the faithful for the restraints placed on their piety on Holy Thursday itself, when the nearness of Good Friday hindered them from making it a sufficiently joyful festival. Now, what date should be selected for this Eucharistic consecration, for the fuller gratifying of our pent-up feelings of joy and gratitude for the institution of the great banquet of love? There was a certain fitness in choosing some day that comes as soon as possible after the completion of the yearly cycle of feasts which commemorate the events of Our Lord's life on earth, ending with the establishment of His Church and the descent of the Holy Ghost. That cycle closes with Pentecost: what day, therefore, after the octave of Whitsunday, shall be the glorious feast of reparation and thanksgiving for the Sacrament of the body of Our Lord? The Thursday of the first week after Whitsuntide is Corpus Christi, not preferred at random (as we have said several times) to the other days of the week, but out of homage to that particular day on which this Most Blessed Sacrament was actually instituted.
Finally, what individual claim can Ascension Thursday advance to be ranked as a Eucharistic festival, like the two other Thursdays which it comes between? Because the commemoration of the departure of our divine Redeemer must needs call to our minds His abiding presence amongst us. He who is gone stays still. Hundreds of years before the Ascension the Royal Psalmist, who foresaw it, linked this consolation with his prophecy, or at least piety is delighted at discovering this hidden meaning in his words: "Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive, Thou hast received gifts in men" (Psalm lxvii. 19). This was the supreme gift and love -token which, if it had not been given already, would have been given then, to console those who were left behind in loneliness on the mountain of the Ascension. Surely, as all the pathetic words spoken at the Last Supper have a deeper force, a more poignant significance, if we imagine them repeated by Jesus at the very last on Mount Olivet, when the final parting had indeed come, as they were repeated (if not with His lips) with His Heart; so, too, the "memorial of His marvels," memoria mirabilium suorum, the memento that He left behind Him, did not take effect, as it were, or come fully into play, until His visible presence was actually withdrawn. And therefore, when Our Redeemer goes from us on the clouds of heaven, it is impossible not to try and calm, our troubled hearts by reminding ourselves of the supreme device of His love by means of which, though He has gone,
