talk? If I were not sick it would be enough to make me so. But on the other hand a loving, sympathetic, cheerful, modest friend, who as the Apostle says, “showeth mercy with cheerfulness,”[1] encourages one by his conversation and makes his visit welcome. Such a friend as that cheers up the sick man and often helps him to forget his pains. And it is in time of sickness and trouble that true friendship is proved and the steadfastness of an affection that is not changed by outward circumstances.
There is no more faithful or loving friend than Christ when He visits the sick in the Blessed Sacrament. Nowhere can the suffering Christian find a more faithful, well-meaning, kind-hearted, generous, and loving friend than Jesus Christ; and from whom can he expect greater consolation, refreshment, and help, than when his Saviour comes to visit him in person in the Blessed Sacrament as the food and drink of his soul? A more loving friend is not to be found in heaven or on earth than He who, with unheard-of devotion, came down from heaven on earth for the sake of us men, and shut Himself up in such a wonderful manner in the accidents of bread and wine, that He might be always with us and be united to us in the most agreeable manner in the form of food and drink. In the whole world there is not a greater or better comforter or consoler. When brothers, sisters, parents, friends visit you in your sickness, what can they do for you besides giving you the miserable consolation of the outward expression of their sympathy, making known their good wishes in your regard, and expressing their hopes that you may soon get better? When they have done that they can go home, and what better are you? That is all you have gained by their visit; they cannot take from you the bodily pains or mental depression which the natural sensitiveness to illness causes you. Nor can they give you the strength of grace to support the torments of your sickness and thus make them easier for you; nor can they lengthen your natural bodily life or assure you of eternal life; and therefore you can say to them like Job: “You are troublesome comforters,” from whom no help is to be expected.
For He alone then can and will comfort and help. But when Jesus visits you in the Blessed Sacrament your faith tells you that He is the Son of God, who holds in His hands the keys of life and death, to whom, while He was still on earth, the sick and dying were brought, and as St. Luke says: “virtue went out from him and healed all.”[2] He is the same the touch of whose garments was enough to cure disease; whose visit to a
