THE BODY OF THE DRAGON
If you remember, when Madeleine had realised that the feast of Saint
Magdalene was approaching, an idea had flashed into her head which she
had not then dared to entertain. But it had slowly crept back and now had
established itself as a fixed purpose. It was this—on the feast of Saint
Magdalene to communicate, _without having first received Absolution_.
She felt that it would please the potent Saint that she should commit
a deadly sin in her honour. Also, it would mean a complete and final
rupture with Jansenism. And with one stroke she would annihilate her
Salvation—that predestined ghostly certainty to the fulfilment of which
the Celestial Powers seemed bent on sacrificing all her worldly hopes
and happiness. Yes, she would now be able to walk in security along the
familiar paths of life, unhaunted by the fear of the sudden whirr of
wings and then—the rape to the love of invisible things.
So on Sunday, the twenty-second of July, she partook of the Blessed
Sacrament. Arnauld had written in the ‘Fréquente Communion’: ‘_therefore
as the true penitent eats the body of Jesus Christ, so the sinner eats
the body of the Dragon_.’
Well, and so she was eating the body of the Dragon! The knowledge gave
her a strange sense of exaltation and an awful peace.