Letter 43. To a Lady. on Withheld Communion

. • •. You are right in obeying your confessor, whether he deprives you of the comfort of frequent communion in order to test you, or whether he does so because you are not sufficiently earnest in correcting your impatience. I should be inclined to think that he has both objects in view; and you must persevere in patience so long as he sees fit thus to deprive you, feeling sure that he does nothing without due consideration. If you obey humbly, one communion will be really more profitable to you than several made in a different spirit; food is never so nourishing as when we are hungry with exercise, and the exercise of mortifying impatience will invigorate your spiritual digestion.

But be gentle in your humiliation, and often make an act of love thereof. Put yourself awhile in the attitude of the Canaanitish woman, unworthy to eat the

“children's bread," and say, “Yes, Lord, I am truly as a dog — I, who am prone to wound my neighbours by my impatient words. But even as the dogs gather up crumbs under their masters' table, so I ask of Thee, dear Lord, if not Thy Blessed Body, at least the blessing Its Presence confers on those who come near in loving reverence.” Some such mind you should have, my dear child, on those days when you would have communicated if you were allowed....

Your feeling of being wholly God's is not an illusion, but you must be rather more diligent in the practice of virtue, and specially in those points where you are most deficient; warm feelings in prayer are good, but it will not do to rest in them to the neglect of good deeds, or the mortification of our passions.

t*55.3 XLV.