examination of the heart 192 not offer a gift of extraordinary prayers, or of virtues practiced more zealously or of spontaneous mortifications; if, finally, you refused to spread His honor whenever possible, or help those who are spreading it. Or, what is more impious, if you hindered them in spreading it; or, finally, if you lessened the honor that was being spread. Therefore, abstain from this and from every other irreverence shown to the Savior. For if you do not treat with honor the One who should be honored, He will judge you in His ultimate, dreadful, and just tribunal. 2. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps [M]y word” (Jn 8:51). If there is such a great power in the words and teaching of the Lord that it preserves human souls from temporal and eternal death, consider what a great power is contained in the Most Holy Sacrament, where not only the words and the speech of Christ, but the whole Christ, complete with His divinity and humanity, is present and received. Who would doubt that this Sacrament grants life to people, and either raises or preserves from the unhappy death of sins those who receive it devoutly and piously? That which the Truth Himself expressed in words about His Most Sacred Body is certain: “he who eats [M]y [F]lesh and drinks [M]y [B]lood has eternal life” (Jn 6:54). You ask: how can this be done? Thus says the Lord: “As the living Father sent [M]e, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats [M]e will live because of [M]e.” (Jn 6:57) [f.38v] Therefore, consider yourself fortunate, for you have been revived today with this lifegiving bread, and do not forget the great divine benefit and grace granted to you. 3. “whoever keeps my word” (Jn 8:51). Consider that the Gospel teaching of Christ the Lord guards and preserves people not only from eternal death, but also from the earthly one. For if drunkenness, gluttony, lust, and other vices destroy the health of men, snatching away days from a longer life, and weaken bodily strength, causing countless ailments; then the one who keeps clear from these things and (forbidden by divine commandments and warned against them by the evangelical counsels) shrinks from them more than from a dog or a snake,
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