Virgo Potens

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)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 10th IV. I said before that the Blessed Sacrament was the triumph of the Church over the world, of spirit over matter, of grace over nature, of faith over sight. Now I will say more. The Blessed Sacrament is everything to us. If we wish to be all for Jesus, there is our way, there is Himself. If we desire to see how Jesus is all for us, or which is another thing, how He is all in all to us, the Blessed Sacrament is at once that double revelation. All the doctrines of the Church, creation, incarnation, grace, sacraments, run up into the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament, and are magnificently developed there. All the art and ceremonial, the liturgical wisdom and the rubrical majesty of the Church are grouped around the Blessed Sacrament. All devotions are united and satisfied in this one. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 9th Date after date of the infallible destruction of the Papacy passes on with the harmless course of the four grateful seasons, and the calender of heretical prophecy is left disdainfully, cruelly unfulfilled; and they will figure in the half antiquarian novels of our posterity as the vagaries of the Rosicrucians, and the sabbaths of the Lancashire witches do in ours, emblems and monuments of the undignified weaknesses of the human mind. Still souls are lost meanwhile, and the Christian’s eye is fixed far more on that lamentable fact than on the successive extinction of her foes, which it is as natural and common-place a thing for her to expect as that the sun shall rise, or the harvest, plentiful or scarce, shall come in its appointed season. Neither does she triumph because the Blessed Sacrament is to her a foretaste of the joys of heaven and of its eternal satisfactions. Men do not triumph in anticipations, and the feast of victory must be something more than the pleasant ardour of desire. Nay, truly, if I shall not seem to be uttering a conceit, I will say that this one day is the only day in the year in which she does not seem to think of heaven ; rather, she acts as if it had come to her, and she needed not to go to it. And this brings me at once to the real cause of her spiritual triumph. It is because she has Jesus Himself with her, the Living God, in the Blessed Sacrament. It is no commemoration of Him; it is Himself. It is no part of the mystery of the Incarnation; it is the whole mystery, and the Incarnate One Himself. It is not simply a means of grace; it is the Divine Fountain of Grace Himself. It is not merely a help to glory; it is the glorified Redeemer Himself, the owner and the source of all glory. The Blessed Sacrament is God in His mysterious miraculous veils. It is this real presence of God which makes Catholicism a religion quite distinct from any of the so-called forms of Christianity. It is this possession of her God which is of necessity the lifelong triumph of the Church. Nothing short of this could be a real or sufficient triumph to the Bride of Christ. ~ 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 9th Neither again is she triumphing because she has outlived so many foes who at one time seemed to be actual conquerors : though this phenomenon must be a daily subject for her devout thanksgiving and renewed confidence in God. The turbid flood of protestantism, daily subsiding and leaving waste tracks of dismal mud behind, never covered the earth so dreadfully as Arianism in the early centuries; and as the one passed, so will the other. Protestant prophecies are coming untrue, and making their rash authors a laughing-stock year after year. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 9th emblems and monuments of the undignified weaknesses of the human mind. Still souls are lost meanwhile, and the Christian’s eye is fixed far more on that lamentable fact than on the successive extinction of her foes, which it is as natural and common-place a thing for her to expect as that the sun shall rise, or the harvest, plentiful or scarce, shall come in its appointed season. Neither does she triumph because the Blessed Sacrament is to her a foretaste of the joys of heaven and of its eternal satisfactions. Men do not triumph in anticipations, and the feast of victory must be something more than the pleasant ardour of desire. Nay, truly, if I shall not seem to be uttering a conceit, I will say that this one day is the only day in the year in which she does not seem to think of heaven ; rather, she acts as if it had come to her, and she needed not to go to it. And this brings me at once to the real cause of her spiritual triumph. It is because she has Jesus Himself with her, the Living God, in the Blessed Sacrament. It is no commemoration of Him; it is Himself. It is no part of the mystery of the Incarnation; it is the whole mystery, and the Incarnate One Himself. It is not simply a means of grace; it is the Divine Fountain of Grace Himself. It is not merely a help to glory; it is the glorified Redeemer Himself, the owner and the source of all glory. The Blessed Sacrament is God in His mysterious miraculous veils. It is this real presence of God which makes Catholicism a religion quite distinct from any of the so-called forms of Christianity. It is this possession of her God which is of necessity the lifelong triumph of the Church. Nothing short of this could be a real or sufficient triumph to the Bride of Christ. ~ 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 9th Neither again is she triumphing because she has outlived so many foes who at one time seemed to be actual conquerors : though this phenomenon must be a daily subject for her devout thanksgiving and renewed confidence in God. The turbid flood of protestantism, daily subsiding and leaving waste tracks of dismal mud behind, never covered the earth so dreadfully as Arianism in the early centuries; and as the one passed, so will the other. Protestant prophecies are coming untrue, and making their rash authors a laughing-stock year after year. Date after date of the infallible destruction of the Papacy passes on with the harmless course of the four grateful seasons, and the calender of heretical prophecy is left disdainfully, cruelly unfulfilled; and they will figure in the half antiquarian novels of our posterity as the vagaries of the Rosicrucians, and the sabbaths of the Lancashire witches do in ours, (continued below)

