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A lover of the liberal arts, especially antiquity in its diverse forms, I am nonetheless wholly devoted to, utterly transformed by divine revelation. I seek to know the thought of the past, articulate my deepest longings aroused by the wise, and understand the uneasy relationship between reason and revelation; all for the sake of proper action and contemplation, both now and in the future.

5.18.2018

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.

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