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Section VI. The Magnet of Souls

It naturally follows from all that has been said, that the Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination. This is the attraction on our side. On the other hand, He draws us to Himself by grace, by example, by power, by lovingness, by beauty, by pardon, and above all by the Blessed Sacrament. Every one who has had anything to do with ministering to souls has seen the power which Jesus has. Talent is not needed. Eloquence is comparatively unattractive. Learning is often beside the mark. Controversy simply repels. But the simple preaching of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, will collect a congregation, fill a Church, crowd the confes eionals, furnish the altar rail, and solemnize a feast, when nothing else will do so. There is not a powei on earth to be compared to the simple and unadorned preaching of the Gospel. Sermons on Jesus, and affectionate expositions of His mysteries, will make men perform their ordinary actions and relative duties more perfectly than direct instructions on those very things All the attraction of the Church is in Jesus, and Ilif chief attraction is the Blessed Sacrament.

The Blessed Sacrament is the property of the souls of men. It belongs to them in a way and with an intimacy which the spirits of the angels cannot share. Nevertheless, there is a great connexion between the angels and the Blessed Sacrament. It is the especial mystery of that Human Nature in which Jesus is Head of the angels. It is one of the mysteries they adore, and humbly desire to look into. They admire it with a special admiration, and follow it all over the world, in the priest's hands, on the throne, in the tabernacle, round the Church, on its obscure visits to the sick, as if they were attracted by it, which they are. It is called angel's food, and the bread of angels; and although they cannot enjoy the proper sacramental union with the Flesh of our dearest Lord, they doubt less feed on it in their intelligences by a kind of mighty spiritual communion. Nevertheless, it is still Human Nature's boon, a favour derived from the eternal choice and preference of our nature, and it is the magnet of human souls. This must always remain true, though there are doubtless many mysterious connections be tween the Holy Eucharist and the angelic kingdom, of which we are at present wholly ignorant.

It is said that St. Michael revealed to St. Eutropius, the Hermit, that he had been chosen to be the guardian angel of the Blessed Sacrament; and that it had been entrusted to his charge ever since Holy Thursday; and there are also on record several revelations of his to various saints concerning the worship of the Blessed 44 2H

Sacrament. Some have supposed him to be the angel of the mass referred to in the canon; and he is spoken of at the beginning of mass in the Confiteor, again at the second incensing at the High Mass; and also in the offertory of masses of Requiem. Many saints and ser vants of God have had a peculiar devotion to the angel mentioned in the canon of the Mass, without deciding on his name or individuality.1 Each of the seven angels who stand before the Throne are said to have one of the Sacraments committed specially to their custody. The Eucharist is assigned to St. Michael, Baptism to St. Gabriel, Confirmation to St. Uriel, Penance to St. Jehudiel, Extreme Unction to St. Raphael, Order to St. Sealtiel, and Matrimony to St. Barachiel. It is of course extremely difficult to estimate at their proper value such pious beliefs. There is mostly something divine in them, but, as usual, clouded with uncertainty.

There seems also a strong inclination among the saints to connect the choir of Thrones in some especial manner with the Blessed Sacrament. When St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi goes through the nine choirs to obtain some special grace from each, she says she has recourse to the Thrones to put her into the arms of the Incarnate Word, especially in his sacramental union with His espoused souls. f Angela of Foligno, after her visions, calls the Thrones the " Society" of the Blessed Sacrament. J So also Boudon in his life of Surin men tions the continual visions of the Thrones which he had in connection with the Mass.

As to the relations between Mary and the Blessed Sacrament, it is impossible to speak of them worthily, and difficult to speak at all. There are two sources from which we learn them, theology and private revela tions. We should be out of harmony with the Church if we lightly esteemed these revelations to the saints, especially those which enjoy the countenance of ecclesiastical approval in any of its various degrees. But my object in this treatise has been to follow theology rather than these revelations, and, where I have referred to them at all, I have left them in their own uncertainty. No one can appreciate more highly than I do the devotional beauty and the spiritual value of much that these revelations have been commissioned to tell us. Yet upon the whole, and especially on this subject of the Blessed Sacrament, they are not only less satisfactory than theology, but also less interesting.

There are some theologians who maintain that the Blessed Sacrament was instituted for the sake of our Blessed Lady, principally for her, and more for her than for all the rest of mankind put together. Indeed, this seems to follow from the principles most approved and in commonest usage in speaking of her honour. It is said by most writers that all that Jesus did for us He did for her in a more eminent and excellent way, as when He redeemed her by prevention in the Immaculate Conception. He is said to have loved her more than all else together, and the Blessed Sacrament is the crowning act of His love; and from these two premises the conclusion easily follows that the Holy Eucharist was principally instituted for her, and that in the same sense in which we are indebted to her for the Incarnalion, we are also indebted to her for the Blessed Sacrament. The analogies between the Incarnation and the Eucharist, or rather the concentration of the mysteries of the one in the other, makes this doctrine easy of acceptation, in the sense which those who teach it intend to convey.

There are theologians, again, who teach that what our Lord took from Mary at His Incarnation, formed of her purest blood, was never allowed to undergo any change; but that while all else that grew upon Him afterwards might have been subject to natural laws, (which surely we may venture to doubt) what He took originally from her remained, was crucified, buried, and rose again, and hence is actually in the Blessed Sacrament, which, as they further teach, receives a certain peculiar excellence and prerogative from the presence of this original matter of the Incarnation. This will explain the words of St. Ignatius who says that our Lady showed him in the Blessed Sacrament what had been formed from her. His expressions are very remarkable.2 " As I was conversing with the Holy Spirit before Mass with the same tears and devotion, it seemed to me that I felt and saw a bright effulgence of the colour of flame, very strange. As I was preparing for the altar, and after I had put on the refitments and was celebrating, there was great inward commotion, with intense weeping and sobbing, and frequent loss of speech. Then I felt and saw our Lady exercising her favourable influence with the Father, so that in the canon of the Mass and in the consecration, I could see and feel nothing except her who is, so to speak, a party to this so great grace, and the gate of it; and I had a spiritual perception of her showing me in the act of consecration the existence of her own flesh in the Flesh of her Son (that is, tht formation from her substance) with so intimate an intelligence that it cannot be described."

