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I don’t know how many people have access to the Divine Office.
The office of Matins has as the second reading for today this piece from the
works of St Thomas Aquinas on the feast of Corpus Christi. It is entitled “O
precious and wonderful banquet”. I felt I had to share it with those of you who
don’t have access to the Divine Office on today's feast of Corpus Christi.
O precious and wonderful banquet!
Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men
should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming
man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the
whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father
on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his
blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our
wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the
memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food
and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and
wine.
O precious and wonderful banquet, that brings us salvation
and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under
the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here
Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more
wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it
sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an
abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living
and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for
the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of
this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in
which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed
in his passion.
It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon
the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last
Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after
celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial
of his passion. It was the fulfilment of ancient figures and the greatest of
all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his
departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.
St Thomas Aquinas
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