Chapter V. The Last Will of the Sacred Heart

With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer. S. LUKE xxii. 15.

I HAVE hitherto spoken of the Sacred Heart as the interpretation of the mystery of God Incarnate; and next, as the centre of all doctrine, and therefore as the source of all devotion; and lastly, we have seen the ways in which we come to know, and therefore to love, the Sacred Heart. We have now to consider the character of our Divine Lord as it is manifested in the Sacred Heart.

I have said that there are two ways by which our Divine Lord teaches us to know and to love Him.

The first way by which He teaches us to know His Sacred Heart is the living voice — divine, and therefore unerring — of the only Church of God. That living voice, by its articulate and infallible utterance, teaches us the knowledge of the doctrines of faith, and makes them definite and certain in our intellect.

The other way whereby we come to the love of the Sacred Heart is, as I have said, the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Now we will take this latter point; and my purpose will be to show how the Most Holy Sacrament is a revelation of His character.

I can find no more explicit words in proof of what I have said than those which I have taken from the lips of our Divine Lord in the Gospel of S. Luke. He said, ' With desire I have desired' — that is, by a Hebrew reduplication of the words, I have intensely desired — ' to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer.' That last Paschal Supper was a time to which He had looked with an intense longing. In one word, it was at that time and in that place and in that night when He was betrayed that our Divine Lord instituted this Most Holy Sacrament of His love. It is the revelation of His love to us. It is more; it is the perpetual application of His love to our salvation. It is also the object of His love, and it ought therefore to be the object of our love in return. This is the point to which I wish to call your thoughts.

Let us, then, consider what were the reasons why our Divine Lord so intensely desired to partake of that Paschal Supper.

1. First, because it was the end of His sorrows.

His whole life on earth was one continuous sorrow — a ceaseless sorrow that was growing in volume and intensity for the thirty- three years of His life. The sorrows of our Divine Lord began from the first moment of His Incarnation. In that same instant the deified soul of Jesus had its full capacity. It was not in a state of imperfect development; it was not in a condition of unconsciousness, in which future knowledge was to be infused or acquired little by little; but from the beginning, when the human soul was assumed by the Son of God, in that moment it entered fully and altogether into a complete knowledge of the life that was before it. In that moment He foresaw the whole future of His life and death; in that moment the human intelligence, deified by assumption into God, foreknew the whole Passion that was to come; and by divine and human knowledge knowing the sorrow that He was to enter upon, He deliberately, by a divine choice, and by the consent of His human will, for the redemption of the world, made that life of sorrow His own. And therefore the sorrows of the Son of God were like ours indeed, because they were human sorrows; but they were not like ours in this, that He foresaw them all; but ours we do not foresee. Through the whole of our life He, in His mercy, hides from us the things that we shall have to endure — the many trials, the pains, the afflictions of our lives are hid from us until they come. If we ever foresee them, it is only little hy little, and as they approach us. But He saw all before Him. And we know that the suffering is increased by the clearness and the distinctness with which we foresee the sufferings that are to come. When we foresee them we suffer them twice over — once in foresight and once in reality. And therefore, in His mercy He has ordained that our foresight of sorrows should be but little. He withholds it till the moment of suffering is come; and when that moment comes He gives us strength to endure it. Not so with Himself. He foresaw through His whole life the future before He suffered, and therefore in this way He suffered twice all the griefs and sufferings of His life. At last, when that night of the Paschal Supper was come, His sorrows were at the full, and He knew that the turn in the tide was near. The flood was at its height, and it was about to ebb. He had sorrowed for three-and-thirty years, and He was come to the time when His Passion should be accomplished, and He should sorrow no more. He had foreseen that last night; He had foreseen the sadness of that last meeting and of that last farewell. He had foreseen all the circumstances of His Passion; His betrayal by a friend who was false; His betrayal by a kiss, the token of a love which was still more false. He had foreseen all the agonies in the garden under the shade of the olive-trees — all that night of buffeting and scoffing and scourging and mockery. He had looked forward to all these things, and had said, ' I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptised, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished.'1 To the traitor He said, 'What thou dost do quickly;'2 meaning that He had an intense desire to enter into that last conflict, and that the last conflict should be over. Here, then, was the first reason: it was the thirst of the Sacred Heart to suffer for us — an intense desire for the redemption of the world, and a sinless impatience for the end of His sorrow unto death.

2. But, once more, the night of that Last Supper was a time full of sadness, but full of sweetness too. It was full of sadness, because the hour of His Passion was come. It was full of sweetness, because He was for the last time gathered with those whom He loved. He was there with His disciples, with those friends, weak and ignorant, and yet loving and fast, who had cleaved to Him for three long years, through evil report and good report, through shame 1 S. Luke xii. 50. 2 S. John xiii. 27.

and through danger. Many had gone back from Him, but they had remained faithful. He was sitting in the midst of them, and interchanging with them the tokens of their mutual love. John lay upon His bosom, and the others were conversing with Him. He was speaking to them of a coming trial, and He said, 'Because I have said these things sorrow has filled your heart. Let not your hearts be troubled.' 'You shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.'3 And when He began to speak of going away their hearts were more deeply troubled; and He consoled them under that sudden fear, saying, 'In My Father's house there are many mansions,' 'I will come again,' and ' I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you.'4 And they gazed upon one another like men who feel that the shadow of some great change is sensibly falling upon them. They were already sorrowful, but they had forebodings of some greater sorrow yet to come. Such moments have a strange sweetness even in their sadness and fear. For it was as the time of a last farewell; and farewells are sad indeed, but sweet beyond all words. You have known it, when friends bid farewell to go into far-off 3 S. John xiv. 1, xvi. 20. 4 Ibid. xiv. 2.

lands, perhaps never to meet again; how they watch together through the long last night, and converse with one another until the sun rises: and those last hours, though they are overcast hy the shadow of a parting so soon to come, have nevertheless a sweetness that no time in all their memory can surpass. The recollection of those last hours is treasured up through life for ever. Or you may have known it in parting from mother, or sister, or brother, when you were taking a last farewell; how, in those last moments, some token of love has been given to you, the least memorial of the past — it may be a book, or a flower dried within its leaves, or something that they have familiarly used — which will for ever recall their presence. And if in that moment they have given you the expression of a wish, a word would be a commandment which you would obey for ever. Though they had given only a sign of their will, that will would be a command which you would obey to the end of life. It was in such an hour that Jesus took bread and blessed it, and brake it and gave it to them, and said, ' Do this for a commemoration of Me.' It was the command of that dying love, the last commandment, I may say, that He ever gave in memory of Himself; the token of His dying love, to be the memorial of it and the test of ours in return. And therefore it is that the Church of God every morning commemorates the Passion of its Divine Head; and therefore it is the faithful, with loving hearts, love the Holy Mass. It was in that last hour of the Paschal Supper that Jesus instituted that Most Holy Sacrament; to be to us the last will and testament of His Sacred Heart.

3. Again, in that hour and in that action He offered up the Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world. The atoning Sacrifice predestined from all eternity was then offered up. The true Lamb was there. The types and the shadows passed away, the reality was come. Jesus, without spot or blemish, the Lamb immaculate and holy, was brought up into the courts of the Temple. From the first moment of the Incarnation the Son of God assumed His eternal priesthood; the Divine Infant was the Priest of the order of Melchisedech, the great High-Priest of the whole human race, who makes atonement for the sin of the world. In the moment of the Incarnation He was consecrated: He assumed His sacerdotal vestments, and put upon Him the stole of His priesthood. The three-and-thirty years of His life were sacerdotal — a life of self-oblation, of reparation, and of atonement. He was not only Priest, but Victim: He was a sacrifice all through His life; and what was that sacrifice? It was what, in the spirit of prophecy, He had declared: ' Sacrifice and oblations and holocausts for sin Thou wouldst not.' ' In the head of the book it is written of Me, Behold, I come to do Thy will, 0 God.'5 The sacrifice was the life-long oblation of His will. It was the oblation of His perfect will in perfect obedience and perfect patience even unto death. This it was that redeemed the world. And from all eternity this oblation was accepted; and from the beginning of the world this sacrifice was foreseen; and for the merits of this sacrifice all the inspirations and effusions of grace that have saved mankind, before He came, were given.