This must not, however, be confounded with an error on this subject on which an attempt was once made to found a false devotion. Father Zephyrinus de Someire, a Franciscan, published a book on the Worship of the Mother of God in the Blessed Sacrament, in which he asserted that part of her flesh and part of her blood were in the Host in their own species; so that we have not only in the Blessed Sacrament her blood turned into the flesh and blood of Christ at the Incarnation, but her very own uncomnmted flesh and blood. Christopher de Vega, in his Theologia Mariana, puts forward the same views, and is attacked by Theophilus Raynaud in his Marian Dypticks.3 Guido, the Carmelite, in his Summa of Heresies, charges the Greeks with the same error. He says they believe that the remnants of consecrated Bread are the relics of the Blessed Virgin, which he proves to be manifest heresy. Benedict XIV., in his work on the Canonization of Saints,")" treats of this false devotion, and shows how it is contrary to the principles of the faith; and he thus concludes, " Therefore it is only lawful to affirm, that there is in the Sacrament the Flesh of Christ assumed from Mary, as St. Ambrose is quoted in the canon, Omnia De Consecrat. Distinct. 2. 1 This is My Flesh for the life of the world, and, as I may more wonderfully say, manifestly no other Flesh than what was born of Mary, and suffered on the Cross, and rose from the Tomb, I say, this is the very same/ " Thus the opinion quoted in the preceding paragraph is perfectly accordant with sound theology and the princi ples of the faith.4

According to some revelations of the saints our Blessed Lady was either present at the Institution of the Blessed Sacrament, or was at least communicated by our Lord. Novatus, on the contrary, thinks this improbable. His reasons, however, are extremely weak; and as there are nothing but probabilities in the matter either way, they seem, in a theological point of view, to incline towards that side of the revelations, independently of the weight of the revelations, as such, however great or small that may chance to be. According to these visions, our Blessed Lady received communion on the Thursday night, and the species was preserved in her un corrupted all through Good Friday, and until her next Communion. Indeed there are some theologians who assert that all through the remaining fifteen years of her life, the sacramental species invariably remained in her incorrupt, so that she was a perpetual living tabernacle of her Son, as she had been for the nine months before His birth; and, as I have already mentioned, the erudite Waldo believed that the last Host consecrated on earth would be preserved to all eternity in her transparent Heart in heaven. It is very commonly said that our Blessed Lady combined in herself, besides her own special prerogatives, all the marvellous gifts of the saints, of whom she is the queen; and thus there would be no difficulty in conceding to her what some of those saints have enjoyed, the incorruption of the sacramental species from communion to communion. In the life of Benigne Gojos, the Visitandine of Turin, we read as follows,* "In her latter years the abundance of her tears obliged our humble Benigne to leave the choir as soon as possible and retire to her cell. There she abandoned herself to the transports of a love in which she was as it were liquefied. Her arms were in the shape of a cross; she was upright, and as it were suspended in the air, ever and anon making a genuflection as if she were adoring. There it was that God often renewed in her the impression of His holy Passion; and what is still more admi table, the miraculous duration of the species of the mos Holy Sacrament. This favour was at first accorded to iier only for an hour; but it was afterwards prolonged from one communion to another."

• Page 450. Turin, 1846.

If our Blessed Lady did thus preserve within herself the sacramental species during Good Friday, then must she have been the theatre of those wonders, already touched upon, and which have no parallel save in the mystery of the Annunciation, and the life of our Saviour in the womb. Nay, they are even more wonderful. Our Lord dwelt within her in passible flesh, even as He had done at the Incarnation. He as it were brought back again and reposed in her Immaculate Heart what had been formed from the blood of that heart itself. He brought it back unchanged, no longer hers, but His, or rather more hers than ever, because it now was His. There He lay hid through all that long night in the covert of His chosen sanctuary. There, as well as amid the olive-trees, He wrestled through His three hours of mental agony. All the interior pains, all the anguish of soul, all that was not outward bodily suffering or the outrage of external circumstances, He went through within His mother; and at last as His precious Blood distilled in mysterious sweat upon the ground, so did that Blood which was in the Host within her by concomitance retire by the secret miracle of the sacra mental life. Through the five trials and the seven journeys of the night and morning, He was in her, without blows, or sound, or violence, or stripes, or spittle, or thorns, or wounds, for such things could not touch His sacramental Body; but His Heart went through every phase of that successive agony, draining to the dregs every species of inward shame and horror, anguish and wounded sensibility, humiliation and crucifixion of soul, which can afflict « human heart, miraculously strengthened to endure what else would many times of its sole self have caused immediate death. He spoke not the seven words within her; but within her in the plenitude of their heavenly graciousness were the beauAiful interior dispositions out of which those words were uttered. Still mysteriously all through the day the Blood ebbed from the Adorable Host, so that it ever preserved its truthfulness as being our dearest Lord Him self in the actual state in which He is. The moment of the loud cry came; but in Mary's heart He broke not the breathless stillness of the Sacrament. The soul sank into the ground at the foot of the Cross, and went to dazzle liinbus with its brightness, leaving the body on earth equally with itself united to the Divinity. So that moment also He died in Mary, and the Sou1 that was with the Body in the Blessed Sacrament by concomitance was separated from it. 0 wonderful fitness I He that began to live in Mary, also died in Mary. Where Body and Soul had been joined, there also were they severed. And what remained in her? United to the Divinity, just the amount of His debt to her, His Flesh alone! And here was a new marvel of the Incarnation; for never had the Body been for one instant be fore without the soul. Moreover, if the species remained within her always incorrupt from one communion to another, so must the Body and the Soul have been re united in her by a silent and secret Resurrection. What wonder then that when He ascended, and a cloud received Him out of the sight of men, the apostles should turn with awe and love and docile dependence to their queen, as they walked back to the holy city? for not only was she like to Jesus, and the likeness broke out and bloomed on every feature the more signally now that

