TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MONSEIGNEUR DE LA BOUILLERIE,Archbishop of Perga, Coadjutor of Bordeaux.
But remark especially the connection which God has been pleased to establish between the Christian religion and childhood. Modesty and simplicity, simple faith and docile submission, pure love and lively hope,—these are the attributes of childhood, and also the virtues of the Christian. For the renovated earth there was needed the freshness of childhood. God willed that Christians should be children, but the humility of these children lias raised them above the princes of the world.
Their ignorance has given more light than all the science of the Areopagus, and Jesus Christ has fulfilled in His own Person the prophetic words : " Wisdom has made the tongues of infants eloquent.'' Wisdom x. 21.
How then ! Is not this first call of Jesus Christ to children repeated to them every day ? And if now, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, we find them gathering ground the Saviour in such large numbers and with such simple-hearted joy, is it not because they have heard the distant echo of the Divine words?—Yes, Jesus Christ calls children. But if they come to Him so easily, it is because He comes to them in the sacrament of His love! Blessed in truth is the Holy Eucharist, which, since the evening of the Last Supper, always living amongst us, ceases not to represent Jesus Christ before our eyes and near our heart; and, renewing amongst us every circumstance of His life on earth, perpetuates through the ages the gospel history.
We are blind, and the Eucharist makes us see; paralytic, It makes us walk; troubled and restless, like Martha, It reminds us of the one thing needful; kneeling fervently at Its feet, as Mary, It receives us and makes us understand in the rapture of Communion that we have chosen the better part.* The God of the Eucharist responds always, and in every case, to the present need of our soul; and He speaks to us the words that we love best to hear from His mouth.
