At the beginning of the new millennium, there is an impelling need to pick all the flowers which, thanks to the Holy Spirit, have silently bloomed at the heart of the Church in this time of grace. This is in order to allow all God’s people, enlightened by the wisdom of the saints, to rejoice in the deep feelings which our brothers and sisters have been able to inspire through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
It is precisely with these feelings that we must approach the meditations of Mother Maria Candida of the Eucharist. Her name, as she used to say, is already an evocative synthesis of the mystery of the Eucharist. These are deeply intense nuptial meditations, in accordance with the life of a Carmelite who found in her vocation to the Teresian Carmelite life, as spouse of Christ, the full accomplishment of a Eucharistic ideal which started in her childhood and became the centre of her existence. A Eucharist which is presence, love, constant company and eternal immolation. A Eucharist characterized by Jesus abiding in the sacrament with a permanent presence which is open to the love of the Father and the brothers, and capable of transforming, as it did, the life of Mother Candida. Hers was a kind of existence permanently characterized by her love towards God, the sisters in her convent, and towards humanity, near and far and surrounding her, whom she embraced through contemplation and intercession.
It is a mystery which makes her presence in the Present. A real love relationship which becomes a nuptial union in which the Carmelite from Ragusa lives as if at the centre of the world, being concentrated on Him who, in the Eucharist, is the very heart of mankind and the cosmos.
Jesús Castellano Cervera, ocd (from the Preface)
Maria Candida of the Eucharist (1884–1949) was a Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, beatified by Pope John Paul II. More info⇒
