4th Saturday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow: 1st, on the importance of the act of thanksgiving after Communion; 2d, on the manner of making it. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to be very faithful in performing our thanksgiving rightly; 2d, often to remember, during the day, the communion we made in the morning, the good sentiments which we then experienced and the resolution we made to live in a more holy manner. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Psalmist: “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered to me” (Ps. cxv. 3) in the one sole benefit of Holy Communion?

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord teaching us by His example in the cenacle to make an act of thanksgiving after Holy Communion (Matt. xxvi. 27, 30). Ah, what sentiments, full of tenderness and love, flowed then from His heart toward His Father! Let us unite ourselves with His fervent thanksgiving.

FIRST POINT

The Importance of the Act of Thanksgiving after Communion

Reverence, gratitude, our own interests, make it a duty incumbent on us. 1st. Reverence. When Our Saviour honors us so far as to come to us, is it not just that all the powers of our soul should assemble together, as it were, around Him, to keep Him company, to render to Him their homage, to hold intercourse with Him, to speak to Him, and to listen to Him? Would it not be strange irreverence to leave Him alone in the bottom of our hearts, to pay no attention to Him, and to occupy ourselves with other things? Is it thus that we receive a great personage or a friend who comes to visit us? 2d. Gratitude. We ought to thank God the Father, who gives us no longer the manna which He gave to the Israelites in the desert, but His own Son (I. John iii. 1). We ought to thank God the Son, who gives Himself wholly to us, who gives Himself continually, without ever exhausting Himself. Oh, here indeed have we good reason to say: “Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift” (II. Cor. ix. 15). If we did but comprehend what gratitude this gift of God deserves (John iv. 10), our hearts would melt with love. 3d. Our own interests. For it is in the moments which follow upon Communion that the soul can best enjoy Jesus Christ, be filled with His spirit, and be penetrated with His love; it is then that Jesus Christ is best disposed to enlighten, inflame, and touch the soul and that the Sacrament produces its principal effect, provided that it does not meet with any obstacle. Now, to neglect the act of thanksgiving would be to place an obstacle in the way of grace; it would be to imitate the poor man who will not wait for the alms which the rich man is about to make him. Let us here examine ourselves. Have we always given at least a quarter of an hour to our act of thanksgiving? During this quarter of an hour, have we not allowed our mind to wander through not having done ourselves a little violence, through not having maintained an attitude of recollection, or through our not having been willing to subject ourselves to the acts suitable to this exercise? Have we not deferred, or abridged, or interrupted our thanksgiving through the merest pretext? Alas, whence comes it that we have derived so little fruit from so many communions? The ill performance of our thanksgiving has been the most ordinary cause.

SECOND POINT

The Manner of Making our Thanksgiving

The first means is to listen to what Jesus Christ says to the heart at so precious a moment, and to follow the attractions of grace. The second is to produce acts, 1st, of adoration, admiration, and love; of adoration, which consists in annihilating ourselves in presence of the infinite greatness of Our Lord, offering Him the adoration of the angels and saints in supplement of ours, and remaining in a state of abasement at His feet; of the admiration which fills us with profound astonishment that so great a God should descend so low; of love, with the effusions and transports and ecstasies of heart which make us attach ourselves to Jesus alone, desire nothing else but Him in the world, and count all things beside Him as nothing. 2d. To produce acts of the thanksgiving we owe to Him for so great a benefit and which we beg of Him to offer to God in our stead. 3d. To make the requests which we ought to address to Him, telling Him in all simplicity and confidence what are our needs and our miseries, like a child that speaks to its father. It is then the moment to ask everything and to obtain everything (Ps. lxviii. 14). 4th. To offer the whole of ourselves to Him, consecrating to Him all that we are and all that we have, to be disposed of in accordance with His good pleasure (Cant. ii. 16). Lastly, we must make the good resolutions which ought to be the fruits of our Communion. Is it thus that we perform our acts of thanksgiving?

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.