IN a letter to "The Times" upon the question of
the "Black Rubric," Dr. Headlam, Bishop of Gloucester,
stated that the reason for omitting this rubric from the alternative
Communion Service in the Deposited Book was the crude literalism
of the words "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour
Christ are in heaven and not here: it being against the truth
of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than
one." But at the same time the Bishop makes it clear that
in its present form the Black Rubric proves clearly that the
doctrine of the Real Presence is legitimate in the Church of
England, for he says, "the words real and essential presence,
which were used in the Prayer Book of 1552, were deliberately
changed into corporal presence in the Prayer Book of 1661. No
theologian, so far as I am aware, in the Church of England believes
in a corporal presence."
Part of our purpose in this paper will be to explain how the
words "real and essential presence" imply also a "substantial
presence," or Transubstantiation.
Again, in the Gloucester Diocesan Magazine, Dr. Headlam, writing
on Transubstantiation, asserts "that this dogma is not a
materialistic theory: it does not imply any belief in a physical
or material change in the elements. It means that the Transformation,
whatever it may be, is entirely in the region of the spiritual,
the essence of things." The Bishop continues, "that
while the doctrine of Transubstantiation is inconsistent with
any philosophical idea of the structure of the Universe which
he could hold, yet there is nothing in it inconsistent with ordinary
scientific teaching." "It would be possible for a philosophic
realist who believed in the reality of the essence or substance
of a thing to accept the whole of modern science." Tine
only theory of the universe which the Bishop says he could hold
would be one according to which there was a spiritual basis for
all the phenomena of nature.
The term TRANSUBSTANTION is challenged on the ground that
it binds us to a philosophy which no one now reasonably holds.
Since Francis Bacon expressed his dislike for scholastic philosophy,
English thought has substituted conceptions which are vain and
illusory when compared with the immense work of Aristotle, St.
Thomas Aquinas and modern scholastic philosophers such as the
late Cardinal Mercier. In consequence there is a dread of the
word Transubstantiation, grounded on a prejudice and a confusion
of thought which arises from vagueness as to the exact meaning
of the term. This prejudice, in minds untrained in philosophy,
is implanted by the elementary teaching of History. But the Fathers
of the Church explored all possible methods of expressing the
truth of the Eucharistic change, and before the time of St. Thomas
Aquinas (1226-1274 A.D.) they had agreed upon one interpretation
of our Lord's words. They chose the word Transubstantiation so
as to exclude such ideas as Transelementation, or Transaccidentation
or Transformation. That the bread and wine are transubstantiated
was embodied as a dogma in the Lateran Council, 1215 A.D. This
Council was accepted by the whole Western Church, and expressly
by the English provincial synods; and, in fact, some of the canons
of the Council have recently been upheld as binding to-day in
civil law.
The XXXIX Articles condemn an interpretation which was included
by some under the term Transubstantiation, and give as a ground
for this condemnation that the doctrine "overthroweth the
nature of a sacrament." The truth of this statement lay
in the fact that some asserted that the bread and wine were only
left as a delusion of the senses after consecration. In such
a misuse of the word Transubstantiation, the condemnation by
the Articles is just, and in the same way St. Thomas Aquinas
had refuted this false notion years before the Articles were
compiled. In 1561, the Council of Trent was equally strong in
its condemnation. This Council propounded its definition after
the Articles were written, and so cannot be referred to by them.
We therefore accept the definition of the Council as the best
form of words to assert the doctrine of a real change in the
Eucharist as held throughout the whole Church, East and West,
to this day.
The doctrine under consideration is thus expressed by the
Council of Trent (A.D. 1561):--
"By the consecration of the bread and of the wine a conversion
is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance
of the Body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of
the wine into the substance of His Blood: which conversion is
by the Holy Catholic Church suitably and properly called Transubstantiation."
A very simple definition of the Holy Eucharist is that "it
is the Sacrament of the True Body and Blood of our Lord, together
with His Soul and His Divinity under the species of Bread and
Wine." The Council of Trent also emphasised that while there
is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread and of the
whole substance of the wine, the ("appearances" or)
species of bread and wine none the less remain.
We will now consider:--
(1) Transubstantiation in relation to modern science.
(2) What difference there is between the natural and the Eucharistic
Body of our Lord.
