Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/534



528 THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST.

flourish, if men would but ponder well the charity which Christ has shown in this Sacrament. For in it He has not only given a splendid manifestation of His power and wisdom, but "has in a manner poured out the riches of His divine love towards men," ^ Having before our eyes this noble example set us by Christ, who bestows on us all that He has, assuredly we ought to love and help one another to the utmost, being daily more closely united by the strong bond of brotherhood. Add to this that the outward and visible elements of this Sacrament supply a singularly appropriate stimulus to union. On this topic St. Cyprian writes: "In a word the Lord's sacrifice symbolizes the oneness of heart, guaranteed by a persevering and inviolable charity, which should prevail among Christians. For when Our Lord calls His body bread, a substance which is kneaded together out of many grains, He indicates that we His people, whom He sustains, are bound together in close union; and when He speaks of His blood as wine, in which the juice pressed from many clusters of grapes is mingled in one fluid. He likewise indicates that we His flock are by the commingling of a multitude of persons made one."^ In like manner the Angelic Doctor, adopting the senti- ments of St. Augustine,^ writes: "Our Lord has be- queathed to us His body and blood under the form of substances in which a multitude of things have been reduced to unity, for one of them, namely bread, con- sisting as it does of many grains is yet one, and the other, that is to say wine, has its unity of being from the con- fluent juice of many grapes; and therefore St. Augustine elsewhere says: *0 Sacrament of mercy, O sign of unity, O bond of charity!' "* All of which is confirmed by the declaration of the Council of Trent that Christ left the

1 Ck)nc. Trid., Sess. XIII. De Euch. c. ii. ' Ep. 96 ad Magnum n. 5 (al. 6). ^ Tract, xxvi. in Joan. nn. 13, 17. Â«Summ. Theol. P. III., q. Ixxix., a. 1.