Corpus Christi - The Greatest of Gods Gifts by Pope Urban IV

Over this mystery, which prepares joy for us and elicits our tears, we rejoice weepingly and weep joyfully because our hearts are entranced with joy at the remembrance of so great a benefit, and in the sense of the most just gratitude which we owe it, we cannot refrain from tears. O infinite, Divine love! O exceedingly great condescension of our God! O astounding miracle of His liberality! Not enough to make us masters of the goods of this world, He even places all creatures at our command. This was not even enough for His goodness to us. He raised man to so great a dignity as to give him Angels to guard him and celestial spirits to serve him and to guide the elect to the possession of the inheritance which is prepared for them in Heaven. After so many brilliant proofs of His munificence, He has given us a still greater pledge of His unspeakable charity by bestowing Himself on us. Exceeding the very fullness of His gifts and the very measure of His love, He offers Himself for our food and drink.

O sublime and admirable liberality, in which the Giver is the Gift, and the Gift is the very One Who gives! O unexampled liberality by which He gives Himself! Our God has given Himself to be our food because man, condemned to death as he is, can be restored to life by this means only. By eating the forbidden fruit he incurred death, and by partaking of the tree of life, he has been redeemed. In the former was the sting of death; in the latter the food of life. By eating the former he inflicted a wound upon himself; by eating of the latter he recovered health. Thus the partaking of the one food wounded him; the partaking of the other healed him. Wound and cure proceed from the same source, and what entailed death upon us, has restored us to life. Of the former it is said: "On the day on which you shall eat thereof, you shall die the death"; and of the latter, "He that eats of this bread shall live for ever". O Substantial Food which perfectly satisfies and truly nourishes, not the body, but the heart; not the flesh, but the soul! Our compassionate Redeemer, who knew that man needed spiritual nourishment, has in this institution of charity and mercy prepared for his soul the most precious and most nourishing food that His wisdom could devise. Neither could any work have been better befitting the Divine liberality than that the Eternal Word of God, should, after He was made flesh, give Himself to flesh and blood.

This Divine Bread is eaten, but it is not changed, because it assumes no other form in him who eats it. It transforms the worthy receiver into Him whom it contains. O most excellent, most adorable and most venerable Sacrament, to which we can never give adequate praise, honour and glory and whose benefits we can never justly extol! O Sacrament, which is worthy of being revered from the bottom of the heart, loved with the most tender and fervent affection and of being deeply engraved upon our memory in indelible characters! O most precious remembrance, which ought to be made known and exalted in all places, which all Christians ought ever to remember with feelings of the deepest gratitude, which can never sufficiently meditate upon or ever sufficiently worship. We are therefore bound to cherish a perpetual remembrance of it, so that we may constantly have Him before our eyes who offers this inestimable benefit to us. For the more we consider the Gift, the more we prize Him who bestows it.