Page:AceticLibraryV2PreparationForDeath.djvu/278

 from Him, saying, "How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat? .... This is an hard saying; who can hear it? (S. John vi. 52, 60.) But what men were not able at any time to conceive, the great love of our Lord Jesus Christ, both intended and wrought.

S. Bernardine says that our Blessed Lord left us "this Sacrament to be a memorial of His love," and the record which S. Luke has left us of our Lord's words, agrees with this statement "This do in remembrance of Me." (S. Luke xxii. 19.) S. Bernardine adds that the love of our Lord was not satisfied with sacrificing His life for us: " In that excess of fervour, when He was ready to die for us, He was impelled by this ocean of love to do a greater work than ever had been wrought, to give to us His Body for food." Abbot Guerric says, that in this Sacrament Jesus "poured out upon His friends the last strength of His love;" and the same sentiment is expressed more forcibly, when it was said of old that in the Eucharist our Blessed Lord, " as it were, poured out upon men the riches of His love."

S. Francis of Sales says, What a refinement of love it would be deemed, if a prince at table were to send to a poor man a portion of his own dish! How much more if he sent to him his whole dinner, if finally he sent him a piece of his own flesh that he might eat it? Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Communion gives us for food not only a part of His own table, not only a part of His own body, but His whole Body: " Take, eat; this is My Body," and together with His Body He gives us even His Soul and His Divinity. In short, says S. Chrysostom, in the Holy Communion Jesus Christ " gave Himself to thee wholly, and left nothing for Himself." S. Thomas Aquinas adds, that " God in the Eucharist has given to us all that He is, and all that He has." S, Bonaventure exclaims with wonder of our Blessed Lord's presence in the Eucharist, " Behold He Whom the world cannot contain, is our prisoner." And if the Lord in the Eucharist gives us His whole Self, how can we fear that He will deny us any grace that we ask of Him: " How shall He not with Him, freely give us all things?" (Rom. viii. 32.)