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Section VII. The Life of the Church

IP the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest work of God, the most perfect picture of Him, and the most complete representation of Jesus, it must needs follow that it is the very life of the Church, being not only the gift of Jesus, but the very living Jesus Himself. This is true, whether we look at the Blessed Sacrament in our relation to it, or in its relation to us; in other words, whether we look at it as a devotion or as a power; and it ia twofold as a devotion, and twofold as a power, in that it is both Sacrifice and Sacrament.

Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is the queen of all devotions. It is the central devotion of the Church. All others gather round it, and group themselves there as satellites; for others celebrate his mysteries; this is Himself. It is the universal devotion. No one can be without it, in order to be a Christian. How can a man be a Christian who does not worship the living Presence of Christ? It is the devotion of all lands, of all ages, of all classes. National character makes no impression on it. It is not concerned with geography, or blood, or the influence of government. It suits no one rank, or trade, or profession, or sex, or individual temperament, more than another. How can it, for it is the worship of God turned into a devotion by the addition of the sacramental veils? It is, moreover, our daily devotion. All times are its own. As a sacrifice, it is the daily expiation, and as a sacrament, the daily bread of the

2K faithful. It is the cause and the object of many religious orders, whose whole lives and energies it simply engrosses to itself. There is incessant adoration of it ever going on in the Church; there are many cities where the Blessed Sacrament is only taken down in one Church when it is put up in another, and night and day the inhabitants watch and pray before it. In many con vents, through the silent night, gentle Victims of reparation weep and worship before the lonely tabernacle. In many countries pious seculars, men and women, are banded in associations to take hours of adoration in succession, wherever they may be. Here and at the antipodes, if we count both sides of the earth at oncey through the four-and-twenty hours there is uninterrupted mass. And what with preparation for mass and communion, and what with thanksgiving, if we could see the whole world at any given hour, we should see multitudes deeply absorbed in the Blessed Sacrament. Nor less wonderful is its power over private life. It is at all hours making all men happier, because it is hin dering sin, sweetening bitterness, calming angry tem pers, soothing sorrows, and engendering countless works of mercy. Social life, with marriage and its domestic institutions, is always feeling its hallowing influence; and it is ever multiplying peace in the political world between governments and the governed. It can even' attract heretics by a kind of spell, and in gentle but erring hearts it silently preaches itself, sweetly constraining more souls into Peter's fold than the close rea sonings of the controversialist or the greater influence of the hot words of a true preacher of Jesus Crucified. Its alliance with the deep spiritual life of interior soul& is unbroken, and is continually leading to the heights of self-renunciation and the wonders of supernatural prayers. The ordinary world, the moral, social, political, literary, devotional, ecclesiastical, and mystical worlds, —the Blessed Sacrament is brooding over them all with fertile, pacific, and creative power throughout the mighty centuries. 0 silent whirlpool of divinest love! ho\t calmly and strongly art Thou ever drawing Thy crea tures within the bosom and the inner circles of Thy gracious influence! 0 swiftly and surely and compassionately draw us down into the depths of everlasting love, down to the very Vision of the most dear and glorious Trinity! Thy name is Jesus; for Thou shalt save Thy people from their sins.

But the Blessed Sacrament is not only the devotional life of the Church; it is also in itself a lifegiving power. Indeed it seems to embrace the whole Church and make itself coextensive with all the wants of redeemed but exiled humanity; and it does this in a sevenfold manner, by Mass, by Communion, by Benediction, by the Tabernacle, by Exposition, by Viaticum, and by Procession. These are the seven principal mysteries of our Sacramental God; and each of them has a spirit of its own and a way of its own, making it as discernible from the rest, as one mystery of the Thirty-Three Years is different from another. A whole treatise would be lequired to do justice to this single branch of my subject; but no room is now left for more than a mention of these seven mysteries.

