Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fearsQuadrupani, Carlo Giuseppe
Religion
Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fears
Quadrupani, Carlo Giuseppe
Christian life -- Catholic authors
3. St. Francis de Sales says there are two classes of persons who should
often receive holy communion; the perfect, to unite themselves more
closely to the Source of all perfection, and the imperfect to labor to
attain perfection; the strong that they may not become weak, the weak
that they may become strong; the sick that they may be cured, and those
in health that they may be preserved from sickness. You tell me that your
imperfections, your weakness, your littleness make you unworthy to
receive communion frequently; and I assure you it is precisely because of
these that you ought to receive it frequently in order that He who
possesses all things may give you whatever is wanting to you.
*The following words on this subject will not perhaps be considered by
others as giving much additional value to the authority of the saintly
Bishop of Geneva. They do so, however, in ours, because they are from the
lips of a holy religious whose memory will always be dear to us——from a
man whose last moments were the occasion of the greatest edification it
has ever pleased God to accord us. The Rev. Father Margottet, a Jesuit,
died at Nice, April 1st, 1835, shortly after his return from Portugal
where he had suffered a most cruel captivity with the courage that faith
alone can inspire. During the last months of his life he took great
pleasure in conversing with a certain young man who visited him regularly
to be instructed and edified by his pious discourse. One day this young
man confided to him the confusion he felt in availing himself of his
director’s permission to receive holy Communion several times a week.
This was due especially to the thought that St. Aloysius, whilst a novice
of the Society of Jesus, went to Communion on Sundays only. “Come, come,
my dear sir,” laughingly replied the good Father, “continue your frequent
Communions—you need them much more than St. Aloysius did.” It is indeed
an error to consider holy Communion a reward of virtue, and, in a
measure, a guage of perfection, whereas it is above all a means to attain
perfection, and the one pre-existing virtue required in order to employ
this means is the desire to profit by it. Our divine Lord did not say:
_Venite ad me qui perfecti estis_—_Come to Me all ye who are perfect_: He
said: _Venite ad me qui laboratis et onerati estis_[7]—_Come to me all ye
who labor and are burdened_. (Read Chapters XX. and XXI., Part II., of
the _Introduction to a Devout Life_; and Chapters X. and XVI. Book IV. of
_The Imitation_.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fears — John Shaqi
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