parably more helpless. He is little and insignificant, as one annihilated and emptied out.

M.

Visus, gustus, tactus, in te fallitur.

In cruce latebat sola Deitas,

At hic latet simul et humanitas.

"The sight, the taste, the touch, give us no help at all to know how near He is. On Calvary His Divinity, only His Divinity, was hidden; but here there is no sign of any kind to tell us that His human Soul and Body are with us."

Erat subditus, He was subject, was the history of His life at Nazareth. Jesus tacebat was true of certain short hours of the night and the day of His Sacred Passion. But now those words, Erat subditus-Jesus tacebat: are to be the short story of His long existence through the ages in the Most Holy Eucharist. The hidden God He is to be. And, alas! too often we might borrow the words which St. Paul found inscribed at Athens, and say that in many places Jesus shall be in the tabernacle the unknown God.

N. That the world may know that I love the Father. Arise, let us go.

We were endeavouring just now to imagine what manner of thoughts arose in the heart of His Blessed Mother when her Son in days gone by explained to her, as He stood by her side in all the loveliness of His youth, the compassionate decree of the Eternal Father that He was to become in the Blessed Eucharist the food of fallen man. Let us return for a little while longer to this study.

If, by an impossible supposition, Jesus had a mother who loved Him as Mary loved, but was not wise and holy and one in will with her Divine Son, as Mary was, how would the heart of such a mother beat and throb and break with sobbing when it dawned upon her what a future in His Sacramental Life was prepared by the Eternal Father for her Son!

We have dwelt upon that most appalling thought of

some holy Fathers that the Ever-Blessed Mother would, with unflinching love and obedience, with her own hand have immolated the Divine Victim had such been God's desire. But if by so doing the Mother could avert the long-enduring misery and reproach and dishonour which her Divine Son sees before Him in His Eucharistic Life, then surely to strike the death-blow would have become to a maternal heart immeasurably more possible.

"O my Son," the broken-hearted Mother would say, as the picture of this life of humiliation is set before her, 'Why hast Thou done so to us?" (St. Luke ii.).

"O Eternal Father, all else that is in this bitter chalice, let Him drink it, but do not say that He is to live for ever as the food of men, and in the power of men, to be loathed with nausea by them, and to be scoffed at for ever by the powers of darkness."

For when we read in the Book of Job how Satan in the pride of his victories intruded among the sons of God, to scoff at Him because men whom He created did not serve Him or love Him; may we not take it for granted that the wicked spirits, as they range through this world, often halt to scoff at our Saviour in His tabernacle? "You boasted that you would draw all men to yourself; have you done it? Neither your promises nor your threats can induce them to come to you." Surely any mother who loved Christ Jesus tenderly, but was not full of grace, as Mary is, would plead most piteously, Absit! Far be from Thee, my Son, all this opprobrium. This shall not be unto Thee (St. Matt. xvi.).

O. But these are not the thoughts of the Blessed among women when the message comes to her from her Son :

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My hour is come". For though she knows that sorrows great as the sea are close at hand, yet at these tidings her soul superabounds with joy, seeing that all the glories of this Eucharistic Mystery have been disclosed to her.

Some holy writer has suggested that at the marriage-feast of Cana, when her Divine Son said to her, My hour is not yet come, He was answering a secret wish and longing, a hope against

hope in her soul, that by some possibility the great first miracle of His Public Life, which she felt in her heart He was about to work for her, might be the miracle of miracles, the Eucharistic transubstantiation. For that crowning and culminating grace His hour was not come; but at once, to console her patient love, He gladly put forth the might of His arm to work a wonder that should prepare the way for the Blessed Eucharist. For it convinced men that all power was given to Him, and that, as in the beginning God could by a word create out of nothing, so too could He also now by a word change water into wine, and wine into His Sacred Blood.

Be this, however, as it may, we can rest assured that if the Blessed Mother rises and gathers round her the devout women to go with her to assist at the first Holy Mass, she understands fully what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the charity of her Son Jesus, about to be hidden under the semblance of the unleavened

bread and the juice of the grape. Her Divine Son has fully disclosed to her the plan and intention of His Eternal Father, and as she now hastens to Him, no word can come from her heart but a most reverential and jubilant Fiat, Fili mi. Be it done, my Son and my God, according to Thy word. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

Who alone doth wonderful things.
of His Majesty for ever; and the
with His Majesty. So be it.
(Psalm lxxi.).

P. Arise, let us go hence.

And blessed be the name whole earth shall be filled So be it. Amen. Amen

O yes, because the time is come, and her Divine Son is going to fulfil His Father's wish, which is, in the first place, that He shall give back His Body and His Blood to her who gave of her flesh and her blood to Him, and so enable Him to become God-Man, and to earn His name of Jesus; then, too, secondly, that He shall, with His Body and His Blood, feed and nourish her who has fed and nourished Him with the substance of her body. Nothing less will content the longing of His Heart. Nothing less will accomplish the decree of His Eternal Father.

With what delight we read in the Sacred Books how

old Tobias and his son put this difficulty of their grateful hearts to one another: My son, what can we give to this holy man that is come with thee? and his son answered, Father, what wages shall we give him? or what can be worthy of his benefits? (c. xii.). Sursum corda. Let us lift up our hearts, and reverently dare to contemplate how the blessed choirs of angels listen in breathless ecstasy, while the Eternal Father and His Divine Son take counsel together in the wide immensity of their infinite gratitude. "My Son, what shall we give to Thy Mother, ever blessed, in return for what she has given to Thee? Quid retribuam?” And the Divine Son answers only by echoing back the question, "Quid retribuam? My Father, what shall we give to her that shall be fitting and worthy of our boundless gratitude?

And, to go on with our human language, the outcome of this Divine conference is the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. The Eternal Son, Who came forth from her womb, shall, it is decreed, go back and dwell within her body. The Flesh He had from her, to her He will give back.

Moreover, carefully and faithfully and lovingly she nursed and fed Him in His helpless infancy. So now He shall become her Food, in which she shall find the sweetness of every taste (Wisdom xvi.), and It shall serve her and be turned to whatever she likes.

Q. Arise, let us go.

Further than this, her Divine Son has explained to her in those early days how, when He took to Himself a Human Body and Human Soul, it was not His thought to sanctify and elevate only that one Body and one Soul; the whole of His fallen family must be raised up and hallowed and made quite heavenly. Every disciple of Christ is to become a Christ, a Divine man of His flesh and of His bones. The chaos of separation between her one onlybegotten Son and the countless children of her second family that is to come, shall be bridged over; all are to

be in very deed her children, and the brethren of her Son : of His flesh and of His bones.

R. Arise, let us go.

For she has, moreover, laid up in her heart another truth taught her by her Lord, that, through the Adorable Sacrament, the sentence passed on fallen man, Thou shalt die, will be so far most gloriously cancelled and reversed, that the Blessed Eucharist shall become to the mortal body the germ of immortality. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up in the Last Day (St. John vi.).

S. Arise, let us go.

For neither has she forgotten how her Son, as He explained to her the things that were written in the Holy Books concerning Him and concerning herself, pointed out that promise of His Eternal Father: After her shall virgins be brought to the King. They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing, they shall be brought into the temple of the King (Psalm xliv.).

And she is fully conscious that it is through the Eucharistic corn of the elect, and the Eucharistic wine that germinates virgins (Zach. ix.), that she shall be able to lead after her into the temple of the King the long line of virgins who, even while living in the flesh, shall rival the purity of the angels. It is the Body of Christ that will sanctify their virginal bodies.

Corpus Christi, salva me.

T. Arise, let us go.

Yes! for as His Sacred Body shall sanctify, so too she knows that His Precious Blood in the sacred chalice shall inebriate. That is to say, it shall so cheer and gladden interiorly, and fill with heavenly transports the souls of His disciples, that men and women, and boys and maidens, will go to martyrdom as to a joyous wedding-day. Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

U. And more than this, she knows too in her heart how the wheaten bread and the drops of the grape juice shall