of Jesus Christ; that it may be admitted (adscriptam),—that is, substracted from all profane usage and wholly consecrated to the divine Majesty; ratified (ratam), that is, approved as a perfect sacrifice; reasonable or rational (rationabilem),—this includes an allusion to a passage in the Epistle to the Romans, in which St. Paul says: "I beseech you … that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service;"[1] acceptable (acceptabilem),—that is, altogether agreeable and worthy of being received, differently from the victims and the oblations of the Hebrew people, which were not sufficient to appease the divine justice incensed against sinners; and, finally, Ut nobis corpus et sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui ("That it may become to us the body and blood of Thy most beloved Son"). The priest, according to St. Thomas, does not thereby ask that the consecration, be accomplished, but that it be profitable to us.[2]
Qui, pridie quam pateretur, etc. ("Who the day before he suffered," etc.). Here the priest, renewing the memory of the Passion of Jesus Christ, relates what the Lord did on the evening before his death, when he instituted the Sacrament and the sacrifice of his body and blood. Then the priest does the same thing, and consecrates by pronouncing the very words used by Jesus Christ, as St. Ambrose remarks: "He uses not his own words, but the very words of Jesus Christ."[3]
The form of the consecration is taken from St. Matthew: Hoc est corpus meum ("This is my body").[4] These words need no explanation, since they themselves
