His Divine Person ; all the avenues of the palaces of the God of Heaven are freely opened ; it costs nothing, no money is needed to have the honour of speaking to Him. Ineffable consolation ! Christian souls being so easily able to enjoy the Presence of Him, who makes the felicity of the Blessed, already partake, in some degree, of the joys of a blissful eternity. They find Paradise out of Paradise; earth is changed into heaven, and men have no great reason to envy the angels their happiness, seeing they possess Him who makes the height of angelic bliss.
Would to God that all the poor, all the afflicted, all those who are persecuted and forsaken, all who are held in contempt and who have had losses, would listen to these truths, and would remember the words of the Apostle : — Quomodo non cum illo omnia nobis donavit ! That the Eternal Father, in giving us his well-beloved Son, has given us all things.
Jesus is ours in the most Holy Sacrament ; He belongs to all who will receive Him ; but Jesus is God, therefore He is the Great and Supreme Good,
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Can there be anything wanting to Him who is in possession of this Infinite Treasure? O afflicted souls, be comforted ! He who satisfies all hearts, who fulfils all desires, is yours ! Rejoice, ye poor, for ye are very rich, you can enjoy Immense Good ; while the great and rich ones of the world reject you, and turn you from their houses and their society, and will not listen to you, the Great King of Angels gives you an audience as often as you desire it. He is pleased to hear you, and He likes your conversation when it comes from the heart; He fills you with His graces, He caresses you with His most precious favours, and places you in the rank, and amongst the number of His dearest favourites. Esurientes implevit bonis, et divites dimisit inanes. He has loaded the needy with His gifts, while He sends away the rich, who are full of this world's goods, but deprived of His favours.
SEVENTH MOTIVE.
JESUS IS VERY HUMBLE IN THE MOST HOLV SACRAMENT.
Discite a me quia mitis sum, et humilis corde. — Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart. — (Matt. xi. 29.)
O my soul ! we must here exclaim with the Prophet that the works of thy God, His designs and His thoughts, are impenetrable to all human understanding. We cannot contemplate them seriously without being overcome with love; for, when we
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reflect on the God of Paradise with all His Infinite Greatness fixing His dwelling amongst men, until the consummation of the world, for love of them, does it not seem that nothing more could be expected from His Infinite Love ?
But when we think, when we know, that this ever Adorable Being, hiding all His greatness, bears extreme humiliations in the Divine Eucharist, can we find words, or even thoughts, on a subject which will be the astonishment of all eternity?
Jesus Christ, says the Apostle, emptied Himself in becoming man; the holy writer could not use stronger terms to tell us something of the Humility of the Son of the Eternal Father. But where shall we find words able in any way to express the inconceivable abasement of the same God of Majesty in the Most Holy Sacrament ? Ecce puerum dedi te gentibus; contcmptibilis tu es valde, says the Scripture. We must confess that the Eternal Child is in a state of great humiliation ; but at His birth angels poured forth celestial music, while in the Divine Eucharist all is silence. He dwells in Egypt as an exile, but at His arrival every idol fell to the ground. He is despised by the Pharisees in His Public Life, but He raises the dead, and six or seven thousand persons follow Him to make Him their King.
If He is abject on Calvary by His Death, He is glorious by the marvels that are accomplished; the rocks are rent, the sun is darkened, the graves are opened; but in the Blessed Sacrament, His humi-
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liation is carried to excess; the senses there perceive nothing. Here, my God, who is the God of Glory, is clothed only in the fragile species of bread and wine ! He might, at least, have appeared only a child, as He did in the manger, or a man, as He did on Calvary ; but no, we perceive only the appearance of bread. O my soul ! let us remember that this is the study of pure Love, the Divine school where we must learn to walk in the holy paths of Christianity, into which we have been called and brought by such special grace.
After this abasement of our Blessed Lord, if humility has ever seemed difficult to us, ought not vanity now to be placed among things that are impossible ? O dust, O ashes, what sayest thou to such startling truths? It would be good for us here to place before our eyes those questions in which our pride suffers ; is there a heart to be found that still refuses to submit to the greatest humiliation possible, at the sight of the surprising abjection of its God ?
The Great All reduces Himself below that which is nothing; where then shall nothingness place itself? It often happens that, when there are numerous communicants, imperceptible fragments of the Sacred Host fall to the ground, so that, in a certain manner, the God of Paradise is in the dust, at our feet. Strange Spectacle for the eyes of the holy Angels who, seeing their Sovereign brought so low, behold, at the same time, nothing but
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insolence in the greater number of those who are in our Churches. Pride reigns in their minds, in their intentions, in their posture, in their dress ; pride so excessive, that it often leads these followers of This Humbled God, to dispute precedence in His Presence, to dispute their places, and the vain honours of this world, which is so deceitful and so miserably deceived. This seems inconceivable, but alas ! it is seen every day.
I say, therefore, that it will be difficult to find a perfect Christian, and thus it is that the God of Christians is humbled ; we hear and we see people who call themselves Christians, but who live and speak like infidels. These wretched white-washed Christians say : Why should I yield ? Why do you ask me to humble myself to a person who is my inferior ? O words, O thoughts, O designs that deserve to be held in execration by all the faithful ! O my soul, my resolution is made, — you must yield to every creature, you must humble yourself beneath all men, whoever they are. We must always think ourselves below every one else, look upon ourselves as the last in the world : after the humiliation of our Master in the Most Holy Sacrament, all our honour ought to be to bear every possible abjection. We must make humiliation this point of honour, and the contempt of others ought to be a subject for our glory. A soul that is a little enlightened on the humility of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament, is capable of practising all
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kinds of humiliations. O my God, my Sovereign ! alas, how is it possible for any one who knows Thee, to act in any other way ? The world does not understand these practices : but the world knows not God !
EIGHTH MOTIVE.
JESUS IS VERY POOR IN THE MOST HOLY
SACRAMENT.
Pauper sum ego. — I am poor. — (Psalm lxxxvii. j6.)
That voice, O my soul, which thou nearest, is the voice of the Holy Spirit. This ought to remove all doubt from our minds; it ought fully to convince us of an inconceivable but very certain truth, which the Divine Spirit teaches us by the mouth of the Royal Prophet, who, speaking in the person of our Blessed Lord, assures us that He is poor : Pauper sum ego. Let us admire this striking truth in the Divine Eucharist, where He, who is the Lord of all things, is exceeding poor, and in many places scarcely possesses a Church wherein to repose. Thou knowest, O Eternal Greatness! Thou knowest, O Worthy King of Paradise! how often we have found only Ciboriums
