Of which CRETE € mystery of the Body of Blood in the SCIGNEUT Solesmes ee Loome Theological Booksell The Mystery of the Body and the $20.00 n LTRS- Liturgical & Sacram Stacks TURNÀ FSY4N11 OUR The mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord DOM PAUL NAU monk of Solesmes The Mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord The Mass according to St. Thomas Aquinas Its Rite according to History Solesmes 1976 Imprimi potest : Imprimatur Solesmes, 21 March 1976, Br. Jean Prou, Abbot of Solesmes. Abbey Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, F-72300 Sablé-sur-Sarthe. ISBN : Le Mans, March 22, 1976, Bernard Alix, bishop of Le Mans. 2-85274-022-2 Warning The present "notes", written at first for a teaching given in 1974-1975 to monastic communities, were originally intended only for the listeners. On several sides, both secular and religious, the desire was expressed that they be given a wider distribution. It is in response to this wish that several of them have been brought together in the present volume, without, however, having been given the leisure to recast them or to remove from them their primitive character of "working notes" for study or oral teaching, with the defects - in particular the repetitions - and the advantages which this character entails. We only thought we were doing the reader a service by giving in French translation the texts originally quoted in Latin, and by adding some notes to those which reproduce the quotations in their original text. These "notes" were part of an overall study on the doctrinal and sanctifying mission of the Church. They formed only one section, devoted to specifying the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, as the "perfect sacrament of the Passion", or, to use the preferred expression of the Benedictine abbots at the Council of Trent, which we have retained as a title: "The Mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, to find that even such vital issues as participation in the development of the economy are not dealt with here. 8 Warning sacrifice through Holy Communion, or that of the minister of the Eucharist, to which have been dedicated to or will be, if God wants it, other sections. He will also see that an effort has been made to follow closely the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, of which several of the present chapters are but a broad commentary. If the common Doctor did not write a treatise on the Mass distinct from that on the sacrament of the Eucharist, he did give a teaching on it which alone is capable of ruling out the Protestant or contemporary controversies, most of which stem from a misunderstanding of this teaching, which is nevertheless still recommended by the Church. To neglect to take up its principles would be to forget that, on this subject as on many others, the difficulties raised often come only from a badly posed problem. Therefore, to return to the problematic of St. Thomas seems the best way to ensure unity of thought within the Church itself, and to resolve most of the difficulties which still hinder our separated brothers. To contribute to this in a humble way is the ambition and would be the best reward of this work. The sacrifice in the divine plan "Mysterium fidei", "Great is the Mystery of faith", we sing every day after the consecration, the daily offering of the Victim of Calvary. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is indeed the great mystery that can only be accepted by faith. Yet, as the first Vatican Council recalled, "when reason, enlightened by faith, searches carefully, devoutly and moderately, it arrives, by the gift of God, at a certain intelli- The Church has a very fruitful understanding of the mysteries, either because of the analogy with the things she knows naturally, or because of the links which connect the mysteries to each other and to the final end of man" (Const. Dei Filius, c. 3; DZ. 1976; F.C. 98). In order to arrive at this "understanding" of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, it will be useful to situate the sacrifice in the divine plan, beginning with a brief reminder of its place in the history of salvation, as well as of its Trinitarian origin. Sacrifice in the history of salvation From the Old Testament onwards, we see the people of God invited to render to God a cult, a sacrifice: there is an intimate link between the very constitution of the people of God and this act of worship. of Egypt, what Moses asks of Pharaoh on behalf of God, is to let his people go into the desert to offer him a sacrifice: 10 Sacrifice in the divine plan "Let my people go, that they may offer me a sacrifice in the wilderness" (Ex. V, 1). At the foot of Horeb, at the moment where it will end the Alliance, Here is what the Lord asks Moses to assure the people: "If you listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be a kingdom to me and a holy nation" (Ex. XIX, 5-6). And this pact, which will thus constitute the people of God, the Covenant will be concluded by a sacrifice. I need not remind you of the details, which are recorded in chapter XXIV of Exodus. After Moses has recalled God's benefits to the people: "I am your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"; after he has enumerated the conditions of the covenant, the precepts of the Lord, the people, with one voice, agree: "All the precepts of the Lord we will observe. It is then that a solemn sacrifice will seal this covenant. Moses had young men slaughter young bulls; he put half the blood in basins and sprinkled the other half on the altar. Then, after reading the covenant again, with the blood set aside he sprinkles the People, saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you." We know, alas, the repeated unfaithfulness of the chosen people to the covenant so solemnly made, and the announcement by the prophets of the making of a new covenant: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel: Then will I be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. XXXI, 31). This covenant will be that of a new gathering, of a new church: "Listen, nations the word of Yahweh. Proclaim it in the far-off islands: * He that scattered Israel gathers him, he keeps him as a shepherd his flock. "For the LORD has redeemed Jacob, and my people shall be filled with my blessings" (Jer. XXXI, 10-11, 14). This covenant too will be concluded by a new sacrifice, sacrifice- From the east to the west my name is great among the nations, and in every place they sacrifice and offer a pure oblation to my name: for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. (Mal. I, 11). Sacrifice in the divine plan 11 This New Covenant is that of the New Testament, that of the Church. It is not after the exit from Egypt that this new pact will be concluded, but on the eve of the Passion, which redeems us, It is no longer the blood of bulls that seals it, but that of Christ himself: "This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. >This blood is no longer sprinkled; but by the communion of Christ with his own blood, it is poured out on this living altar, of which all the others are only the figure or the symbol; through the communion of the participants, it is poured out on the people. And this sacrifice offered a once for all at Calvary, realizes However, the prophecy of Malachi is still valid; through the Mass, it is offered daily from East to West: "Every time the sacrifice of the cross, by which Christ our Passover was sacrificed, is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is accomplished" (Const. Lumen Gentium, n. 3; cf. Secret of the 2nd ordinary Sunday). As the people of the Old Covenant were a sacred people, so the people of the Old Covenant were a sacred people. the new one is too; St. Peter affirms it by taking up the very words of Exodus (cf. 1 Petr. II, 9): "You You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a chosen people, to proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light, you who are now the People of God. The inaugural sacrifice of this cult is the Passion: "Christ," says St. Thomas, "inaugurated the rite of the Christian religion by his Passion" (3a/62/5), or, more precisely, by his Paschal Mystery, which includes, along with the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascent and the Revelation. cension and Pentecost. The central rite of this Easter is the Eucharist, "memorial of the Passion". Before beginning to study it, it is not superfluous, in the present state of theology, to see how the cultic rite of the Church, inaugurated by the Passion, comes from the Father, is realized by the Son, in the Holy Spirit. 1. The note, to which the following refer, at the end of the volume, this call, is located, so that all 12 Sacrifice in the divine plan The Trinitarian Origin of the Sacrifice At first sight, an objection may be raised: that the teaching mission comes from the Father, is transmitted by the Son, is quite natural, since it is a matter of communicating to us the very secrets of God. It is the same for the sanctifying mission, since its purpose is to make us participate in his holiness. Truth and holiness come from God to us. Worship, however, seems to be directed in the other direction. It is a tribute to God, and it comes from us to him. How could it have the Father as its origin? To be surprised at this would be to forget that, even in the natural order, all that we can offer to God, beginning with ourselves, we have only from him. But how much more, since sin, can a man who has turned away from God have no other source than him? We cannot know this beforehand, but revelation has taught us. It is necessary - we cannot know this a priori, but revelation has taught us - that God himself give us the gifts, the gift that we can offer him to recover his friendship. This is a sign of immense love and mercy: "In this God shows his love for us above all else, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. V, 8). However, it does not yet appear in this text how the death of Christ, the Passion, his Sacrifice, are first of all a gift from the Father: Saint Paul tells us this in the admirable hymn of hope and of This is the recognition that ends chapter VIII of the Epistle to the Romans: "If God is for us, who will be against us? - Qi etiam proprio Filio suo non pepercit, sed pro nobis omnibus tradidit illum - He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up to feed us all. >The melody that so beautifully accompanies and underlines these words in the "darkness" of Holy Week has fixed them in our memories. God, in Saint Paul, is the Father: it is the Father who has not Sacrifice in the divine plan 43 He spared his Son, who gave him up for us, thus giving us an unprecedented proof of his love. This is the way he chose to draw us out of sin and give us life in Christ, "propter nimiam caritatem suam - because of his great love" (Eph. II, 4-5). Too great a love. St. Thomas will explain to us what it consists in: in the fact that he did not want to forgive - although he could have done so - without at the same time giving sinful humanity the means of presenting to the divine Majesty a superabundant satisfaction: "Noluit dimittere peccata sine satisfactione, propter abundantiorem misericordiam - by reason of a more abundant mercy" (3a, 46/1/3um; cf. 47/3/1um). It was the Father who delivered up his Son: this Passion, the inaugural of It comes first of all from the Father, from whom the whole of Christian worship draws all its price. Isaiah had seen it beforehand: "The Lord gave him up for our sins" (cf. Is. LIIT). The same conclusion can be drawn from the passages where the offering that Christ will make of himself is presented as an act of obedience, an act that supposes a precept of the Father: "While he was Son of God, he learned obedience by his passion" (Heb. V, 8). It is precisely by this act of obedience that he will make reparation for the disobedience of the first Adam: "Just as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one many will be restored justice > (Rom. V, 19). And all of you still have in your hearts the text from Philippians, so often repeated during Holy Week: "He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, the death of the Cross; therefore God exalted him. (Phil. II, 8-9). Not that this obedience of the Son is to be understood as a penal obligation, the effect of a vengeance of God. Coming from love, from Mercy, this obedience, St. Thomas assures us after the Fathers of the Church, comes in the Son from his love for his Father and from his love for us: "The Father did not deliver his Son against his will", by force, one might say, "which," adds the holy Doctor, "would have been iniquitous and cruel". He gave him up by inspiring in him the will to suffer for us, by infusing charity into his heart" (3a, 47/3/2um*). See also Contra Gentiles, IV, c. 55, especially no. 3949: "He did not force him against his will, 14 Sacrifice in the divine plan but he was pleased with the act of will by which Christ accepted death out of love, and this love was given to him by the Father. in the heart. The Passion, then, comes from the Father: it is he who has given us, not only the victim of the sacrifice, but the very charity by which this victim has given himself up. But if this first act and source of Christian worship comes from the Father, it is accomplished by the Son: this is too clear, and this act of obedience is a sovereignly free act and above all an act of love. Do we need to multiply the texts? A few will suffice: Gal. IL, 20: "Dilexit me et tradidit semetipsum pro me - he loved me and gave himself up for me. >In Ephesians the same statement is made, but instead of the singular we have the plural "pro nobis - he gave himself up for us" (V, 2); or again for the Church "dilexit Ecclesiam et tradidit seipsum pro ea" (V, 25). (See also Gal. I, 4; Tim. IL, 6; Tit. IL, 14; Mk. X, 45; Mt. XX, 28.) We do have the Son. We We have just seen that the sanctifying mission of the Church has its origin in the Father, that it is accomplished first of all by the Holy Spirit. of the offering of the Son by himself, is no other, we have just We can see that Charity, this charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, but which is first of all the love of God himself. But above all, if the Holy Spirit, Love of the Father and the Son, is to the principle of the offering of the Son, the inaugural act of the cultic and sanctifying work, it is the end of this work : all the work of Indeed, the only purpose of sanctification is to communicate to us the Spirit of Sanctification "Spiritum sanctificationis", the Holy Spirit himself. We will see this clearly at Pentecost, the last act of the Sacri- This order of the redemptive work to make us love God is admirably explained in a beautiful text of St. Thomas, which I can quote here. This order of the redemptive work to make us love God is admirably explained in a beautiful text of Saint Thomas, which I cannot refrain from quoting here. It is found in the opus- Sacrifice in the divine plan 15 cule to the Cantor of Antioch, "De rationibus fidei contra saracenos", In ch. V: "The mode of our reparation had to be such as would suit both the nature to be repaired and its evil. "To the nature to be repaired," I say, "inasmuch as man, being of a reasonable nature, endowed with free will, was to be brought back to a state of rectitude, not by any force external to him, but according to his own will. "To sickness, because, as this consists in the perversion of the will, it was expedient that the will should be made straight. But the rectitude of the human will consists in the order of love, its first tendency. Now love is ordered if we love God above all things, as the supreme good, and if we relate to Him, as to our last end, all that we can To restore this order of love is the goal of the whole work. Restoring this order of love will be the goal of the entire work It is the sanctifying act, and first of all the act of worship, by which we rightly protest our love, above all things, for God, the sovereign Good and the last end, to the Triune God, to whom we thereby give all honor and glory: "Per ipsum et cum 1pso, et in ipso est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti, in unitate Spiritus Sancti, ommnis bonor et gloria." It is to study this act of worship, the sacrifice, and its realization in the celebration of the Eucharist, that we must stop now. REASONS TO BE FROM SACRIFICE Origin of the controversies The question of the nature of the sacrifice, and especially that of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, has given rise to many controversies, which have not yet been extinguished, even if their object has changed somewhat. While the Church was in quiet possession of the doctrine from the beginning, it has been called into question especially by the 16 The reasons for sacrifice Protestantism, which in a way catalysed the earlier quarrels. The question raised is this: while the Epistle to the Hebrews so firmly affirms the absolute uniqueness of the Sacrifice of Christ in relation to the sacrifices of the old law: "He did it once for all, offering Himself." (Heb. VII:27; cf. IX:12, 26; X:10, 19), how can there be yet another true sacrifice, offered daily on the altar? We know the negative answer of most of the Reformers, and the multiplicity of theories invented since the Council of Trent by Catholic theologians to answer them. Most of these theories have only confused the problem. It is to one of these theories that the present difficulties with the new Ordo of the Mass * can be traced. The only way to bring some clarity is to go back to the theology before the controversies. This is what we shall try to do by putting ourselves in the school of St. Thomas. For him, the question did not arise: he therefore did not answer it He did not write a separate article asking how the uniqueness of the Sacrifice of Calvary and the "gwotidie", the daily renewal of the Eucharist, are reconciled. He did, however, give the answer in one word, in question 22 of the 3a Pars, a question devoted to the priesthood of Christ. It is in this connection that he raises the problem. In article 3 of this question he considers the problem of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The author of the Epistle showed the insufficiency of the priesthood of the Old Law, arguing that the sacrifices were continually repeated. If they had wiped out sin, there would have been no need to repeat them. St. Thomas uses this argument as an objection to the priesthood of Christ: "If his sacrifice had been efficacious for the remission of sins, there would be no need to repeat it daily on the altar. Therefore it is ineffective." - And here is the answer: "The sacrifice which is offered daily by the Church is no other than the sacrifice which Christ himself offered, but is his memorial" (3a/22/ 3/2um°). This is a very topical response at a time when, under the pretext of fidelity to Tradition, the term "memorial" is being challenged. Sacrifice in the divine plan 17 But it is not enough to know the answer of Saint Thomas, we must seek how he arrives at such a conclusion: such will be our way of approaching the study of the Eucharistic sacrifice. A source of confusion, even among those who have looked to St. Thomas for the answer to the problem raised by Protestantism, is that they have tried to do better than he did, to take different definitions of Sacrifice from different parts of the Summa and lump them together. This was to ignore two important truths: the first is that the notion of sacrifice is not univocal, but analogous; the second, that to read St. Thomas, or rather to use his texts outside the problematic of each of his treatises, is a sure way to go astray and to distort his thought. Now, Saint Thomas speaks of sacrifice in two very distinct problematic areas. He distinguishes between these two issues in one of the first questions of the treatise on the Sacraments, q. 61, a. 1 and 2. In art. 1, speaking of the necessity (not absolute, but only of propriety) of the sacraments, he considers it in a triple respect. The first two especially interest us here: "The sacraments are necessary for salvation for three reasons: the first is to be taken from the condition, "ex conditione," of human nature ("conditio" is to be taken here in the etymological sense: it comes from "condo" to shape, to found; we could translate "conditio" as structure). Thus the first reason for the necessity of the sacraments is to be taken from the structure of our nature which knows spiritual things only by the way of the bodies and the senses; the second reason, affirms Saint Thomas, is to be taken from the state of this nature "ex statu hominis qui peccando se subdidit corporalibus rebus >". We can translate this as "state" - man is "established" in sin; or we can translate it as "stage", a translation which we will justify later on. For the present we may stick to the former: "In the present state of human nature." 18 The reasons for sacrifice We of human art. not in Let us find the same distinction in the following article: in ad 2um 2, Saint Thomas affirms: before and after sin, nature is always the same (same structure); but it is not the same state. Let's remember these two terms, condition or structure, and state or step. They will give us the key that will allow us to read the texts of the Holy Doctor correctly. Some of them, in fact, envisage sacrifice and define it on the basis of the requirements of man's nature, of its structure, others from the various states where it has been, the successive stages of its history. SACRIFICE, A REQUIREMENT OF THE CONDITION CREATIVITY This is how it is envisaged in the Contra Gentiles (L. IIL, cc. 119 and 120); and also in question 85 of the Summa Theologica. It is necessary to show the validity of this assertion. You are not unaware of the structure of the Contra Gentiles, most probably written in view of the controversies with the Arabs, disciples of Aristotle. This "Summa" contains 4 books: the first three start with rational arguments, where St Thomas thinks he can find common ground with his opponents. Only in the fourth, where he deals with the mysteries, does he start from revelation. In the first three cases, therefore, it cannot take into account the He does not consider the state of righteousness or sin (which are sufficiently known to us only through revelation), but must confine himself to the nature of man alone, an intelligent creature, having God as his first principle and last end. The same is true in 2a 2ae, q. 85, where he speaks of sacrifice as an act of religion. Religion here is a virtue derived from justice, which requires that, as creatures, we acknowledge God's supreme dominion over us. This part of the 2a 2ae is in fact only a detailed study of each of the virtues, an overview of which was given in the 2ae; in art. 5 of question 61, St. Thomas warned us that he was speaking only of the moral virtues Sacrifice in the dwin plan 19 only as civil or political virtues, namely those which are required of a man's rectitude, without there being yet any question of his state. It is only afterwards in connection with the worship of the ancient law (the 24th, qq. 100 ff.) and especially in the 3a pure, where he will show us in Christ the one who delivers us from the state of sin, whether it be a question of the various efats of man or of the various stages of salvation: "To complete this exposition of the whole theology, after having treated of the ultimate end of human life, of the virtues and vices, our study should now be directed to the Savior himself and to the benefits he has brought to the human race." Why, then, is sacrifice a requirement of human nature and how, if we consider it from this perspective alone, should we define it? Even when enlightened by the supernatural, let us never forget our creaturely condition. Let us begin by reading the Contra Gentiles, chapter 119. The Sacri- It is from nature that we start. "Because it is connatural for man to receive his knowledge from sensible things and it is very difficult for him to go beyond the realm of his senses, it has been divinely provided that man should find, even in sensible things, a reminder of divine things, so that his thought may be more strongly reminded of the latter, even for him whose thought is not of such strength as to contemplate the divine in himself " (n° 2908). "For this reason, sensitive sacrifices were instituted: if man offers them, it is not because God needs them, but in order to make present to man the duty of relating himself with all that he possesses to God, as to his final end and as to the Creator, Governor and Lord of all things" (no. 2909). We find the same problematic and the same doctrine in 2a 24e, q. 85. A word about the context: it is a question of acts of religion, itself a virtue annexed to justice, a moral virtue which we asks to give to each one what is due to him: to God, what is 20 The reasons for sacrifice due is the recognition of its sovereign domain on us, as of him from whom we hold everything and to whom we must relate everything as to our final end. And this as a requirement which is already shown to us by reason alone. Having defined the nature of the virtue of religion, we move on to the study of its various acts: interior acts, exterior acts (81/7). Here is the reminder, always timely, of the absolute independence of God, to whom the creature can contribute nothing: "It is not for his sake, but for our own good that we worship God", and here is why We have just read in the Contra Gentiles: "By paying homage and honour to God, our spirit 'mens nostra' submits to him, which is precisely what its perfection (that of our spirit) consists in. It is that in fact everything finds its perfection in submission to its superior." This interior attitude of dependence on God is essential. But it cannot be sufficient in itself, and here is the reason why: "In order to unite with God, the spirit of man, his 'mens', his spiritual part, needs Therefore it is necessary in worship to use corporeal objects, by which, as by signs, the spiritual part of man is stimulated to the accomplishment of spiritual acts, those by which it unites itself to God." And the conclusion, which we are sometimes tempted to forget: "Therefore the virtue of religion comprises interior acts which are the principal ones and those which essentially belong to it; and exterior acts, but which are secondary and ordered to interior acts °." We have perhaps dwelt too much on this preamble, but it nevertheless commands the understanding of what follows. We do not need to dwell on the beautiful questions of Saint Thomas on interior acts. It is indeed among the external acts that sacrifice is situated. The external acts of religion can be classified into three categories. Those by which man uses his own body to venerate God: this is adoration, prostration with the mouth to the ground "ad os"; those by which some good external to man is offered by him to God; those finally by which a divine object Sacrifice in the divine plan is assumed by man 21 the use of the sacraments and the use of the of the name of God for the oath. It is in the second class that the sacrifice is situated and it occupies the first place. St. Thomas devotes question 85 to it. Art. 1° confirms for us the legitimacy of the perspective in which we have said that this part of the Summa should be read. The question which he asks and which he resolves in the affirmative is this: "Is the Sacrifice an obligation of the law of nature? The sed contra, which does not furnish a proof properly so called, but a probable reason is the observation of a fact: "In all ages, stages, in all peoples, everywhere is met with the offering of sacrifices. Now what is met with everywhere seems to be natural." The dicendum, the "determination", will bring the proof, the "ratio" of this fact and a conclusion that is no longer merely probable but certain; "It is reason itself - it is reason that promulgates the natural law - that invites man to submit to a superior being, this because of the limits he recognizes in himself, and because of which he needs to be helped and directed by this higher being. And whoever that higher being is, he is the one whom everyone calls God. >You see we are still far from the perspective of the revelation: "whatever that higher being is." Here is the first part of the proof, the "major" part: man needs to submit to a higher being, God, and to manifest this dependence to Him in His own way. And here is that way, his way, man's way - is the "We arrive at the conclusion: "Therefore it is a rational conclusion that man should use sensible objects to offer them to God as a sign of the submission and honour he owes to Him. We come to the conclusion: "Therefore it is a rational conclusion that man should use sensible objects to offer them to God as a sign of the submission and honor he owes Him." Titles of the inner sacrifice The following article reminds us that sacrifice is reserved for God alone. And we see here, both what we have read in the 22 The reasons for sacrifice Contra Gentiles, and what St. Thomas has just told us about the relationship of external and internal worship: "The offering of the sacrifice has the character of a sign. Now the sacrifice offered externally signifies the interior sacrifice by which the soul offers itself to God (.) as to the principle of its creation, and as to the final end where it will find its beatitude." But none other than God is this principle and this end: the sacrifice of the soul is a fice which signifies this double relationship cannot therefore be offered to anyone else (cf. a. 2; the 2ae 102, 3c.) A not inconsiderable precision is added by chapter 120 of the Contra Gentiles. We find there first (n. 2926) a reminder of the principle according to which the external sacrifice is representative of the interior sacrifice, the true one, by which the spirit offers itself to God. This is followed by the titles to which this offering is due to God. Three are listed: first, the two we have just read in question 85 of the Summa Theologica: "Quasi suae creationis principio", God as creator; "quasi suae beatitudinis fini", God as the beatifying last end. The third is not found in the Summa Theologica. T1 is added here "swae operationis actori" God is not only the creator of our being, he is not only the last end of our will, he is also the "actor" principle, "first author of all our activity". Nothing that is in us escapes him, nothing that belongs to us that is not received from him, and - what we too often forget - even our activity itself. Saint Thomas wanted to make this clear Again, "Îpse etiam solus voluntatem hbominis potest inclinare ad guodcumque voluerit - He alone can incline the will of man in the direction He wills." We must note here the three titles in whose name the sacrifice is due to God and is reserved for Him. They are not taken at random, they take their exemplar from the Trinity itself, and we can notice how they command the structure of the Summa, assuring us consequently that this structure is not commanded by pedagogical preoccupation alone, but corresponds to the very nature of things. In the Trinity: we should reread the whole of the admirable article 9 of question IX of De Potentia, where Saint Thomas we watch Sacrifice in the divine plan 23 that it is impossible for there to be more than three persons in God. We cannot follow - it would be too long - the whole demonstration. Let us only retain the conclusion: "In us as in God there is a return (circulatio quaedam) in the operations of the intelligence and the will; for the will returns to that from which the principle of knowledge came. But whereas in God the circle closes in on itself, in us it returns to an object external to us, for the external good moves our intelligence, this in turn moves our will, and our will tends to return by its appetite and love to this external good (which has moved our intelligence) °." It is above all as a final end that God is the reason for our existence as creatures. The sin of our first parents consisted in the refusal to recognise this order, this rafio: "You shall be like gods, knowing good and evil", that is to say, you shall not have to recognise as binding on you the end for which you were created and from which the rule of good and evil is taken, you shall be able to go astray. It is indeed the end that is principle. In the Summa we have the three parts which correspond to this same structure of reality: the first part: God and creatures in so far as they proceed from him as Creator; the second part: the return of creatures to God, as to their final end; the third part: the return of creatures to God, as to their final end, corresponds to the additive of the Contra Gentiles: the process of this return, a process received from God: Christ and grace. Sacrifice and oblation But before coming to this perspective of sacrifice considered in its historical realization - according to the various states or stages of nature - we must still gather from question 85 an important precision on the nature of sacrifice as a requirement of human nature as such. We find it in art. 3, in the answer 47 tertium. The objection concerned the multiplicity of things offered to God: prayer, first fruits, decimals. In what way is the sacrifice different? St. Thomas replies that there is, properly speaking, only sacrifice 24 The reasons for sacrifice if there is a transforming action on the objects offered. He gives examples: the killing or burning of animals, the breaking or eating of bread or its blessing. He adds the reason - the very word sacrifice suggests it to us -: to sacrifice is to consecrate, to make something sacred. We take the liberty of drawing your attention to this text. One of the reasons which has caused so much confusion about the notion of sacrifice is that - introducing the historical perspective of sin into the very definition of sacrifice as a cultic act - bloody immolation has been introduced as an essential part of it. We see from the answer given here by St. Thomas that this is by no means necessary: there must be an action on the object offered, an action which shows that it is passed into the domain of God "sacrum facere", but which can be anything but a bloody immolation. We can thus define sacrifice as a special act of external worship and as such a sign of our submission to God as principle and final end, an act consisting in the offering of an object external to us and which we sacrifice, making it sacred by performing on it an action which transforms it in some way to signify its passage into the domain of God. Or, to use St. Thomas's shorter definition in Art. 4 that ends our question, "An act that has virtuous value only for the sole reason that some external object is offered to God as a protest of our submission to him." We have just studied the sacrifice, a special act of external worship, which we shall call, if you please, sacrifice ritsel. It is indeed an external rite significant of our interior dispositions. This is what St. Augustine has in mind when he defines sacrifice: "The sacrament, that is, the sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice - Sacrificium visibile, invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, id est sacrum signum" (De ciwit. Dei, X, 5). Before leaving the 2a 2ae, let us see, in the last article of the question 85, in what way men are bound to offer sacrifices; the answer will introduce us to the other perspective according to which St. Thomas, as we have said, studies sacrifice: Sacrifice in the divine plan 25 the perspective of the various stages of history. Here is the answer: If we speak of the inner sacrifice, all are bound by it; all are bound by it. They are indeed bound to devotion to God, to the recognition of His sovereign domain. Is it, on the contrary, an external sacrifice? A distinction must be made between the various periods of history: - for those who had received a law from God (old law or new law), there was an obligation not only to offer external sacrifices, but to follow the rites prescribed by this law; - for those who had not received the law, it was up to them to choose the rites which they judged most suitable for manifesting their inner sacrifice (Noah, Abraham) This time prior to the law has now passed (we can only consider that it still persists for those who have not received the gospel message). We must now consider sacrifice in its historical dimensions, study it in the perspective of the history of salvation, and consider its various forms according to the different stages of this history. SACRIFICE AS A REQUIREMENT OF THE CONDITION OF FISHER We are in the perspective of salvation, the salvation of sinful man, whose sin and salvation are not known to us by reason alone, and do not flow from man's nature alone, but are telative to the various states of that nature. I need only remind you of them in a word. Let us leave aside, if you like, what we might call prehistory of this greeting, the moment, which we know not The history of salvation is the history of a life which has lasted for a long time and of which we can only conjecture whether it has known external sacrifices: that of original justice. Moreover, we can only speak very improperly of the history of salvation, since salvation presupposes sin at the outset, and is the history of deliverance from this sin. In this perspective, what is the definition of sacrifice? Saint Thomas will tell you, either in the 2ae, about the 26 The reasons for sacrifice sacrifices of the old law (q. 102, a. 3); or in the 3a pars about Calvary or the Eucharist. Let us first note that, in this perspective, sacrifice does not cease to be what is required by the constitution of nature, its condition as a creature, ordered to God as its final end. Let us reread the body of art. 3 of question 102. We see there first of all the reason for the existence of sacrifice: "By the sacrifices was represented the ordering of the soul to God, an ordering stimulated by the offering of sacrifice." Here we find the already stated connection of the outward sacrifice with the inward sacrifice and the role of the latter, the recognition of our double dependence on God. This double order is explained here: "The right ordering of the soul to God implies man's recognition of God as the first principle of all that he has and as the last end to which he must order everything." This is "what is expressed in the external sacrifice, inasmuch as man offers in honor of God something of what he possesses, in order to acknowledge that he has received everything from Him." "Also, in sacrifice, man does he protest that God is the The first principle of creation and the final end to which everything must be related. Here we find the perspective we have already encountered of sacrifice, law of nature. "And because the right ordering of the soul to God involves the recognition that no one shares with God this title of first principle and last end, the sacrifice is reserved for God alone." So far nothing new. But to this already known reason for the sacrifice, another is added, in this same article: the figuration of the future sacrifice of Christ. Why? The answer will be given to us in the third paragraph, with a new note specifying the sacrifice and giving us its "proper" definition in the perspective of salvation history: this note, this end of the sacrifice, is reconciliation with God: "Sacrificium proprie dicitur aliquid factum in bonorem proprie Sacrifice in the divine plan 27 Deo debitum, ad eum placandum - sacrifice is defined in its own right as an action done to render to God the honour proper to him, to appease him" (3a, q. 48, at 3, c). We see there, first of all, under In summary form, the challenge We know that this is the recognition of God's double title of creator and final end. What is new is the finality: "ad eum placandum - to appease." This finality or result is again affirmed in the next question, att. 4: "Est enim hoc proprie sacrificii effectus, ut per ipsum placetur Deus - the proper effect of the sacrifice is to obtain by it the appeasement of God > - and it is explained: "sicut cum homo offensam in se commissam remittit propter aliquod obsequium acceptum quod ei exhibetur - it is like a man who forgives an offence which has been done to him because of tokens of deference given to him and accepted by him." It is because there has been an offense: sin. The sin of our first parents, the ones we commit ourselves. They broke the bond of friendship we had with God. It is probably by figure that we say that God is angry, that he needs to be appeased. God is immutable. If there is any change, it is not in God, but in us: we say that God is angry when we have turned away from Him by choosing another last end, and we have lost the grace that His friendship offered us. To appease God is to effect in us that rectification which will bring us back into order towards him, into that order which directs all our activity towards him as our last end, whereas sin has led us in another direction, has "led us astray", by a step opposite to that of sacrifice, by which we protest our voluntary and free ordering to God's last end, our dependence on his creative power to lead us there. The sin of the devil (1a 24e, q. 63, a. 3): the refusal to owe God that which is due to him. 28 The reasons for sacrifice He is the only one who can order his final end, this total fulfillment of his being, either that he wishes to direct himself to a purely natural last end, or that he claims to reach the supernatural end by the forces of his nature alone: in both cases, affirmation of independence with respect to God. That of man (2a 24e, q. 163, a. 3): wanting by his own knowledge, by his own intelligence alone, to determine his final end, and consequently the good which leads to it, the evil which leads away from it: "You shall be like gods, knowing good and evil"; he wants to reach it without needing the free gifts of God. And this end being no longer God himself, but a well particular, the man is by there- even turned away from God, deviated. It is the disintegration of order. This order was God's order loved over all things, and others for him, in other words, from God the last end. Sin has turned man away from this order, has directed him, no longer towards the last end, but towards a particular good, which will be loved above God himself. It has disoriented him. Sin has made a break. Before (this word being taken at least in the sense of order of nature if not of chronological order), before offering our In order to do this, we need to straighten out our soul and bring it back to its ultimate purpose: to love God above all else. This recovery is the sacrifice interior, which, as of then, in At the same time, it is a tribute to God the Creator and a final end, and it will serve to appease his irritation, to conclude peace, a new covenant, reconciliation with him: "Indiget igitur homo sacri- ficio propter tria: man needs sacrifice for three reasons: "First, for the remission of sin by which man is turned away from God; second, for the preservation of the state of grace; and third, for the preservation of the state of peace. for the perfect union with God, which will take place especially in glory" (32,4. 