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called friends. Surely this is what ought to be. The man who is to have this marvellous power over the Lord Jesus Christ- so that when he says, Come, the Lord must come, and be in his hands upon the altar- such a man ought to be nothing else but a most intimate, familiar and tender friend. Who but the Blessed among women was fit to be Mother to the Divine Child ? who but Holy Joseph fit to be the foster-father of Jesus? And yet the priest has a power akin to theirs. He, too, has the Body and the Soul and the Divinity of the self-same Lord Jesus in his keeping Surely none but a true and most tender-hearted friend should approach the altar to be consecrated for such an office.

Whence is this to Me! N. Do

ye

this in memory of Me. St. Paul adds: That not even the best of friends, unless he be a man that is called by God as Aaron was, can intrude himself into this priestly dominion over the Lord Jesus Christ. What is written of all power and authority is true ten-fold here: He that taketh power to himself unjustly shall be hated (Ecclus. xx.).

Alas! alas! with what unanimity, with what a sorrowful intensity, but yet an unflinching, unhesitating intensity, will all the blessed saints and angels, and even the Mother of Mercy herself, unite in the final anathema pronounced against him who was a consecrated priest of Jesus Christ, and yet loved not Jesus Christ.

0. Do ye this in remembrance of Me.

The memory turns to what the heart loves ; and the tongue speaks of what the heart loves.

The priest is to be a friend who truly loves Jesus : and it behoves him to come to the altar full of remembrance of Christ Jesus, of His Life, of His Death, of His Sacred Heart. Out of the abundance of the heart, his memory is to call up countless words and works of Jesus; and his tongue is to speak of Jesus.

The priest of Jesus Christ cannot easily be a midway neutral man, an indifferent, neither hot nor cold. If not a

true friend and intimate familiar, how shall he escape being a traitor ?

P. For as often as you shall eat this Bread and drink the Chalice, you shall show the Death of the Lord till He come (I Cor. xi.).

The Holy Mass is to be the Memoriale Mortis Domini. One reason why our Blessed Saviour instituted this Most Holy Sacrament under two kinds, is that He wished the Holy Mass to be, we may say, a scenic representation of His Death.

The Sacraments are outward signs of an inward grace. The Holy Mass, too, the clean oblation, is to be an unbloody representation and perpetuation of the Sacrifice which was offered with so much shedding of Blood on Calvary. At the time of His Death, His Blood

had been well-nigh drained out of His Body, by the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Crowning, the Crucifixion. The spear that pierced His Side brought out the few drops remaining.

The separation of His Blood from His Body, or His Soul from His Body, can never take place again : Christ rising from the dead dieth now no more.

Death shall no more have dominion over Him (Romans vi.). But our Saviour wished to represent the separation of His Sacred Blood from His Body. This is better done by our having the Most Holy Sacrament under two kinds, and by our hearing the words, This is My Body. This is My Blood.

Holy Church makes a very resolute stand against all false teachers who pretend that they who receive under one kind receive only half a sacrament.

All the faithful know through her teaching that if Christ were not whole and entire under either kind, He would not be present with those who receive under both kinds. If the Sacred Host were nothing but the lifeless Body of Christ, and if the chalice contained nothing but His Sacred Blood, He would not be present and living either under one kind or under both. Under either kind, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ is truly received.

But under the appearance of bread the Body is present by its own right, and by virtue of the sacred word : This is My Body. The Precious Blood is only present under the form of bread by the right it now possesses of inseparable companionship with the Sacred Body. Had Mass been offered up while our Lord was dead, and after the Blood had been drained from His Body, the Sacred Blood would not have been present under the form of Bread.

Q. Before retiring from the Sanctuary of the first Holy Mass, we may reverently ask the question : Did our Blessed Saviour make known to His little flock the thanksgiving hymn of His own Most Holy Mother?

It is the will of His Eternal Father and His own that it shall be the evening-song of His future Church till time

is done. This is decreed : and so, Day telleth unto day the words of her Canticle: And night unto night passes on the knowledge of them. There are no speeches nor languages in which the song of the Mother of God is not heard. The sound is gone forth into all the earth, and her words to the ends of the world.

Did our Blessed Saviour wish to commence Himself the use of this Vesper song? Did He wish to give gladness unspeakable to the listening choirs of angels by adding on to the Post-Communion hymns of thanksgiving—this song of praise, so sweet and so becoming-Magnificat anima mea Dominum ?

Sit jucunda, sit decora,

Mentis jubilatio.

SCENE IX.

THE DISCOURSE AFTER MASS. As has been said, we are following, while we contemplate the scenes in the Cenacle, the order suggested by Father Coleridge, according to which, besides the short discourse by which our Saviour prepared His Apostles for the Blessed Eucharist and for their Priesthood, He spoke many more parting words after the Holy Mysteries were ended. Probably they were addressed only to the Apostles.

It falls in well with this arrangement that our Lord commences His Post-Communion exhortation with words that might well be suggested by the Holy Sacrifice just celebrated.

STATION I.
I am the True Vine (St. John xv. 1).

I
A. “ Attendite," for we are permitted to be present in
spirit. “May the Blessed Mother and the holy disciples
pray that we may have ears to hear, and that we may not
merely be hearers but doers."

Therefore, the juice of the grape, which His little flock have just seen consecrated, is created to be a type or image of His Most Precious Blood. When the Eternal Father creates the vine that wine may cheer the heart of man (Psalm ciii.), He has in His thoughts something better

than the poor image; He has the True Vine, and the Sacred Blood of His Son Whom He wird send. I am the True Vine, and My Blood is the Wine that shall inebriate the hearts of the elect. This chalice is the beautiful thing of His Church, filled with the wine that germinates virgins (Zach. ix.). Inebriated with the wine which they will drink in gladness from the fountains of their Saviour, the disciples of Jesus will, with heavenly courage, conquer the flesh, the world, and the powers of Hell.

If He is the Vine and we the branches, what wonder that He wishes to nourish us with His Sacred Blood ? Were the Lord's Supper only bread and wine, how could it effect all that the branch requires from the vine ?

I am the True Vine and My Father is the Husbandman.

Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He will take away; and every one that beareth fruit He will purge it that it may bring forth more fruit (vv. 1, 2).

A. Here is a short history of the Church-a short history, but a contemplation for many days.

We can then divide men into two great classes :

1. Branches that bear no fruit, which after a time are cut off and cast away.

2. Branches which bear fruit, and which God is pruning and purging that they may bear more fruit.

Why, we sometimes ask impatiently, why is God afflicting me? why has He taken from me my child ? my lands?

my

friends? We have the answer here. The careful, the all-wise Husbandman is purging and pruning, that the fruitful branch may bear more fruit. What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.

Attendite, let us give heed, and lay up this Divine word in our hearts. This world is not our home. All that goes on here is but preparation for the eternal life in our Father's everlasting home,

ܕܙ

STATION III.

Now you are clean by reason of the word which I have

spoken to you (v. 3). Already, after the washing of their feet, He had said to them, You are clean; but now, after the new word that He has spoken to them, Take ye and eat, for this is My Body; take and drink ye all of this, for this is the chalice of My Blood, they are still more clean ; their souls are filled with much more grace.

“Grant us, most merciful Jesus, so to reverence the Most Sacred Mysteries of Thy Body and Thy Blood, that we may ever experience in us the fruit of Thy Redemption. Amen."

STATION IV.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear

fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine, so neither can
you unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, you the
branches; he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same
beareth much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing.
If any man abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a
branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up,
and cast him into the fire, and he burneth (vv. 4–6).
A. Abide in Me, and I in you.

“ The Sacrament, that is, the outward sign and ceremony, passes quickly ; but the union effected between your soul and Mine, your heart and Mine, your body and Mine, is not to pass away: Abide in Me, and I in you."

B. Abide in Me, and I in you. His earnest longing is that we may be as anxious to abide with Him as He is to abide with us. For the Lord hath chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His own possession (Psalm cxxxiv.). Ought this to be impossible or too difficult ? According to human wisdom, who is the gainer by this union ? Our Lord, or our souls? In the Holy Mass we pray that we may be “partakers of His Divinity, Who has vouchsafed to share

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