By way of conclusion to this first part of our subject – the Holy Eucharist considered as a Sacrament – it may be well to add to what has been already said a few practical lessons and considerations.
1. The Blessed Sacrament has been termed the “abridgment of the wonders of God.” It is the centre to which everything in the body of the Church tends, to which all the other Sacraments refer, just as everything in the human body centres in the heart; it is the mystery which gives life to the social community, directed to the bringing back of the universe to God. For all creatures strive towards perfection, but they lose their own individuality in so doing; thus, earth, air, and water lose their individual existence, when assimilated as food by plants and trees of the vegetative world, a higher and more perfect form of being than the inorganic, to which the former belong. Vegetation, in its turn, is lost in the life of animals which it subserves; while both vegetative and animal life is absorbed by man, for his food, clothing, and general comfort. Then lastly man himself is assimilated to God, who imparts to him His own Divine life in Holy Communion, so that he truly says with Saint Paul: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Thus is the Holy Eucharist the centre to which all things tend, it is in the moral world what the sun is in the physical, drawing all things to itself, diffusing spiritual life and fruitfulness throughout the Church.
2. The Fathers call the Eucharist also an “Extension of the Incarnation.” For in that mystery Our Lord united Himself to only one body and one soul, but in the Holy Eucharist He unites Himself to the body and soul of each one who receives Him. This union of God and man by Holy Communion is likened to a piece of red-hot iron, assuming all the qualities of fire, without losing its own nature, and to food, which is daily changed into the substance of our body by digestion. Thus Holy Communion makes each one of us another Jesus Christ, “in whom the Father is well pleased,” thus extending the mystery and work of the Incarnation.
3. In reference to Society at large, the Holy Eucharist is what the sun is to the universe, what the heart is to the body. Take away the sun, and the physical world would crumble to pieces in darkness and arctic cold. Take away the heart, and life succumbs and is lost. So, too, would it be in Church, did the Holy Eucharist cease to be her treasure. For, in it the Church finds her vigour and strength; by it the Christian Religion is ever strong and flourishing; and for it Divine worship displays its grandeur and magnificence, all which exercises an influence and power on the well-being of human Society.
4. The Holy Eucharist is the principle of the miracles of charity and self-sacrifice, of which the annals of the Church open out to our gaze so marry noble examples. We see Saint Charles Borromeo carrying comfort and consolation to the plague-stricken in the streets of Milan, fearless as to personal inconvenience and danger, because inflamed through Holy Communion with burning love for the souls and bodies of the stricken ones. Saint Francis of Sales, in like manner, sacrificed everything, and would have laid down his life, in his zeal for the salvation of the heretics among whom his lot was cast. In recent times, Father Damien, the leper martyr of Charity, sacrificed everything – home, friends, comforts, and even life – for his stricken neighbour. So also the Religious of both sexes have ever devoted their means, their time, and their very lives to the welfare, spiritual and temporal, of their fellow-beings, suffering from all the miseries that human flesh is heir to, because their souls were inflamed with love for God and man, in the daily reception of the Bread of Life. Thus, too, will it be with us, if we, like them, go often to the same Holy Table.
Where love of the Holy Eucharist grows cold, true Charity becomes extinct; then selfishness or cold philanthropy come to take its place, thinking much of the bodily wants of the poor, as we so often see at the present time – an excellent thing in itself, a corporal work of mercy – but without any thought for the higher happiness of the victims, without raising their thoughts to God and eternity, and so, failing in the first essential towards true peace and happiness, the idea of God and of resignation to His Divine Will.
May God grant that the present-day return to the salutary practice of frequent Communion may multiply wonders of charity and love, tending to the temporal benefit and social welfare of men in this world, but at the same time raise their souls to the heights of spiritual perfection, and fit them for closer union with God in the next.