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النشر الإلكتروني

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I shall drink it with you, new (as it then will be,) in the Kingdom of my Father. Oh! that day, that endless day, that day of light and vision whereof David sang! On that day, throwing aside all the veils that are now shrouding him from our eyes, and himself the first to be inebriated with love in that divine banquet, eternal Wisdom, with an embrace uniting both Head and members together, will give MAN to drink of the torrent of his own divine pleasures, and of that fount of life which himself has in the bosom of the Father. Christ, our Head, has long since ascended beyond the clouds; the Church, flowing with delights, and leaning upon her Beloved, is continually going up, after him, from this desert-land; one or another of his members, our brethren, is every moment going. in, to complete the number of guests at the heavenly and eternal and new Passover; and, as each one goes in, our Jesus says: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; for all these are then united to him as the bride to her Spouse, for they are but one body. It is the Eucharist which has produced this marvellous capability of perfect union between the members and their divine Head. This union will not be manifested till the day of glory: but it is here below, under the shade and cloud of faith, that the Eucharist is thus transforming the elect into Christ, that is, into eternal union with him, so as to make one Body.

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He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. "This, then, it is," says St. Augustine, "to eat that meat, and drink that "drink:-to abide in Christ, and have him abiding "in one's self." " "The sign that a man has eaten "and drunk (of this Sacrament) is the abiding in "and the being abided in, the dwelling in and the

1 St. Matth, xxvi. 29.

2 Ps. xxxv. 8-10.

3 Cant. viii. 5.

4 Gen. ii. 23.

5 St. John, vi. 57.

6 In Johan. Tract. xxvi. 18.

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"being dwelt in." Yes, this is the very nature of the Eucharistic banquet, this banquet of mutual abiding; a banquet at which man cannot worthily eat of the Bread of Life without his becoming, and that gradually more and more, the bread of Christ, that one bread spoken of by the Apostle, which is kneaded up by the Church in the holy Mysteries, that it may become one with the sacred Flesh of Christ, as St. John Chrysostom so forcibly expresses it,3 and give, as St. Augustine says, growth and strength in unity to the mystical body of Christ. "I am the "wheat of Christ," said the holy martyr, Ignatius of Antioch; "may I be ground by the teeth of the wild "beasts, that I may be found to be the pure bread of Christ, * * * to be offered in sacrifice to God.” 5 This same thought of the great martyr of the early ages was taken up, and enlarged upon, in the 8th Century, by the monk St. Beatus and his disciple Heterius: they are sending to Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, their reply to the Nestorians of Spain; and, in the first portion of it, they thus speak of the treatment the Faithful receive from these Heretics : “ They are our persecutors: but, by persecuting us, they "are but shaking the wheat out of the straw; when they torture us, they are but separating the dregs "from the wine. We ought to go down on our "knees, and pray for them that thus make us become "the food of God. As wine, when it has come forth "from the press, is put into the Chalice, so is it with you: after those fastings, after those fatigues, and "humiliations, and crushings, you now are come into "the Lord's cup, in Christ's name. You are bread "upon his table; you are wine in his goblet. We are all one and the same together; for there is but "the one Chalice, in which we all are, because there

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1 In Johan. Tract. xxvii. 1.

2 1 Cor. x. 17.

3 Hom. xlvi. in Johan.

4 Serm. 57, 137.

5 Ad Rom.

6 Ad Elipand. lib. i. 72.

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"is but the one Passion and Death of Christ, where"by we have all been redeemed. We all drink "together, though we do not live together. A heretic "seeks to separate; this is his effort, to tear asunder, "not to piece; to break, not to join. He separates "the Word from the Flesh. He separates the Head "from the body, by saying that the Head is by itself, "and the body by itself. Unfortunate man! he "knows not, how Christ is the Head of the Church;1 "and that the Church is conjoined to that Head; "and that that is the whole Christ, that is Head and 'body. Heretics are not food for the Lord; for it was not of them, that he said: My meat is, to do the "will of Him that sent me, that I may perfect his "work; and that work consists in his making one "bread out of many grains, that is, out of many "souls, the making one soul, one in one charity, one "faith, and one hope. For if the souls which he "makes one by one faith were not the food of God, "he would not have said of the countries white and "ready for the harvest, but which at that time were "not visible to the disciples: I have meat to eat, which ye know not!" 3

