The Lords Day
Saint John Eudes (Admirable Heart of Mary, page 53-4): Consider how strange it is! The world offers nothing but crumbs and dregs of feasting, empty fame, wealth and fleeting pleasure, but it sells you these stale crumbs at the costly price of worry, pain, bitterness, restlessness, anguish, often even at the price of your very life. As Sacred Scripture exclaims: “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?” (Isaias 55:2) Furthermore, the libations that the world sells so dearly are not only stagnant and bitter, completely unable to satisfy you in this life, but their venom is poison bringing eternal death. What satisfaction can you possibly expect to derive from waters as bitter as those of Egypt? (Jeremias 2:18)
On the other hand, the Divine Son of God and of Mary offers you the refreshment and rapture of the fountain of fullness of th4e House of God, of which you are free to drink forever. O what blind, blind folly it is to choose the goblet of sin instead of the chalice of Our Saviour? God Himself has exclaime din amazement a through the prophet Jeremias, saying: “Be astonished, O ye heavens at this, and ye gates thereof, be very desolate. … For my people have done two evils. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Jeremias 2:12-13
O dearest Lord, have pity on such wretchedness, and by the pure heart of Thy most blessed Mother, grant unto us the living water that flows from Thee through the miraculous fountain of Her Heart. Stifle in our hearts the dangerous thirst for worldly things and grant us instead the thirst that burns only to please Thee, tolove Thee, to seek our delight and refreshment in following Thy Holy Will, in imitation of the admirable Heart of Mary, fountain of sweetness and grace, Who knew no joy or paradise except to accomplish Thy Divine Will most perfectly.
