There We Must Stand
From Bishop Hugh Gilberts book: Living the Mystery, Chapter 11.
"Institution of the Holy Eucharist" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
‘[W]e go to the table. This is the perfection of the life in Christ; for those who attain it there is nothing lacking for the blessedness which they seek. It is not longer death and the tomb and a participation in the better life which we receive, but the risen One Himself…
‘As He washes them in baptism He cleanses them from the dirt of wickedness and imposes His own form upon them; when He anoints them [in the sacrament of Confirmation] He activates the energies of the Spirit… But when He has led the initiate to the table and has given him His Body to eat He entirely changes him, and transforms Him into His own state. The clay is no longer clay when it has received the royal likeness but is already the Body of the King. It is impossible conceive of anything more blessed than this.
‘It is therefore the final Mystery as well, since it is not possible to go beyond it or to add anything to it… After the Eucharist then, there is nowhere further to go. There we must stand, and try to examine the means by which we may preserve the treasure to the end.’
So wrote the fourteenth century Greek lay theologian, Nicholas Cabasilas in the opening pages of Book IV of The Life in Christ.1
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‘Thing’ and Action
The word ‘Eucharist’ – from the Greek for ‘thanksgiving’ – is used in two senses. It may refer to the consecrated bread and wine, therefore to the Body and Blood of Christ contained, offered and received in this sacrament. Or it may refer to the liturgy of the Mass as a whole, and more particularly to its second part, the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
In the first sense, ‘Eucharist’ denotes a ‘thing’, indeed the ‘most holy Thing’ (the Sanctissimum): the elements of bread and wine once they have been consecrated, the Body and Blood of the Lord. Not a ‘mere thing’, therefore, but a Person, Christ himself, sacramentally present under the appearances of the consecrated bread and wine, offering his own body and pouring out his own blood. ‘For in the most blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself our Pasch and the living bread which gives life to men through his flesh – that flesh which is given life and gives life through the Holy Spirit.’2
In the second sense, ‘Eucharist’ denotes a ritual, and so an action. Indeed, it denotes the most sacred action conceivable, the flaming heart of the world, no less. ‘Do this in memory of me’, says the Lord. ‘Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’ (1 Cor 11:25). So the Anglican liturgist Gregory Dix could say, ‘The apostolic and primitive church regarded the Eucharist as primarily an action, something “done”.’3 And again, ‘The ancients … habitually spoke of “doing the Eucharist”,(eucharistiam facere),“performing the mysteries” (mysteria telein), “making the synaxis” (synaxin agein, collectam facere)and “doing the oblation” (oblationem facere, prosphoran poiein).’4 The very word ‘sacrifice’, so often used in the context, implies a doing: a ‘making-sacred’.
It is to the Eucharist in this sense that the following reflections are given.
The Agents
Clearly, Bishops and priests – the qualified celebrants – do the Eucharist in a special sense. Without them there can be no valid celebration of the Eucharist. Yet the Eucharist is, no less visibly, something in which all present take part, all do. ‘All have their own active parts to play in the celebration, each in his own way: readers, those who bring up the offerings, those who give communion, and the whole people whose ‘Amen’ manifests their participation’ (Catechism1348). It has been the great achievement of the post-conciliar liturgical reform to make this more possible. But further, to the eyes of faith, there are invisible participants as well. The saints are commemorated, and not as past or absent, the dead still in process of purification, are prayed for, while the Preface of the Roman Eucharistic Prayers as it leads into the Sanctus conjures up ‘concelebrating’ angels and archangels. ‘When, then, we celebrate the eucharistic sacrifice we are most closely united to the worship of the heavenly Church’ (Lumen Gentium 50). Above all, the Eucharist is an action of Christ, the High Priest of the New Covenant, ‘the same now offering himself through the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross’, as one Church Council put it. So, ‘the celebration of Mass [is] the action of Christ and the People of God hierarchically ordered.’ And, ‘in it is found the high point both of the action by which God sanctifies the world in Christ and of the worship that the human race offers to the Father, adoring him through Christ, the Son of God, in the Holy Spirit.’5 The Eucharist is an action of Christ and the whole Church, however humble its here and now realization. And, by faith and baptism, we are qualified to take part in it, to join in the action.
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The Liturgy of the Word
This action is in two parts.We speak of the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. As the Jewish convert, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, once pointed out, the Liturgy of the Word represents a Christianization of the Synagogue service of readings, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist a Christian fulfilment of the Jewish ritual meal, specifically the Passover.
