Hymn: “Come, Holy Ghost” (Missalette,



RCIA Session 31: The Eucharist, Holy Sacrifice

(October 26, 2010: 30th Tuesday of Ordinary Time)

Housekeeping:

1) word scramble (Sacraments & Baptism available now)

2) Any progress in building a relationship with your Patron Saint (or picking one, if you don’t yet have one)?

3)

4)

5) Look for something in your life this week that reminds you of Confirmation--what it was & why it made you think of Confirmation.

Opening Song: “O Salutaris Hostia” (St. Michael Hymnal, #626; English, then Latin)

[SIT] A reading from the Letter to the Hebrews: (Hebrews 10:1,4,10-17)

The Word of the Lord. [All: Thanks be to God.]

Psalm Response: (R): I will take the chalice of salvation and call upon the Name of the Lord.

(Psalm 116:12-19)

What shall I render to the Lord

for all the things He has given to me?

I will take the chalice of salvation

and call upon the Name of the Lord (R.)

I will pay my vows to the Lord

in the presence of all His people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord

is the death of His Saints. (R.)

O Lord, I am Thy servant,

the son of Thy handmaid;

Thou has loosed my bonds.

To Thee will I offer a sacrifice of praise,

and will call upon the Name of the Lord. (R.)

I will pay my vows to the Lord

in the presence of all His people,

in the courts of the House of the Lord,

in your midst, O Jerusalem. (R.)

[STAND] Alleluia. [All: Alleluia] “I Am the Bread of Life, says the Lord; those who eat of this Bread will never die..” [All: Alleluia]

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke: [All: Glory to You, O Lord.]

(Luke 2:14-20)

The Gospel of the Lord. [All: Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ.]

Lord Jesus Christ, You gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of Your suffering and death. May our worship of this Sacrament of Your Body and Blood help us to experience the salvation You won for us and the peace of the Kingdom where You live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. [All: Amen.]

[Final prayer, in the absence of a priest or deacon:]

May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. [All: Amen.]

Summary: The highest of the seven Sacraments (and the source of all the others) is the Eucharist, which is Christ, Himself—His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, hidden under the appearances of bread and wine. The Eucharist is presented to us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is literally and truly the sacrifice of Christ upon Calvary’s cross. By Christ’s power and command, this Eucharistic Sacrifice reaches across time and space, allowing us to be at the foot of the cross while Christ sacrifices Himself for us, and empowering us to unite our own sacrifices to His perfect one, by which even our worst sufferings can be given meaning. (Cf. CCC 1322-1419)

It hasn’t been only once that I’ve come up in front of the room and said something about “this word or phrase that used to mean this, until the modern American culture twisted it out of recognition into some silly idiom or figure of speech that’s almost completely wrong!” Our discussions about the original meanings of the words, “worship”, “adore”, and “love” are only a few examples. But in order to get a solid basis for the most important topic that Kathy and I will ever cover, I need to do it again, so grab your favorite writing utensil! First, although you’ve heard this innumerable times already, I need to offer a quick review of a very important word, and its true meaning, while highlighting a different word than before:

[1] Love is the free choice to sacrifice of oneself for the best good of another person.

Far from being the “warm, fuzzy feeling” (or worse, some sort of hormonal “rush”) that the world often mistakes for love, true love is a free choice—a decision—to sacrifice of oneself for the best good of another person. There are four key parts of this; Love is:

(1) a choice, not a feeling or biological accident;

(2) a sacrifice, which means giving up something that’s rightfully in your possession; that’s where the “of yourself” part comes in.;

(3) a sacrifice for someone else’s best good—not simply throwing something away because you’re tired of it, or because you think you’ll get some sort of “kickback” from it;

(4) a sacrifice for another person. It’s possible to talk about loving and sacrificing for your country, for instance, but that’s a metaphor—it means that you value the persons who make up the country, and you value the God Who allowed the establishment of the country in the first place. It isn’t true love, for example, to sacrifice for a set amount of rocks, trees, and rivers; and it isn’t true love to treat any country as if it’s completely and totally important, above all other things. (It’s no true love to turn patriotism into idolatry.)