22/2) Consequences of sin Unfortunately, because of this very sin, which makes it doubly necessary to take the interior step, which is the essence of the sacrifice, Sacrifice in the divine plan 29 this rectification of his affections becomes impossible for the fallen man. Once he has deviated from the path that leads him to the final end, it is impossible for him to return to it, at least by himself. Why this impossibility? Without doubt, to love God above all things, in the state of justice, was not beyond the powers of nature alone: it was natural for man to love God more than himself, as it is natural for him to put his arm forward to deflect the blow that threatens his head. Why is this no longer possible after sin, unless God Himself comes to make the recovery? (a) First of all, it is that it is not not a simple mistake of the road, but of a diversion from the end. This is the great difference, which is not recognized today, between mortal sin and venial sin. As long as one remains ordered to the end, it is possible to correct, in virtue of this order to the end, an error of course. But this correction is contradictory, if it is from the end itself that we have turned away. We must not forget that in matters of human acts, it is the end that is the principle, it is the end that drives the whole voluntary movement by the attraction it exerts: just as in travel, it is the goal, the end of the journey that invites us to leave and to take the path that will lead us there. If, on the way, there is an error of direction, it will be the desire, the will to reach the end, the goal of the journey, which will invite us to go back to the right path. It is quite different if, along the way, we change the goal itself. It will be It attracts us to it, it cannot redirect us towards the first project. Let's take a concrete example: I decide to go to Paris and I take the road to Chartres: if at a crossroads I make a mistake and take a road that goes to Tours, as soon as I realize my mistake, the will I have to go to Paris will make me return to the road that leads there. If, on the other hand, it is not a question of a mistake on the road, but of a modification of my first project and if, on the way, I decide to go, not to Paris, but to Rouen, this 30 The reasons for sacrifice If I reject God as the last end, as the principle of all my activity, I choose another goal, an immediate personal satisfaction. If, rejecting God as the final end, as the principle of all my activity, I choose another goal, an immediate personal satisfaction, this new orientation will never bring me back to God. b) But, you may ask, why can't I change my mind again and turn to God? To take Him again as my final end? Here the previous comparison goes awry: Going to Paris or Rouen was up to me. I could get there by my own means, my own strength. I could determine for myself to choose one direction or the other. Let us suppose, on the contrary, that it is no longer a question of a journey that I can make myself, but of an invitation to go to a country, where it would be absolutely impossible for me to go by myself. If, once on board, I turn away from the road, I abandon the opportunity that was offered to me, it becomes impossible for me to go back on my failure unless another opportunity is offered to me. Such is the case with the sinner, and with the whole human race. There has never been a purely natural order: the final end to which we were ordained by God is none other than the beatific vision, absolutely beyond our human powers. God, in the state of innocence, ordered us to it by an impulse, a motion of grace (gratuitous) which was proportionate to Him. By turning away from it, by rejecting this motion, in order to order us to a perishable good, we have lost the opportunity, refused the invitation which was made to us and which alone could enable us to attain to the vision. There is no hope for us to reach it from now on, unless God Himself offers us such a gift again, unless He reconciles Himself with us. It is impossible to offer a sacrifice - an interior sacrifice, that is to say, a sacrifice which orders us to God's final end - without God forgiving us, without a reconciliation between us and Him. But how can we obtain this reconciliation, which presupposes on our part a gesture which is precisely that which we can no longer make, the interior sacrifice? Sacrifice in the divine plan 31 Here we must read again the Epistle to the Hebrews, written entirely to show the inefficiency of the sacrifices of the old law, and the uniqueness of the Sacrifice of Calvary: The incapacity of the sacrifices of the old law is proved by their continual renewal: it is every year that the High Priest, after all the rites of atonement, enters for a few moments into the Holy of Holies; and the conclusion is given in a word: "Impossibile enim est sanguine taurorum et hircorum auferri peccata - it is impossible to blot out sins by the blood of calves and goats" (X, 4; cf. IX, 7; X, 1-3; X, 11). How could these outward sacrifices, however many, change the heart of man? Only God can touch our will. We shall see that if they had any efficacy, it was in so far as they directed the faith of those who offered them towards another sacrifice, whose victim, given by God, would obtain precisely this change of heart. The Epistle to the Hebrews also reveals to us this secret design of divine mercy: "But Christ, no longer by the blood of goats The author goes on to explain how "it is this blood of Christ which will purify our conscience (- it reaches even that interior which is to be straightened and which cannot do it by itself). And the author goes on to explain how "it is this blood of Christ which will purify our conscience (it reaches even to that interior which must be straightened out and which cannot do so by itself) from dead works, to enable us to serve the living God. (IX, 11-14). Redemption Here we have the answer: that of the infinite mercy of God. This is the whole mystery of the Redemption, a redemption which will be the work of a sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Calvary, "potissimum sacrificium", the only one truly pleasing to God who himself makes us It is the gift of the Victim, the only one capable of offering him a tribute worthy of him, a sacrifice that all the others can only prefigure or commemorate. He is the one at the center of salvation history, 32 The reasons for sacrifice The starting point of this story is the first sin and the state that followed it: séatus peccati. The end point is the beatitude of heaven: status beatitudinis. At the centre, there is Christ who alone opens the way to beatitude. Before Christ: prefigurative rites of Calvary, which hold their value only because they allowed those who used them to protest their faith in the salvation to come, through Christ. Rites freely chosen, before the promulgation of the law; rites specified by that law, in its ceremonial precepts. After Christ: rites no longer figurative and nir, but commemorative of an effected salvation, and of that salvation. No longer an empty sign, but a sacrificial sign that makes present and signifies. We find again the rites (as we have seen prophetic of the bearer of the effective containing salvation, the highest in reading the 2ae, q. 102, a. 2, c), of which we have seen that the sacrifice was The main thing is that neither sin nor grace removes the demands of nature. But we find them bearers, not only of what man's nature, as a creature, owes to his Creator They are the bearers of a new meaning: the recognition by man of his sin and the surrender of himself and his salvation to the Saviour sent by God. Rites which, since Christ, have been bearers of the reality and the fruits of this meaning of the sacrifice they commemorate. Since sin, we see, every sacrifice can only find its meaning in its relation to the only sacrifice capable of reconciling us with God and making him accept our homage, in its relation to the Passion. But how can analyze this meaning without Have we looked more closely at the Sacrifice of Calvary? Even though its systematic study belongs to the treatise on the Incarnation, we cannot omit to contemplate and specify its sacrificial character. Sacrifice in the divine plan THE SACRIFICE FROM 33 CALVARY How is Calvary, the Passion of Christ, a sacrifice? That it is, it is the Scripture that affirms it to us. Let us reread some At the same time as they reveal the sacrificial character of Calvary, they will help us to penetrate the mystery of it. Effectiveness The first ones we will mention show the sacrificial nature of the heaven, because of the fruits which they attribute to the Passion, the very fruits which are the proper effect of the sacrifice: reconciliation with God, his < appeasement. Rom. V, 10 : " Reconciliati sumus Deo per mortem Filii ejus - we are reconciled to God through the death of his Son. - 2 Cor. V, 19: "Deus erat in Christo reconcilians mundum sibi God was in Christ, reconciling the world." Col. I, 20: "Pacificans, per sanguinem crucis ejus - pacifying, making peace through the blood of his cross. Other texts underline the sacrificial character of Calvary, in comparison with the sacrifices of the Old Testament. We have first of all the very clear text of the Epistle to the Hebrews. After affirming, as we have just seen, the ineffectiveness of the old sacrifices, here is how the author introduces that of Christ: Hebr. X, 5-10: "Therefore, because the old sacrifices were ineffective, Christ, entering into the world, said: 'You did not want a victim or an offering, but you gave Me I said, "Here I am," and at the head of the book it is written, "I will do your will"; and I said, "Here I am," and it is written, "I will do your will. Then said I, here am I; at the head of the book it is written of me that I will do your will." And the author of the Epistle, after remarking that in taking note of the exclusion of the old sacrifices, he establishes a new one, concludes, "It is by this act of will that 2 34 The Sacrifice of Calvary we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all. It is by a parallel with the sacrifices of the ancient law that the Epistle to the Hebrews shows us the sacrificial character of the Lord. It is by a transparent but significant sllusion that Saint Paul, in a passage often invoked by Saint Thomas, shows us the sacrificial character of the Lord, one that Calque us teaches the same doctrine: Eph. V, 2: "Christus dilexit nos et traditit semetipsum oblationem et bostiam Deo, in odorem suavitatis - Christ loved us and offered Himself for us as an offering and a victim, in odor of suavitatis." The word "hostiam", victim, alone would indicate that Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice; but the few words that follow, "in odorem suavitatis", add a great deal of emphasis. If they do not mean much to us, how much more so to St. Paul, "learned in the law" and familiar with the texts of the Old Testament. This "odor of sweetness" is precisely what the sacrifices of the old law bring up to God. It is enough to refer to some passages in Exodus, for example, XXIX, 18: "You shall offer the whole ram on the altar: it shall be an offering to God, the odor of a very sweet victim to the Lord." Leviticus: In the first chapter alone, three times, in connection with burnt offerings, it is stated that the smoke which shall ascend from the altar where the victim is burnt shall be a "very sweet smell to the' Setcneuf,":3(Lev:1. 9413, 17 UT 0 etc) We need no further proof; these passages suffice, corroborated by the whole tradition of the Church. It is time to put ourselves in the school of St. Thomas to see not only that this is so, but to try to analyze with him the how. A word first Passion. We don't know where it's being treated carefully, but of its affirmations of the sacrificial character of the Passion is not only found in art. 3 of question 48, "ex professo", and that we will reread more in many other passages: it will suffice to note some of them. In our analysis of the sacrificial character of the Passion, we shall have to note several others, Sacrifice in the divine plan We amounts now, and unless otherwise indicated 35 On the contrary, in the 3 a pars, devoted entirely "to Christ the Saviour and the benefits he has brought to mankind. Q. 22. The priesthood of Christ: art. 1% tells us that he is a priest (we know how much sacrifice and priesthood are inseparable) and the Art. 2 is still more explicit: it affirms that Christ is both the priest and the victim of his sacrifice. Q. 47. Art. 2 asks whether Christ died in obedience, and answers that Christ's death was a sacrifice "acceptissimum Deo," that "the sacrifices of the old law were but figures of that true sacrifice which Christ offered in dying for us. Further on, with regard to the Eucharist, we will see the holy Doctor We can affirm that this sacrament is the commemoration of the passion "which was a true sacrifice" (73/4, c). Sacrificial character But it is time to read art. 3 of question 48, where Saint Thomas asks whether the passion "operata sit per modum sacrificii - whether the passion operated by mode of sacrifice". Let us be careful here, not only to grasp with precision The title of question 48: De modo efficiendi passionis Christi - of the mode of efficiency of the Passion of Christ. The first title of question 48: De modo efficiendi passionis Christi - of the mode of efficacy of the Passion of Christ. It is not yet a question of the effects themselves: they will be the object of question 49 - liberation from the power of the devil, reconciliation with God, etc., but of the manner or the title according to which it produces these effects: Let us note well the way in which the questions are formulated. They are not formulated in the same way in all the articles. All this may seem subtle to you. But I can't help but think that it sheds a lot of light on the problem, not to mention the confusion that is avoided. Five questions are thus posed, each one touching one of the modes of causality of the Passion: merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, etc. 36 The Sacrifice of Calvary fice, redemption, efficiency. We do not have to take into account an excursus (art. 5) asking whether it is proper to Christ to be redemptive. The five questions begin and end in the same way: "Utrum passio Christi... per modum...." The mode studied follows. But here the similarity ends. In the first two the verb is: "causaverit", and the complement "sostram salutem". Utrum Passio Christi causaverit nostram salutem... per modum meriti", for art. 1%, "per modum satisfactionis >" for art. 2. Art. 4 "per modum redemptionis" does have the words "ostram salutem", but "causaverit" is replaced by "operata sit"; the same feature for art. 6, "per modum efficientiae". "Causaverit >": the word is clear, it is about the causality of salvation, meritorious, satisfactory causality. Why don't we find it in the other two articles whose wording we have just read? "Operata est > can be translated as "accomplished >" or better as "employed to". For efficiency the reason seems to be that it is only instrumental causality, as it is answered in the body of the art, the main causality, the very causality coming from God himself. For redemption it is, as the end of the body of the article shows, only a different expression: 'they say that the Passion of Christ was our redemption', and the reason that we give is that the satisfaction for our sins offered by the passion has been superabundant. This is another aspect of satisfaction. On the contrary, in the first two articles, it is a question of causality properly so called: the merit of Christ causes our salvation, as that of his own members; he causes it by the act of charity which underlies the Passion. In the same way for satisfaction, his sufferings are a sufficient satisfaction to compensate for all the sorrow due to the faults of the human race. Let us now turn to art. 3, the one which interests us. It does not have the word "causaverit", and is close in this respect to the last two, at Namely 4 and 6, redemption and efficiency; but it differs from them by the absence of the term "nostram salutem". There is only "operata sit per modum sacrificii". Sacrifice, in fact, does not bring about salvation, Sacrifice in the divine plan 37 but reconciliation, as we have seen and as will be specified in art. 4 of q. 49. So the question that arises is only to know if the Passion was accomplished according to the mode of a sacrifice, if it really had the character of a sacrifice and how it verifies its definition. Let us read art. 3: let us not stop for the moment at the difficulties and the answers which are given to them. We shall have occasion to encounter them in the course of our exposition. The sed contra reminds us of an already known text: that of chapter V of Ephesians "Tradidit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem et hostiam Deo in odorem suavitatis". We know what the incision "in odorem suavitatis" adds, to express the sacrificial character of the Passion to the already clear terms of "oblationem et hostiam". We do not have to return to this again. The "sed contra" thus affirms this sacrificial character, but does not explain to us the how. This how, St. Thomas explains to us, in the body of the article, by means of a formal demonstration. He starts from the definition of sacrifice, to show us how it is verified in the Passion. The major point is the definition of sacrifice in the history of salvation: "Akiquid factum in honorem proprie Deo debitum ad eum placandum. > We have already analyzed it. The minor one is the fact that Christ offered himself voluntarily for us in the Passion, an offering which, because of the charity that inspired it, was most pleasing to God: "Deo maxime acceptum fuit". The "manifest" conclusion is that the Passion was a true sacrifice: "Unde manifestum est quod Passio Christi fuerit verum sacrificium. > Let us take up the demonstration in detail. We know the three elements of the definition of sacrifice: - the offering of an object external to us - this is the sign - to signify the interior sacrifice by which we acknowledge our total dependence on God: this is the signified; - in order to appease God: this is the new nuance required by the state of sin. Let us see how the Passion verifies these elements: 38 The Sacrifice of Calvary The visible sign Here, from the start, an objection stops us. It is, moreover, the first one that St. Thomas is opposed to. We had seen, in the definition of sacrifice, as required by our It is a fact that the sacrifice consisted in the offering of something external to us, to signify the offering of ourselves. Now, what Christ offers is not an external good, it is his own COrps. A beginning of an answer had already been given to us, in 2a 2ae, in the very question where we had collected this definition of sacrifice as a requirement of nature. Art. 3 of Question 85 asked whether sacrifice was a special act of virtue, and objected that fasting, continence, martyrdom, though pertaining to various virtues, were presented by St. Paul as having the character of sacrifices: "Offer your persons as a living host" (Rom. XII, 1). Sacrifice, then, is not a special act of virtue. This was the objection. The answer (ad 2um) distinguishes a threefold good of man: the first is that of the soul, which is offered to God by the interior sacrifice. - We shall come to this in a moment. This is the essential sacrifice " principal sacrificium > ", according to Saint Thomas. The second is the good of the body which is offered to God in some way by martyrdom, abstinence and continence. Finally, the sacrifice includes all the external goods that can be offered to God, either directly or through the mediation of our neighbor when we give them to him by works of charity. The Sacrifice of Christ consisted in the offering of the good of his body, an offering which, according to the definition of sacrifice, expresses better than any other the interior sacrifice. And we have seen that this expression, which is at the same time a reminder and a stimulus, is the essential reason for the visible sacrifice. This good of the body, if not external to Christ, is external to other men, for whom the Lord's Sacrifice is offered. When man offers some external good, he chooses it from among the most excellent gifts of God. How many times do the holy books remind us that we must offer to God only the most excellent gifts? Sacrifice in the divine plan 39 and that it is an insult to him to present him with imperfect victims. € Now, - it is St. Thomas who remarks on this in the 1 a 24e, concerning Of all the good things that God has given to man since the fall, the most important is the gift of his Son. Therefore, St. John tells us that God so loved the world that He did not hesitate to give His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life (John III, 16)." "The text of the Summa adds that the most precious sacrifice - potissimum sacrificium - is that by which Christ offered himself in the odor of sweetness. in odorem suavitatis (Eph. V, 2). And therefore in the old law all other sacrifices were offered to figure this one and principal sacrifice - + hoc unum singulare et praccipuum sacrificium figuraretur - as the perfect by the imperfect" (the 24th, 102/2, c.). Thus, the offering of this good given by God to the human race will be a sign, like any visible sacrifice, - and this is the answer to the second objection in question 48/3 - the sign of our own interior offering. We will have to come back to this in connection with the Eucharist. Will one object that, in the former law, the sacrifices humans were severely forbidden, it will be easy to reply that there is a great difference between Christ and other men. Man's life does not belong to him, but only to God. And when- When Abraham prepared to offer his son - the image of Christ's sacrifice - it could only be at the command of God, to whom alone belongs the life of man, whose author he is. But it is different with Christ: he has power over his own life: "I have power to lay down my life, and power to take it up again" ([X], 17-18). So it was voluntarily that he was able to offer himself to the Passion. And St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, enumerates for us the reasons that made his body and his flesh particularly suitable for sacrifice. You can read them again in the xZ lum of question 48/3. Moreover, it is not in so far as it took away his life that Christ's death and Passion were a sacrifice and as such pleasing to him. 40 The Sacrifice of Calvary to God. St. Thomas formally excludes it: "The death of Christ under the sole common reason of death was not pleasing to God and capable of reconciling us with him" and St. Thomas gives the reason: "For, as Wisdom says, God does not find joy in the loss of the living". We may note, moreover, that in order to show the sacrificial character of the Passion, St Thomas nowhere invokes the fact of immolation. It is not in his immolation, as such, which was the work of the executioners, nor in his Passion materially taken and his death as the loss of life, that he seeks the formal reason for the sacrifice. It is in this Passion and death, but in so far as, voluntarily offered by Christ, they testified and visibly signified the obedience and charity from which they proceeded. Indeed, death can be considered from another point of view than from its brutal fact, we might say; "the Passion and death of Christ can be considered in the source from which they proceed, namely the will of Christ, a will which, in order to offer himself to death, was inspired both by obedience to his Father: "he became obedient unto death", and by his charity for men: "He loved us and gave himself up for us". It is from this point of view that Christ's death was meritorious and satisfying and "so pleasing to God that it was sufficient for the reconciliation of all men, even of the executioners - ei im tantum accepta quod suffecit ad reconciliationem omnium, Deo and etiam occi- dentium Christum" (in Rom. V, 1.2, circa finem). This is the visible sacrifice, the sign of the invisible: "there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends", this is the irrefutable proof. Moreover, in the Sacrifice of Christ, death is not an end, it is only a stage. The sacrifice does not consist essentially in in the killing of the victim. We have seen that what was required was an action which, by modifying it in some way, signifies its passage into the divine domain, making it sacred: sacrum facere. It is in this sense that Christ, on the eve of the Passion, said to his apostles: "I sanctify myself", that is, I consecrate myself. But this consecration is only completed by divine acceptance. In the animal sacrifices in the temple, this acceptance was signified Sacrifice in the divine plan 41 by the "sweet-smelling" smoke that ascended to God. How imperfect a meaning! With Christ, what was a figure becomes reality. The acceptance by God, the passage of the victim into the divine domain, is the Resurrection, the Passover: "The hour being He came to pass from this world to His Father" (Jn. XIII, 1). Not the spiritual first," wrote St. Paul (1 Cor. XV, 46), speaking of our own resurrection, "but the carnal, then the spiritual. >This is also true of Christ. Not that his flesh was not already spiritual thanks to his union with the divinity, but by the Resurrection it becomes so in a new way, not only spiritual, but spiritualizing. This is the consummation, of which the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us "that it was for all a cause of eternal salvation, consummatus _factus est omnibus obtemperantibus sibi causa salutis acternae" (Heb. V, 9). Finally, the Ascension brings Christ into the heaven opened by his Sacrifice and consummates his triumph: "Habentes ergo Pontificem qui penetravit coelos... teneamus confessionem - having a Pontiff who penetrated the heavens. let us be faithful" (Heb. IV, 14). So it is not only on the "consummation" of the Sacrifice of Christ that the Epistle to the Hebrews insists, but on the consequence of this consummation: the Sacrifice of Christ, unlike those of the old law, having obtained the remission of sins and definitively opened the gates of Heaven, does not have to be renewed: "Christ, no longer with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, entered the sanctuary once for all, having acquired for us an eternal redemption" (Heb. IX, 11-12). Thus," writes Fr. Lecuyer (Le Sacerdoce dans le mystère du Christ, pp. 17-18), "the true sacrifice is that which truly realizes what all sacrifice tends towards: the return to God of humanity separated from him by sin, or, in other words, the possibility for sinful men to penetrate into heaven, which is their true promised land, their true resting place, their true home. This is what the sacrifice of Jesus accomplishes, for by entering heaven himself with his sacrificed and risen humanity for us, he opens up access to it and, in a certain way, introduces us to it. All with him. Here, the text of the liturgy of the Ascension tells us 42 The Sacrifice of Calvary est garant " ascendens Christus in altum captivam duxit captivitatem ". In question 22 of the 34 pars, St. Thomas, speaking of the priesthood of Christ, distinguishes two aspects in the office of the priest: "In officio sacerdotis duo possunt considerari, primo quidem ipsa oblatio sacrificii - the first is the actual offering of the sacrifice; secundo 1psa sacrificii consummatio - the other is its consummation," and he explains to us in what it consists: "Quae quidem consistit in hoc quod illi pro quibus sacrificium offertur, finem sacrificii consequuntur - in that those for whom the sacrifice is offered, perceive the fruits of it. We shall have to return to this aspect: we We can already notice that this consumption, this distribution of the fruits of the Sacrifice does not really begin, at least visibly, than at Pentecost. Inner Sacrifice But it is time to move on to the other good offered by Christ in his Sacrifice and which constitutes the essential part of it: the good of the soul or interior sacrifice, of which the other is only the sign or stimulus. We already know what this interior offering of Christ is and how it was more pleasing to God than anything else: "Hoc ipsum opus quod voluntarie passionem sustinuit - the work he accomplished by voluntarily undergoing his Passion. - Deo maxime acceptum fuit, utpote ex caritate proveniens - in so far as it came from his charity." We have already seen how this act of charity was the specific redress of the evil of sin: the mode of reparation, we read in the pamphlet to the Cantor of Antioch, had to be proportionate to the evil to be cured. This evil consisted in a disorder of love, which had preferred the creature to God. The reparation, the rectification, will consist precisely in giving God a proof of love that prefers Him to everything, even the life of the obliterator. Sinful man was no longer capable of this rectification. It was the Son of God, who, assuming our humanity, taking, without the Sacrifice in the divine plan 43 In the name of the whole of humanity, Christ, who is the only one who has sinned, the very condition of sinful man, presented to God this supreme act of obedience and love. St. Thomas, speaking of the fruits, the effects of the Passion, still insists on showing us in this act of Christ the supreme good accepted by God, capable of reconciling us to Him: < In quantum est sacrificium Deo acceptissimum - inasmuch as he was a most acceptable sacrifice," and he explains how: "The fact that Christ offered himself voluntarily to the Passion, was such a great good, that because of this good found in human nature, God forgave all the offences of the human race. One word, one condition, however, is added by the holy Doctor: < quantum ad eos qui Christo conjunguntur secundum modum braedictum - relative to those who are united to the Lord according to the mode indicated." This mode being faith, charity and the sacraments of faith. Indeed, if Christ has satisfied us, the act of love signified by his sacrifice has been offered to God (this is what is meant by appeasement) in order to obtain for us the ability to perform the same act of love in the depths of our souls. It is not to dispense us from returning to order, but to enable us, by uniting ourselves to his sacrifice, to carry out this same rectification. Saint Thomas had already said this in question 48/3, in reply to the second objection. The latter, relying on the definition of sacrifice as a sign, objected that the Passion of Christ signifies nothing, is not a sign, but a "res". The answer tells us that it means precisely what we ourselves must do in order to imitate the sacrifice of Christ, to unite ourselves to it, with the help of the grace which Christ, also by his Passion, has merited for us. This recovery, we have just said, presupposes that we unite ourselves to Christ. This union takes place through faith, charity and the sacraments, above all that of Baptism, which makes us rise with him, after having symbolically conformed us to his death, and that of the Eucharist, in which we offer ourselves to him. same in sacrifice with Christ. rat n"% ne at Gt if :Len annice Anse detre sf rats àdr PRE 0 of ni - vs v-emsohr TS rm sante par 1 pare praA ne me RM ua Rues sr | | * Raman so riad 54: Lot al npat) a6paE a # - : pr Pr ai à5 es Se)Mas "etsc) SAT ssl aida À À ir 4 ;LA gs.abs sr nr: of the "gerer "sé É 4 to: '&h home 26 noi z his es ie and px Macse oiexit À- Sénhceo Le Fra To # ne Beerceren PR where af see te "sas sSbree sheaoeis Ent Lt are F3 ia N" SL AUX aktiagie HAUTE skmeeue fi usEs #hAt "ne 7 sou.voue that ie db Avrersaqañé5 Ê aka tsar a ra ch ka Si ER | The Eucharistic Sacrifice Here again we shall follow St. Thomas, and after studying him we shall place him in the whole tradition, to which he has given us the key, as it were, and thus see the complete continuity of the Church's teaching. We may wonder, however, why so many writers have hesitated to follow him in studying the Mass. He has been accused of not having made a treatise on the sacrifice, nor on the mass. We have just seen what concerns the sacrifice. As regards the sacrifice of the Mass, what is true is that he did not, like modern authors, divide his treatise on the Eucharist into two parts or sections: the Eucharist as sacrifice, the Eucharist as sacrament. Moreover, he treats of the Eucharist only in the treatise on the sacraments, without having made a separate treatise on the sacrifice. Why did he not make this division? We will see that he did not have to make it: when it is opposed to him, he even rejects it "explicitly, the Eucharist - we return to it today - being at the same time, inseparably, sacrament and sacrifice. We find the affirmation of this as early as 2ae, in connection with the ceremonial precepts of the old law. Q. 101. In art. 4, St. Thomas enumerates them; he finds four kinds: sacrifices, sacraments, observances, sacred objects. And from the second objection he In the new law, it is objected, there is no distinction between the precepts of the old law and the precepts of the new law. 46 The sacraments according to St. Thomas The answer, far from denying this statement, merely explains and gives the reason for it, a reason which also explains why there is no complete parallelism with the old law: "It must be answered that in the new law the sacrifice itself is the sacrament of the altar." The answer, far from denying this statement, merely explains it and gives the reason for it, a reason which also explains why there is no complete parallelism with the old law: "It must be answered that the sacrifice of the new law, namely the Eucharist, contains Christ himself who is the author of sanctification. Therefore this sacrifice is also a sacrament" (1a 2ae/101/4/ 2 um):. THE SACREMENTS AFTER SAINT THOMAS One must weigh the terms of this answer: "the sacrifice of the new law, namely the Eucharist...". What is called for Saint Thomas the Eucharist, it is not here above all the sacrament, it is the sacrifice. We will find more This statement is far-reaching: it is as a sacrifice that we speak of the Eucharist. One could thus paradoxically return the reproach sometimes made to Saint Thomas for not having made a treatise on the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and ask rather why he did not make a treatise on the Eucharist as a sacrament. The reproach would not, however, be more well founded. The answer here gives the reason: it is that "the sacrifice of the new law, namely the Eucharist, has something which the sacrifices of the old law did not have: it contains Christ himself, the author of all sanctification, and therefore it is also a sacrament. The Eucharist is both one and the other. We will find this same affirmation, in a slightly different form, at the end of the treatise on the Eucharist, where the rites of its celebration are discussed. "Once the people have been prepared, we come to the celebration of the mystery. >Now this is "offered as a sacrifice, and it is consecrated and consumed as a sacrament - god quidem et offertur ut sacrificium, et consecratur et sumitur ut sacramentum" (83/4, c). The Eucharistic Sacrifice 47 But then the question we asked at the beginning is turned on its head: we must no longer wonder why Saint Thomas did not write two separate treatises, one on sacrifice, the other on the sacrament, but why modern authors have hardly followed him. As in many cases, the answer is to be found in the Protestant controversy which, very quickly at least, led to the denial of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. The Council of Trent, whose aim was not to make a doctrinal synthesis but to oppose Protestantism, affirmed this character, and it did so in sessions quite distant from those in which it The sacraments, including the Eucharist, had been discussed. The authors have followed suit, in order to take as statements The Protestants' difficulty with the sacrificial character of the Mass was that it was not a question of the Council's being able to give the text the "de fide catholica definita". The difficulty opposed by the Protestants to the sacrificial character of the Mass was this: The Epistle to the Hebrews, in particular, states very clearly and The uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice is strongly emphasized: "semel". How, then, can a rite of the new law be recognized as a true sacrifice? Notice that it is in virtue of the same problematic that the existence of the character of a sacrifice is questioned today. priestly, separate of the priesthood of the faithful: Christ would be the only priest, no others after him. The Epistle to the Hebrews is formal and how insistent: VII, 27: "Hoc enim fecit semel - he did this once for all by offering himself." IX, 12: "He entered the sanctuary once and for all by his blood. >26: "Christ was offered only once"; "Semel". X, 10: "We are sanctified by the oblation of Christ's body made once - semel. > X, 14: "Una oblatione - by one offering he led the sanctified to consummation," etc. The difficulty had not escaped St Thomas. He raises it in question 22 of the 3a pars, dedicated to to the priesthood of the Christ, and which owes so much to the Epistle to the Hebrews. Here is how he proposes it: 48 The sacraments according to St. Thomas Art. 2 asks whether the effect of Christ's sacrifice is the remission of sins. To the affirmative answer, a second objection is opposed, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews X, 1: if the sacrifices of the old law were continually renewed, it was because they did not obtain the remission of sins. But continually a sacrifice is offered in the Church (the Eucharist). So the priesthood of Christ and the sacrifice of Calvary failed to atone for sins. The answer lies in a statement that we must carefully collect: "Sacrificium quod quotidie in ecclesia offertur non est alind a sacrificio quod ipse Christus obtulit, sed ejus commemoratio - the sacrifice which the Church offers daily is not other than the sacrifice offered by Christ himself, but his memorial*" (3a/22/3/2 um). In order to understand the meaning and scope of this text, we must first of all place the Eucharist in the divine plan and recall the doctrine of St. Thomas on the sacraments. The Eucharist in the divine plan It is again Saint Thomas who will situate the Eucharistic sacrifice in the whole of the history of salvation. It is in art. 5 of question 73, concerning the institution of the Eucharist. Why was the Eucharist instituted? Here is the answer: "Without faith in the passion of Christ, there can never be salvation. Therefore it was necessary that at all times there should be something among men to represent the passion of the Lord. "In the Old Testament, this was mainly the Paschal Lamb. "In the New Testament, it is the Eucharist, which is the memorial of the Passion now accomplished, as the Lamb was prefigurative of the Passion to come. Further emphasis in the answer 44 3wm. "This sacrament was instituted at the Last Supper, to be in the future a memorial of the Passion after it had taken place. > We find again the affirmation of the The Eucharistic Sacrifice 49 q. 22: "The sacrifice which the Church offers each day is not other than that offered by Christ himself, but his memorial." This is because - let us beware of forgetting this - grace does not suppress nature. We have seen that sacrifice is an obligation of the natural law: a tribute which we must pay to God. That Christ offered himself for us does not exempt us from this duty, a duty owed by us to God in a double capacity, as creatures and as sinners. But as we have seen, the only sacrifice pleasing to God since sin is that which Christ offered for us on the cross. Any sacrifice we can and should offer must be relative to that one. This relationship will be one of commemoration, of remembrance, of sign, but also of container. "Eucharistia est sacramentum perfectum Dominicae passionis, tanquam continens ipsum Christum passum >" (13/5, 2um). This last trait is the one that distinguishes the rites of the new law from those of the old. This is what we must examine more closely, following what Saint Thomas teaches us about the sacraments. The sacraments are signs The definition of the sacraments is one of the points on which there has been a very clear evolution in Saint Thomas between his position in the Commentary on the Sentences and that of the Summa Theologica. It is so clear that the first difficulty opposed to the definition which will be given in the Summa (3a, q. 60, at 1) is the very position of the Sentences: the sacrament (position of the Sentences) is to be classified in the genus "cause", it must not therefore be in the genus "sign" (position of the Summa). For St. Thomas, then, what is a sacrament? Let us first open 2a 24. We had already read it in connection with the sacrifice. We are in the treatise on religion, of which, after having seen the interior acts, we approach the exterior acts; they are of three kinds (q. 84, preamble) : those by which one uses one's body to worship God; this is adoration ; those by which an external object is offered to God; it is here that 50 The sacraments according to St. Thomas sacrifice, and in the first place, before the oblations and firstfruits; those by which something belonging to God is used: these are the sacraments and the name divine, the latter being used by the oath (q. 89, preamble). The sacrament is thus something that comes from God and whose use is a cultic act. Here St. Thomas says no more: '1 simply refers to the 3a pars, which, from q. 60 onwards, will be entirely devoted to the study of the sacraments. It is there that we must look for the definition. It is to this search (what Aristotle called the hunt for the definition) that art. 1 and 2 of q. 60 are devoted. All definition, as we know, is done by the next genus and the specific difference. Art. 1 asks in which genus the sacrament is to be classified, and art. 2 seeks the specific difference. The kind "sign" or "cause"? Sign or cause of a sacred thing? The Sentences had chosen the genus "cause": the sacraments in fact appeared above all as a remedy for sin: the remedy is the cause of the cure. However, this classification is not necessary: in particular, it has the disadvantage of not being suitable for the sacraments of the old law, or at least to suit them only in a purely analogous way. These sacraments did not in fact cause sanctification: they were "impotent elements. They could only support faith in the Christ to come, without producing anything by themselves, except a purely external and legal sanctification. Fortunately, another classification is possible: St. Thomas points out that everything that is ordered, in one way or another, to the same reality, can derive its name from it: one can be ordered to holiness, either as a cause or as a sign. It is the latter point of view that will be retained for the sacrament, and St. Thomas can support this choice with a text of St. Augustine which defines the visible sacrifice as the "sign" or "sacrament " (the The word is from Saint Augustine) of the interior sacrifice. But the signs of the sacred things are multiple: the heavens pro The Eucharistic Sacrifice vi Are they to be regarded as sacraments? The events of the people of Israel prefigured and signified the holiness of Christ. Why then were certain ceremonial fites called sacraments? The sacramentals of the new law, the holy water, the consecration of the churches, are signs of holiness; they are not sacraments. But if the definition is to to suit all the defined, it must suit only him. How, By what specific difference are we going to restrict the kind of signs of sacred things to the rites which we call sacraments? We must follow closely the argument of Saint Thomas: signs, he remarks, are only for men; angels have no need of them, and animals are not capable of understanding them. The sacrament, a sign of a holy thing, will be all the better if it concerns a holy thing serving men, interesting them: it will be the sign of a holy thing, not in itself, but capable of sanctifying men, or destined for their sanctification. Hence are excluded from the definition the signs of holy things which do not sanctify men: first, that which signifies the holiness of God in himself, not in relation to us; secondly, sacramentals which do not signify sanctification properly so called, but only something which disposes of it in a more or less remote manner. The definition thus clarified by this specific difference sign of a thing sanctifying men, is well suited to all the definite, but to it alone, namely, to the sacraments of the old law or of the new law. There is a precision to be added, a precision which is particularly important for the study of sacrifice which we are making here: that which sanctifies man, can sanctify him in several ways, either as the cause of sanctity, or as the form of this sanctity, or finally as its firm, as the last goal to which it is ordered. The end of our holiness is future glory: the sacraments signify it as the end to which grace, itself a form of our holiness, is ordered. The cause of this holiness is the passion of Christ: the sacraments of the old law prefigured it, those of the new law 52 The sacraments according to St. Thomas We will see that they recall it and draw their sanctifying dynamism from it. Before examining this dynamism, an important remark must be made: in all that we have just said, the sacrament is considered only as a sign, the sign of something sanctifying, but not a sanctifying sign. It can be, if, at the same time as it is a sign, it is also a cause: we shall see that this is the case of the sacraments of the new law which contain the grace that they signify, but which, in considering them formally only according to the definition of the sacrament previously given, disregard this causality. This causality must be sought elsewhere than in the definition of the sacrament as a sign; we have proof of this in art. 6 of q. 62, where St. Thomas explicitly refuses all causality to the sacraments of the old law. The sacraments of the new law, causes of grace (q. 62) The sacraments of the new law must cause grace since they incorporate us into Christ, and incorporation into Christ is the work of grace. For the sake of completeness, it would be necessary here to take up again the treatise on grace, especially q. 110 of la 2ae, where Saint Thomas shows that grace is not a simple extrinsic denomination, but rather a means of incorporating us into Christ. sèque, which it might be sufficient to signify, but one which must be produced in the soul. The question was asked < utrum gratia ponat aliquid in anima - is grace something in the soul"; "liquid - alind quid"; something else, other than the components of nature. This is precisely what Luther would later deny, to which St. reality as follows: produces some Thomas for Luther, grace is the look in the eye of a man. This is the favourable gaze that God casts on a soul, granting it