Thought for the Day – 13 June – Meditations with Father Francis Xavier Weninger SJ (1805-1888) (Austrian Jesuit Missionary and Author).
Practical Considerations
on the Life of St Anthony of Padua
The Miracle of the Donkey
which knelt before the Eucharist
“St Antony commands a senseless animal to fall down before the Blessed Eucharist and to honour it – the animal obeys and thus honours its Creator.
You have, in the Holy Sacrament, your Lord and God, your Redeemer and Judge before you.
You know the command of the Most High – “The Lord, thy God, thou shalt adore” (St Mark 4).
“For every knee shall be bowed to Thee ” (Isaiah 45).
The Church of Christ says to you … “Come, let us bow down and worship God; let us weep before God Who has created us because He is our God and we are His people.”
Are you not then ashamed, if, notwithstanding all this, you conduct yourself, in the Presence of the Holy Eucharist, with less reverence than an unreasonable animal?!
That those who are not Catholics should not manifest due honour to the Blessed Sacrament is wrong in them but they have, at least before man, the excuse that they do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ.
But how can you excuse yourself, either before God or man, you who believe in the Presence of Christ and yet, give no due honour to your God?
“If I believed,” said a Turkish Ambassador, one day, speaking of the little respect evinced by some Catholics in the Church, “that my God were substantially here, I would humble myself to the ground and if possible, even beneath it! ”
And what do you think, who believe it and are still too indolent to bend your knee before your God?
Do you not consider that your Divine Judge, Whom you honour so little, will one day punish your irreverence towards Him?
Reform, while you have time!”
Fr Francis Xavier Weninger
AnaStpaul 