(3) That the words "real and essential" in Black
Rubric include the word "substantial."
(1) TRANSUBSTANTIATION IN RELATION TO MODERN SCIENCE.
As has been said, in this dogma "There is nothing inconsistent
with ordinary scientific teaching." We can examine matter
by physics or by metaphysics. The dogma of substance belongs
to metaphysics rather than to physics. But in the Eucharist we
are dealing with material things, bread and wine--and the Body
and Blood of Christ. At the Last Supper that Body and Blood was
a chemical compound, as our own bodies. Vet He said then of the
bread, "This is My Body." So it is not out of place,
keeping our minds on the Last Supper--the first Transubstantiation--very
briefly to consider the conclusions of physics or chemistry concerning
flesh and blood; bread and wine.
Dr. Headlam says that he could "only accept a theory
of the universe according to which there was a spiritual basis
for all the phenomena of nature." By phenomena is meant
all that is experienced by the senses, and we can extend that
to include those experiments in a laboratory which increase the
powers of our senses. In scholastic philosophy these phenomena
perceived by the senses are called "accidents."
(a) Matter in Modern Science is not Solid.
Bread and wine, flesh and blood, are chemical compounds. They
were such at the Last Supper. When the scientist investigates
all the compounds of the material universe, he asserts that their
final form is built up from a combination of elements, which
in their turn he scrutinises and discovers that each element
is built up of atoms themselves composed of a proton and one
or more electrons; the whole atom being charged with positive
and negative electricity. The atom, itself, is not a compact
solid, but between its particles there are wide spaces which
may be occupied by the "Ether of Space," but in which
the electrons and protons can move freely at enormous but calculable
speed. In the final structure of a solid like a diamond, the
atoms which compose it are also spaced so that ''the diamond
is full of holes like a sponge."
If you want to know simply, but in more detail, the modern
investigation of matter, it is clearly explained in "Concerning
the Nature of Things," by Bragg (Bell and Sons).
In a complicated structure of gases, fluids and solids like
a human body there is a similar combination of atoms within which
is force, energy and motion.
(b) Force and Substance.
Thus, all the objects of the natural world can be analysed
by physics. But there must be some-tiling in the case of each
material form in the universe which determines the combination
of atoms, and the force, energy and motion, and the order and
arrangement hidden in a particle of matter, such as a wafer.
In Creation, God must have determined all this force, order and
arrangement, so that the compound forms might ultimately
emerge. If we accept the deductions of physics and then consider
"matter" from the point of view of metaphysics, we
should say that Substance is the thing which determines each
varying form, in its minutest detail, or its complete structure.
Thus it determines the difference between bread and wine, flesh
and blood, and the conversion of bread into the living tissues
of flesh and blood by nutrition.
(c) Substance the Spiritual Basis of Matter.
Thus--Substance is that which God has ordained in the laws
of Nature to determine what a "thing is in itself."
Substance might be described as the soul of matter. We should
not think of asserting that the "electrons" of bread
and wine are changed at consecration: it is the substance which
is changed. In the Blessed Sacrament, bread and wine in their
physical properties still continue, and so nourish. But the substance
of the EUCHARIST is the Body and Blood of Christ. The properties
of the Body of Christ have changed since the Last Supper by His
Resurrection and Ascension, but the Substance of His Body remains.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in "Ether and Reality," writes: "A
real thing merely changes its form: it may have lost the special
properties which depend on a particular form, but the substance
remains. Real Substance, like Energy, is indestructible."
Behind force or energy there lies substance, which might well
be called the "spiritual basis behind all the phenomena
of nature." But if the word "substance" is disliked,
we might express the doctrine of Transubstantiation in these
words--
A conversion is made of the "spiritual basis" of
the bread into the "spiritual basis" of the Body of
Christ our Lord; and of the "spiritual basis" of the
wine into the "spiritual basis" of His Blood; while
the phenomena of bread and wine none the less remain.
But we must remember also that Transubstantiation is not a
physical definition. "There is no precedent in the natural
order of changes nor in Creation itself to this mystery."
We will conclude this section by a quotation from the Council
of Trent:--
"Nothing more becomes the piety of the faithful than,
omitting all curious questionings, to revere and adore the majesty
of this august Sacrament, and to recognise the wisdom of God
in commanding that these holy mysteries should be administered
under the species of bread and wine."