forgiveness, covering its sin with the mantle of Christ, but a favourable gaze that produces no change in the soul. Such is also, alas, it seems, the position of many Catholics, misled by this new nominalism which today has taken the garb of phenomenology. No, answers St. Thomas, there can be no change in God; if there is a change in the relation between the creature and The Eucharistic Sacrifice 53 God, the change must be found in our soul. To grant his grace, for God, is not a new look in him, the unchanging, It is a modification wrought by Him in our soul, and which makes it gracious, by the infusion of a habitual disposition which we call sanctifying grace. This is the work of the sacraments: infusion, maintenance, increase of this grace. But how do they cause it? Mode of causality of the sacraments It is to answer this question that Saint Thomas devotes the first article of question 62. He begins by eliminating an easy answer: according to some, the sacraments cause grace only in the same way that a cheque presented at a bank counter can be said to cause the payment of the sum written on it. But this cheque is only the sign of a previous payment by the drawer, and of his will to take a share of it for the benefit of the recipient. It is in no way a cause, in the proper sense of cause, which is that of an action exercised on the effect itself. St. Thomas eliminates with a word this way of conceiving the efficacy of the sacraments: "non transcendit rationem signi", this so-called causality "It does not go beyond the role of the sign. There is no action on the effect, but only on the one who caused it; in the case of In the case of the cheque, on the cashier who will pay the sum, in the case of the sacrament, on God, the only cause of the infusion of grace or its increase. It would be almost a magical rite claiming to compel God to act. Having eliminated this false conception of causality, what will Thomas propose to us? For the difficulties - apparently at least - are not negligible. Let us read their exposition in the Summa: The first is that of reconciling in the same subject the reason of sign and that of cause; normally it is the effect that is sign of the cause: smoke is sign of fire, not the other way around. The second argues from the impossibility for a material object to act on the soul which is the subject of grace. The inferior cannot act on 54 The sacraments according to St. Thomas the superior; one does not pass from the order of matter to that of spirit. The third comes from the nature of grace. To be the cause of it is God's own. It cannot therefore be attributed to any creature whatsoever. It is to this last difficulty that the body of the article will already respond. The answers to the first two objections will add some clarifications; when Saint Thomas arrives at the third, he will only have to refer to what has been said in the body. This progression should be noted. Let us begin with the body. We have already summarized the beginning: the exposition of the easy solution, which reduces the sacrament to its role of sign, without granting it a true causality, or action on the effect of the sacrament, namely on grace or its infusion. This solution is unacceptable because it is irreconcilable with the tradition, "ex multis sanctorum auctoritatibus", authorities which affirm that the sacraments not only signify grace, but cause it. How can this be explained? Here is the principle of the solution: the distinction between the principal cause and the instrumental cause. Only the former acts through the dynamism of its own form, a form whose resemblance is found in the effect. This is how fire heats by its own heat. In this capacity of principal cause, God alone can cause grace, since the latter is nothing other than a "participated likeness of the divine nature - quaedam similitudo particibata divinae naturae". It is quite different for the instrumental cause: this one does not act by its own dynamism (it seems to us that this is the best translation of the word "virtus", whose term " virtue "is not but only by the motion it receives from the principal agent. The effect does not reflect the form of the instrumental cause, but only that of the principal cause. The bed that was made by the carpenter using the instrument of the saw does not reflect the form of the saw, but the idea, the intentional form, conceived by the carpenter; the poem does not resemble the pen, but gives us the thought of the writer. It is in this capacity of instruments that the sacraments of the new law cause grace: they are employed in effect by a dispo The Eucharistic Sacrifice 55 s wisdom, to give us grace. Indeed, what is called an instrument is what someone uses to do something. This distinction between principal and instrumental causes is the very principle from which we will draw a more complete answer to the difficulties raised against the active causality of the sacraments. The examination of these difficulties will give the opportunity, through a wise progression, to deepen this notion of instrumental cause, the hinge of the whole sacramental doctrine. It is precisely this notion that the Protestantism. Both causes and signs The first difficulty arose from the apparent incompatibility between the role of cause and that of sign. The distinction between principal cause and instrumental cause will allow us to respond. If the former cannot, strictly speaking, be said to be the sign of an effect that cannot be seen in itself, the same cannot be said of the instrumental cause. If the latter is visible, it can be the sign of an unnoticed effect. The reason is that it is not only a cause, but in a certain way is already an effect, inasmuch as it is moved by the principal cause. If you saw a nun take her work clothes and a spade, you can conclude - this is the sign for you - that she is digging; if you saw her take a secateur, you see the sign that she is pruning the trees; a broom, that she is removing dust (but there is never one in the nuns' house) of the dormitory. Thus the sacraments of the new law are both signs and causes of grace, which allows us to say that they produce what they signify. We have underlined the words "at the same time". The danger is great, in fact, and far from always being avoided, of syncretizing these two orders of causality and of seeing in the sacraments only the efficacy of the sign, whether one speaks, as Cardinal Billot did, of the "intentional" causality of the sacraments (by which he meant that the sacraments produce grace as an order produces the action 56 The sacraments according to St. Thomas of the one who receives it), or, and the error is more serious, that we completely eliminate causality by speaking of an "effective" sign, not because it would be at the same time a cause, but only because that it means "effectively" that which is already realized by God, quite independently of the sacrament. We must draw your attention to this error which is sometimes expressed today, even in the magazines catechism, where, for example, the baptism is declared "It is an 'efficacious sign' of grace in that 'it makes manifest to all' the love with which God loved a child in creating his soul. It produces nothing more in that soul. No, it is indeed by virtue of being signs of a sacred thing and causes of this thing, that the sacraments of the new law "perfectly possess the reason, the quality of sacraments": "habent perfecte rationem sacramenti": you see that we have not strayed too far from the study of the Eucharistic sacrifice "sacramentum dominicae passionis", by stopping at some length to this question - of the causality of the different types of sacraments of the new law. The sacrament reaches the soul But we have only come to St. Thomas' answer to the first difficulty. It was based on the distinction between principal cause and instrumental cause, given as the key to the problem by the body of the article. It did not lead us to a deepening of the notion of instrument. This will be the contribution of the second answer. You remember the difficulty that was put forward: how can a corporeal thing, such as the water of baptism, act on a spirit, on the soul which is so much superior to it? In other words, how can the sacrament reach the soul? Here we no longer have to distinguish between instrumental cause and This is already done and would not suffice to resolve the difficulty, since it is precisely a question of knowing how such a corporeal instrument can have a useful and effective impact on the subject who receives the grace. A further clarification is therefore necessary: the answer will distinguish The Eucharistic Sacrifice 57 in the instrument a double dynamism: that of the principal cause of which it is the bearer - this is what is properly called causality or action instrumental -, and its dynamism own - that which it holds from its own form -. Indeed, if we have seen that the latter is not found in the effect, if this effect does not reflect it, as the poem does not reflect the pen, it is not in vain that the instrument has been used; it has been chosen because of its own form: the saw because it will cut the boards from which the table will be made, the pen because it can, by its point, draw lines on the paper and thus enable the writer to write his poem. The pen will write the poem only in the title, only by the dynamism of the main cause; entrust it to a monkey, it will produce only scribbling, in the hand of the poet, it will entrust the paper with mer- But in both cases, the dynamism that comes from the pen will have been exercised, he will have drawn lines on the paper. The same is true of the sacraments - with the difference, however, that if the carpenter cannot do without a saw, the poet has a The power of God is not limited to the instruments he employs, not by indigence but by pure liberality. By virtue of the action which they exert on the body which they touch by virtue of their own dynamism (also of a corporeal nature), they operate instrumentally, that is to say, as transmitters of the dynamism of the principal cause, the divine cause, on the soul; for the body and the soul of which man is composed form a single subject. Let us remember the word of St. Augustine: "corpus tangit et cor abluit - the water (of baptism) touches the body and purifies the heart." Perhaps it would not be unfaithful to the thought of St. Thomas to ask whether, at the same time as this bodily touch, or rather because of this visible bodily touch, the sacramental sign might not have been chosen by God as the cause of grace, so that the one who receives it might be informed of the gift granted to him and be able to receive it by his faith. If, in fact, the sacraments operate, as the Council of Trent would say, "ex opere operato", by the mere fact that their rite is validly performed, they do not really bear fruit in the soul unless the latter receives it vitally by faith and in the measure of this reception. We are obviously speaking of adults. 58 The sacraments according to St. Thomas It is not so - as we will see it in connection with the baptism- for children. The instrumental dynamism of the sacraments But we cannot, without running the risk of forgetting our purpose, which is the study of the Eucharistic sacrifice, dwell any longer on this subject of the causality of the sacraments. It will suffice with St. Thomas, in order to answer the third difficulty to which sufficient attention has already been paid in the body of the article, to note the two corollaries which are art. 3 and 4. The sacraments of the new law contain grace, not as a reservoir or a vessel, nor as a form which would be proper and permanent to them, proportionate to the effect to be produced, but according to a certain instrumental dynamism, "secundum quamdam instrumentalem virtutem >", we would say today, as a "current" of a fluid and incomplete nature, as the following article will say (art. 4). This new corollary (art. 4) further specifies the role of the instrumental In order to understand what the sacrament is, he affirms that there is in the sacrament "an instrumental dynamism" ordered to the production of grace - "quaecdam virtus instrumentalis, ad inducendum sacramentalem effectum". There is like a mathematical function, a proportion between principal cause and action in virtue of its proper form, on the one hand; instrument and instrumental dynamism, on the other: the instrument operating only under the motion of the principal cause, inasmuch as it receives its impulse. Similarly, while the dynamism of the principal agent possesses a permanent and complete being, as the action of the principal agent itself, on the contrary, the dynamism of the instrument is only transient and incomplete, inasmuch as it is not the result of the action of the principal agent. that movement transmitted by him from the agent to the patient. Today we could say that the dynamism of the principal cause is comparable to an electric generator, that of the instrument to the conducting wire of the current that comes from the generator, and that the instrument or the wire only has the function of distributing, or more exactly of transmitting. We will find this "viritus instrumentalis", this dynamism, The Eucharistic Sacrifice 59 about the Eucharistic sacrifice, and that is why we are We have lingered a little, at the risk of making these very technical considerations tedious. However, before abandoning question 62, we must read art. 5, which is fortunately more concrete, and which asks whether the instrumental dynamism of the sacraments has as its source the passion of Christ. The sacraments as instruments of the Passion For between the sacrament, which is merely an instrument, and the principal cause of grace, which is God, there is the action of another instrument, just as between the idea of the table that the carpenter wants to make and his saw or plane, there is the action of his hand. It is said that the planer is the separate instrument, and the hand is the joint instrument, being one with the principal cause. Between God, the principal cause, and the sacrament, the separate instrument, there is also a instrument spouse : humanity of Christ, who, the bearer of the divine dynamism that produces grace, acts through the sacrament to confer this grace on us. St. Thomas assumes that this doctrine was already known, since he had dealt with it in connection with the human person. nity of Christ, in q. 19 of this 3a pars. What he specifies here - and this brings us back to the Eucharistic sacrifice - is that among all the mysteries of Christ, to which we owe grace, the Passion plays a leading role, a role which allows us to say that the sacraments receive their dynamism especially "specialiter" from the Passion of Christ. In fact, as we have seen in the treatise on the Redemption, the Passion was not only the meritorious, satisfactory and efficient cause of our salvation, but "it was also the Passion that inaugurated the rite of the Christian religion, by offering himself to God as an oblation and a sacrifice, as it says The Epistle to the Ephesians". Now it is time, taking care not to forget these notions, to return to the "Sacramentum perfectum dominicae passiopis - the perfect sacrament of the Passion," the Eucharistic sacrifice. 60 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion SACREMENT THE EUCHARIST, PERFECT OF THE PASSION We have seen that, for Saint Thomas, "the sacrifice of the new law, namely the Eucharist - sacrificium movae legis, idest Eucharistia - was also a sacrament - efsam est sacramentum >" (2ae, 101/4/2um). We have also seen what constitutes the perfection of the sacraments. of the new law. It remains for us to examine how the Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion, is, in this respect, a sacrifice. The answer is to be found in art. 4 of q. 73, the first of the treatise on the Eucharist. The question asked is: "Is it proper, opportune, that the sacrament of the Eucharist be designated by several names?" The answer refers us to what had been said of all the sacraments, namely that their meaning is threefold (60/3): one concerns the Passion, the cause of our sanctification, the other grace, which is its form, the last, the glory which is the end or the end of it. To each of these meanings corresponds, for the Eucharist, a different appellation. It is the first that interests us here: "This sacrament has a meaning which looks to the past, inasmuch as it is commemorative of the Lord's Passion, which was a true sacrifice And on this account it is called sacrifice." And, further on, in the same article, in the answer ad 3um we read, "It is called a sacrifice, inasmuch as it represents the very Passion of Christ.'" "He is called >" this is not a formula, a simple external denomination, without felation with reality. Saint Thomas is not nominalistic. "It is called a sacrifice, inasmuch as it represents the passion itself," and, the same paragraph adds, it is called a "host" inasmuch as it contains Christ himself who is a host of a sweet smell, according to the word of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. The Eucharistic Sacrifice A difficulty arises, however, which St. Thomas 61 does not to point out. It will give him the opportunity to insist again on the validity of attributing the sacrificial character to the Eucharist. Here is the difficulty: one cannot give as a specific difference of a species that which is the common character of the genus; now to all the sacraments are appropriate those diverse meanings, according to which different names are given to the Eucharist. Consequently, these names cannot be appropriate to this sacrament. In particular, as regards the sacrificial character, in all the sacraments something sacred is done, there is a sacralizing action - which is the reason for the sacrifice, and characterizes it. Hence we cannot attribute this term sacrifice, as its proper character, to the Eucharist. And now here is the answer: (ad 24m) "It must be answered that what is common to all the sacraments is attributed to the Eucharist by antonomasia, because of its excellence." We know what antonomasia is: a figure which consists in using a proper name for a common name - a "Nero" to say a cruel man -, or conversely a common name as proper, to designate that which realizes to perfection, in an absolute way the meaning of this common character. When speaking of St. Paul, we readily say "the Apostle"; he is the Apostle par excellence; likewise the term Apostle is also used as an antonomasia for the twelve witnesses of the Lord, while as a common name it can designate anyone who has received a mission, anyone who exercises an apostolate. Such is the case with the Eucharist. If the other sacraments signify in some way the passion of the Lord, the Eucharist is the It is the sign, the memorial, the sacrament par excellence. This is what St. Thomas affirms again, in the very next article, by giving a sort of definition of the Eucharistic sacrifice: "Eucharistia est sacramentum perfectum dominicae passionis tanquam continens ipsum Christum passum (15/5, 2um) - The Eucharist is a sign, a memorial, a sacrament, the sacrament of excellence. It is the perfect sacrament of the Lord's passion in so far as it contains Christ himself immolated. It is the perfect sacrament according to the two aspects that we have recognized in the sacraments of the new law: it is as a sign, it is as a container. 62 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion The sign "This sacrament is not only a sacrament, it is also a sacrifice. For in so far as it represents the passion by which Christ offered himself to God as a victim, it has the character of a sacrifice, rationem sacrificii*." (79/7, c.) This is the reason given by St. Thomas to show the propriety of the consecration under the two species: "Hoc valet ad repraesentationem passionis Christi, in qua seorsum fuit sanguis a corpore - this double consecration is valid to represent the Passion of Christ in which the blood was set apart from the body" (76/1; cf. 79/1). And further on, in question 83, a. 1, where he asks whether in this sacrament Christ is immolated, he gives as his first answer : "The celebration (later on we will say the consecration) of this sacrament is an image which represents the Passion of Christ, his true immolation. "Commemoration of this immolation, it can also be called immolation, or sacrifice. This, then, for St. Thomas is the first reason why the Eucharist can be called the "perfect sacrament of the Passion": it represents it, it is the sign of it, the sacrament by antonomasia; it is, by the separate consecration of the species, the symbolic representation par excellence. Content. Yet, from this point of view of meaning, it is not superior to the sacraments of the old law. St. Thomas even remarks that several sacrifices of the ancient law, in which the blood of the victims was shed, represented the Passion in a more meaningful way. (Cf. 3a, q. 22/6/2um; 73/6/c; 74/1/lum). \ Indeed, even more than its representative value, what makes The Eucharistic Sacrifice 63 The Eucharist is the perfect sacrament of the Passion, it is its content: "Sacramentum perfectum Passionis, tanquam continens ipsum Christum passum" (13/5/2um). St. Thomas had already insinuated this in the preceding article, where, reviewing the various names given to the Eucharist, he recalled that it is called "hostia", "in quantum continet ipsum Christum, qui est 'hostia salutaris' ut dicitur Eph. V, 2" (73/4/3um). "Inasmuch as it contains Christ who is a saving host." Later, when speaking of the real presence of Christ under the holy species, he will have occasion to affirm still more clearly this superiority of the Eucharist over the sacraments of the ancient law. This will be the first reason for propriety, which he will invoke to show the harmony of the divine plan in this mystery, which can be held only by faith: "Sensu deprehendi non potest, sed sola fide". "Hoc autem conveniens est", it is appropriate first of all to the perfection of the new law: "Primo perfectioni novae legis". And here is the reason: "For the sacrifices of the old law contained only the true sacrifice of the passion, so that the sacrifice of the new law, instituted by Christ, had to have something more...". And this something more is this: "Namely, that it contained the immolated Christ Himself, not merely signifying or portraying Him, but in truth and in reality *." It is important to note that it is always to these two aspects recognized for all the sacraments, but which are appropriate by antonomasia to the Eucharist, that Saint Thomas has recourse to affirm the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, the aspect of sign, and the aspect of container. The aspect of sign representative of the Passion; that of container of containing "aliquid sacrum" something sacred, not only "ordered to something else as other sacraments, such as water of baptism contains sanctifying virtue, but something absolutely sacred, aliquid sacrum absolute, scilicet ipsum Christum" (73/1/3um). 64 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion The Mass and the Passion St. Thomas goes further: not only does he not look elsewhere for the reasons of the character of the Mass, but he also does not look for the reasons of the Passion. of the Eucharist, but it positively excludes any independence from the Passion. of the Eucharistic sacrifice It is about the priesthood of Christ (3a pars, q. 22, art. 3). He wonders whether this priesthood is effective for the remission of sins. An objection arises from the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is known that this Epistle relied on the annual repetition of the sacrifices of the ancient law to prove their inefficiency. But, it is objected, even after the Passion, the Holy Sacrifice is offered every day in the Church. It is therefore that the priesthood of Christ, like his sacrifice, that of the Passion, was not effective, and did not obtain the forgiveness of sins. Here is the answer: "The Sacrifice which is offered every day in the Church is nothing other than the sacrifice offered by Christ himself: it is the memorial of it. Thus St. Augustine says: "The priest is Christ himself in his act of offering; he himself is also what is offered. Of this offering and oblation he willed that the sacrifice of the Church should be the daily sacrament" (3a/22/3/2um). Even victim At the risk of repeating ourselves, but because of the numerous confusions which have for too long led theologians down false paths and which have perhaps not yet been completely dispelled, let us stop to spell out each of the two combined affirmations of Saint Thomas: What is offered daily by the Church is not something else, "non est aliud", than what Christ himself has offered, it is the same - object, the same victim, namely Christ himself In the text quoted here, St. Augustine writes, "ipsa oblatio". In the Eucharistic sacrifice, there is no need to look for another object offered, another victim than that of Calvary itself, namely the body and blood of Christ, whose Passion made him a victim, The Eucharistic Sacrifice 65 < ipsum Christum passum - Christ immolated himself". "Dici- tur hostia im quantum continet ipsum Christum qui est hostia salularis - the Eucharist is called a host inasmuch as it contains Christ himself who is the saving host" (3a/73/4/3um). It will suffice for us to add here the text of question 83 (art. 1), more telling if possible. St. Thomas asks whether Christ is immolated in the Eucharist. The first objection, the one whose answer interests us here, is again taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is affirmed that Christ "by one offering conferred fulfillment for ever on those who are sanctified - na enim oblatione consummavit in acternum sanctificatos. Now, the objector adds, "this offering was his immolation. The conclusion therefore seems rigorous: "Christ is not therefore immolated in the celebration of this sacrament." Let us read the answer; it is based on a text of St. John Chrysostom which is erroneously attributed to St. Ambrose: "It is the same victim (##a est hostia), namely that which Christ offered and that which we offer. There are not many (not multae) For, explains the text quoted, Christ offered himself only once and this Sacrifice (that of the Cross) is the copy of the other. In the same way that what is offered everywhere is but one body and not many bodies, so is offered but one sacrifice" (q. 83/1/ad lum). This text shows us that if in the offering of the Eucharist there is no need to look for another victim than that of Calvary - ipsum christum passum -, there is no need to look for another sacrificial act either. We aircraft seen, in fact, by studying, in question 85 of the 2a 2ge, the essential components of the sacrifice, that what distinguished it from the simple offering was "that an act was performed upon it". This act meant that it was taken away from profane use and placed in the divine domain: "guando circa res oblatas aliquid fit"; and St. Thomas gave as an example the killing of animals, the breaking or eating of bread: "sicur... quod panis frangitur et comeditur ®" (85/3/3um). Thus, whenever St. Thomas asks why and how the Eucharist is a sacrifice, the answer, sometimes in slightly different but always equivalent terms, is invaria3 66 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion It is clear that this sacrament is "the representation, the sign, the image of the Passion", of the death on the Cross voluntarily accepted and which made the body of Christ a victim, "hosfia", a "sacrifice" in the passive sense, fit to be offered again as such, "fit to be eaten", as participation in the sacrifice requires. "Crux autem fecit carnem Christi abtam manducationi, in quantum boc sacramentum repraesentat passionem Christi" (3a/ 81/3/1lum). This answer was given in connection with the Last Supper, in response to an objection which claimed that Christ had given the Apostles a body already endowed with impassibility, whereas for St. Thomas, there was given sound body, liable, as he was then in fact, but which was impassively under the holy species. The Passion Memorial Moreover, it is by referring to what Saint Thomas says about the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist that we will grasp the full significance of the end of the sentence of question 22, the beginning of which we have just commented on, namely that "the sacrifice which is offered every day on the altar is nothing other than that which Christ himself offered on the Cross". The text continued with the statement that it is not something else, "but a memorial of it. "Non est aliud à sacrificio quod Christus ipse obtulit, sed ejus commemoratio. (22/3/2um). To better understand this, let us read article 5 of question 73, where Saint Thomas seeks the propriety of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Let us note, in passing, the scope of these questions of "propriety"; they are not at all about proofs, even purely dialectical, i.e. leading only to dialectical To take them as such would be both to increase and to diminish their value. It is a question, starting from a datum held by faith, of making a work of intelligence, in order to try to grasp which of the of the harmony of the divine plan, to contemplate its marvelous design, its sovereign wisdom. The Eucharistic Sacrifice 67 The body of the article excludes any temptation to seek in the Eucharist a sacrifice independent of that of the Passion. The affirmation is peremptory: salvation can only come from faith in the Passion. In all times, therefore, something, a rite, had to be presented to men to represent it ""liquid repraesentativum dominicae passionis". Under the old law, it was the bloody sacrifices; first of all that of the Paschal Lamb, the figure par excellence of the Eucharist which succeeds it: "Our Passover, Christ, has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7)" and "antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui". This new rite is the Eucharist. It recalls the Passion already accomplished, as the Paschal Lamb prefigured it: "Successit autem ei in novo Testamento Eucharistiae sacramentum, quod est rememorativum praeteritae passionis, sicut et illud fuit praefigurativum futurae. >And the conclusion, showing the suitability of this moment for the institution of the Eucharist, is self-evident It was necessary, it was fitting that at the moment when the passion was about to be fulfilled, the Lord, after having celebrated the old sacrament, instituted the new one. veal." We remain, then, in the perspective which we had already encountered several times, and which the Epistle to the Hebrews emphatically affirms. There is salvation only in one sacrifice, that of Calvary, offered once and for all. All the rest can only be a sacrament, a figure or a reminder. The answer to the third objection will only insist and make it even more precise. The objection argued that the Eucharist being the "memorial It was not to be instituted until the Passion had been fulfilled. The answer in no way denies, but on the contrary affirms even more strongly, this "memorial" character. It states: "This sacrament was instituted at the Last Supper, in order to be, later, in the future the memorial of the Sacramentum illud fuit institutum in Coena, ut in futurum esset memoriale Dominicae passionis ea perfecta" (75/5/3m). And both the objection and the answer are based on the Lord's precept: "hoc facite in meam commemorationem - you shall do this - in the future - in memory of me." 68 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion This respondent therefore canonizes for the Eucharist, for the Eucharistic Sactifice, the term "memoriale: mernorial". And it is on this account that the Eucharist is a true sacrifice; St. Thomas had already told us: "hoc sacramentum dicitur sacrificium in quantum repraesentat ipsam passionem Christi... est commemorativum Dominicae passionis, quae fuit veruin sacrificium -- this sacrament is called a sacrifice in so far as it represents the Passion of Christ it is commemorative of the Passion of the Lord which was a true sacrifice" (3a/73/4/3um et al.). This is, moreover, the strong meaning of the term "memorial" in the Jewish liturgy, in which Jesus instituted the "memorial" of his passion. "In mei memoriam facietis 5: "Do this as my memorial. Louis Bouyer: "We must give this word (memorial) the meaning it always had in the rabbinic and especially liturgical literature of the time. fl does not mean a psychological, subjective, human act of returning to the past, but an objective reality, destined to make something or someone perpetually present before God, for God himself. This conception of the "memorial" is itself a even rooted in the Bible. The memorial is not only an essential ritual element of certain sacrifices, but what gives The final meaning of all sacrifices, and of the Passover sacrifice in particular. It is an institution, it may be said, established by God, given and imposed by Him upon His people, to perpetuate for ever his saving interventions. Not only will the memorial subjectively assure the faithful of their permanent efficacy, but first of all it will assure it, as by a pledge that they may and shall (L. Bouyer, Echaristie, théologie et spiwisnalité de la prière eucharistique, Paris-Toutnai, 1968, p. 107). Here this permanent reality is the very victim of Calvary, " ipsum Christum passum 5%, presented symbolically in his state of victim, and, as such, indissolubly linked to the act of Christ, who, by offering himself voluntarily to the Passion, made of his body and blood present on the altar, the very victim, the " sacrificinm $ of Calvary. Moreover, this "ipsum Christum passum" - the immolated Christ himself - is a The Eucharistic Sacrifice 69 The same "is present on the altar only in virtue of the words of Christ, who at the Last Supper, presenting his body and blood as a sacrificial victim, gave at the same time to his apostles the command to pronounce the same words, to do the same in the future gestures, which, by virtue of his command, would be effective in making him present on our altars. The oblation It is Christ's unique offering, prefigured at the Last Supper and realized on the Cross, which, in virtue of this commandment, perpetuates, in its immediate object, a human act definitively past of Christ. The sacrifice of Christ, offered "only once - semel" on the Cross, The sacrifice of Christ is an act of Christ as a man, since he is a priest as a man; but this priest was at the same time God, and therefore, as his human being, he was also a priest. No doubt the sacrifice of Christ is an act of Christ as a man, since it is as a man that he is a priest; but this priest was at the same time God, and consequently, as his hum- the virtue (the sanctifying power) of his sacrifice, of his act of oblation extends to all Licet Christus non fuerit sacerdos secundum quod Deus, sed secundum quod homo, unus tamen et idem fuit sacerdos et Deus. et ideo ejus humanitas operabatur in virtute divinitatis - although Christ was not a priest as God, but as man, he was one and the same who was a priest and who was God. and therefore his humanity operated in virtue of his divinity" (34/22/3/lum); a virtue "which reaches through his presence all places and all times - fingit praesentialiter omnia loca et tempora" (3a/56/1/3um). "Una oblatione", a single oblation of Christ, not repeated, but made present, in its immediate object - the Body and Blood of Christ - by the unique word of the Incarnate Word, repeated by the priest in his Person at each consecration. Because of the too frequent ignorance of this doctrine of St. Thomas, it will perhaps not be useless to quote again two texts, both taken from this same question 22 consecrated 70 The Eucharist, the perfect sacrament of the Passion to the priesthood of Christ. They are all the more relevant to us because they are found in Art. 5, in which St. Thomas asks whether Christ's priesthood remains eternally, "#2 aeternum". If for St. Thomas there had been another sacrifice at Mass than that of Calvary, it would have been natural to reply in this sense. Now, far from seeking in the Eucharistic sacrifice a new oblation in which the priesthood of Christ is exercised, it is solely to that of the Cross, to the permanence of its virtue, that the holy Doctor refers. The second difficulty opposed the permanence of the priesthood of Christ to the uniqueness of the Passion: "sed passio et mors Christi non erit in acternum. And here is the answer: "licet passio et mors Christi de cetero non sit iteranda tamen virtus îllius bostiae semel oblatae, permamet in aeternum - although the Passion and death of Christ need not be renewed, nevertheless the virtue (the dynamism) of this victim, available a only times, dwells forever." The answer to the third difficulty interests us even more. We have said above, following St. Thomas, that, although a priest, not as God, but as a man, the Christ, who was both God and priest, operated "2m virtute divinitatis", a "Virtus" which covers all times and places. But it is objected here that Christ, during the triduum of his death "was not man - #one flees homo". Did he cease to be a priest? The answer is based on the Epistle to the Hebrews, which affirms the absolute uniqueness of Christ's sacrificial act: "Una oblatione consummawit in aerternum sanctificatos - by one oblation he consumed the sanctified for ever" (Heb. X:14). This unity was figurative. The reason for this was that the High Priest entered the sanctuary only once a year. But, remarked St. Thomas, it was the nurse- The figure's "deficiency in relation to reality" obliged this annual renewal: "deficiebat figura a veritate, in boc quod illa hostia non habebat sempiternam virtutem. It is that in fact, contrary to the victim of Calvary, the one offered each year by the high priest did not have a perpetual virtue: & perpetuam virtutem ". We always have the same thought: the Eucharistic sacrifice, The Eucharistic Sacrifice 71 which is none other than that of Calvary, but its memorial "commemoratio", carries its perpetual "virtue". The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice, not independent of that of Calvary, but its memorial. In virtue of the word of Christ and his commandment, the priest makes present in it, under the species of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, as offered once on the cross. The Eucharist thus perpetuates, in its immediate object, an act of Christ that is definitively past, but whose virtue is always operative: it is by this virtue that the sacrifice of Christ, offered once on the Cross, is present on the altar each time the sacrament of the Eucharist is consecrated. And this virtue which makes it present to its immediate object, namely the body and blood of Christ, is the effect of the word, a word repeated by the priest, but the word of the Incarnate Word, instituting this memorial. In other words, a single sacrificial oblation of Christ, namely his body and blood, an oblation, not repeated, but made This is done in virtue of the one word of the Incarnate Word instituting this memorial: "Hoc est corpus meum.... Hic est calix sanguinis met." a word repeated at each consecration by the priest, acting in the Person of Christ under the motion of the command received by the Apostles at the Last Supper: "You shall do this in remembrance of me." But while consecrating in the Person of Christ, the priest also acts as a minister of the Church, who through him at each consecration offers anew the one Sacrifice of the Lord. "Sacrificiam quod quotidie in Ecclesia offertur, non est alind a sacrificio quod Christus obtulit. > This, it seems to us, is the thought of St. Thomas, and, as we shall see, also that of the Fathers of the Church, whose doctrine he merely systematizes. We shall return to this, not so much to prove this doctrine, but to penetrate it as the most authentic thought of the Church. 