Now, I need to try to redeem the meaning of one of the words we already mentioned, above: the word “sacrifice.” [2] A sacrifice is the willing, free, and permanent surrender of something which can rightfully be considered yours. Sometimes, through circumstances completely beyond your original intention, you might get the object of your sacrifice back; sometimes, you won’t. In either case, a sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice unless it’s made with the intention of being “for keeps”.

Our culture has several very mixed-up ideas about sacrifice; people often use the word as an exaggerated description of what they did, in order to impress others (e.g. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I made for you—I had to miss the end of my favorite sitcom, just so that I could pick you up from your appointment!”); but when something even approaching a true sacrifice comes near, the same people often scream and run in panic! True sacrifice is a serious business… but, then again, so is our salvation. It’s no accident that God tied the two ideas—sacrifice and salvation—together; sacrifice is a necessary component of selfless love.

Now that we’ve done our weekly “damage control” on the English language, we’re ready to ask the fundamental question of the night… and, when I ask you this, I’d ask that you try your best not to accept the first answer or two that comes to mind; I ask that you think about this question anew, with a fresh mind and “new ears”, as if you’ve never heard it before (which might be true, for all I know!). I’ll ask it in three versions:

What makes the Mass important? What makes it worth going to participate at it? What happens there?

Even before Jesus came to earth to teach us the fullness of the meaning of sacrifice, the people of the Old Covenants knew that salvation had to come from God alone: Psalm 62’s “Only in God is my soul at rest; from Him comes my salvation.” (Psalm 62:1-2) is only one of a dizzying number of references to that effect. When the people of the Old Covenant made a sacrifice to God, they gave something that they would really miss—such as the best of the harvest, or the best lamb from the flock—and it was most often an animal, which was valuable to a largely nomadic people such as the Israelites (think of sacrificing your car, or sacrificing an entire month’s paychecks, as an offering to God, and you might get some idea of what it was like). Moreover, when something was sacrificed, it was usually destroyed completely—burned up on an altar as a sign of complete surrender of that gift… and also as a sign which admitted our acceptance of the fact that everything truly and ultimately belongs to God—even if we might have the use of some of those things for a short while.

We’ve already heard, in recent weeks, how Jesus—the Eternal Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God Himself—came to earth, took on our humanity, took all our sins upon His Own shoulders, and died a hideous death in order to repay the infinite debt that our sins had reaped… a debt that we ourselves could never have repaid… and this is the key to our question. [3] Our redemption (our being “bought out” from slavery), our justification (our adoption by God as His Children), and our salvation (the opening of the gates of Heaven for us) were all accomplished through the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ upon the cross of Calvary. This is the ultimate sacrifice, and no sacrifice has any true meaning at all unless it is united to that One Sacrifice of Christ.

It can be said with only slight metaphor that, for us fallen humans, nothing else on earth matters to us at all except for that sacrifice which freed us from the guarantee of eternal hell. Everything else is secondary, or less… because God is the highest good, and Christ’s sacrifice is the only thing that empowers us to reunite with God, who is our final destiny and the ultimate fulfillment of who we are. Of all the events on earth, the highest and most important is that Christ became Man, and that He submitted Himself to a suffering and death that we can’t ever fully understand… all because He loved us too much to let us throw ourselves into eternal damnation. First, Christ sacrificed the glory of His Godhood and emptied Himself to take on our weak, limited human nature—complete with its suffering. Then He gave up even that, for love of us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)”

So what does that have to do with the Mass? Quite simply… everything. Several weeks ago, Kathy stepped you through the main parts of the Mass during the session on Liturgy, and she described how the Mass is composed of two main parts: the Liturgy of the Word (the first part, where we’re spiritually fed by listening to God’s Written Word in the Bible), and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (the second part, where we’re fed both spiritually and physically by the Eucharist—Christ’s very own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity—during Holy Communion).