He was gone, but also He Himself was within her, having truly left behind in her all that He had taken into heaven, and was at that moment exposing to the triumphant worship of angelic choirs.

If it be true that our Lady was communicated on Holy Thursday, and if it be true that the species re mained incorrupt in her from communion to corn-j munion, and I own that both the theological and, so to call them, historical probabilities incline me so to believe, then, on no less an authority than that of St. Thomas,5 theology and the true doctrine of the holy Eucharist require us to believe that Mary was the scene of these new marvels of the Incarnation. Were ever those words of Solomonf more true of the Incarnate Word than in the Blessed Sacrament in Mary? I was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world; and My de lights were to be with the children of men! It is remarkable also as an illustration of the changes in the Host as our Lord's own state changed, that in relating the seven consolations she received in the Blessed Sacrament, Angela of FolignoJ mentions that when she was following the mass of a wicked friar, she saw our Lord in the Host, first dolorous, bloody, and fastened to the Cross, and afterwards dead upon the Cross. Reguera in his Praxis of Mystical Theology, says it is conformable to right reason to suppose that at least to some chosen few among the saints, our Lord would grant the miraculous duration of the species.6

Our Lady is also said by some theologians, as well as in sundry revelations, to have lived almost exclusively on the Blessed Sacrament, or at least for long times together; and that it drove away from her all sickness and infirmity. Suarez thinks it more probable that our Lord only ate when it was necessary either to conceal His miraculous abstinence or to prove the truth and reality of His Human Nature. Certainly m;my of the saints have lived for years on the Blessed Sacrament only, and therefore it is likely that our dear Lady had this grace also. The driving away of sickness is another matter. But is it necessary to suppose this as a medicinal gift, or anything more than an honour and a grace? Was it needful in order to drive sickness away from her sinless body, which had compassed God? Was not her gift of original justice of itself sufficient for this? Let us rather put aside this uncongenial supposition of Novatus, and suppose that if our Lady received this grace, she received it as a pure gift of love, and as befitting the dignity of the queen of saints, who should be herself ft participator in the gifts of her subjects. Gorres says,7 " With the saints the Eucharist has often taken the place of bodily nourishment. Ordinary nourishment produces an intimate union between a man's body and external nature. In like manner the Eucharist also, introducing us into a superior region, unites the recipients with God, and makes them participate in His life. In ordinary food, he who cats is supelior to what is eaten, and therefore assimilates the aliments he takes, and communicates his own nature to them. But in the Eucharist the aliment is more powerful than the eater. It is no longer the food which is assimilated. It is on the contrary the food which assi milates the man to itself, and introduces him into a higher sphere. It produces then in some cases as it were a complete change of the whole life. The supernatural life absorbs after a fashion the natural life, and man, instead of living on the produce of earth, lives henceforth on grace and heaven. Food which was heretofore delicious to him, now excites in him nothing but disgust, and the stomach refuses either to receive or to retain it." He then cites various examples, which will serve to illustrate this gift, which we suppose our Blessed Lady to have received.

Nicholas de Flue, after he had embraced the solitary life, lived only on the Holy Eucharist. The rumour of this miracle soon spread through the canton of Underwald, and at first no one believed it. Many imagine that in past ages all news of this kind were received with an easy credulity, which they attribute to the ignorance of the times. But this is a great mistake, In all times the first feeling about such things has been doubt, and a demand for the requisite evidence of the facts. Thus in 1225 Hugh, the bishop of Lincoln, learned that there was a nun at Leicester who had taken no food for seven years, but lived only on the Eucharist, which she received every Sunday. At first he disbe lieved it altogether. He then appointed fifteen persons to act as spies upon her for fifteen days, without allow ing her ever to be out of their sight. But during the whole time she preserved her usual health and strength, although without food; and he was thus convinced of the truth of the assertion.

The inhabitants of Undcrwald did the same thing with Nicholas de Flue. For a month they surrounded his hut, and made sure that he had never eaten food. Nevertheless, the bishop of Constance was still not satisfied, and sent his suffragan bishop to live with the solitary. This bishop, astonished at the strength and vigour of Nicholas after so long an abstinence, asked him what virtue he preferred before all others. Nicholas replied, obedience; whereupon the bishop bade him eat some bread. He obeyed; but he had scarcely swal lowed the first mouthful, when violent vomiting ensued. The bishop of Constance was still incredulous, in spite of the testimony of his suffragan, and determined to be an eye-witness himself. He went therefore to Nicholas, and asked him how he could live without eating. The saint replied that when he assisted at mass or received holy communion, he felt a strength and sweetness which satisfied him and did instead of food. More than once he confessed to his intimate friends that meditation alone sometimes produced these results, in such a way that when he was contemplating the Passion of our Saviour, he used as it were to receive the breath of the dying Jesus into his breast, which seemed to penetrate and fortify the whole inner man.

So it was with St. Catherine of Siena. From her childhood, till she was fifteen, she took nothing but a little red wine mixed with water, and a small piece of food. After that age she confined herself to water herbs, and bread. At the age of twenty she left off bread, and then all external food, without her health 45 being the least affected by it. The only consequence was a much more ardent desire of frequent communion. This divine food, while it kindled the more intensely the flames of her love, rendered her life of exile from her Beloved all the more sorrowful; so that whenever she communicated she was overwhelmed with sadness. Nevertheless, she received at the same time unspeakable consolations, which took away from her not only the desire but even the ability to swallow food; and when ghe tried to eat anything, she suffered dreadful pains, and was violently sick. This extraordinary phenomenon naturally attracted the attention of her relations and friends. They spoke to her confessors, who, not knowing what to think, several times ordered her to eat something; but each time the attempt nearly cost her her life. Time after time she sat down to table with the rest and forced herself to eat, but she had scarcely taken the food into her mouth when she was obliged to reject it with tor ments so horrible that they bred compassion in all who beheld her. After many attempts they left her in peace, and she then took nothing but plain water. In the presence of others she attributed this to her sins; but every time she received holy communion, it imparted to her an incredible strength. Often the mere sight of the Host, or of a priest who had said mass that morning, produced in her the same effect. More than once when she was fainting from exhaustion, her strength would come back suddenly, and she would perform without the leasi fatigue works of charity of the most painful description. St. Rose of Lima is another instance of the same grace. When she went to communion she appeared like an angel; so that the priest was stupefied. If any one asked her what effects the Blessed Sacrament produced in her, she stammered and said she had no words to express them, bat that she seemed to pass entirely into God, and was inundated with such joy that nothing in common life could he compared to it. This divine nourishment satisfied and strengthened her to such a degree that when she returned from church, her step was firm and agile, whereas when she went to church she was often obliged to stop to take breath, so exhausted was she by fasting, watching, and other mortifications. Her relations at once perceived the effects of the Blessed Sacrament upon her; for as soon as she came home, she went into her room, and remained there till night. In the evening when they asked her to eat something, she replied that she was so full she could not eat anything. Once she passed eight days without eating anything; and whenever the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for the Forty Hours adoration, she passed the«whole of that time on her knees in adoration.

When the Blessed Lidvvine was asked where her blood came from, seeing she never ate anything, she replied, Whence comes the sap in spring, seeing the winter has dried and killed it? And she added that she gained more strength in one good meditation than others in the most nutritious food. St. Angela of Foligno lived for twelve years on no other food than the Holy Eucharist. So it was with St. Colomba of Rieti, Domenica del Paradiso, who ate no other food in Lent, and the holy bishop St. Modoc, who spent forty days with no food but the Blessed Sacrament, and then appeared more robust than ever At Norfolk there was a devout maiden, popularly called Jane the Afcathxs, because she had lived on the

Blessed Sacrament alone for fifteen years. Sister Louisa of the Resurrection, a Spanish nan, lived for many years on the Holy Eucharist. The same was the case with St. Colette, Helena Encelmina, the abbots Ebrulph and Fantinus, Peter of Alcantara, and several who are men tioned in the lives of the Fathers of the desert. We may therefore well believe of their Queen, what has been so far from uncommon with the Saints.

There is a tradition that mass was said, at which our Lady communicated, every morning during the Forty Days of our Lord's Risen Life; and we are also told that at the close of her life she communicated in Viaticum, though hers was no dark gulf which she had to cross in order to regain our Lord in a blissful eternity. Of course, no creature ever approached so nearly to making a strictly worthy communion as the Immaculate Mother of God.8

"Oh! that there might cleave to us, when we hear of so devout a communion, some little of the overflowings of the devotion which the Virgin felt. What must have been the reverence of this most lowly soul, who, when she looked upon herself, did not reckon herself worthy of the morsel of bread, which was her nourishment, or to tread the ground on which she walked! With what gratitude and love she must have received the Body of her most holy Son, since, as Man, Ha was one flesh with her, and, as God, she was one spirit with Him, and from these two sources there sprang a love inseparable and unspeak able, uniting her to God, and changing her daily more and more into that Lord whom she received, and strengthening her, above every

Yet, of necessity she fell short. Even a million years of her stainless and heroic sanctity would be an inadequate preparation to ensure a reception of the Blessed Sacrament, altogether and strictly worthy of the gift to be received. It was for her mainly that it was instituted. To her it gave gifts and graces such as it imparted to no other. She had in many more ways to do with the Blessed Sacrament than all the rest of creatures. Yet there has been only one communion literally worthy, our Lord's Communion of Himself. The Blessed Sacrament-worships the Holy Trinity worthily for us all day and night; it has had but one act of worship worthy of itself, and that was when He, whose own Self it is, received it with joy unutterable back into Himself.

Having spoken of the angels and the Blessed Sacrament, and our Lady and the Blessed Sacrament, we come naturally to speak of the relations between the saints and the Blessed Sacrament. We have in some measure anticipated this, but there is still much to say. Indeed, if we look at the saints collectively it will seem as if their interior life was mainly the worship of the Blessed Sacrament, while their external apostolic labours or works of mercy drew their motives, their strength, other devotion, to support her exile; in that she had present and received within her breast the Beloved of her heart; and though she saw Him not face to face as she desired and hoped to see Him in heaven, yet Ho, her duteous Son and Lord, was wont to manifest Himself to her in the Sacrament, such as at the moment she might wish to see Him, now, as when He came forth from her hallowed womb, and now, as when she held Him in her arms and gave Him suc-k, and so on, according to the various states in which she had beheld Him during His life." — Juan de Avila, Obras. vii. p. 350 Tratado de la Assumpcion.