In this last Paschal Supper, when Jesus sat at the table, and took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it, and said, ' This is My Body,' and the chalice, when He had blessed it, and said, ' This is My Blood,' He began the act of oblation, finished upon Calvary, which redeemed the world. He offered that sacrifice first without bloodshedding; but it was the same true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice which redeems the world, because therein He offered Himself. We read in the Gospels that ' No man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come;'6 that is, no man

5 Heb. x. 8, 9. « S. John vii. 30.

had power to take Him until He delivered Himself into their hands. We read again that the servants of the high-priest who came out to seize Him in the garden of Gethsemani, when they heard Him say, ' I am He,'7 went backward and fell to the ground — the majesty of His divine presence awed them. They were cast at His feet in fear; and in proof that, when they took Him and bound Him, it was of His own free will. When He stood before Pilate, He said once more, * Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.'8 Bound as He was, still no man had power over Him. Twelve legions of angels would have surrounded Him: they would have cut His bonds and set Him free, if it had been His divine will. Therefore at His Last Supper He made a free and voluntary offering of Himself. He had not yet shed His Blood, but throughout His whole life He had offered His will, and He now offered His death; and that which He began at the Last Supper he accomplished on the morrow upon Calvary by the shedding of Blood; for that shedding of Blood was the completion of His sacrifice. Nevertheless, when He sat at the table in the guest-chamber, He truly offered Himself, the one true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice that takes 7 S. John xviii. 6. 8 Ibid. xix. 11.

away the sin of the world. The merits of the Incarnate Son were there: they were sufficient at that time to take away the sin of all mankind if it had not been His will to die. He died to complete the sacrifice, to fill up its perfect propitiation by the last gift that He could give, by the last drop of His Precious Blood.

When He said, ' This is My Body,' and 'This is My Blood,' He instituted the Holy Sacrifice; and when He said, ' This do in commemoration of Me,' He consecrated His Apostles to be priests, to offer for ever that same sacrifice of Himself. Therefore, what the Church offers, day by day, is the continuance of that same divine act which Jesus at that hour began. It is nothing new, nothing distinct from it, nothing added to it, for in itself it was perfect — a Divine Sacrifice admitting of no addition. The Sacrifice of the Altar is the same sacrifice prolonged for ever. He who offered Himself then offers Himself now. He offered Himself then by His own hands; He offers Himself now by the hands of His priesthood. There is now no shedding of blood — that was accomplished once for all upon Calvary. The action of the Last Supper looked onward to that action on Calvary, as the action of the Holy Mass looks backward upon it. As the shadow is cast by the rising sun towards the west, and as the shadow is cast by the setting sun towards the east, so the Holy Mass is, I may say, the shadow of Calvary, but it is also the reality. That which was done in the Paschal Supper in the guest-chamber, and that which is done upon the altar in the Holy Mass, is one and the same act— the offering of Jesus Christ Himself, the true, proper, propitiatory, and only Sacrifice for the sin of the world. And there, in that Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is the Sacred Heart in all the fulness of its atonement, in all the propitiation of its Precious Blood, in all the worship and adoration of its praise and thanksgiving, in all the power of its intercession by the infinite merits of the Incarnate Son. There upon the paten and there in the chalice every morning is the Sacred Heart in all the plenitude of its redeeming power, of its infinite merits, of its unutterable love, of its exquisite tenderness for sinners. It is indeed a commemoration, because it is the perpetual visible memorial of a reality; and it is also the reality itself, because it is His Body and Blood; that is, it is the Keal Presence of Jesus, God and man. It is also the application of His Death and Passion to the souls of those who believe. The Sacred Heart, then, is there in the Holy Mass, teaching us by Itself to know His love. 4. But still further: He desired that last Paschal

Supper, because in that hour He instituted a new way of perpetual presence in the midst of us. He had promised His disciples, ' It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you.' He promised more than this. He said that He would not leave them orphans, but that He would come to them again. And He said still more: ' Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.' He has fulfilled this promise in many ways; but, above all, He has fulfilled it in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. The Council of Trent,9 in the Catechism which it puts into the hands of its priests, speaks thus: ' Jesus having loved His own while He was in the world, loved them unto the end; and now, knowing that the time was come that He should depart unto the Father, in order that He might never be absent from His own — that is, that He might never be absent from His Church — He ordained a divine and wonderful pledge of His love, and by a counsel inexplicable to us, He ac-

9 ' Cum enim Dominus dilexisset suos, in finem dilexit eos: cujus quidem amoris lit divinum aliquod atque admirabile pignus daret, sciens horum jam advenisse, ut transiret ex hoc mundo ad Patrem, ne ullo imquam tempore a suis abesset, inexplicabili consilio, quod omnem natime ordinem et conditionem saperat, perfecit.' Catecli. Rom. p. ii. c. iv. 2.

complished this mystery of His presence in a way that transcends the order and the conditions of nature.' The meaning is this: there are three ways in which God is present in the world. He was present from the beginning as God in a divine manner; next, He was present when He came, into the world, incarnate, in a divine and human manner; lastly, He is present now in the world, in a divine and human and a sacramental manner. He was present in the world as God from the beginning, in a divine manner; for ' all things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made; He was in the world, and the world knew Him not.' He was in the world, by His essence sustaining all things that He had made, by His presence ruling and giving laws to them all, and by His power preserving them all. And His presence in the world was luminous, not to the eyes of faith only, but to pure reason, if only the intelligence in man were not darkened by sin. Like as the sun in the heavens is luminous, resplendent, and self-evident, so the existence and the presence of God in the world would be, if men had the will to see. But there are three causes why men are blind. One is, that the light is too great — it overwhelms them; and the more light the less men see. The next is, because through their own sin the light fails to give them light. ' They have eyes, and they see not.' And the last is, that they darken their own sight. They become judicially blind, like Elymas the magician. The first presence of God in the world, then, is in a divine manner; the next was by Incarnation, by the presence of His two natures of God and man in one Person: it was therefore divine and human; it included all the first and it superadded another, and that other was a palpable and visible presence in the midst of men, visible to their eyes and palpable to their sense. S. John says, ' That which was from the beginning, which we have heard; which we have seen with our eyes; which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.'10 He came as a man born of a Virgin; He conversed among men, He ate and drank with them, He dwelt in the midst of them, He hungered and thirsted, He was weary, and He wrought miracles amongst them. He was Himself above the order and the conditions of nature, because He was the Incarnate God. Our humanity was assumed into God. Therefore Jesus was above the order and the condition of nature; and being above the order of nature, He said, ' No man hath seen God at any time, but the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of His Father' 10 1 S. John i. 1.

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— at the moment He was speaking — 'He hath declared Him.' ' No man hath ascended up into heaven, save He only that came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who, while I speak, is in heaven.'11 He was therefore in the world, and yet above all the order and conditions of the world. More than this, He had dominion over nature, being its Creator. He had power to multiply the bread in the wilderness, because it was the creature of His hands; He had power to give sight to the blind, because it was He who created the eye; He had power to restore hearing to the deaf, because the hearing ear was of His own making; He had power to cleanse the leper, because He had made man, and could cleanse the work of His own hands; He had power to walk upon the water, because when He made the earth He made the sea likewise; He had power to raise the dead, because He was the Giver of life. Therefore He was above all the conditions of nature, and had dominion over them all, for He was God. Nevertheless, when He was in the midst of men, the Jews thought that He was the son of a carpenter, because they judged only by sense. Nicodemus interpreted sense by reason. He knew that He must be a teacher sent from God, for no man could do the miracles that 11 S. John iii. 13.

He did, except God were with Him. Peter knew Him to be Christ, the Son of the Living God; but not by sense alone, nor by reason alone, but by reason illuminated by faith. ' Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father who is in heaven.'

But there is another way of the presence of God in the midst of us now, which is divine, human, and sacramental; and in the mystery of the altar there is Jesus, God and man, above the order and the conditions of nature, as He was when He was visible and palpable on earth. He is no longer visible and no longer palpable, because He is present under the veil of the Most Holy Sacrament.12 According to the natural manner of existence, and in the dimensions of His human nature, He is in glory at the right hand of God; but according to the sacramental mode of His existence, which admits of neither dimensions, nor magnitude, nor locality, nor of the order or the conditions of nature, He is in the Most Holy Sacrament. He is there, as the holy Council of Trent says, not as in a place which, being circumscribed, circum-

12 ' Neque enim haec inter se pugnant, ut ipse Salvator noster semper ad dexteram Patris in coelis assideat juxta modum existendi naturalem, et ut multis nihilominus aliis in locis sacramentaliter praesens sua substantia nobis adsit ea existendi ratione, quam etsi verbis exprimere vix possumus, possibilem tamen esse Deo cogitatione per fidem illustrata assequi possumus.' Cone, Trid. Sess. xiii; cap. i.

scribes all that it contains; but, being the infinite God, He is there without circumscription; there in very truth, there in reality, there as God and man, nevertheless not contained by circumscription of place, nor subject to the conditions or order of nature. You ask me how He is there. He is there as God is everywhere; and where He is in His Godhead there He is in His manhood also. How is His manhood present? It is present, as the Council of Trent says, as it is a substance.13 The foot of a man placed upon the earth is the very reality of his presence, yet no man will say that the footprint circumscribes the man; nevertheless it is a proof that he is there. This is feeble, imperfect, and remote from the divine reality; still is enough to make this divine fact in some way comprehensible to our minds illuminated by faith. But men judge of the Most Holy Sacrament as the Jews judged of our Divine Lord's presence when they saw Him. The world, judging by sense, tells us it is bread and wine; for the men of sense have no spiritual intuition, as the Apostle has before declared of them: ' The sensual' or the animal man — that is,

13 ' Christ! corpus in Eucharistia non est ut in loco. Etenim locus res ipsas consequitur, ut magnitudine aliqua praeditse sunt: Christum vero Dominum ea ratione in sacramento esse non dicimus, ut magnus aut parvus est, quod ad quantitatena pertinet, sed ut substantia est.' Catech. Rom. p. ii. c. iv. 44.

the man of sense — * perceiveth not the things of the spirit of God, neither can he discern them, for they are spiritually examined'14 or discerned. They are known only to the spiritual man. A man who has reason says, ' Under this appearance of hread and wine there are the substances of bread and wine;' and he contends that the doctrine of Tran substantiation cannot be true, because bread and wine must have each their proper natural substance. If, indeed, it were in the order of nature, reason would be right; but the Council of Trent begins by affirming that it is above the order and the conditions of nature. The bread and wine before consecration are bread and wine, subject to the order of nature alone; but when consecrated by the Word of God, Who in the beginning said, ' Let the light be, and the light was,' at His divine words, ' This is My Body, this is My Blood,' they pass from the order of nature to the supernatural order: they are what God calls them; for what He calls them, that they are thereby made. By faith therefore illuminating reason we know this, that what to sense is bread and wine, and what to natural reason has natural substance, to the light of faith, and to reason judging by faith, is the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore we say, 14 1 Cor. ii. 14.

in the solemn rhythm of the Church, ' on the Cross the Godhead lay hid;' hut here, 'in the Most Holy Sacrament, hoth Godhead and manhood are hidden.' But where the manhood is, there is the Sacred Heart. Under the veil of the Most Holy Sacrament, as a vesture hanging between His presence and our sight, there is the Word Incarnate; and out from that vesture there goes forth the virtue of healing, as it went out from the hem of His garment when the poor woman touched it visibly on earth.

5. And lastly, in that Paschal Supper He also instituted for us a new way of union with Himself. We were the children of the first Adam, and we partook of the substance of his flesh and blood; we were of his flesh and of his bone, because we were born, according to the order of nature, unto sin and death. When, by regeneration of the Holy Ghost and by the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, we are made members of the second Adam, we partake of His Divine Flesh and Blood; we are made bone of His Bone, flesh of His Flesh; and we are partakers of His substance unto life and immortality. What is the world dreaming about when it contends with such heat and vehemence that the Sacrament of the Altar is but a representation? Is the world content with a shadow instead of a reality? And does it desire to have not a reality but a shadow for its inheritance? What does the world mean by disputing away the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament? It is a strange infatuation. If you saw a man squandering his inheritance, you would think him to be a fool; if you saw him casting from him precious stones and pearls of great price, you would think him a madman. Why, then, shall we think the world wise in trying to persuade itself, and to persuade others, that the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar is nothing but a shadow, and not a divine reality? And if the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be only a shadow, I would ask, is the Incarnation only a shadow? TherB were heretics in the beginning who were called Phartasiastse, because they taught that the manhood of Jesus was only an appearance. And how did the Christians and the Martyrs of those days answer them? They said that the Incarnation was real and true, as the Flesh and Blood of Jesus in the Most Holy Euchirist is real and true. They argued from the reality of the Most Holy Sacrament to the reality of the Incarnation. We argue from the reality of the Incarnation to the reality of His Sacramental Presence. Nay, more. I would ask the wise men of the world, who still call themselves Christians, do they believe the Eesurrection to be a figure or a reality? Shall we not rise in our own bodies? Shall we not be clothed in these same bodies of ours, only glorified and immortal? And if the Incarnation be a reality and the Kesurrection be a reality, what is the mystery of the Most Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ but the link between these two realities and the means whereby we are made members of His substance, and thereby partakers of Him who has said, ' I am the Kesurrection and the Life'? Therefore our Lord has instituted the Holy Eucharist as a means whereby we are made partakers of His very substance. We belong to the second Adam, as His lineal descendants, as members and partakers of His Flesh and of His Bone. We are incorporated into Him. Hear His own words: ' Unless you eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, you shall have no life in you;' and lest there should be any error, or evasion of His meaning, He added, ' As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.'15 How does the Eternal Son live by the Eternal Father, but because the Son is consubstantial with the Father? And how do we who eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Jesus Christ live by Him, but because we are made

15 S. John vi. 58.

consubstantial with Him; that is, we partake of His very humanity, and that humanity is our own, deified in His Person? This is the Flesh which He gives for the life of the world, the living Bread which came down from heaven. And as we are incorporated into Him, we are made to be of one heart with Him: * He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood abide th in Me and I in him.' He takes our heart into His Heart, and places His Heart in ours; thereby He makes us to love the things He loves, and to hate the things He hates, and to have no will but His. He dwells in those in whom His Sacred Heart abides; He makes them to be His dwelling-place; and if He dwells in them He changes them into His own likeness; He makes them to be like Himself in mind, in thought, in will, and in affection, that they may be like Him in life. There can be no external conformity to our Master if there be not first an internal transformation of the heart into His likeness. And therefore Holy Communion in the Most Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is the way to know and to learn the love of the Sacred Heart to us. By receiving it into ours, and by being conformed to His likeness, we love Him again; for it is by likeness that we know, and by knowing that we love Him.

This it is that makes the unity of the Church indissoluble. In all ages, over all the world, all the action and malice of men, all the power of the gates of hell, all the audacities of heresy, all the cleavings of schism, all the seductions of false science, all the powers of the world, and all the persecutions of Satan have never been able to prevail against the indissoluble unity of the one only Church, Catholic and Koman. It is because the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament is the centre of all hearts. All who are faithful are united to Him: as flames mingle with flames and the multitudes become one, so the unity, supernatural and spiritual, of all those that are united to His Sacred Heart is above the order and the conditions of nature, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Shall I ask, Why is it that every other system that has pulled down the altar, rifled the tabernacle, cast off the Holy Sacrifice, denied the Keal Presence, — shall I ask why it is that these systems (call them what they may), dignified by worldly wealth, by legal authority, by great learning, by social power, as they visibly are, cannot hold the souls of men together? They crumble perpetually, they are wasting every day by a continual decay, losing on the right hand and on the left the hearts and wills which outwardly adhere to them, and are only kept together by the strong bond of worldly interest or by the imperious penalties of law. Why is it? It is because where they worship there is no lamp burning before the altar, no tabernacle, no Sacramental Presence. The Incarnate Word is not there. The centre of all unity is gone; the Sacred Heart does not dwell in the midst of them. They have rejected the Eeal and Sacramental Presence of Jesus Christ.

Now I have endeavoured to give the reasons why our Divine Lord so desired that Paschal night. It was the end of His sorrows; it was the hour of His last sad but sweet farewell; it was the offering of the Sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world; it began His new way of presence in the midst of us; it opened His new and intimate way of union with us for ever. Let us therefore sum up what I have been saying.

