425 part ii: meditations for more solemn feasts from sins and adorned with virtues. Magdalene also approached Jesus as a sinner and went back justified. O happy access203 to Jesus, through which the recess from sin is acquired! O Holy Sacrament, which turns a sinner into the one who loves; a servant of the world into a servant of God; a son of darkness into a son of light; a slave of the devil into a freedman of Christ! [f.136r] After Holy Communion 1. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt 9:11). Do not be too surprised that the pride of the Pharisees was thus agitated and raged against the tax collectors. The Pharisees were servants of the devil; therefore, perfectly imitating their master, they persecuted not only the Son of God, but also those sinners who wanted to be converted and obtain God’s mercy. Oh, how grievous is the vice of pride! Truly, the proud envy others even for their salvation; perhaps because they cannot attain it themselves, since they do not want to ask for it humbly. You, on the contrary, rejoice at the conversion of sinners and labor for it, as did St. Matthew, who after Christ converted Him, invited the tax collectors to the banquet, so that they might likewise be converted by eating together with Christ. 2. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Mt 9:12). Behold, the heavenly Teacher Himself answers the question of the Pharisees: asserting that, since He is the Doctor of souls, He was sent not to the healthy, that is, to the saints; but to the sick, to the ailing sinners. Indeed, you have experienced it yourself, since both at another time and today you approached this most clement Doctor not without wounds, and you were completely healed by the wellproven medicine of His Body and Blood. 203 St. Stanislaus uses the words “accessus … recessus.” Literally: “going to … going away from.”
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