Let me lead you on a “guided tour”, of sorts, of this Holiest of Holy Sacrifices, where we are able to watch, every week (or even every day) the One Sacrifice which bought our Salvation for us.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist, which is named from a Greek word for “giving thanks”, is simultaneously God’s self-sacrifice for us, and our response of thanksgiving by laying down our lives to Him in turn. This sacred Liturgy begins with the offertory—now called the “Preparation of Gifts”. The gifts of bread and wine—which will soon be completely changed into the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ—are brought to the altar of sacrifice, and other offerings from the congregation (such as money, food donations, etc.) can be brought up at this time, as well… though these are placed off to the side, so as not to draw attention away from the main sacrifice. The priest prepares the altar by opening and spreading out a white, square cloth called a corporal—a word which means “for the body”; this is the cloth on which Christ’s Body (which used to be mere bread) will lie, either directly (in the traditional Latin Mass) or on a gold or silver plate called a “paten”. Beside it, the chalice—the sacred cup—which will soon hold the Precious Blood of Christ will rest on that same corporal.

It’s at this moment that all the “seemingly minor details” of Salvation history stand up, and are counted, so to speak. Remember the Old Testament priest and king, Melchizedek, who offered a curious offering: bread and wine, rather than the usual lamb? Melchizedek was a “type” or “foreshadowing” of Christ, Who would offer Himself—the perfect, spotless Lamb—hidden under the appearances of bread and wine. And now every validly ordained priest is, by the Will and Command of Christ, an “alter Christus”—an “other Christ”—who lives in the place of, and in the Person of, Christ—“in persona Christi”.

After receiving the bread and wine, the priest prays (either silently or aloud) a prayer that you might remember from our session on the Paschal Mystery, since the prayer is taken almost word for word from one of the prayers of the Passover Seder: “Baruch atta Adonai, [etc.]…”, “Blessed are You, Lord God […]” This is where the Passover Seder will soon be completely fulfilled.

Next, the priest and the congregation have a curious exchange which may shed some light on what we’re describing; after cleansing his hands (as a symbol of his contrition for his sins), the priest says, “Pray, brethren [i.e. brothers, sisters, etc.], that our sacrifice (older: “my sacrifice and yours”) may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father.” The people respond, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His Name, for our good and the good of all His [Holy] Church.” The prayer-exchange says “the” sacrifice, as if there were only one sacrifice (instead of many—such as bread, wine, monetary donations, etc.). The setting is right; as Kathy described, the priest is standing before an altar—whose only purpose is to hold and offer a sacrifice, usually a lamb (or some other animal), as described earlier. Our sacrifices have no worth at all, in and of themselves; but they gain limitless worth when they are united to—become one with—the One Sacrifice of Christ, soon to be re-presented. And, though we lay people don’t have the Ministerial priesthood that one gets through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, we still have a real (though different) priesthood through our Baptism—in which we were made priests, prophets and kings by our union with Christ, Himself. Thus, our sacrifices—when united to that of Christ, are truly priestly offerings (though of a very clearly different sort than that of an ordained priest) which Our Lord is pleased to accept, if we only obey Him.

