crament

"And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and
broke, and gave to His disciples, and said: take ye and eat. This is My
body" (_Matt_. xxvi. 26).

PERHAPS no mystery of revelation has been so universally attacked as the
Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

By the Real Presence is meant that Jesus Christ is really and truly,
body and blood, soul and divinity, present in the Blessed Sacrament,
under the form and appearance of bread and wine.

This teaching of the Church is in perfect agreement with Scripture,
tradition, and reason.

If the reader will take up his Bible and read carefully the 6th chapter
of the Gospel according to St. John; the 26th chapter, 26th, 27th, and
28th verses of St. Matthew; the 14th chapter, 22d verse of St. Mark; the
First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 10th chapter, 16th verse,
as well as other portions of the New Testament, he will certainly see
that the Catholic teaching and practice concerning the Real Presence of
Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament are founded on Scripture. In this
6th chapter of St. John, we learn that before instituting the Blessed
Sacrament Our Saviour wished to announce or promise it to His disciples
in order to prepare them for it. He first gave them a figure of the
Blessed Sacrament in the multiplication of the five loaves of bread by
which He fed five thousand persons. After this miracle He told them that
He would give them bread superior to that which they had eaten, and that
this bread was His own flesh and blood. "The bread that I will give is
My flesh, for the life of the world." It is almost impossible to
understand these words of Our Lord in any other than a literal sense. He
was so understood by those who heard Him. "How can this man give us his
flesh to eat?" they said, and many withdrew from Him. It is but
reasonable to believe that if He did not wish to be understood in a
literal sense He would have told His hearers so, rather than have them
leave Him.

This promise of a doctrine so difficult to understand was fulfilled at
the Last Supper.

Then Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave to His
disciples, and said: "Take ye and eat. This is My body." And taking the
chalice He gave thanks; and gave to them, saying: "Drink ye all of this.
For this is My blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many
for the remission of sins."

"Do this for a commemoration of