45* 2i their perseverance, and their heroicity, from the same burning source of Incarnate Love. All classes of the elect have gathered round the Blessed Sacrament to worship It in their measure and degree. The inventions of their devotion have been numberless. A whole book would not contain them. The city of Home, the pontiff and the populace alike, has always put itself at the head of this devotion. Peter's City is eminently the City of the Blessed Sacrament. Visions, voices, prodigies, and miraculous Hosts, are ever occurring in the higher spheres of catholic sanctity, and feed there the mystical life of contemplation on which all the active strength of the Church depends.

But there is between the saints and the Blessed Sacrament a kind of double attraction, or if we may venture to use in these days a word which the usuage of some great mystical theologians has consecrated, a sort of double magnetism. The Blessed Sacrament attracts the saints in certain wonderful ways: while on the other hand the saints have sometimes the power to attract the Blessed Sacrament. If the sense of sight, says Gorres, can perceive sins concealed in the folds of the human heart, it is not astonishing that it should distinguish what is holy even behind the veil which hides it. This marvellous faculty of the saints is principally applied to the Blessed Sacrament. It is because of this that we read so often in the lives of the saints that our Lord has appeared to them in such or such a form, and most often in the guise of an infant. Something of this kind hap pened in the time of St. Louis of France, who refused to go into the chapel to see it, because he said miracles were not needed by those who already believed. Oul

Lord appeared as a child to St. Ida three times successively, and each time greater than before, and she was deluged with joy for forty days. St. Veronica of Binasco, saw Him with her bodily eyes, all environed with angels. She saw at the same time, above the chalice, something which shone with a marvellous brightness, but she could not distinguish what it was. Vaulem, the Cistercian, saw in the Host the Infant Jesus, holding in His hand a crown of gold adorned with precious stones. He was whiter than snow, His countenance serene, and His eyes sparkling. When Peter of Toulouse was holding the Host over the chalice at mass, the Infant Jesus appeared to him in marvellous beauty. Frightened at the brightness, he shut his eyes; but the vision still continued. He turned his head aside; but still he saw our Lord, sometimes on his hand, sometimes on his arm, which ever way he turned. The same thing happened to him almost every day for three or four months. A parish priest at Moncada, in the kingdom of Valentia, was tormented by doubts about the validity of his ordination. One Christmas day, while he was saying mass, a little girl four years and a half old saw a Babe in his hands, instead of the Host, at the elevation. He bade her watch the next day, and the same thing occurred. Not content with that, he took with him to the altar three altar breads, consecrated two of them, communicated with Dne of them, and then showed the other two to the child. She at once perceived the same vision in the consecrated Host, but not in the other.9

Similar things are related of St. Angela of Foligno,

St. Hugh of Cluni, St. Ignatius, St. Lidwine, Domenica del Paradiso, and many others. Our Lord often ap peared in the Blessed Sacrament to St. Catherine of Siena, and under different forms. But she almost always 8aw angels holding a veil of gold, the symbol of the inys tery, and in the midst a Host with the semblance of an Infant. Sometimes she saw the angels and saints ador ing our Lord on the altar. Sometimes He appeared to her all on fire; and then she saw herself, the priest, and our Lord, in the midst of flames. Sometimes a light shot from the altar and illuminated the whole Church. An other time when the priest was dividing the Host, she saw how the entire Body of our Lord was under each part. Our Lord did not always appear to her of the same age.

Mary of Oignies often saw at the elevation our Lord under the form of an infant surrounded by angels. When the priest communicated, she saw our Lord de scend into his soul and fill it with marvellous brightness. If he communicated unworthily, she saw our Lord indignantly leave his soul unenlightened and obscure. Even when she was in her cell, persons could see by the extraordinary changes manifest in her, that she felt our Lord's presence on the altar. She sometimes saw Him under the form of a lamb or a dove. He showed Him self to her on all His feasts under a form analogous to the mystery commemorated. At Christmas she saw Him as an infant on His Mother's lap, and at Candlemas in the arms of Simeon. One Candlemas He lighted her candle for her, when it had gone out. In Passion-tide she saw Him on the Cross; but this was rare, as it excited her feelings too keenly. In the same way when

Extreme Unction was administered to any one, she saw Him spread Himself through their limbs like a light. She often prayed for a priest of her acquaintance; in gratitude for which he said mass for her. When he had finished, she said, This mass was for me. The priest in much astonishment asked her how she knew it. She re plied, I saw a dove descend on your head at the altar, and extend its wings towards me; and I understood it to be the Holy Ghost bringing the fruits of the mass. Ordinarily speaking, when mass was said by a holy priest, she saw the angels all bright with joy.

Sometimes our Lord is visible to all present. Cantipratensis relates that in the Church of St. Araat at Douay in Flanders, a priest, having let a Host fall, went down on his knees in dreadful consternation to take it up. Meanwhile he saw it lift itself from the ground, and lay itself on the purificatory. He immediately called the canons, who beheld a beautiful infant lying on the cloth. The people pressed round to see the miracle, and were all witnesses of it. Cautipratensis, having heard of this, came to Douay, and as he knew the dean of the Church, he prayed him to let him see the miracle. The dean opened the tabernacle, and the crowd approaching cried out, Ah! look, look at our Lord: I see Him. Cantipratensis saw nothing but a Host; and yet he was not conscious of any secret sin which hindered him from seeing what others saw. But all at once his eyes were opened, and he beheld the countenance of our Lord, of mature age, and the size of life. He had a crown of thorns upon His head, and two drops of blood trickled down His brow. He prostrated himself immediately and burst into tears When he rose again, he saw neither blood nor crown, but only the figure of a man turned to the right, so that the right eye was hardly visible. He was beautiful and radiant; His forehead high, His nose long and straight, His eyes downcast, His hair floating over His shoulders, His beard long, His cheeks thin, and Ilia head bent. During this time others saw Him under different forms; some fastened to the cross; others as the sovereign judge of the living and the dead; but most as an infant. Such is the narrative of a man perfectly worthy of belief as an eyewitness, however uncritical as an historian, relating with the greatest detail what he saw with his own eyes. Many other facts of a similar nature are related in credible histories, especially in stances of the species of wine appearing as blood and the species of bread as flesh.10

