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| Chapter XXX. The answer to the question raised.
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Chapter XXX.
The answer to the question raised.
Serenus: If we had this
knowledge, or rather faith, of which I treated above; viz., to believe
that all things were brought about by God, and ordered for the good of
our souls, we should not only never despise them, but rather pray
without ceasing for them as our own members, and sympathize with them
with all our hearts and the fullest affection (for “when one
member suffers, all the members suffer with it”1499
), as we know that we cannot possibly be
perfected without them inasmuch as they are members of us, just as we
read that our predecessors could not attain the fulness of promise
without us, as the Apostle speaks of them as follows: “And these
all being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise,
God providing some better thing for us that they should not be
perfected without us.”1500
But we never remember
that holy communion was forbidden them; nay rather if it were possible,
they thought that it ought to be given to them daily; nor indeed
according to the words of the gospel which you incongruously apply in
this sense “Give not that which is holy to dogs,”1501
ought we to believe that holy communion
becomes food for the demon, and not a purification and safeguard of
body and soul; for when it is received by a man it, so to speak, burns
out and puts to flight the spirit which has its seat in his members or
is trying to lurk in them. For in this way we have lately seen Abbot
Andronicus and many others cured. For the enemy will more and more
abuse the man who is possessed, if he sees him cut off from the
heavenly medicine, and will tempt him more often and more fearfully, as
he sees him removed the further from this spiritual remedy.1502
| 1502 The question
whether the Holy Communion should ever be given to those possessed is
discussed by S. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa III. Q. lxxx. Art. 9, and
answered in the affirmative, the authorities quoted in its favour being
this passage from Cassian, and the third Canon of the 1st Council of
Orange (a.d. 441). | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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