Virgo Potens

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 18th The purely spiritual character of God’s works is another standard of their perfection. This is only saying in other words that spirit is more glorious than matter, and the soul more wonderful than the body. The spiritual regeneration of the world is a more beautiful work than the first material creation, though the one could not have been without the other. To work a miracle by a word seems more perfect than to use the instrumentality of matter, though this last may often be more expedient, and give God greater glory. But matter and spirit are God’s creatures, and He can use either of them separately or both together when he vouchsafes to work, yet the more spiritual the manner of His operation the more perfect do we usually account it. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 17th A second criterion for determining the perfection of the divine works, is to be found in the greatest heights to which they raise the creature. Every condescension of the Creator implies the elevation of the creature towards Himself. This is their very object. Creation itself is for this end. The Church, grace, sacraments, good inspirations, God’s evidences of Himself, all mean this, the approach of the creature to the Creator. Thus to redeem mankind from their sins through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, and to allow them to live a life of immortal happiness on this beautified earth, after the day of judgment, with every joy short of the Vision of the Most Holy Trinity, would have been a great work of love, because it would have raised men out of sin into holiness, and out of God’s enmity into His friendship. How much more perfect a work is it to be raised to see God face to face, and as He is, and to be conformed to the likeness of the glorified Body of our dearest Lord ! The Law was a beautiful work of God ‘s compassion ; yet it is so overshadowed now by the more perfect beauty of the Gospel that we can hardly appreciate its real beauty; yet as the characteristic of the Jewish Law, as compared with the loose fragments of natural religion and primitive revelation in the systems of paganism, was that men had God near to them as no other people had, so in the Gospel it is the very nearness of God to us and the closeness of our union with him, which gives its surpassing beauty to the Christian Church. So in ascetical theology we count the degrees of perfection in mortification as they raise us nearer to God ; and in mystical theology we distinguish the successive states of mental prayer and heights of contemplation according to the intimacy and completeness of our union with God in each of them. Grace is greater than nature because it lifts us nearer God, and glory puts grace beneath it because it effects a closer union between the soul and God. Thus the greater the height to which any work of God raises the creature, the greater is its beauty and its perfection. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 17th What then are we to say when He has taken upon Him our passible nature, and has actually suffered, and exhausted all manner of suffering, mental and corporal, in it, not only in spite of our sins but in order to redeem us from our sins, and make us kings and co-heirs with Him in heaven ? This is a more perfect work because of the still lower abyss which is reached and occupied by the divine condescension. It seems then of the very nature of God’s works, because they are works and because they are His works, that the degree of condescension which they imply is in truth the measure of their perfection. The more love they hold, the more perfect they are; and the lower God deigns to stoop, the more loving is His condescension. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 16th When men speak of one of God’s works being greater than another, it is not that they pretend to sit in judgment upon God, or arrogate to themselves such a comprehension of His designs as will fit them to make a critical comparison of His works. Nay, in all God’s works they acknowledge that there may be, and probably are, ends and purposes of wisdom, justice, and mercy, which are beyond their sight, and are even unsuspected by them. But they speak with all reverence in a human way, to the best of their judgment, as it strikes them, and as the Church and her doctors lead them to infer. The saints are the works of God ; yet as the apostle tells us, one star differs from another star in glory ; and Scripture teaches us that God has given up the world to the discussion of the sons of men. In this spirit we may venture to compare the gracious works of God one with another, confessing the least of them to be deeper than we can fathom, higher than we can measure, broader than we can embrace, and more full of condescension than all the merits of angels and men could ever have a right to claim. All human hearts which aim at the discovery and expression of the beautiful, whether by form, by colour, by sound, by language, or in any other way, have certain canons of their own by which they are guided in their search and determined in their judgments. In God’s works He is His own rule; for He is all beauty, all skill, all wisdom, and all goodness. But from the knowledge He has been pleased to give us of Himself, we may venture to draw certain canons or criteria by which we may the better discover the divine beauty of His works for our own instruction, and to gain fresh matter for prayer and adoring love. We may thus ask the question, wherein consists the perfection of the eternal operations of God ? I answer, that in our manner of speaking and according to our understanding, it consists chiefly in five things; and a work of God is more beautiful, more wonderful, more gracious, in proportion as it unites in itself the greatest number of these five things in the greatest degree. First of all, the perfection of the Divine Works consists in the lowest depths of condescension which they reach. All God’s works are condescensions. He made Himself infinitely little, says St. Ephrem, in order to make the world which seems to us so great. He had no need of us, nor of any possible created beings, however wise and holy and beautiful. Creation is not necessary either to His glory or His happiness, nor strictly speaking to His goodness. None of God’s outward works are. Thus creation was a marvellous act of condescension. But if the Eternal Word had taken upon Himself the nature of an angel, and assumed it to His Divine Person, it would have been a more perfect work than creation, because the divine condescension would have gone further out and reached lower down. For the Eternal Word to take the lower nature of man upon Him, the lowest of reasonable natures, is a more perfect work than the assumption of angelic nature would have been, for the very reason that it is a lower depth of loving condescension. Had man never fallen, and had our Lord vouchsafed to assume the impassible nature of sinless humanity, in order to dwell with us and be as it were one of us, it would have been a work of such perfect love that neither angels nor men could have imagined it without revelation. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

It seems then of the very nature of God’s works, because they are works and because they are His works, that the degree of condescension which they imply is in truth the measure of their perfection. The more love they hold, the more perfect they are; and the lower God deigns to stoop, the more loving is His condescension. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 16th When men speak of one of God’s works being greater than another, it is not that they pretend to sit in judgment upon God, or arrogate to themselves such a comprehension of His designs as will fit them to make a critical comparison of His works. Nay, in all God’s works they acknowledge that there may be, and probably are, ends and purposes of wisdom, justice, and mercy, which are beyond their sight, and are even unsuspected by them. But they speak with all reverence in a human way, to the best of their judgment, as it strikes them, and as the Church and her doctors lead them to infer. The saints are the works of God ; yet as the apostle tells us, one star differs from another star in glory ; and Scripture teaches us that God has given up the world to the discussion of the sons of men. In this spirit we may venture to compare the gracious works of God one with another, confessing the least of them to be deeper than we can fathom, higher than we can measure, broader than we can embrace, and more full of condescension than all the merits of angels and men could ever have a right to claim. All human hearts which aim at the discovery and expression of the beautiful, whether by form, by colour, by sound, by language, or in any other way, have certain canons of their own by which they are guided in their search and determined in their judgments. In God’s works He is His own rule; for He is all beauty, all skill, all wisdom, and all goodness. But from the knowledge He has been pleased to give us of Himself, we may venture to draw certain canons or criteria by which we may the better discover the divine beauty of His works for our own instruction, and to gain fresh matter for prayer and adoring love. We may thus ask the question, wherein consists the perfection of the eternal operations of God ? I answer, that in our manner of speaking and according to our understanding, it consists chiefly in five things; and a work of God is more beautiful, more wonderful, more gracious, in proportion as it unites in itself the greatest number of these five things in the greatest degree. First of all, the perfection of the Divine Works consists in the lowest depths of condescension which they reach. All God’s works are condescensions. He made Himself infinitely little, says St. Ephrem, in order to make the world which seems to us so great. He had no need of us, nor of any possible created beings, however wise and holy and beautiful. Creation is not necessary either to His glory or His happiness, nor strictly speaking to His goodness. None of God’s outward works are. Thus creation was a marvellous act of condescension. But if the Eternal Word had taken upon Himself the nature of an angel, and assumed it to His Divine Person, it would have been a more perfect work than creation, because the divine condescension would have gone further out and reached lower down. For the Eternal Word to take the lower nature of man upon Him, the lowest of reasonable natures, is a more perfect work than the assumption of angelic nature would have been, for the very reason that it is a lower depth of loving condescension. Had man never fallen, and had our Lord vouchsafed to assume the impassible nature of sinless humanity, in order to dwell with us and be as it were one of us, it would have been a work of such perfect love that neither angels nor men could have imagined it without revelation. What then are we to say when He has taken upon Him our passible nature, and has actually suffered, and exhausted all manner of suffering, mental and corporal, in it, not only in spite of our sins but in order to redeem us from our sins, and make us kings and co-heirs with Him in heaven ? This is a more perfect work because of the still lower abyss which is reached and occupied by the divine condescension.

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 16th We are not concerned now with the first four mysteries, those inside God Himself, which express the doctrine of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. We have to do with the works which the Holy Trinity has vouchsafed to work outside Himself; and of these five crowning works, Creation, Incarnation, Justification, Glorification, and Transubstantiation, Transubstantiation is the greatest and most perfect, as expressing most fully the interior perfections of God Himself. This is what I set myself to show in the present book; and you must be indulgent to me if I am hard and dry in the discussion, because I have many things to say hereafter which might seem mere poetry or devotional exaggeration instead of grave and sober truth, unless I have persuaded you to follow me through this investigation of the works of God. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 15th But those who have been long accustomed to meditation, and have thus become familiarized with the works and mysteries of God, may obtain their idea of God in a different manner. When we form to ourselves as perfect a picture of God as we are able, and then take it to pieces again to see how it is composed, we find it made up of nine mysteries, four in God Himself, and five outside Himself. The four in Himself are Innascibility, Generation, Procession and Unity, by which we express the doctrine of “Three Persons, One God.” The five mysteries outside Himself are Creation, Incarnation, Justification, Glorification, and Transubstantiation. You must not misunderstand me to mean that this picture forms an adequate representation of God, or one which is perfect in any other sense than relatively to ourselves. There are nameless attributes in the Most High, depths of perfection for which creatures have no name because they have no ideas of them. There are in Him summits of beauty and glory, whose shadows, if they cast any, would fall far beyond this present world of ours, or indeed any finite creation. There is nothing in God which is so simply a cause of delighted love and abounding joy as that He is incomprehensible, and beautiful, and glorious beyond the reach even of angelic conception. But the picture of God I am speaking of is perfect in that it embraces all we know of Him, all He has told us of Himself, all we require for an intelligent love and profound adoration of Him, while it includes also in itself a history of God’s works full to overflowing of motives for the most intense reverence and the most tender love. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 15th THE BLESSED SACRAMENT BOOK I. THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE GREATEST WORK OF GOD. SECTION I. THE CANONS OF THE DIVINE WORKS. WE cannot make a picture of God to ourselves. We have no way of representing to ourselves by images or sensible figures, eternity or omnipotence. We should fall into grievous error if we even attempted to put God before ourselves in this way. Yet it is of great consequence to our spiritual life that we should have a clear idea of God ; for it belongs only to the higher stages of mystical union with God to contemplate Him in obscurity, to enter into clouds and darkness, and be able to find our rest and satisfaction there. Now we can bring God before ourselves with sufficient clearness by denying of Him every conceivable imperfection, or again by affirming of Him in the most superlative way every conceivable perfection. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 14th Think how it makes over to us, as if they were, and they truly are, our own hereditary possessions, all the grandeurs of the universal Church, the famous Church, the martyr Church, the Church that is never old, but ever has a perpetual freshness like the Holy Trinity, ever-virgin as Mary herself, ever wet with blood as the martyrs were, ever teaching like the apostles and doctors, ever witnessing like the confessors, ever suffering innocently like the Holy Innocents themselves, and sending up a perpetual song of victory even out of the fires of persecution. O how we ought to bless God, now that we know Jesus, that we were not born in the poor times of the patriarchs and prophets before the Blessed Sacrament ! Ah ! how they desired to see our day and saw it not ! Nay we even seem privileged in our day beyond elder Christian times ; for the longer the Church battles with the world the more venerable she seems to become, and her victories of grace more brilliant, and the heavenliness more wonderful. Time “writes no wrinkles on her brow,” but adds line after line of glory and of freshness. She seems, because we know her better, to grow more beautiful, more powerful, more bright of face, more sweet of voice, more strong in arm, more mother-like in manner. Dear Church ! to-day is her great day, the Feast of Holy Faith ! ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

Is it not a magnificent thing to be a Catholic ? 1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 14th But see how long I am keeping you as it were outside our subject and in the vestibule of this glorious temple of Catholic doctrine. It is half because I fear to begin, because I am afraid of myself and my subject, because I almost wish I had not begun. Look now with the eye of faith at the Blessed Sacrament, and remember simply what our catechism teaches us about it. Is it not a magnificent thing to be a Catholic ? Faith is such a glorious gift. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 13th There are saints with whom these moods are almost habitual, following far off, for the sake of Jesus and by His grace, that unbroken renunciation of self which was the characteristic of His Thirty-three Years. Now devotion to the Blessed Sacrament has a special power to communicate this divine spirit. The Eucharist is a sacrifice, as well as a sacrament : no wonder the spirit of sacrifice goes out from it, and is contagious among loving souls. But it is not out of the meekness and sweetness and gentleness and bashful humility of love that this ardent desire of sacrifice arises; but out of love’s boldness, its victory, its warlike prowess, its sense of triumph. Once more; the spiritual life requires also a generous filial love of Holy Church. People in these days often try to draw a distinction between what is spiritual and what is ecclesiastical in the Christian religion; and obviously for many purposes, and from many partial points of view, such a distinction is very capable of being drawn. But the two cannot be separated the one from the other; they lie together practically inseparable. Hence there is no interior or mystic life, not even in the cloister, which is not distinguished by a vivid interest in the vicissitudes of the Church, an inveterate attachment to her external and ceremonial observances, and quite a supernatural sympathy with the fortunes of the Holy See. Love of God and love of Rome are inseparable. To obey Peter is the same thing as to serve Jesus. Now the triumph of Corpus Christi is especially a triumph of our loyalty to Holy Church. The very thing I started by remarking brings it home to us. Here is this poor land of heresy and schism dark and desolate to-day. It has no response to the mighty acclamations of the catholic millions of other lands. It sees nothing in to-day but a common unhonoured week-day. So through the fair realms desolated by the Greek Schism there is the same lifeless silence. It is a Catholic feast, a monument of Rome. The very word triumph seems to express something more than an individual joy. It is a patriot thing, a national exultation ; and dear, most dear, as our native country is to us, the Church is a dearer and a truer country still, for it is more like that heavenly Country for which we are sighing, and out of which we are exiles at the best. We of all men need triumph ; for we are cowed all the year round by the dominance of heresy. It tarnishes our faith. It chills our love. It checks us, and galls us, and unmans us, at almost every turn of our spiritual life. No one comes quite unscathed out of the trial; least of all, those who think they do and have no fear. O we need the triumph of to-day, the feast of our loyalty and patriotism to the most ancient, the most godlike of all monarchies, the Holy Apostolic Roman Church. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 13th Again, in order to be spiritual, we need a thirst to sacrifice ourselves for God and Jesus Christ. Self sacrifice is of the very essence of holiness. Love is impatient of secrecy, at least of being concealed from its object. It longs to testify itself, and the stronger and purer it is, the more does it desire to testify itself in different and heroic ways. Nay, love needs self-sacrifice as an evidence to itself of its own earnestness and intensity. How little have we given up for our dearest Lord, and how we burn to sacrifice ourselves in some way for Him. There are times when we seem to desire nothing in life but to suffer for the sake of Jesus, times when pain and sacrifice appear, not desirable only, but absolute necessities, so vehemently does love work within us. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 12th If it is unworldliness that we need, where shall we find it more completely than in that faith which is our triumph over the world? If self-forgetfulness, where shall we attain it so soon as beneath the shadow of faith’s tremendous mysteries ? If consolation, when the world and self and sin all press upon us, where does it spring so abundantly as in the continual inward triumph of a believing mind ? The love of the Blessed Sacrament is the grand and royal devotion of faith ; it is faith multiplied, faith intensified, faith glorified, and yet remaining faith still, while it is glory also. And out of it there come three especial graces which are the very life and soul of an interior life, an overflowing charity to all around us, a thirst to sacrifice ourselves for God, and a generous filial love of Holy Church. The very joyousness of having Jesus with us, of being in actual and delighted possession of Him, renders us full of love to others. Happy ourselves, and with a happiness so exquisite and abounding, we are anxious to make others happy also. To be full of love is in itself a pain, if we have no vent by which we can pour out our fulness over others. To our ignorance something of this sort seems the reason why God created the world, in order to communicate His own perfections to His creatures. Moreover, we want our love to touch Jesus Himself and to do Him good. We wish to satisfy our own love by showing our love to Him, in the ways which He Himself has ordained and honours with His acceptation. And all this points to the poor, the desolate, the afflicted, whom He has put in His own room since He ascended into Heaven. On days of joy and in moments of triumphant festivity, then it is that the skilful fathers of the poor know how to lay sweet siege to the hearts of men, and with gentle craft to win their wealth from them for the little ones of Christ; and none are such generous givers, whether it be to the adornment of the material shrines of God, or to those more beautiful living temples, the poor and sorrowing, as those who are distinguished by an especial devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Charity is the choicest as well as the most exuberant emanation from the Adorable Host. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

La caridad y purenza son el mas bello ornato del Corazon. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Charity and purity are the most beautiful ornament of the Heart. 1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 12th We must have something in our spiritual life to answer to the causes of joy and energy and trustfulness and support with which the world sustains her votaries. We must have something to supply for all those motives of action which we consciously abandon when we enter upon a spiritual life. Otherwise we shall become cowardly, languid, and mean-spirited. This is more especially true if we are aiming at anything like perfection. St. Theresa used to say that, if humility was to be considered the first grace for ordinary souls, we must consider that for souls aiming at perfection, courage is of more account at starting even than humility. And all this we find in the perpetual spirit of triumph with which faith supplies us. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 12th If it is unworldliness that we need, where shall we find it more completely than in that faith which is our triumph over the world? If self-forgetfulness, where shall we attain it so soon as beneath the shadow of faith’s tremendous mysteries ? If consolation, when the world and self and sin all press upon us, where does it spring so abundantly as in the continual inward triumph of a believing mind ? The love of the Blessed Sacrament is the grand and royal devotion of faith ; it is faith multiplied, faith intensified, faith glorified, and yet remaining faith still, while it is glory also. And out of it there come three especial graces which are the very life and soul of an interior life, an overflowing charity to all around us, a thirst to sacrifice ourselves for God, and a generous filial love of Holy Church. The very joyousness of having Jesus with us, of being in actual and delighted possession of Him, renders us full of love to others. Happy ourselves, and with a happiness so exquisite and abounding, we are anxious to make others happy also. To be full of love is in itself a pain, if we have no vent by which we can pour out our fulness over others. To our ignorance something of this sort seems the reason why God created the world, in order to communicate His own perfections to His creatures. Moreover, we want our love to touch Jesus Himself and to do Him good. We wish to satisfy our own love by showing our love to Him, in the ways which He Himself has ordained and honours with His acceptation. And all this points to the poor, the desolate, the afflicted, whom He has put in His own room since He ascended into Heaven. On days of joy and in moments of triumphant festivity, then it is that the skilful fathers of the poor know how to lay sweet siege to the hearts of men, and with gentle craft to win their wealth from them for the little ones of Christ; and none are such generous givers, whether it be to the adornment of the material shrines of God, or to those more beautiful living temples, the poor and sorrowing, as those who are distinguished by an especial devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Charity is the choicest as well as the most exuberant emanation from the Adorable Host. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 11th But it seems to me that humility grows far more rapidly and blossoms more abundantly in the mere thought of the immensity of God’s love of us, and the unintelligible prodigality of His fatherly affection for us, where there is no thought of self at all, even in the way of merited self-reproach. This vision, for it is nothing but a beautiful celestial vision, overshadows our souls. The fires of our selfish passions go out in it. The glare of the world comes softened through it. There is nothing to distract us in the absorbing simplicity of this one sight which we are beholding. There is nothing to awaken self-love and to aim it against the nobler or better thoughts of self-forgetfulness. Humility is never more intense than when it is thus simply overwhelmed by love ; and never can our souls be more completely overwhelmed by love than when they rest, silent and wonder-stricken, beneath the shadow of the Blessed Sacrament. V. This leads me to one more remark on the spirit of triumph, which I have said the Blessed Sacrament produces in our souls and that concerns the relation between this feeling of triumph and the spiritual life. Almost all the provinces of the spiritual life are invaded by what, for want of a better word, I must call a holy discouragement. The word is stronger than I like and stronger than my meaning, but I do not know of any other. We are something more than dissatisfied, something less than disheartened. When we look at ourselves, at our defeats, nay, even our victories, we cannot help but be depressed. If we consider the multitude and weight and ubiquity of our temptations, the scene is little less disheartening, especially when we add the consideration of our invisible spiritual foes. So also the world, and its effect upon us and power over us, are all facts of our Christian warfare. Indeed in all things our very safety consists in being afraid, in a sense of inferiority, in a conviction that we are no match either for our own poor selves or for evils from without. Yet for all this we must be joyous, gay, confident, secure; and as there are no fountains for these things either in self or circumstances, we can only find them in our faith ; and our faith, as the apostle tells us, is our victory over the world. We must have some cause for triumph, something to supply us with boldness and with more than hope, something to buoy us up and to make our heart strong within us, and our steps firm, and our eye upraised and keen, and our hand quick and unfaltering. We must have”songs in the house of our pilgrimage;” and those songs can only be “the justifications” of God. And the crown of all these is the Blessed Sacrament. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 11th But it seems to me that humility grows far more rapidly and blossoms more abundantly in the mere thought of the immensity of God’s love of us, and the unintelligible prodigality of His fatherly affection for us, where there is no thought of self at all, even in the way of merited self-reproach. This vision, for it is nothing but a beautiful celestial vision, overshadows our souls. The fires of our selfish passions go out in it. The glare of the world comes softened through it. There is nothing to distract us in the absorbing simplicity of this one sight which we are beholding. There is nothing to awaken self-love and to aim it against the nobler or better thoughts of self-forgetfulness. Humility is never more intense than when it is thus simply overwhelmed by love ; and never can our souls be more completely overwhelmed by love than when they rest, silent and wonder-stricken, beneath the shadow of the Blessed Sacrament. V. This leads me to one more remark on the spirit of triumph, which I have said the Blessed Sacrament produces in our souls and that concerns the relation between this feeling of triumph and the spiritual life. Almost all the provinces of the spiritual life are invaded by what, for want of a better word I must call a holy discouragement. The word is stronger than I like and stronger than my meaning, but I do not know of any other. We are something more than dissatisfied, something less than disheartened. When we look at ourselves, at our defeats, nay, even our victories, we cannot help but be depressed. If we consider the multitude and weight and ubiquity of our temptations, the scene is little less disheartening, especially when we add the consideration of our invisible spiritual foes. So also the world, and its effect upon us and power over us, are all facts of our Christian warfare. Indeed in all things our very safety consists in being afraid, in