But it is not only by sight that the Blessed Sacrament attracts the saints. Some have the gift of feeling our Lord's sacramental presence by a sort of spiritual perception; and that even at great distances. Ida of Louvain felt our Lord's presence at consecration, at the moment when He descended on the altar. When a server once by mistake gave the priest water instead of wine, so that there was no consecration, St. Colette per ceived it, although at a considerable distance. Juliana, the Cistercian, when her friend Eva came to visit her, often perceived that the Blessed Sacrament was being taken out of the church of St. Martin after the divine office, though it was at a great distance, and she used to be overwhelmed with sadness each time. The Fran ciscans of Villonda one day invited a holy Carmelite of the name of Casset to visit them, and in order to try hiiw, they took the Blessed Sacrament out of the tabernacle in which it was usually kept, and placed it else where. They put no light before it, but left the lamp burning as usual befor the customary altar. Casset, entering the church first as was his custom, and seeing his companion genuflect before the High Altar, said to him, The Body of our Lord is not there, but in yonder place where there is no lamp; for the friars, who are now hidden behind the grating in front of the high altar, have taken the Blessed Sacrament away in order to try us. St. Francis Borgia had the same gift; and when he entered a church he went straight to the place where the Blessed Sacrament was, even when no out ward sign betokened its reservation there. Jane the Meatless, the Norfolk maiden, could distinguish a consecrated Host amid numbers that were unconsecrated. Gerson mentions a man who could detect the Blessed Sacrament by the sense of smell.11

On the other hand, the mystical attraction seems sometimes to reside in the saints themselves, and it is rather they who attract the Blessed Sacrament than the Blessed Sacram«nt them. Thus Veronica of Binasco often attracted the Blessed Sacrament to herself through the air from the altar.12 One day St. Theresa was lifted up from the ground in an ecstasy at the moment of communion, and the priest could not reach her to give her the Host. Suddenly he saw it escape from hi& fingers and lay itself on the tongue of the saint. Tho same thing happened to Elizabeth of Jesus, whose confessor by way of mortification had forbidden her to go to communion. While the priest was communicating the other sisters, he saw a Host fly from his hand into the mouth of Elizabeth. The Blessed Raymond of Capua relates that once when he had just returned from a journey, S. Catherine of Siena expressed an intense desire to go to communion. As he was very tired, he wished not to go to the altar just yet; but yielding at length to the importunity of the saint, he said mass. When he came to give her communion, he saw her face all radiant as an angel's; whereupon he said inwardly to the Blessed Sacrament, Go, Lord! and find your betrothed! and instantly the Host he was about to take up flew to Catherine. He also said that he had heard persons of both sexes, whose word he could trust, say that they had often seen the Blessed Sacrament fly into her mouth as she was approaching the altar to communicate. A priest remarked more than once in giving communion to St. Hippolytus, that the Host escaped from his hands, attracted by the saint as the loadstone attracts iron: and that when this happened his face which had been shining became suddenly as white 38 snow. Simon of Alne going one day to communion, the Host he was about to receive fell to the ground

The priest was about to take it up, when Simon begged him to wait a moment till he had asked God whether it was his sins which had caused it to fall. That instant the Host rose from the ground and flew into his mouth.

Rader in his Bavaria Sacra tells the following story of the princess Margaret and her chaplain. While he was giving her communion, he saw her face, which was ordinarily pale, shining with excessive brightness. He was seized with fear; and when his panic had subsided, he could not find the Host which he was about to give her. Believing it had fallen from his hands in his fright, he made a scrupulous search for it. But it had flown into Margaret's mouth simultaneously with the wonderful light which had appeared on her face. This attraction sometimes operates from a great distance. Veronica Giuliani often wished to receive communion; and it not unfrequently happened that she placed her self at the window, and when the priest at the altar divided the Host, a particle would fly away into her mouth, and then she would fall into an ecstasy. The sisters often saw her in this state without knowing the cause. This method of communion lasted nearly all her life, at least when the mass was said by the priest Thaddeo, who never observed the missing particle. The same happened to Ida of Louvain, whose intense desire to communicate, attracted a particle of the Host at the priests' communion, and she knew that she was com municated, rather by taste and feeling than by sight. On one occasion the Host was brought her by a dove.

Our Lord, or the angels and saints, have often per formed the functions of the priest. But one of the most remarkable and authentic instances of this attract- 46 ing of the Blessed Sacrament by the saints is to be found in the deathbed of S. Juliana Falconieri; and although it is so well known I will extract it from her life.13 On one account she was inconsolable, and this was, that being in the habit of refreshing herself several times in the week with the Eucharistic Food, it was not granted to her in the last moments of her life, on account of her continual nausea, to receive Jesus in His Divine Sacrament. Her confessor, and those who sur rounded her bed, comforted her, and told her to remember the dereliction of which the same Divine Jesus complained on the Cross, entreating her to acquiesce in the Divine Will, and to offer these same desires to our Lord, by which she might in part satisfy her mind, as she could do no more. The saint being tranquillized by their words, and having received with signs of humility and resignation the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, turned, as it is related, to the other side of her little bed; and overcoming with great delight the torments of her agony, she began to entertain herself in sweet colloquies with her guardian angel, begging his assistance; and to call to mind the sorrows of our Blessed Lady, in memory of which she wore the habit of the Servites; remembering also the precious and happy death of the Blessed Alessio, her uncle: and she was visited at this last hour by angels in the form of white doves, and by Jesus Himself under the appearance of a very beautiful infant, who crowned her with a charming odoriferous garland of flowers of paradise; and entertaining herself a little in this last thought, she again broke out into sighs and sobs, grieving that she could not at least satisfy her eyes, since nothing more was allowed her, with the sight of Jesus in His Adorable Sacrament. She was afflicted, and earnestly begged to see Him, saying that death would be very bitter to her, if the Sacred Host were not first brought near her bed.