The essential elementof the Liturgy of the Word is, of course, the biblical readings themselves. These follow a clear sequence: First Reading – Psalm – (second reading) – Acclamation before the Gospel – the Gospel reading itself. The deeper movement here is from Prophets (that is, the Old Testament) to Apostles (that is, the New Testament) and finally to Christ himself (the Gospel), a recapitulation of the history of the Judaeo-Christian revelation. Appropriate silence, the homily, the profession of faith and bidding prayers may further enhance, unfold, answer and turn to prayer what is heard in the readings. The essential action here for us as participants is that of listening, an art in itself, and here inwardly sensitized by the Holy Spirit.
The climaxof the Liturgy of the Word is, needless to say, the reading of the Gospel, that is, of a portion from one of the four canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is signified by its restriction to an ordained minister, often by a special book containing the Gospel readings (an Evangeliary), by the prayers the reader is to say before and after, and by the use of incense and lights. ‘This reading of the liturgic Gospel is something more than a mere instruction of the faithful. It is a vital moment in the sacred action of the Church. In it Christ the Energetic Word speaks and acts.’ It is a moment when we ‘are confronted by the awful realism of Christ. Here the Supernatural meets us, disclosed in the degree in which we can bear it, by human acts and human words’. We are offered a ‘mysterious contact with the mind and heart of the Incarnate … who comes forth again and again in His changeless Gospel, as in His earthly ministry, to teach men the secrets of Reality, to enlighten, heal and redeem.’6
The relationshipbetween the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist to which it leads has been well expressed thus: ‘The Church is nourished spiritually at the table of God's Word and at the table of the Eucharist: from the one it grows in wisdom and from the other in holiness.In the Word of God, the divine covenant is announced;in the Eucharist the new and everlasting covenant is renewed.The spoken Word of God brings tomind the history of salvation; the Eucharist embodies it in the sacramental signs of the liturgy. It can never be forgotten, therefore, that the divine Word read and proclaimed by the Church in the liturgy has as its one goal the sacrifice of the New Covenant and the banquet of grace. The celebration of Mass in which the Word is heard and the Eucharist is offered and received forms but one single act of divine worship.’7God’s word is proclaimed and heard. Christ's Body and Blood are made present, offered and received. The former action prepares for the latter; the latter completes the former.
There is an ancient tradition of interpretation of the Mass which sees its pattern as an echo of the pattern of Christ’s life. This should not be forced beyond a certain point, but it need not be simply scorned. Surely the movement of the Mass from teaching to sacrifice reflects the movement of Christ’s public life, and makes of it for us always something of a ‘going up’, in his wake, to Jerusalem, the place of death and resurrection.
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The Altar
The Liturgy of the Word completed, the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins. The Eucharist, being the Church’s imitation of the Last Supper, necessarily calls for a table. When the Eucharist is celebrated in a church, that table becomes an altar. And it is especially at this moment of the Mass, when the altar is prepared and the gifts are brought, that the altar shines out.
Altars are as old as man, at least, it is said, since he ceased to be a hunter-gatherer: some humble and domestic, others public and magnificent, like the Altar to Zeus at Pergamon or the Ara Pacis of Caesar Augustus. How often children build secret altars! The Christian altar keeps, first of all, the memory of these deep and ancient things, of these sacred centres, ‘high places’, places of sacrifice, where the divine touches man and man the divine. Then too the Christian altar recalls, gathers up in itself the many altars of biblical tradition:
- the altar Noah built emerging from the Ark after the Flood (Gen 8:20);
- the altars Abraham set up in silence in the Promised Land whenever the Lord appeared to him (Gen 12:7; 13:18), and above all of the terrible one on which he binds Isaac and receives him back (Gen 22:9-14);
- the stone Jacob anointed on waking from his nocturnal theophany: ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’ (Gen 28:17);
- the altar, and twelve pillars, Moses erects at the foot of Mt Sinai, for the ratifying of covenant of the Exodus (Ex 24:3ff);
- the altars of burnt offering and incense in the Jerusalem Temple, places of Israel’s daily sacrifice.
‘As the variety of foreshadowing figures ceases’, though, it is ‘in Christ that the mystery of the altar is brought to fulfilment’, as the Latin rite’s Prayer of Dedication of an Altar beautifully expresses it. Above all, a Christian altar points to Christ: to his person,to him as the Living Altar, as the ‘living stone’ (1 Pet 2:4) in which we are to be built as ‘a spiritual house’ (1 Pet 2:5), as the ‘cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple’ (Eph 2:20-21), as ‘the spiritual Rock’ from which we drink (1 Cor 10:4). So too it recalls the central actions of his life: it symbolizes, is one with the table of the Last Supper, the ‘holy Table’ as it is known in the East; it evokes the altar (the tree) of the Cross; it also stands in continuity with the Empty Tomb, the place from which eternal life entered the world.
Here [then, in a Christian altar] is the true high place, where Christ’s sacrifice is continually offered in sacramental form, perfect praise is given You and our redemption is disclosed. Here the Lord’s Table is prepared, at which Your children, nourished by the Body of Christ, are gathered into the one, holy Church. Here the faithful drink Your Spirit from the rivers flowing from Christ, the spiritual Rock, and become through him, a holy offering, a living altar (Preface for the Rite of Dedication of an Altar).
Given this wealth of significance, it is no wonder that Christian altars have long been the object of liturgies of dedication or consecration – with solemn prayers and washings, anointings, incensations, ‘vestings’, lights. No wonder they receive reverence, especially the holy kiss, during the many liturgies of which they are the centre. Monastic tradition has always preserved a sense of this, and has recognized the altar as a special focus of personal prayer, as well as of liturgical. In all these rites and gestures, the altar is being acknowledged as if it were a person, that is the person of Christ.
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The Liturgy of the Eucharist
The Liturgy of the Eucharist proper – the second part of the action – moves through three phases: the Preparation of the Gifts, the Eucharistic Prayer, and the Rite of Communion. The reflections that follow will also move through three parallel phases, beginning with what is most immediate and visible, then touching on the core and centre of ‘what is happening’, and moving thence to where all this ultimately leads, its final goal or effect.
‘Do this in memory of me.’
The Liturgy of the Eucharist is first of all an obedience to these words of Jesus at the Last Supper. It is doing what he did. It is an imitation of Christ. The Lord’s Supper of Christian tradition (1 Cor 11:20) re-enacts Christ’s Last Supper. ‘We do exactly as the Lord did,’ said St. Cyprian of Carthage.
At the Last Supper, held within the framework of the Jewish Passover, Jesus took bread, blessed God, broke it, gave it to his and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body’, and then, later in the meal, took a cupof wine, gave thanks, gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood…’ (cf. Mt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:19-21; 1 Cor 11:23-26).
Accordingly, the Church has arranged the entire celebration of the Liturgy of the Eucharist in parts corresponding to precisely these words and actions of Christ:
1. At the Preparation of the Gifts, the bread and wine with water are brought to the altar, the same elements that Christ took into his hands.
2. In the Eucharistic Prayer, thanks are given to God for the whole work of salvation, and the offerings become the Body and Blood of Christ.
3. Through the fraction and through Communion, the faithful, though they are many, receive from the one bread the Lord’s Body and from the one chalice in the Lord’s Blood in the same way the Apostles received them from Christ’s own hands.8
Historically, the basic pattern of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, received from the Apostles, has been developed in the seven major liturgical traditions of the Church: Alexandrine, West Syrian, East Syrian, Armenian, Byzantine, Milanese and Roman. These vary in secondary matters but concur on the essentials.
This whole action, if it is to be a true doing of what Christ did, must be celebrated by a bishop (a successor of the apostles) or by a priest under a bishop’s authority. Such a one, by the grace of the Holy Spirit received through the laying-on of hands, holds the place in the Lord’s Supper which Christheld at the Last and acts in the person of Christ. He is the visible representative of the invisible Presider, Celebrant, Priest, his icon. He stands, as it were, at the head of the table, like the father of a family. His task is to do what Jesus did.
At this first level, the Eucharist appears very clearly as a sacredmeal. Many deep human and biblical things could be said at this point: about bread and wine, and about eating and eating together, about the significance of meals in the Old Testament, about the Passover. The Mass presupposes and incorporates all of this, just as Jesus did by making a meal the farewell action of his life, and an ultimate expression of his care for his disciples. At this first, largely outward level, which the theologians call the sacramentum tantum,the Liturgy of the Eucharist is the Church’s repetition of Christ’s action in the Upper Room. It is an obedience to his words, ‘Do this in memory of me.’
But what, beyond appearances, is ‘this’?
‘This is my Body which is given for you … this is my Blood … which is poured out.’
With these words, the words of consecration spoken at the heart of the Eucharistic Prayer, we approach the sacred centre of the celebration, visible only to the eyes of faith, that which the theologians call the res et sacramentum (the reality in the sign).
At the Last Supper, Christ anticipated his Passover, the offering he would make of himself to the Father for us on the cross, revealed as salvific in his resurrection.
In the Eucharist, the Church commemorates Christ’s Passover and sacrifice.
This commemoration has always been understood as more than subjective (mental), it is also objective (real, ‘out there’).
