Consider well and lay to heart the record we have of the affection of an eminent French ecclesiastic (lately deceased) for the Holy Scripture. The word of God was always on his table. He kissed its pages with respect, read a few verses, and stopped at each thought that struck him, desirous to meditate and penetrate the spiritual sense. Towards the end of his life he said: "I have read this book for thirty years, and every day I discover in it new lights and new depths. How different it is from the word of man! That is exhausted at a single draught, but the word of God is a bottomless abyss!" How much (he wrote) are unbelievers to be pitied as they advance in life! The light becomes so lively, so sweet, so penetrating in proportion as we draw near to death under the auspices of faith, and of virtue, which has its root in the gospel. We no longer believe only. We see. In the same way as the mystery of iniquity increases in an unbelieving soul, and everything becomes to him a puzzle and object of doubt, so the light extends and envelopes a soul accustomed to live in God. When I read the gospel, every word seems to me as a flash of lightning, and gives me new consolation." The gospels were in fact his favorite study, and in the New Testament his preference was for Saint John and Saint Paul, the Apostle of Love, and the Doctor of the Cross. The epistles of Saint Paul, which (he says) "I read every day, enchant me more and more with the truth. They are an ocean of which God alone is the shore." Is not this an instruction and a reproof for many of you? Of some who have not I fear a copy of the Holy Scriptures, or of the New Testament, so easily and cheaply obtained? Of some who let day after day pass without looking into it, or treasuring up a single text to be (Saint Francis of Sales observes) "as a sweet flower to smell to," amid your daily cares and occupations?
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp