SERMON XXXII.
ON THE DISPOSITIONS FOR THE COMMUNION.
"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." — Luke iii. 4.
Behold what the church is continually repeating to us during this holy time, in order to prepare us for the birth of Jesus Christ: Prepare, says she to all her children, prepare the way of the Lord, who descends from heaven to visit and redeem his people; make his paths straight; let the hollows be filled up, and the mountains levelled; let the crooked ways become straight, and the rugged even. Or, to express the same meaning without metaphor, Prepare yourselves, says she to us, to gather the fruit of that grand mystery which we are going to celebrate, by humiliation of heart, meekness, and charity, rectitude of intention, uniformity of living, renunciation of your own wisdom and your own righteousness; mortifying the flesh and humbling the spirit.
Allow me to hold the same language to you, Christians, my brethren, who, on this solemn occasion, come to purify yourselves in the penitential tribunals, in order to give a new birth to Jesus Christ in your hearts, on receiving him at the sacred table, — prepare the way of the Lord. The deed you are going to perform is the most holy act of religion, and the source of the most special favours: undertake it not, therefore, without all the cares and all the precautions which it requires: do not expose yourselves, through your own fault, to lose the inestimable advantages which ought to accrue to you from it.
The communion ought to give birth to Jesus Christ in our hearts: but where would be the difference between the righteous man and the sinner, between the soul who discerns the body of the Lord, and him who treats it as common food, were he equally to have birth in the heart of all who receive him? Deceive not yourselves, then, my brethren; there is a way of receiving Jesus Christ, by which his presence is rendered useless to us; and would to God, that, in thus receiving him, we deprived ourselves only of those favours which follow a holy communion! Ah! my brethren, unless the communion gives birth to Jesus Christ in our hearts, it brings death to him there; if it does not render us participators of his Spirit and of his grace, it is the sentence of our condemnation: if it be not a fruit of life to our soul, it is a fruit of death. Terrible alternative, which ought to excite our fears, but which ought not entirely to keep us away from the sacred table. The bread which is there distributed is the true nourishment of our souls, the strength of the strong, the support of the weak, the consolation of the afflicted, the pledge of a blessed immortality. How dangerous would it then be to abstain from it? — but infinitely more
