A true sacrifice is anything that we do with the aim of being united to God in holy fellowship – anything that is that is directed towards that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. It follows that even an act of compassion towards men is not a sacrifice, if it is not done for the sake of God. Although it is performed by man, sacrifice is still a divine thing, as the Latin word indicates: “sacri-ficium”, “holy-doing” or “holy-making”. Man himself can be a sacrifice, if he is consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God – a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world in order to live to God....
[Jesus Christ] took on the form of a servant and suffered for us. It was under this form that he both offered and was offered: at the same time mediator, and priest, and sacrifice.
St Paul starts by exhorting us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, as an act of homage justly owed to him. He tells us not to con-form ourselves to the world but to be trans-formed by renewing our will and our thinking: seeking to find out the will of God, to discover what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect; for we ourselves are the whole of that sacrifice....
This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And, as the faithful know, this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.
(St Augustine, City of God)
"I make a holy hour each day in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. All my sisters of the Missionaries of Charity make a daily holy hour, as well, because we find that through our daily holy hour our love for Jesus becomes more intimate, our love for each other more understanding, and our love for the poor more compassionate. Our holy hour is our daily family prayer where we get together and pray the Rosary before the exposed Blessed Sacrament the first half-hour, and the second half hour we pray in silence. Our adoration has doubled the number of our vocations. In 1963 we were making a weekly holy hour together, but it was not until 1973, when we began our daily holy hour that our community started to grow and blossom.
"May you may discover that nowhere on earth are you more welcomed, nowhere on earth are you more loved, than by Jesus, living and truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time that you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about an everlasting peace on earth.
"When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you NOW. This is why you should ask your parish priest to have perpetual adoration in your parish. I beg the Blessed Mother touch the hearts of all parish priests that they may have perpetual Eucharistic adoration in their parishes, and that it may spread throughout the entire world.
"God bless you."
Mother Teresa
(When she was very sick in the hospital, the doctor told one of the priests attending to Mother Teresa the following:)
Father, go home and bring that box to Mother. (The priest didn't know what box he was referring to. Later he realised the doctor was referring to the Tabernacle.) That box, that temple they bring and put in her room and Mother looks at it all the time. If you bring it and put it in the room Mother will become so quiet. When that box is there, in the room, she is just looking and looking and looking at that box. (Come Be My Light, p 328)
At the Mother House since we have 10 groups of Sisters, 8 novices and 2 professed, we have 10 hours of Adoration in two chapels. Here lies our strength and our joy.... (Blessed Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, p 279)
(Once Mother Teresa obtained permission to have the Blessed Sacrament in the convent chapel. This is what she wrote to the archbishop.)
Soon our Lord will be with us.--Everything will be easy then--He will be there personally. (Blessed Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, p 139)
(In her letter to the Archbishop on 28th January 1948)
How many must we be to have the Blessed Sacrament in our midst?--The work that we will have to do, will be impossible without His continual grace from the tabernacle.--He will have to do everything.--We have just to follow.
Pray for me, please, that I do the things that are pleasing to Him.(Blessed Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, p 111)
(One of the sisters describes Mother Teresa's devotion to the Eucharist.)
Mother received Holy Communion daily with tremendous devotion. If there happened to be a second Mass celebrated in Mother House on a given day, she would always try to assist at it, even if she were very busy. I would hear her say on such occasions, "How beautiful to have received Jesus twice today." Mother's deep, deep reverence for the Blessed Sacrament was a sign of her profound faith in the Real Presence of Jesus under the appearances of bread and wine. Her adoring attitude, gestures such as genuflections--even on both knees in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and that well into old age--her postures such as kneeling and joining hands, her preference for receiving Holy Communion on the tongue all bespoke her faith in the Eucharist.
(In the last days of her life, when she was very weak even to write, she wrote only the words below.)
I want Jesus.
(Blessed Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, p 330)
...I ask you to tell Jesus--when at your word the Bread becomes His Body and the wine becomes His Blood--to change my heart--[to] give me His own Heart--so that I can love Him as He loves me. (Blessed Mother Teresa, Letter to a priest, Come Be My Light, p 279)