The Eucharistic Sacrifice is also offered in obedience, "according to our Savior Jesus Christ's holy institution," and in fulfillment of his command. By uniting ourselves to him, we are making our wills one with his, so that in all things we may obey his heavenly Father. The obedience of Our Lord led him to the death of Calvary; of that death, the Sacred Mysteries are a perpetual memorial. By the indwelling of Christ in our souls through the Blessed Sacrament, we shall in our turn be able to endure all the sufferings of this life, and to make them an offering to God. The Church's prayer is therefore not merely part of a rite to be performed, it is the plea for that intervention of God into our lives that will transform them. Being "partakers of the divine nature" we shall, here in this world, "have eternal life."

THE CONSECRATION

The second act of Our Lord at the Last Supper was to bless the bread and wine that he had taken. The Church follows his example in the Liturgy at the Consecration. In the strictest sense, the name is used for the central act of this part of the service-the recital of the Words of Institution in the prayer over the bread and wine-but Consecration is the theme of all that is included between the short dialogue before the Preface and the Amen after the Doxology. The Offertory is the gift of men to God, made through their union with Christ; the Consecration is the occasion of God's great gift to man effected "through Jesus Christ our Lord" and dependent on his action through his mystical Body the Church. The gift is no less than the presence of our incarnate Lord in his Body and Blood, under the sacramental veils. It is therefore with the deepest reverence that we must approach so great a mystery.

The doctrine of the Real Presence, like all other doctrines,