Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/242

 his love towards man." (Sess. 13, cap. ii.) If faith had not taught it, who could ever imagine that a God would become man, and afterwards become the food of his own creatures? When Jesus Christ revealed to his followers this sacrament which he intended to leave us, St. John says, that they could not bring themselves to believe it, and departed from him saying: ” How can this man give us his flesh to eat ?...This saying is hard, and who can hear it? ”  (St. John vi. 53, 61.) But what men could not imagine, the great love of Jesus Christ has invented and effected.  ” Take ye and eat: this is my body." These words he addressed to his apostles on the night before he suffered, and he now, after his death, addresses them to us. 3. “How highly honoured, ”  says St. Francis de Sales, “would that man fed to whom the king sent from his table a portion of what he had on his own plate? But how should he feel if that portion were a part of the king‟s arm? ” In the holy communion Jesus gives us, not a part of his arm, but his entire body in the sacrament of the altar. "He gave you all," says St. Chrysostom, reproving our ingratitude, ” he left nothing for Himself. ” And St. Thomas teaches, that in the eucharist God has given us all that he is and all that he has. "Deus in eucharistia totum quod est et habet, dedit nobis." (Opusc. 63, c. ii.) Justly then has the same saint called the eucharist ” a sacrament of love; a pledge of love. ” “Sacramentum charitatis pignus charitatis." It is a sacrament of love, because it was pure love that induced Jesus Christ to give us this gift and pledge of love: for he wished that, should a doubt of his having loved us ever enter into our minds, we should have in this sacrament a pledge of his love. St. Bernard calls this sacrament ” love of loves." “Amor amorum." By his incarnation, the Lord has given himself to all men in general; but, in this sacrament, he has given, himself to each of us in particular, to make us understand the special love which he entertains for each of us. 4. Oh! how ardently does Jesus Christ desire to come to our souls in the holy communion! This vehement desire he expressed at the time of the institution