First and foremost is the Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass, where God Himself is both Victim, and Priest, and the Majesty to whom it is offered. It is a true expiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, not a shadow of the Sacrifice of the Cross, but the very self same, renewed and continued in unbloody mysteries. In itself it is infinite, and is only limited by our own fervour and devotion. If we look at the creation of God, we shall find it owing to God four infinite debts, not one tithe of any one of which could it ever pay. It owes God infinite praise, because of His boundless perfections, infinite expiation because of its innumerable sins, infinite thanksgiving because of His immeasurable mercies, and infinite petition because of its endless necessities. Not the Immaculate Heart of Mary with the wide realms of angelic sanctity, all multiplied a thousand-fold, could pay any one of these infinite obli gations. But the Sacrifice of the Mass pays them all ten thousand times a day, and each single time supereminently and superabundantly. Through it come all the graces earth receives. We have never bad a grace which did not come to us through the Mass. Number less temporal calamities are averted by it daily all over the world. From it is continually rising up to the Majesty of the Most Holy Trinity a perpetual incense of adoration, intercession, thanksgiving, satisfaction, and supplication, itself in man's imperfect words equal in worth to the worth of the uncreated God. Multiplying words will not enable us to say more. Every thing, as St. Thomas shows, which is either said or done at mass is a celestial mystery; and like all other things in the world, it has its own angel, whose powerful name and surpassing glory are not revealed, but who bears the oblation to the throne above. The Sacrifice, as it proceeds, exhibits the History of our Saviour's

Passion, sets forth the resurrection of the redeemed soul, and pictures the fate and fortunes of the Mystical Body of Christ. In a word, the earth lives and moves and has its being in the Sacrifice of the Mass. There is no good on earth, of which it is not the sufficient cause. There is no stay put to the ravages of hell, but through the Mass. There is no alleviation in Purgatory which is not distilled like balm from its abundant cha lice. There is no increment of heavenly glory, but through the Sacrifice, and no new inmate of heaven whom the Mass has not landed in his secure immortal rest.

Communion is the second sacramental mystery. Theo logians truly say that the greatest action of worship which a creature on earth can pay to His Creator, is to receive Him as his food in this tremendous mystery. When therefore we reflect that Communion is to the whole spiritual world among men what food is to the natural world, we shall perceive the way in which it is at all hours acting with divine force and in innumerable holy manifestations upon the whole race of man. If we take up a long and minute life of a saint, it sometimes almost scares us to see how much went to complete his sanctity. What seas of temptations he went through! What armies of difficulties! What cruel derelictions, what weary labours, what fearful mortifications, what long years, what diversified trials! And it seems as if he could have been spared none of them, if he was to be the saint he was. Yet one single Communion con tains grace enough of its own self to make us saints, if our fervour would only drink deep enough of its inexhaustible fountains. The mercy of God, which called 47 us out of nothing and gifted us with free-will, has thereby caused us to run the risk, and the possible sight of His blessed Self makes it a risk a good man likes to run, of being lost eternally. This risk involves also long perseverance in cares, pains, woes, labours, dissatis factions, and disappointments. Yet it would have been a huge privilege, a boon worthy of God, to have been allowed to run this risk for the chance of once receiving Holy Communion. Were we to collect into one all the human actions that have ever been done in the world, with all that was noble, generous, heroic, gentle, affectionate about them, and place them by the side of the act which a man performs in receiving Communion, they would seem less than nothing, a shadow of a shadow. It is brighter than all glories, deeper than all sciences, and more royal than all magnificences. But what are all these ways of measuring the dignity of Communion but like the leaves of the forests and the sands of the sea which we play with when we try to make a little child understand eternity, and which in truth we ourselves understand as little as he?

Neither, amid higher or more spiritual thoughts, must we forget to meditate with holy fear on the temporal judgments, by which God avenges the profane reception of the Blessed Sacrament. The Holy Ghost bade St. Paul reveal to the Church that because of sacrilegious Communions many of the faithful are visited with sickness, and some even with temporal death. It is as if the interpositions of the divine indignation, which in days of old protected the Ark of the Lord, gathered now around the adorable Sacrament. Durandus, in his Rationale, tells that for many years in Rome there were so many sudden deaths about Easter that the public attention was drawn to it, especially as there seemed no reason in the ordinary course of things why the average should be so greatly exceeded always at the occurrence of that moveable feast. At length the pope received some light by which he was led to infer that this annual visitation of sudden deaths was in consequence of the number of sacrilegious Commu nions made by those who were fulfilling the Easter precept. In consequence of this he added the following verse to the paschal hymn:

