rue friend and intimate familiar, how shall he escape being 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 (1 Cor. xi.).

The Holy Mass is to be the Memoriale Mortis Domini. One eason why our Blessed Saviour instituted this Most Holy Sacrathent 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).

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 will 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.

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

our humanity". What an exchange! We give Him the poor rags of our human infirmity, and in exchange we ask to be clothed with His Divine perfections. The holy Psalmist had good cause to expostulate with our Lord, saying: What is man that Thou art mindful of him? or the Son of Man that Thou dost visit him? Yet He not only visits us, but wishes to abide in us.

C. "But, Lord Jesus," each of us may say, 66 even if Thou visitest Thy faithful servants and takest delight in abiding with them, yet, whence is this to me, my God, that Thou shouldst come to me, and wish to abide in me? Lord, I am not worthy that Thou enter under my roof" (St. Matt. viii.).

D. The wonder is partially explained when we remember the common saying that "love goes downwards"; that a good father and mother care more for their child, than their child for them. Our Father Who created, is infinitely more fond of His child than His child is of Him. There is no one but His own Divine Son Who knows Him and loves Him adequately and fully; and next to Him the Ever-Blessed Mother.

E. Abide in Me, and I in you. "Se nascens dedit socium." He is born purposely to be our inseparable companion; two yoked together; two labouring together in the field; two grinding together in the mill. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, all things do ye in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him (Coloss. iii.). We must mark that word by Him. In the Holy Mass the priest is taught to say that, "Through Him, with Him, and in Him, we give glory and honour to God". We have to keep close to Him, close as the chickens under the wing of the hen. Nay, closer much than this; close as the branch to the vine. Every true disciple is that man described in the goth Psalm, who dwelleth in the aid of the Most High, and shall abide under the protection of the God of Jacob.

Holy Church teaches us to pray "that all our words