a sense of inferiority, in a conviction that we are no match either for our own poor selves or for evils from without. Yet for all this we must be joyous, gay, confident, secure; and as there are no fountains for these things either in self or circumstances, we can only find them in our faith ; and our faith, as the apostle tells us, is our victory over the world. We must have some cause for triumph, something to supply us with boldness and with more than hope, something to buoy us up and to make our hearts strong within us, and our steps firm, and our eye upraised and keen, and our hand We must have”songs in the house of our pilgrimage;” and those songs can only be “the justifications” of God. And the crown of all these is the Blessed Sacrament. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 11th How sweetly beneath the shadow of this overwhelming mystery may the soul grow in the grace of humility ! It is a humbling thing to feel how much we might have done for God that we have not done, how many opportunities have been wasted, how many graces not corresponded to, how poor and languid and ungenerous has all been that we have actually had the heart to do. It is humbling also to feel how little we have done for God in return for the greatness of what He has done for us, and how little we can do for Him at the best, even if we were saints, considering His Majesty and our nothingness; and it is painfully humbling to think how much we have positively done against Him by deliberate preference of ourselves to Him. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 10th All mysteries gravitate to this, touch upon it and are crowned by it. Nowhere are the marvellous perfections of the Invisible God so copied to the life and displayed to His creatures. All the mysteries of the Incarnation are gathered into one in the Blessed Sacrament. All the lives and actions of Jesus are found therein. All the other sacraments subserviently minister to this, and it is the one only Sacrament which Jesus Himself received. It does His work better than anything else does, and answers as nothing else does all the ends He had in view. With the Body and the Blood and the Soul of Jesus it brings with it His Divine Person, and the Persons of the Father and of the Holy Ghost, in a way so real and sublime as to be beyond expression, but which we signify by the theological word “concomitance,” as if the Holy Trinity came in the train of our Saviour’s Body, as its equipage and company. It is the greatest work of God, and the sabbath of all His works; for therein the Creator’s love and power and wisdom find their rest. The Church can never triumph except in what crowns, completes, and satisfies the vast nature of an immortal soul; but was ever triumph like to this ? It is the triumph of Creation, the triumph of Redemption, the triumph of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, the triumph of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. What I have to do is to prove all this, not in a controversial way, but by the authority of the Church, to loving souls. O what unfathomable sweetness there is in Jesus ! Everything that leads to Him, that stands in sight of Him, that in any way belongs to Him, or after the most indirect fashion can be coupled with Him, how sweet it is, how soul-soothing and soul-satisfying, even though it be not Himself ! Earth has nothing like to it, and withers away and gives out no scent when it comes near it. The very odour of His Name is as ointment poured forth. The very sign of His Cross is stronger than hell. The very fringe of His garment can undo curses. Formalities become all life and spirit, if they so much as catch His eye, or point a finger at Him. What then must those things be which are near and dear to Him, on which the golden light of His love and choice is ever resting like a diadem, His blessed Mother, His foster-father, His great precursor, His glorious apostles, the little Innocents that died instead of Him ? Has the world a love or a devotion which is enough for the least of these things? What a world of heavenly beauty there is all around Jesus ; and simple souls, how happy, how intensely happy they are made by it ! But when we get beyond this, when we press through the rings of saints and angels and apostles, through the calm majesty and divine magnificence of that vast city of God, which is none other than Mary herself, when we reach the very Jesus, what can we do but weep for sheer excess of joy at the height and depth and length and breadth of His incomparable sweetness; and what is this but the Blessed Sacrament itself ? Ah ! then the Blessed Sacrament is not one thing out of many; but it is all things, and all in one, and all better than they are in themselves, and all ours and for us, and it is Jesus ! ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)