(2) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NATURAL AND THE EUCHARISTIC
BODY.
The Body of our Lord (with His Precious Blood and His Immortal
Soul for ever united to His Divinity) has ascended into Heaven.
Its state now is glorious, impassible, and possessed of other
properties of Resurrection. That is its natural mode of existence
or being. In the same way, while He walked on earth our Blessed
Lord lived in flesh under the same laws as we have for our being.
At the Last Supper, in His natural mode of being, He consecrated
bread and wine, declaring them to be His Body and Blood, as in
the hour of Death or Sacrifice on the Cross, in the Last Supper
His natural bodily life was unimpaired, yet He was at the same
time present under the Eucharistic signs. This is His "Eucharistic"
Body and Blood. The same JESUS had in the Last Supper a new mode
of Being. This "mode of being" is continued now in
the Eucharistic species, while in His natural mode of Being He
liveth for evermore at the Right Hand of God. The natural mode
of being is subject to physical laws whatever they may be for
a Risen Body; but His Eucharistic mode of being is a "substantial
presence" and is subject to the laws of "substance."
The Council of Trent thus expresses this truth:--In the august
Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the
bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man,
is truly, really and substantially contained under the species
of these sensible things. For neither are these things mutually
repugnant--that our Saviour Himself always sitteth at the right
hand of the Father in Heaven according to the natural mode of
existing, and that nevertheless He be in many other places sacramentally
present to us in His own substance by a manner of existing which,
though we can hardly express it in words, vet we can conceive
by the understanding illuminated by faith, and we ought firmly
to believe to be possible to God."
This passage is happily devoid of the "crude literalism"
to be deplored in the Black Rubric, while at the same time it
expresses a truth which the Black Rubric was seeking to uphold--namely,
the difference between the natural and Eucharistic mode of existence.
Further, it avoids the overstatement involved by the words "real
and essential" in the Black Rubric of 1551. The words of
the rubric were: "No adoration is intended . . . unto any
real and essential presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood:
the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven,
not here: it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body
to be at one time in more places than one." Presumably the
Reformers would have admitted the worship due to our Lord in
His natural Body in Heaven, and what they express in the Rubric
is that it would be erroneous to suppose that His Natural presence
is in the Eucharist. The theory which the Rubric condemns is
the Lutheran teaching that our Lord's natural Body has the same
ubiquity as His Godhead; so that being everywhere, the natural
Body is present in the Eucharist together with the unconverted
substance of bread and wine in such a way that in adoring the
Eucharist we should also be adoring bread and wine.
(3) REAL, ESSENTIAL AND SUBSTANTIAL. The Black Rubric was
left out of the Book of 1559. But it is clear from the controversial
writings of the period of the Reformation in this country that
the Rubric was framed to exclude any idea of a physical presence;
and because "real and essential" were erroneously interpreted
as involving physical presence, these words were used in the
Rubric in 1552. It is admitted that belief in "the real
and essential presence" is legitimate doctrine from the
later history of the Rubric in the revision of 1661. But in the
language of philosophy the words "real," "essential,"
"substantial," are almost interchangeable. Real means
the RES. or "Thing in itself." What is the inward part,
or Thing signified? "The Body and Blood of Christ, which
are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the
Lord's Supper."
The word Essence may mean cither "That a thing has existence";
or it may be a synonym for "Substance," what a thing
is in itself, or that which exists in itself. Much of the error
or vagueness concerning Eucharistic doctrine is caused by misconceptions
of the metaphysical meaning of Substance.
(a) Cranmer's Gross Notion of Substance.
Substance does not mean anything to do with size, motion,
place, for these are all accidents or phenomena. It was just
because Cranmer and his fellow-Reformers kept insisting that
substance must mean place and size, and so on, that they could
never grasp the true meaning of Transubstantiation. Cranmer could
not see that the term substance was used in and other but the
gross sense in which he himself understood it, though his master,
Henry VIII, had won the title Defender of the Faith for vindicating
Catholic truth against Luther, who tried to get over the "spatial
bulk" of substance as he imagined it by speaking of "ubiquity"
given to our Lord's Body. In the same way the compiler of the
Black Rubric wrote: "The Sacramental bread and wine remain
still in their natural substances." By the "natural"
world we mean the world of sense, the world which we see and
feel around us; the world of accidents or phenomena. Substance
is in this world of sense, but it is not part of it, except as
the unseen basis of it. We cannot see substance: we do not feel
it, for it belongs to the world beyond sense. We only know its
nature by its manifold appearances. In the Black Rubric the words
"natural substances" obviously mean natural properties,
appearances or phenomena. That is obvious from contemporary writings,
and the use of the plural "substances" also makes clear
that the word is used in its popular rather than its philosophic
sense.
