The Eucharistic act, on the evening of Holy Thursday, was the testament of Jesus Christ, a solemn act which the Savior wished to accomplish before his bloody immolation, and whose effect, like all those of the same nature, presupposed the death of the divine Testator, and was to have its ultimate result only in the future.

The institution of the adorable Eucharist was thus, in its double mystery, a transitory act which « completed » the past as sacrifice, linking it to the future as sacrament. One of its ends was obviously to perpetuate, at the same time as it realized it, this sacramental state, and it created the priesthood at that very moment: « Do this in memory of me », he said to his Apostles, conferring on them the power of holy consecration.

Let us notice: immediately after the Institution of the Holy Eucharist and naming it a memorial, Our Lord regards his mortal life as being finished; and indeed in the sublime discourse of the last evening, the divine Master, ablaze with a new fire and transported by charity, was already as if no longer of this world: « It is now that the Son of Man is glorified,[1] » he said, as if he had lost sight of the fact that he still had to die, or as if that death had already passed; It is that death seemed to him to be nothing more than the baptism of his new existence, « a baptism which he had ardently desired,[2] » no doubt in order to be relieved of the sins of the world for which he had assumed the expiation, and to be sooner « the pure and spotless host.

3] « My little children, » he repeated to his Apostles, as if they were almost newborns, « I give you a new commandment: Love one another.

At this supreme hour, we feel the Heart that has just given itself in a new outpouring overflowing on all sides.

The Institution of the Eucharist can thus be considered under these two different aspects: death and life, the end of one state and the beginning of another.

At the Last Supper, the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus made him institute what was to remain forever the memory of the death of the God-Man; and by this same love, this divine Heart, which became the Eucharistic Heart, gave the living God offered until the consummation of the ages in his impassible and glorious state.

[1] Cf. John XIII, 31.

[2] Cf. Luke XXII, 15.

[3] Cf. Malachi.

[4] Cf. John XIII, 34.