"The Sacramental Idiom of Saint Thomas"

We continue our review of Abbot Vonier's "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist."  Abbot Vonier again quotes St. Thomas:

The Paschal Lamb, ... prefigures this sacrament in a threefold manner; Firstly, inasmuch as it was eaten with unleavened bread, according to Exodus 12:8, They shall eat the flesh . . . and unleavened bread.  Secondly, it was immolated by the entire multitude of the children of God on the fourteenth day of the month, a figure of the passion of Christ who on account of His innocence was called the Lamb.  But with regard to the effect, as by the blood of the Paschal Lamb the children of Israel were protected by the destroying angel, and delivered from the Egyptian captivity, so the Paschal Lamb is the chief figure of this sacrament, for in all like things it foreshadows it.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.