Quaesumus author omnium, In hoc Paschali gaudio, Ab omni mortis impetu Tuum defondo populuiu j which since the correction of the hymns has stood thus:

Ut sis peronne mentibus Paschale, Jesu, gaud iu in, A morto dira criminum Vitae rcnatos libera.1

Benediction is as it were the evening sacrifice, as it is when noon is past that it is most usually given It is as if the sense and instinct of catholic devotion would fain fill the afternoon with the Blessed Sacrament, as Mass fills the morning, as if it could not wait from morning to morning without some manifestation or use of the Sacramental Jesus, or at least without Him could not keep His own feasts, or those of His Mother, the angels, or the saints. Moreover, as if to correspond to this affectionate craving in the multitude of believers, the Church seems with the more facility and abundance to allow the various worships of the Blessed Sacrament, in proportion as the wickedness, heresy and ignorance of the world outrage and blaspheme the mystery of love. St. Philip once beheld our Lord in the Host at Exposition giving benediction to the kneeling crowd, as if it were the natural attitude and customary occupation of His goodness in the Blessed Sacrament. It would be difficult to find words to express the greatness or the reality of the graces which our dear Lord imparts to us at Benediction. They fall not only on the cares and sorrows, the troubles and temptations, the faults and unworthinesses, which we venture to spread before Him at the moment; but they light also on all the weak points of our soul of which we ourselves are ignorant, and on our present circumstances the danger of which we are unable to perceive, and on the evil spirits around us, making them stupid and nerveless, and on our dear Guardian angel, rewarding him for his charitable toils, and enlightening and invigorating him in his blessed office. We must remember also that the grace of Benediction is not only in the faith and love which it excites in our souls, great as is that boon, but that it comes from Him, solid, powerful, and substantial, purifying and creative, because it participates in the reality of the Blessed Sacrament itself. Everything which has to do with this mystery enters behind the veils into this awful reality, and thus has a characteristic life, which is like nothing else in our devotions. In this reality lies the attraction of the Blessed Sacrament. This is not the place to enter upon the practices which holy men have devised for Benediction. Every one will follow the bent of his own devotion. So much may bo Baid: the Gospels mention three especial benedictions of our Lord, and to some one or other of these we may spiritually unite all the Benedictions of the Blessed Sacrament which we receive. One while He blesses little children, as in the tenth chapter of St. Mark, and we may in spirit prostrate ourselves beneath the shadow of His outstretched sacramental arms, as if we were little ones, and desired nothing so much from Him as an increase of that childlike simplicity, with which He Himself is so intensely pleased. Again, we read that at the Ascension, when he was parted from the apostles, He lifted up His hands and blessed them, and at once their sorrow was turned into exceeding joy, and their timidity into bravest zeal for souls. There are times and duties when we are fain to have these graces of joy and zeal multiplied in our sad and weary souls. Again, there is the Doomsday benediction which He describes Himself as giving; Come, ye blessed of My Father, enter into the kingdom, prepared for you before the foundation of the world. We may unite ourselves to this benediction to obtain the grace of final perseverance, the dearest of His gifts, because it is one so altogether His. There are some, if I may dare to recommend a practice myself, who are so overwhelmed with the extent and variety of their own wants and of our Lord's gifts, that at the moment of Benediction, they bow their heads, and at each sound of the bell repeat that prayer of one of the saints of the desert, Sicut scis et vis, Domine! As Thou knowest and wiliest, Lord! and then add, remembering that we arc blessed that moinenfc 47* by the very substance which was taken from Mary, those words of the Office, Et innumerabilis honestaa cum ilia, And all kinds of purity with her! as if these two ejaculations concentrated all they had to say, and all they would fain in that brief moment lay before the Sacred Heart of their dear Redeemer.

