We would be happy to have a relic of Jesus, only one of his hairs, a thorn in his crown, a shred of his seamless dress to touch to be healed! Yet we have on hand infinitely more precious relics: his words
Under his adorable words, of which not one will pass, Christ has put his thought, his heart, his divine life. Beneath the bark of words lies the eternal Word. “The gospel,” says St. Augustine, “is another way that Jesus chose to stay with us. “
Alas, the Divine Book has very few real readers! The human spirit, like the prodigal son of the parable, goes to distant regions, dispels its substance, nourishes itself with remains, while at the house of the Father abounds the substantial and pure bread that would enable us to live by the very life of God and to satisfy him fully. The diminution of the Christian truths which one notices with anxiety in the popular masses, does not it come largely from the abandonment where one has neglected the reading of the Holy Gospel? One reads at most a passage on Sunday, ?
Dear guards of honor, let us go to the living springs, open the pages of the Gospel, and drink in long draughts the words of eternal life; do not let pass a day during this month when we do not read at least one passage of the Gospel. And if we are familiar with the Scriptures, let’s read them again because the more we press them, the more the juice we receive which is abundant and precious! (Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud, founder of the Guard of Honor)