Vain things, what offer ye to me but an empty shadow of the God whom I seek! What answer do ye make when my softened heart bends toward you to soothe its anxieties? Return, say you, to him who hath made us; we groan in awaiting his coming to deliver us from this servitude, which makes us subservient to the passions and to the errors of men: seek him not among us; thou wilt not find him; he is risen; he is no longer here: if he appear, it is only to die again: recall the desires and the affections which thou meant to place upon us, and turn them toward heaven; the Bridegroom hath been carried away, the earth is no longer for a Christian now but a vale of mourning and tears. Such is what they answer to me. What, then, detains me here, Lord? What are the ties and the charms which can attach me to the world? Restless in pleasures, impatient in absence, tired of the conversations and the commerce of men; afraid of solitude; without relish for the world, without relish for virtue; doing the evil I would not, and leaving undone the good that I would, — what keeps me here? What delays the dissolution of this body of sin? What prevents me from soaring with the wings of the dove upon the holy mountain? I feel that I should then be happy; I could then feast at all times upon this delicious bread. I taste no real delight but at the feet of thy altars: these are, indeed, the happiest moments of my life: but they are so short, and I must so soon return to the insipidities and disgusts of the world; I am under the necessity of being so long absent from thee: no, Lord, there is no perfect happiness on the earth, and death is a gain to whoever knows to love thee.
Are these our sentiments, my brethren, when we draw near to the altars? Where are now the Christians, who, like the first believers, await the blessed hope, and hasten, by their sighs, the end of their banishment, and the coming of Jesus Christ? This is a refinement of piety of which they have no idea: it is merely a language of the speculatist: it is, however, the groundwork of religion, and the first step of faith. The necessity of dying is considered as a cruel punishment; the sole idea of death, with which our fathers were so comforted, makes us to shudder: the end of life is the term of our pleasures, in place of being that of our sufferings; the attention paid to the body are endless; our precautions extend even to absurdity; or, if it sometimes happen that this last moment is desired, it is in consequence of being wearied of life and its chagrins: it is a disgrace, a habitual infirmity preying upon us, a revolution in our worldly matters which leaves no more pleasures to be expected here below, the disappointment of an establishment, a death, an accident, or lastly, a disgust and a wish of self-love; we tire of being unfortunate, but we are not eager to go to be reunited with Jesus Christ; and, with all this, they come to eat of the Lord's Supper, to renew the remembrance of his passion and to show his death until he shall come: what an outrage!
Secondly. His death is shown in this mystery, because Judas there finally determined upon delivering him up. Now, what does
