that I may be altogether enamoured of Thee, and weary myself to give Thee pleasure. I love Thee, my Jesus, my Love, my All; and I desire very often to be united with Thee in this Sacrament, that I may separate myself from all things, and love Thee alone, my Life. Succour me, O my Redeemer, through the merits of Thy Passion.
Third Point.
Let us consider, in the third place, the GREAT DESIRE of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we should receive Him in the Holy Communion. "Jesus knew that His hour was come." (S. John xiii. i.) But how was our Blessed Lord able to call His hour that night in which He was to experience, the beginning of His bitter Passion? Yes! He called it His hour, since in that night He was about to leave us, that Divine Sacrament for the perfect union of Himself with His beloved souls. And this longing made Hun say, " With desire, I have desired to eat this passover with you." (S. Luke xxii. 15.) Words, by which our Redeemer wished to make us understand the desire that He had of uniting Himself with each one of us in this Sacrament. " With desire, I have desired:" it is thus that the great love which He bears us, forces Him to speak. S. Laurence Justinian calls it " a voice of the most burning love." And he willed to leave Himself under the form of bread, so that all might be able to receive Hun; for, if He had placed Himself under the form of any precious food, the poor would not have had the power to receive it, and even if He had left Himself under the form of any other food not precious, it might perhaps not have been found in every part of the world; therefore, it was that Jesus willed to leave Himself under the form of bread, since bread is of small cost; it is found everywhere, so that in every place it can be obtained and received.
Through the great desire that the Redeemer had to be received by us, not only did He exhort us to receive Him with such invitations as, " Come, eat of My Bread, and drink of the Wine which I have mingled," (Prov. ix. 5); " Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved, (Sol. Song v. i); but He imposed the reception of Himself by positive command, "Take, eat;
