rightful infirmity
to have him there present before you and to think of other
things. Let each man be struck with amazement, let the whole
earth tremble, let the heavens thrill with joy when the Christ,
the Son of the living God, descends upon the altar into the
hands of the priest. Oh, wonderful profundity! Oh, amazing
grace! Oh, triumph of humility! See, the Master of all things,
God, and the Son of God, humbles himself for our salvation, even
to disguising himself under the appearance of a bit of bread.

Contemplate, my brothers, this humility of God, and enlarge your
hearts before him; humble yourselves as well, that you, even
you, may be lifted up by him. Keep nothing for yourselves, that
he may receive you without reserve, who has given himself to you
without reserve.

We see with what vigor of love Francis's heart had laid hold upon the
idea of the communion.

He closes with long counsels to the Brothers, and after having conjured
them faithfully to keep their promises, all his mysticism breathes out
and is summed up in a prayer of admirable simplicity.

God Almighty, eternal, righteous, and merciful, give to us poor
wretches to do for thy sake all that we know of thy will, and to
will always what pleases thee; so that inwardly purified,
enlightened, and kindled by the fire of the Holy Spirit, we may
follow in the footprints of thy well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ.

What separates this prayer from the effort to discern duty made by
choice spirits apart from all revealed religion? Very little in truth;
the words are different, the action is the same.

But Francis's solicitudes reached far beyond the limits of the Order.
His longest epistle is addressed to all Christians; its words are so
living that you fancy you hear a voice speaking behind you; and this
voice, usually as serene as that which from the mountain in Galilee
proclaimed the law of the new times, becomes here and there unutterably
sweet, like that which sounded in the upper chamber on the night of the
first eucharist.

As Jesus forgot the cross that was standing in the shadows, so Francis
forgets his sufferings, and, overcome with a divine sadness, thinks of
humanity, for each member of which he would give his life; he thinks of
his spiritual sons, the Brothers of Penitence, whom he is about to leave
without having been able to make them feel, as he would have h