This wish of the saint appeared good to Father Giacouio, director of the nuns, and to the others, and wishing to give her this last spiritual consolation, they caused the Sacred Host to be brought into her presence, in looking at which, all on fire with a most ardent love, she several times tried to leap from her bed and to prostrate herself before it, but to her great sorrow her weakness did not allow it. But at last she gained sufficient strength, for what cannot an ardent love effect? to succeed in throwing herself out of bed, and stretching her self on the floor in the form of a cross, humbly adoring her God. At that moment her pallid countenance, ema ciated by her long and painful sickness, recovered its colour and beauty, so that her face seemed like that of an angel, and on it was expressed that intense desire which she had to feed upon this Heavenly Bread, not bfing allowed to partake of it. But as it is the property of love not to be satisfied till it attains the full possession of the beloved object, she began to think of all the means by which she might at least gratify herself by giving Him a most humble kiss. But the priest would not allow it. She begged him therefore to place the Sacred Particle on her breast for a short time, that her heart might receive some refreshment from its vicinity to Jesus, with whom it earnestly desired to unite itself.

Her tears, and the affecting manner in which she asked this favour, and above all things, the knowledge of her many virtues, and of the love which inflamed her, induced the good priest to grant her petition; and having washed her breast, she caused a veil to be placed upon it, and over that the corporal on which the priest placed the Sacred Host. Scarcely had he placed it on the chaste bosom of the loving virgin, than languishing with love and collecting the small remains of her strength to speak, she exclaimed, 0 my sweet Jesus! and in saying this she sweetly and quietly expired. But in drawing her last breath, the Most Sacred Host disappeared from her breast, and entered into it, leaving a mark on her bosom like the crucifix of an altar-bread. So that as Jesus under the veil of the Host had comforted her in her passage, He also accompanied her to heaven.

One more instance from Gorres* shall complete my chain of examples. In consequence of the great pain she was suffering, St. Catherine of Siena on one occasion asked her confessor to delay his mass a little, as she had to communicate at it. But she was not able to go to the church as soon as she expected, and when she got there it was so late that her companions advised her not to go to communion; for they knew that she always had three or four hours ecstasy afterwards, and the time for shutting the church would arrive before she had come to herself. The saint was half persuaded, and Raymond began his mass. As she was kneeling at the other end of the church, he did not perceive that she was present. But when he wished to break the Host into two pieces,

*B. iv. 3, Sinne und Wahrnehmun-svermogen.

previous to detaching the Particle to put into the chalice, the Host broke into three, not two pieces, one of the three not larger than a bean. This last Particle leaped into the air above the chalice; and he did not see it fall, but supposed that the whiteness of the corporal hindered his perceiving it; and so he continued his mass. After communion he carefully looked for it; but with all his pains he could not find it, and so was obliged to conclude his mass. When all had retired, he examined with great attention the corporal, the altar, and the ground near the altar; but nothing was to be found. He was so miserable that he confided his grief to Father Christopher, the prior, and they determined to interrogate the saint. They went therefore to her house, but found she bad been gone to the church long since; and there, in truth, they found her on her knees in an ecstasy. When she came to herself, Raymond told her what had hap pened. She smiled and said, Have you looked tho roughly? He replied that he had. Why then, said the Saint, do you disquiet yourself so much? Raymond, at once suspecting what had happened, said, My Mother, you have taken the Particle of my Host. My Father, she rejoined, do not accuse me. It is not I but Another who has done this. I tell you you will never find the Particle. Raymond insisted on knowing how it had happened; and Catherine replied, My Father, be not pad. It was our Lord who took pity on me and brought me the Particle Himself, and with His own hand com municated me. Rejoice then with me; for you have suffered no loss, and I have had a great gift, for which I would fain spend all this day in praising and thanking God.

There is still another double attraction of the Blessed Sacrament, on which a few words should be said. As the saints are connected with the Blessed Sacrament in all these wonderful ways, which are extraordinary gifts and graces, and exceptions to the daily customs of our most patient Lord in His mystery of love, so He has deputed a whole caste of men who should be officially afc once the guardians and the masters of His Body. If the Holy Eucharist was instituted for Mary, so the priesthood was created for the Holy Eucharist. Our whole life as priests resolves itself into duties and cere monies with regard to it. To that end we are deputed. We are taken out of the world and set apart. The mark of Jesus Christ is put upon us, and the spirit of the world, and the ways of the world, and the allowable things even of the world, are to us what they are not to others. We have to enter the Holy of Holies daily, in one way or another. We have to handle God, and to be ready at all moments to wait upon and carry about and administer the infinite substantial purity of the Most High. An invisible character has been sculptured upon our soul by the chisel of the Holy Ghost, that we may be the property of the Blessed Sacrament for ever. Our hands have been anointed to touch Jesus. Even He Himself in the holy oil of Extreme Unction shrinks from the spot where that other greater unction went before. There is not a nun on the Quirinal who is so much or so truly a Sacramentine as we priests are, all of us. None of the mystical wonders of the saints are to be compared to ours. They attract Him from the tabernacle; we from heaven. He raises Himself from the corporal and lays Himself upon their tongues; we lift

Him up, and break Him into three pieces, and He re mains unbroken, and He loves us for what we dare to do. We bid Him go to the garrets of dying sinners, and lie obeys. We lay Him on the tongues of dreadful, polluted, but secret sinners, and He makes no sign of Ilia repugnance. What are the marvels of the saints to these? The Fraction of the Host is more than all of them collectively; and then there is still left the wonder of wonders, the Consecration.