72 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition THE DOCTRINE OF SAINT THOMAS IN THE TRADITION The Council of Trent This is also the doctrine of the Council of Trent, and today, when the force of the term "memorial" has been forgotten, it is sometimes disputed whether it accurately reflects the doctrine. Yet it suffices to reread these conciliar texts to convince ourselves that it is as a visible sacrifice, a memorial of the Passion, that they present the Mass. Let us reread the capital passage of chapter I of the 22nd Session: "Our God and Lord, although he had to offer himself only once to God his Father by his death on the altar of the Cross, in order to effect an eternal redemption, nevertheless wished, since his priesthood was not to be extinguished with his death, to leave to his visible Church a visible sacrifice, by which he who was to be offered bloodily only once on the cross would be represented, and by which his memory would last until the end of time and his virtue would be made known to all, to leave to his visible Church a visible sacrifice, by which he who was to be offered bloodily once on the cross would be represented, and by which his memory would endure to the end of the ages and his saving power applied for the remission of the sins we commit every day - ## dilectae sponsae suae Ecclesiae visibile reliqueret sacrificum, quo cruentum illud semel in cruce peragendum repraesenbaretur ejusque memoria in finem usque saeculi permaneret atque illius salutaris virtus in remissionem eorum, quae a nobis quotidie commitituntur, peccatorum applicaretur. " "Therefore, at the Last Supper, on the very night when He was betrayed, Christ, declaring Himself to be an eternal priest, offered to God the Father His body and blood and wine, and under the same symbols His apostles (whom He thereby constituted priests the order of Melchisedech, under the species of bread, gave them to receive the New Testament) And he commanded them and their successors to offer them, saying: 'Do this in remembrance of me' - 2 'meam commemorafionem' - as the Catholic Church has always understood and taught." The Council of Trent goes on to compare the Eucharistic sacrifice with the The Enchanted Sacrifice 43 The latter is the "memorial" of the coming out of Egypt, the latter the "memorial" of Christ's passage from this world to his Father. Repre- Let us read the text where we left it: "For after celebrating the old Passover, which the multitude of the children of Israel sacrificed in remembrance of the going forth from Egypt (Christ) instituted the new Passover to be sacrificed there Himself by the Church, through (the ministry of) His priests, under visible signs, in remembrance of His passing from this world to His Father, when He redeemed us by the shedding of His Blood and "aroused us from the power of darkness, and conveyed us into His Kingdom" (Col. I, 13). In the next paragraph the Council affirms that the Mass is that "pure oblation" announced by the prophet Malachi as to be offered in all nations. And it concludes by affirming: "It is this which, under the law of nature and under the revealed law, was It is prefigured by the various images of the sacrifices, in so far as it contains all the goods signified by them, since it involves their perfection and their consummation for all. The next chapter of the same Session, wants to affirm the propitiatory character of the sacrifice of the Mass. It is especially the reasons it gives that interest us at this time. Here they are: "And because in this divine sacrifice which is accomplished in the Mass, it is the same Christ who is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, who offered Himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the Cross, the Holy Council teaches that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory..." Then, after indicating the conditions required to benefit from this propitiation, it continues, "For, appeased by this oblation, God conceding grace and the gift of penance, remits even enormous crimes and sins. For it is the same victim, the same one who now offers through the ministry of the priests, who then offered himself on the cross, the only difference being in the manner of (DZ: 940; FC. 768) *. But, lest anyone should see in the sacrifice of the Mass a sacrifice independent of that of the Cross, a sacrifice which would be one with it by bringing fruits which had not already been obtained by Calvary, the Council immediately adds: "This 74 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition The fruits of this oblation (of the bloody oblation, we say) are received abundantly by the non-bloody one, without the least injury being done to the bloody one! The Mass, then, does not derogate from the uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice, from the "semel" so often repeated by the Epistle to the Hebrews; the Council by this incision joins, intentionally or not, the "on est aliud" of Saint Thomas. We must still quote a canon, the 3rd, which resumes, under In the form of anathema, the affirmations of the chapters, brings a new precision: "If anyone says that the Sacrifice of the Mass is only a sacrifice of praise or thanksgiving, or an empty commemoration of the sacrifice made on the cross, let him be anathema. Beware here of French translations: they have been the source of more than one error, as we shall soon see. Where the common translation (Lepin, F.C.) writes: "simple commemoration ", The Latin had "nudam commemorationem": "nudam" seems to be opposed to "plenam": it means "deprived of", "deprived", and thus it is directly opposed to the Protestant Last Supper, a simple commemoration, deprived of the content of the victim of Calvary. The point of the anathema is not on "commemoratio", a term used elsewhere by the Council itself, but on the qualifier "ndam", on the emptiness of a commemoration which would not contain the very victim of Calvary. Here again we can see the complete harmony between the doctrine of the Council and that of St. Thomas. The latter had already warned us that the Eucharist was not only a telling representation of the Passion, but that it contained the very victim of Calvary, L "ipsum Christum passum", and that it was up to the Eucharist to provide the victim of Calvary with the means of commemoration. It is a sign and a container - a title proper to the sacraments of the new law - that it is the "Sacramentum perfectum passiomis". It is true that one might be surprised that the Council did not take up this expression, so significant and precise, from the Holy Doctor. But it should not be forgotten that, on the one hand, while giving a place of honour to St Thomas in its deliberations, it did not want to The Eucharistic Sacrifice 75 canonize the doctrine of an author and create a division between the various Catholic theological schools; let us remember that, on the other hand, Protestants, against which he had to defend the ortho- doxia, did not admit, because of their nominalist prejudices, the effectiveness, causality, content the sacraments for them than pure signs. In such Eucharistic fice as the sacrament adding the perfect word, or else would have tions, or would have risked being understood they were not the Passion, even when asked for long explanations of a "nwdam commemo- rationem >", that of the Protestant Last Supper condemn. that it was necessary to But if he did not ratify the term, he formulated the doctrine clearly enough. We have seen that for Saint Thomas the Eucharistic Sacrifice is "sacramentum perfectum passionis", in a double capacity: that of the "significatio", that of the presence of the victim of Calvary. These two titles were both clearly affirmed in the conciliar texts which we have just read: "The unique sacrifice of Calvary is represented there: 'repraesentaretur'" "It is the one and same victim which is offered today by the ministry of the priests and which offered itself on Calvary. >Una eademque est bostia. "Idem ille Christus continetur." Finally, as Thomas, the Council, in order to express the nature of Christ's sacrifice, uses the very words of Christ when he instituted it "hoc facite in meam commemorationem >". He not only made it clear, because of the Protestant error, that this commemoration was not empty " ##dam ", a mere external representation, but he affirmed, and repeatedly, especially in allusion to the Passover, that it is the " memoria " the memorial perma- It is a "memorial" of the passage of Christ from this world to his Father, as the ancient Passover was of the going out of the captivity of Egypt. What can legitimately surprise us is how this doctrine could so easily be ignored by post-Trent theologians, even the best. 76 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition The answer, it seems, lies in the climate of controversy which the Council had sought to put an end to, but which still remained in the minds and in theological studies. From Trent onwards, and for several centuries afterwards, it was against the Protestants that the character of the Eucharist as a sacrifice was asserted; and as happens all too often, alas, in these doctrinal disputes, while the conclusions of the adversary are refuted, it is neglected to go back to the principles which dictated them; sometimes it is even imprudent to start from them as from common presuppositions. Among these presuppositions, there is one which will leave its mark on almost all later theology and which is common to it and to Protestantism: it is the nominalistic cowrant, who no longer sees in the term "memorial" or "commemoration" the full and strong meaning which tradition had hitherto recognized, but only a psychological reminder of a past event. Another is the Lutheran exegesis of the Epistle to the Romans, which, through an overly material interpretation of the " fecit pro nobis maledictum > ", instead of recognizing in the satisfaction the vicar of Christ, In this way, the sacrifice of Christ, expiating in his flesh the debt of our faults, a free act of love and supreme mercy, wants to see in it the vengeance of God's justice exercised on Christ as on the scapegoat charged with the weight of our sins. From then on, sacrifice is no longer, as we have seen, the act by which we recognize God as Creator and final end, but above all that by which we confess his right of life and death over the sinner. Sacrifice can therefore only consist in the killing and destruction of the victim. There will be no sacrifice other than a bloody one. We are obviously simplifying or rather schematising; but it is very difficult to do otherwise when it is a question of the positions of the Reformers, positions which are as different from each other as from those of the Catholic authors who are trying to defend the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. For these, also, two other confusions of the diversity of their opinions: were the reason for the The Eucharistic Sacrifice I the disregard of the traditional doctrine of sacrifice, such as as expounded by St. Thomas, a doctrine which does not distinguish between oblation and immolation as two distinct acts within the sacrifice, but rather considers immolation as the mode It is also a misunderstanding of the thought of the Council which, when it speaks of the immolation of the Mass, presents it as an unbloody immolation (incruentam) and consequently takes this term in the sense in which it is explained by St. Thomas in question 83/1, that is to say, as a picture of the immolation of Calvary, an image bearing his "virius". On the contrary, many, not to say most, post-Council theologians interpret this term as requiring a killing, or at least a present diminution of the victim. Having recognized these presuppositions, it will now suffice to classify, in a very schematic and approximate manner, the theories into three groups '7. A. Those who seek in the Mass itself, with or without reference to the cross (cf. Buathier, quoted by Lepin, p. 595), either the complete destruction of the victim, or at least its real diminution. But even among them the differences are innumerable: - For some this destruction is that of the bread and wine, which the consecration changes to the body and blood of Christ. The victim of the sacrifice would then no longer be Christ, but the bread and wine. - For others, much more numerous, it is in Christ that this immutation must be found: this will be sometimes a destruction by mystical immolation, the word of the priest being like the spiritual sword, which at the consecration, if Christ had not happily become immortal, would put him to death by separating his body and blood "5 verborum" (Lessius, Billuart) (Lessius, Billuart can be quoted); for others this destruction to the less will be carried out through communion, by that of the priest, destroying by the manducation, body present under the holy species (Bellarmine); the 78 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition - Some others, without demanding a real destruction, see in the sacrifice a real immutation, making the victim pass into a state of inferiority: by the consecration Christ is reduced to the state of food fit for eating; he is in a state of impotence under the holy species; he is - and we know how much the pious literature of the last century and even of the beginning of this one abused this image - the divine prisoner of the tabernacle. This theory, more or less suggested by some of the theologians immediately after Trent, was widely disseminated by the Jesuit Franzelin (+ 1886), professor at the Roman College, of which influence was exerted on a large part of the clergy (perhaps especially in France). B. Another group can be characterized by the distinction it proposes between oblation, immolation, sanctification, etc, as distinct acts within the sacrifice. For them the Mass would be the oblation of Christ, always in a state of immolation in Heaven. This oblation would be for them more visibly represented at Mass than on the cross itself. C. Finally, we can classify in a third group the theologians who, at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of this one, under the influence of Leo XIII, began a return to the doctrine of Saint Thomas, to which, moreover, they only gradually achieved. One of the first, and in any case the one who perhaps exercised the strongest influence on the clergy of France was Louis Billot, later Cardinal, who succeeded Franzelin at the Gregorian. Returning to St. Thomas and his classification of the sacrifice as a sacrament, in the category of sign, he sees in the separation of the species, in the sacramental sign of the Eucharist, the sign of the interior sacrifice of Christ, and therefore, according to the definition of St. Augustine, a true sacrifice: "Sacrificium visibile invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, id est sacrum signum, est." He is on the right track, that of the sacramental sacrifice which Dom Vonier will take up with greater happiness; but he seems to pass directly from the "sacrementum tantum," from the sign, to the "res" the interior sacrifice of Christ, without to involve the "vireus" of the Calvary act enough, The Eucharistic Sacrifice 79 Father de la Taille A little later than Billot, the Gregorian city, after having it from Angers, Fr. Maurice to attach it more closely to the and professor like him at the University, like him also, to the one Size saw clearly the necessity of the Eucharistic sacrifice to that of Calvary. His work, Mysterium fidei, published in 1921, marks a It is a milestone in the history of the theology of the Eucharistic sacrifice; it also marks a great step in the return to the thought of St. Thomas. Unfortunately, it is not the case, French - tributary the French school of thought. of Condren in particular - he sees in the oblation and immolation two distinct acts, both essential to the sacri- fice. The application he makes of it is seductive by its apparent simplicity and its clarity: it can be read in the table of contents itself. Only one immolation: that of Calvary. Two oblations, which form the basis of two sacrifices: that of the Last Supper, "Sacrificium dominicum", that of the Mass, "Sacrificium ecclesiasticum". For him, the immolation of Calvary cannot in itself constitute a sacrifice, if it was not the object of an oblation (and in this we see how he departs from Saint Thomas, affirming that the sacrifice of Calvary is constituted by the free will of the Lord to give himself up to the immolation). This oblation, the Lord made it The Lord's Supper and the Cross are thus complementary as necessary elements of the Lord's Sacrifice. As for the Mass, the Sacrifice of the Church, it is only the oblation by the Church of the very immolation of Calvary. From then on it is closely connected with it, but then it is no longer possible to see how it is not another sacrifice than that of Christ himself offering at the Last Supper the immolation of Calvary, In spite of the light shed by this magnificent work, which contributed in no small measure to bringing theology back onto the path of fidelity to Saint Thomas, it must be admitted that it does not achieve its goal for at least two reasons. First of all, it distinguishes oblation and immolation as two separate acts, whereas, for Saint Thomas and Trent, immolation 80 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition is only the mode of oblation which characterizes the sacrifice. He is still influenced by the anti-Protestant controversy, which wants to see in every sacrifice a bloody immolation. Moreover, he departs from Scripture and from the constant Tradition of the Church, as of the clearest statements of St. Thomas, by refusing to recognize the Passion, on its own, without the preliminary of the Last Supper, the character of a true, we should say of a true redemptive sacrifice. If Father de la Taille, by his thorough study, rich in traditional texts and profound views, brought precious material to theology and provoked the enthusiasm of his students, his theory seems to be the starting point of the attitude which today rejects the Ordo Missae of Paul VI as not fulfilling the conditions for the tions of the sacrifice. This refusal is based in fact on two points: the absence of a fairly explicit offertory - one recognizes here the influence of de la Taille - and an understanding in the nominalistic sense of the term "memorial", which understands it in the Protestant sense, like the "w%da commemoratio" condemned by the Council of Trent, without taking into account that the condemnation concerned the "#wda" and not the noun, taken up again by the Council itself on more than one occasion, as expressing the essence of the sacrifice of the Mass *. Justification of Saint Thomas If indeed we are attached to the theological explanation of the sacrifice of the Mass, such as we thought we read in the texts of St. Thomas, it's not just, nor even princi- The reason for this is, first of all, out of respect for the thought of a Doctor so highly recommended by the Church, and secondly, because it seems to us to be the only one which gives a satisfactory account of all the points of doctrine which cannot be abandoned. All the other theories seem to us to be difficult to reconcile, not to say incompatible, with several of these points of doctrine. We will see this when we enumerate some of them: The Eucharistic Sacrifice 81 a) The victim offered or sacrificed at Mass is the same as that of Calvary (cf. Council of Trent). It is therefore necessary to exclude the theories which see in the immutation of the bread, through the consecration, the essence of the sacrifice. b) No action can be taken at present on Christ who is in the Eucharist as he is actuated in Heaven, and upon whom a action, even instrumental did not jump have no prized. It is therefore necessary to exclude all theories which claim that the sacrifice consists either in the destruction, by sacramental eating, of Christ present under the species, or in the alleged power of the sacred words of the Church. to put him to death by setting aside his body and blood in the church. double consecration. It may be significant to note that St. Thomas does envisage the case of this consecration over the body and blood, really separated in the triduum of the mott, but by no means a separating consecration. - It may be significant to note that St. Thomas considers the case of this consecration over the body and blood, really separated in the triduum of the Word, but not a separating consecration. c) Nor can any rite act upon Christ himself, now living in Heaven, to make him perform a new act of oblation at each Mass. To claim otherwise would be magic and would go directly against the uniqueness of the Sacrifice of the Chtist, against the "jemel" from the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therefore, theories which seek in the Mass a new act of oblation of Christ by himself must be excluded. d) At Mass, according to the Council of Trent, it is not only the same victim of Calvary is present, but the same priest. It is therefore necessary to exclude the theories which would oppose, as adequately distinct, the oblation of the Victim of Calvary by the 82 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition Christ alone, on the evening of Holy Thursday, to his oblation by his Mystical Body, the Church, to the point of ignoring the fact that the consecration "in which the sacrifice is offered" is always effected in the Person of Christ, the principal priest, by his minister. e) Moreover, tradition has always considered Calvary as a complete sacrifice in itself, which was not merely the second stage of a sacrifice begun at the Last Supper. Therefore, any sacrificial theory that would consider the immolation as only a part of the sacrifice, requiring to be completed by a separate act of offering, must be excluded. Immolation is the mode of oblation proper to the sacrifice. f) The sacrifice of the Mass must also be the same as the Sacrifice of Calvary (Council of Trent). Same sacrifice, meaning It is necessary to be official of the outside mass does not the inner sacrifice. therefore excluding the theory according to the mass would be saved by the sufficient of the inner sacrifice would be more the sign of the sacrifice which the sacred character makes it a sign of Christ. In this case the exterior of Calvary. g) finally, it is contradictory, and consequently unfeasible even by miracle, for a past moment to be made present, whereas a past act, by its greenness (its dynamism) can remain present and thus be presented again (re-presented) in its effect: "actio agentis est im passo." All these points are, on the contrary, completely respected in the doctrine of St. Thomas, as we have been able to read it in the Summa; we note them in particular in these capital affirmations, commented on in the preceding pages: "The sacrifice offered daily in the Church is not other than the sacrifice offered by Christ himself, but his memorial" (3a, q. 22). The Eucharist was instituted at the Last Supper: "To be in the future the memorial of the Passion, once it is completed" (3a/73/5/3um). "The Eucharist is the perfect sacrament of the Lord's Passion, . The Eucharistic Sacrifice 83 inasmuch as it contains the immolated Christ himself" (:b44., ad Zum). "The virtue of this host once offered remains eternally *" (3a/22/5/2um). These statements of St. Thomas, which we have just recalled, converge in order to give an account, without injuring any of the points to be held, of the link of the Mass with the Last Supper and Calvary. They invite us to see: a unique act of Christ ("semel"), voluntarily offering himself, once and for all, to the immolation of Calvary " hoc ipsum opus quod voluntarie passionem sustinuit.... "; prefiguring this immolation at the Last Supper, by the institution of a rite symbolically representing the immolation; rite which makes present, at each consecration, in virtue of the commandment "you shall do this in memory of me", not only the victim, but also the very oblation of Calvary, oblation always remaining present in the victim constituted by the Passion in this victimal state. Moreover, this doctrine does not look for any other essential rite in the Mass than that of the Lord's Supper itself, where the anticipated offering of the memorial was not signified or accomplished other than by the consecratory words themselves: "In the consecration of the sacrament the Sacrifice is offered" (3a/72/10/c). "The consecration of the Eucharist, in which a sacrifice is offered to God" (5h54. ad 1um) *". The Witness of Tradition. The doctrine of St. Thomas on the Mass not only has the advantage, which we should expect from any theological explanation, of giving a perfect account of all the data of the faith; it has a considerable interest, too long ignored, that of being the culmination and the flowering of a theological tradition in which the East and the West come together. If, in fact, the precious contribution of Aristotelian philosophy, digested, as it were, by the lucid intelligence of St. Thomas, provided him with the instrument of analysis and reduction capable of 84 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition to give scientific status to the doctrine of the Fathers, we know, and we discover more and more today, how much he wanted to remain faithful to them. For the most part, moreover, this tradition came to him, carried by the liturgical texts*, by the Sentences of Pierre Lombard which he had the first task of commenting on, of "reading" at the Faculty of Paris, Sentences which were themselves, as their title implies, a collection of the principal texts of the Fathers of the Church or of more recent authors. We can therefore, in order to show this link of Thomistic theology of the Sacrifice of the Mass with Tradition, begin by reading the passage by Pierre Lombard that relates to it. It is quite short, theological controversies being then centred on the discussions with Berenger and interested especially in the question of the real presence, more than in that of the sacrifice in itself. The text of Lombard is nevertheless revealing as an immediate source of St. Thomas, and brings us, in addition, several passages from the Fathers, of which one in particular will arrest us. Here is the text of Peter Lombard, his own reflections. They can be found in the 4th Book of the Sentences, Distinction XIL n° 7. After studying the permanence of the accidents after the consecration, the author comes to ask whether the mass can legitimately be called a sacrifice or an immolation. But let us take the text, "After this it is asked whether what the priest does is called in the proper sense sacrifice or immolation, and whether Christ is immolated every day, or whether he was immolated only once. "To which it may be briefly answered that what is offered and consecrated by the priest is called sacrifice and oblation, because it is the memorial and representation of the true sacrifice and holy immolation accomplished on the altar of the cross. Christ also died only once on the Cross, and was sacrificed there in himself; but every day he is sacrificed in the sacrament, because Following this solution summarized by the Master of the Sentences, the texts on which it is based are quoted. The one which will be of interest to us is attributed by the author to Saint Ambrose, as he had The Eucharistic Sacrifice 85 was by Yves of Chartres, as it will be after Lombard by St. Thomas (3a, 83, to. 1, ad um); it is in reality by St. John Chrysostom, which gives it great importance, because, taken up since Raban Maur by Latin authors, it represents at the both the Greek and Latin traditions. It is taken from Homily XVII on the Epistle to the Hebrews (PG. 63, 129-130, with the translation used by Lombard, pp. 249-250). We can read it as we find it in the Patrology, using the translation given by M. Lepin o.c. pp. 42-43. The question that St. John Chrysostom asks is how, if Christ was only offered once, we can nevertheless offer him every day. We can note here the parallelism with question 22 of the Summa. But let us read the text: "In Christ, on the contrary (in contrast to the sacrifices of the (In Christo autem contra: semel est oblatus, et in perpetuum satis fuit). But what do we do? Do we not offer every day? We offer, indeed, but in remembrance of his death; and there is only one host, not many. Why only one and not many? Because it was offered only once, and was carried into the Holy of Holies; and it is this sacrifice which is the copy of ours. We always offer the same victim... that is why the sacrifice is one (Proinde unum is sacrificial). Should Does this mean that because he is offered in many places, there are many Christs? No, indeed, but there is everywhere only one Christ, fully existing here and fully there: one body. In the same way For he who is offered everywhere is one body and not several bodies; in the same way it is the same sacrifice everywhere. Our Pontiff is the one who offered the host that purifies us. It is this same host that we offer now, which although offered then, cannot be consumed. But what we do is done in commemoration of what was done (formerly). "Do this" - he says, "in remembrance of me." It is not another sacrifice (non aliud sacrificium) but the same one we always make. And it is rather the memory of a sacrifice that we make. If we cannot expect from sermons pronounced before the people the same precision as that of a scientific work like the Summa, we already find as if in germ, in the text that 86 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition We have just read the very ideas and terms that will be developed by St. Thomas. Saint John Chrysostom used the term "memorial". St. Augustine used the term "sacramentum" in a letter to Boniface, a letter often quoted by medieval authors: "Was not Christ himself sacrificed only once? He is nevertheless sacrificed, in sacrament - famen in sacramento - not only on every Easter solemnity, but also every day in the presence of the people; and it is not a lie, if you are asked, to answer that Christ is indeed sacrificed. For if the sacraments had not some resemblance to the things of which they are sacraments, they would not be not the sacraments "(Ep. 98 ad Bonifacium, PL. 33, 363; quoted by Lepin 9, 1. p. 38). This term "sacrament" of the passion is found in another text of the same doctor: "Verus ille mediator... et sacerdos est, ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio. Cujus rei sacramentum quotidianum esse voluit Ecclesiae sacrificéum." - "This true mediator is also a priest, he is the one who offers, he is the offering. It is from this reality that he wished the daily sacrifice of the Church to be the sacrament" (De Civi. Dei, X, c. XX, PL. 41.298, trans. Lepin, ol. p. 79). With this term of sacrament, attributed to the sacrifice of the Mass, It is the identity of the obliterator and the offering that we find affirmed in this passage. The same idea, if not the same term, is used by St. John Chrysostom in the homily from which we have quoted above: "He is the sacrifice and the priest and the host." By whom was it offered? - By himself. Here the Apostle calls him not only priest, but host and sacrifice - hic dicit non solum sacerdotem sed et hbostiam et sacrificium >". (Note that he It is a question here of the sacrifice of the Mass (Migne, P.G. 63, 129). Along with St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine, the testimony of two other doctors will assure us of the concordance in this same doctrine of the West and the East. Several passages from the letter of St. Cyprian "ad Caecilium", : The Eucharistic Sacrifice 87 This letter was written to invite the recipient to maintain the rite of mixing water and wine in the chalice. (See Lepin, p. 73.) This letter was written to invite the recipient to maintain the rite of mixing the water and wine in the chalice. St. Cyprian relies on the identity of the sacrifice of the Mass and that of the Lord's Supper to demonstrate the need to make the rite conform in every respect to the exemplar: the chalice over which the Lord pronounced the words of consecration contained wine, mxtum (water and wine) : "By this we see that the blood of Christ is not offered if the wine is missing in the chalice, and that the sacrifice of the Lord is not regularly celebrated if our oblation and our sacrifice do not respond to the Passion" (Ep. 63, ad Caecilium, IX, 3, trans. Bayard, Paris 1925 pr 205)". "That if it is prescribed by the Lord and repeated by his apostle, to do, whenever we drink the chalice in memory of the Lord, what the Lord himself did, we find that we are not observing what has been recommended to us, if we do not ourselves do what the Lord did (5bid. X, 2, p. 205). Finally, these dense lines: "And because we mention his Passion in all our sacrifices, the Lord's Passion is indeed the sacrifice we offer - passio est enim Domini sacrificinm quod offerimus - we must do nothing else but what he has done. For Scripture tells us that whenever we offer the chalice in memory of the Lord and his Passion, we must do what it is clear that the Lord has done" (:bid, XVII, 1 ; p. 210-211). Is this not equivalent to what we have read in saint Thomas: "Sacrificium quod quotidie in Ecclesia offertur, non est aliud a sacrificio quod Christus ipse obtulit sed ejus commemoratio"? Before concluding, we would still like - and we apologize for the fact that we are In this regard, it is important to mention a text which is less well known, since it was only published in our language in 1949: it is the catechetical homily of Theodore of Mopsueste on the Eucharist. What we have to say about it," writes its learned editor in his introduction, "can be summarized as follows The Eucharist is a memorial, a presence, a figure. In the old covenant, the sacrifice was adapted to the earthly order, casual, repeated; the victims followed one another... The 88 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition The sacrifice we celebrate is a memorial of this universal sacrifice of Christ, whose stages are reproduced in the liturgy of the Mass" (R. M. Tonneau, o.p., Les Homélies catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsueste; Studi e Testi, n. 145, p. XXXII). It is by following these steps that the catechesis of Theodore explains to the catechumens the nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Let us stop at a few points which have more especially to do with our subject. Let us begin with this statement which can be considered as the title or the summary of the whole fifteenth catechesis: "We must know, then, that what we eat is a kind of sacrifice that we make. For although in food and drink we remember the death of our Lord, and although we think that these things are a remembrance of his Passion, since he said: 'This is my body which was broken for you, and this is my blood which was shed for you,' it is clear that in the liturgy it is like a sacrifice that we are making. For this is the work of the Pontiff of the New Covenant: to offer that sacrifice by means of which the New Covenant is made manifest. It is therefore evidently a sacrifice, without it being something new, nor his own, that he (the priest) accomplishes; but it is a memorial of this true immolation" (Hom. XV, p. c. p. 485). Here again, as in Saint Thomas, it is not a question of a new sacrifice, but of the memorial of the Passion. We find again the same affirmation a few pages further on: & All the priests of the New Covenant offer the same sacrifice continually, in every place and at all times: because unique also is the sacrifice which was offered for us all, (that) of Christ Our Seipneut, who for our sake accepted death and by the oblation of this sacrifice purchased for us perfection, as it says the blessed Paul: "For by one oblation," he says, "he has made perfect forever those who are $anctified." "Now all of us, in all places, at all times, and continually, it is the memorial of this same sacrifice that we make, because every time we eat from this bread and drink from this chalice, The Eucharistic Sacrifice 89 (Ibid. 19-20; pp. 495-497) And continuing his explanation of the rites of the Mass, Theodore continues: "When this reading (of the names of the living and the dead who are remembered) is completed, the Pontiff then comes forward for the liturgy, while the herald of the Church, the deacon (....), calls out first of all, "Look to the oblation"; and thus he urges everyone to look carefully to the oblation, for it is a matter of the com- community that is about to take place. A sacrifice of the community immolated, and an oblation of the community is is offered. It is well evident that it is the same thing that we call "offering the oblation" and "immolating the oblation," since it is a kind of fearful victim that is immolated and therefore offered to God, as the blessed Paul, who sometimes says, "Christ did this once for all by immolating himself," and sometimes, "For which cause it was necessary that this one should have something to offer." So since it is a similitude of this immolation that we do, we call it "oblation" or "anaphora" of the oblation. This is why the deacon rightly says before the presentation of the oblation: "Look towards the oblation" (Ibid. n. 44, pp. 529-531). The following homily explains to the people how this oblation is to take place. It begins with the pontiff's blessing: "After this blessing, the pontiff prepares the people by saying, 'Lift up your spirits,' to show that, although it is on earth that we are supposed to perform this dreadful, ineffable liturgy, it is nevertheless there (high up), towards heaven, that we must look and direct the intention of our souls towards God, because we are making a memorial of the sacrifice and death of Our Lord Christ, who for our sake suffered and rose again, and who is seated at the right hand of God and is in heaven. We too, therefore, must direct the gaze of our soul there and, from this memorial, carry our heart there" (Hom. XVI, n. 3, pp. 539-541). "It is therefore necessary that the Pontiff, according to the law of the priesthood, should present a request and supplication to God, so that the coming of the Holy Spirit may take place, and that grace may come from above over the bread and wine presented, so that it may be seen that it is truly the body and blood of Our Lord which is the memorial of immortality. 90 The doctrine of St. Thomas in the tradition For the body of our Lord Christ, which is also of our nature, was first mortal by nature, but by means of of the resurrection he passed into an immortal and unchanging nature. When, therefore, the Pontiff says that this (bread and wine) is the body and blood of Christ, he clearly reveals that they became so by the Holy Spirit, and that through him they became immortal, that the body of our Lord also, when he was anointed with the Spirit, thus clearly showed itself. In the same way nant again, when comes the Holy Spirit, is as the coming - because and received many a type We believe that the bread and wine presented to us were anointed by the grace that came upon them. And therefore we believe them to be the body and blood of Christ, immortal, incorruptible, impassible and unchangeable by nature, as it happened to the body of our Lord by means of the Resurrection" (Hom. XVI, 12; p. 553). If Theodore of Mopsuestia could rightly be considered, in matters of Christology, as a Nestorian before the letter, his catecheses, on the other hand, very close to those of St. Cyril of Alexandria, while taking on a more pronounced eschatological accent, are regarded as a faithful echo of the sacramental doctrine of the Church. Thus, from the fifteenth century onwards, they bear witness to the deeply traditional roots of the theology of St. Thomas, for whom the Eucharistic sacrifice is not "another" than that of Calvary, but is seen as its "memorial". Far from being "empty", this memorial contains the very victim of Calvary. vaire, which each consecration places and offers again on the altar, in virtue of the oblating act of Christ himself, whose own words each priest, by his command and in his Person, pronounces. The dogma of the Real Presence Unity of the Eucharist in St. Thomas In the old law, there were separate ceremonial precepts for the sacrifices on the one hand and the sacraments on the other. "In the In the new law, on the contrary, the sacrifice itself is nothing other than the sacrament of the altar - In nova lege, ipsum sacrificium est sacramentum altaris" (La 2ae, 101/4/2um). After the preparatory ceremonies, St. Thomas remarks in commenting on the rite of the Eucharist, "we come to the celebration of the mystery which is both offered as a sacrifice and received as a sacrament - acceditur ad celebrationem mysterii, quod quidem et offertur ut sacrificium et comeditur et sumitur ut sacramentum" (3a/83/4/0). Also, it is in the same treatise, that of the Eucharist, that Saint Thomas, in the third part of his Summa, studies these two external acts of religion, which in a previous analysis * he had treated separately, and which he brings together here in the mystery of their mysterious realization under the new law. Let us stop for a moment to seek the reason for this. At the beginning of our study of the cultic mission of the Church, we had already stopped to see how and why this mission, like that of teaching, came from the Father. If, in fact, sacrifice is for man a duty which derives its primary raison d'être from his condition as a creature, coming from God and being able to find its final end only in Him, if this duty is not become all the more imperative because of his sinful state, and if he 92 The dogma of the real presence From then on, the task takes on a new purpose, that of appeasing the Majesty of the offended God and regaining his friendship; man himself is now unable to fulfil it. left to himself- Indeed, the offering that can be accepted, that can appease the offended Majesty and be pleasing to Him, can no longer be found: neither on the side of the interior sacrifice: the heart of man having become, through sin, the enemy of God; nor on the side of the visible sacrifice, expression of the interior sacrifice: no object external to man, if it cannot represent the interior offering of a pure heart, being capable of satisfying for the offense. Before we can offer this external object, this victim, to God, We must therefore have received it first as of Mercy, putting it into our hands as a host of pleasant odour capable of pleasing God and of being reconciled with him. "Among all the gifts which God bestowed on mankind a free gift of sorts, of us reconhuman, fallen by sin, the main one is that of his only Son, as written St. John: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life." "Therefore," adds St. Thomas, "the first of all sacrifices is that by which Christ himself 'offered himself to God in the odor of sweetness. "Therefore all the other sacrifices in the old law were offered to figure this one sacrifice, the sacrifice par excellence, as the perfect is figured by the imperfect...." The time for figures is now past: this perfect sacrifice, which all those of the old law prefigured, was offered by Christ Himself, once for all, on Calvary. But if this sacrifice, this offering of himself by Christ, has merited forgiveness for us, if it has reconciled the human race with God, it has not, for all that, dispensed men from the doubly well-founded duty of translating into an outward sacrifice the recognition of their condition as creatures and their state as sinners. It is therefore necessary that the sacrifice of Calvary, the only one accepted by God, can still be offered by us today, after twenty centuries, presented to God, as the sign and external expression of our own offering. The dogma of the real presence 93 The institution of the Eucharist responded to this request. There was never any possibility of salvation," St. Thomas remarks, without an act of faith in the Passion of Christ. Therefore, at all times there must have been something to represent the Lord's Passion to man. "Under the ancient law, this sign, this "sacrament," at least the main one, was a sign of faith. cipal, was the Paschal Lamb. Under the new law it was succeeded by the sacrament of the Eucharist, a sacrament which is a reminder of the past Passion, just as the Paschal Lamb was the prefigurement of it before it was accomplished. Our sacrifice, that of the new law, will therefore also be a sign, a <"sacrament" no longer figurative of the Passion to come, but memorial of the unique sacrifice of Calvary. Only there will be all the immense difference which separates the New Testament from the Old. The sacrament of the Passion which will constitute our sacrifice will no longer be a simple representation, a purely psychological reminder, capable only of serving as a point of support, a relay for the faith of the oblator. What we will then be able to offer to God will not only be the homage of our faith to the Passion to come, but, present under the sign, the very victim of Calvary, a victim that God has given us twice, both in the redemptive Incarnation, when he sent his Son to offer himself, and in the Eucharist where, by the consecration, he makes it present under the species of bread and wine. It is this sacrament, this gift of God, that we offer as a sacrifice. And this," remarks St. Thomas, "is in full harmony with the perfection of the new law. The Sacraments of the Old Law In the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The law was but a shadow of the good things to come, not the image of them. It was necessary, therefore, that the sacrifice of the new law, instituted by Christ, should have It contained Christ himself, not only as a sign or figure, but in truth and reality (3a/75/1/c). This sacrament, as we have seen, is really 4% sacrifice: its consequence is that it is the sacrifice of Christ. cration is the offering to God of an object outside ourselves, 94 The dogma of the real presence signifying our offering domestic; it is "the sacrament perfect It is the "offering of the Passion of Christ", the offering of the immolated Christ. It is also a true sacrament, belonging as it does to This is the type of the external acts of worship and consists in "the use of a divine gift", according to the definition given by the 2a 2ae of this category of external acts of worship. We assume this sacrament, a divine object, in order to make it our sacrifice, just as our eating will subsequently assume it, so that we may participate, by communion with the victim, in the fruits of the Sacrifice thus offered. But the Eucharist is fully both: sacrifice and sacrament, and it is so in the perfect manner befitting the New Testament, only because it is the sacrament of the real presence of the immolated Christ, whose body and blood, separated on Calvary, it really and substantially contains. Before going any further, we must now pause to consider the dogma and mystery of the Real Presence. Importance of the dogma The order we have followed, starting with our study of It is not personal to us that the Eucharist is the same as that of the Mass. This is also the position taken by His Holiness Paul VI in his encyclical Myste- rium Fidei, September 3, 1965: "What we have just summarized concerning the sacrifice of the Mass, leads us to speak also of the sacrament of the Eucharist. This sacrifice and this sacrament belong to at the same mystery and we cannot separate the one from the other. The Lord immolates himself in an unbloody manner in the sacrifice of the Mass, which represents the sacrifice of the cross and applies its saving virtue, at the moment when, by the effect of the words of consecration, he begins to be sacramentally present as the spiritual food of the faithful under the species of bread and wine" (N. 34; Documentation col. 1641). Catholic, n. 1456, We have just seen the importance of the real presence for the sacrifice of the Mass to be a true sacrifice "fanquam continens ipsum Christum passum". It is no less indispensable for that the Passion communion. may we share in the fruits of the The dogma of the real presence 95 The liturgy has, moreover, marked magnificently this primordial importance of the real presence by giving the feast of the Blessed Sacrament the title of Corpus Christi. We should not be surprised, therefore, by the importance given to it by St. Thomas, which may have given many the impression that this insistence would have left in the shade the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. Of the eleven questions devoted in the Summa to the Eucharist, three deal with the real presence; they are devoted, q. 75, to the conversion of substances, q. 76, to the mode of presence of the Christ in the Eucharist, q. 77, to the permanence of accidents and its consequences, not to mention the fact that this doctrine is everywhere assumed in the whole treatise. The questions which deal with it ex professo do not apply in any way to proving the fact of the real presence, but only to showing how it is possible to account for it and to refute its adversaries. From the outset, in fact, we are told "that this presence of Christ cannot be the object of experience, but is a truth that can only be grasped by faith supported by the authority of the Word of God - Dicendum quod verum corpus Christi et sanguinem esse im hoc sacramento, sensu deprehendi non potest, sed sola fide, quae auctoritati divinae innititur" (3a/75/1/0). It is therefore to this divine authority that we must first of all refer, as it has been transmitted to us by the Church, in particular as the inspired writers have recorded it for us in Scripture, and as the Magisterium, as the errors that challenged it were brought to affirm it in a more and more precise manner. Later on, especially with regard to the modern philosophical suppositions which have called into question the scriptural data, we shall stop to examine them more closely. We shall do this all the more easily if we have followed the discussions or errors which, in the course of the centuries, have arisen on the subject of the real presence, and the increasingly clear-cut positions taken by the Church. 