body with all its senses, and of your heart and soul with all their powers and affections. First, you should consecrate your body to God; that is, you should in future bear in mind the union you have contracted with God, and respect in yourself the temple of the Divinity — a temple of which he has so lately taken possession; consecrated by his presence, purified by his blood, and enriched with the most precious gifts of his holy spirit: This is the sacrifice to which St. Paul exhorts all Christians, but particularly Communicants, when he says: I beseech you, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God. (Horn. xii. 1.) Reflect also, that as a material temple is not alone consecrated to God externally, but is known before it is entered to be a house of God, by its external solemnity; so should your modesty and Christian deportment manifest to every one that you are really consecrated to God, and become the living temple of Jesus Christ. To animate you to this meritorious consecration of your senses to God, consider how strongly St. Chrysostom recommends it, when he says: It is not just that those eyes which have beheld the divine and sacred Host should afterwards delight in the vanity and idle follies of the world — that those lips, which received and touched the God of heaven, should ever be profaned by frivolous discourses — that your tongue, on which the body of Jesus Christ reposed, should ever become instrumental in lessening the reputation of others, or in wounding charity. Present your resolutions on this head to God through the glorious Queen of Virgins. Set before your eyes, and resolve in every action of your life, to imitate this incomparable model of perfection, whom St Anselm
