and gladness of heart to Israel; let the child be restored to his father and the husband to the desolate wife; and, if our evils touch thee not, O pay attention to the miseries of thy church.
Thirdly. The death of the Lord is shown in this mystery, for Jesus Christ sacrifices himself in it, by the mystical separation of his body and of his blood. What follows from thence? That we must be at the foot of the altar as if we were at the foot of the cross: that we must enter into the dispositions of the disciples and of the women of Jerusalem who received the dying sigh of Jesus, and were present at the consummation of his sacrifice. Now, what hatred had they not against a world which had crucified their Master? What measures did they think it necessary to keep with his murderers? Were they afraid of declaring themselves the disciples of him who had so openly declared himself their Saviour, and that at the price of his blood? Did they not say to the heavenly Father, Ah! strike us, Lord, who are the guilty, and spare the innocent. What horror at their past faults, which had attached so good a Master to the cross! What a lively impression in their heart of his sufferings! Thus, my brethren, still to keep measures with the age, to be afraid of declaring openly for piety, to be ashamed of the cross of Jesus Christ, to calculate your works of devotion in such a way that an air and a savour of the world may still pervade the whole: not boldly to confess Jesus Christ; to be afraid of abstaining from a theatre where he is insulted, from an assembly where he is offended, from a proceeding by which innocence must suffer, from I know not what train of life which the world makes a necessity to you, from certain maxims which wound the Gospel, and which custom has established as laws; to pretend to keep up all those conciliatory measures with the world, and yet to come to eat the passover with the disciples of Jesus Christ; to preserve a correspondence with his enemies, and yet to seat yourselves at his table; to esteem the maxims which crucify him, and yet to wish to be the spectators and the faithful companions of his cross; — ah! it is a contradiction.
He hath overcome the world; he hath fixed it to his cross: along with himself he hath given death to its maxims and errors: consequently, to show his death in the communion is to renew the memory of his victory. And, if the world lives and still reigns in your heart, my brother, do you not annihilate the fruit of his death? Do you not contest with Jesus Christ the honour of his triumph? And, in place of showing his death, do you not come to renew it with his enemies.
Besides, in the fourth place, his death is shown in this mystery, for it is the consummation of the sacrifice of the cross, and he applies the fruit of it to us. Now, what gives us a right to the fruit of the cross, and, consequently, to the communion? Sufferance, mortification, and a penitent and inward life. For, say, living in delights, shall you dare to nourish a body, like yours, enervated by pleasures, flattered, caressed; shall you dare, I say, to nourish it with a crucified body? Shall you dare to incorporate Jesus
