It is obedience, O my God! that leads me to Thy Holy Table: the tender
words by which Thou hast invited us would not have sufficed to draw me,
for in the troubled state of my soul I cannot be sure they are addressed
to me. Misery and infirmity are claims for admission to Thy Feast, but
nothing can dispense from the nuptial garment. Therefore when I turn my
eyes on myself, after having raised them to Thee, I doubt, I hesitate, I
tremble; for if I go from Thee I flee from life, and if I approach
unworthily, to my other sins I add the crime of sacrilege.[27] But Thy
merciful wisdom, O my God, whilst foreseeing our every need, has foreseen
all our weaknesses and has prepared helps for us against both presumption
and distrust. For if Thou hast not willed that, certain of Thy grace, we
should ever advance with the assurance of the Pharisee and say like him:
I come to the altar of the Lord because I know I am just in His eyes:
neither hast Thou permitted that a sacrament of love should become for us
a torture and an unavoidable snare. I therefore obey, O my God, and in
the darkness that envelops me I wish to follow implicitly the guidance of
him whom Thou hast appointed to lead me to Thee. I shall approach the
Holy Table without wishing for any other warrant than the words spoken by
my confessor, or rather by Thee: _You may receive Holy Communion_. I
accept, O my God!--be it a well merited punishment or a salutary
trial,--this privation of light and sensible devotion, this coldness and
distraction, which accompany me even into Thy presence when all the
faculties of my soul should be absorbed and confounded in sentiments of
adoration and of love. Faith, hope and charity seem to be extinct in my
heart, but I know that Thou never withdrawest these virtues when we do
not voluntarily renounce them.
Act of Faith.
Notwithstanding, then, the doubts that cross my mind, _I wish to
believe_, O my God! and _I do believe_ all that Thy holy Church has
taught me. I have not forgotten that brilliant light of Faith which Thou
didst cause to illumine my soul in the days of mercy in order that the
precious remembrance of it should serve me as support in the days of
trial and temptation.
Act of Hope.
In spite of these vague fears that seem to extinguish hope within my
soul, I know that although Thou art the mighty and strong God before whom
the cherubim veil themselves with their wings, the just and all-seeing
God who discovers blemishes in the purest souls, still Thou wishest to be
in the most Holy Sacrament only the Victim whose Blood effaces the sins
of the world; the Good Shepherd who hastens after the strayed sheep and
carries it tenderly and unreproachfully back to the fold; the divine
Mediator who comes _not to judge but to save_.[28] All this I know, O my
God! and therefore _I hope_.
Act of Love.
Notwithstanding the coldness and insensibility that benumb my soul, I
know that _I love Thee_, O my God! since my will prefers Thy service to
all the joys of this world, since Thy grace is the sole good to which I
aspire, and because I suffer so much by reason of my lack of sensible
love for Thee.
Act of Desire.
No, I am not indifferent, Thou knowest, O my God! that I am not
indifferent to this Most Holy Sacrament which I approach unmoved by any
sensible feeling: for Thou seest that although I find in Holy Communion
neither relish nor consolation, I would yet make any sacrifice in order
to receive it.
Act of Contrition.
I feel neither hatred nor horror of sins to which the world does not
attach shame and contempt; I experience no sensible sorrow for the sins I
have committed, but I know, O my God! that, with the assistance of Thy
grace, my will denounces them, for I am resolved to commit them no more.
I have taken this resolution because sin displeases Thee and because all
that swerves from eternal order is abhorrent to Thy infinite sanctity. _I
believe, then, that I am contrite_, O my God! because I believe in Thy
promises, and if Thou dost not always grant us the consolation of
realizing our contrition, Thou wilt never refuse its justifying virtue to
those who humbly implore it; and this I do.
No, my God, I shall not pray Thee to grant me sensible enjoyment, not
even that of Thy spiritual gifts: what I implore of Thy grace is to keep
my will ever turned towards Thee and never to permit it to fall or wander
anew on the earth.
_Lord! into Thy hands I commend my spirit._
(Read _The Imitation_, Chapters IV., XIV., XV. of B. IV.; and Chapters
XXV., XLVIII and LII of B. III.)
If you have an ardent desire for the sensible love of God, a desire that
cannot but be pleasing to Him provided you are at the same time resigned
to be deprived of it, remember that according to Saint John Chrysostom it
can be obtained only by fidelity to prayer. God wishes, says the Saint,
to make us realize by experience that we cannot have His love but from
Himself, and that this love, which is the true happiness of our souls, is
not to be acquired by the reflections of our minds or the natural efforts
of our hearts, but by the gratuitous infusion of the Holy Ghost. Yes,
this love is so great a good that God wishes to be the sole dispenser of
it: He bestows it only in proportion as we ask it of Him, and ordinarily
makes us wait for some time before He grants it.
There are few prayers better calculated to dispose the soul to receive
this great grace than the XVI. and XVII. chapters of the IVth. Book, and
XXI. and XXXIV. of the IIId. Book of _The Imitation_.
For thanksgiving after Communion, read Chapters XXXIV., V., XXI., II. and
X. of the III. Book of _The Imitation_.