At the heart of the Eucharistic Prayer, the celebrant, empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit received at ordination, after asking the same Spirit of God the Father in the prayer called the epiclesis, recounts the story of the Last Supper and, taking successively the bread and the chalice into his hands, speaks the words Christ himself spoke. Through this ministry of the priest, the bread and wine, while retaining their outward characteristics, are transformed (trans-substantiated) by the words of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body and Blood, and the living Christ makes present in sacramental signs the sacrifice he once offered to the Father on the cross.
At the heart of the Eucharistic action, therefore, it is the action of Christ himself which predominates.
Christ thus gives his whole self and his sacrifice to the Church, making it hers (ours) as well.
The faithful present, led by the celebrant, now offer the consecrated bread and wine, now the Body and Blood of Christ, in prayer to God the Father. They do this above all in thanksgiving for the whole divine work of creation and redemption and in intercession for the Church and the whole world, for the living and the dead. They will finally receive the holy gifts in communion.
All of this makes the Eucharist at once the sacramental re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ, and the sacrifice of the Church herself. ‘Christ’s sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering’ (Catechism 1368).
Imaginatively, we may see any Eucharistic celebration as a raising up, in the here and now of countless times and places, of the Tree of the Cross (the Tree of Life), its fruit made ours in Holy Communion. Thus we ‘proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Cor 11:26), and are united with the Passover of Christ.
But then a further question arises, where is all this leading?
‘… We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.’
What is the ultimate purpose, goal, effect of each and every Eucharist, what the theologians call the res tantum (the reality alone)?
Here we must recall the ultimate intentions of God for humanity, our intended, corporate destiny, as glimpsed for instance by John: ‘He showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God’ (Rev 21:10-11).
In every celebration of the Eucharist, however humble or small, this final situation – ‘having the glory of God’ – is both symbolized and genuinely anticipated. In every Eucharist, this ‘End’ is at once present as a reality (we share in the heavenly liturgy) and at work drawing us, in the measure of our openness, closer to our full appropriation of that reality.
The goal and completion of the Eucharistic action is not on the altar, but in us. Its final effect is the Church,in the most ample sense of that word. This shines out most clearly in the act of Eucharistic communion.
This can be variously expressed. One can describe the teleology of the Eucharist in terms of the sealing of the Covenant and our entry into it as the People of God, or in terms of the coming of the Kingdom and the gathering together of ‘the children of God who are scattered abroad’ (Jn 11:52), or in terms of the Temple where God dwells with us and we with him, or in terms of the marriage of the Lamb and the banquet that celebrates it. Or again, in terms of both looking forward to the heavenly banquet in the world to come and already taking part in it. And precisely because of all this, the Eucharist has a transforming potential even for human society here and now.
Perhaps, though, the simplest and most effective way of capturing the purpose of it all is by evoking the full meaning of the term, the Body of Christ. ‘The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor 10:16-17). In the Eucharist Christ gives himself in his (sacramental) body and in that way makes us his (‘mystical’) body. As St. Augustine and St. Leo and several post-communion prayers pithily express it: ‘we become what we receive.’ We receive the Body of Christ and so become the Body of Christ. ‘If therefore you are the Body of Christ and his members, said St. Augustine, it is your mystery placed on the Lord’s Table; it is your Mystery that you receive.’ ‘He who suffered for us has entrusted to us in this sacrament his Body and Blood, which indeed he has even made for us. For we have been made his Body, and, by his mercy, we are that which we receive.’9 ‘Through one body, which is his own, wrote St. Cyril of Alexandria, he blesses by a mysterious communion those who believe in him, and he makes them concorporal with himself and with one another.’10
The res tantum of the Eucharist, says St. Thomas on more than one occasion, is ‘the unity of the mystical body’. It is the same thought. And this one Body, ‘the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Eph 1:22), is the goal to which, through the Eucharist above all, the whole creation moves and the whole working of God is taking us.
[Bishop Hugh ends with a poem from George Mackay Brown but due to copyright issues we have had to omit it].
‘In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’
Notes
1. Nicolas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York, 1974), pp. 113-114
2. Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis 5
3. Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (A. & C. Black Ltd, London, 1945), p. 15
4. Ibid., (p.12).
5. General Instruction of the Roman Missal, rev. 2002 (CTS, London, 2005), 16.
6. Evelyn Underhill, The Mystery of Sacrifice (Longmans, London, 1944), pp. 9-10
7. General Introduction to the Lectionary, 2nd edt. n.10; my italics).
8. GIRM 72.
9. St Augustine, Sermons 272, 229
10. St Cyril of Alexandria, On John 11, 11
I would like to thank Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB and Gracewing Publishers for allowing the reproduction of Chapter 11 of from the book; Living the Mystery, published by Gracewing www.gracewing.co.uk"