Blessed Francis then opening the box showed him that it was quite full of unconsecrated hosts, and said, "You are a Priest, God has called you to that vocation, and also to the Pastoral Office in His Church. Would it be the right thing if an artisan, a magistrate, or a doctor only worked at his profession one or two days in the week? You have the power to say Holy Mass every day. Why do you not avail yourself of it?
"Consider that the action of saying Mass is the loftiest, the most august, of all the functions of religion, the one which renders more glory to God and more solace to the living and the dead than any other.
"I conjure you, then, by the glory of Him in whom we live and move and have our being, to approach the Altar every day, and never, except under extreme necessity, to fail to do so.
"There is nothing, thank God, to prevent your doing this. I know your soul as well as a soul can be known, and of this you are yourself quite aware, you who have so frankly unfolded to me the inmost recesses of your conscience. Far from seeing any impediment, I see that everything invites you to do what I ask, and that you may so use the daily and supersubstantial Bread I make you this present, entreating you not to forget at the holy Altar him who makes you this prayer on the part of God Himself."
The young Priest was somewhat surprised, and without attempting to evade the implied rebuke contented himself with submitting to the judgment of the holy Bishop his secret unworthiness, his youth, his unmortified passions, his fear of misusing so divine a mystery by not living as they should live who each day offer it up.
"All this excusing yourself, replied our Blessed Father, is only so much self-accusing as would appear if I chose to examine your reasons in detail and weigh them in the scales of the sanctuary. But without entering into any discussion of them let it suffice that you refer the matter to my judgment. I tell you then, and in this I think that I have the Spirit of God, that all the reasons which you bring forward to dispense yourself from so profitable an exercise of piety are really those which oblige you to practise it. This holy exercise will ripen your youth, moderate your passions, weaken your temptations, strengthen your weakness, illuminate your path, and the very act of practising it will teach you to do so with greater perfection. Moreover, if the sense of your unworthiness would make you abstain from it out of humility, as happened to St. Bonaventure, and if your own unfitness makes the custom of daily celebrating productive in your soul of less fruit than it should, consider that you are a public person, and that your flock and your Church have need of your daily Mass. More than that, you ought to be stimulated and spurred on by the thought that every day on which you refrain from celebrating you deprive the exterior glory of God of increase, the Angels of their delight, and the Blessed of a most special happiness."
The young Priest deferred to this counsel, saying "Fiat, fiat," and from that time for a space of thirty years has never failed to say Mass daily, even when on long journeys through France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and in heretical countries. He never failed, I repeat, even under conditions which seemed to make the saying of Mass impossible.
Such power have remonstrances when tempered with kindness and prudence.
[Footnote 1: Possibly M. Camus himself. [Ed.]