Volume II, Treatise VIII, Chapter VII

What We Are to Do After Communion, and What Our Thanksgiving After It, Ought to be

As it is good before we eat, to take some little exercise, to stir up our natural heat; so also it is good before we approach this divine table, to exercise ourselves in holy meditation; to enkindle in us devotion and fervour, which is the same to our souls as natural heat is to our bodies. Itis good also to give some time to conversation after meals; and it will be also very much to our purpose, as soon as we come from this divine banquet, to entertain ourselves for some time with God; this being the most favourable and fit time to treat, and to unite ourselves with him. We ought, therefore, endeavour to make our profit of it, and not to lose the least moment thereof. ‘ Permit not yourself to lose so good a day as this, and let not the least part of so precious a gift be lost.”— {(Ecclesiasticus 14:14))

For this end we must employ this time in making some pious meditation, such as I have said should be made before communion. But above all, we must employ ourselves in praising God, and in giving him thanks for all the benefits we have received from him; and particularly for the inestimable one of our redemption, and for the favour he does us in giving himself to usin this manner. But since we can never sufficiently of ourselves return those thanks that are due to him, we must, to supply this defect, offer him ‘all the benedictions and praises that all the angels together have ever offered him from the beginning of the world, and that all the blessed during their lives have also ever given him, or do now give him in heaven, and all those also which they shall give him for all eternity. We must join our intention with theirs, “and beg of him to command that our voices may be heard and admitted with theirs.” Finally, we must invite all creatures to praise him with us, and say with the royal prophet, “celebrate the magnificence of our Lord with me, and let us glorify his name together.”—-(Psalms 33:4) But because God is infinitely above all sorts of praises, and that all those which all creatures together can ever be able to give him do not come near to what are his due, we must also wish that he would love and praise himself as he deserves, because he only is able to do 30.

Secondly, we must employ this time in producing acts of the love of God; because it is chiefly then we are to pour out our hearts in holy aspirations, which are nothing else but acts of love, and ardent desires of uniting ourselves to God. It is then we must say to him with the royal prophet, ‘“‘O Lord, who art my strength, let me always love thee.” (Psalms 17:1) My soul continually pants ‘after thee, O my God, as the hart, pursued by hunters, pants after the fountains of waters.” (Psalms 41:1)

We must in the third place, spend this time in begging favours of God; because it is the fittest time to obtain them, and to despatch our affairs with him. The ‘holy Scripture relates that queen Esther having something to beg of king Assuerus, she would not presently declare what it was, but only invited him to come and eat with her, reserving till then the explanation of what she desired of him. He came to her, and she obtained of him what she desired. It is thus in the holy banquet where the King of kings is our guest, or to say better, where we are his; in which we shall obtain whatsoever we shall ask of him; “because we are come upon a good day.”— (1 Kings 25:8) And we may tell him what Jacob told the angel with whom he had wrestled all the night long, “I will not let thee go, till thou hast blessed me.” (Genesis 22:26) When you entered, O Lord, into the house of Zacheus, you said, ‘ Salvation is this day given to this house.” (Luke 19:9) Say now the same to this house, into which you are now entered, “Say to my soul, I am thy salvation.” (Psalms 34:3)

It is also then we must beg pardon of God for our sins, and at the same time, beg strength of him to overcome our passions, to resist the devil’s temptations, and to give us the grace of gaining humility, obedience, patience, perseverance, and those other virtues, which we stand most in need of. But we must ask them not only for ourselves, but pray also for the necessities of the church, as well in general as in particular; and pray also for the pope, for the king, and for all those that govern the Christian commonwealth, either in spirituals or in temporals; and for all those particular persons, to whom we have any obligation; as is practised in the ‘‘ Memento” of the Mass, and asI shall hereafter speak more at large.

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