159 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year which are greatly harmful to your salvation. The evil spirit usually does this to people dedicated to the spiritual life: he does not immediately capture them with grave sins, which they abhor, but with small faults, which he knows to be treated lightly, and through them he brings about even more grievous falls. When you receive heavenly wisdom, ask for the insight by which you may be able to avoid these tricks of the evil spirit. After Holy Communion 1. “How then has it weeds?” (Mt 13:27). Consider whether Christ does not wonder at you, your soul, and your senses, and whether He does not also say: “How then has it weeds?” Perhaps you turn too quickly to external things shortly after receiving the Most Holy Eucharist and you fall into the most disgraceful vice of ingratitude, thus causing weeds to appear among the wheat which the heavenly Landowner had planted [f.23r] in your heart today. Therefore, at least focus your mind and meditate today on this immense favor that the Lord of Heaven granted you. Give Him endless and due thanks for it, not forgetting that the thanksgiving for one Holy Communion is the preparation for another. 2. “An enemy has done this” (Mt 13:28). Consider that the servant of hell always attentively tracks human faults; but on the day when we reconcile with God through the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist and recover His grace, he works especially hard to outwit us, or perhaps to induce us to sin and to fall into grievous imperfections. Why, then, do you behave thoughtlessly and carelessly? Do you believe that he is not preparing any snares for you today? You are wrong. All the power and efforts of the evil one are in effect today in the attempt to cause your fall. For if Judas’ evil deed is deemed grievous, because he betrayed and sold the Lord at the moment of consuming the Lord’s Body, so anyone’s fall can be more hideous, insofar as it suddenly stains the soul that had been cleansed by the Blood of Christ. Hence, your imperfections displease the Lord today even more than at any
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