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Canon Wilberforce is reported by the London Temperance Record as saying at a recent meeting in England: "He believed if people desired to go back literally and absolutely to the days of the institution of the Sacrament, it would be a most difficult thing, if not impossible, to prove that the particular cup which their Master took in His hand in that solemn crisis of His life when He instituted the Holy Eucharist was fermented at all.
It is a true symbol of what he has done for the world in glorifying all things. With his divine alchemy he turns not only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries, yea, every meal into a eucharist, and the jaws of the sepulchre into an outgoing gate.
The Sacrament of Marriage shows out the marks of a Sacrament as clearly and as definitely as do Baptism and the Eucharist. Both the outer sign and the inward grace are there. The material is the Ring the circle which is the symbol of the everlasting. The Word of Power is the ancient formula, "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
He instituted the most Holy Eucharist, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and thus remains in His Church until the end of time. Jesus, the Head of the Church, offers Himself to the Father unceasingly in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Thus the glorification of God takes place here upon earth as unceasingly as it does in heaven.
It was better, according to his opinion, even at the risk of abuse, to make the reconciliation of a sinner to his God too easy rather than too hard. The rule of the Mission Priests lays down that "one of the principal points of our Mission is to inspire others to receive the Sacraments of Penance and of the Eucharist frequently and worthily."
They relate numerous cases in which the host when profaned has, when broken, sent forth blood. If a sacristan omits to light the lamp which burns at night before the eucharist, the lamp lights itself.
This idea and the method of its development can be found in the symphonic thought which follows the Preludium to the Benedictus of the Beethoven Mass. It will be necessary to make a short digression and explain a portion of the canon of the Mass to enable the reader to understand what follows. During the office of the Eucharist the celebrant repeats certain prayers inaudible to the congregation.
I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence the actual body and blood of our Saviour? "After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been pleased to lead me.
There was one of the fathers who asserted that the substance of bread and wine in the eucharist ceases not, but remains, just as the substance of the human nature remains in the Lord Christ united with the divine.
This union is the "Holy of Holies" of the ancient mystics and alchemists. We see its reflection and its persistence today in the Catholic service of the Mass, where the priest raises the Eucharist as the "Holy of Holies" in which is generated the Christ-man, and before whom all human devotees bow the head that they may not look upon the perfection and beauty of its pure radiance.
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