Chapter II. Charity and Placability.

Furthermore, from the exceeding charity with which God loved us, by offering this sacrament to us it is called Eucharist, that is, good grace. It belongs to one who loves and is good, as Dionysius says, to bring good things; and it belongs to the best and one loving in the best way to bring the best things. Therefore, since God prepared this grace for us by the best love of himself toward us, fittingly and by just reason it received the name Eucharist, that is, good grace. And indeed, not knowing this, Absalom said to Chushai the Archite in 2 Kings 16:17: This, he says, is your grace toward your friend. For Chushai is interpreted secret; but Archite, raising up the captive brother. Because this grace is so excellent that no one knows its secret except the one who receives it; and it was prepared in so great a love that it raised up to life all the captive brothers of Christ, as Christ says in John 6:58: He who eats me, he also shall live because of me. Therefore grace prepared for a friend in such an effect and affection of love is most excellently called Eucharist.

Hence it is that the Lord, speaking of that love through Jeremiah 31:3, said: With perpetual charity I have loved you; therefore I have drawn you, having mercy. For he never drew us so much as he drew us then, when he himself, sacramentally according to truth, is in us, and we are in him according to a spiritual incorporation made to him. For then we were drawn most strongly and bound by his bond of indissoluble charity, so that we may be spiritually in his inmost parts, and he in our inmost parts through sacramental taking. And this is what Isaiah 41:7 said: The iron-smith striking with the hammer strengthened him who was forging at that time, saying: It is good with glue; and he strengthened him with nails, so that he would not be moved. For the iron-smith is the Father loving us, and from philanthropy, that is, love of men, saying: With glue, that is, with the love of charity as with glue, I join the good to myself. And every saint responded: It is good, because nothing better can be thought out for us. The iron-smith is said to be the love of the heavenly Father because, just as iron tames all things, so love conquers all things; hence Virgil in the Bucolics: Love conquers all things, and let us yield to love. For it is the embrace of excessive love, because he so glued us to himself that he would be in us and we in him so intimately that he would be poured into our entrails and we would be incorporated into him. For if, as blessed Dionysius said in the book On the Divine Names, divine love is productive of ecstasy, this is most excellently called divine love, which so transposes God into us and us into God; for ἔκτασις in Greek is established to be transposition in Latin. For he says in John 6:57: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. He abides in me, he says, transposed outside himself; and I abide in him, transposed outside myself. For the bride suffers thus when she says in Canticles 2:16: My beloved is mine, and I am his. For her beloved bridegroom would not be hers unless he were transposed into her; nor would she belong to the beloved unless she were transformed into him with her whole affection. Thus also it is said in Canticles 7:10: I am my beloved's, and his turning is toward me. For he is wholly turned into us when, in the sacrament, there is perfected and ordered how we may remain incorporated in him.

Hence it is that she cries in Canticles 8:6: Place me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, because love is strong as death. It places the soul outside the lover into the beloved, and therefore it is strong as death; and therefore the beloved is to be placed upon the heart as a seal, because he so profoundly transposes his soul and body and deity into us that he is sacramentally in my entrails, and we are made united in him bodily by spiritual power. Hence Saint Jerome said very well in his hymns of love that love or charity is a unitive virtue, which truly, as Augustine says, is a band binding and uniting the lover and the beloved. And this sacrament also, since it belongs to love for the stated cause, is called the sacrament of union. For it is as it were a bond binding and uniting us with God and God with us. Hence in Psalm 62:9 it is said: My soul has adhered after you; your right hand has received me. For our soul adheres immovably in the sacrament, and the right hand of his eternity, by embracing, has received us intimately, and by clasping, so that we may never be separated from it.

This again is what Hosea 11:4 said: I will draw them in the cords of Adam, in the bonds of charity. For from Adam in this sacrament we received the body and blood, by which two cords the Lord draws us in this sacrament. But we have the bonds of charity because the Lord is bound to us in this sacrament both according to soul and according to deity, so that we may not be separated forever, and thus may be incorporated, drawn, and bound to him. The Lord said in John 15:13 that no one has a greater love than this, that one lay down his soul for his friends. And let the word of my Lord indeed remain safe in all things, because it is a sign of inestimable love that he gave to us in the sacrament his soul laid down unto death for us, a pledge of redemption, and his blood as a sacrifice of expiation, and his body as a bond of communication, and his deity as the sweetening of the best savor. For he bound us very much to himself in the embrace of charity when he associated us to himself in such a way.

