The Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle

Selected writings from Saint Manuel Gonzalez Garcia

By Victoria Schneider

St. Manuel felt called to the priesthood at the age of 12. After his ordination in 1901, he was sent to preach at a church which he found to be unclean and abandoned. There, praying before a Tabernacle covered in dust and cobwebs, with torn altar cloths and oil dripping onto the floor from the sanctuary lamp, he decided to dedicate his life to providing for Jesus’ needs in the Tabernacle. This poor, abandoned Tabernacle taught the young priest more about the Love of Jesus than his years of theological study. It marked his entire life from that moment. He dedicated himself until his death to spreading devotion to the Eucharist, proclaiming these words which he would go on to choose for his epitaph: “Jesus is here! He is here! Do not abandon Him!” This saintly bishop will help you to receive Holy Communion more fervently and to love Jesus more deeply in Eucharistic Adoration. This book will awaken you to a new experience of Our Lord — that you may see, hear, love, and console “Love who is not loved.”

Victoria Schneider is a language translator. She and her husband Harald live in Maryland and both collaborate in and coordinate Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration for their parish. This experience has impelled her to translate and compile Saint Manuel's writings, so that we might all learn from the one who wrote: "Jesus is with us in each and every tabernacle on earth! Do not abandon Him!"

“How real they are for our times the life, the message and the testimony of St. Manuel. It is not by chance that the canonization takes place at this moment in which along with a powerful call for evangelization by the sign of charity, we hear the same call to center our lives, the lives of the priests and of the Christian communities in the Eucharist and in Eucharistic adoration. Let’s not be deaf to the voice of the Lord, nor be blind to the signs Our Lord is offering us in these times that we live.” (Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Mass of Thanksgiving, Valencia, Oct. 2016)

“Saint Manuel believed very strongly in the Real Presence of the Eucharist. Once he was asked how many hours we should pray. He answered: ‘twenty-four hours a day, because when a soul gives herself to God, she belongs to Him all the time.’ His ideal was to be the Host of the paten of his Mass and in that way he would live his Mass throughout the day.” (Cardinal Angelo Amato, St. Mary Major Basilica, Mass of Thanksgiving, October 17, 2016).

"I ask to be buried next to a tabernacle, so that my bones, after death, as my tongue and my pen in life, are saying to those who pass: there is Jesus! There it is! Do not leave Him abandoned!" 

Saint Manuel González García