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He hungered after this food, and, oh! with what hunger! He longed, he thirsted, for that banquet of his Last Supper, wherein He, the omnipotent guest, gives himself as food to man, and would make the whole of humanity his own food. "As the fire devours "the wood that is thrown into the furnace, so our "Redeemer eats and assimilates to himself, at this "sacred table, the whole body of holy Church; he "makes it his own, and thus it gains strength and grows." 4 So spoke William of Paris, at the beginning of the 13th Century; and he was but repeating what St. Leo the Great and St. Augustine had taught,

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11 Cor. xi. 3; Ephes. v. 23. 2 St. John, iv. 34.

3 St. John, iv. 32.

4 De Sacram. Euch. c. 4.

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ages before, saying, "The participating of the Body "and Blood of Christ has this as its chief work,-to change us into Him," 1" and in such wise, as that being made his body, and having become his mem"bers, we may be what we receive: 2 (ut in id quod "sumimus transeamus, ut simus quod accipimus.")

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Eternal Wisdom had all the children of men in view, when he assumed human flesh. If the unity, which marks all the works of God, seemed to require that he should unite himself to one only in the same hypostasis or Person,-that same law of unity was, so to say, a promoter of his loving design to make this Man-God the Head of a mystical body, in which each of the elect was to be united to Christ. The economy of the Incarnation is described to us by the holy Fathers of the Church in this way,-that the great mystery is not quite completed, until, by the Eucharist, the Head joins to himself his members, and is united to the body, which he is to animate and govern. "It "is on this account, says Paschasius Radbert, "that he so rejoiced at the Supper, and gives thanks "to God, his Father, for that his desires are, at last, "fulfilled. He desired, before he suffered, to eat the "true Passover; in order that, when the hour came for him to deliver himself up as the price of our ransom, we might already be in him as one body. And thus, we had to be crucified, and buried, and rise 995 again, together with him,'

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The union between the Head and the members produced by the Eucharist is so close, that, taking the words of our Saviour, who compares it to the union which exists between the Father and Himself, St. Hilary and St. Cyril of Alexandria adduce it as an argument, the one to defend the consubstantiality of

1 S. Leo, Serm. 14, De Pass.
2 St. Aug. Serm. 57.

3 Ep. ad Frudeg.

4 St. Luke, xxii. 15.
5 Rom. vi.

6 St. John, xvii. 21.

the Word,' against the Arians; and the other to prove against the Nestorians, the union, real and physical, and not merely one of influence or affection, which unites the Word and human nature in the Incarnation. One, by nature, with his Father, one, in Christ, with the flesh he assumed, Eternal Wisdom makes us, through that flesh, one with himself, in the Father.

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But, already, by anticipation, the Holy Ghost, that Bond eternal, had brought the elect into unity. He the divine indweller of the children of God, He the sanctifying, the indivisible Spirit, assembles the sons of Adam in the unity of his own spirit of grace. "As "the power of Christ's flesh makes one body of all "nations," says St. Cyril," so the Holy Spirit makes "all spirits one; and yet, hereby, neither spirits nor "bodies are confounded; as the Apostle said: One 'body, and one spirit, one God and Father of all, who "is above all, and in us all."5 Still, in the marvellous union of creatures brought about, to the glory of the Father, by the Spirit of Father and Son,-it is to the Son, as Incarnate Word, that is, as eternal Wisdom, who is taken with love for the children of men,-it is to Him, that belongs this immense work of union, which so gloriously terminates in, which so stupendously leads up to, the divine espousals with human nature.

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So it is, too, with ourselves; we are just at the close of this Mystery of love, which we have been contemplating, though too briefly, in the most dear company of divine Wisdom; we are to spend the two days, still remaining of our Octave, in considerations which are less exclusively on the dogma of the Blessed Eucharist; and we now find ourselves returning to the thought which was our starting-point. God is love, as we

1 De Trinit. lib. viii.

2 In Johan. lib. x.

3 Eph. iii. 6.

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In Johan. ubi supra.

Eph. iv. 4. 6.

5 Prov. viii. 31.

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