As the Liturgy of the Eucharist goes on, and approaches its climax, these ideas become more and more clear. Here’s a portion of one of the four main Eucharistic Prayers—the central and highest part of the entire Mass: “We come to You, Father, with praise and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ, Your Son. Through Him we ask You to accept and bless these gifts we offer You in sacrifice.” As the priest says those words, he makes the sign of the cross—not over the money, and not over any donations of non-perishable food or clothing for the poor—but over the bread and wine. Why? The Eucharistic prayer answers that question, just a few lines later, when the priest prays to God the Father: “Bless and approve our offering; make it acceptable to You, an offering in Spirit and in truth. Let it become for us the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, Your Only Son, Our Lord.” It’s true that we’ve offered bread, wine, and resources for the Church—but those are only weak and indirect participations in the One True Sacrifice of the Mass: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross which took away our sins, which adopted us into God’s very family, and which opened the gates of Heaven that had been shut by the sin of our first parents. In a very few seconds, that very same sacrifice is going to happen, on that altar, right in front of us. The Cross of Christ will become present to a flock of weak, sinful believers like us in Thorp, WI, and on the altar of every other place at which this Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered. Before we answer the large questions this brings up, I want to point out the answer to an unspoken question: [4] The full name of the Mass is “The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass” because the sacrifice being offered is Jesus Himself, on the very same cross that killed Him 2000 years ago—and no other sacrifice has any meaning apart from the holiness and perfection of that one.

As you can imagine, this brings up another serious question: if Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross at Calvary in c. 33 A.D. was the perfect, final sacrifice—and Scripture makes it crystal-clear that His self-sacrifice was perfect and final and once-for-all (among other places, see Hebrews, chapter 9, for a rich description of this)—then how can we say that the Sacrifice of Christ happens each time the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered, literally thousands of times per day around the world? It’s this point which alarms many non-Catholic Christians who are familiar with the Scriptures and with the fact that Jesus’ sacrifice was once-for-all; they ask, “how can the Catholic Church claim that Jesus is sacrificed again and again, every day, in thousands of places throughout the world?” The answer is deep, but simple: the Church claims nothing of the sort. When the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered thousands of times per day throughout the world, each instance is the very same once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus—on the very same cross at Calvary—reaching beyond the limits of space and time and re-presented to us who were, like St. Paul, born “late in time” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:8). If you think about it, it’s stunning, but it also makes sense; God is eternal—which means He’s completely beyond time and space, and none of His actions need be limited by time or space, either. Besides: if the only people who could benefit from Christ’s sacrifice were the people who were present on that hill outside of Jerusalem, 2000 years ago, then we were born 2000 years too late to be saved from eternal damnation… and those who lived before Christ were likewise doomed to hell by being born too early! Like a massive rock thrown into the lake of time, the ripples of that one great splash of Calvary in 33 A.D. run forward and backward in time in order to reach us, and offer us the same freedom that was bought for all ages. It’s that very same sacrifice—Jesus, dying on the cross for all of us—which is re-presented at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Jesus knew that we couldn’t all go to Calvary in 33 A.D.—so He brings Calvary to us, through the actions of His priests at every Mass. If you’ve ever felt sorry that you couldn’t be with Jesus at the foot of the cross, you needn’t; go to Mass, and know that—despite what your limited physical eyes tell you, the consecration of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ brings you to the very foot of the very same cross on which Our Savior died to save you; during the Mass, Christ—Who died once-for-all—tears away the veil of time so that you are present at the very moment when He dies to save you. Remember that, and the Mass will never be the same for you again. There’s substance enough in this one idea to fill your meditations for a lifetime.

2) The entire Mass is the means by which Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross reaches across time to be made present to us… but the central moment, when this happens, is called the consecration; it’s at the center of the Eucharistic prayer, when the priest prays in the words used by Our Lord at the Last Supper—His last Passover Seder on earth, which He transformed and fulfilled on that holy night. There are at least 9 different Eucharistic prayers (4 common ones, 3 designed for Masses with children, and 2 which specifically emphasize reconciliation) and all of them use different words and different images, but when the priest reaches the actual words of consecration—the words which make Christ’s sacrifice truly present—all the prayers are in unison. The priest takes the Host—the wafer of bread offered by the people—holds it before him, and repeats Christ’s own words: “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is My Body, which will be given up for you.” A few lines later, the priest takes the offered wine, holds it before him, and finishes the words of Christ: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of My Blood, the Blood of the new and everlasting Covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of Me.” At the phrase, “this is My Body”, the bread is gone, and Jesus has come bodily into the room. At the phrase, “this is My Blood”, the wine ceases to exist, and the Blood of Christ rests in the chalice. The Church, because She is fiercely protective of this most intimate and holy moment, uses the specific word “transubstantiation” to describe this change; it’s a change in the very substance—from bread to non-bread, and from wine to non-wine, even though the sights, smells, tastes, and all other data from our senses says otherwise. Fr. Ronald Knox, a prolific writer who lived in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s who was a convert from the Church of England, used the following description of transubstantiation for a retreat for girls that he gave:

