.

I lived with a sorrow that ached to the core of my being, to my soul. I felt I didn’t deserve to live. Somehow I kept an outward face of a fairly normal person, at least in my view. Every now and then, through these years, I would wake in the night and weep copiously with the heartache of a grieving mother, and one who felt tremendous guilt, who really just wanted to die.

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Within four months after John’s death, the relationship deteriorated into drunkenness and abuse. I shall say that I escaped from Thomas because he had threatened to kill me. A number of years later I found out that Thomas had died of a drug overdose and exposure.

I eventually returned to the Catholic Faith and the Sacraments. I had been away for 20 years.

A few years after my return to the Church, I attended a retreat that was directed by a Jesuit priest who was also a psychiatrist. During the retreat, which was a silent one, he led us in a probing history of our pasts which allowed me to really scrutinize my part in this hurtful situation in which I was holding resentments against myself and my baby son’s father.

I discovered that, in the beginning of our relationship, I did not have any respect or concern for his feelings. He told me he didn’t want to have children, and I thought that somehow things would work out even if I did get pregnant. I thought he would rise to the occasion and be a good father anyway. I did not consider that he could really be serious about not wanting children. So my fault was in not respecting his wishes. I never believed in using birth control so I should have ended the relationship then and there, but I didn’t. I confessed this sin because in the end it did cause him hurt and emotional turmoil, the extent of which I am unaware.

During the four months of our son’s life he did not prove to be a loving father and this was evidenced to me by various things he would say, as well as just a general annoyed attitude he kept towards our son.

I owed it to my son to leave his father, for I did fear for my son’s safety. However, I didn’t have a faith that was strong enough to leave, while at the same time I had been convinced by Thomas telling me that no one would help me. I thought he was right. It really did seem that there was no one. We were isolated, living in the country and I had lost touch with friends and family because they didn’t approve of our relationship.

The priest I went to for Confession during the retreat was a Jesuit too (though as far as I am aware, he was not a psychiatrist or a psychologist). During the confession I told him the above. I told him that by my not ending the relationship, I hurt a lot of people. Specifically, myself, my family, and most of all, my son and his father.

The priest told me to go sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament (they were having adoration in the afternoon) and to ask Jesus to allow my son to hear my apology and for Thomas to hear my apology. He also absolved me from my sins which, anyone who gets absolution in the Sacrament of Confession, will experience as a sort of lightness of being.

That afternoon I went to the Blessed Sacrament that was exposed, and prayed that God would allow my son to hear my apology. I then made my apology. I looked at the Host in the monstrance and saw the outline of a mother holding a baby. I seemed to know it was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, holding my son. I closed my eyes and saw very clearly my son’s face bathed in a warm bright light. He had the greatest smile on his face, and I knew now he knows no sorrow, only continual joy. I knew my little baby boy had forgiven me.

I then asked God to allow Thomas to hear my sorrowful apology for not considering his feelings and wants. ...... I made my apology, understanding that he was listening since Jesus was allowing this. For just a second my mind wandered to the thought, ........... "I wonder if Thomas did something to hurt our son and if he will end up in Hell". Immediately I heard a man’s voice around my right ear whom I am sure was the voice of Jesus. He said, "That’s between me and him." ... I became so aware of my judging Thomas and that I had overstepped my boundaries there. I thought of what a frightening thing that can be, to make God’s business of justice my own.

I left the spiritual exercise feeling deep gratitude and joy for Christ truly present in the Eucharistic Host. Also, I felt deep appreciation for the priests He uses to guide us and direct us on our souls’ journeys.
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"In many ways, Our Lord, is calling us to worship and receive Him in the Eucharist. He speaks this desire in many ways: through the Pope and the Magisterium of the Church, in the Bible (John chapter 6), through his Blessed Mother in approved Marian apparitions, through the testimonies of Saints and Martyrs, through Eucharistic miracles, through Church approved messages given by Jesus by Divine Revelation, through our souls who long for Jesus in Communion, and through our suffering world which is in much need of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Unfortunately many of us disbelieve or have grown indifferent towards Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament." .......... (From THE REAL PRESENCE )

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Paragraph 174 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

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"The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."