(b) Popular Misuse of the word Substance.
In English, a loose and vague meaning has become attached
to the word Substance, as, for example, when we speak of a substantial
table, meaning a heavy and solid table; or of one cloth being
of softer substance than another: iron being a harder substance
than gold; ryebread being a more nourishing substance than wheatbread.
Any language in current use is liable to such variations in meaning.
(For example, the word "let," which once meant "hindered,"
now means "allowed.") That is the fate of any living
language--it is always dying or changing; whereas a "dead"
language like Latin or Greek, lives for ever, the exact meaning
of its words and phrases are fixed for all time. Nuttall's Dictionary
is perhaps the most popular at the moment; there, substance is
defined "a real thing with qualities: a material body substantiality:
the essential part: goods: estate means of living: the assumed
substratum of qualities (metaphysics)." Out of this variety
of meanings, as a technical term, "Substance" means
the invisible and invariable reality which a Thing is in Itself,
or that which exists in itself apart from its phenomena.
HERESY CAN OFTEN BE TRACED TO CONFUSION OF LANGUAGE.
CONFUSION arising from the use of words with different or
opposite meaning is no new thing in Theological controversy.
The history of the technical terms used to expound the doctrine
of the Blessed Trinity or the Incarnation is a striking proof
of this. God is Three Persons in One God. But the Greek word
for Person (PROSOPON) had been tainted in its use by a heretic.
The Church had therefore to adopt another Greek word (HYPOSTASIS),
which strictly was more nearly equivalent to OUSIA or ESSENCE
(
essentia
in Latin). When Hypostasis is put into Latin,
it should be
substantia
, substance. But Greek theologians
and Fathers had been compelled to use Hypostasis instead of Prosopon
to express
Persona
(Latin) or Person. Thus they spoke
of Three Hypostases in one Ousia. (Three Persons in One Substance.)
But it is obvious how the crossing of the words hypostasis and
persona laid open the way for confusion of thought, and so for
the long quarrel centring round the great Councils of Nicaea
and Constantinople which gave us the Nicene Creed and the teaching
that our Lord is "
of one substance with the Father
."
In the same way Nestorius kept insisting that there are two
Persons in our Lord, because, of course, there are two substances
in the Word-made-Flesh: consubstantiatial with His Mother as
man, and consubstantial with His Father as God--two Natures in
One Person--and that Person eternal, being the Second Person
of the Blessed Trinity. The difficulty perhaps can be traced
to the primary relation of Hypostasis to Ousia. So that when
St. Cyril of Alexandria insisted that our Lord is one Hypostasis,
Nestorius thought he meant that the ousia or substance of man
had been merged into the ousia or substance of God; he thought
ousia was akin to Hypostasis, whereas Hypostasis was being used
by St. Cyril in its technical meaning of Person. Thus, it is
not hard to see why Nestorius insisted that there are in the
Incarnate Lord two Hypostases. Of course, Nestorius went further
than this, for he refused to adore the Infant JESUS and denied
that the Babe in His Mother's Womb is God. Both sides used the
Eucharist as evidence in their own favour. Thus Nestorius asks:
"Is the bread the Body of Christ by a change of ousia?"
He insists that the bread and wine remain in their own nature
or ousia; whilst St. Cyril affirms that the substance of the
bread and wine is changed by consecration, and becomes the substance
of the Word of God, which always includes in St, Cyril's mind
the substance of His Body and Blood, i.e. of His Humanity; not
merged together, of course, but as two substances in One Person,
as we might speak of our whole compound soul and body, or St.
John speaks of "the WORD made FLESH."
It is not difficult to imagine the arguments at cross-purposes
in the Arian or Nestorian controversies; and in the same way
Catholics like Gardiner disputed with Jewel or Cranmer; and while
the Catholic party used "substance" in its technical
sense, the other side thought they meant something natural and
carnal, and, like Nestorius, they also refused to worship the
Humanity of our Lord in its Eucharistic mode of being.
