Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/528



522 THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST.

religious life. For this gift, than which nothing can be more excellent or more conductive to salvation, is offered to all those, whatever their office or dignity may be, who wish â€” as every one ought to wish â€” to foster in themselves that life of divine grace whose goal is the attainment of the life of blessedness with God,

Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would rightly esteem and would make due provision for life ever- lasting whose industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of human events. But, alasl we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world, as it were, a fresh lease of life and prosperity, in- asmuch as by their own energetic action they are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display. And yet, whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God, instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it anxiously strives for pros- perity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds. But the source and chief of all these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so much. For what can be more honorable or a more worthy object of desire than to be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state,