96 The progressive elaboration of dogma THE DEVELOPMENT PROGRESSIVE FROM DOGME The first controversies We know what place the distinction between sacramentum and res, sign and reality, which was so marked in the theology developed after St. Augustine, has had in his work. There have been entire theological treatises- It is around this distinction that the first authors who tried to elaborate a "theology of the Eucharist" in the ninth century clashed. It was around this distinction that the first authors who tried to elaborate a theology of the Eucharist, the monks of Corbie, Paschase Radbert and Ratramme, came up against in the 9th century, and that of Fulda, Raban Maur. How could the body of Christ actually be in the Eucharist if it was to be classified as a sign? We know how, in the eleventh century, this dialectic of opposition between sign and reality, sacramentum and res, led Berenger to the position, at least ambiguous, which led the Roman Council of 1079 to impose on him an oath explicitly recognizing the real presence: "I believe with my heart and confess with my mouth that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar, are, by the mystery of sacred prayer and by the words of our Redeemer, substantially changed into the true, proper, and life-giving flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, after the consecration, are the true body of Christ, who was born of the Virgin, and who, being offered for the salvation of the world, was hanged on the Cross, and is seated at the right hand of God, and the: true blood of Christ, which flowed from his side; that they are not only according to the sign and by sacramental virtue, but in property of nature and in truth of substance" (DZ. 335). Less than a century later, a great step was taken by a lesser known author, Anselm of Laon (Ÿ 1117), who found the term thanks to which we will be able to solve the same contradiction: sign/thing. Between "Sacramentum tantum" (what is only a sign) and "res tantum" (or last reality) he will introduce the "res et sacramentum" (that which is both reality and The dogma of the real presence 97 sign of a later reality), a term that for the Eucharist will serve to designate Christ truly and corporeally present under the species, while being the sign of the last reality: his mystical body. But let us not anticipate, by giving, as if it were already fully developed, the doctrine that we will read later in Saint Thomas. Another step, comparable to that taken by Anselm of Laon, was the introduction of another term, that of "#ranssusbstantiation". It is acknowledged to have been coined by the future Pope Alexander III, then Roland Bandinelli. Inserted around 1140, in his Sententiae, it is already commonly used ten years later, while waiting to be in some way canonized by the IV® Lateran Council in 1215: "One is the Church of the faithful, in which one only is both priest and sacrifice (victim): Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, after that by divine power the bread has been transubstantiated to the body and the wine to the blood" (DZ 430) *. Thanks to this text, Saint Thomas already possessed the vocabulary that he would only have to develop scientifically less than fifty years later. We will dwell on this at greater length, since these notes on theology tend above all to be a reading of his doctrine. Modern errors and their common source, nominalism For the moment, if we wish to follow the Magisterium in the defence of Revelation against errors, we must begin by distinguishing the origin of these errors, an origin quite different from those which led to the condemnation of Berenger. The starting point of the latter was not a doubt about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but a difficulty concerning one of its consequences: if Christ is present in the Eucharist, if the host is Christ, how do we not show him disrespect by crushing his flesh between our teeth (perhaps you remember the scruples of little girls, crying after their first communion because they had touched the host with their hands)? 98 The progressive elaboration of dogma teeth...). If, on the other hand, we do not see this as a lack of res- We have seen how this impasse was resolved by Anselm's introduction of the "res et sacramentum" in Laon. We have seen how this impasse was resolved by Anselm of Laon's introduction of the "res et sacramentum". We will soon clarify, following St. Thomas, what exactly is the case. The contemporary errors have a very different origin: they do not come from a scruple of believers, but from a philosophical position which does not allow us to account for the fact of the real presence and its mode of realization, transubstantiation. To take them at their source, it seems that we must go back to the father of nominalism, to the one who could also be called the father of modern thought, in the pejorative sense of this term. We are referring to William Ockham's (or Occam). It is to him that we must We can go back to 1270-1347 to find the starting point of the modern philosophical problematic, which, whatever name or form it takes, remains basically a nominalism. We know that for him, our knowledge can only reach individuals Peter, Paul, Andrew. We do not know not that which, though realized in each individual, is common to them all, for example, that which makes a man a man: in a word the essence of man. Criticizing Plato's theory, which saw essences existing in themselves independently of individuals, as, - by caricaturing it, - that of Aristotle, who sees them existing in individuals, but grasped as their common character by the intelligence, Occam sees only collections of individuals, more or less resembling each other. Words, therefore, do not express our concepts. Since they do not designate essences, they are only convenient signs for cataloguing collections of individuals. They do not express what things are: they only allow us to talk about them and to build a rigorous logic, which will not deal with what things are are, but on the signs that are the This rejection of essences claims to be justified by a theological requirement, that of not limiting the omnipotence of God. This rejection of essences claims to be justified by a theological requirement, that of not limiting in any way the omnipotence of God. For we, the almighty is in no way limited by the essences, reflections of the essence of God, and whose laws are those The dogma of the real presence 99 of being, of divine Wisdom. For Ockham, these very laws would be an insult to total freedom, one would have to say to divine arbitrariness. God must be able to make contradictory things coexist: everything depends on what he has fixed. Thus, if fire burns, it is not because it is in its nature to burn (we do not know the natures, we do not even know if there are any), it is because God has so decided. He might as well have ordered it to be used as a freezer. If hatred of God is a fault, it is not because it is opposed to the love we owe to God: by no means, it is only because God has decided so, he could just as well have wanted this hatred to be a meritorious act. The principle is established; it remains for us to follow the consequences. First of all, if we cannot know the essences, the laws of being, we can no longer, by reason, go back to God, know its existence: for Ockham the world would be just as well explained if God did not exist, or if we put his existence between brackets (we will find this position close to us in Bonhoeffer). If we know God it will be by faith alone, and a faith without preliminaries or rational support. Another consequence is that the principle of contradiction being a law of being, if we exclude these laws in order to leave the field free to God's freedom, the contradictories do not necessarily exclude each other: the same proposition can be both true or false, true for reason, false for faith. We have an example of this in the case of Ockham's position on the Eucharist, according to which reason is in no way opposed to the bread remaining in the Eucharist after the consecration: this position seems to him even more rational; but, because of the unanimous opinion of the doctors, he dares not hold it, even holds it false from the point of view of faith. This was a first step towards the positions which will be explicitly held by Luther (impanation). We will have to come back to this. For the time being, we must follow the development which, starting from these principles, will lead philosophy, then theology, to the errors which we have to face today. 100 The progressive elaboration of dogma You may be surprised that we have taken Ockham as our starting point. On the one hand we almost always find, in one form or another, in modern errors, the ideas which he was one of the first to popularize; it is thus that on the other hand authors as different in their tendencies as M. de Lagarde, in La Naissance de l'Esprit laïque à la fin du Moyen Age and M. J. Largeault in his Enquête sur le Nominalisme, find themselves in agreement in attributing to Ockham the paternity of secularism and of modern secularism. However, we would be going beyond our purpose if we tried to follow in detail the logical development, in the philosophers and theologians of later centuries, of the principles laid down by Ockham. We will leave this task to the professors of philosophy and will content ourselves with a simple overview, whose schematic nature we ask you to excuse in advance, but which, by the same token, we hope, will be able to better bring out the broad outlines of the genesis of what we have agreed to call modern thought. From Ockham onwards, the doctrine will develop along two lines: - that of his direct disciples, such as Gabriel Biel, Luther's teacher, and which leads to the doctrines of the Reformation; - that of a compromise, between Ockham and other philosophies (Saint Thomas, Scotus), a compromise, which, through Suarez and the Jesuits of La Flèche, will lead to Descartes and all his lineage. The Reformation and the Council of Trent We will not have any difficulty in finding in Luther more than one, thesis already at least in germ in Ockham. A few examples will suffice. If Luther still admits - at least for a certain time - the real presence, the German Augustinian as well as the English Franciscan will only explain it by the "im- panation" (Christ present "in the bread"). Luther will only formulate as a thesis what his predecessor gave only as a more rational hypothesis. Both refuse - we can already see the beginning of Descartes - to distinguish between substance and quantity, they will not be able to explain the pre The dogma of the real presence 101 The real presence will be explicitly denied by Zwingle; and Calvin in his effort to reconcile the two other Reformers will only be able to do so by admitting - as Occam once did - two propositions at once. The real presence will be explicitly denied by Zwingle; and Calvin in his effort to reconcile the other two reformers will only be able to do so by admitting - as Occam once did - two contradictory propositions at once. If, in fact, the force of the scriptural argument obliges him to recognize by faith a "qualified" real presence: "verum Christi corpus adesse fidei contemplatione," he declares with much more insistence: "That the body of Christ is present in essence and in reality as the papists and some others (this is Luther) say so, that no only we deny it, but we constantly affirm that 'It is an error contrary to the word of God'," We can, by schematizing and to make short, reduce the errors common to Occam and to the Reformation to a double refusal: - refusal of the value of reason, powerless since sin, to to reach metaphysical and moral truths; hence the adage "Sola fides"; - to refuse the authority of the Church and its mission to propose to us the content of revelation; hence the adage: "Scriptura sola". We do not have to dwell on them here: we need only note them. We shall find them again in our time as supposed in the various positions of some Reformation theologians. Before having to meet them again, we must read the texts of the Council of Trent, then quickly follow the other philum, the other line of Ockham, that of Descartes and his successors. Faced with these errors which were invading a large part of Christianity, the Council of Trent was obliged to take a clear stand. We have seen the one it took with regard to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: that which relates to the real presence, is summarized in canons 1 and 2 of the XIII® Session, which are aimed directly at Zwingle and Calvin: "1. If anyone denies that in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist are contained really, actually and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ, 102 The development of dogma is progressing But if he says that they are there only as a sign or figure or by their virtue, let him be anathema" (DZ. 883). "If anyone says that in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains with the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies this admirable and unique change of the whole substance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood, while the appearances of the bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church very appropriately calls "transubstantiation," let him be anathema" (DZ. 884). It will have been noticed that the Council, without making the point of In the same session of the Council, the Fathers did not insist on this term and the theological position it implies. In this same Session of the Council, the Fathers had moreover insisted on this term and on the theological position which it implies We will have to come back to this when we deal with the theological explanation. Chapter 1® sets forth only the doctrine of faith in the Real Presence. We may also quote at least the first part of it: "In the first place, the holy Council openly and unmistakably teaches and professes that in the venerable sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really, and substantially present under the appearance of these sensible realities." (DZ. 874). This is followed by an affirmation of the non-contradiction of the two different modes of presence in heaven in the sacrament, as well as a reminder of the scriptural sources: Synoptics and St. Paul (1 Cor. XI, 24 ff.). St. John was omitted, not because the Council did not see in it the affirmation of the real presence, but because, having at the same time to affirm against the Protestants the sufficiency of communion under one species, it did not wish to appear to contradict itself and to have the text of St. John opposed to it: "If ye eat not the flesh of the Son If you do not drink his blood". This is a purely prudential omission, the reason for which must be remembered when we read the scriptural texts relating to the Eucharist. A long period of at least apparent peace, or possession { The dogma of the real presence 103 These definitions of the Council concerning the Real Presence were followed by a quiet one. We have seen that if there were any theological controversies it was rather about the nature of the Sacrifice of the Mass. But philosophical errors were developing during this time, and we shall see their consequences. THE ERRORS CONTEMPORARY We have indeed just spoken of apparent peace. But the fire smoulders under the ashes, and philosophical currents develop in their implacable logic, all the more easily because, by virtue of the principle laid down by Ockham, that a truth can be contrary to reason, as well as believed by faith, philosophy develops without reference to the guidance of the Church. After having reached the most opposite conclusions, it will reappear one fine day to question the hitherto most secure foundations of our dogmas. If the Council of Trent had condemned theological errors, it had refused - in order to make it easier to unite all theologians - to go back to the presuppositions of the errors, their philosophical sources. These presuppositions were thus able to unfold their consequences freely, to reintroduce themselves surreptitiously, especially through the channel of Protestant exegetes, into the very interior of Catholic theology. At the time of Vatican II, which will serve as a revelation, they will manifest themselves again openly, leaving Catholic theologians too often disarmed, lacking a philosophy capable of responding to them. Descartes and his lineage We know the starting point chosen by Descartes: that of universal doubt. The senses sometimes deceive us. We must therefore look elsewhere than in sensible experience for the assured principle of 104 Contemporary errors our knowledge. We will find it in thought itself, in the act of thinking, the famous "cogito". It is from my act of thinking - which I cannot doubt - that the whole edifice of knowledge will be deduced, as if mathematically. Let us note that it is the act of thinking in itself, as an act, and not its content. How can we claim to know the external world from this point on? Descartes, however, does not doubt that he has this knowledge. But it is thanks to a postulate (to his faith, if you like), that of the existence of a good God, which cannot allow that the clear ideas which it enables me to form in my mind do not correspond to the reality of the external world. The philosophers who would follow him, and who would start from his "cogito" - Kant, in particular - would not be slow to underline the hypothetical character, of pure postulate, without any rational basis, of this recourse to the goodness of God. For Kant, the real, which comes from The thing in front of me confronts in a way my thought and triggers its activity, is unknowable in itself, since it is external to my thought (it is the "noumenon"). We only reach it from or rather through forms existing in advance in our mind: categories of time, cause, space, etc., which will colour it. Our knowledge will only concern the impact produced in us through these forms, the "phenomena "which will leave the new leads unknown in itself. After Kant, Hegel, we pass the intermediaries. Hegel will go to the end of the principle: he wants to find the correspondence of our mind and things. But since our mind cannot be - as Saint Thomas defined truth - the conformity of our mind to things, it is the world that will be conformed to my mind: This is pure rationalism. For St Thomas and traditional philosophy, thought was reduced to being, it was a way of being: being thought. Hegel reverses the proposition: it is not the real that will inform my thought, but the thought that will To be at the principle of the real: there is a complete reversal: it is the real that is a mode, a modality of thought. Obviously, this thought of which the real is only a mode, this The dogma of the real presence 105 The demiurge Spirit of reality will not be my spirit, my individual thought. This reduction of reality to thought will be the reduction to that of the absolute Spirit. In the development of this absolute spirit - a development that merges with history itself - the thought of each individual, like each person himself, will be no more than a simple moment, absorbed into the absolute by the dialectic of history. We can see the consequence from the religious point of view: in traditional philosophy, which started from the external world, we went back to God, the necessary and transcendent principle, above the created world and governed by Him. For Hegel and his lineage, the transcendent is not to be sought above us, it merges with the very history in which we are immersed. We take the liberty of quoting here, in an attempt at translation, a passage by Fr. Fabro, C.SS. in his "Avventura della teologia progressista 5", p. 87: For Hegel, there is a reversal: "truth coincides with the impersonal objectivity that is the reality of universal history. God or the Absolute is the life or reality of the world and is embodied in human thought and action. Jesus Christ became God assimilation by developing in himself, to the limit of possibility, the consciousness of being God, and the proof of this is his voluntary death. Christ had to die: thus "God died", the death of God was the decisive event of universal history. It is therefore not wrong, Fabto adds, nor by chance, that Hegel's thought has been characterized as a secularization and fenvetsement of Christianity, in antichristianity and irreligion. Normally -- and Fr. Fabro does not fail to prove this abundantly in another masterly work, "Introduzione all ateismo moderno "*, such a philosophical position must lead to pure and simple atheism. If we still speak of God, it is not the God who creates and transcends human history, but a God who is none other than this history itself, or its outcome. By embarking on this philosophical road, from which we know that Marxism emerged, were we born not The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? Not as much as one might think: he did not lack 106 Contemporary errors theologians, even Catholic ones, who, believing that they saw in Hegel a new Aristotle, in his dialectic the philosophy of the future, tried to play the role of Saint Thomas and to put Hegel at the service of theology itself... Influence on the Reformed theologians But it was mainly through the philosophers or theologians, even the exegetes of the Reformation, that Hegelian philosophy came to confront our strictly theological problems. These exegetes had to explain Scripture. They spoke of Jesus and of the Lord's Supper. What is the link with philosophy, which knows no other transcendence than that of history? The school of liberal reformed theology, among whose proponents it will suffice to mention the name of Strauss, has endeavoured either to show interpolations in the Gospel or to see in it a simple account of myths, products of popular consciousness. It was in the wake of this liberal Reformed school that the modernist error was introduced among Catholics: faith is the product of religious consciousness. But we know the reaction of Karl Barth, a Reformed theologian born in 1884, who, returning to the absolute of Luther's "sol4 fides", rejected as vitiated in its root any compromise of faith with a rational explanation, with a stone of expectation, even that of the religious tendency in man's nature. Faith must be an absolute, must come from God alone: it is evacuated by religion. There is nothing to explain, nothing to justify, only to believe. Almost his contemporary, Rudolf Bultmann, followed a path somewhat different. To his name has remained attached the trend known as "demythization". Not, as we have just seen, that others before him, such as Strauss, did not try to evacuate the intervention of God in the Gospel by means of myth, but because for Bultmann it is not a question of evacuation, at least directly, but of interpretation. For him, faith does not come from It is not so much Scripture as preaching, the Word of God that challenges man in every age. According to Heidegger's philosophy, also dependent on Hegel, what counts, what he The dogma of the real presence 107 But to be understood, this word must be proposed to man in his own language. But the language of the first Christians was that of myth. It was through myths that they expressed the Word of God: it is through these myths, by demystifying it, by freeing it from this language that we must listen to it today. In this way we return to the Eucharist: we must demystify the language of the Gospel, which speaks to us of it, in order to see in it God's interpellation to our response of personal commitment: this is all that counts. It is therefore quite useless to investigate whether the accounts of the institution of the Eucharist, or the sixth chapter of St John, are authentic: the question is far out of date - indeed, the objections that arose from these disputes have long since been answered. What we need to do is to look for the meaning that the gospel account has for us when it speaks to us of the Eucharist. Through this account, this myth of a Jesus (we no longer say a God) presenting his flesh to us as food, what is the idea, the Word, that God wanted to address to us and which is certainly not to make us take these gospel affirmations literally? Shifts among Catholics We now understand where Catholics, too eager to follow in the footsteps of Protestantism, and at the same time too often imbued with the same philosophical assumptions, come from with the doctrines of "transfinalization" and "transsignification", which are proposed to explain the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is no longer that of the conversion of one substance into another: the word substance for them has no meaning (we see the refusal from concept of gasoline by Ockham). By saying "this is my body" the Lord wanted to give bread a new meaning; henceforth the bread on which he It will no longer be intended to feed the body, but to show us the Lord's love for us, 108 Contemporary errors These doctrines are generally attributed to Dutch theologians, to whom they undoubtedly owe a great deal of the publicity given to them. Their origin, however, as Fr. Schillebeeckx himself affirms, "comes from France. The one who first launched the idea of transfinalization and transsignification is said to have been Fr. de Baciocchi, sm, professor at the Catholic Faculties of Lyon, in an article published in 1959 in Irenikon and entitled: "Présence réelle et transsubstantiation". It would be too long here and difficult to follow the evolution of this position through the various writings of contemporary theologians. We can, however, see it, very well summarized and explained, in a small booklet which "is part of a series of documents that we would like to offer to young people who are seeking a path towards a more personal faith *". Under the title Evangelization as Communion, the author, after having spoken of the signs of God in nature, then in history, and especially of the manna, leads us from the "sign of the manna" to the "sign of the real presence". Notice this term "sign" of the real presence. This is the road he invites us to follow: "In the manna God had ventured out, he had come out of himself He was waiting for the heart of man to open and recognize, to respond and commit itself. "The manna was a figure and it was refused. Now it is the reality that is offered, so that God's presence to man becomes real presence. But let us see what the author means by these words "real presence". He explains it to us at once by continuing: "Everyone can read in the features of Jesus' face, in his gestures, and in his relationships, what God expects, what God prefers what is stirring in him. The presence of God to man is gathered and concentrated in Jesus, in this point of space and time, in this body of man. And among the gestures of this man, only one gathers all the others: the gesture of Jesus saying: "This is my body given up for you", a gesture which is expressed at the Last Supper and is accomplished on the cross. "During this meal, Jesus holds bread in his hands and gives it to his disciples. The dogma of the real presence 109 to his friends. But he does not say to them, "You are hungry? go and eat. For this bread is no longer bread, it is taken away from its usual use: feeding the body. He who is hungry for "bread only" must go to the bakery. "Jesus said to them, "This is my body given up for you. This "" is my blood shed for you. " " np € .......... "Jesus gives in advance to his death the meaning of a gift because his life already has that meaning. And it is precisely this meaning that he injects (emphasis added) into a piece of bread. When he says to his friends: "Take and eat "This means: "I have injected In this bread, all that makes up the dynamism and unity of my life: the gift of myself to the Father for you. If you receive this sign, I will enter into you; my thoughts, my actions, the meaning of my life will enter into you; you will assimilate them and I will become the soul of your For those who receive it as such, this bread is no longer the bread that sustains the body alone: it has become the entire sign of God's intention of communion towards us. (pp. 14-15). If we have quoted this page, it is because it seems to sum up well the slippage to which many theologians seem to have allowed themselves to be led. We still speak of the real presence. But these words have changed their meaning. Is it still the same meaning that results from the change of the whole substance of the bread into that of the body of Christ and that was expressed so well in the old hymn of Father de Montfort: "The bread and the wine are no longer there, it is the true body of Jesus. In the text we read above, the bread, on the contrary, is always there. If it "is no longer bread" it is not because it has been changed into the body of Christ, but only "taken away from its usual use: food for the body". What is changed is only its finality: "#transfinalization". And if, "for the one who receives it as such, this bread is no longer the bread that gives life to the body", it is not because it has made way for the body of Christ, it is because Christ has "injected" a new "meaning" into it, because "it has become entirely a sign of God's intention of communion towards us: #ransignification". Through philosophical developments, we have arrived at the 110 The encyclical Mysterium Fidei We can only use signs which do not express the things themselves, but only allow us to speak of them. It is understandable that the Holy See was concerned about the propaganda surrounding such opinions. On September 3, 1965, His Holiness Paul VI published the encyclical "Mysterium Fidei", "On Doctrine and Worship of the Holy Eucharist * ". THE ENCYCLE MYSTERIUM FIDEI In this document, the Holy Father entrusted the bishops, but also to all the Christian people, the concerns and worries which the newly spread opinions concerning the Eucharist gave them, opinions which "cause a great confusion of ideas concerning the truths of the faith, as if it were permissible for anyone to leave in oblivion the doctrine previously defined by the Church, or to interpret it in such a way as to impoverish the authentic meaning of the terms or to weaken the force duly recognized to the notions". (n° 9). The Real Presence Then he gave some examples. Let us retain those which aim at the doctrines concerning the real presence: "No," the Pope continued, "it is not permitted... to insist on the aspect of the sacramental 'sign', as if the symbolic function, which no one disputes with the Holy Eucharist, expressed in an exhaustive way the mode of Christ's presence in this sacrament; it is not permitted to treat of the mystery of transubstantiation without alluding to the prodigious conversion of the whole substance of the of the bread to the body of Christ and of all the substance of the wine to the blood of the Lord - the conversion spoken of by the Council of Trent - and to remain simply at what is called "transsignification", he The dogma of the real presence 111 It is not permissible to present and follow in practice the opinion that NS. J.-C. is no longer present in the consecrated hosts which remain after the celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass" (no. 9). Everyone can see how these opinions, and others of the same kind that have been spread, compromise faith and worship towards the divine Eucharist " (n° 10). This is only the preamble to the encyclical. The exposition itself is divided into five parts. The first recalls that the Eucharist is a "Mystery of faith"; the second specifies that this mystery is realized in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; the third affirms that Our Lord makes himself sacramentally present there; and the fourth specifies that it is by means of transubstantiation; the fifth, as well as the conclusion, draws the consequences, with regard to the cult of the Holy Eucharist, of the doctrine recalled in the encyclical. The mode of presence We must stop at the third and fourth parts. The third, in order to bring out the real character of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, proceeds by approaching or eliminating the other modes of presence: Christ's presence to the Church's prayer, "being Himself the One who prays for us, who prays in us, and who is prayed through us"; Christ's presence through the works of mercy, "which He Himself works by means of His Church"; Christ's presence through preaching, where the "Word is proclaimed in the name and by the authority of Christ"; Christ's presence in the Church, whose governing power "flows from Christ, who assists the pastors exercising this power"; Christ's "still more sublime" presence "in the Church, which in his name celebrates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and administers the sacraments. Yet, the encyclical points out, however wonderful these various modes of presence may be, "the truly sublime mode in which Christ is present to the Church in the sacrament of the Eucharist is quite different. Yes, it contains Christ himself, and he is "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend" (St. Thomas, 3a, q. 65, a. 3) (no. 38). 112 The encyclical Mysterium Fidei "This presence," the papal text continues, "is called 'real', not exclusively, as if the other presences were not 'real', but by excellence or antonomasia, because it is substantial, and through it Christ, the God-man, feels all." (n° 39). goes to the "It would therefore be a poor explanation of this kind of presence to reduce the Eucharistic presence to the limits of symbolism, as if this sacrament, so venerable, consisted in nothing (Pius XII, Enc. Hwmani generis), (no. 40). And after quoting the texts of the Councils and the Fathers recognizing this symbolism, Paul VI adds, and this is where we it seems, If this symbolism helps us to grasp the proper effect of this sacrament, which is the unity of the Mystical Body, it does not give an account or an expression of that which, in the nature of the sacrament, distinguishes it from the others. Indeed, in order to be faithful to the doctrine constantly taught and defined by the Church, we must profess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins and whom the Father in his goodness raised up" (St. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7,1). "At these words The Holy Father continues, "We may add to the words of St. Ignatius that Theodore of Mopsuestius, a faithful witness of the Church, addressed to the faithful: 'For the Lord did not say: This is the symbol of my body and this is the symbol of my blood, but rather: This is my body, this is my blood. I] invite us not to look at the nature of the object presented to our senses: this indeed, by thanksgiving and by the words spoken over it was changed into flesh and blood. " " (Com. im Mat. 26) (no. 45). The encyclical does not consider it useful to cite other patristic testimonies. They are quite numerous and can be found listed and quoted in collections such as that of J. Quasten, Monwmenta eucharistica vetustissima (Bonnae, 1937). We will content ourselves with reproducing the text of the Council of Trent, quoted by the encyclical as its conclusion of this third part, devoted to the affirmation of the real presence: The dogma of the real presence 113 "The Council of Trent teaches and declares openly and simply that, in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the true God and real man is contained really, truly and substantially under the species of these sensible realities. Our Saviour is thus present in his humanity, not only at the right hand of the Father, but at the same time in the sacrament of the Eucharist in a mode of existence which our words are almost powerless to express, but which the intelligence enlightened by faith can recognize and which we must firmly believe is possible to God" (DZ. 874). This doctrine, recalled in the third part of the encyclical, is aimed directly at those who deny the reality of the presence; it is not yet opposed, if not indirectly, to those who claim, as we have seen, that this presence is due only to a change in the meaning or finalization of the bread and wine, not to a change in their substance into that of the body and blood of Christ. Transubstantiation. It is more precisely to affirm this #ransubstantiation* that the fourth part of the pontifical document is devoted. In contrast to the preceding chapter, the testimonies of tradition come only after the affirmation of the doctrine. It is to this doctrine that we will now turn, referring to the encyclical or to the works we have cited, for those who would like to have an idea of the continuity of the Church's teaching in this matter. The chapter begins with a reminder of the need to listen to the voice of the Church in this matter. We shall see later on how important it is. Let us read it, as well as the doctrinal statement which follows: "In order to avoid any misunderstanding concerning this mode of presence which is superior to natural laws and which, in its kind, constitutes the greatest of miracles, we must listen with docility to the voice of the Church in her teaching and her prayer. Now this voice, which never ceases to echo that of Christ, assures us that Christ makes himself present in this sacrament only through the conversion of the whole of humanity. 114 The encyclical Mysterium Fidei This is a singular and marvellous conversion, which the Catholic Church rightly and properly calls "transubstantiation". When this is accomplished, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly acquire a new meaning and a new end, since there is no longer the ordinary bread and the ordinary drink, but the sign of a sacred thing and of a spiritual food; but the species have this new meaning and this new end because they bear a new reality, which we call ontological right (n° 47). "Indeed, under the species we are talking about, there is no longer what For once the nature or substance of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, there remains of the bread and wine only the species under which the whole Christ is present in his physical and even bodily reality, though in a mode of presence different from that according to which the bodies occupy this or that place" (no. 48). The affirmation of the real presence could not be clearer, nor could the rejection of the errors we have just pointed out be clearer. This is the moment for us to take a look at the new character of these errors, in order to better see how to respond to them. It is no longer a question, as it was in Berenger's time, of reconciling the respect due to the body of Christ with his presence under the eucharistic species, and for that reason choosing between sign and reality. At that time the words of Scripture were not contested; the difficulty was properly theological: that of reconciling two apparently opposing statements of tradition. Nor was it a question, as at the beginning of the Reformation, of contesting the efficacy of the words of consecration, in order to keep the Lord's Supper only as a representation; nor, as hourly It is a refusal of the capacity of our intelligence to know what is, or exactly "what is" something. It is a question of a priori refusal of the capacity of our intelligence to know what is, or more exactly "what is" something. The dogma of the real presence 115 The question is whether the truth revealed by God must and can be accepted by faith, or whether it must first be subjected to the examination of reason, in order to declare, in the name of the refusal to know the being, the acceptance of this impossible faith. A text by Dom Delatte, of a general character, gives a good account of the situation in which we find ourselves in the face of Eucharistic errors. < It seems, he wrote, that the circle of time is closing. The doctrine is complete, the unity of the Church completely affirmed. There is no resource left but to deny everything; to deny the Church, to deny Scripture, to deny history, to deny God, to deny reason. This is the nihilism of the intelligence resemblance of the times with those which preceded Incarnation." THE METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED How to deal with these errors? Any discussion is impossible if the opponents do not find at least one common point to refer to. With those who denied revelation and Scripture, there remained at least reason: with those who no longer recognized even the value of reason, Aristotle felt that it was impossible to argue, and that one could only wave one's fingers at them. The value of reason: it is not a question of justifying it in a treatise on the Eucharist. If I wanted to confront you with the character of modern errors, it was precisely to show you how, in order to know the mysteries revealed by God, there is no other way than the one chosen by God to reveal them to us, and then we transmit them, namely the Words of its Entrusted yarns à the authority of the Church. St. Thomas, in the first article in which he addresses the study of the real presence, begins by noting that the real presence cannot be proven or experienced, but must be held by faith alone: "verwm corpus Christi et sanguinem esse in hoc sacramento, sensu deprehendi non potest, sed sola fide, quae auctoritati divinae innititur" (3a, q. 75, a. 1, C). 