The Fiery Meditations of a Soul Inflamed with Love (Part 2)

Mother Mectilde on Confession, frequent Communion, and lack of feelings

The spiritual master Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament (1614-1698) has a profound reverence for the sacrament of Penance, which she regards as an opportunity of holy humiliation and even a kind of annihilation, but ultimately an encounter with an enveloping divine mercy—and, as if joining the lofitiest summit to the closest street corner, she offers common-sense advice and warns against scrupulosity:

When we present ourselves at the tribunal of penance, we must be in some disposition which has a resemblance to that of Jesus. We should enter into the most holy and most perfect horror of sin which He had, and into the humiliation to which He found Himself reduced before the greatness of His Father, a sorrow and abasement so profound that He remained prostrate and as if annihilated. This is how we should be at the feet of the priest who represents Our Lord for us. We should bring a heart broken with regret for our sins, and a spirit humbled even to the center of the abyss; we should apply to ourselves what Jesus Christ Our Lord did and suffered in the Garden of Olives, abandoning ourselves to His grace and His love in order to receive some of its effects, offering to the Eternal Father the sufferings of His Son in satisfaction for those we lack.

However, my Sisters, beware of scruples and anxiety about your previous confessions, for God is as good as He is just. Do not be troubled about your past life; it is necessary to humble ourselves but not to torture ourselves. Let your bitterness be peaceful: always hating your disorders, but not wasting time in dwelling on them. We must indeed have regret for our infidelities and the poor use we have made of the Blood of Jesus Christ, but without any distrust of His mercy. (39)

Mectilde strongly favored frequent Communion precisely because she believed it was the quickest and most effective way to conquer one’s vices and cleave to Christ. Remarkably, she thought that the more seriously we took our (venial) sins, the more we would run to the only one who can defeat them in us:

We should go to Holy Communion, my Sisters, so that Our Lord may be in us all that He ought to be and so that we may cease to be all that we are, with the intention of being blessedly lost in Him and separated from ourselves. Also, so that in coming to us, He may destroy all that is contrary to God, such as the generation of Adam and its rebellion, the reign of sin, the empire of the evil spirit and our domination which usurps us by self-love, [instead] producing in our souls perfect justice, crucifying the old man, and establishing God’s reign. Thus, our imperfections should make us desire Holy Communion out of zeal to destroy them. (43)

Indeed, she goes so far as to say that, since Jesus desires to be one with us, we are depriving Him of His desire if we remain away when we do not need to:

For Holy Communion does not only give Jesus to us, it also gives us to Him, according to this prophetic utterance pronounced by His lips, “The one who eats My flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me and I in him.” Now, the desire of Jesus to receive us is as great as His charity, which is exceedingly great, and as great as His merits which give Him rights and kingship over us. It is a great infidelity to deprive Him of the fulfillment of His desires, unless we have some involuntary impediment which we cannot overcome. (44)

In a century and in a place where Jansenism was at its peak influence, Mectilde sounds a distinctively anti-Jansenistic note when she pleads: […]