He loved them unto the end" (John xiii. i). Thereupon, as the other evangelists tell us, Jesus instituted the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. This was therefore the token that Jesus loved His own unto the end. The Most Holy Eucharist is indeed the Sacrament of Love; it is in truth a miracle of love. Simply for love of us poor human beings is Jesus Christ really and truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. From the Tabernacle therefore does He unceasingly call to us: "Come unto me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you!"
2. It is especially necessary that you, my youthful reader, should keep your belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament ever alive within your soul. For this re? son call to mind the principal foundations of this belief.
The first foundation rests upon the promise of Him who is the Eternal Truth. When Jesus Christ, the God-Man, promises anything, He fails not to fulfil that promise. He solemnly promiser to institute the Most Holy Sacrament. When upon one occasion, after the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, the people came to Him in the hope of obtaining a further supply of bread, He referred them to another kind of bread, which He would bestow upon them. And what kind of bread did He mean? He said : " The bread that I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world," that is to say, the selfsame flesh which He offered up on the cross in order that the world, all mankind, should have eternal life. Thus plainly and definitely did Jesus promise that He would really and truly give His flesh to be our food.
