Spirituality of A. Zaccaria

  - Why this emphasis on the Eucharist?

- To appreciate the significance of Anthony Mary’s initiative, we should bear in mind the conditions surrounding the Eucharist atthat time. Mass was celebrated on rare occasions. Holy Communion was a privilege denied, ordinarily, to the laity. Hence, the Blessed Sacrament was not kept, most of the time, at the main altar, but in the sacristy or in some dark church corner, even in a grimy wooden box where ants and other bugs could easily enter. Churches became places for anyone to stroll around, for lovers to meet, for people to hold conversations or games, or warehouses of sort for people to store household tools and goods. Against this background it is easier to understand the reason why St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria put so much emphasis on public and solemn display of devotion to the Eucharist.

- For St. Anthony Zaccaria the Eucharist is the crucified Lord alive and living among us. The two poles of his spirituality are the crucified Lord and the Eucharist and the two are obviously connected.

- St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria was a reformer, that is, a prominent figure of that 16th century spiritual revival movement known as the Catholic Reformation.

- While Martin Luther sought to reform the Church as institution, St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria and other reformers were convinced that reformation of the Church had to start with the individual person, with personal conversion, with commitment to radical "self-reform."

- What does personal conversion imply? It implies the possibility of saying with St. Paul, "I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2, 20). What can effect this radical personal conversion, thin transformation into Christ? St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria has no doubts: the Eucharist; the Eucharist is the sacrament of conversion. In his Sermon 3 he writes, "You turn to God… by offering Him sacrifices: the sacrifice of your bodies kept under control by penance for the love of God, the sacrifice of your souls eager to unite themselves with Him, but above all the sacrifice par excellence, the most holy Eucharist. No wonder that people have grown lukewarm and turned into beasts, as it were. It is because they do not receive this sacrament. The surest proof, then, of your return to God is that you go back to receive this food. Go back, my friends, go back to receive this sacrament. Nothing can make you holier than this sacrament, for in it is the Holy of Holies. Remember that Augustine exhorts you to receive Holy Communion at least once a week." And following St. Augustine exhortation, St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria prescribes in his Constitutions, "Let everybody, according to one's disposition, go to communion at least every Sunday and Holy Day of obligation" (Ch.1).