Christ, dying and crowned with thorns, with delicate and sensual members? Would this connexion not be horrible? Will you dare, by converting his body into your own substance, to transform it into an effeminate and voluptuous body? Ah! it would be the perfection of iniquity. To be nourished with the body of Jesus Christ, your members must become his members, his body must take the figure of your body. Now, his body is a crucified body; his members are suffering members; and, if you live without suffering; if you bear not upon your body the mortification of Jesus Christ; if, perhaps, you have never practised a single instance of selfdenial; if your days are passed in a tranquil effeminacy; if afflictions excite impatience; if you feel hurt at every thing which opposes your humour; if you prescribe to yourself no works of mortification; if those sent to you by heaven are unwillingly and unthankfully received; how will you that you unite your body to that of Jesus Christ? This is never reflected upon, my brethren, and nevertheless, a soft and sensual life can be a presage only of an unworthy communion.
Lastly. The death of the Lord is shown in this mystery, for he is there himself as in a state of death. He hath a mouth and speaketh not; eyes, and useth them not; feet, and walketh not. View then, my brother, and act according to this model; behold how you ought to show his death in partaking of his body: you must bring there eyes instructed to be closed for the earth; a tongue accustomed to silence, or to sayings of God, as St. Paul says; feet and hands immoveable for the works of sin; senses either extinguished or mortified: in a word, to bring there a universal death over your body. The state of Jesus Christ in the eucharist is the state of the Christian on earth; a state of retreat, of silence, of patience, of humiliation, of divorce from the senses. For, what is Jesus Christ in the eucharist? He is in the world as if not there: he is in the midst of men, but invisible; he hears their vain discourses, their chimerical plans, their frivolous expectations, but he enters not into them; he sees their solicitudes, their agitations, and their enterprises, and he allows them to act; divine honours are paid to him, and he is insulted; and, ever the same, he seems insensible alike to the insults as to the homages: he looks on while families, empires, and ages are renewed; manners are changed; the taste of men and of ages are incessantly fluctuating; he sees customs sink into decay and then revive; the figure of this world in an eternal revolution; his inheritance divided; wars, seditions, and unexpected revolutions; the whole universe shaken; and he is tranquil upon its ruins; and nothing withdraws him from his close and ineffable study of his Father; and nothing interrupts the divine quiet of his sanctuary, where he is always living for the purpose of interceding for us. Once more, consider and act according to this model: let us bring to the sacred table eyes long since closed upon every thing which may hurt our soul; a tongue surrounded with a guard of circumspection and of modesty; eats chaste and impenetrable to the hissings of the serpent,
