things which can the least
endure it.

The believer asks in what spot on the Verna Francis received the
stigmata; whether the seraph which appeared to him was Jesus or a
celestial spirit; what words were spoken as he imprinted them upon
him;[13] and he no more understands that hour when Francis swooned with
woe and love than the materialist, who asks to see with his eyes and
touch with his hands the gaping wound.

Let us try to avoid these extremes. Let us hear what the documents give
us, and not seek to do them violence, to wrest from them what they do
not tell, what they cannot tell.

They show us Francis distressed for the future of the Order, and with an
infinite desire for new spiritual progress.

He was consumed with the fever of saints, that need of immolation which
wrung from St. Theresa the passionate cry, "Either to suffer or to die!"
He was bitterly reproaching himself with not having been found worthy of
martyrdom, not having been able to give himself for Him who gave himself
for us.

We touch here upon one of the most powerful and mysterious elements of
the Christian life. We may very easily not understand it, but we may not
for all that deny it. It is the root of true mysticism.[14] The really
new thing that Jesus brought into the world was that, feeling himself in
perfect union with the heavenly Father, he called all men to unite
themselves to him and through him to God: "I am the vine, and ye are the
branches; he who abides in me and I in him brings forth much fruit, for
apart from me ye can do nothing."

The Christ not only preached this union, he made it felt. On the evening
of his last day he instituted its sacrament, and there is probably no
sect which denies that communion is at once the symbol, the principle,
and the end of the religious life. For eighteen centuries Christians who
differ on everything else cannot but look with one accord to him who in
the upper chamber instituted the rite of the new times.

The night before he died he took the bread and brake it and distributed
it to them, saying, "TAKE AND EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY."

Jesus, while presenting union with himself as the very foundation of the
new life,[15] took care to point out to his brethren that this union
was before all things a sharing in his work, in his struggles, and his
sufferings: "Let him that would be my disciple take up his cross and
follow me."

St. Paul entered so perfectly into the Master's thought in this