oes the priest turn round towards the
people, to denote that our Lord manifested Himself five times on the
day of His Resurrection, as stated above in the treatise on Christ's
Resurrection (Q. 55, A. 3, Obj. 3). But the priest greets the people
seven times, namely, five times, by turning round to the people, and
twice without turning round, namely, when he says, "The Lord be with
you" before the "Preface," and again when he says, "May the peace of
the Lord be ever with you": and this is to denote the sevenfold grace
of the Holy Ghost. But a bishop, when he celebrates on festival days,
in his first greeting says, "Peace be to you," which was our Lord's
greeting after Resurrection, Whose person the bishop chiefly
represents.

Reply Obj. 7: The breaking of the host denotes three things: first,
the rending of Christ's body, which took place in the Passion;
secondly, the distinction of His mystical body according to its
various states; and thirdly, the distribution of the graces which
flow from Christ's Passion, as Dionysius observes (Eccl. Hier. iii).
Hence this breaking does not imply severance in Christ.

Reply Obj. 8: As Pope Sergius says, and it is to be found in the
Decretals (De Consecr., dist. ii), "the Lord's body is threefold; the
part offered and put into the chalice signifies Christ's risen body,"
namely, Christ Himself, and the Blessed Virgin, and the other saints,
if there be any, who are already in glory with their bodies. "The
part consumed denotes those still walking upon earth," because while
living upon earth they are united together by this sacrament; and are
bruised by the passions, just as the bread eaten is bruised by the
teeth. "The part reserved on the altar till the close of the mass, is
His body hidden in the sepulchre, because the bodies of the saints
will be in their graves until the end of the world": though their
souls are either in purgatory, or in heaven. However, this rite of
reserving one part on the altar till the close of the mass is no
longer observed, on account of the danger; nevertheless, the same
meaning of the parts continues, which some persons have expressed in
verse, thus:

"The host being rent--
What is dipped, means the blest;
What is dry, means the living;
What is kept, those at rest."

Others, however, say that the part put into the chalice denotes those
still living in this world, while the part kept outside the chalice
denotes those fully blessed both in soul and bod