0 what are we, and what should we be? Mary drew the Eternal Word down from heaven once, while we draw Him daily. She bore Him in her arms till He grew beyond it; but with us His Sacred infancy is pro longed throughout our lives. Can we look into our Mother's face and tell her we are in this way greater than she, and then not think of the holiness our dread office requires? To Jesus Himself we are Mary, and Joseph, and the apostles, and the evangelists, and if His dear Sacrament require it, the company of martyrs also: while to the people we are as Jesus Himself. With us priests, self-preservation is but the second law of our nature; the preservation of the Blessed Sacrament is our first. 0 how happy would the slow martyrdom of our unworldly lives be, did we but strive after sacerdotal holiness! If we attract the Blessed Sacrament even so far off as the throne of God in heaven, ough we not to feel His corresponding attraction in oiu hearts? The attraction of the Holy Eucharist is our vocation, our ecclesiastical spirit, our sanctity, our joy. The fires of hell cannot burn the characters out of our souls. The splendours of heaven will but light it up with more excessive beauty. Mary there is our first devotion; Joseph is our second; our fathers the apos tles are our third; and who can discern, for the blood of self-sacrifice makes them both alike, between the pirit of the martyrs and the spirit of ecclesiastics? 0 n what a close union with Mary ought we not to live, to lean upon her power, to imbibe her dispositions, to learn how to minister to Jesus, to handle Him gently, and to worship Him with whole and undivided hearts! St. Ignatius says he saw nothing but Mary all through the canon: how shall we say mass without her? When we bear the Blessed Sacrament about from the tabernacle to His throne, from the altar to the altar-rail, from the Church to the sick, and above all in that overwhelming privilege, a procession, shall we not reel and totter if Joseph be not at our side the while? Mary has abandoned her Babe to us, with a reality of which the favours of S. Cajetan and others into whose arms she gave Him were but merest figures; for it was not Him self they held, as He really is. That is the solitary grandeur of the Blessed Sacrament. When S. Angela of Foligno, assisted at the mass of an unworthy priest, at the Fraction of the Host she heard a low voice of murmuring, piercing sweetness thus complain, "Alas! how they break Me and make the Blood flow from My limbs I" Ah! my Fathers and Masters, my Brothers in this intolerable grace! do we not each of us know in his own secret soul at least one priest, and that there can be but one, who, if he had his due, could never break the HovC without having his own heart broken also by th<? I* t itable sweetness of that plaintive cry 't

Footnotes

  1. Sarconio. Ritratto di S. Rafaele, p. 43. Da Ponto. Life of thazar Alvarez. Vita, cap. xxi. £ Vie, cap. vii. ↩

  2. Life ii. p. 80. Orat. Edit. The words in italics are my own. ↩

  3. Opera, vol. vii. f Lib. iv. para ii. cap. rxxi. no. 32. ↩

  4. The second part of Velasquez' Maria Forma Dei, or De Augustissimo Eucharistiee Sacramento, is merely a section of his great work, De Maria Forma Dei, which I cannot learn was ever published in extenso. This is, to the best of my knowledge, by far the most voluminous work on the connection between the Blessed Sacrament and our Lady: and it is a most unfavourable specimen. Worthless rn theology, weary with its prolix and forced analogies, always straining doctrines and putting the screw on Scripture, it is just one •f those books which damages real devotion to our Blessed Lady by the reaction it produces, in common with all attempts to raise that devotion into a category to which it does not theologically belong. To startle by extravagant statements, and then to explain that our strong language does not represent a theological reality, but only an exaggerated figure, is just the way to ruin catholic devotions and so to injure souls. Yet how common it is! Nothing is in reality so strong as plain theology, and it has an intrinsic persuasiveness which nothing can surpass. ↩

  5. Part. iii. quaest. Ixxxi. artic. 1, 2, 3, and 4. ↩

  6. Proveibs viii. J Cap. vii. n. 113. ↩

  7. Mystik. B. ii. ↩

  8. "To these two exercises, the one of charity towards her neigh bour.and the other of compassion for Jesus Christ, her Son and her God, she added a third, and this was, to receive the Sacred Body of her Blessed Son, consecrated by the words which He ordained. Mass was said for her by her blessed son and chaplain, the evangelist St. John; and he communicated and she communicated, and happy was he who merited to be the acolyte and to servo that mass and to hold tho communion cloth for Our Lady when she received Our Lord. ↩

  9. Raynaldus. Annales, sub anno 1392. ↩

  10. Most of these instances are taken from Gorres, Christliche Uk, scattered through the third, fourth, and fifth books. ↩

  11. Gorres gives the following examples of the saints. 1. Thou tcho could fed the Blessed Sacrament. Mary of Agreda, St. Rose of Lima. 2. Thote tcho could taste it. Lucy of Adelhausen, Angela of Foligno, Ida of Louvain. 3. Thote who could smell it. Giles of ilheggio, Catherine of Siena, St. Philip Neri, Herman Joseph, 4. Those who heard it. Jerome Gratian, Henri Suso, Joseph of Cupertino. 5. Those who could see it. Joseph of Cupertino, Vera nica of Binasco, Peter of Toulouse, Catherine of Siena, Mary of Oignies, Ac. ↩

  12. Bollandist. ap Jan. xiii. ↩

  13. Oratorian Edition, p. 383. ↩

Chapter 29 of 31