keep one's eye fixed on the end, to
raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth enthroned at the Right
Hand of the Father. The day's song is the Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your
hearts unto the Lord!"

The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through His
Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents to
the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly oblation of
our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach pure Divinity, is
also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth. The heavenly Altar and
the earthly Altar are but one in that there is but one Priest and one
Victim here and there. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the Church's
presentation of her Head as her means of approach to God, as the ground
of all her prayers. These prayers make their appeal through Jesus Who
died and rose again for us and is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of
no other way of approach, we plead no other merit as the hope of our
acceptance. Let us be very clear about this centrality of our Lord's
mediation because I shall presently have certain things to say which are
often assumed to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which
in reality do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.

We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we at once
see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the Resurrection
of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the survival of His human
soul strikes at the very heart of the Catholic Religion. If Revelation
be true, our approach to God is rendered possible because there is a
Mediator between God and man, the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers
have explicitly, or implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a
pleading of this fact.

How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We come
together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We are coming
to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood. But who,
precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask what this congregation
is, what is the answer? The congregation is the congregation of Christ's
Flock: it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of
Almighty God. The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not
primarily of individuals. Our participation in the act of wor