On the night before His death, His betrayer already at work, our Lord lifted a simple chalice in a world covered in darkness. Elevating it, He sealed for eternity a new covenant between God and man, imparting to us the gift of His Body and Blood.

In these sublime meditations on the events of Holy Thursday, Nobel laureate Fran ois Mauriac reminds us of the ineffable value of the gift given us that evening in the Upper Room: the Eucharist, present still in the tabernacles of the world...where Christ waits patiently for us to visit Him, pray with Him, and receive fullness of life from Him.

To read these stirring pages is to rejoice again in the fact that Christ has not left us orphans. He remains with us at all times in the Eucharist, without which we can never attain true peace. As Mauriac notes, "No man knows himself, if he has not looked at his soul in the light of the Host lifted above the ciborium."

Come, then, into the heart of this m