And then – and for this he is most universally known and loved and blest – he undertook to restore the communicant to the altar rail. The glorious Pope

– whose personal holiness was so marked that invariably those who spoke with him came away filled with the conviction that they had talked with a saint,

and whose two devotions all through his deeply holy life were to his Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary – issued two great

edicts on the Blessed Eucharist. The first was given in 1905, and concerned frequent Communion. In this edict it was urged on all the faithful to return

to the injunction made by the Council of Trent when it stated that the ideal attendance at Mass is daily attendance, and with a daily reception of Holy Communion.



"Holy Communion is the shortest and surest way to Heaven," the Holy Father once wrote. "There are others, innocence, for instance, but that is for little children;

penance, but we are afraid of it; a generous endurance of the trials of life, but when
they approach us we weep and pray to be delivered. Once and for all, beloved
children, the surest, easiest, shortest way is by the Holy Eucharist."