to a worthy communion, but also from that fatal attachment to any venial sin, which is the obstacle to a profitable communion. This remote preparation, properly speaking, should extend from one communion to anothereach reception of the holy Eucharist should be a preparation for the following, and thanksgiving for the foregoing communion. You should communicate at stated periods, once a month, once a fortnight, or oftener, according to the advice of your director. In proportion as the happy days of communion draw near, your longing desires to be united to your God should increase; your thoughts, affections, and actions, even the most indifferent, should be directed as a preparation for your approaching happiness; above all, your watchfulness over yourself, and endeavours to correct your habitual failings, should redouble. Thus would remote preparation for the holy Eucharist conduce to the sanctification of your whole life, and each communion become a perfect preparation for your viaticum, or last reception of the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ. Immediate Preparation for Communion consists, as your Catechism points out, "in being in the state of grace, penetrated with a lively faith, animated with a firm hope, and inflamed with an ardent charity." If you have done every thing in your power to make your confession according to the method you have been taught, and with all the dispositions which have been so fully explained; if you sincerely detest, not only grievous sins, but every venial offence of your life, and generally every spot and stain which may be an obstacle to the grace you hope to receive, you may trust in the mercy of your Creator, that you have acquired the first immediate dispositions for a good and fervent communion. This disposition consists in sanctifying grace, and that purity of heart which Jesus Christ recommends to all communicants, by washing the feet of his Apostles before he administered to them his adorable body, though he had expressly assured them that they were clean; that is, exempt from every grievous sin. But remember, that if you expected the visit of any person whom you loved and highly respected, you would not be content with preparing a perfectly clean chamber for his reception, you would also endeavour to ornament it as much as possible; consequently, you should not be satisfied with having cast out the filth of sin from that heart in which God himself is so soon to lodge; you should endeavour to adorn and beautify it to the utmost extent of your ability. The ornaments of the soul are virtues one single act of love, of contrition, of humility, one victory over any particular failing, sinful inclination, or passion, exalts and advances a soul more in the sight of God, than all the brilliant achievements of the greatest conquerors; and also, is more effectual in preparing a soul for communion than many long prayers, which often proceed only from the lips. Be therefore particularly careful, when preparing for communion, to profit of every little opportunity of overcoming yourself; such as, being silent when you are inclined to speak impatiently; bearing with the little trials which the tempers or inclinations of others may occasion; behaving with gentleness and for bearance, when spoken to unkindly; endeavouring to oblige every one, particularly those who may have disobliged you; being strictly obedient and docile to your superiors, and uniformly exact to all the rules of your school, offering up your studies, and the salutary restraints you are under, as a preparation for communion; conquering your own will, and cheerfully yielding to that of others; avoiding the least appearance of ill temper, even in looks, and taking care to bear all the little inconveniences you may have to suffer from cold, heat, or fatigue, without those idle, superfluous complaints which are so common, yet which never diminish the evil. These little acts of virtue are the gems with which Jesus desires to find your heart ornamented. If you be on your guard, you will find innumerable occasions for thus proving your desire to receive worthily a God who does so much for you, and who has prepared, in the holy Communion, so great and precious a recompense for the sacrifices you may have to offer him when he enters your heart. The immediate preparation should commence at least three days before that is, you your communion; should spend those three days as retired as the duties of your state of life will permit; but at all events, in a spirit of recollection, in watchfulness over yourself, and in the practice of those acts of virtue alluded to, which are consist A Prayer for the three Days before Communion. 