The Tabernacle is the fourth sacramental mystery. How beautiful is the silent patient life of that prison-house of love! Everything about our Lord has such endurance! It does not come and go like a transient flash of grand lightning, deepening the darkness of the night. It is not a visitation which is over before we have realized it. But just as he stood quietly among His apostles in the amazing beauty of His Resurrection, and said, Handle Me and see, so does He abide with us in the Blessed Sacrament, that we may get to know Him, to outlive our tremulous agitation, and the novelty of our surprise, and to grow familiar with Him, if we can, as our life-long Guest. There we can bring our sorrows and cares and necessities at all hours, when there is no ceremonial of the Church. We can choose our own time, and our visit can be as short or as long as duties permit or as love desires. There is an unction and a power in the mere silent companionship of the Blessed Sacrament which is beyond all words. Mem bers of religious communities accustomed to sleep under the same roof with the Blessed Sacrament, know the feeling of anxious loneliness and the sense of some unsatisfied want when they are away from home. The feverishness of Good Friday passes upon their spirits, when they are staying where there is no Blessed Sacrament in the house. The ways of visiting the Blessed

Sacrament must be as various as the souls of men. Some love to go there to listen; some to speak; some to confess to Him as if He were their priest; some t? examine their consciences, as before their judge; som2 to do homage as to their king; some to study Him as their Doctor and Prophet: some to find shelter as with their Creator. Some rejoice in His Divinity, others in His Sacred Humanity, others in the mysteries of the season. Some visit Him on different days by His different titles, as God, Father, Brother, Shepherd, Head of the Church, and the like. Some visit to adore, some to intercede, some to petition, some to return thanks, some to get consolation; but all visit Him to love, and to all who visit Him in love He is a power of heavenly grace and a fountain of many goods, no single one of which the whole created universe could either merit or confer. The fifth sacramental mystery is Exposition, than which the Church bestows upon her children no more thoroughly maternal boon. Da Ponte3 says, that the sight of the Blessed Sacrament is the " richest vein of prayer," and he would have us look up humbly at the elevation at Mass, to catch a glimpse, like Zacchcus of old, amid the branches of sycamore, of the Saviour momentarily passing by. What riches then for the spirit of prayer, when for long quiet hours the Church ex poses Him for our adoration and delighted love? think it is Lanzi, but I am speaking from memory, f whc gives three methods of devotion at exposition, for those who prefer to go prepared with a method traced out for them. The first is to regard Him on His sacramental throne as the Brazen Serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, whereon all who gazed were healed of the mortal bites they had received from the serpents; for this is one of the most eminent and beautiful types of our Lord in His office of Kedeemer. We have all been bitten by the infernal serpent, and are sick with our wounds, and it is to Him we must look, and a look is sufficient, for the healing of our wounds. Or again we may gaze upon Him as exalted and enthroned as the Head of creation, according to that passage of the Apocalypse,4 "The Amen, the faithful and true witness, who is the beginning of the creation of God." We may approach Him as it were in the company of all His crea tures, and present ourselves to Him for His blessing, and give free expression in our hearts to the loyal joy we feel in being His creatures; for to be a creature, rightly considered, is our highest honour and our most precious right. Or again, which I have already spoken of, we may look upon Him as our Judge, comparing the silent gentle majesty of the Host with His blaze of glory at the Great Assize; and we will be beforehand with the terrors of His judicial royalty, by making peace now with His sacramental meekness.

Viaticum is the sixth mystery of the life of the Adorable Host; and who can tell its power? for it comes on the verge of life, and stretches out beyond it, and clasps and buckles together life and death, time and eternity, mortal suffering and immortal bliss. We die in the strength of the Viaticum, our judgment is tempered by its weakness, and our purgatorial pains are cooled beneath its shadow, and its energy waxes not feeble till it has landed us with more than angelic hand, at the feet of God in heaven. Foregoing life, the coming journey, the untold spiritual and invisible combat, the many-sided act of dying, all find their mysterious completion in the plenitude of the Viaticum; and the very flesh falls to dust, and is resolved into its original ele ments, bearing away with it the unseen force, the indiscernible and immeasurable and indivisible Seed which will one day call it all back, make it cognizably and numerically the same, and bathe it in a flood of immortal Deauty in a glorious Resurrection.

