This story will bring you closer to the Holy Eucharist. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a famous American orator and preacher.
A few months before he died in 1979, Bishop Sheen had given a television interview. The questioner asked Bishop Sheen:
“Your sermons inspire millions of people. Who has inspired you the most? Was it a Pope?”
“It was not a Pope, a Cardinal, a Bishop, a Priest, or a Nun. It was a girl of only eleven years old,” replied Bishop Sheen.
This incident took place in the late 1940s when the Communist regime took over China. The anti-religious communists were searching for and destroying Catholic churches in the country. As part of the operation, they reached a village church and detained the priest in the churchyard. Opening the door of the church, the soldiers smashed all the relics and the temple objects there. Their next goal was to destroy the Tabernacle. The soldiers insulted the Holy Eucharist and threw them on the ground. The vicar, who was watching all these events through the windows of the church. His heart was broken while seeing this act and prayed: “O God, forgive these sinners.”
The priest was sure that there were exactly 32 Holy Eucharists in the ciborium. An 11-year-old girl was praying behind the shrine when these incidents took place. She hid under a bench at the back of the church when the soldiers entered the church. When the soldiers left, she went home.
That very night, the girl reached the dilapidated church collected the scattered Holy Eucharist in a pot and hid it in the church itself. Every night she went alone to the temple and worshipped for an hour and received on her tongue. 32 nights passed. The vicar used to watch this every day through the window in the churchyard. The priest’s eyes were full of spiritual children who loved the Holy Eucharist as much as life.
On the thirty-second day, while coming out after the Holy Communion, the eleven-year-old girl went in front of the soldier who had come to watch the church. It was like the state of the lamb before the wolves. She tried to run away, but the soldier chased her and shot with his gun. Hearing the gunshots and screams, the vicar opened the window and saw the sight of the girl who was dying in front of the gun barrel. The helpless priest could only weep.
Bishop Sheen learned of this incident and promised Jesus that from then on he would spend at least one hour before the Holy Mass. It was an eleven-year-old girl from a far-off parish who influenced Bishop Sheen most to love the Holy Eucharist and appreciate and value the priesthood.