The use of the word "corporal" as meaning "after
the manner of a body" is false when applied to the Blessed
Sacrament; and it is this use which the Black Rubric rightly
condemns. But there is a sense in which it is true to say that
the substantial conversion in the Eucharist is carnal, corporal
or material. For the gift is a gift of Flesh, and is therefore
carnal. And since it is His Body which He gives, it is a corporal
gift, and the real presence is a corporal presence, since it
is the presence
of a Body
. But it is a Body present substantially;
and though its natural properties arc not visible in the "natural
substances" of nerves and tissues and bones, yet these natural
properties are all
substantially
present. And since a
Body is not spirit like the soul, but is matter, it may be called
a material presence, i.e. the presence of matter in its substance,
but without any of its accidents. Christ's natural Body is now
glorified in Heaven. But the substance of that natural Body is
the same now in Heaven as it was through all His incarnate life
on earth. It is this substance of His Body which is present in
every consecrated Host as it was at the Last Supper.
THE XXXIX ARTICLES AND CORPORAL PRESENCE.
The commentary of Harold Browne, Bishop of Ely, was at one
time the standard work for the clergy on the XXXIX Articles.
In commenting upon Article 28, the Bishop admits the use of the
term "corporal Presence":--
"We acknowledge that the Body of Christ there received
is the very Body that was born of the Virgin Mary; that was crucified,
dead and buried. For there is no other Body, no other Blood of
Christ. Christ's Body is now glorified, but still it is the same
Body, though in its glorified condition. IT IS NOT EVEN DENIED
THAT WE RECEIVE THE BODY REALLY, SUBSTANTIALLY, CORPORALLY: for
though the word corporally seems opposed to spiritually, yet
it is not so of necessity. And as we acknowledge that it is a
body which we receive, so we cannot deny its presence corporally,
i.e. after the manner of a body. Only when we come to explain
ourselves, we say that, though it be Christ's very Body we receive
in the Eucharist, and though we cannot deny even the word corporal
concerning it, yet as Christ's Body is now a spiritual Body,
so we expect a spiritual presence of that Body."
The Bishop admits the use even of the term "corporal."
But we should not allow his explanation: for though there is
a corporal presence
of a body
, there is not a corporal
presence
after the manner
of a body, even though that
Body be spiritual. Were our Saviour to appear as He appeared
to His Apostle St. Paul after His Ascension, that would be a
corporal presence after the manner of a body, albeit a spiritual
Body; for "it was sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual
body." This vision or presence would be, as we should expect,
"a spiritual presence of that Body." But the presence
in the Eucharist, though it is a spiritual presence, differs
from the spiritual presence of His Risen Body in the Gospel appearances
after Resurrection or Ascension. It is not because Christ's Body
is now spiritual that we expect a spiritual presence of that
Body in the Eucharist. For at the Last Supper the Host was then
the Body of the Lord "after a heavenly and spiritual manner."
But the accidental condition of His Body then was still under
the laws of physical life. Independent of the state of His Body
in the Upper Room, or in Death or Resurrection, the Host is His
Body. It is His Body "after a spiritual manner," because
it is after a substantial manner. The Substance is present: the
substance is the link between the Upper Room, Calvary, or Heaven.
For whatever the external state of His Body, there is always
one and the same substance of that Body; so that at the Last
Supper, or at every Mass, what "we expect "is the same
substantial
"presence of that Body."
THIS CONVERSION IS INSTANTANEOUS.
This substantial conversion is not one which can be measured
by time: it takes place in Time, for the Sacrifice of Mass is
enacted in Time. But the conversion of the substance cannot be
measured by Time. Consecration is not a process of becoming or
slow conversion, as chemical conversions must often be. The Host
becomes what it is on the instant the words of Christ are uttered
and ended. So sublime a mystery could not be delayed throughout
the recitation of a series of men's prayers. It would be abhorrent
to think that for a moment (even immeasurable in its minuteness)
the Host is partly the substance of bread and partly the substance
of our Saviour's Body. Above all natural measure of Time, the
inward part becomes and is at once the Lord Christ.
THE PERMANENCE OF THIS CONVERSION.