179 ent with all circumstances and conditions. You should likewise discharge your spiritual duties most fervently, particularly your meditations, for which the following considerations are arranged. If you require any instruc tions as to the method of meditation, you will find suffi cient in the explanation of that holy exercise to be found in this book. But though you ought to prepare for communion as fervently as if every thing depended on yourself, yet you should be firmly persuaded that all your own efforts, however fervent they may be, could never dispose your soul for a worthy communion; that must be chiefly the work of God, who will not refuse to do for you, if you humbly and constantly implore it, all that he knows to be beyond your ability. A very enlightened spiritual writer observes on this subject, that "if a great monarch were to condescend to lodge with a poor widow, he would not expect that she should provide him with accommodations suited to his rank-he would know her poverty, and therefore would send the officers of his household to prepare all things necessary." Let one of your chief petitions to God be that he, in like manner, would deign to prepare his own dwelling in your soul; that as he knows your poverty and weakness, he himself would supply for all your deficiencies, and send forth his Holy Spirit into your heart; that he would also employ the ministry of his holy Angels to assist you, and by their intercession make all things ready for the reception of so great and good a King. For this intention, say devoutly, on the three days preceding your communion, the following Prayer, and beg the same grace frequently by short aspirations, which you know may be made in the most distracting occupations. A Prayer to be said for three Days before Communion. O adorable JESUS! who hast left us the precious treasure of thy sacred body and blood, to be the food and life of our souls, discover to me the extent of the happiness I hope to enjoy in a few days, by receiving thee in the holy Eucharsit. I am soon to approach thy sanctuary, to sit at thy 180 A Prayer for the three Days before Communion. table, and be honoured with the actual presence of that Omnipotent Being, before whom the angels themselves tremble. O my God! I rejoice at the prospect of so great a blessing; I ardently desire to receive thee, and adore thee in the centre of my soul. I earnestly beg thy powerful grace, that my sins may not be an obstacle to the blessings which always follow from a worthy communion. O merciful Jesus! thou seest my heart, thou knowest that I would prefer all the miseries of this world, and even a thousand deaths, to the misfortune of receiving thee unworthily. Thou art too merciful, too good to permit that I should commit that evil which I sincerely dread; therefore I firmly trust in thee, and now place my whole heart and soul in thy divine hands, that thou mayest thyself prepare the abode thou art so soon to enter. I desire that every moment, from this to the happy day of my communion, may be spent in the fervent exercise of all the virtues that should adorn thy sanctuary; particularly lively faith in this adorable mystery, firm hope, ardent love, sincere contrition, and an earnest desire to be united to thee. Give me, I conjure thee, light to discover my sins, and grace to detest and sincerely confess them; that the merits of thy precious blood being applied to my soul in the tribunal of penance, I may approach to thee, clothed with the wedding garment of innocence, and receive, in the holy communion, those graces necessary for persevering in thy service to the end of my life. Amen. 181 MEDITATIONS For the three days before Communion. FIRST DAY. On the opposite Dispositions of Communicants. The preparatory Acts for Meditation will be found in the Course of this Work, as pointed out by the Index. I. Point.-CONSIDER seriously, that the adorable Eucharist is denominated by the Church, a source of death to the wicked, because this bread of life, though the source and fountain of life itself, can as little strengthen those who are spiritually dead in mortal sin, as food could strengthen a dead body. Such souls, far from participating in the divine treasures contained in the holy Eucharist, defile themselves with the guilt of the most horrible of all sacrileges; they insult the Almighty himself-attack and profane the adorable humanity of Jesus Christ-they trample on the blood of the new covenantand, to crown all their misfortunes, they, as the Apostle says, eat and drink their own damnation. Ponder well the import of those awful words;-consider, that like the Jews, who consented that the blood of Jesus should fall on them to their destruction, unworthy communicants ratify themselves the sentence of their condemnation—a sentence which they, as it were, write on their own hearts -a sentence, which begins to be in some measure executed, even in this life, for the justice of God often abandons the profaners of his adorable body to such obduracy and insensibility, that they at length sink into a species of spiritual lethargy :-after having braved the greatest of all dangers, they seem to fear no other, and they thoughtlessly run on from sin to sin, until at length the time for repentance and mercy is over. Trace these dreadful evils to their source, and you will find them all to originate in mortal sin, that sovereign evil, without which there would be no evil;-that great and only obstacle to the designs of Jesus in the institution of the * Mors est malis.-Lauda Sion, Hymn for Corpus Christi. |