On the Lapsed 25

Hear what happened in my own presence and with me as witness. Some parents, as it happened, fleeing in panic and taking too little thought, left their little daughter in the care of a wet nurse. The nurse took the abandoned child to the magistrates. There, before the idol where the people were flocking, because she could not yet eat meat on account of her age, they gave her bread mixed with wine, which was itself also left over from the sacrifice of those who were perishing. Afterward the mother took her daughter back. But the girl could no more speak of and disclose the crime committed than she had been able before to understand or prevent it. So it happened through ignorance that the mother brought her in with her while we were offering the sacrifice. But the girl, mixed with the saints, impatient of our prayer and supplication, was now shaken with weeping, now tossed about fluctuating in agitation of mind; as if under the compulsion of a torturer, her untaught soul, still in its simple years, confessed by whatever signs it could the consciousness of the deed. And when, the solemn rites completed, the deacon began to offer the cup to those present, and, as the others received, her turn came, the little one, by an instinct of the divine majesty, turned her face away, pressed her mouth shut with tightened lips, and refused the cup. The deacon persisted, however, and, though she resisted, poured in some of the sacrament of the cup. Then there followed sobbing and vomiting. The Eucharist could not remain in a violated body and mouth; the drink sanctified in the Lord's blood burst out of the polluted inward parts. So great is the Lord's power, so great his majesty: the secrets of darkness were uncovered under his light, and not even hidden crimes deceived the priest of God.