The seventh mystery of the Blessed Sacrament is its Procession, the highest culminating point of ecclesiastical worship and catholic ceremony. In it, as I have said in the Prologue, is expressed the notion of triumph. Our Sacramental God proceeds around the Church with all the pomp the poverty of human love can shed around Him, as the Conqueror of the human race. It is then that we feel so keenly He is our own, and the angela can claim less in Him than we. Procession is the function of faith, which burns in our hearts and beams in our faces, and makes our voices tremulous with emotion, as our Lauda Sion bids defiance to an unbelieving world. It is the function of hope, for we bear with ua our heaven which is on earth already, our reward who has put Himself into our hands as it were in pledge, and so we make the powers of hell to tremble while we tell them by shout and song how sure we are of heaven, and the adorable Sacrament meanwhile flashing radiance un bearable into the terrified intelligences of our unseen foes. It is the function of love, for it is the timid, happy, heartfelt, venturous use of our right to be familiar with Him. The Procession is moreover a pathetic representation to Him of all life, private, social, political, and ecclesiastical; for what are all lives of men and fa milies and states and churches, but processions of exiles, pining, toiling, travelling home to Him, and yet through this mystery, not only to Him, but also in His company? Such is the seven-fold manner in which the Blessed Sacrament is the life of the Church, and its grand life-giving power. But nothing can show its power more wonderfully than that the very shadow of it should it self be one of the greatest powers on earth. I speak of Spiritual Communion, which is in truth the Communion of the angels. Nothing can show its power with Jesus more wonderfully than the innumerable times in which the desire of Communion has enabled the soul to receive the real Communion by some stupendous miracle, as has been already related of St. Catherine of Siena and other saints, and eminently in the case of St. Juliana Falconieri, communicated through her breast without manducation: that is, her communion was real, without being either spiritual or, strictly speaking, sacramental; as theologians make manducation necessary to the latter. The Council of Trent5 recommends it to the faithful; and St. Thomasf says, They are considered to be com municated spiritually and not sacramental ly, who desire to receive this Sacrament; and they eat Christ spiritually under the species of this Sacrament; so that, as Scarai says,J they do not only receive Jesus spiritually,

Sess. xxii. de Sac. Miss. c. vi. but especially Sess. xiii. c. viii. t p. 3. qu. 21. art. 1 and 2. J Diret. Ascet. i. x. vii.

.] A PICTURE OF JESUS. 5G3 but this very sacrament spiritually. So the old martyr, St. Ignatius, says to the Romans, I do not desire the pleasure of this world, but I desire the Bread of God, the heavenly Bread, the Bread of life, the Flesh of Jesua Christ the Son of the living God, and the drink which is His Blood, which is love incorruptible and life eternal St. Alphonso, in his sweet little treatise on Visiting tho Blessed Sacrament,6 says, that our Lord showed to Siyter Paula Maresca two precious vessels, one of gold and the other of silver, in the former of which He preserved her sacramental Communions, and in the latter her spiritual Communions. Joanna of the Crossf affirmed, that she was often visited in spiritual Communion with the same graces she received in sacramental, and, with a sigh, she exclaimed, 0 rare method of communicating, where neither leave of confessor nor superior is needed, but only Thine, 0 my God! The Blessed Agatha of the Cross so pined with love of the Blessed Sacrament, that it is saidj that she would have died if her confessor had not taught her the practice of spiritual communion, and then she used to make two hundred spiritual commu nions every day. Surin and Scararaelli both assert that some souls receive sometimes greater graces in a spiritual than in a sacramental Communion; this is of course rare, and when it happens it is not through defect of the Sacrament, but defect of fervour in themselves. Surin, in his account of the favours he received after the famous possession of Loudun, has a chapter on the graces that came through the Holy Eucharist, and in it is this pas-7 sage: " Moreover it often happened that my soul was reduced to such an extreme want of that Bread of life, that when I did not communicate, its languor was so great as not only to impart itself to my body, but often to make me unable to take any food; and bread and wine giving me no refreshment, I was as it were constrained to take into my hand the bread which was before me. and to pray our Lord to give it power to invigorate me, I then ate the bread with that intention, and found that it had the same supernatural taste which I experienced in the Host, and this taste was so distinct and sensible, that I could not doubt from the strength it gave me but that it was our Blessed Lord, who in His infinite goodness had regard to my extreme desire to communicate, and thus nourished and satisfied my soul by the virtue of His Divine Body, which I received in desire with the same plenitude as if I had in effect been com municated by the hand of a priest."8

