Eternal Father, I offer Thee the precious blood, etc., etc.
Fifteenth Day.
Man's life is a struggle for good from the beginning to the end. We are taken out of wickedness by Baptism, and we are frequently redeemed by penance. We need a sacrament that will give us perseverance. “Be thou faithful unto [pg 298] death,” is the watchword that St. John cries out to the bishop in the Apocalypse, “and I will give thee the crown of life.” We are never sure of ourselves; even the sharpest intellect will not be able to say whether he be worthy of God's wrath or of God's love. Therefore Jesus Christ has applied the merits of His sacred blood to the Sacrament of Confirmation, by which we are to be made strong, by which human weakness is to be taken away. After receiving this sacrament what noble works we are capable of! In the olden ages martyrs died for Christ; mothers saw their children martyred before their eyes, all for the love of Jesus, strengthened by this sacrament. People give up the world and persevere in the heroic practice of virtue by the grace of the precious blood of Jesus.
Prayer.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the precious blood, etc., etc.
Sixteenth Day.
How comes it that although we are endowed with virtue from on high, nevertheless we sometimes make the blood of Christ of no avail to us? By Confirmation we ought to be perfect Christians, and still we are far from being such. The reason of our weakness, is that we are addicted to the things of this world, and we are very much inclined to follow the demands of our passions. We do not place implicit confidence in the efficacy of the precious blood; we do not desire to be cured of our maladies; we do not pray to be freed from our evil inclinations. What great strength did not the saints [pg 299] gather from the precious blood! How strong they were against the devil! How mortified their lives! How sincere in the service of God—and all through the power of that sacred blood. How firm the martyrs stood in their testimony for the faith! how many Christians persevere in doing good by means of the graces derived from the adoration of the precious blood! If we would be as they were, we must turn to the suffering Jesus, and adjure Him, by the blood that He shed, to sustain us also in our struggle against the foes of our salvation.
Prayer.