ut a perpetual repetition of the
Savior's passion, and what has the Savior supposed in instituting
it, but that whatever passed at Calvary is not only represented but
consummated on our altars? That is to say, that He is still performing
the functions of the victim anew, and is every moment virtually
sacrificed, as tho it were not sufficient that He should have suffered
once; at least that His love, as powerful as it is free, has given to
His adorable sufferings that character of perpetuity which they have
in the Sacrament, and which renders them so salutary to us. Behold,
Christians, what the love of God has devised; but behold, also, what
has happened through the malice of men! At the same time that Jesus
Christ, in the sacrament of His body, repeats His holy passion in a
manner altogether mysterious, men, the false imitators, or rather base
corrupters of the works of God, have found means to renew this same
passion, not only in a profane, but in a criminal, sacrilegious, and
horrible manner!

Do not imagine that I speak figuratively. Would to God, Christians,
that what I am going to say to you were only a figure, and that you
were justified in vindicating yourselves to-day against the horrible
expressions which I am obliged to employ! I speak in the literal
sense, and you ought to be more affected with this discourse, if what
I advance appears to you to be overcharged; for it is by your excesses
that it is so, and not by my words. Yes, my dear hearers, the sinners
of the age, by the disorders of their lives, renew the bloody and
tragic passion of the Son of God in the world; I will venture to say
that the sinners of the age cause to the Son of God, even in the state
of glory, as many new passions as they have committed outrages against
Him by their actions! Apply yourselves to form an idea of them; and in
this picture, which will surprize you, recognize what you are, that
you may weep bitterly over yourselves! What do we see in the passion
of Jesus Christ? A divine Savior betrayed and abandoned by cowardly
disciples, persecuted by pontiffs and hypocritical priests, ridiculed
and mocked in the palace of Herod by impious courtiers, placed upon a
level with Barabbas, and to whom Barabbas is preferred by a blind and
inconstant people, exposed to the insults of libertinism, and treated
as a mock king by a troop of soldiers equally barbarous and insolent;
in fine, crucified by merciless executioners! Behold, in a few words