2 of 2 April 8th ~ FEAST of the ANNUNCIATION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Transferred from March 25th At the High Mass on this day, the celebrant and his ministers kneel on the altar-steps at the singing of the Et incarnatus est, in the Nicene Creed. Should the feast fall on Passion Sunday, it is celebrated on the following Monday. If it falls in Holy or Easter week it is celebrated on the Monday after Low Sunday. The Mass, although we are in the middle of Lent, carries us straight back to Advent. Yet this white winter blossom which recalls the snows of Christmas has its own deep significance, for it reminds us of Gideon’s fleece — that gracious symbol of the spotless virginity of the Mother of God — which was found by the Prophet newly wet with the dew of spring in the midst of a sun-baked plain in Palestine. ~ The New Roman Missal, 1937

1 of 2 April 8th ~ FEAST of the ANNUNCIATION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Transferred from March 25th This ancient feast, like that of Christmas, was considered originally as a feast of Our Lord, rather than of the Blessed Virgin. It has been fixed on the date of March 25, since the Seventh Century. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 8th The empire of the demons abounds in fearful intelligence, backed by no less fearful power, and the Church has to prove it all. There is not a change in the world’s destinies which is not a fresh trial for the Church. There is not a new philosophy or a freshly-named science; but what deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either explode the Church as false, or set her aside as doting. There is no new luxury of our modern capitals, but the devil or the world enter into it with a mysterious possession, in order to make a charm of it against the Church and her mission to the souls of men. Heresy, can be pious, reverent, philanthropic, a zealot for public morals, patriotic, liberal, conceding, if so only the Church can be wounded by the stratagem. No ! it would be premature indeed if at this day the Church should sing her paean because she has finally destroyed her enemies and is victorious. Neither is the feast of the Blessed Sacrament a triumph because she is at peace. She never gets beyond a truce, and it is seldom enough that she ever has so much as that. She can never be at peace until the day of doom, nor while there is yet a soul, that is not already reprobate, left unsaved. Her very alliances must needs be full of suspicions from long experience, and in reality they are rather fresh anxieties than permissions for repose. She has often been in alliance with the governments of the world, and thereby has many a soul been saved that would have else been lost. But such alliances cost her the blood of martyrs and the toilsome sweat of popes, and at the best she can live in them only as the timid deer in the forest whose every echo is ringing with the hunter’s horn. She is less at her ease in a Concordat than in a Catacomb. So with educational and reformatory movements; so with legal efforts for political liberties; so with philosophical and scientific leagues; so even with the graceful enervations of beautiful and refining art. She has her place in all these things, because she has a mission to them all; but she does not, may not, dwell with them in peace. Neither does she triumph because heresy is stifled all over the earth. For new heresies wax while old ones wane : and each schism as it decays is the fruitful parent of many more. In truth heresies are a condition of her life, and the unwitting cause of nearly all the intellectual magnificence of her dogmatic teaching. Nevertheless it is doubtless a pleasure and a triumph to her children to see how year after year various heresies seem to shed their Christian elements, and to work their way with a blind fatality outside the ring of revealed truth altogether. There is not perhaps a single year in England which does not see some section of protestant opinion repudiate its own starting point and anathematize its own first principles, and so either lose its hold on earnest minds, or drop with indifferent minds into the growing gulf of simple weary unbelief. An Englishman should be the last person in the world to deem the Church was triumphing because heresy is extinct. ~ 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 8th The procession of the Blessed Sacrament is a compendium of Church History. It is a disclosure of the mind of the Church in all the vicissitudes of her warlike pilgrimage. It makes us feel as past ages have felt and as generations will feel in times to come. It gives us a taste of her supernatural disposition, and helps powerfully to form the same disposition within ourselves. It is not the triumph of the Church because she has finally destroyed her enemies and is victorious. Every day is only bringing new enmities to view, and unmasking false friends. The whole of the extraordinary versatility of human wickedness is simply at work to harass and exhaust the Church by the multiplicity and unexpectedness of its attacks. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 7th But it waits until the Church has led up all her mysteries into the secret fountain, the mother mystery, of the Most Holy Trinity, as if the whole collective devotion of the year rose up into the unapproachable light, and fell back again in showers of glory and in streams of celestial power and beauty upon men in the grand and consummating mystery of Transubstantiation. Hence its character of triumph. The Church Militant is blended for a moment with the Church Triumphant, and forgets her exile and her militant condition ; and the worship of the Holy Trinity, which is a sort of antepast of Heaven, finds its adequate expression in the joyous adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It is a day when we cannot be still, and hence a day of processions. It is a feast of shout and song, one while against the earth, as if the walls of the great city of the world were miraculously falling down before our faith, while we encompass it, marching, angels and men, to the martial strains of our Lauda Sion ; another while, in praise of the Church, while the whole world resounds with the acclamations of the redeemed bearing their Redeemer round the ramparts of His own impregnable Sion. III. But it is not enough to settle that the spirit of Corpus Christi is one of triumph; there