Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER XVI.: We Should Show Our Needs to Christ and Ask His Grace

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It is not by forcing ourselves to raise our minds to sublime thoughts, that we shall gather the fruit of the holy communion; but by adoring, full of love, Jesus Christ in us, by opening to him our hearts with great confidence and with great simplicity, as a man is wont to speak to his friend (Exodus. 33:11). We have wants; it is necessary to make them known to Him We are covered with wounds; we must show them to Him, in order that he may wash them with his divine blood. We are weak; it is necessary to beseech Him to strengthen us. We are naked, hungry and thirsty; we must say to Him: Have pity on this poor beggar. From him flow all graces; listen to his words: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me although he be dead, shall live; and every one that liveth, and believeth in me, shall not die for ever (John 11:25, 26).

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER XIV.: The Ardent Longing of Devout Men for the Body of Christ

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How to make a good spiritual Communion. Spiritual communion, which the Council of Trent approves of and so strongly advises and commends as a substitute for the sacramental and corporal reception of Jesus Christ, may be made at all times and in all places, whether we are in the presence of the blessed sacrament are not. We may make it every hour, or after a Hail Mary, said in honour of the Blessed Virgin, mother of God, uniting ourselves to those holy dispositions with which she conceived Jesus Christ in her chaste womb. We should bring our minds to a respectful remembrance of Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament; we should there adore him, and direct our hearts towards him, as Daniel did towards the temple; we should give all to him, and ardently desire to receive him sacramentally.

But the most proper time for making a good spiritual communion is when we assist at Mass, at the time of the priest’s communion. Then a Christian, animated with a lively and actual faith in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the blessed sacrament, and with an ardent desire of being intimately united to him, should evince such dispositions, by humbling himself profoundly in his presence, and esteeming himself unworthy of really receiving him, implore him to come and dwell in his mind by faith, and in his heart by love and gratitude for his goodness, that so he may say with the apostle, I live now, not I, but Christ liveth in me.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER XII.: The Communicant Should Prepare Himself for Christ with Great Care

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The preparation for the New Pasch comprises two things: in order to purify the guest-chamber and to adorn it, that is to say, in order to receive worthily the body and the blood of Christ, the soul should above all be free from blemishes; it should have been washed in the waters of penitence, and afterwards exercised in the practice of virtues which make it pleasing to God. What pleases God and draws down his graces, is profound humility, and sovereign contempt of one’s self; a lively faith, a perfect abandonment of one’s own will, detachment from the earth, the desire for heavenly things, and divine charily. Christian soul! thou who aspirest to the nuptial banquet! imitate then the prudent virgins: take oil and light your lamp, in order to go meet the bridegroom; for those whose lamps are extinguished, shall hear those terrible words: verily 1 know you not.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER VIII.: The Offering of Christ on the Cross; Our Offering

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Act not after the manner of those many weak Christians, who. when they communicate, give themselves entirely to God, but immediately after return to themselves; whose lives are a constant succession of good desires and sinful actions, and who are therefore never firmly established either in the fear or love of God. It is of such souls, who are thus mean and ungenerous towards a God who is so prodigal of himself towards them, that the prophet speaks, when he says: On account of the iniquity of his covetousness, I was angry, and 1 struck him; I hid my face from thee, and was angry; and he went away wandering in his own heart. –Isaiah 67:17.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER VII.: The Examination of Conscience and the Resolution to Amend

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There is nothing more useful in itself, nor more indispensable in order to approach worthily the altar, than to descend into your conscience, and to examine, with a salutary severity, its sad depths. We have in ourselves, as it were, an image of the kingdom of darkness; in us lives, increases, and propagates itself the numerous family of vices, sprung from the threefold concupiscence which has infected human life from its otigin. Whoever seriously examines his heart, finds in it the germ of all that is bad; a pride, sometimes bold and violent, sometimes full of duplicity and artifices; an unrestrained curiosity; burning desires; hatred which injuries, outrages, and calumny accompany; envy, the mother of murder; avarice which says without ceasing, Bring, bring (Proverbs 30:15); hardness of heart; the guilty joys of the mind: and although these seeds of death do not develope themselves in every man to the same degree, all have them in themselves, and grace alone smothers “-.em more or less. Such is, since his original fall, the lot of the children of Adam. Who, in his terror, would not cry out to the Lord from the depths of his immense misery? He that hideth his sins shall not prosper; but he that shall confess and for* sake them, shall obtain mercy (Proverbs 28:13). Touched with compassion for sinners, Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament of penance, which regenerates them in the blood of the Lamb, and clothes them again with their primitive innocence. This is the nuptial robe necessary in order to assist at the feast of the bridegroom; ye who bear with grief the weight of your sins, hasten then, go, full of repentance, of faith, of hope, and of love, to lay down that oppressive burden at the feet of him who takes the place, in the sacred tribunal, of the Son of God Himself; go and humiliate yourselves; go and weep: a divine hand will dry your tears, and, re-established in grace with God and in peace with yourselves, you will at last feel gladness and joy in your souls.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER VI.: An Inquiry on the Proper Thing to Do Before Communion

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Ont of the best dispositions for worthily receiving the holy communion, is to be resolved that Jesus shall reign for ever in our hearts; that is, that we will obey Him in all things, and refuse Him nothing that He demands of us; for it is in quality of king that He comes to us, and as the king of all bounty He comes into our souls, to be again born there, and to reign over our passions and affections.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER IV.: Many Blessings Are Given Those Who Receive Communion Worthily

