CHAPTER II
THE REASON FOR THE INSTITUTION OF THIS MOST HOLY SACRAMENT
Therefore, our Savior, when about to depart from this world to the Father, instituted this sacrament, in which He poured forth, as it were, the riches of His divine love towards men, making a remembrance of his wonderful works (57), and commanded us in the participation of it to reverence His memory and to show forth his death until he comes (58) to judge the world. But He wished that this sacrament should be received as the spiritual food of souls (59), whereby they may be nourished and strengthened, living by the life of Him who said: He that eateth me, the same also shall live by me (60), and as an antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sins. He wished it furthermore to be a pledge of our future glory and everlasting happiness, and thus be a symbol of that one body of which He is the head (61) and to which He wished us to be united as members by the closest bond of faith, hope and charity, that we might all speak the same thing and there might be no schisms among us (62).
CHAPTER III
THE EXCELLENCE OF THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST OVER THE OTHER SACRAMENTS
The most Holy Eucharist has indeed this in common with the other sacraments, that it is a symbol of a sacred thing and a visible form of an invisible grace; but there is found in it this excellent and peculiar characteristic, that the other sacraments then first have the power of sanctifying when one uses them, while in the Eucharist there is the Author Himself of sanctity before it is used. For the Apostles had not yet received the Eucharist from the hands of the Lord, when He Himself told them that what He was giving them is His own body (63). This has always been the belief of the Church of God, that immediately after the consecration the true body and the true blood of our Lord, together with His soul and divinity exist under the form of bread and wine, the body under the form of bread and the blood under the form of wine ex vi verborum; but the same body also under the form of wine and the same blood under the form of bread and the soul under both, in virtue of that natural connection and concomitance whereby the parts of Christ the Lord, who hath now risen from the dead, to die no more (64), are mutually united; also the divinity on account of its admirable hypostatic union with His body and soul. Wherefore, it is very true that as much is contained under either form as under both. For Christ is whole and entire under the form of bread and under any part of that form; likewise the whole Christ is present under the form of wine and under all its parts.
CHAPTER IV
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
But since Christ our Redeemer declared that to be truly His own body which He offered under the form of bread (65), it has, therefore, always been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy council now declares it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. This change the holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation.
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(57) Ps. 110:4.
(58) Luke 22:19; I Cor. 11:24–26.
(59) Matt. 26:26 f.
(60) John 6:58.
(61) See I Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23.
(62) See I Cor. 1:10.
(63) Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22.
(64) Rom. 6:9.
(65) Luke 22:19; John 6:48 ff.; I Cor. 11:24.
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