It is still more impossible to imagine that the substantial
conversion of the Host and Chalice is "intermittent "and
not permanent.
"The Body of Christ remains in this Sacrament not only
until the morrow, but also in the future, so long as the sacramental
species remain (incorrupt): and when they cease, Christ's Body
ceases to be under them, not because it depends on them, but
because the relationship of Christ's Body to those species is
taken away, in the same way as God censes to be the Lord of a
creature which has ceased to exist."--ST. THOMAS.
NOTE.--(Incorrupt.) This word is not in the text of St. Thomas.
St. Cyril of Alexandria (
fl
. c. 431) is equally emphatic:--
"Some are so foolish as to say that the mystical blessing
departs from the sacrament, if any of its fragments remain until
the next day: for Christ's consecrated Body is not changed, and
the power of the blessing and the life-giving grace is perpetually
in it."
The Sacrifice of the Cross is represented at the moment when
the Host and Chalice have been consecrated. Between that and
the act of Communion a short period elapses. Xo one would suppose
that the Host and Chalice have temporarily become bread and wine,
and that the Divine Presence returns at the moment of Communion.
However prolonged may be the time between the Consecration and
Communion of any particular Host, the Catholic Church, East and
West, believes that it is the Body of the Lord. If, then, as
recorded in Apostolic Constitutions or Church Orders, deacons
convey the Sacrament to those absent from the Liturgy, or if
the Host be reserved in a hermit's cave or in the house of some
Christian woman in a pyx (Tertullian, date
c
. 200), or
if it be carried by a Martyr boy, Tarsicius, to a dying man.
it is still the substance of Christ's Body. And if it be reserved
in a fair pyx or within a tabernacle upon the Altar, as long
as the species of bread remain unconsumed and incorrupt, so long
does the substance of the Body of Christ abide therein. No one
would say that a Bishop or priest who, for any reason, had ceased
to exercise his office, was therefore no longer Bishop or priest.
This Sacrament also is equally what it is--the Christ--as long
as the species remain.
THE HOST IS AT ALL TIMES ADORABLE.
If the substance of bread and wine remained after consecration
as Luther taught, though the Body of Christ would still demand
worship, it would be "abhorred of all faithful Christians
"to adore the substance of bread and wine unchanged, not
transubstantiated. For the Host would thus be at the same time
two Realities--Bread and Christ,--and we might truly be charged
with idolatrous worship. But by the dogma of Tran-substantiation
we are preserved from this danger. For then we believe that the
species do not exist for and in themselves, but their inward
part or reality is Christ only. Just as the Church says in the
6th General Council, we do not adore the human flesh of Christ
in itself, but we adore it because it is personally united to
the Word of God; so we worship the Blessed Sacrament. We must
worship the Manhood with one and the same worship as paid to
the Godhead. But if that worship is due to Christ present naturally,
we owe also one and the same worship to Him in His Eucharistic
being. St. Augustine says, "Let no man eat till he have
first adored." No one thinks of adoring the accidents of
bread and wine in their natural substances or properties as such.
But we worship the Host wherein the substance of Christ is contained.
ADORATION AND COMMUNION.
The Host is never reserved for the purpose of adoration. The
last, the sole purpose of every Host, is Communion. Some human
mouth will consume it and in his soul receive Christ, given,
taken and received therein. It has been well pointed out that
if Communion at all times is given from the Reserved Sacrament
(apart from the practical convenience of this custom), the notion
that the Hosts were reserved for any purpose but Communion would
not arise. But if Reservation is in some remote spot, at once
an association of abnormality arises. No consecrated Host has
any other destiny than to be received in Holy Communion. But
if the "consecrated element" is Christ, true God and
true Man, adoration is due to Him and is not a "use."
Adoration is not a purpose, or use. We owe adoration to GOD of
GOD, whom we must worship in spirit and truth. We are bound to
believe that the human nature of our Lord is inseparably united
to his Godhead. Ascension has not terminated that Union. In the
same way the consecrated Host, as long as it remains, is the
Body of Christ. It must therefore receive the worship and adoration
paid to His natural being.
TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM.
VENEREMUR CERNUI.
Therefore we before It bending
This great Sacrament revere.
Who shall dare to refuse to Christ in His Eucharistic mode
of being the adoration due to God, the Incarnate Lord at all
times?
A.M.D.G.