rises the farther question of the character of this triumph, which is of course wholly supernatural, and not the mere fine feelings of patriotism or the earthly glow of some national victory. Nay, it is not so much a triumph because by the grace of God we are on God’s side, as because God in this mystery is triumphing Himself over those things which are the undoubted enemies of His kingdom and sovereignty. It is His triumph as well as ours, His rather than ours. I said that Corpus Christi was naturally a day of processions. Now the whole history of the Church may be viewed as in itself a vast and various procession, seen under all the vicissitudes of war, as a caravan of pilgrim soldiers fighting their way from east to west. Now it is in little straggling bands with the apostles on the Roman Roads, or now encamped with the obscure Proselytes of the Gate round the Jewish Synagogues in the Roman Provinces. Here we behold it, an army of martyrs, with the pontiff at its head in the dim chambers of the Catacombs; there it is out before the world s eyes, all gleaming and glancing with the ensigns of imperial favour and command. One while it is pushing its way across the desert to reach the unevangelized nations; another while it is curbing the inundations of the barbarian north. Now it has absorbed the whole civilized world into itself and in its mediaeval splendours ; and again it is mingled with the unbelieving multitude cleaving for itself a passage through the crowd of base literatures, of wicked philosophies, of corrupted civilizations, and of debased diplomacies, never lost to the eye, always cognizable, always suffering, always royal, always unlike anything else in the world, like the children of Israel in the Red Sea when the solid waters stood up as a wall on their right hand and on their left. ~ 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 7th It is a day of triumph rather even than of joy, a day of power, of fearlessness, of public profession of faith, of the heavenly insult of truth over doubt, heresy, falsehood, sacrilege, and blasphemy. Its position immediately following upon Trinity Sunday is a sort of Type of this. It does not come after the Ascension in unbroken order, as one feast of our Lord following another, nor even at once after Pentecost, when the descent of the Holy Ghost had been as it were the fruit of the Ascension and the sweet token of the strange truth that it could ever be expedient for us that our Lord should go away. (continued below)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 7th It is a day of triumph rather even than of joy, a day of power, of fearlessness, of public profession of faith, of the heavenly insult of truth over doubt, heresy, falsehood, sacrilege, and blasphemy. Its position immediately following upon Trinity Sunday is a sort of Type of this. It does not come after the Ascension in unbroken order, as one feast of our Lord following another, nor even at once after Pentecost, when the descent of the Holy Ghost had been as it were the fruit of the Ascension and the sweet token of the strange truth that it could ever be expedient for us that our Lord should go away. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 6th and hence the spirit of Corpus Christi is not a sense of sin, of forgiveness of sin, or of exile, but of triumph, though ending in the soul at last, as we shall see, in a devotion of the most plaintive and pensive description. But true it is, that whatsoever in devotion is of a joyous sort, brave, persisting, trying great things and accomplishing them, quick-sighted, instantaneous, venturesome, and trustful, is of faith, and is chiefly introduced and maintained by the worship of the Blessed Sacrament. This is the secret of the fortitude of the saints. Then again there are feasts and ceremonies expressing the past mysteries of Jesus and Mary, the gracious acts, joyful, sorrowful or glorious, which belong to the mystery of the Incarnation. These feasts are commemorative, historical, monumental, while they also keep reviving in the Church the peculiar graces and exercises of virtue, and the heroisms of the spiritual life which they recall. They all belong to one class, because they express past events, and those events mysteries of the Incarnation; yet each one of them has a peculiar and separate spirit of its own; each has a speciality to further some particular grace in the soul and to give some cognizable shape to its interior life, or to become the dominant genius of some religious congregation. One star differs from another star in glory; and every action of our Blessed Lord is so fertile and exuberant, so powerful to produce its like in others, so full of divine energy and signification, that it is in itself a creative word, and calls forth in our souls a perfect little world of mystical and spiritual beauty and consistency. The same may be said of each of those several and successive adornments of grace and power, with which the munificence of the Most Holy Trinity arrayed the elect Mother of God. Thus a knowledge of the mysteries to which they are specially devoted will often reveal the whole spiritual history of a pious soul, and will enable us to discern the purposes of God upon it. Corpus Christi does not fall under this class of feasts, while Holy Thursday evidently does; and who is there who does not perceive at once the great dif ference between these two processions of the Blessed Sacrament. While the one is simple triumph and holy jubilation, the other is pensive and pathetic. The Sepulchre is there, a visible monument of what we are commemorating, and the Vexilla regis is the key-note of the whole, and our last effort to be joyful has passed away with the closing music of the Gloria. If we compare Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi we shall see wht very distinctive spirits two similar feasts can have; and these different spirits represent realities and actual operations of grace in the soul. I seem to be wasting a great many words on a very simple truth. But if it is true, as St. Philip tells us, that it is a bad sign if we do not experience a notable fervour and sweetness at great feasts, is it not also true that in order to draw the fire and to suck the sweetness out of each feast, it is important to apprehend its real and peculiar spirit ? I say then that Corpus Christi is essentially a feast of triumph. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)