Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/526

520 order that their Master, their Good Shepherd, their most acceptable Advocate with the Father, He may impart to them of His own inexhaustible abundance the benefits of that redemption which He has accomplished. Now if any one will seriously consider the benefits which flow from the Eucharist he will understand that conspicuous and chief among them all is that in which the rest, without exception, are included; in a word, it is for men the source of life, of that life which best deserves the name. The bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world. In more than one way, as We have elsewhere declared, is Christ the life. He Himself declared that the reason of His advent among men was this, that He might bring them the assured fulness of a more than merely human life. I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly. Every one is aware that no sooner had the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour appeared than there at once burst forth a certain creative force which issued in a new order of things and pulsed through all the veins of society, civil and domestic. Hence arose new relations between man and man; new rights and new duties, public and private; henceforth a new direction was given to government, to education, to the arts; and most important of all, man's thoughts and energies were turned towards religious truth and the pursuit of holiness. Thus was life communicated to man, a life truly heavenly and divine. And thus we are to account for those expressions which so often occur in Holy Writ:  The tree of life, the word of life, the book of life, the crown of  life, and particularly the bread of life.

But now, since this life of which We are speaking bears a definite resemblance to the natural life of man, as the one draws its nourishment and strength from food, so also the other must have its own food whereby it may be