Of Other Methods of Thanksgiving

OTHERS make their thanksgiving after Holy Communion in the following manner. They imagine and consider Christ our Lord within their breast as on a cushioned seat or faldstool, and call upon all their powers and senses to recognize and reverence Him for their King and Lord, in the way that in the world, when a man entertains in his house a person of high degree, he is wont to call all his sons and relations to reverence and recognize him. And with each of their senses and powers they do three things: first, to give Him thanks for His having given this power or sense; secondly, they accuse themselves and are sorry for not having employed it to the end for which the Lord gave it; thirdly, they ask favor and grace to amend their ways from henceforth. This is a very good and useful method of thanksgiving; in fact it is the first method of prayer of the three which our Father sets down in his Book of Spiritual Exercises.

Others imagine themselves afflicted with disease in all their senses and powers, and Christ as a physician who “cures all infirmities”—qui sanat omnes infirmitates tuas (Psalm cii. 3). They bring Him round to them, as a phy- Sician is brought round to cases of illness; and beg Him, Come and see, O Lord (John xi. 34) ; come and see my sick eyes, this tongue, and so forth, and have compassion on me and heal me. Have pity on me, O Lord, because I am ailing: heal my soul, because I have sinned against Thee (Psalm vi. 3; xl. 5).

Let it be here observed that, to go through these exercises and others like them at this time, it is not necessary to make a fictitious composition of place, or seek anything outside of ourselves, since we have present within our breast Jesus Christ Himself, true God and true man, Who is really within us all the time that the sacramental species last; that is, all the time that the substance of bread would last, if it were there. Now, if looking at a figure of Christ serves to make us recollect ourselves for prayer, what must it be to look upon Christ Himself, Who is there present, not in figure, as in the crucifix, but in His own person? Thus everyone should turn to look within himself, considering Christ within him, as the most holy Queen of Angels did when she carried Him within her womb, and hold sweet converse there with his Beloved, saying with the spouse: J have found him whom my soul loveth, I have held him, and will not let him go (Cant. iii. 4).

To encourage us to stay and spend more time over our thanksgiving, we shall be helped by a thing that some theologians say; it is that all the time that the sacramental species last and the real presence of Christ in our breast continues, the more we exercise ourselves in these acts, the greater graces we shall receive, not only for the greater merit of the acts, which they call grace ex opere operantis, but ex opere operato, by the virtue of the Sacrament (Chapter 3).

Hence will be seen how ill they do who let slip this time in which they might gain so much, and after receiving such a guest in their house, turn their backs immediately so that scarcely has He entered in by one door but they go out by the other, breaking off the conversation. If in the society of this world it would be taken for a piece of discourtesy to receive a guest, a person of credit, in one’s house, and after receiving him to pay him no attention, what must it be with a guest like this!

Surius relates of the glorious virgin Margaret, daughter of the king of Hungary, that when she was to communicate she lived the day before on bread and water, in reverence for the heavenly food that she was expecting, and spent the whole night in prayer; after Communion she spent all that day in reciting psalms and praying until nightfall, when she took some slight refreshment.