116 The method to follow If the real presence can be known only by faith, it is only in the principles of interpretation of faith that it must be sought, namely in Scripture, infallibly interpreted by the Church. It is only afterwards that theology, starting from revealed doctrine, will be able, using reason, to show how the objections which are opposed to this mystery in the name of the same reason can prove nothing against it, and, with humility, to seek to penetrate somewhat into its marvelous economy. This is how St. Thomas proceeds, who, after affirming that the real presence can be held only by faith, immediately shows us its admirable conveniences, and, in the following articles, refutes, some after the others, the difficulties that could him and attempts to diminish the doctrine. Profession of Faith of Paul VI These two stages of research, that of faith and that of theology, are clearly evident in the paragraph of the Profession of Faith of His Holiness Paul VI, dedicated to the real presence. We will read it again together: "We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated at the Last Supper were changed into the body and blood of Christ, which were to be offered for us on the Cross, so the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of the glorious Christ seated in Heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses in the same way as before, is a true, real and substantial presence." This is what faith is all about: "We believe". From the very content of faith, the Holy Father passes to the rules of the theological explanation; let us continue reading the text, taken from that of the encyclical: "Christ cannot be present in this sacrament in any other way than by the change in his body of the very reality of bread and by the change in his blood of the very reality of The dogma of the real presence 117 This mysterious change is very appropriately called #transubstantiation by the Church, and it is the only thing that remains unchanged are the properties of the bread and wine that our senses perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church #ransubstantiation. Any theological explanation, seeking some understanding of this mystery, must, to be in accord with the Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independent of our spirit, the bread and wine ceased to exist after the consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus which from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed, in order to give himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of his mystical Body" (Prof. of Faith, June 30, 1968). Like St. Thomas and the Supreme Pontiff, we will study the teaching of Scripture on the Real Presence in two stages and then move on to the theological explanations. TEACHING FROM THE WRITING The stories of the institution These stories are, as we know, four in number: those of the three Synoptic Gospels, that of St. Paul in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (XI, vv. 23 ff.). This last text is the closest to the events themselves: only about 25 years separate it from them. Those of the evangelists are still a few years further away. How could they have kept such a precise memory of what happened on the evening of Holy Thursday? It is not our purpose to point out the various theories, constantly renewed, which have been used either to invalidate or to affirm the authentic value of the accounts, their substantial concordance or their small partial divergences. This is the whole synoptic problem: it is within the competence of the professor of exegesis. It will suffice to reassure us fully with a few elementary remarks: First of all, the accounts of the Last Supper were written by authors 118 The teaching of Scripture with the writings of the Old Testament and Jewish customs very much in mind. The Lord's Supper is in fact part of the context of a Jewish Passover meal: let us recall the question of the apostles to the Lord: "Where do you want us to prepare the Passover? - We have also noted how the various cups mentioned are easily understood by following the course of this paschal meal, of which the evangelists did not feel obliged to report all the details, since they were addressing a generation for which all this was still present. What we have to notice is the force that, in this context, the term Lamb, applied to Our Lord, takes on, as well as that of "new and eternal Covenant", a reminiscence and even a quotation from Jeremiah. It is the same for the the blood "shed for the many", a quotation from the passage in Isaiah on the Suffering Servant. One Protestant exegete has even written that these quotations were like the framework around which the narrative was articulated, thus making it easier to remember. What must also be remembered is that the narrators of the Last Supper wrote the story only after Good Friday had allowed them to fully grasp the meaning of Jesus' words "my body given up for you", "my blood shed for the many". On several occasions, as you will have noticed, the evangelists warn us that the disciples did not understand the meaning of the Lord's words at the time: it was only after the Passion and the Resurrection that they were able to grasp their significance, enlightened then not only by the realization of the events, but by the light of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost. These remarks might suffice to explain why events such as the Last Supper and the words spoken by the Lord at that time were sufficiently engraved in the memory of the apostles that, many years later, they had forgotten nothing about them. But there is a further explanation which, together with the fidelity of the accounts, gives reason for the discrepancy in the details. After the consecration, the Lord had added " do this in remembrance of me ", and the accounts in the Acts of the breaking of bread, like the manner of which St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, introduces, as a reminder of a common gesture, the account of the Last Supper, are a proof that, soon after the Lord's departure, the apostles obeyed the command of the Lord. The dogma of the real presence 119 They did so as he had done, speaking in turn the very words he had spoken. Later, when the evangelists took up their pens, they had only to write down what was done daily in the Church, faithfully repeating the gestures and words of the Lord. Liturgical tradition, the guarantor of the fidelity of the story and the words In this reading we have the starting point for the Church's faith in the real presence of the Lord's body and blood under the species. There is nothing in the context, nothing in the narrative that would invite us or even allow us to see in it a mere symbolism or a pure image. The Lord did not say: this broken bread is a sign of my presence among you; he did not imply that he was "injecting his love" into it. He said this is my body, this is my blood, given up, poured out for you. On the day after Good Friday, could there have been any doubt among the apostles about the meaning of these words? And if it had been only a sign, how could St. Paul have written so clearly: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord," and two lines further on: "He who eats and drinks, eats and drinks his own condemnation if he does not discern the Body in it." It seems unnecessary to dwell further on this. Until a philosophical prejudice declared a priori that it could only be a change in the meaning or purpose of the bread and wine, tradition was unanimous in seeing in the accounts of the Lord's Supper the affirmation of the Real Presence, to which better exegesis seems to be increasingly returning today. The Promise of the Eucharist The same has not always been true of the promise of the Eucharist, so firmly announced in chapter VI of St John. For a while there was some doubt among Catholics about of a choice made by the solemn Magisterium itself. We know that in its definition of the real presence, the Council of Trent referred to the accounts of the Institution, but did not allude to this 120 The teaching of Scripture chapter of St. John. If he had seen a Eucharistic text, why would he not have quoted it? The reason is simple: a matter of expediency. The reason is simple: a matter of expediency. The Council had not only to answer the deniers of the Real Presence, but also to affirm, against the claim of the Protestants, that the Eucharist is a real presence, the value of communion under one species. Was it appropriate then to refer, even to prove the real presence, to the text advanced by the advocates of the necessity of communion in the chalice: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you." The rest of the Council, without No doubt, theologians will have no difficulty in showing that Christ being contained entirely under each species (vi concommitantine, as theologians say), the principle laid down by the Lord remains true even though communion is given only under the species of bread. But was this the moment to revive the quarrel? Were the texts of the institution not sufficiently eloquent for it to be necessary to bring this new proof, likely to cause another controversy to arise? We no longer have the same reasons to pass over this text in silence, not because we need proof, but because the meditation of this chapter of Saint John will introduce us even more deeply into the heart of the mystery of the real presence. In order to approach the interpretation of this text, let us begin by responding to an objection, no longer drawn from the Council of Trent, but from the beginning of the century. Reformed scholars. These, in order to dismiss the Eucharistic meaning of the sixth chapter, considered the last part - the most explicit: "my body is - as a This way of composing our rhyme; the The fact that we are seeing this indicates a lack of understanding of St. John's procedures: "My blood is truly food, and my blood a drink. In poetry, we have at present the regular alternations of dac- tyles and spondees. The Semites, employed before all the parallelism. We have examples of this throughout the psalms: the same idea is taken up again, in each part of the same verse, in a different form. Vanhoye on the Epistle to the Hebrews and its literary structure shows how far this concern for parallelism can go. According to the analysis he proposes, the Epistle unfolds in two absolutely corresponding parts, like the The dogma of the real presence 121 wings of a butterfly, with, as a hinge, a word which forms the center of the whole letter: "Christ" (ch. IX, v. 11). Saint John uses a somewhat different way of proceeding: he writes, one might say, in a spiral. He starts with a word, an idea, of an opposition, treats it once, then returns to it, often scandalizing the repetition by the use of identical terms, but each time by deepening, to deliver only in the very last place the bottom of his thought; a remarkable pedagogical procedure to prepare progressively the listeners to welcome the mystery which he is going to reveal to them. If we are willing to read in this way - with the help of this key - chapter VI® of his Gospel, from v. 23 onwards, we will discover a complete unity: that of a thought which is always faithful to itself, but which does not give itself up completely until the very last moment. You will remember the circumstances of this famous speech. It was given the day after the multiplication of the loaves. The Jews, full the day before, cross the lake to find the one who had fed them so cheaply. Immediately the Lord raises the debate: it was not a good meal: the multiplication of the loaves was a sign; but a sign that the Jews did not understand and in which they only grasped the material advantages. And from this reproach the Lord invites them to look for other food, no longer perishable, but lasting for eternal life (vv. 26-27). Note this opposition: perishable food, bread of eternal life: it will return in one form or another at each of the loops of the spiral. But immediately a question from the Jews leads him to indicate the condition required to enjoy this food: "What must I do to receive it? >The answer is in one word: believe in the one sent by God. For, as Jesus has just said, he is the only one who can give this food and the life it brings. The only one? A new objection from the Jews: "Moses did the same, he gave us the manna," an opportunity for the Lord to deepen the first idea: "No, it is not a question of a food such as the manna. This, like the multiplication of the loaves the day before, was only a figure. Your fathers ate the 122 The teaching of Scripture manna and they died; the food of which I speak, he who eats it will live eternally. " It is the first opposition which returns, more precisely. And at the same time, another precision: the one sent by the Father is not only the one who gives this food: he himself is this food: "The bread from heaven, the true bread He is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (v. 33). There seems to be a division among the listeners. Some, seduced, attracted by the mystery, beg the Lord to give them always of this bread, and thereby furnish Him with an opportunity for a development of the manner in which He gives eternal life - a development of the first opposition - and a reminder of the process indicated above as a condition of this food: faith: "Yes, it is my Father's will that everyone who acknowledges the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise him up at the last day" (v. 40). The others, rebelling against the act of faith that is asked, murmured, "How can he call himself the bread that came down from heaven, whose father and mother we know?" (vv. 41-42). It is an opportunity for Jesus to remind us once again of the indispensable condition for tasting the bread of heaven: faith, but here the word is not pronounced, or rather the word that is pronounced is not that of "faith", but that of who gives it: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (v. 44). "Whoever He who hears the teaching of the Father, comes to me. He who believes has eternal life" (v. 47). Now the condition has been sufficiently stated, affirmed. It is to those who accept it that the Lord addresses himself in order to specify the nature of this bread that gives eternal life, of this bread that came down from heaven, which he had already said was himself. The spiral is going to undergo a new revolution, starting as it did in the first one from the demand of faith, to end up in the exposition of the exact nature of the bread that gives eternal life: "I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (v. 51). All is said, the spiral has gone to the bottom of the revelation it had to prepare to receive, it has now delivered it in its entirety. The dogma of the real presence 123 There is no further clarification to be added, other than a return to what has just been said, so as to leave no room for equivocation. It is again the Jews who give the opportunity by discussing among themselves how this prophecy could be fulfilled: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat? If it had been a symbol, a simple sign of Jesus' love, he would have had only a word to say and the crowd would have been quick to nod. But he does not say this word: he does not say, as our modern theologians do, that he is going to give the bread a new purpose, a new meaning: that of his love, or that he is going to "inject his love into a piece of bread". No, he does not not, it does not explain not, he asserts, by insisting more on the realism, we would dare to say the crudeness of the realism of what he has just said, and he does so by prefacing his statements twice with a solemn "Amen": "Amen, Amen, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and unless you drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As I, sent from the living Father, live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. "This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread our fathers ate, for they are dead; whoever eats of this bread will live forever" (vv. 53-58). We have just said: Jesus does not give an explanation. He delivers the whole truth. This bread that came down from heaven is himself, it is his flesh and blood. This bread is the bread of eternal life, because whoever eats it becomes one with the One who came down from heaven and who is himself one with the Father. This is the whole revelation of the mystery: he who receives it by faith knows it and has the secret of eternal life. And at the end of this admirable spiral development, we discover everything that was only hinted at at the beginning. Really, one would be tempted to say: Amen, amen, one does not know to admire more, either the depth of the revelation made to us, or the admirable unity of the discourse. How, if we have 124 The teaching of Scripture How can one, when he has grasped the key to his composition, subtract anything from it without rendering all the rest incomprehensible? How can we disregard a teaching which is gradually brought to a conclusion, but which ends with implacable logic (one hardly dares to pronounce this word) in such a formal statement that it is impossible to water it down? We do not wish to add anything to the Lord's clear words, as reported to us by his apostle. We can only invite you to read the admirable comments of St. Augustine (homily on Wednesday of the four times of Pentecost) and of St. Thomas, on this passage, which can only be commented on by saints. We can also, unfortunately, make the painful comparison between the attitude of the disciples when they heard the discourse: "This language is too strong (we would say today "undrinkable"), who can listen to it", and that of the deniers or the attenuators of the realism of the Eucharist, to whom we would like to be able to say that the Lord's answer does not apply to them: "There are some among you who do not believe" (v.64). For our part, let us listen to Jesus' invitation to the Let us make our own the answer of St. Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go, for you have the words of eternal life." Yes, our faith in the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist is based on solid foundations; we have just reviewed them. It now remains for us to theologize it, that is to say, to show its "conveniences" or harmonies with what we know elsewhere about the divine plan of salvation, and to show the impotence of the arguments which the adversaries would try to oppose to it in the name of reason. î The theological explanation of the real presence In the previous chapter we recalled the revealed foundations of faith in the real presence. In this chapter we must approach, following St. Thomas, the theological explanation of it. We shall follow the Summa, noting in passing the difficulties which are opposed to the traditional explanation, and we shall endeavour to make a healthy criticism of it. The outline of the Summa Theologica St. Thomas, in the Summa (34 pars), devotes three questions to the mystery of the real presence: nos. 75, 76, 77. They start from two facts: a fact of faith: the dogma of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (75/1); a fact of experience: the permanence of accidents (75/5). The first question concerns the change that has taken place by the consecration: how can we account for the affirmation of the faith that Christ is made present in the Eucharist, what can be called the real presence in fiers? The other two will deal with the real presence 2" facto esse, once accomplished: how, in what way is Christ present in the sacrament? (q. 76), how can the accidents remain without subject in spite of the dispatition of the substances of the bread and wine, in which they subsisted before the consecration? (p. 77). Before giving an account of the fact of the real presence, St. Thomas 126 The argument of convenience We have already read at the beginning of art. 1: "The real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament cannot be grasped by our senses, but only by faith, which is based on the truth. We have already read at the beginning of art. 1: "The real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament cannot be grasped by our senses, but by faith alone, which is based on divine authority." These are the foundations of this faith in the dogma of the real presence that we have just recalled. But if we believe what God has revealed to us, if we take God at his word, we are not forbidden to try to grasp the profound intention of divine Providence in the institution of this mystery. Why, as far as our reason can try to guess, did Christ wish to make himself present in the Eucharist? In seeking this, it is not proofs that we are trying to find - the word of God is enough for us - it is a more intimate grasp of the thought of God, it is, according to the beautiful word of Saint Anselm defining theology, "fides quaerens intellectum", faith trying through the intelligence to better grasp what God has revealed to it. These "conveniences" are a wonderful subject for meditation and contemplation. Without dissipating the mystery, they will help us to situate it better in the whole of God's plan of salvation, and will be a stimulus to thank him for it and to love him more. THE ARGUMENT FROM CONVENIENCE In fact, even though he acts outwardly only freely and never by necessity, God does nothing without reason, as the Contra Gentiles reminds us (1. IL, c. 97). Now the primary reason for everything God does is the communication of his Goodness, "Bonum diffusum sui", an adage to be well understood. God needs nothing, and nothing can increase his beatitude. But it is, one might say, overflowing. We have a reflection of this in ourselves when we hear news that fills us with joy: we want to be able to share it with others. Let us recall the examples given in the Gospel of the woman who found the lost coin, of the shepherd who found his lost sheep... The theological explanation of the real presence 127 But there is a difference: for us, this sharing brings an additional joy or happiness. We are limited beings thirsting for a happiness that we must receive from outside, which we will receive precisely in this participation in the happiness of God that will be the beatific vision. God, on the contrary, is fullness, his happiness too; nothing can be added to it and if he overflows on us, this overflow is entirely free, pure goodness and liberality on his part. But if this communication of his goodness, of the good of which he is the If, therefore, everything he does has a reason, he is fully free to communicate himself in this or that way. Our search for the "reasons of convenience" tends precisely to make us grasp how such and such a work of God realizes this principle of the communication of his beatitude. An example of this is given to us at the beginning of the treatise on the Incarnation. Our holy Doctor remarks: "God is the supreme good; as such, it is fitting that he should communicate himself in the greatest possible way. Now the greatest communication he can make of himself is to unite a created nature in the unity of a Person "in such a way," says Saint Augustine, "that a Person is made up of three elements: the Word, the soul and the flesh" (3a, q. 1, a 1); Only the Incarnation involves a unity of Person. The communication that can be made to created persons can only be a union of operation; the greatest will be that by which the divine essence itself is immediately united to the intelligence, in the beatific vision. This union is also a unity, if we wish to remember this principle that the intelligence in the act of grasping and the object grasped in the act of being grasped are one and the same thing - sntellectus in actu et intellectum in actu sunt unum et idem. It is impossible to conceive of a more intimate union of the creature with the Creator, a union which is realized in the Word: it is the bread of angels. This union, towards which faith leads us, constitutes a true possession towards which hope leads us. But charity does not wait. It is already what it will be up there; it is the friendship in which there is possession of one friend by the other. Through the 128 The argument of convenience In charity, we already possess God without seeing him. Of this charity, of this mutual possession, the Eucharist is the sacrament, at once sign and food: "He who eats me will live by me", says the Lord, but also "will live for me". Between the food and the eater there is an intimate union, and it is the same Word - who will be the bread of the Vision - who in the Eucharist, through his flesh and his blood, will live for me. Blood, is the bread of our pilgrimage. It is in this perspective that we must read the "appropriateness" of the real presence, which St Thomas proposes to us: Superiority of the New Law We have already, in connection with the Mass, said a word about the first of the reasons of propriety invoked by St. Thomas in favour of the Real Presence. The communication which God makes of himself to the intelligent creature, and which we have seen to be the final reason for the whole of the divine work, is situated in the course of a history which is not yet complete. toire. It implies progress. The New Testament must mark this progress in relation to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the sacrifices were only figures of the only Sacrifice capable of pleasing God and of redeeming sinful man: that of his Son on Calvary. The Eucharist, the sacrifice of the new law, is no longer merely a figure, it contains this sacrifice, the very victim immolated on the Cross. The time of figures has passed, we are in the time of realities: "dat panis caelicus figu. ris terminum", as we sing in the hymn of Matins on the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, "the heavenly bread puts an end to figures". Summit of the Sacramental Economy Thus situated in relation to the sacrifices of the ancient law, the Eucharist must also be situated in relation to the other sacraments of the law The New Testament Sacrifice, "full sacrament", The theological explanation of the real presence 129 and no longer empty, of the Passion, is the source of the efficacy of the other sacraments. It] stands in relation to these, like the source in relation to the channels through which its sanctifying power is derived. Containing the Sanctifier itself, an object "absolutely sacred", The Eucharist deserves the name of "Holy Sacrament", whereas the other sacraments contain only something relatively sacred, that is to say a simple sanctifying power. Thus the Eucharist is at once the source, the center and the summit of the entire sacramental economy "perfectivum ommniwm sacramentorum" (75, a. 1; cf. 65/3; 73/1 ad 3um). Sign par excellence of God's love" Situated in the time and economy of the New Testament, the Eucharist must also be situated in the overall plan of God's love, that of our supernatural vocation. It is to place it in this perspective that the second reason of propriety brought by Saint Thomas is employed. If this reason is not a proof, in the precise sense of the term, it is at least such as to make the dogma of the real presence much less "unthinkable". For finally, if we often have difficulty in admitting that the power of God is employed in bringing about this marvellous change of the substance of bread into that of the body of his Son, it is because we do not situate this power as ordered to the service of his Love. "God is love," St. John tells us, "Deus caritas est," and this love has been manifested for us in Christ's charity for us. Now, charity is friendship. Therefore, if Christ wants to be and is He will wish, like every friend, and for those whom he has as friends, their presence with him, his presence with them. No doubt this presence will only be fully realized in heaven, but it is to this heaven, to this meeting, that the whole Christian economy aims to lead us: "We proclaim to you eternal life," writes Saint John at the beginning of his first epistle, "that eternal life which was in the bosom of the Father and has been made manifest to us... we proclaim it to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. "If God loves us, if Christ wants to be our 130 The argument of convenience friend and that we be his, if for us to deserve this life It is no longer unthinkable that he used his power to give us a foretaste of it, to provide us with the nourishment that will make us happy. will support. This taste, this food, will be the man- This is the first union that makes us dwell in him and him in us, and is thus the sign par excellence of his charity, of his unimaginable friendship towards us. This foretaste, this union with the Friend, is however only made in the Eucharist in the darkness of faith. But this too is a new suitability, a harmony moreover with all the economy of the present life which remains in this obscurity. The Eucharist is the mystery of faith par excellence " mysterium fidei >. In it, it is not only what belongs to the divinity that is hidden and mysterious, but what should normally be sensible: the bodily presence of Christ. If he gives us his flesh to eat, it is still an act of faith that we must make, because if this flesh is in the Eucharist in a real way, it is nevertheless only invisible, imperceptible to our senses. If it unites us to Christ in an intimate and marvelous way, and gives us a foretaste of heaven, it is no exception to the economy of the Eucharist. The real presence is the economy of faith, an economy that assures us the merit of our loving adherence to the Word of God: "visus tactus gustus in te fallitur, sed audits solo tuto creditur". Thus enlightened by these "conveniences", the real presence, far from being impossible ("undrinkable") to admit, is on the contrary situated at the very heart of the Christian economy, as the summit towards which all its avenues tend. Raphael understood this well when, in the famous stanza of the Vatican, he placed opposite the painting of ancient philosophy the famous "dispute of the Blessed Sacrament", in which the Blessed Sacrament is represented radiating on the altar, in the midst of the pontiffs and saints. The theological explanation of the real presence TRANSUBSTANTIATION: HOW CHRIST BECOMES PRESENT 131 (75/2-4) Thus situated at the heart of the economy of salvation, the real presence is thereby made, if not understandable, at least more easily admissible. We now have to ask ourselves how Christ can make himself present in the Eucharist, how he can remain there, or at least to show how the arguments brought against the mystery cannot conclude that it is impossible. It is to explain to us the way in which the realization of the presence of Christ can be conceived without ending in contradiction that articles 2-4 of question 75 are employed. This way is the complete change of the bread into the body of Christ and of the wine into his blood. In order to simplify the exposition, only the body is spoken of, what is said of it being also to be understood of the blood. Even if it requires an effort of attention and intelligence, the reasoning of Saint Thomas is simple. In order to understand its scope, let us not forget, first of all, that we are dealing with a real body, the body of Christ in flesh and blood. Now, for a corporeal object There are only two conceivable ways of being made present where it was not before: - or of being transported there by a local movement, by a path which will not fail to be noticed by the senses; - or to appear there as the end of the change of this body, of another body already present in this place. in To have fire under a stove, it is necessary either to bring it there with a lighted firebrand, or to rub a match which will produce it by the transformation of the chemical elements of which it is the carrier. In the case of the Eucharist, the impossibility of transport is obvious. First of all, it would be necessary for the Lord to leave heaven at each consecration, which is unthinkable; moreover, it would be necessary to make a journey, an unimaginable journey, a body which moves, only being able to do so by passing successively through all the points 132 Transubstantiation of the way then even is not), Christ, at times on de that separates the point of departure from the place of arrival; finally, that these two difficulties would be surmountable (which would not explain how the same body of such a local displacement, could make itself present at multiple altars distant from each other. That leaves - if we want to remain faithful to the faith, the bodily presence of Christ - the other hypothesis, the other member of the disjunctive: the change of substance * from bread to the body of Christ. This has two consequences: the substance of the bread cannot remain from the moment Christ is made present; it cannot be decomposed or reduced to nothing. That it cannot remain is shown in Article 2. In addition to the proof drawn from the impossibility of explaining the real presence otherwise than by the change of this substance of the bread into that of the body of Christ, and thus by the disappearance of the former, it also relies on the practice of the Church and on the words and meaning of the sacramental form. On the practice of the Church, which makes us adore the consecrated host, which would be idolatry if its substance were that of bread. On the meaning of the sacramental form: it is known in fact that the sacraments operate what the form signifies: that of the Eucharist would no longer be true, it would no longer correspond to the sacramental efficiency, if, after its pronouncement, the substance of the bread remained under the The substance of the bread cannot disappear or decompose; this would explain nothing, and would only make it more difficult, by making it no longer about the bread, but about the elements into which it would be decomposed; nor by the fact that it would be a matter for the priest to say, "This is my body. Nor can the substance of the bread disappear or decompose; this would explain nothing and would only make it difficult, by making it relate, not to the bread, but to the elements into which it would be decomposed; nor by annihilation, for, besides the fact that God does not annihilate by its recoil on the nothing of What he did "Deus non est via tendandi in non esse" (cf. 1 Cor, XI, leç. 5, n. 662; 1a/104/3), this annihilation would also be contrary to the meaning of the consecratory words. Finally, by this annihilation, as by the decomposition of the bread into its elements, would The theological explanation of the real presence 133 This is the only possible way to explain the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Once we have demonstrated that, unless we end up with a contradiction, there is no other way to explain the real presence, except through total change, "conversion", to use the term of St. Paul. Thomas and the Council of Trent, from the substance of bread to the body It remains to show that this explanation does not itself lead to contradiction, or that, at least, the arguments which would reduce it to this cannot be conclusive. It is to this task that article 4, the most important of the question, is devoted. If the arguments that could be opposed to transubstantiation (a term that summarizes the expression total change or change of substance) cannot prove its impossibility, it is because they are and can only be drawn from the changes that we know, those that are operated by created agents. All these agents exist and can only act according to their form. If they are material (and such is the case for the changes of which we can have the experience) it is indeed this form which gives to the matter its existence " forma dat esse materiae 5. De In any case, their being is limited by this form. No creature possesses being at all, is being at all, "ipsum actus essendi", but possesses only the being of a form, the being limited by this or that form, determined by its own form. Therefore, since the action of an agent cannot exceed in its effect the being from which it emanates - "operari sequitur esse" - it is consequently limited by this being, by the form which determines it. The water flowing from a stream cannot be more abundant than that supplied by its sources. From then on, every created agent can only act within the limits of the actuality that is his, of the being that is his, that of a form. In his action, he can only reach the forms, but not the very being of the subject of his operation, a subject that is always assumed to be the subject of his operation: all created activity can only operate "transformations" (whether they be generations - changes of substantial forms - or alterations - changes of accidental forms -), changes of form in an already existing subject. If we have understood the reason for this limitation of the created action, 134 Consequences of transubstantiation we will not have difficulty in understanding why it no longer exists when it comes to God. For God is not the being of this or that form, but the being in its fullness, the "Ipswm esse subsistens". From then on, his action is no longer limited to changes in forms, it can reach the very being to its core, change not only the form of a subject, but change one being into another being, in such a way, as St. Thomas explains that "every the substance of the one is changed into the whole substance of the other. This is precisely what happens at the consecration, where the whole substance of the bread (matter and form) is changed into the substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of the blood of Christ. We can no longer speak, therefore, of transformation, nor of any other kind of natural change; a reserved and appropriate term is needed: that of transubstantiation. That this explanation is not easy to grasp for those who are not familiar with the distinctions of matter and form, of essence and being, we cannot deny, and we gladly refer those who are not familiar with the distinctions of matter and form to the term "transubstantiation. who will have somewhat forgotten these notions in the third question of the prima pars. But the conclusion is necessary, and it is it that allows Saint Thomas to answer the objections. All the refusals to receive that could be brought against the dogma of the real presence, to its explanation by transubstantiation, can only come from or be based on the changes that created agents can operate; they cannot conclude anything when the agent is God himself, whose operation extends to the depths of being. CONSEQUENCES OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION Permanence of accidents; the fact (75/5) The first Christ can be believed: that of experience: " The fact that invited us to seek how to make him present in the Eucharist was a fact of his real presence. It was totally beyond our sensu deprehendi non potest, sed sola fide, quae aucto- ritati divinae innititur" (75/1 c). The theological explanation of the real presence 135 A second one, on the contrary, is supplied to us by the senses: that of the permanence of accidents: "sens apparet facta consecratione, Omnia accidentia panis et vini remanere" (75/5 c). Now, Saint Thomas specifies (ad 3um) here the senses are in their the field of sensitive qualities. We can and must trust them. On the other hand - and despite the words of the prose "visus tactus, gustus in te fallitur" - the domain of substance is that of intelligence, and although properties are normally the way to penetrate the nature of substance, if we are otherwise warned that this nature has been changed, there is not strictly speaking deception, but exceeding competence. Suitability Here St. Thomas once again looks for conveniences. He sees three: - the first invites us to think of the realism of the Eucharistic presence: if the accidents remain, it is "to avoid the repugnance we would have to eat human flesh"? So it is indeed flesh that we eat when we take communion with the host, it is not bread. It is blood that we drink from the chalice. But the Lord, by veiling them under the appearances of bread and wine, makes communion more amiable to us. Let us not, however, take advantage of this condescension of the Lord to be less sure of eating the Lord's flesh and drinking his blood. - The second comes from the prudence of not revealing to unbelievers the marvels of the Real Presence; - The third comes from the increase of merit that there is for us in bringing our faith to the Real Presence, while appearances are contrary: "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. Total conversion of substance, matter and form (75/6) In Article 4, when we talked about the total conversion of the substance of the bread to the body of Christ, of the difference of this 136 Consequences of transubstantiation In the conversion from the transformations brought about by the agents created, and which we are witnessing, the insistence - for that was the difference - had been placed above all on the non-permanence of a common subject, of a material, it was not only the form that was changed but the very being of the bread. Here, the permanence of accidents invites us to pose the problem of form. This problem seems to be "outdated" today, but on the contrary, it is very current, because it poses the problem of the very nature of substance. Two difficulties are to be retained here: the first and the third. The latter will be studied especially when we have to ask ourselves what are the possibilities of action of accidents. It is especially there that it will arise. The first, on the other hand, must stop us here. Saint Thomas starts from the artificial character (arte factum) of bread. It is not a natural substance; it is a manufactured product, the product of the baker's art. Therefore, would not its form, instead of being substantial, be accidental, an accident? In other words, the fact Would the fact that it was made prevent bread from being a true substance, and would it be necessary to see in it, as in a house for example, only a unity "secundum quid", a unity of order, of disposition, an accidental whole, not subsisting in itself but only in the parts which compose it (cf. Ia, 104/1)? Today, the difficulty would come rather from its composite character: bread is composed of flour, water; they themselves are composed of chemical elements, hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, etc. Where should we look for the substance*, the primary subject not existing in another, but carrying its properties? Although "outdated" by our biological knowledge, St. Thomas' answer puts us on the right track. If we can no longer say that living beings are made (we try in vain to do so), at least the answer of the Summa assumes as indubitable the fact that living beings are substances. But what is more composite than a living being? Let us remember our first contacts with organic chemistry! For- Each living being is undoubtedly a substance, since it has a substantial form which we call its "soul" *. Each of them is indeed the subject of all its operations, as well as of its carac- or accidental. No one will say that Medor is not The theological explanation of the real presence 137 It is not a dog, but a compound of chemicals, and it is to these chemicals that we must attribute the fact of having barked or bitten. This is so true that it is from our experience as living subjects that we most clearly acquire the notion of substance. But what about beings that are not alive? Where is the boundary between substantial and accidental form, between "any substance" and "all substance"? What is the difference between "all natural" and "all accidental"? If we go back to the series of elements (they were not unknown to the ancients, and St. Thomas spoke to us earlier about the decomposition of bread into its elements), if we go back the series, if it is in them that we must look for the substance, Where should we stop? The ancients knew four elements: earth, water, air and fire: they saw them as part of the composition of substances, but they did not see them as substances. Since then, it has been discovered that these elements themselves are composite. We have known the molecule, the atom. We have gone further: the atom has been revealed as containing a whole system of particles. At what level is substance to be found, if we do not want to go back to prime matter, the pure subject of all forms, but having without them no subsistence? The answer seems to be sought in the relation of substance to the properties of which it is the subject: whether simple or compound, there will be different substance whenever there are different properties. There is substance where there are properties irreducible to others. If they are compounds, the compound will be a substance, it will have a substantial form and not only The properties of a house are only the addition of the properties of its components: the waterproofness of the slates, the firmness of the stone of the walls, etc. The properties of a house are only the addition of the properties of its components. The properties of a house are only the addition of the properties of its elements: the waterproofness of the slates, the firmness of the stone walls, etc. The properties of sulphuric acid, on the other hand, are quite different from those of sulphur and oxygen! The properties of bread, likewise, are not those of water (water is a liquid, bread is a solid); they are not even those of water and those of flour, added together. A proof of this is that doctors will forbid the use of bread to a patient to whom, on the other hand, they will recommend 138 Consequences of transubstantiation pasta, although it is made up of the same elements. The dietetic properties - not to mention the others - are different in both cases. Indeed, if we speak of substance, it is in relation to properties or accidents. Substance is the subject of these properties, what it is appropriate to subsist by itself, to exercise its own being and not to subsist in another, as in its subject. Of that object whose property is to be hard, we shall say: it is iron. Of that other object which burns, one will say: it is wood; it is to the iron that one will attribute the hardness, not the reverse. Did not a psychologist specializing in the study of childhood write that the idea of substance is the first to which the child's intelligence opens up, and that it is on this idea that he asks his first question: "What is this?" wood, iron, stone, bread or butter? Have we come to the point, by dint of science and analysis, where we no longer recognize what appears spontaneously to the child? Here we have a good answer to those who reject the scholastic distinctions of substance and accident, and who consequently refuse, as outdated, the traditional explanation of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, based on this distinction and these notions. If we wish to refer to St. Thomas for further clarification, it is not difficult to find in him, and in the Summa itself, the principles of the answer we have just outlined. \ The study of the Incarnation gives him the opportunity to distinguish between various kinds of "wholes", of compounds (3a, 2/1): Or the whole is composed of complete elements, which remain unchanged and retain all their properties in that whole. This can only be the case of "wholes", whose form is only a composition of order or arrangement of parts. This is the accidental whole, whose being depends on the very elements that compose it, which are the subjects, the substances. Or the whole is composed of complete elements, but which, on entering the whole, are transformed or at least lose their properties, which give way to those of the whole. It is the substantial whole, it is the subject of the exercise of being, and its elements do not have the same properties as the whole. The theological explanation of the real presence 139 In other words, the subject is the only thing that can give rise to its being (in order to find its own properties, its subsistence, it is necessary to decompose the whole). In other words - We apologize for insisting, but the subject matter is delicate and important for our treatise on the Eucharist. When it is a question of an accidental whole, a compound of substances, a compound whose form is only accidental, the being of the whole depends on the elements which compose it, the accidental form, that of the whole, is "subject" in their substances (Ia, 104/1). When it is, on the contrary, a substantial whole, the elements appear modified (as long as they remain in the whole), the being The body is the sum of the whole, and its properties are something other than the addition of the elements and the sum of their properties. We now have the principles required to be able to answer the question asked: what, of the bread, at the moment of consecration, is converted into the body of Christ? The answer is that what is converted into the body of Christ is the whole substance of the bread, its matter, as we have seen above, but also its form, which is not an accidental form, the order of the elements entering into the composition of the bread, but a substantial form which gives the matter of the bread its being and distinguishes it from all other substances, as from its own elements. On the other hand, it is not the accidents of bread: quantity, odor, color, taste, etc., of which, Saint Thomas pointed out to us, our The senses, after the consecration, can see the permanence. This is what the Council of Trent affirmed, taking up almost verbatim the words with which St. Thomas ends the body of art. 4: "The whole substance of the bread is changed (convertitur) into the whole substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of his blood. So this conversion is not only that of one form into another. Nor can it be classed among the species of natural changes, but may be called by a name peculiar to it: transubstantiation." It will remain to explain, as we have already said, the manner in which the Christ can remain present in the Eucharist, the one whose accidents of bread and wine can remain without their substance. Such will be the matter of questions 76 and 77, the commentary on which must now occupy us. 140 The mode of Christ's presence THE MODE FROM PRESENCE FROM CHRIST (q. 76) The fact of faith The fact of faith is that the whole Christ is present in the Eucharist: "It is absolutely necessary to confess according to the Catholic faith that the whole Christ is in this sacrament" (76/L.c.). This is also the doctrine of the Council of Trent: "If anyone denies that in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist are truly, really and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ, let him be anathema" (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. 