to the sick man; but no one thinks of Him, or at best He is remembered when the patient is at the last gasp; meanwhile the door remains closed, blind and unjust door!
Some do so through fear of dying after receiving it. This most reprehensible custom comes, in many cases, from a false idea that people have (and I know not whence they have it) that once they receive the holy Viaticum they must die. What incomprehensible ignorance amongst Catholics! If I receive holy Communion I must die! If I receive the Author of life I must die! If I allow Jesus Christ to visit me I must die! Mercy on us! To what ignorance do we owe an argument of that kind? To make out of a sacrament of the living, that restores health not only to the soul, but often, also, to the body—to make out of that a sign of approaching death, as if He who has the keys of life in His hands could only be a harbinger of death! And you, husbands and wives, parents, friends, and domestics, how cruelly you often act towards the members of your households, in preventing them from receiving holy Viaticum during their illness, or in putting off the reception of it from day to day, asking the doctors, nurses, and friends not to hint a word of danger, and least of all of the holy Viaticum, lest the sick person should be frightened! Thus the patient is defrauded of the heavenly food, until he grows delirious or falls into a lethargy which deprives him of the use of reason, or begins to gasp for breath, or has the death-sweat already on his brow, so that his soul is on the point of departing: thus it is either too late to receive holy Communion and the other sacraments, or else the patient cannot prepare for them worthily, and so receives them without any profit. What am I to think or say of this? According to St. Laurence Justinian this divine Sacrament, worthily received, is a certain pledge of eternal life.[1] Now, if one neglects to receive it through culpable negligence, or defers receiving it until he can no longer prepare for it properly, especially when he is about to undertake the dangerous journey into eternity, what a bad sign that is for him! God grant that I may never fall into the hands of such flattering, deceitful friends, who would hide my danger from me, and defraud me of the Food of my soul, if it were only for half an hour!
Others through human respect. Others, when they are sick, are afraid to allow Jesus to visit them in the Blessed Sacrament because they are influenced by human respect. If I now settle my accounts with God, they
- ↑ Notissimum vitæ æternæ præsagium.
