FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.
Christ the Life of your Soul.
"Love the Lord thy God, and obey His voice and adhere to Him, for He is thy life and the length of thy days." (Deut. xxx. 20.)
I. It is recorded in the gospel of to-day, that Christ raised a young man from death to life. He is the true life of your soul according to the expression of St. John, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live." (John xi. 25.) "As the body dies," writes St. Augustine, "when it is abandoned by the soul, which is its life, so does the soul die when by sin it loses God, Who is its Life." Ponder the benefit of spiritual life, by comparing it with that of the body, for the soul, when deprived of God's grace, is in the sight of God, what a deformed, loathsome and useless carcass is in the eyes of men.
II. Christ "with Whom, is the fountain of life" (Ps. xxxv. 10), gives life to dead souls, by the Sacrament of Penance, and preserves and increases that life by the Holy Eucharist. " He that eateth Me," He says, " the same shall also live by Me," and, "he that eateth this bread shall live forever." (John vi. 58.) You ought, therefore, to expect with a longing desire, the sacred hour in which this fountain of life will visit you. Say with the Psalmist, "As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, O God, my soul hath thirsted after the strong living God." (Ps. xli. 2.)
III. This spiritual life is only bestowed on those who ask it with great devotion. " He asked life of Thee and