"This Food," says St. Catherine of Siena, speaking of our Lord's Flesh and Blood,f "strengthens us little or much, according to the desire of him who receives it, in whatever way he may receive it, sacramental ly or virtually;" and she then proceeds to describe virtual or spiritual Communion. St. TheresaJ is speaking of the very great importance of the soul's remaining alone in our Lord's presence, and thinking only of Him during the time of thanksgiving after Communion; and she speaks of spiritual Communion by the way, when the

V.] A PICTURE OF JESUS. 5G5 immediate subject before her is the disposition we ought to bring in order to receive our Lord worthily; and from this she is led to remark that these dispositions alone, even without the sacramental reception of our Lord, are productive of many graces to us. Her words are as fol lows: "Whenever, my daughters, you hear mass and do not communicate, you can make a spiritual Communion, which is a practice of exceeding profit, and you can immediately afterwards recollect yourselves within yourselves, just as I advised you when you communicate sacramentally; for great is the love of our Lord which is in this way infused into the soul. For when we prepare ourselves to receive Him, He never fails to give Himself to us in many modes which we comprehend

We read in the life of St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi that it was the custom in her monastery that, when daily Communion was hindered by the illness of the priest or any other cause, the nuns should communicate spiritually. The usual signal for Communion was given in the morning, and all being assembled, they prayed for half an hour, and then made a spiritual Communion. It was on one of these days that the Saint was communicated by St. Albert the Carmelite, saying the Confiteor, and the Domine non sum digna, and doing all that she was accustomed to do when receiving Communion; and she afterwards declared that she had seen the same saint with the pyx in his hand, going to communicate the other nuns. Her enlarged charity ardently desired that others also and especially those of her own monastery, should have a great hunger for that most holy Sacrament, and 48 2L9 this as well for the glory of God as for the good of their Own souls.

"We also read of her what will remind us of the gift Juan d' Avila attributes to our Blessed Lady. God, says the saint's biographer, gave her the grace to see Jesus in the bosom of her sisters under various forms. She saw Him in some as an Infant) in others at the ages of twelve, thirty, and thirty-three years; in others, suffering or crucified according to the desires, perfection, and capacity of each nun. Once, being in company with the other sisters, she glanced on all, and then said to one of her companions, 0 how I love these sisters, regarding them as so many tabernacles of the Blessed Sacrament, which they so often receive and conceal in their breasts! One Easter morning, whilst at table in the refectory, her face became so cheerful and glad, as actually to shine with delight. One of her novices, who was sewing, per ceived this, and said to her in confidence, " Mother-mistress, whence proceeds that joy?" " From the beauty of the Divine Presence," replied the saint; "for I behold Jesus reposing in the hearts of all the sisters." " In what form?" rejoined the novice. "All glorious and risen," she replied, "as the Church represents Him to-day."10

It is said of St. Angela Merici that when she was forbidden daily Communion, she supplied by fervent spiritual communions in the mass and often felt her heart as completely inundated by grace as if she had made a sacramental Communion, and she left as one of her legacies to her order an earnest recommendation of this devotion. f Father Squillante, of the Naples11

Oratory, in the life of Sister Mary of Santiago, of the Third Order of St. Dominic, which rivals Carmcl as a mystical garden of delights to the Heavenly Spouse,12 tell us that her love of the Blessed Sacrament was such that she had at last come to make a spiritual Communion at almost every breath she drew, so that iu her were fulfilled the words of Jeremiasf that in the desire of her heart she snuffed up the wind of her love, and that none turned her away.J Sister Francesca of the Five Wounds, an Alcantariue of Naples, used to visit the Blessed Sacrament in spirit when she could not go to the Church, and was often seen raised from the ground, with open arms, and her face turned to the nearest church, exclaiming, 0 my Spouse! my Spouse! 0 the joy of my heart! Would that I had the hearts of all men to bless Thee with! 0 ray dear Jesus! how is it that I am without Thee to-day? 0 happy tongues, that have received Thee! 0 happy walls, that shut up in those churches my dear Good! Would that my heart j Squillante Vita di Suor Maria, lib. ii. cap. ir.13

