For that matter, we are apt to imagine the Middle Ages as much more
melancholy than they really were. Men suffered much in those days, but
the idea of grief being never separated from that of penalty, suffering
was either an expiation or a test, and sorrow thus regarded loses its
sting; light and hope shine through it.

Francis drew a part of his joy from the communion. He gave to the
sacrament of the eucharist that worship imbued with unutterable emotion,
with joyful tears, which has aided some of the noblest of human souls to
endure the burden and heat of the day.[19] The letter of the dogma was
not fixed in the thirteenth century as it is to-day, but all that is
beautiful, true, potent, eternal in the mystical feast instituted by
Jesus was then alive in every heart.

The eucharist was truly the viaticum of the soul. Like the pilgrims of
Emmaus long ago, in the hour when the shades of evening fall and a vague
sadness invades the soul, when the phantoms of the night awake and seem
to loom up behind all our thoughts, our fathers saw the divine and
mysterious Companion coming toward them; they drank in his words, they
felt his strength descending upon their hearts, all their inward being
warmed again, and again they whispered, "Abide with us, Lord, for the
day is far spent and the night approacheth."

And often their prayer was heard.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1 Cel., 62.