My Lord Jesus, how wonderful were those conversations which You did have with Your disciples after your resurrection.   When You went with two of them to Emmaus.  You did explain all the prophecies which related to Yourself.  And You did commit to the Apostles the Sacraments in fulness, and the truths which it was Your will to reveal, and the principles and maxims by which Your Church was to be maintained and governed.

And thus You did prepare them against the day of Pentecost…when life and illumination was to be infused into them.  I will think over all You did say to them with a true and simple faith. The “kingdom of God” was truly Your sacred subject.  Let me never for an instant forget that You had established on earth a kingdom of Your own, that the Church is Your work, Your establishment, Your instrument; that we are under Your rule, Your laws and Your eye-that when the Church speaks You speak.

…let not the weakness of Your human representatives lead me to forget that it is You who speak and act through them.  It was just when You were going away, that then You  did leave this kingdom of Yours to take Your place on to the end of the world, to speak for You, as Your visible form, when Your Personal Presence, sensitive to man, was departing.  I will in true loving faith seeing You before me, teaching all the truths and laws of this kingdom to thy Apostles, and I will adore You, while in my thoughts I gaze upon them and listen to Your words.

I need you to teach me day by day, according to each day’s opportunities and needs….I need the mind of the Spirit, which is the mind of the holy Fathers, and of the Church….I need to be saved from originality of thought, which is not true if it leads away from you….Give me the gift of discriminating between true and false in all discourse of mind…My ears are dull, so that I cannot hear Your voice….You alone can quicken my hearing…cleanse and renew my heart….Give me the discernment to know Your voice from the voice of strangers….and answer me through my own mind.