1. If any man loves our Divine Lord, he will love the Most Holy Sacrament; and ' if any man love not our Lord Jesus, let him be anathema maran atha.'16 This is the sentence of the Apostle, and the sentence of the Apostle is the sentence of the Holy Ghost. The Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar is the presence of Jesus. It was ordained for this purpose, to keep

16 1 Cor. xvi. 22.

alive in the midst of His disciples the sense that He is never absent; and wherever the Blessed Sacrament is in all the world there is Jesus Christ. It matters not whether in the guest-chamber, or deep in the Catacombs, or on the mountain-side, or in the forests of wild lands, in the hovels where we in England begin our missions, or in the stately basilicas of Home, — there is the Blessed Sacrament, and there is Jesus; and there is shed abroad a sense of His presence, which pervades every place and fills every heart; ay, even those who do not fully believe, when they come into our sanctuaries, feel something strange; something thrills in them, there is a vibration in their heart, a consciousness that they have entered into a presence that may be felt. They do not feel it elsewhere: they cannot account for it, they cannot deny it. But of the stately vaults under which the Blessed Sacrament once was, and is no longer, what shall I say? There is in them a sense of absence — an absence which may be felt. All is empty and void. No man who has ever known the sense of what it is to enter a Catholic church can go into one of the ancient minsters, the noble cathedrals which the faith of our ancestors reared in England, without saying: ' There is a sensible absence here; some one who ought to be in this place, and to reign in it as the Lord of the sanctuary, is here no longer. The tokens of Him who once reigned in this sanctuary speak with an almost articulate voice.' It is like our churches on Good Friday, when the altars are stripped, and the lights are out, and the tahernacle is empty and the door left open wide, that all men may know and feel ' He is not here.'

2. They who love the Blessed Sacrament love it also because it is the most intimate way of conversing with Jesus. We converse with Him in our private chamber in our prayers; we converse with Him when we pray anywhere all the day long, by the roadside, or in the throng of men. But what is that to kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament? If every day you could speak for a quarter of an hour with your angel-guardian it would leave an impression on you all the day long. S. Stephen's face shone like an angel's; so if you could stand visibly face to face with your guardian-angel for a quarter of an hour in the morning your face would shine, and people would know that you had been conversing with some bright and blessed presence higher than your own. Or if you could daily see one of the Saints — the beloved disciple, who lay upon the bosom of Jesus at Supper — if you could see him, day by day, even for a passing moment, what an impression it would leave upon you. And yet, do you not see here the Lord of Angels and the King of Saints morning after morning in the Holy Mass? and may you not at any time come and kneel down here in His presence? and may you not converse with Him, not for a quarter of an hour only, but as long as you will? You may weary of His presence; He is never wearied of yours. 3. And once more. If you love the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Sacrament by its own light will teach you to know and to love the Sacred Heart; and the Sacred Heart will open itself, and will teach us to know its own character. We shall know all its love — the love which is from eternity to eternity; the love of ineffable divine fervour, of unspeakable human.tenderness; the Love that died for us. We shall know too the commandment of that Love when He was about to die for us. And we shall learn not only His love, but His patience; for He abides in the midst of us for ever. Sinners as we are — cold, ungrateful, reckless, and heedless as we are — He still dwells in the midst of us in His humility, veiled, out of sight, slighted and disbelieved, passed without a sign of recognition by the multitudes that go by Him. There He is, in His generosity, giving away grace after grace. We become bankrupt through our fault and sin; we go back to Him: He restores to us the graces that we have lost; more than this, He pours out upon us even more grace than we have wasted, for His generosity is inexhaustible. He does not ' break the bruised reed' nor ' quench the smoking flax.' He waits for you. He has waited for you from your childhood and in your youth and in your manhood; in all your wanderings He has been waiting for you still; trying to draw you towards Him, that some day, at last, you may come to true repentance, and that some day before you die you may be His disciple. And in all this see what I may call His unsuspiciousness. Friends suspect one another, they form rash judgments of one another, they are always harbouring hard thoughts of each other, they draw to themselves pictures and characters of other men, and seldom in their favour. How does the ' Sacred Heart deal with us? He knows everything that is in us, and yet He speaks to us with the same unchangeable love and the same unalterable patience as if we were within altogether what we show ourselves without. What a perfect love, then, is this divine and human character of our Master.

3. But if we love Him, we must bear the fruits that are like Him. ' The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace.'17 These are the fruit of the Sacred Heart.

17 Gal. v. 22.

The heart He bears to us we must bear to our neighbour. Our whole mind must be to our neighbour what His mind is to us. And to this we must add a love of the Cross; for that was the crowning perfection of the Sacred Heart. It is not easy to love contradictions, slights, sorrows, anxieties, failures, vexations. We who murmur and repine and chafe and fret all the day long if anything goes against us call ourselves disciples of the Sacred Heart; and yet we have not so much as the will to bear the Cross, much less to love it. We must learn to be forgiving, to be patient, to be severe against the least sin, not in others — we must bear with them in charity, hoping for their salvation — but in ourselves. Be as sharp as you will with yourselves, do not bear with the least sin in your own temper, give no impunity to yourselves or to your own faults. These are the tokens of the true disciples of the Sacred Heart.

I have endeavoured to put before you the dogma of the Sacred Heart in the Sacrament of the Altar; for dogma, as we have seen, generates devotion. One reason why devotion among us is often so low and feeble is because the light of dogma sometimes is not held up in all its peremptory and divine splendour. Truth has a sacramental power of its own.

Wherever truth is lifted up it is the light of a heacon set on high, and the radiance of that light penetrates into the intellect, and through the intellect into the will, and pervades the heart. You that are not members of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, lose no time to enrol yourselves. Go to your pastors, and give your names to be entered on the rolls of the confraternity. The obligations are very slight, the benedictions are very great. The obligations are only to say every day one ' Our Father' and one 'Hail, Mary,' and once the baptismal Creed, with this one aspiration, ' 0 Most Sweet Heart of Jesus, make me to love Thee more and more.' This is the whole obligation. Rut it puts you into a special and continuous personal relation to the Sacred Heart and to the Divine Person of Jesus; and being a personal disciple, and in direct personal relation to Him, your whole life will be drawn to His presence. After having enrolled yourselves, I counsel you to consecrate yourselves; that is, to resolve that you will take His Sacred Heart as your model; that you will live according to it; that you will examine your own heart by it; that you will make it, day by day, the rule of your actions; that you will come to it as to a fountain. As a thirsty man comes to a fountain of water, so come, day by day, to the Sacred Heart it-

H self, to obtain the grace to be like it: and lastly, make a constant reparation to it for the manifold sins and wrongs and slights that you have committed against it; and not for your own sins only, but for the sins of all other men. Live henceforth a life of reparation, endeavouring by your love and by your fidelity to offer, instead of the vinegar and the gall lifted to His lips on Calvary, the consolation and the joy of your generous and grateful service.

Into what sweetness, into what gladness will you enter if you are disciples of the Sacred Heart. You will understand by experience the words, ' How great is the multitude of Thy sweetness which Thou hast hid for them that fear Thee.'18 Throughout the whole world, from sunrise to sunset — for in the Kingdom of Jesus the sun never goes down — the Sacred Heart is worshipped day by day. When the tapers on the altar are lighted for the Holy Mass in our morning, in other regions of the world they are being Mndled on the altar for the evening Benediction. And as the sun goes round the world, in the language of men, opening the day, the Holy Mass follows it, and Benediction comes after in its train. Everywhere Jesus is upon the altar, in the tabernacle, under the canopy of the world -wide Church; and there are 18 Ps. xxx. 20.

millions upon millions, and myriads of millions, adoring Him in perpetual worship, and saying, ' Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus; Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest/

And that worship upon earth mingles with the worship of heaven. For before the throne there are Saints and Martyrs, and Angels and Archangels, and dominions and principalities and powers, and virtues and thrones, and Cherubim and Seraphim; and in the splendour of eternal glory all created things are casting their crowns of gold before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, saying, * Worship and glory and thanksgiving and wisdom and praise be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne.' The Sacred Heart of Jesus to all eternity will be adored, in the glory of God the Father.

VI.