[Sermones de eucharistiae sacramento]

cessity, but it is received in the light of the sun, not for delight, but for turmoil. Thus the sinner and enemy receives the true body of the Lord, not for salvation but for damnation. Yet, in this, the supreme liberality of God appears in regard to the nobility of the giver. For it is a great thing to give great goods to neighbors and friends; greater to servants and handmaids; greater still to strangers and pilgrims; but greatest to enemies. Here they are argued to be of great ingratitude. Job 19: "Why do you pursue me like God, and are filled with my flesh?" Romans 2: "Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering? Do you not know that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?" The abundant goodness and kindness of God is the liberality of His nobility, which does many good things for those who are enemies and sinners against Him, especially when He permits such people to take His own body so that He might convert them with such great liberality.

Thirdly, the maximum liberality of God is proven in this act regarding the utility of the recipient. For in this sacrament, one who receives worthily is made deiformis God-formed, that is, similar to God in a certain way through the grace of goodness or through the image of imitation. John 1: "As many as received him, to them he gave the power to become sons of God," that is, similar to God through the grace of goodness. Ambrose: "Because the Lord Jesus is the consort of your likeness and body, and you who receive His flesh participate in that divine substance as food." Divine substance is goodness; therefore, to participate in this food of divine substance is to be assimilated through grace to divine goodness. Proverbs 12: "He who is good shall draw grace from the Lord." Grace is truly the influence of divine goodness into the soul, through which, having been assimilated to God, it becomes pleasing to Him and worthy of eternal life. It is not sufficient, therefore, for divine liberality that in this food it illuminates the intellect, heals the affection, delights the memory, strengthens the whole human being in good, and associates him with His mystical body, but furthermore, as it has been said, it makes him similar to God. And this degree is the highest and most overflowing of divine largesse regarding the utility of the recipient. For no one can promote a creature to a greater state than to assimilate it to its Creator, in the present through grace and in the future through glory. 2 Corinthians 9: "I give thanks to God for his indescribable gift." Amen.

The second reason for the aforementioned, that the Lord gives His body as food. Sermon 6.

"Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed" This refers to Proverbs 9:5, as in the first sermon. The second reason for the wisdom of God, by which the Lord gives His body to man as food, is the corruption of human nature, which required medicine from this food, and this in three respects: first, regarding the proper beginning of healing; second, regarding the complete healing of corruption; third, regarding the firm preservation of health.

First, the corruption of human nature required such food regarding the proper beginning of healing. Just as the beginning of corruption and death began from food, via a physician or rather through a medium with the forbidden thing, namely the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so the beginning of justification and life...