Sunday, June 2 : Saint Bonaventure

When you approach the table of the heavenly banquet, “examine yourself,” according to the advice of the Apostle (1 Cor 11:28). Consider carefully with what faith you approach. (…) First see what faith you must have in the truth and nature of this Sacrament of the Eucharist. You must believe firmly and without doubt what the Catholic faith teaches and proclaims: at the moment when the words of Christ are pronounced, the material and visible bread in some way pays homage to the Creator and makes way, under the visible appearance accidents, to the living Bread which comes down from heaven for the minister and sacramental service. Material bread ceases to exist and, at the same moment, beneath its accidents, several things truly exist in a prodigious and ineffable way. First the very pure flesh and the sacred body of Christ, which were generated by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the glorious Virgin Mary, suspended on the cross, deposited in the sepulcher and glorified in heaven. Since the flesh does not live deprived of blood, this precious blood, which flowed on the cross for the salvation of the world, is also necessarily present there. And as there is no true man without a reasonable soul, the glorious soul of Jesus Christ, who surpasses in grace and glory all virtue, all glory and all power, in whom “rest all the treasures of divine wisdom” (Col 2:3), is itself present. Finally, since Christ is true man and true God, God is there in the glory of his majesty. Together and distinguished from each other, these four realities are found whole and perfectly contained under the species of bread and wine; both in the chalice and in the host and no less in one than in the other, so that nothing is lacking in one which must be supplied in the other, and everything is found in each of the two by a mystery “about which we would have many things to say” (cf. Heb 5:11). But it is enough to believe that each species contains the true God and Man, surrounded by the help of Angels and the presence of Saints.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team