what faith, for do not the devils believe and tremble? "I do tell you," he says, “I am even now making the distinction: but faith that worketh by charity. . . . Have faith with charity, for you cannot have charity without faith." I beg, and admonish, and teach you in the Lord's name, to have faith with charity, because you were able to have faith without charity. I do not exhort you to have faith, but charity. For you were not able to have charity without faith. I mean charity towards God and towards our neighbour: how can this exist without faith? How does the man love God who does not believe in God? How does the fool love God who says in his heart, "There is no God." You may perchance believe that Christ has come, and still not love Him. But it is impossible that loving Christ you should not believe that Christ has come.

LVII.

ADORATION OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST.

(Enarratio in Ps. xcviii. 9.)

says,

The

ADORE the footstool of the Lord our God, for it is holy. What have we here to adore? His footstool.... But consider, brethren, what it is He commands us to adore. In another place the Scripture says, The heavens are My seat, but the earth is My footstool. Then, does He command us to adore the earth, as He says in this passage that it is His footstool? And how shall we adore the earth when the Scripture plainly tells us, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore. Here it says, Adore His footstool, but explaining what that is, it earth is My footstool. Here I am put into a difficulty: I fear to adore the earth lest He Who made heaven and earth should condemn me; and again, I fear not to adore the footstool of my Lord, because of the words of the Psalm, Adore His footstool. I want to know what His footstool is, and the Scripture tells me the earth is My footstool. In my uncertainty I turn to Christ, for it is He Whom I am here seeking, and I find how the earth may be adored without impiety, how His footstool may be meetly worshipped. He took earth of the earth, for flesh is of earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in that Flesh and gave us that very Flesh to eat unto salvation-but no one eats that Flesh

without first adoring it-we find how it is that this footstool of the Lord may be adored. Not only do we not sin in adoring, but we should sin did we not adore. But does the flesh quicken? In speaking of the glorification of this same earth the Lord Himself said, It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. When, therefore, you turn your face to the earth, wherever it may be, and prostrate yourself, look upon it not as earth, but that Holy One Whose footstool you are adoring, for your adoration is on His account; hence the Psalmist's words, Adore His footstool, because He is holy. Who is this Holy One? He Whose footstool you are adoring. And when you adore Him, lest your mind be occupied with the carnal meaning and you should not be quickened by the spirit, He says, It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. Our Lord laid this down after speaking about His flesh. His words were, Unless a man eat My Flesh, he shall not have eternal life in him. A certain number of His disciples-about seventy-were scandalised, and said, This saying is hard, who can bear it? And they went back, and walked with Him no more. His words seemed hard to them, Unless a man eat My Flesh, he shall not have eternal life. They took them stupidly in a literal carnal sense, and imagined that Our Lord was going to cut off parts of His body and so give them to eat, and they said, This saying is hard. It was they, not the saying, who were hard. For if they had not been so, if they had been meek, they would have said to themselves: "He would not speak in this way unless His words bore some secret meaning." If they had not been hard but gentle, they would have remained with Him, and would have learned from Him that which they who remained after their departure did learn. For after their going away, His twelve disciples who

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had remained with Him said to Him, as if grieving over their death, that they were scandalised at His words and had withdrawn from Him. But He instructed them, saying: "It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. Put a spiritual meaning upon what I have said. You are not to eat this body which you see nor to drink the blood which the men who crucify Me are to spill. It is a mystery which I have laid before you, and in its spiritual sense it will quicken you. Even if it is necessary to give that mystery a visible celebration, it must be spiritually understood. Exalt ye the Lord our God, and adore His footstool, for it is holy."

LVIII.

MANNER OF RECEIVING THE HOLY

EUCHARIST.

(Sermo. lxxi. 17.)

How are we to understand those words of Our Lord, He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood remains in Me and I in him? Are we to take them as applying also to those of whom the Apostle says, that they eat and drink judgment to themselves, eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood? Did Judas, who sold his Master and impiously betrayed Him, although, as the evangelist St. Luke plainly says, he had eaten and drunk of that first sacrament of His Body and Blood, prepared by His hands, with the other disciples, remain in Christ, or Christ in Him? And do so many who either eat that Flesh and drink that Blood with an insincere heart, or apostatise after its reception, remain in Christ, or Christ in them? But there is most surely a certain manner of eating that Flesh and of drinking that Blood by which he who eats and drinks remains in Christ and Christ in him. It is not, therefore, that any one who eats the Flesh of Christ and who drinks His Blood in any kind of a way remains in Christ and Christ in him, but there is a certain manner of receiving which was known to Our Lord when He said these words. Thus again when He says, He who shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost