297 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year After Holy Communion 1. “You shall love the Lord your God” (Mt 22:37). If our chief reason for loving our friends is that we are loved by them, why will you not love God, who so loved you that He gave His only Son for you (cf. 1 Jn 4:9-11)? Think, moreover, what you were before He created you: you were nothing, a piece of clay. However, led by His love for you, He made you in His own image. So why would you not love Him? If vessels knew their makers, if paintings and statues knew their creators, they would know how to talk to them. Certainly, they would greatly love them, if only for the beauty that they received from their hands, and perhaps love them more faithfully than you love your Creator, whom you nevertheless acknowledge, perceive, and contemplate. 2. Consider, if someone ransomed you from grievous slavery, by what services would you try to repay him for this good deed? With what love would you burn towards such a great benefactor of yours? The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who paid the price of your redemption (when you were in the slavery of eternal death), [f.83v] not with money, but with the treasure of His own Blood. Yet what flames of love for Him did that enkindle in you, truly? Withdrawing from the sacred table completely cold, don’t you give yourself at once to vain recreations, talkativeness, laughter, jokes, empty joy, and great idleness? O you, ungrateful heartless man, deserving only of the perpetual fire of hell! 3. Consider how greatly you would be obliged to thank someone who pulled you out after you had fallen into a cave located in the midst of the wilderness, especially in the thickest forest. Yet, you have received this assistance from the Holy Spirit so many times. In addition to the vocation to the Catholic faith, by which you were freed from the infernal abyss meant for infidels, He frees you from so many dangers by His daily promptings! And how many times does He mercifully pull you out, after you fall through your
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