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“My God, how can it be that
Christians actually remain so long without giving this food to their
poor souls? They leave them to die of want.”
“They are close to this glorious Sacrament, like a person dying of
thirst by the side of a river, when he has only to bend his head... like
a person remaining in poverty with a treasury close beside him, when he
has only to stretch out is hand.” “My God, what misery and blindness...
when they have so many remedies for healing their souls, and such food
for preserving their health!... Alas! let us sorrowfully admit that man
grudges nothing to a body that sooner or later will be destroyed and
eaten by worms; while a soul created in the image of God, a soul which
is immortal, is despised and treated with the utmost cruelty...
“Tell me what it can profit you to leave your soul in so unhappy a state
by depriving it of the food which alone can create strength and give it
vigor. You are contented and at peace, you say... Is it because your
soul is only awaiting the moment when death will strike it and drag it
to hell?” Is it because you are vegetating in mediocrity and tepidity?
“What confusion you would feel, if your faith were not extinguished or
weakened, to see a father or mother, a brother or sister, a friend or
neighbor, go to the holy table to be fed with the adorable Body of Jesus
Christ and you yourself abstaining from it! My God, what a
misfortune--so much the greater because we do not comprehend it!”
“Do not say,” to justify your estrangement from the holy table, “that
you have too much to do. Has not the divine Savior said: ‘Come to
me all ye that labor and are exhausted: come to me, I will relieve
you.’” Can you resist an invitation so full of love and tenderness? “Do
not say that you are not worthy of it. It is true you are not worthy,
but you have need of it. If our Lord had been thinking of our worthiness
he would never have instituted his glorious sacrament of love, for no
one in the world is worthy of it--not the saints, nor the angels, nor
the archangels, nor the blessed Virgin... but he was thinking of our
needs.
Do not say that you are sinners, that you are too wretched, and that is
why you dare not approach it. You might just as well say that you
are too ill, and that that is why you will not try any remedy nor send
for the doctor.”
-this meditation taken from the writings and instructions of St. John
Vianney
The Cure of Ars and the Holy Eucharist, compiled by Abbe H. Convert,
The Neumann Press, Long Prairie, Minnesota, 2000
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