291 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year Consider that escorting the dead to the burial place is a great deed of charity, but a greater one is leading their souls out of the tomb of Purgatory by pious prayers. Consider that a deed equal to this one is helping by devout prayer those who are overcome by spiritual death, that is, those in mortal sin, that they may be revived. You were among such, but the widowed mother (be it the community in which you live or the Catholic Church with her great multitude of the faithful or her saintly Patrons), obtained for you a better life by successfully entreating the Lord on behalf of sinners. Indeed, you should firmly believe that it is due to her prayers that the Lord of life decided to raise you up today, meeting you in the Most Holy Sacrament. See to it, when all is better with you, that you do the same for the others, and that you try to help the souls of the deceased as well as the spiritually dead sinners, through singular diligence in prayer or mortifications. After Holy Communion 1. “Young man, I say to you, arise” (Lk 7:14). Imagine that today Christ stood by you, put to death by sin, and said to your soul: “Arise.” Perhaps, as usually happens to resuscitated people, the soul was overcome by astonishment and wondered that the force of mind and body suddenly returned to it and that it was called back to life with all its faculties. Truly, those who previously perceived you as dead (persuaded to hold this view by your scandalous behavior) now consider you as one returned to life. Prove it with your good deeds: do only what is proper to virtue, love mortifications, practice silence, promptly fulfill [f.81r] what is imposed by obedience, dedicate more time to prayer, exercise serious penance, and with the greatest passion seize the heavenly Kingdom, which is to be taken only by force (cf. Mt 11:12). 2. “And the dead man sat up, and began to speak” (Lk 7:15). You, also, start talking, but with God and with yourself. Sit up, you who were dead, and turning to Him, say: Where was I? With what kind of death was I punished? How much did I detach
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mw==