were a burning furnace of the fire of love, huge as the great world, to love Thee with! 0 happy priests, who are always near this Sun of Justice, this most sweet Lord! And she satisfied her love by frequent spiritual Communions, which were her remedy especially in times of spiritual desolation. Nay, her spiritual communions passed not seldom into real ones; for she was communicated by St. Raphael, who was her Guar dian, as the Blessed Benvenuta used to be by St. Gabriel. Repeatedly at the mass of Father Bianchi, the Barnabite, the chalice used to be snatched away by an invisible hand, which was St. Raphael's, and then re turned; on one occasion the Precious Blood was fully half consumed; and Francesca said to him, My Father! had it not been for St. Raphael who told me to leave it that you might consummate the Sacrifice, I should have drunk it all!14 In the life of Maria Scolastica Muratori, a Roman lady, by Father Gabrielli of the Bologna Oratory, we read that she tried to make a spiritual Communion every time she raised her eyes or drew her breath, so that, as she said, Were I to die suddenly, I should die as it were inhaling my God. Another of her devotions was to make a spiritual Communion in set form, whenever she saw Communion given to any one in the church, j"

What must the reality be, of which the shadow is such a power? If we had been with Jesus in Galilee He would have been all in all to us, when we knew His Divinity. He would have been our first thought in the morning, our last at night. So He was with His Mother. So He is with His Church. So should He be with us on earth, as He is at all hours with those in heaven. Sometimes we seem to get a glimpse of the deep abyss of love which the Blessed Sacrament truly is, and we begin to sink beyond our depth in joy, and love, and wonder. We can pray no prayer, but our silence itself is prayer. We can utter no praise, but then our whole soul itself is praise. And tears begin to burn our eyes with fire, when alas I the world has made some noise in our soul, or self has drawn attention to itself, and the light is gone. But in heaven it will not be so. 0 that we were come therefore to that happy shore, to that first unveiled sight of Jesus, which is our beatific welcome to our only true and eternal borne!

Footnotes

  1. Durandus ap. Arbiol. Desenganos Misticos. ii. 17. ↩

  2. Dux Spiritualis, Tract i. cap. xxi. ↩

  3. The book to which I think I am referring is the exquisite collection on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, published at the Propaganda press by Archbishop Cullen. ↩

  4. iii. 14 ↩

  5. p. 12 of Duffy's English translation. ↩

  6. Lohner, Bibliot Predicat. Art. Coramun ↩

  7. Barry, Ann6e Saincte tome 3. p. 89. ↩

  8. Histoiro Abr6ge"e de la Possession de Loudun. partie 4ieme. lir. ii. chap. Hi. ↩

  9. Dialogo. Trattato delFOrazione. cap. IxvL i Caniino de Perfeccion. cap. xxxv. ↩

  10. Life. Oratorian Edition, pp. 245-249. ↩

  11. Salvatori. Vita della Santa, lib. ii. cap. iii. p. 83. ↩

  12. It is not one of the least blessings for which English catholics have had to thank the infinite compassion of their Lord during the last few years, that we possess now the Third Order of St. Dominio in England. Those who are conversant, indeed we find the strength and consolation of their lives in the Acts of the Saints, well know that there is not a nook of the mystical paradise of our Heavenly Spouse where the flowers grow thicker or smell more fragrantly than this Order of multitudinous childlike Saints. Nowhere in the Church does the Incarnate Word show His "delight at being with tho children of men" in more touching simplicity, with more unearthly sweetness, or more spouselike familiarity, than in this the youngest family of St. Dominic. ↩

  13. ii. 26. ↩

  14. Vita dai Process!, parte ii. cap. i. pp. 148, 149, 151, 155. t Vita lib. ii. cap. viii. cap. xiii. lib. iii. cap. xi. ↩

Chapter 30 of 31