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Jesus Christ when about to quit the earth, promised to his disciples that he would send them the consoling Spirit; and it is this divine Spirit which is given to us in the sacrament of the New Law–the substantial love of the Father and of the Son. By an invisible operation, as sweet as it is powerful, He freely inclines our will to what is good, purifies it, and raises it to God. He is our strength: the Word is our light. Now, when we have in us Jesus Christ, we have the Word itself in us, and we participate in all the gifts which the Word and the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from Him, pour out incessantly on the sacred humanity of the Saviour, become one with us by the communion of his body and of his blood, of his soul and of his divinity, which are inseparable. In Him are all riches of fullness of understanding; all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (1 Colossians 2:2, 3): and He opens out those treasures to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, whilst the sanctifying spirit consumes in us, by his divine flames, the last traces of sin, gives us, as it were, a foretaste of celestial happiness, and prepares us to enjoy it fully, when we shall have arrived at the happy term of our trials on this earth. Go then to the fountain of graces, go to the altar, go to Jesus: and to whom. Lord, shall we go? Thou hast the words if eternal life (John, 6:69). When languishing, Thou dost fortify us; when afflicted Thou dost console us; when troubled by the tempests which are within and without, thou dost rebuke the wind and there is made a great calm (Mark 4:39).

O Jesus, thy love presseth me (2 Corinthians 5:14), and my soul has grown faint in the ardour of uniting itself to Thee. That is ray entire desire. I have no other; I wish for Thee only, O my God! when shall I be able to say: My beloved to me and I to Him (Song of Solomon 2:16); it is not I who live, but Christ liveth in me (Galatians 2:20). Amen.

Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER III.: It Is Profitable to Receive Communion Often

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As much as we should take care to prove ourselves before eating of the bread and drinking of the chalice of the Lord (1 Corinthians xi. 28), in the same degree should we be careful not to keep away from the Holy Table through false respect and excessive fear. We will be always, no matter what we do, infinitely unworthy of so high a favour; nothing is pure, nothing is holy before Him who is Holiness itself. But when the Saviour says to us . Come ye to me! He knows our misery, and it is in order to heal it that he invites us to go to Him. Let us go then, not like the hypocritical Pharisee, giving God thanks that we are not as the rest of men (Luke, 18:n): God repels with horror this pride of conscience which disguises from itself its secret scars; let us go, but like the humble publican, with our eyes cast down on this earth, striking our breast and saying: 0 God be merciful to me a sinner! (Luke 18:13.) It is necessary, without doubt, to prepare ourselves by penitence, recollection, and PRAYER. for the communion of the body and of the blood of Jesus Christ; but, having sincerely prepared ourselves with our entire soul, it is insulting the Redeemer to refuse his gifts; it is voluntarily depriving ourselves of the most precious, abundant, and holy graces; it is renouncing life: for, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you (1 John, 6:54).

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK FOUR: AN INVITATION TO HOLY COMMUNION
CHAPTER II.: God’s Great Goodness and Love is Shown to Man in This Sacrament

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The Apostle St. John, borne in spirit into the heavenly Jerusalem, saw, in the midst of the throne of God, a Lamb standing as it were slain, and around him the seven spirits whom God sends through the entire earth, and four and twenty ancients; and those ancients prostrated themselves before the Lamb, holding in their hands harps and vials full of odours, which are the PRAYER.s of Saints: and they sang a new canticle of praise to Him who had been put to death, and who redeemed us to God, from every tribe, from every tongue, from all peoples, and from all nations: and myriads of angels raised their voices and cried out: the Lamb which has been slain is worthy to receive power, dignity, wisdom, strength, honour, glory, and benediction from all creatures that are in heaven, on the earth, and in the sea; and all that were there cried out to Him who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb, benediction, honour, glory and power! (Apoc. v.) Then behold another sight. This very Lamb, who receives on his eternal throne the adoration of the angels and of the saints, and whom the entire glory of heaven surrounds, comes to us full of sweetness; and, concealed under the appearance of a morsel of bread, He gives himself to his poor creatures, in order to sanctify our souls, to nourish them, and even our bodies, by the substantial union of his flesh to our flesh, of his blood to our blood; taking flesh anew, so to speak, in each of us, and accomplishing in us, in an incomprehensible manner, by communicating Himself entirely to us, the great sacrifice of the cross. It is too much, O Lord! it is too much; remember who Thou art; or rather grant that I may never forget it, and that I may approach to Thee as the angels do, trembling with respect, with a heart filled with a sense of its unworthiness, penetrated by thy mercies, and inflamed by that same inexhaustible, immense and eternal love which urges Thee to come down to it.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER LIX.: All Hope and Trust Are to Be Fixed In God Alone

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When interior or exterior trials, troubles, or contradictions afflict us, let us have recourse to God, who can alone aid us and remedy our distresses; let us with confidence pray to Him to assist us, to strengthen us, to comfort us. No temptation, no trial, no tribulation can come on us without his permission; nor will he permit us to be tried beyond our strength. Whatever trials He may be pleased to allot to us in this life, are given to us for our sanctification; we should therefore thank him for them, cheerfully undergo them, raise our hearts and eyes to Him, and rely confidently on the promise of Him who has said, Come to me all you that are heavy burdened, and I will refresh you.

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