The Holy Eucharist III

Christ is the center of history and the cross is at the center of Christ. This is another way of saying that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is the primordial center of all things, for the Mass is that same consecration, breaking and immolation of His Passion, made manifest in all times and in all places. It was present in the Old Testament by means of shadows and figures; in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God, the Passover lambs slaughtered in Egypt foretold the reuniting of divine and human; Christ's death and resurrection accomplished that within history - i.e. time and space - and that sacrificial Act brought the Church into being, as blood and water flowed from the side of a dying god; symbolizing the union of divine and human (in a way, the Church, like Her Bridegroom, is a hypostatic union), it is in this way the Eucharist makes the Church. It literally brings Her into existence. 

Thus the Eucharist is primordial: it is in the beginning, it is the Covenant, it is nuptial, one-flesh union. It is the center of a Christian metaphysics, wherein the true is free because the true is covenant. It is both history, for we can point to a temporo-spatial point where it 'began', and it is mystery, for it transcends the very limits of the time and space that would seem to be its boundaries. It is an icon of divine revelation, but unlike an icon it is without limit. Now, in the age of the sacramental,  history and mystery become one, and they become one through the Eucharist.

More specifically, they become one through consecration: the hallowing, breaking, offering, and immolating of a pure and holy Victim; present also is the union of past, present, and future, for Christ as Antitype of the Old Law hearkens back to it, and His broken and immolated Body and Blood, offered to the Father in praise and thanksgiving, are really, truly, substantially, and sacramentally present under the appearance of bread and wine - vere, realiter, substantialiter, et sacramentaliter - in our present, which itself prefigures and foreshadows the Wedding Feast of the Lamb Who was slain at the consummation of all things. And all this occurs in consecration. By breaking the bread, Christ was offering Himself to be broken; the bread, consumed as food, is really His love and obedience to the Father. And because the Eucharist is now the ordering principle of reality, already accomplished but not yet complete, the same is true of us who celebrate the Eucharist, whether our Eucharistic role is clerical or lay. We, corporately (i.e. bodily) members of the Bride, share a transfiguring union with Christ our Head - what He is, fully human and truly divine, we also become, and this through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which takes from us our false nature and restores us to His image and likeness.

History, mystery, past, present, future, Apocalypse - all unite and are one in a still, small voice, when a priest holds a small host and whispers, "This is My Body, broken for you."

The Holy Eucharist II

Like the Word of God, the Eucharist is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is the prayer of prayers, the sacrifice of sacrifices, the highest action the Church can render; on the other hand, it is the very action that brings the Church into being, and so is prior to Her. The Church draws Her life and source from the Eucharist, for She was born from the side of Christ at His Paschal Sacrifice; as blood and water flowed from a dying god giving life to His people, so too divinity and humanity have been reconciled and reunited in Him. Thus He is the Head and His Body is one. By means of sacrifice, human will has once again adhered to the divine will - from the Garden of Eden-turned-death, to the Garden of Gethsemane-made-life, that drama is both the mystery of Christ's Body the Church, and Christ's Mystical Body sacrificed and made lifegiving food for us. 

All this is chiefly drawn from, mediated by, and seen through the Church's ancient tradition and manner of worship. In the ancient Roman anaphora, the mystery of faith, the mystery of the Church, and the mystery of the Eucharist are interwoven, mutually illuminating, and wholly ordered to the praise and glory of the Holy Trinity. The rite is structured, bearing the stamp of austere Roman law, but it is the structure of an ecstatic act of worship. The mystery of faith is the simple affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again from the dead, and will come again; but it is transfigured in long paean of communion sacrifice, the anamnesis of the Roman Canon. 

This structure shows the identity and dignity of the Christian, for it reveals the will of God - Him loving us in eternity and in time. The first part of the Canon makes repeated reference to the sacrifice of praise, which refers both to the Act of Christ on the cross, making the Church to be, and the action of the priest, re-presenting that same sacrifice for the praise and glory of His Name, culminating in the sacred banquet, feeding on the Holy Eucharist Itself.

These two motion are constantly informing each other through the Canon, like two voices in polyphonic music, but there is a third voice - a transfigured mystery of faith. The first was the simple affirmation of the life and death of Christ; the second, a hymn to the Holy Trinity: "Per Ipsum..." The act of faith, through which the Body of Christ is professed and the Mystical Body of Christ worshiped, adored, and consumed, leads us to the interweaving, ever-holy life of the Holy Trinity - the life of perfect communion. From these three elements - faith, Church, Eucharist , each with their own structure and logic, we can see the movement of man from death in sin to life in God All-Holy, for the praise and glory of His name.

The Holy Eucharist I

Most properly, 'the Eucharist' refers to two realities: 1) the ritual representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, the one eternal Act that brings the Church into being; 2) the Sacred Species, offered to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and distributed to the faithful as the medicine of immortality. The Church confesses this to be the Flesh and Blood of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine. Put in contemporary terms, the Order of Mass is a ritual, sacrificial offering in an unbloody manner, and the Blessed Sacrament is the Sacrament of Sacraments. The Eucharist is a sacrifice for it is the very same sacrifice of the Cross, and it is a sacrament because it accomplishes what it signifies - the triumph of the Son of God over sin and death, and His Flesh and Blood, fruit of that sacrifice, nourishing His Bride the Church and leading Her to participate in divine life.

When created, man fell almost instantly into rebellion, twisting his will against the will of the Father. Man was profaned, and from the instant of the Fall recognized his fallenness and need to return to God. This was tried first on man's own initiative: sacrifice, a setting-apart, a making-holy, that God eventually hallowed and required from His People. From the beginning (Abel) it was a bloody sacrifice, slaughtering a helpless and therefore innocent animal, burning some of its flesh and consuming the rest. An intuition that through sacrifice, man could return to God.

At first carnal, physical, and unspiritual (e.g. the guardianship of the Mosaic Law), in the Psalms and Prophets arose the conviction that the true sacrifice to God was a humble and contrite heart - i.e. a sacrifice on the order of the spirit, which is to say the order of reality. God is spirit, so union and reunion with Him must be on the order of spirit, but man is also carnal, so that reunion must be carnal as well. This tension could not be resolved within the limits of the Old Covenant.

Only in the Word-made-Flesh does the solution appear. As fully, integrally man, Christ unifies His flesh, His mind, His will to God; and as truly God, He gives those united by faith to Him a share of His own divinity, so that each believer can renounce evil and Satan, being conformed to Christ through the renewal of the mind.

This was accomplished, fittingly, through sacrifice. Adam severed his will from God, and death was the result. Christ united His will to the Father as far as it was possible for a man to do - unto and through suffering and torturous death. Through this act, humanity is restored and made holy again before the Lord. 

The Sacrifice of Christ, as the antitype or fulfillment of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, fittingly included a ritual meal - as seen at the Last Supper. Building on principles of hospitality, so important to the ancient world, a shared meal was the source and summit of human connection, human communion. But in the case of Christ, the communion is between man and God, so it was fitting that the means of the sacrifice - the Body and Blood of the Lord - should become the source of the communion meal, symbolized, figured by bread and wine, and being really, truly, substantially, and sacramentally present under those signs.

Thus the Eucharist is a sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Not a different sacrifice, or a parallel sacrifice, or a new sacrifice, but the same act re-presented again for us; and the Eucharist is a sacrament, a mystery; for the power of God accomplishes through the words and actions of His bishops and priests what those words and actions signify - our redemption in Christ, culminating in Holy Communion with God and one another.