The simplest way to put it is that our Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist is just the opposite of your presence in the looking-glass. When you brush your hair in front of the looking-glass, those of you who haven’t thrown your brushes out into the lavender, the girl opposite, in the looking-glass, has the same *appearance* as you, but she has no reality; it *looks* like you, but it “*isn’t* you. When you were looking, just now, at the sacred Host in the monstrance, it hadn’t the *appearance* of Jesus Christ, but it had the reality; it didn’t *look* like him, but it *was* him. The substance that lies behind the appearances of bread and wine is there no longer after the Consecration; Jesus Christ himself is present there instead. And he comes right into us, unites us bodily with himself. -Ronald Knox, _The Creed in Slow Motion_

A few minutes before this, the congregation prayed, “Hosanna in the Highest”—“Our Lord, come and save us from on high!”—and Our Lord comes, in person, bodily. All that remains is for us to worship and to receive the God Who has heard our cries, and Who has come running to us. Kathy will describe this further when she discusses the Eucharist as Holy Communion…but this is the point of Holy Communion: God Himself became flesh to save us, and Jesus takes the completely helpless forms of bread and wine—common food—so that we might take Him into ourselves and unite ourselves to Him in a way that even the most loving and holy embrace of spouses could possibly do. Jesus is really there, in the host—what used to be bread. Jesus is really there, in the cup—taking the place of the wine that was in the cup a few seconds before the consecration. [5] This is why the Mass is so important, and this is why we worship and adore the Eucharist just as we worship and adore God—because He is God; and He hasn’t simply saved us; He’s come to save us in Person! All other things involved in the Mass—the music, the decorations, the preaching, the company, and all other details—are secondary, at best. The value of the Mass consists entirely in the Holy Sacrifice of Christ for our salvation, and in the Eucharist which makes Christ physically present among us, to prove beyond doubt that we will never be alone!

Note: even the tiniest fragments of the Sacred Host, and the tiniest drop of the Precious Blood, contain the entirety of the eternal Christ, Who is not limited by space and time. Reception of even ten or twenty Sacred Hosts would gain no more than if one had received only a speck of one host, or only one drop of the Precious blood. This is why even the tiniest particles of the Eucharist must be treated with the highest reverence.

3) As we mentioned earlier: no sacrifice has any true and eternal merit—no eternal worth or meaning—unless it’s tied to the one infinite sacrifice of Christ. But this cuts both ways: if we do unite a sacrifice to Christ’s sacrifice—no matter how small that sacrifice might be—it gains tremendous worth in the Father’s eyes, since His beloved Son is then joining us in offering it up to Him. It’s possible to attend a Mass, and even to satisfy our Sunday or Holy Day obligation, without participating in that Mass in any meaningful way… just as (to borrow another image from Fr. Knox) it’s possible to take a walk with a friend without actually “being with” them; you can plod along, looking straight ahead and refusing to utter a single word or acknowledge their presence at all, and you’ll technically be “taking a walk” with them… but they’d probably find it hard to appreciate it. A true gift of love requires that we give of ourselves in some real, meaningful, and sacrificial way—and it can be as easy as choosing to give of oneself. You can share a very meaningful walk with your friend, for instance, without speaking a single word… so long as you’ve chosen to love them, chosen to give of yourself to them, and chosen to let them know that (to the best of your ability); in fact, that walk might (given the right circumstances) be far more meaningful and intimate than would be any other walk in which you chat freely with each other. It’s the choice and the sacrifice that count; people can tell, even with no words or obvious gestures, whether someone has chosen to love them, or whether someone has chosen to reject them. It makes sitting next to that person either a blessed and warm experience, or a pained and cold experience; you may have had experiences of both of these, already. It’s the same with Jesus, the Lord Who loves us; when we attend Mass, we can be there with Him and for Him, or we can be sitting there in spite of Him and in complete indifference to Him… and there’s a world of difference between the two.