Founded and rooted in this charity, as is said in Ephesians 3:18, we can comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth: the breadth, I say, by which he loved us broadly everywhere on earth, uniting us to himself through the sacrament of communion; the length, truly, because he works eternal delight in us, when what we now bear in sacramental species we shall receive in eternity in the truth of things; the height, however, because beyond measure we are associated in height to his deity; but the depth, when also in the depth of his inmost parts we are incorporated to him in body and blood. Thus associated as if by three diameters or dimensions, namely in length, breadth, and depth, so that just as in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, as is said in Colossians 2:9, so also we may dwell bodily in him through the threefold dimension. For his inward charity can accomplish this, which penetrates into us like fire which penetrates most greatly, and draws us to himself like the heat of fire, which among all things that draw draws more strongly. And therefore it is said of charity in Canticles 8:6: Its lamps are lamps of fire and flames. Because he not only draws us to himself, but draws us within, and he himself penetrates into us even to the marrow. With such affection Jeremiah said in Lamentations 1:13: From on high he sent fire into my bones and instructed me. For fire penetrating into the marrow teaches what the force of that love is, by which Christ so pours himself into us and so draws us within himself; and no one can know this virtue except inward love. In this, he says¹, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Because in this teaching both you will abide in me and I in you, so that we may be consummated into one. What, then, could have been anything but good and best grace, which God prepared for us while affected toward us in this love?

By placability, however, he shows especially that he thought out for us only gracious things that belonged to the best grace, because, even when provoked by old sins, he still prepared this grace for us; and therefore it is called good grace, because it was prepared by the best will. Joel 2:13: He is kind and merciful, patient and of much mercy, and able to be prevailed upon above evil.

For this is beyond measure good grace, by which he did not wish to be separated from us; rather, he wished to be united to us who ought to have been separated from him by the merit of sin. Hence in Romans 5:8 and 9: God commends his charity in us, because while we were still sinners, according to the time Christ died for us; and not only did he die, but he was also united to us through the sacrament of his passion.

For on account of this he also placed in the sacrament itself the sacrifice of placation, so that if there were anything which separated us from him, it would be purged by the merit of that sacrifice. For thus it is said in Psalm 39:7 and following: Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire; but ears you have perfected for me. Holocaust and offering for sin you did not require; then I said: Behold, I come. In the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do your will. My God, I have willed, and so forth. For because God accepted no sacrifice of the old law in which he would remit sins, therefore he fitted to Christ a body conjoined and united to deity, in which sacrifice he would be made placated toward us concerning all sins; and because he neither willed nor ought to accept the holocaust of animals and the blood of animals offered to him for sin as satisfaction for sin, therefore Christ came from will, so that by the will of devoted obedience he might fulfill the will of the Father, offering himself so that for all of us he might find placation in his blood. Therefore this is what we daily vow at the altar by slaying the Lamb without blemish, so that in the placable, mysterial will by which God found this grace for us, we may make God be placated toward us. Hence in Hebrews 9:12 it is said: Not by the blood of goats or calves, but by his own blood, he entered once into the holies, eternal redemption having been found. Therefore the grace of this sacrament is best, which was found for us by so gracious and placable a will of God; for it is said in Hebrews 9:22 that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. Therefore this grace is great, which the placable will of God toward us, willing to be placated in every event that might occur, and so that he could be placated, found through himself this way of placation: that the Son should assume flesh from which he ought to placate, and should not lay aside deity by which he could placate. Hence, when this sacrifice is offered daily, he would be placated, and he himself would exist as the inventor and receiver of this best grace. Psalm 50:21: Then you will accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and holocausts; then they will place calves upon your altar. Then, I say, when that sacrifice was offered by Christ, then God accepts every offered sacrifice of justice, and the oblations of our vows, and holocausts burned in the fire of devotion; and also, slaying the calves of our wantonness through mortification of the flesh, we place them upon the altar of the sacrifice of the body of Christ, so that in him those calves themselves may also be accepted placably. For it can never be that one who is easily placable does not always think to make good grace for those for whom he is easily placated. It is said in Exodus 34:10 that the Lord was made placated at the prayer of Moses concerning the evil which he said he would do to his people. And this same thing is confirmed in Numbers 14:20. Much more, however, is he made placated by the oblation of his Son, which his Son offered, and in which his Son is there offered and sacrificed for placation. Therefore this grace is best, and fittingly called Eucharist, which God himself placated to himself so that it would be offered, and found so that he would be placated.

Therefore from these causes this sacrament receives the name Eucharist or good grace, because God prepared this grace for us in goodness, kindliness, piety, sweetness, charity, and placability: in goodness thinking about us, in kindliness flowing with his goodness, in piety flowing out to all of us with melted affection, in his sweetness affected toward sons, and fervent with charity, and in placability, so that he could do good things even while forgiving evils, he prepared for us this sacrament of goodness, kindliness, piety, sweetness, charity, and placability, and so forth.