1, DZ, no. 883; FC. no. 745). The principle of explanation This is the double title of this presence. "Ex vi sacramenti - in virtue of the sacramental sign"; and "ex maturali concomitantia - by natural concomitance". Ex vi sacramenti, - that is, by virtue of the direct signification of the sacramental words, under each sacramental species ze is that into which the substances of the bread and wine are directly converted: under the species of the bread, the substance of the body of Christ; under the species of the wine, that which is indicated by the form: 'this is my blood,' namely, the substance of the blood of Christ. Ex naturali concomitantia, that is to say, because of the co-existence in Christ (as he is and as the words of the consecration do not can change), of all what constitutes it, and who is In each species, Christ is found to be inseparable from the substance of his body and the substance of his blood. Under each species, Christ is found whole, with his body, his blood, his soul and his divinity. The mind may consider them separately, but they are really inseparable. In the Eucharist, it is thus as he is in heaven at the moment of The theological explanation of the real presence 141 At the consecration Christ is found. If the consecration had been made by an apostle while Christ was in the tomb, there would have been under the species of bread only His body, under the species of wine only His blood, and the soul of Christ really separated from the body and blood would not have been present, but His divinity would have been inseparable from His body as well as from His blood. Yet, and this is important from the point of view of the sacrifice, if it is the glorious Christ who is found under each of the two species, this presence of the whole Christ under each species is only due to concomitance. According to the sense and "in virtue of the words of consecration," "vi verborum," the body alone is present under the species of bread, the blood alone present under the species of wine; it may therefore be said that they are sacramentally separate (that is, in the sign), but they are not really separate, as we have just seen. By this means the representation of the bloody death of Calvary is assured, at the same time as the life-giving presence of Christ immolated and risen (art. 2). As we have seen, St. Thomas explains the character of the true sacrifice of the Holy Mass in terms of the sacramental meaning of bloody immolation and the reality of the presence of the victim. How Christ is found in the Eucharist The principle of explanation, drawn from the difference in the title of presence: "vi verborum", or simple concomitance, also allows us to penetrate further into the explanation of the mystery. We can indeed see that after the consecration the accidents of the bread and wine remain, especially the dimensions of the bread and wine. They are not converted into the body and blood of Christ, nor into its dimensions. It follows that in virtue of the words of consecration, only the substances of the bread and wine are converted to the substances of the body and blood of Christ. Only the substances of the bread and wine, therefore, are found under the species, "in virtue of the words of consecration". of the body and blood of Christ, not dimensions. It follows ## second of very great importance to rents and resolve them, is that the their accidents, especially their principle of explanation, which will be to meet the contradictions appacorps and the blood of Christ are not 142 The mode of Christ's presence present in the Eucharist only by mode of substance, in the manner of substances and not in the manner of quantity. This is what takes place "vi verborum". But if it is in the manner of substance that the body of Christ is present, it follows that it will be in the same manner that its quantitative dimensions will also be present, which are present only by concomitance or inseparability from the substance. It will therefore no longer be possible to argue, in order to refuse the real presence, that the host is small compared to the human body. A substance is in fact found in a small quantity as well as in a large quantity. The substance of bread is just as truly found in a host as in a six-pound loaf. It may also be concluded that Christ is found in its entirety in a whole host as well as under a small parcel of it: under this small parcel was also the substance of the bread as well as under the whole host, under a drop of wine as well the substance of the wine as in a chalice filled to the brim. Another consequence is that the Christs themselves can be found in everything, since they are only found there, we have come from the concomitance with the substance and dimensions of the body of the whole under the species, to see it, that in virtue of the substance (art. 4). Finally, Christ will not be found in the Eucharist, located by his own dimensions, but by those of the species (art. 5). We know in fact how the place is defined: "corporis ambientis terminus immobilis primus - the place is the surface of the body which contains the localized body", meaning the surface of the ambient body immediately touching the contained or localized body. The place of a fish is the surface of the water which immediately circumscribes it. A body is said to be located "by its own dimensions - per modum loci > when its own dimensions are immediately contiguous to the surrounding body. Christ is located by his own dimensions in heaven, as he was on earth by the air in which he moved, by the surface of the earth on which his feet rested. Now, as we have just seen, in the Eucharist, the dimensions of The theological explanation of the real presence 143 Christ is not present by virtue of his own nature, but in the manner of substance. Now this substance is not located immediately, but by means of its dimensions. The consecration having made present the substance of the body of Christ and also its dimensions under the species, by conversion of the substance of the bread into that of the body of Christ, Christ (substance and dimensions) will thus be located only in the place where this substance was located. Let us remember the happy formula of the well-known hymn: "In every host He has placed Himself in the manner of the spirits. Let us remember the felicitous formula of the well-known hymn "In every host He has put Himself In the manner of the spirits; His body holds the place of bread His blood holds the place of wine." Scholasticism says that Christ is not present in the Eucharist "per modum quantitatis" (according to its own dimensions, as a given quantity of a body is found present in a place, circumscribed by it) but "per modum substantiae - in the manner of substance," foreign by itself to the dimensions of a place. Thus, since it will be there itself only by mode of substance, all the quantity of Christ, as well as his other accidents (those at least which directly affect quantity) will be there "only in the manner of substance". This removes the apparent contradiction of seeing Christ present both in Heaven and on one or more altars. There would be a contradiction if on the altar as located by its own dimensions; there is only if he is on the altar as in that which has been changed into that of his body. This does not take away or diminish the in Heaven, Christ was not on the contrary the place of substance reality of the presence, but makes it invisible to all eyes, even to the eyes of the blessed. For the eye never sees the substance, which is the coloured surface. Christ is not risen according to this surface, but only an eye can see him under the saints his presence, which remains a mystery of but only the accident not present in the Euchas according to its substance, never species, nor so note faith. 144 Condition of accidents that remain CONDITION OF ACCIDENTS WHO REMAIN (Q. 77) Their permanence We have already seen (q. 75/5) that - as the senses give us certainty - the accidents of the bread and wine remain after the consecration by which the substances of the bread and wine were changed into those of the body and blood of Christ. Here we shall ask what is the condition of these accidents, and how this permanence is not contradictory. St. Thomas, as in the preceding questions, proceeds by stages. He first dismisses false representations or explanations of this permanence; he then shows how it is not contradictory that they remain without a subject; then, among the accidents, he will study one which may serve as a quasi-subject for the others; finally he will see what are or may be the properties or activity of these accidents that remain without a subject. Before tackling each of these questions, we need to situate the way in which they are posed, or more precisely what "makes question" in the fact of this permanence. We recall the definition of accident: "that which is appropriate to exist, not in itself, but in another, in a subject...". If, then, the substances of the bread and wine (in which their accidents subsisted) no longer remain after the consecration, - as my faith obliges us to believe, - if the accidents remain, - as our senses oblige us to recognise, - how can we explain this permanence? The first temptation is to look for another subject for these accidents. We think we can avoid the contradiction, an apparent contradiction at least: existence without a subject of what it is appropriate to exist in a subject, of what is made to exist in a subject. But what would this subject be? Shall we look to the body and blood of Christ? That would be tempting, since it was into these substances that those affected by the The theological explanation of the real presence 145 accidents. Yet we see that this is impossible. To speak only of one accident, the quantity, how could the quantity of bread, even of a large host, be that of a human body? Even if, by an effort of imagination, one would like to consider Christ reducing himself in some way to be affected by the accidents of bread, becoming a piece of bread, like the ogre of Little Thumb changed into a mouse, there is an insurmountable difficulty, apart from the ridiculousness of the imagination: the glorious body of Christ is impassible; it cannot undergo any modification and is in no way modified by the consecration; it is the bread alone, the substance of the bread which is changed into its substance. Can it be thought that these accidents would remain in the air? This is an easy invention, and there is no need to linger long in refuting it. No more than the body of Christ, the air could have (for that is what we should end up with) neither the weight of bread, nor its colour, nor its flavor. It must therefore be admitted that the accidents of the bread and wine, after the consecration, remain without a substantial subject, without that substance which was affected by them, nor without any other. But is this not contradictory if the very definition of an accident is to be "that which is appropriate to exist not in itself but in a subject"? Let's be careful: let's take up this definition again: "that which is appropriate". Not "that which exists" in another. If the definition included the fact of "being in another", the fact of being in itself (or more exactly "not in another") would be contradictory for the accident. But if the definition is the one we have given, namely, "that to which it is appropriate." there is difficulty without doubt, there is no contradiction. There is no contradiction, if a higher power, that which gives being to substance, to the accident of being in substance, if this power intervenes to maintain directly in being - without the mediation of substance - those accidents which ultimately depend more on it than on substance, which depend on the first cause of their being, even more than on the subject for which they were intended. The first cause can indeed produce by itself all the effects of the second causes, to which it gives action, not because it needs them, but because of magnificence; and St. Thomas gives 146 Condition of accidents that remain Here is another example: the virginal conception of Mary, which occurred without the intervention of any man. Role of quantity (a. 2) This does not mean that there is disorder. Among the accidents, there is one which, although it remains without a subject, will fulfil, with respect to the others, the function of subject or quasi-subject: this accident is the quantity. It is indeed visible: after the consecration, it is the piece, the It is the quantity of bread which is always clothed with the properties of the substance to which it belonged, which is white, which has the flavour of bread, which is solid, etc. It is the quantity of wine poured into the chalice that is consecrated. What is visible is also philosophically logical: at the same time as matter, and as its first accident, it is quantity which is the subject of the other accidents; it is it, at the same time as matter, which is the principle of individuation, which distinguishes this piece of bread from another; this quantity of wine rather than another. We will be excused, and perhaps even thanked, for not repeating here all the explanations given in philosophy on the principle of individuation. For those who have them in mind, the conclusions of Saint Thomas will appear in all their clarity. Accident activity (s. 3-6) On the other hand, we will consider a difficulty, perhaps the greatest in the treatise on the Eucharist: we have proof of this in the hesitation which emerges from the answers proposed by Saint Thomas: "melius videtur dicendum - it seems that it is better to answer" (a. 5). We amounts far from the "manifestum is "of the evidence of the permanence of accidents. At the same time as the observation of the permanence of accidents, we can indeed make another one: that of the action The theological explanation of the real presence 147 They can influence our senses, as before the consecration (a. 3); they can become corrupted, mould can disintegrate bread, and, as the corruption of one body is effected by the generation of another, they can engender other bodies, the fungi of mould for example: disintegrated by gastric juices they can feed us. These are all questions that St Thomas asks. But under the words "can they" we must understand: how can they? The essential answer, which recurs in various forms, is that since each being acts insofar as it exists, the accidents can act in virtue of the very being miraculously preserved for them by the first cause at the moment of the conversion of their substances into those of the body and blood of Christ. The answer to the question posed by art. 5, concerning the possibility of generating other bodies, goes further. In fact, it is not only a question in this article of knowing whether and how accidents which miraculously remain without a subject can generate other accidents, which would be sufficient for the answer we have just given, namely, the miraculous conservation of their accidental being. The question is whether and how they can beget other substances, and this is where St. Thomas himself is only very cautious. We must not multiply the miracles, and consequently not see one in this generation of new substances by the accidents that remain. All the miraculous action must come from the consecration itself. So it seems to the holy Doctor that the best answer is to think that at the moment of consecration, when the word of the priest effects the conversion of the substances of the bread and wine into those of the body and blood of Christ, it is then miraculously given to the quantity of the bread and wine to be the primary subject (which is normally the matter) of the forms which will arise. So that these sacramental species, although being always only accidents, now possess the mode and capacity of action of substance. That this is a mystery, we need not insist on realizing. At least, if it is a mystery - and is it not a greater one still than the conversion of the substance of bread into that of the living and glorious body of Christ? - if our poor reason is powerless to account for the way in which the 148 Condition of accidents that remain This is the only way to explain the miracle and all that it implies, but it is also powerless to show the slightest contradiction in this marvellous action of the divine Almighty. We But we can, as St. Thomas says in the prose Lauda Sion, add faith without fear: reason can object nothing of value - it can only sink into adoration. We do not seem to have to dwell on the last two articles of this question; they concern the breaking of bread - in which several ancient authors and St. Thomas himself see a figure of the Passion - and the other the possibility and measure of a possible mixture of liquid with the precious blood. They do not present any special difficulty: they are, moreover, corroborated by the practice of the Church. The breaking of the bread does not affect the body of Christ itself, nor the bread which has been converted, but only the quantity in which remain subject, as we have just seen, to the other accidents from which the substantial subject has disappeared. The evolution of rites The preceding chapters have sought the reasons for the existence of the sacrifice, as well as the nature of that of the Eucharist, and to try to penetrate the admirable mode by which the consecration of the Eucharist is carried out. This sacrament makes it truly present, by offering it to God, the very victim of Calvary. We will leave aside for the moment two questions that Saint Thomas studies immediately afterwards. That of the effects of communion as well as that of the role of the minister will be better placed in other notes which we hope to be able to devote to the principles of the unity of the Mystical Body. It thus remains for us, in order to conclude the treatise on the Eucharist, as it fits into the Summa, to study question 83, which deals with the rite of the Eucharist, the rite of the Mass. THE SIGNED FROM IMMOLATION To understand the meaning of the question posed by art. 1 and its place in the study of the rite, we must refer to the Sentences of Peter Lombard and to the place this problem occupied there. If St. Thomas tackled it here and posed it in these terms, it was so as not to leave unanswered a question inscribed in the manual which he 150 The sign of immolation himself in his first teaching, and which will remain long after the composition of the Summa, the "The question of whether Christ was immolated in the sacrament was merely an adjunct to the question that had long divided his predecessors, that of the breaking of the host. For Lombard, the question of whether Christ was immolated in the sacrament was only an appendix to the question that had long divided his predecessors, that of the breaking of the host: did it touch Christ himself (whom Berenger had had to confess was substantially present under the species), was it only an illusion of the senses, or did it only affect the species itself? an answer that would hold St Thomas. The way in which the Sestences deal with the question of immolation shows that it was only a consequence or an appendix of the preceding one: "Then it must be asked whether what the priest does is in the proper sense a sacrifice or an immolation; and whether Christ was immolated only once, or if he is immolated daily - Post haec quaeritur, si quod gerit sacerdos proprie dicitur sacrificium vel immolatio : et si Christus quotidie immoletur, vel semel tantum immolatus est >" (4 D. XII, q. 5). And here is the answer: "Ad hoc breviter dici potest - it may be answered with a word - that which is offered and consecrated by the priest is called sacrifice and offering, because it is the memory and representation of the true sacrifice and holy immolation accomplished on the altar of the cross. Thus Christ died only once, namely on the altar of the cross, and there he was sacrificed in himself; But every day he is immolated in the Sacrament, for in the Sacrament there is a remembrance of what has been done once." And after having, in support of this answer, quoted some texts of the Fathers, especially that of St. John Chrysostom here attributed, as in the Somme, to Saint Ambrose, the master of the Sentences concludes, "By this it is seen that what is performed on the altar is and is called a sacrifice, and that Christ was sacrificed once, but is offered every day, though here and there in a different manner; and, moreover, it is shown what is the efficacy of the sacrament, namely, the remission of venial sins and the perfection of virtue." St. Thomas' answer in the Summa will not be different, only more precise. Whereas in the Commentary on the Sentences he had extended Lombard's answer by listing The evolution of rites 151 all the rites of the celebration recalling or evoking the immolation of Calvary, he is content here to reply that Christ can be said to be immolated at Mass for two reasons: first, because the immolation of Calvary is represented there; second, because the effects of the Passion are applied to us there. In support of the first answer, he quotes the text of St. John Chrysostom which we have already read*; in support of the second, he recalls the secret of which the statement is so strong: "Each time the memory of this victim is celebrated, the work of our redemption is accomplished - gwoties bujus hostisae commemoratio celebratur, opus nostrae redemptionis exercisetur °. > To which we can add the very clear passage of Pius XII in the encyclical Mediator Dei, which completely corroborates the affirmation of Saint Thomas On the cross (Christ) offered all of himself to God. On the altar, on the other hand, the shedding of blood is no longer possible. On the altar, on the other hand, the shedding of blood is no longer possible, but divine Wisdom has found an admirable way of making the sacrifice of our Redeemer manifest by external signs, symbols of death" (The Liturgy - Solesmes ed., vol. I, no. 554). We can see, then, how this question was well placed in the part of the Summa devoted to the rite of the Mass: if St. Thomas no longer had to show that it contained a true sacrifice - we have seen that he had done so long before - it remained for him to show how, in order to be a sacramental sacrifice, it was important that its rites should be evocative and significant at the same time as they carried the victim of the sacrifice of Calvary. It was not useless to situate this article in this way in order to understand both its place in this question devoted to the study of the rites of the Mass, its restricted scope, and the danger that there would be in seeking only there the thought of Saint Thomas on the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. We need not, therefore, dwell at length here, but only to point out how many confusions would be avoided if we were willing to notice, as this article we invites it, that the The terms sacrifice and immolation are analogous: the Church, like Scripture, applies that of immolation both to the bloody immolation of Calvary and to the commemoration of it. 152 Words and rites of celebration It is made by its symbolic representation and the offering of its victim present on the altar. It can be taken in the active or verbal sense of the act of sacrificing, as well as in the passive or nominal sense of a victim offered or sacrificed; it can designate the bloody sacrifice of Calvary, but also the Memorial which commemorates it and contains it by applying its fruits. We have seen above, in fact (chap. 2) how many Some theologians, forgetting this analogical character and the teaching of St. Thomas, have sought to see in the Mass - almost without reference to Calvary - a further sacrifice, and not the commemorative rite which borrows all its reality from it, and applies to us the fruits of it by making present and offering in consecration the same Victim bloodily immolated once for all on Calvary. But we cannot repeat all that has been said above, and it is time to pass on to the following articles, which seek the reasons for propriety of the various rites of the Mass. WORDS AND RITES FROM THE CELEBRATION These articles analyze the details of the Eucharistic celebration, words or gestures, environments, in order to search for its appropriateness. The arguments of propriety We have already said, with regard to the real presence (q. 75, supra, ch. 4), what these reasons of propriety were for Saint Thomas, an attempt to penetrate, as far as it is possible for us to do so, the thought of God who, although he is free to act in such and such a way, nevertheless does nothing without reason, and without good reasons. If indeed the primary reason from which all others flow is communication of the sovereign Goodness, God a well of The evolution of rites 153 It is therefore impossible for us to deduce them: only revelation can tell us which one God has chosen. It is therefore impossible for us to deduce them: only revelation can teach us which one God has chosen. But after this revelation, we can try to grasp the reasons for this choice, the way in which it realises the first will of the communication of Goodness, to discover the appropriateness of it, and thus to admire more fully the divine plan which presided over it, the plan of this God "who disponit omnia suaviter". Yet the suitability of the mode of communication chosen by God in no way implies the unsuitability or lesser suitability of another mode which God could just as well have chosen; he has many others at his disposal. The same is true of the Church: she has not only one possible way of glorifying God and instructing us by her rites: between these ways she can choose; assisted as she is by the Holy Spirit, she can do nothing unreasonable*. But it is filial piety on our part and a source of contemplation to try to penetrate the reasons for the choices she makes in the course of the centuries. This is the way St. Thomas proceeds: Here, to show the rightness of the various rites of the celebration of the Eucharist, St. Thomas employs two kinds of argument: First, a demonstrative argument: that of sed contra, which assures us that such and such a rite is proper; then dialectical or probative arguments which endeavor to make us perceive the reasons for this propriety. The demonstrative argument is the one we find - formulated here and there in a slightly different way - in connection with all sacramental rites: In dealing with baptism, to the objection denying the propriety of the rites, the following answer is given: "Sed contra quod Ecclesia regitur a Spirit Sancto qui nihil inordinatum facit: (these rites are suitable perfectly) at contrary, because the Church is conducted by the Holy Spirit who does nothing that is not commanded 66/10). " (32, For confirmation, a word is enough: "such is the custom of the Church which is led by the Holy Spirit" (72/12). It is the same for the Eucharist: whether it is the place of 154 Words and rites of celebration When it comes to the rites themselves, it is the same principle that is appealed to, namely, "the custom of the Church which cannot err, enlightened as it is by the Holy Spirit. There is, however, a difference with the order of the article on the real presence. The latter in fact appealed first to a principle of faith "sensx deprehendi non potest sed sola fide, quae auctoritati divinae innititur >" - "One cannot know this presence by the senses, but only by faith which is based on divine authority. Authority of the Church in matters of sacramental discipline ° Here, it is not a question of a divine disposition. St. Thomas, in his treatise on the laws, pointed out that, in contrast to the Old Testament, where the cultic laws were brought about by God himself, the New Testament is above all an interior law, the gift of the Holy Spirit sent to the Church and inspiring it from within. Thus, apart from faith and the very essence of the sacraments, it belongs to the Church, under the influence of this Holy Spirit, to establish itself cultic or ceremonial laws (1a 2ae, qq. 106 and 108) and to modify them (1a 2ae, qq. 108). trust when necessary. This is what the Council of Trent defined against the Protestants who demanded communion in the chalice under the pretext that the Church had committed an abuse of power by allowing the more recent custom of communion in a single form to be introduced and approved: "The Holy Council further declares that the Church has always had the power, in the administration of the sacraments, remaining unimpaired in their substance, to rule or change what she would judge, according to the The same doctrine was recalled by Pius XII when, in his letter to the Holy Father, he stated that "the sacraments are not to be used in the same way as the other sacraments, but in the same way as the other sacraments" (Sess. XXI, c. 2; DZ. 931, cf. can. 2). The same doctrine was recalled by Pius XII when in the Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis, 30 November 1947, he specified The evolution of rites 155 what would in future be the matter and form for the administration of each of the three degrees of the sacrament of Holy Orders. After affirming that the tradition of the instruments was not required for the substance and validity of the sacrament, he adds to cut short any dispute: "Qzod si ex Ecclesiae voluntate et prescripto eadem aliquando fuerit necessaria ad valorem quoque, omnes norunt Ecclesiam quod statuit etiam mutare et abrogare valere - that if it was sometimes necessary, even for validity, all know that what it has established, the Church can also change and abrogate. "According to the variety of times and places," the Council of Trent specified. If it is sufficient for us to know that the rites are established by the Church, assisted by the Holy Spirit, in order to be assured of their "propriety", we may explore these times and places in order to better understand the Church's thinking when she adapts her rites to them. This is the purpose of the arguments which we have called "dia- They do not bring us new certainty. They do not bring us any new certainty; they satisfy the natural and legitimate need of the human mind, as well as of filial piety, to strive to penetrate as far as possible the very thought of the Church. THE CHANGES FROM THE ORDO MISSAE In order to study the appropriateness of the various rites for the celebration of the Eucharist, we could follow St. Thomas step by step, who considers successively the time of the celebration, the sacred buildings and vessels, the texts of the Missal, the rites properly so called, or the gestures of the priest, and the precautions to be taken against possible failures of persons and objects. This method, however, would risk being tedious, since the texts of St. Thomas are easy to read and require no commentary or presentation. But above all, since these rites have recently been the object of important modifications, it is the very reason, the propriety of these modifications, that we shall first have to seek. On the very principle of a modification made by the authority 156 The modifications of the Ordo Missae To deny it would be to call into question both the definition of Trent and the reminder of the same doctrine by Pius XII, which we have just mentioned. We will have to seek the reasons why the Church's authority made these modifications. But before we come to this point, we must reply to a refusal which has been opposed by some, not to the very principle of the Church's authority to make these modifications, but to the fact or manner in which they have been presented. The Constitution "Missale Romanum" of April 3, 1969, is said to be lacking, clarity or sufficient legal formulas for genuine enactment. Promulgation of the new rite We do not wish to enter here into the details and subtleties of this long controversy. It would be useless, moreover. The answer to such arguments had been given long ago, exactly since September 29, 1908, in the Apostolic Constitution Promulgandi. Among the many pastoral reforms of his fruitful pontificate, St. Pius X in this Constitution introduced a new mode of promulgating the laws of the Church: their insertion in an official journal, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. After having affirmed in this Constitution that "the type and method of promulgation of laws depend on the will of the legislator, who is master of He recalls that the hitherto authentic method of posting the documents at the gates of the four major Basilicas and at the Campo dei Fiori had not always been observed, but that "it had almost become customary to consider the acts and decrees of the Holy See as promulgated simply because they emanated from a secretariat legally empowered to carry them". He added that it was almost customary to consider the acts and decrees of the Holy See as promulgated by the mere fact that they emanated from a secretariat legally empowered to issue them. Then he adds that there can be no doubt about the value and force of these acts, either because of their content, or because this method of promulgation had the approval The evolution of rites 157 express or tacit of the Sovereign Pontiff. In order that there may be no ambiguity, we shall reproduce these last lines in their official and original text: "Publici juris sic effecta, dubitari nequit, quin acta ipsa rata firmaque essent, tum quod plerumque munita clausulis, contrariis quibusve derogantibus, tum quod id genus promulgatio esset vel expresse vel tacite approbata a Pontifice Maximo *," Now such is the case with the new Ordo Missae. If the Constitution Missale Romanum of April 3, 1969, did not promulgate the new rite of Mass, but only approved it, promulgation was regularly effected by three Decrees of the Congregation for Divine Worship, issued by express order "ex speciali mandato" of the Supreme Pontiff, and dealing respectively with the Ordo Missae, the Missal and the Lectionary. Is not this precisely the mode which we have just seen St. Pius X declare to be entirely sufficient to remove any dispute about the promulgation of a law emanating from the Supreme Pontiff? As for questioning the Pope's thought, after he has expressed himself so many times, would it not be an insult to him to doubt that his word corresponds to his thought, and to appeal to a principle which would allow us to question any act emanating from the Holy See? We need not, therefore, stop at this refusal, which we have just seen is so groundless, but rather to seek the reasons for the appropriateness of the recent changes to the Ordo Missae, In the wake of St. Pius V In order to understand the reasons for these recent changes, it is important to place them in the context of the great movement which, at all times, and especially at the time of the Councils, has led the Church to rejuvenate her face, to erase the wrinkles which the centuries and men may have left on it, in order to rediscover in the memories of her first loves - as God once invited his people to do by means of the prophet - the eternal youthfulness which her Spouse aspires to contemplate within her. The motives which, in the aftermath of Vatican II, led Sr. S. Paul VI 158 The modifications of the Ordo Missae to impose the new Ordo Missae on the Church are none other than those who, in the wake of of the Council of Trent, had guest St. Pius V to impose his own. The Fathers of the Council of Trent understood that in order to put an end to the criticisms which the Reformers were raising against the Sacrifice of the Mass, it would not be enough to condemn their errors, but that it would also be necessary to rectify the deviations which, in the course of the centuries, had led the celebration of the Mass away from its primitive purity, and to bring back to unity the unheard-of multiplicity of rites which were then in use. It was a far cry from the time when the "Ordines Romani", the "Sacramentaries" of the Golden Age of the Liturgy, served as the norms for the celebration of the Roman Mass; when, as the "anti-pho These books, which were called "natres" and "graduals" for the chant, had been transported throughout the West by Charlemagne, in order to conform the celebration of the liturgy to the customs of Rome and of the papal mass. For several centuries, the multiplication of low masses, celebrated by the priest without the assistance of the faithful, had facilitated the introduction, in the course of the celebration itself, of devotional prayers, which had gradually taken their place in the text of the various Missals. Moreover, errors in handwritten copies, and then, after the invention of printing, the absence of authentic norms of reference, had multiplied the diversity of practices to the point that, sometimes in the same church, priests could celebrate according to different rites. To restore unity, to return to the sources, would have required an immense effort. The Council, however, was unable to meet the demands of its work, and it took care of the most urgent matters. His theologians (today we would say his "experts") had drawn up a catalogue of the errors professed by the Reformers and of what needed to be reviewed and corrected in the rites of the Mass: "Abusus Missae. In its XXII session, on 17 September 1562, the Council condemned the errors relating to the Mass and issued decrees against the most glaring abuses. Since it no longer had the leisure to provide for the reform of the Missal itself, by a decree of the twenty-fifth and last session, it entrusted it, as well as that of the other liturgical books, to the solicitude of the Sovereign Pontiffs. We have seen Vatican II do the same. The evolution of rites 159 The popes soon set to work: on 9 July 1568 the Bull "Qzod a Nobis" appeared, promulgating the reform of the Breviary. Referring to the formularies of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory the Great, and then to the recasting of St. Gregory VII, Pius V noted the deformations and "mutilations" introduced in the course of the following centuries, as well as the multiplicity due to arbitrariness or fantasy in the way the Hours were celebrated. To all To those who did not benefit from a custom that was at least two centuries old, he imposed the new breviary which, he wrote, "does not depart from those of the noblest churches of Rome, nor from the information collected in the Pontifical Library". Two years after the Breviary, the Missal was promulgated in its turn. The Bull "Oxo Primum" of 14 July 1570 showed why its reform was called for by that of the Breviary, and then indicated its two main motives: the unification of the rite in the Latin Church, and the return to "the ancient norm and rite of the Holy Fathers - 44 pristinam... sanctorum patrum norman ac ritum". Like the Breviary, the reformed Missal would be imposed everywhere, except where a two-hundred-year-old custom existed, and "nothing in the future should ever be subtracted or modified, nor anything added - hwic Missali Nostro nuper edito, nibil unquam addendum, detrahendum aut immutandum esse decer-". nendo * ". The return to the rites of the Fathers. Despite this assurance in the Bull, the new Missal remains far from the Mass of the Sacramentaries It was the Gregorian and Gelasian Missals to which the pope had referred in the Bull promulgating the Breviary. The "Missal" was not so old. In the heyday of the Roman Mass the books used in it were numerous, as numerous as the various classes of performers: sacramentaries for the celebrant, graduals and antiphonaries for the choir, lectionaries for the readers, Ordines for the conduct of the ceremonies... It was only from the 11th century onwards, with the multiplication of private celebrations, that the texts of "these different books were brought together in Missals (plenary missals), the most widespread of which (thanks to the Franciscans) was the one of the "Curia Roman", where were inserted also prayers of private devotion. This was the first Missal to be printed in 1474. It is practical- 160 The modifications of the Ordo Missae that which is reproduced, with slight modifications and lightening, in the missal of St. Pius V. From Saint Pius V to Saint Pius X If the return to the "pristina sanctorum patrum norma" was relative, the unification, although more effective, was never absolute. We are not referring here only to those Churches or religious Orders which, by virtue of a two-hundred-year-old custom, have a special missal. As early as 1604, a brief from Clement VIII promulgated a new edition of the Missal. Reproaches were addressed to those who had allowed themselves to modify the texts. But the reproach, it should be noted, was not so much that they had introduced modifications as that they had introduced them without recourse to the authority of the Holy See. Thirty years later, in 1634, Urban VIIL, in his turn, had the He was not to use the Missal of his predecessors, but to follow in their footsteps "eorum vestigiis inbaerentes". Like Clement VIIL, he forbade the printing of any other missal in the future than the one he had published, but like his predecessor, he allowed poor priests to use the one they had in their hands and the booksellers to sell their stock. A century later, in 1749, the great canonist Benedict XIV, noting that earlier works had ignored many of the manuscripts published since then, resumed the same work, beginning, like Pius V, with the breviary, but on a much broader basis and with greater scientific rigour. Unfortunately, the dissensions of the cardinal commission delayed the completion of the work, and when the pope wanted to take it over, he was already ill and his death left things as they were until the advent of Pius X. Saint Pius X Elected in 1903, after the death of Leo XIII, the Holy Pontiff was not slow to set to work. As early as 1895, when he was Patriarch of Venice, he published a Pastoral Letter on sacred music, giving priority to Gregorian chant. In the year of his elevation The evolution of rites 161 to the Roman pontificate, he published a Mofs Proprio and wrote several letters on the same subject. In 1905 the Sacred Congregation of the Council published a decree inviting to frequent communion, and five years later it was the turn of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments to advance the age of admission of children to first communion. Meanwhile, the commission he had appointed was preparing a general reform of the liturgical books: on November 1, 1911 the Bull Divino Afflatu "promulgated a completely new distribution of the psalter, which it presented as the first step in a revision of the Breviary and the Missal: "Nemo non videt per ea quae bic a Nobis decreta sunt, primum Nos fecisse gradum ad Romani Breviarii et Missalis emendationem - no one can fail to see that by what We have just decreed, we are taking a first step towards a revision of the Roman Breviary and Missal. " The total redistribution of the psalter gave sufficient indication that this would not be a superficial reform, but a more complete overhaul. If the Constitution Divino Afflatu had not been clear enough, the Motu Proprio "Abbinc duos annos *", which followed in 1913, indicated this clearly enough by hinting at the extent of the work to be undertaken and the time frame it would require; indeed, it stated that it would "require a considerable and lengthy work. For this reason, he added, it will take a great number of years before this liturgical edifice, composed with intelligent care by the Bride of Christ to express her piety and faith, will appear cleansed of the grime of time, and once again resplendent with dignity and beautiful order. We will find almost the same words in the mouth of His Holiness Paul VI, in the aftermath of Vatican II. These long years were not given to St. Pius X. He died a year later before he could complete his work. Pius XII could speak of the "impetus he gave to the liturgical movement" (all. 22 September 1956): The decrees on sacred music and frequent communion introduced the faithful to a more active participation in