The fourth Eucharistic prayer, after the consecration, says, “Lord, look upon this sacrifice which You have given to Your Church; and by Your Holy Spirit, gather all who share this One Bread and One Cup into the Body of Christ, a living sacrifice of praise.” We’re meant to be a sacrifice to God, as well… a gift that gains meaning when we surrender ourselves in union with Christ’s Sacrifice. When we sincerely offer ourselves to Christ and ask Him to unite whatever we freely give, in union with His perfect sacrifice, anything we offer becomes pleasing to Him. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, whose feast day was January 4, wrote, “The least thing, when done for God, is precious to Him.” [6] This idea of “uniting our sacrifice to Christ’s” can seem so deep and mysterious, but it’s really so simple: we simply ask Christ to do it for us. This is most powerful when we assist at the most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—at the very sacrifice which makes every other sacrifice worthwhile. At any time, we can ask, “Jesus, here’s something for You; would you please unite it with Your sacrifice?” That’s all. He certainly knows how to handle any of the mechanics and details—and nothing delights Him more than having His children ask Him to accept a sacrifice like that. It can be anything: a chore, an ache or pain, a little joy (sacrifices need not be agonizing or negative, you know—remember what the Eucharistic prayer said about a sacrifice of praise? That’s straight from Sacred Scripture, in Hebrews 13:15, and other places), or even taking a simple drink of water! Offer it to Him, since He allowed you to have it in the first place, and He allowed it for your best good; and, no matter how humble it is, if you offer it back to Him as a sacrifice, united to His Own, it will please Him beyond what we can understand, and it will strengthen you greatly in holiness.

So… when the Mass is celebrated, we can respond in one of two main ways: we can simply sit there and count the minutes until it’s over—which is a waste of cosmic proportions—or we can assist at the Sacrifice by uniting our own sacrifices—including our very lives—to God, in union with that One, All-Perfect Sacrifice. When older books on the faith talk about “assisting” at Mass, they used that word for a reason; we’re in the very same room where Jesus tears apart a 2000-year-thick veil of time in order to bring us to the real foot of His cross, at the very moment of His death, and the only fully human response is to give Him back what little we have; and if only we connect our little sacrifices to His, they gain infinite worth. Make no mistake: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is always worthwhile, whether we actually assist or not; but if we actually do assist at the Mass, with our free surrender of ourselves to Christ, then that worthiness will benefit us, as well.

At the offertory in the Mass, we respond to the priest’s prayer by saying, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His Name, for our good and the good of all His Church.” Make this your prayer, when you assist at Mass: when the gifts of bread, wine, money, and other goods are offered in union with Christ at that point, offer yourself to God on that altar, in your heart. Make the choice to believe that God has truly consecrated the hands of his priests to work in His name, and to offer the One Sacrifice—and all the sacrifices united to it. Let that sacrifice include you. If you take it seriously, it can be scary, asking Jesus to allow His priest to offer you up completely to the Father; but it’s the most powerful and most accessible gate to holiness on earth. “Those who lose their lives for My sake will find them,” says the Lord Jesus (Luke 17:33); come and see what He means.

extra ideas to insert: Kathy mentioned Baptism/Confirmation giving the Christian status as Priest, Prophet and King, and priests make sacrifices.

mention Melchizedek

epiclesis, anamnesis

in persona Christi? (in Holy Orders)

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download