6. Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would
rightly esteem and would make due provision for life everlasting, whose
industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of
human events. But alas! we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly
flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world as it were a fresh
lease of life and prosperity, inasmuch as by their own energetic action they
are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of
commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display.
And yet,
whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God,
instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is
shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it
anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an
object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as
men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do
nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and
choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds.
And yet,
whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God,
instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is
shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it
anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an
object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as
men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do
nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and
choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds.
But the source and chief of all
these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains
that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also
enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so
much. For what can be more honourable or a more worthy object of desire than to
be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now
this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after
having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state, he yet
more closely associates and unites him with Himself.
For there is this
difference between the food of the body and that of the soul, that whereas the
former is changed into our substance, the latter changes us into its own; so
that St. Augustine makes Christ Himself say: "You shall not change Me into
yourself as you do the food of your body, but you shall be changed into
Me" (confessions 1. vii., c. x.).
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