the Holy Sacrifice, while the reform of the calendar, promulgated by the last Mots Proprio, gave a more important place to the celebration of the Mysteries of the Lord in the liturgical year. 6 162 The modifications of the Ordo Missae Moreover, the use of ancient manuscripts for the restoration of Gregorian chant had shown the source from which to draw the elements of a genuine renewal, namely the time when the Church, in the from persecution, had been able to translate openly his faith, His adoration and praise in the songs and rites of the solemn Mass, where all entire gathered around from sound Pontiff, it joined him in the celebration of the Lord's sacrifice. Pius XII The impetus was given, which would never stop: interrupted for a moment by the war of 1914 and its aftermath, it was given new impetus by Pius XII, the very pope who canonized Saint Pius X. Two encyclicals: "Mediator" and "Musicae sacrae disciplina", as well These were a true overall teaching on the Liturgy, as was also the case with the important address to the members of the Congress of Liturgical Pastoral Care in Assisi. At the same time, decrees, almost revolutionary for the time, put these principles into practice and inaugurated a return to the ancient Roman liturgy: decrees authorizing evening Masses, softening the rules of the Eucharistic fast, and above all, decrees postponing the Easter Vigil and the ceremonies of Holy Week to the times when they had been celebrated in antiquity, which alone allowed their symbolism to be fully grasped. The hopes which these measures raised at the time were not another decree of March 23, 1955 #, allowed us to think that this was only a beginning. This decree, in fact, only simplified the rubrics, and authorized their use immediate; momentarily but (#terim) he asked for the books that we liturgical continued existing, to use up to It was not provided for in this way: "donec aliter provisus fuerit". It was indeed at the same time as the invitation to patience, the announcement of a future redesign. The evolution of rites THE CONSTANTES FROM REFORMS 163 SUCCESSIVE This rapid overview of history will have enabled us to recognize the constants in the liturgical reforms carried out by the Pontiffs from St. Pius V onwards. These constants can sometimes be read as implied in the reforms themselves, sometimes they are explicitly formulated. It seems that they can be reduced to two main ones: the return to "the norm of the ancient fathers" - to use the expression of St. Pius V himself - and the unification of the rites in the Western Church. Back to the norm of the old Fathers In the Constitution promulgating his Missal, St. Pius V speaks only in a general way of the "ancient manuscripts of the pontifical library"; in the Bull which two years earlier had introduced the reform of the Breviary, he was more explicit, naming the Gregorian and Gelasian sacramentaries. Clement XIII would hardly express himself differently when speaking of the Missal of St. Pius V: "veterem et emendatiorem norman". St. Pius X, in his turn, will write in the same sense, speaking of Gregorian chant: "the proper chant of the Roman Church, the only one it has inherited from the ancient fathers" (M. P. Tra le sollecitudini), and he will do the same in inviting frequent communion, even for small children. Pius XII was even more explicit about the reform of Holy Week and the Easter Vigil. He expressly states that he wants to restore the time and the ancient way of celebrating them. He even gives the reasons for this return. This is not archaeology. He even warns more than once against returning to the old for the sake of the old. It is a concern for authenticity and truth: how can we sing "o vere beata nox" when the sun is shining? The anticipation of the Easter Vigil in the afternoon, and then in the afternoon of the 164 The constants of successive reforms The fact that the morning of Holy Saturday had not been, he remarks, without detriment to the beautiful symbolism so telling of this great vigil. If his predecessors have been less explicit on this point, their thinking is nevertheless the same. If they wish to return to the "Fathers", it is because the rites in the course of time "have lost something of their ancient disposition" (St. Pius V), it is to rid them "of the filth of time" (St. Pius X). Another motive is also expressed by St. Pius X and Pius XII, which had already motivated the calendar reforms under their predecessors. As the years pass, the Church places on her altars those of her children whom she thinks should be given to others as models. Their holidays are on the calendar, but each of them has a The reform of the Church was carried out at the expense of the Proper of Time. When Benedict XIV undertook the reform, which he was unable to complete, only ninety days remained free in the course of the year for the offices of Sundays and feasts. This motive had already led St. Pius V to reduce the number of saints' feasts: as periodically new ones are instituted, it is also periodically that dark cuts must be made. Pius XII specifies the theological reason for this reduction of the number of feasts: the whole liturgy is centered on the Paschal Mystery, the Mystery of the Lord par excellence, the one of which the Sundays are a reminder in the course of the year, a reminder that is prolonged by the festive office. Consequently, if we allow the feasts of the saints to proliferate too much, we run the risk of neglecting or somewhat obliterating these essential lines, not only for devotion, but also for the faith of the faithful. Finally, in addition to these motives of authenticity and doctrine, a motive pastoral invited to return to the customs of the past. Was it not the good of the faithful, their fuller participation in the fruits of Calvary, which led Pius X to promote frequent communion, to admit small children, to propose to the Church a chant which would no longer be reserved for a few specialists, but thanks to which all could participate in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. It was the same preoccupation, and even more affirmed, that led Pius XII to authorize evening Masses for workers who were not free at any other time of the day, to soften the burden of the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice on them, and to make them more accessible to the poor. The evolution of rites 165 the rigours of the Eucharistic fast, to bring back to its original time the celebration of the Easter Vigil and the offices of the Week and thus facilitating the participation of the of the faithful; reason Finally, the slow but gradual introduction of the vulgar language into several liturgical books was a pastoral step. If the reforms themselves and the documents presenting them were not enough to convince us of the Pope's intentions, a reading of the encyclical Mediator Dei of September 22, 1947, and of the 1956 speech to the members of the Congress on Liturgical Pastoral Care in Assisi, can leave no room for doubt. Pius XII insists on the priority to be given to the Mysteries of the Lord at this Easter and at this Vigil "mother of all vigils", on the importance of the solemn sung Mass where the character of the Holy Sacrifice as a public act of worship of the whole Mystical Body of Christ is more fully revealed through the participation of the faithful. But we cannot analyze these two documents, which are so rich and which today appear to be truly precursory. We can only encourage you to read them attentively. As we have just seen, the first constant in the successive reforms brought about by the Popes in the reform of the rites and texts of the Mass is a "return to the norm of the Fathers": Unification of the Roman Rite It is hardly necessary to insist on the constant concern of the popes for this unity. We know the categorical words of St. Pius V. Wishing to remedy an unheard-of multiplicity of modes of celebration introduced even in the same church, he strictly forbade any new initiative in the future. We know, moreover, that the prescription was not strictly observed, since, as we have just seen, several successors of St. Pius V were obliged to call the offenders to order, without forbidding themselves to introduce some modifications. What is true of Clement VIIL and Urban VII was even more true of of Benoît XIV, who, though he could not lead her to its In the end, the government took the initiative for a much more comprehensive reform. 166 The constants of successive reforms This concern for unity was also that of St. Pius X, in connection with his complete recasting of the Psalter, and of Pius XII for that of Holy Week. He firmly prescribed it after an "experimentum" for the Easter Vigil. It was this same concern for unification which led Paul VI, after promulgation of the new Ordo Missae, to impose the use of the new Missal on all (with a few clearly specified exceptions), and to forbid arbitrary modifications. We shall have to see to what extent these prescriptions were followed. At least we have found at Jui that same constant concern for unity. Consistency of Procedure Alongside these constants in the objectives pursued by the Pontiffs in their reforms of the liturgical books, it may be enlightening to note in passing those of the procedures employed. With the usual wisdom of the Roman court, the popes did not proceed lightly in their revisions: Rome takes its time, but it also takes the elementary precautions that are necessary: the pope cannot know everything, nor do everything by himself. We see this today when our bishops, although their office is incomparable- This is what all popes did for the successive revisions of the Missal, and it is not surprising that the Pontiff's responsibility is less onerous than that of the Pope. This is what all popes have done for the successive revisions of the Missal. One does not need to have studied liturgy at length to be sure of this; it suffices to look carefully at the successive Bulls of the Popes, which are reproduced in the editions of the Missal of St. Pius V after 1911 and which, unfortunately, like the editions of the Missal of St. Pius V, are not available to the public. often the Prefaces, are not read. We will allow ourselves to gather here some indications: The task of "collating the old manuscripts" and of "restoring the Missal to its ancient form" was entrusted by St. Pius V "to carefully chosen scholars" (Bull Oxo Primum), by Cle- ment VIII "to cardinals versed in the Holy Letters and The evolution of rites 167 experts in matters of ecclesiastical antiquity" (Bull Cym sanctissimum). Urban VIII, in a style which is somewhat pompous, but which at least shows how, for the popes, the reform of the Breviary and that of the Missal were one and the same, writes: "Because it is necessary that these two wings which the priest, like the cherubim of the ancient Tabernacle, unfolds daily over the true Propitiatory of the world, should fully answer each other and be uniform, we have entrusted this task to learned and pious men, thanks to whose diligence nothing is lacking in the perfection of the work done. " Later, in the decree bringing back the celebration of the Week In order to maintain the old practice of the saint, Pius XII did not hesitate to put a damper on this praise of Urban VIII for the work of his experts. He attributed to the misfortunes of the times the measures taken by them and whose consequences he deplored. Perhaps we could also apply to these scholars what Msgr. Batiffol wrote of those of St. Pius V: "The loyalty of the liturgists of St. Pius V is not in question: it is the maturity of their undertaking that is in question and their criticism that is lacking. Bellarmine and Baronius on the one hand, and Benedict XIV on the other, would not fail to reproach them" (P. Batiffol, Histoire du Bréviaire romain, Paris 1893, p. 247). No doubt Benedict XIV will be wiser in his choice. The members of the Commission established by him were all known for important works on the Liturgy. The seventeenth century had passed and had left the publications of Tomasi, Mabillon, allowing the serious study of antiquity. However, despite this combination of skills, the result was not much better. In view of the impossibility of reaching agreement among the members of the commission, Benedict XIV decided to take on the work himself, but he died before he could complete the reform. With St. Pius X, whose Constitution Divino afflatu we read after that of Urban VIIL, we find the same method: he too insists on the close link between the psalter and the rest of the liturgy, and concludes that the reform of this psalter is only the first step towards that of the Breviary and the Missal: and he indicates the method chosen for carrying out this vast project "for this matter we shall soon constitute a council or as they say a commission of scholars". 168 The constants of successive reforms Pius XII, in his decrees on the reform of the Easter Vigil and Holy Week, makes allusions to "research on the ancient liturgy" and to "great liturgical scholars" which alone would suffice to give us a clue as to how he proceeded. In In any case, the decree of March 23, 1955, concerning a general reform of the rubrics, is no less explicit than those of his predecessors: "The Supreme Pontiff Pius XII, by reason of his office and pastoral solicitude, has submitted the examination of the question to a special commission composed of experts to whom the study of a general restoration of the liturgy has been entrusted. If the Pontiffs have so constantly called upon commissions of scholars for their liturgical reforms, it is because, especially since the seventeenth century, publications were made and even discoveries of ancient texts, and meticulous studies made it possible to know the ancient Roman liturgy better and better. Benedict XIV expressly gave these discoveries as the decisive reason for his decision to reform the breviary. Without the deciphering of the rhythmic signs of the chant manuscripts, St. Pius X would not have been able to realize the return to the Gregorian pieces, and Pius XII, all in moderating excesses of a trend The archaeologist not only relied on this work, but also strongly encouraged it and praised it on more than one occasion (cf. enc. Mediator, Sept. 1956). S. S. Paul VI, therefore, will not make any innovations, but will also follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, when he entrusts to a commission of scholars the reform of the liturgical books requested by the Council, when he makes ample use of the insights provided by the Ordines Romani and the recent discoveries of archaic texts, for the composition of the new Ordo. We have just seen how Rome does not innovate, how the Roman tradition always directs its pontiffs towards the same It is now time to stop and look for the reasons for the great margin which, in spite of these constants, separates the reform of St. Pius V from that of St. Pius X, Pius XII and St. Paul VI. It is now time to stop and look for the reasons for the great margin which, in spite of these constants, separates the reform of St. Pius V from that of St. Pius X, of Pius XII and of His Holiness Paul VI. The evolution of rites THE WORK FROM SAINT PIE 169 V To get a handle on this margin, let's try, as best we can, to measure firstly the one extant between the target from St. Pius V and his achievements. Its "aim" is expressly stated in the decree of the Council of Trent and in the constitution "Quo Primum" which opens the Missal: to reform the book of the Mass by suppressing the abuses of which the theologians of the Council had drawn up a list and which could give rise to legitimate criticism on the part of the Reformers; to prevent the return of similar abuses in the future by publishing a standard Missal to which all others, without introducing or modifying anything, should conform. One precaution, however, had to be taken in the circumstances of the time, and that was not to introduce anything that might be interpreted as an endorsement of Protestant claims or errors. An example of such a precaution can be found in the Council of Trent itself. In its decree on the Real Presence, it was careful not to include among the scriptural texts in support of the dogma the sixth chapter of St. John, because this was the very text to which the Protestants appealed in order to claim the necessity of communion under the two species. For the rite of putting on referred to The reform of the Missal was aimed at "the norm and the Holy Fathers". These terms are rather vague and do not allow us to know precisely what "norm" the pope was referring to. He must have been thinking of a rather old "norm" because he invited the scholars responsible for the reform to be consulted manuscripts (codices) alumni of the Biblio- It is not a matter of the pontifical library or the work of the liturgists, but of the constitution which opens the Missal. But the constitution which opens the Missal does not give any further details. Fortunately, the constitution which, two years earlier, had promulgated the Breviary, was more explicit; two of its codices were named: the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries. It does not matter for our purposes 170 The work of Saint Pius V to know to which manuscripts of these sacramentaries the scholars had recourse; it is enough for us to know that these books date from the beautiful period of the Roman liturgy, that which extends from the beginning of its In the fifth and sixth centuries, the sacramentaries flourished freely, until Charlemagne had them copied to model and unify the liturgy of his entire empire on that of Rome. If the mention of the sacramentaries allows us to think that St. Pius V referred to this period, the consultation of these books was however quite incapable of making known the precise rites. As Bishop Andrieu writes, "the sacramentary was not sufficient in itself. Unlike what we see in the present missal and pontifical, the text of the prayers was not framed by meticulous rubrics, marking the order of the ceremonies and regulating precisely the role of the celebrant and of each of his ministers. Moreover, the sacramentaries that were available at the time were very incomplete and important parts of the liturgical cycle were missing. It was not until the seventeenth century and the publications of Thomassin and Mabillon that a detailed study of the ancient customs of the Church could begin. Consequently, if the collation of the prayers of the Mass with the sacramentaries enabled the members of the commission of St. Pius V to verify the content of the texts to be read by the celebrant, we should not be surprised that it was of no help to them in bringing back or bringing closer the rites of the Mass to those of this ancient liturgy. It is this inadequacy of documentation on the ancient liturgy, together with the concern not to appear to give support to Protestant theories, which explains the gap between what St. Pius V did and what he was unable to achieve. What St. Pius V did The reform of the Missal, known as the reform of St. Pius V, consisted essentially of- It was a Missal printed a century earlier, but its contents date back to the beginning of the 21st century. Another Missal could have been chosen for this reform. St. Pius V himself, before his elevation to the Pontificate, used the one The evolution of rites 171 of his Order, whose rite, different from that of Rome, was more or less that of the Church of Paris in the 19th century. The one who was taken for the basis of the reform had already been reprinted several times, it was more widespread and above all was the one called "of the Roman Curia". was well in harmony ". with the constant concern of the Latin Church to conform as closely as possible to Roman usage. The Missal of 1474 lacked some precise rubrics. These were borrowed from the publication in 1502 by a papal ceremonial officer, John Burchard, of the "Order to be observed by the priest in the celebration of the Mass". But there was a revision of the rubrics as well as the texts: For the rubrics, while making extensive use of Burchard's Ordo, they did not follow it slavishly. A certain number of rubrics disappeared, among them that of the offering of oblates by the faithful, foreseen by Burchard, but which gave rise to abuses introduced by the greed of the clerics (Cf. Jungman, Missarum Solemnia, X, p. 176). The use of Burchard's rubrics, on the other hand, introduced into the Missal of Pius V "a great novelty. Indeed, writes Mme Denis-Boulet, it contained an official codification of the Low Mass. The "general rubrics" deal directly with the latter and add to each paragraph the "particulars" of the Mass of the solemn or even pontifical Mass*. Until then it can be said that the plenary missals, though born of the multiplication of private celebrations, continued to present the Mass as a solemn function. Local customs, more or less capricious, only allowed the use of rubrics or even formulas always theoretically adapted to the Mass, while minimizing them. sung" *. With the introduction of general rubrics, St. Pius V proceeded to revise the text for his Missal. There were few changes in the ordinary of the Mass of 1474. On the other hand, there was a severe pruning of the Prefaces alluding to legendary facts, and even more so of the proses or sequences which had proliferated so widely in the Middle Ages. The number of votive masses was also seriously reduced and their use limited. 172 The work of Saint Pius V The number of feasts was also reduced. We have seen here one of the constants of the reforms carried out by the popes. Pius V retained only those feasts which were already celebrated in Rome in the fifteenth century; but the recent attempts at union with the Greeks fortunately invited the addition of the celebration of four Eastern Doctors. Finally, and this was the most important measure taken by Pius V, the new Missal was imposed on all the local Churches and religious Orders which could not claim for their own a possession of at least two centuries, with the prohibition of changing anything. in the future. The intention was to avoid the introduction of new fantasies. On this point the reform exceeded the forecasts and limits it had set itself: many Churches which could have claimed a long possession of their missal freely adopted that of Pius V, as much to save the expense of printing as because of the constant tendency of the Latin Church to align itself with Rome. Only a few, such as Milan and Lyons, and some religious orders, retained their old missal. Was St. Pius V under the illusion that the reference to the "norm" logically called for a return to the "norms" of the Church? Moreover, had he been better informed, others without doubt diverted, in times of crisis all relative to the sacramentaries? of the time, it would have grounds where he was, from In the case of the Missal, the norm of the Ordines Romani, which was the norm for the solemn or even papal Mass, was taken over. On the one hand, in fact, one of the causes of the diversity of rites which the reform intended to remedy was, in the absence of general rubrics regulating private celebration, the obligation to adapt to such celebration norms intended primarily for the solemn Mass. This adaptation, in fact, left to private initiative, did not only contribute to the "contamination" of the rites of the public sacrifice of the Church by the introduction of devotional prayers, but also to the "contamination" of the rites of the private celebration. The evolution of rites 173 In order to obviate this real fragmentation and to achieve unification, it was important to regulate private worship. In order to obviate this real fragmentation and to achieve unification, it was therefore important to regulate private celebration. This was also necessary in order not to appear to approve one of Luther's most virulent criticisms, as the very title of his treatise indicates: "On the Abomination of the Low Mass Called Canon" (1524). The time was therefore not right for aban- The same reason prevented the long-generalized custom of celebrating in private from being adopted as the rubrics of the Mass, those of the solemn Mass. The same reason prevented the promotion of a more active participation of the faithful through communion at the chalice, through the use of the vernacular, and through a revaluation of sacramental symbolism. Indeed, we know that such a return, however traditional and legitimate it might be in itself, was claimed by the authors of the Reformation in the name of principles seriously contrary to the faith: the refusal of a ministerial priesthood distinct from that common to all the baptized, the denial of an efficacy of the rite validly performed and other than its value as a sign, symbol or preaching, likely to excite the faith of the faithful, the only principle, in their eyes, of justification *. Assessment of this reform Limited by the lack of information, by the climate of controversy in which it was carried out, as well as by the loss of the sense of the Church and the individualism of the "devotio moderna", the reform of St. Pius V, in spite of the unquestionable reorganization it brought about, was still far from the announced return "to the norms of the ancient Fathers"; It would even, by giving priority in its rubrics to the Low Mass, give new support to the error of considering the Mass, a public act of worship par excellence, as a private devotion of the priest, to which the faithful would be invited, not to take part, but only to attend. From then on, inconsistencies which only routine will prevent from being noticed will remain in the Missal: readings intended for the instruction of the faithful, but done with their backs turned to them; resumption in " 174 The Ordo Missae of Paul VI secret, by the celebrant alone, of texts, which, in the ancient Mass were the proper office of the readers or cantors; approval asked of the faithful by their "Amen" of prayers whose content they had not heard. We cannot enumerate everything, but these examples will suffice for sound what a long way still remained to be browsed to achieve the goal assigned by St. Pius V to his reform. THE ORDO MISSAE FROM PAUL VI From the perspective we have just described, it will be easy to grasp the true meaning of the reforms initiated or carried out by the popes of the twenty-first century. In a context different from that of the anti-Protestant controversy, it will become possible to introduce changes, or to return to ancient forms, the adoption of which would have seemed, at the time, to favour the theses of the Reformers; it will also be possible to take up again terms, such as that of memorial, which had then been emptied of its meaning as a bearer of the reality it recalls. As we have already seen, it was on the word "nuda" (void) that the condemnation of the Council of Trent focused in its repudiation of the design of the Mass, as " ##da commemoratio "; but not not on the term "commemoratio" that, following the Scriptures, the Council did not He himself does not fail to use *. Moreover, from the seventeenth century onwards, the treasures of the ancient books were to be published and more and more studied. Pius XII could describe as "providential" the progress of the liturgical movement, especially "since the impetus given by Pius X" (AÏL of September 1956). And, since the astonishing diffusion of Dom Guéranger's Liturgical Year, the Christian people, having rediscovered the path of the liturgy, will be ready to welcome the return of the rites to their ancient forms, to respond to the invitation made to him to participate in a more active in the celebrations. The evolution of rites 175 Back to the Fathers The return to the ancient sources will be the first character of these reforms, in particular that of the Ordo Missae of Paul VI. St. Pius V, in the sixteenth century, had been able to recover the tradition of the thirteenth century, eliminating the adventitious elements introduced into the Mass since that time. Paul VI, better informed, in a more irenic climate, was able to go back further, pruning away all that the proliferation of private celebrations had introduced into the simplicity of the Mass, as it appears to us in the books of the fifth century. This return to the sources, by a logical consequence, will give a new lustre to the symbolism, characteristic of the liturgy, and to which the modifications of the Middle Ages had not been without causing "a grave detriment" (Pius XII, Decree on the Easter Vigil, 1951). Pius XII, in bringing the Easter Vigil, the "mother of all vigils", back to its true place in the middle of the night, Paul VI, in expanding the role of the Easter Vigil, brought it back to its true place in the middle of the night. These measures have not only restored to the liturgical celebrations their ancient splendour: "ad primitivum splendorem revocantur", they also respond to a current aspiration, that of true authenticity, and to the constant concern of the faithful for the quality of the liturgy. Sovereign Pontiffs to direct the reform resolutely towards a more active and organic participation of the Christian people in the celebration of the Universal Declaration. bration of the Holy Sacrifice. The promotion of this participation responded to a twofold concern on the part of the popes, both doctrinal and pastoral: doctrinal, first of all: the Mass is not a private devotion, not even of the priest celebrating the Holy Sacrifice; it is in its celebration that the Church renders to God, "as a society, the worship which she owes him" (AIL 22/9/56). It is therefore in its organic character that the People of God must take part in it, each of its members in the place which belongs to him in the Mystical Body, without there being any need for the Church to be involved in the celebration. However, this does not mean that the essential difference between the ministerial priesthood and that which baptism confers on the faithful has been confused. Is it necessary, in order to maintain the one, to ignore the other? To this doctrinal concern is added a pastoral concern which, quite naturally, "flows from the constitutive elements of the liturgy" (AÏL of 176 The Ordo Missae of Paul VI 22/9/56). If the liturgy is indeed the true source of an authentic Christian life, it is important to facilitate access to it and its understanding by the faithful. It was this concern which inspired St. Pius X to issue his decrees on frequent communion, the restoration of Gregorian chant, and his invitation to the faithful to have in their hands, with their translation into the local language, the texts of the missal which, always for fear of Protestant errors, were placed only in the hands of the priest, to Pius XII the decrees on evening Masses, the softening of the rigour of the Eucharistic fast, the postponement of the Easter Vigil and the Triduum celebrations to times when all the faithful could take part, to to simplify the rubrics. It is this concern which is reflected in the whole new conception of the Ordo Missae of Paul VI. Let it suffice for the moment to mention the new facilities brought about by a greater relaxation of the fast at the time of the celebrations; the bringing within the reach of the faithful of the prayers pronounced in the vernacular, the invitation to them to respond more often to the priest, to sing or recite the prayers of the Ordinary, to make the liturgy, thanks to the homily, to the universal prayer, to the reading of a greater number of passages from Scripture, a real teaching. All this will become even more apparent in the rapid assessment of the new reform, which we still have to try to establish. The balance of the new reform Here a preliminary remark is in order: the changes made are much less profound than is usually thought or said. Those who attend a Mass sung in Gregorian according to the new Ordo are more than once surprised to learn, after the Mass is over, that the Mass they have just attended was not that of St. Pius V, but that of Paul VI. We can make the same observation by resuming the reading of the Summa of St. Thomas, in art. 4 of question 83 (3a pars), where the appropriateness of the texts of the Mass is explained. We find there, in their very order, those of the new Ordo, while we have the surprise, if we are even slightly attentive, The evolution of rites 177 It is not surprising that the prayers of St. Pius V, which were included in the Mass and which the recent reform suppressed, are not included. Moreover, elements introduced in the new Ordo which may surprise the younger generation, such as the prayer of the faithful, were familiar to their elders, who had long been accustomed to hearing and reciting every Sunday in a slightly different form what were then called "the prayers of the pulpit". Having made this remark, it remains for those who wish to assess the results of the recent reform to distinguish - as we have done for that of St. Pius V - between the The purpose of the reform and its achievement. The purpose of the reform The aim, as the Missale Romanum constitution makes clear, is not dissimilar to that proposed by St. Pius V, St. Pius X and Pius XII in their own reforms: a return to the old Roman Mass, and the removal of adventitious elements, re-establishment of certain rites which had disappeared under the attacks of time, pastoral concern for simplification of the rubrics, better participation of the faithful, unification of the rite in the Latin Church. In all these points, therefore, we always find the constant line of the reforms carried out by the popes. However, as in the case of the reform of St. Pius V, we may ask ourselves whether the realization of these reforms has always fully met the hopes that such a program might have raised. Counterfeits The heaviest negative aspect of the balance sheet seems to lie in the failure of the expected unification of the reform. No doubt, like that of St. Pius V, the new Missal was imposed, even more strictly, since no account was taken of the two-hundred-year-old customs. But if it was very rigorous in demanding the abandonment of the old Missal, what facilities were granted for the choice of readings, the 7 178 The Ordo Missae of Paul VI These facilities were quickly interpreted as an invitation to a creativity quite different from that expected by the Council! What condescension in the face of irregular initiatives, first tolerated, then soon even sanctioned by approval, a bonus granted to disobedience. And what confusion among the faithful, who were sometimes forced to ask themselves - and not always without reason - whether the consecration, or to put it more accurately, the "celebration" they attended, was indeed a valid Mass! In what might rightly be called such an "escalation", what remains of the principle that, in order not to lose their "sacred" character, rites should be modified as little as possible? Should not the criticism of the new Ordo of the Mass be aimed rather at what might be called its "sabotage", as well as at the complacency or encouragement with which the celebrants of the new Ordo of the Mass are treated? irregularities sometimes seem to be the object *. Whatever the merits of the reproaches concerning these abuses, they cannot, without injustice, be invoked against the authentic rite. tic itself *. It is of this rite that we have to ask ourselves, as St. Thomas did of the Mass of his time, what the "propriety" might be. The Authentic Rite With regard to the authentic rite itself, some regretted that instead of always taking as a "type" the "norm of the ancient Fathers", of which St. Pius V had already spoken, inspiration had been drawn from relatively recent dialogued Masses. The disappearance of some happy formulas, such as the beginning of the one that accompanies the mixing of the water and wine in the chalice: "Deus qui bumanae substantiae... mirabilius reformasti", has also been deplored, perhaps without sufficiently examining the reasons that may have motivated such deletions or modifications. The same seems to be true of two more far-reaching criticisms, because - according to some - the sacrificial character of the Mass would be himself put in cause, by the absence of the The evolution of rites 179 There is no mention of this sacrificial character in the prayers of the offertory or in any of the new anaphors. The concern caused by this absence seems to stem from a misunderstanding of the true character of the Mass, as we have spent much time explaining above. For St. Thomas, as we have seen, the sacrifice of the Mass "is not It is not something other than that which Christ himself offered on Calvary, but his "memorial"; memorial in the strong sense, "perfect sacrament of the Passion, as containing Christ himself immolated". His offering consists in the very act of consecration, where Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers himself to his Father, making himself present (re-present) on the altar as a sacrificial victim: "Inasmuch as in this sacrament the Passion of Christ is represented, by which Christ 'offered himself as a victim to God', it is rightly sactitial" (34, qd 79, a:7, Gchig; 22,45, ad 2um;q. 15,25, 2um). This doctrine is neither a particular opinion of St. Thomas nor an "outdated" position. It was very clearly recalled by Pius XII in his encyclical Mediator Dei of November 20, 1947, and in his address to the members of the International Congress of Pastoral Liturgy on September 22, 1956. Here is what we read in the latter document: "The central element of the Eucharistic sacrifice is that in which Christ intervenes as se zpsum offerens, for resume the terms It happens at the consecration. This happens at the consecration where, in the very act of transubstantiation wrought by the Lord, the priest celebrant is persomam Christi gerens... It is the central point of the whole liturgy of the sacrifice, the central point of the actio Christi cujus personam gerit sacerdos celebrans. "When the consecration of the bread and wine is validly performed, the whole action of Christ himself is accomplished. Even if all that follows could not be accomplished, nothing essential would still be lacking in the Lord's offering" (The Liturgy, Solesmes ed., 1961, n. 805-806; cf. ibid. Mediator, no. 569). If, then, as St. Thomas teaches and as Pius XII reminds us, it is "in the consecration of the Eucharist that the sacrifice is offered to the Lord", the sacrificial aspect of the Mass will be all the more marked as it will be more clearly expressed in the words 7*. 180 The Ordo Missae of Paul VI This is precisely what has been done in the new Ordo Missae. This is precisely what has been done in the new Ordo Missae where, to the traditional words of the consecration of the bread: "Take and eat, this is my body", has been added the incisive phrase (taken from St. Paul): "delivered up for you: hoc est enim corpus meum quod pro vobis tradetur". This addition, which clearly indicates the victim-like character of Christ made present on the altar, far from blurring the sacrificial character of the Mass, would perhaps accuse it even more. As for the absence of a term recalling this sacrificial character, either In the prayers of the offertory, either at the beginning of an anaphora, the continuation of the text of Pius XII which we have just quoted makes it possible to grasp its validity. After having affirmed that "when the consecration of the bread and wine is validly performed, the whole action of Christ himself is accomplished", Pius XII continues: "When the consecration is completed, the oblatio hostiae super altare positae (the loblation of the victim placed on the altar) may be made and is made by the priest celebrant, by the other priests, by each member of the faithful" (Lk. No. 807). It is important to note the condition laid down for the offering of the victim by the assembly and the whole Church: "when the consecration is completed. If it is only after the consecration that the faithful can offer the sacrifice in their turn, is it not wise, in order to avoid any confusion between the priest's priesthood acting #7 persona Christi, and that which is common to all the faithful, to reserve- In the texts following the consecration, the mention of the offering of the sacrifice by the Church *. Thus enlightened by the teaching of Pius XII, these modifications, imputed as a reproach to the new Ordo, could just as well be included in the positive as in the negative of the reform. Convenience "of the new rite There is, moreover, more than one other point to be recorded on the positive side of the new Missal. A long habituation did not allow one to notice in that of St. Pius V several imperfections of which we have noted above. The introduction of the new The evolution of rites 181 The new liturgy could not fail to confuse those who had not been prepared for it by sufficient liturgical formation. They took for What was merely a return to ancient traditions was considered "new". Only a dignified and respectful practice of the new Missal allows us to notice little by little what, following St. Thomas, we might call its "propriety". First of all, the clearer distinction between the liturgy of the Word and that of the Eucharist has brought out the character of the one and the other. A renewed distribution of readings has been for many of the faithful a true revelation of Sacred Scripture, and very often has helped to reintroduce reading and taste. It has been possible to criticize certain less fortunate choices and even more so the poverty - to say the least - of many translations. Was it not, however, in the wake of previous pontificates to remedy the so often repeated return of common readings, which, without arousing attention, ended up becoming tedious? What benefit could the faithful draw from the homily, once again prescribed as it was by the Council of Trent, if it were really what it should be: a brief doctrinal and spiritual commentary on the sacred texts, or a meditation on the great mystery that is to be accomplished in the next celebration of the Eucharist. In the latter, the permitted alternation of the various canons, each of which It also breaks the routine, and makes it possible to taste the ancient flavor of the Roman canon better each time it is repeated. Before the beginning of the anaphora, the faithful are invited to raise their thoughts and hearts to the Blessed Trinity, not only by the "Sursum corda" which always precedes the preface, but by the singing or proclamation of the triple Sanctus by the entire assembly. The part which belongs to the latter is again emphasized, immediately after the consecration, by the acclamation, so well done in our world impregnated with naturalism, to revive faith in "the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, in the expectation of his arrival in the glory". And, in a society that is entirely focused on material efficiency, the 182 The Ordo Missae of Paul VI What a reminder of God's transcendence and of the importance of the homage due to Him, when the celebrant proclaims the primary purpose of the sacrifice, and invites the faithful to join in it with their Amen: "Through Him, with Him, and in Him, to you, God the Father Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory for ever and ever. The offering of the Sacrifice accomplished, the faithful will participate in it by their communion. Today's invitation to the congregation to join in the singing or recitation of the "Pater" will put them in the midst of the celebration. the required dispositions. "If on your way to the altar you find that your brother has something against you, go, leave your offering there and run to be reconciled with him." How can we not remember this warning of the Lord as we repeat the words that he himself put on our lips: "forgive us.... as we forgive"? After the embolism or prayer recited by the sole celebrant following the "Pater "the new Missal has taken over a acclamation, of which the use of which had been preserved by the Protestants, but which goes back to a high Christian antiquity. How it resounds with this magnificent homage to Christ the King, at a time when all authority is contested, when all that is spoken of is horizontalism: "Thine is the Kingdom, Thine is the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever!" Conclusion No doubt these "conveniences" will never be grasped by those who attend Masses where the texts of Scripture are replaced by readings from dubious authors, where the singing is disappointing, where the homily is a long and hollow babble, and where the attitude of the celebrant is anything other than a testimony of faith and respect for the great Mystery which is accomplished on the altar. On the other hand, it is quite different in a Mass celebrated regularly according to the prescriptions of the new rite, well sung, where the readings are distinctly and intelligibly proclaimed, where the homily already brings us into the spirit of the sacrifice which is to be offered, where the concelebrants grouped around the altar are a visible sign of The evolution of rites 183 the unity of the Church, where the faithful by their dress and conviction manifest their faith, thus giving living witness to Christ, to "his death and resurrection, until he comes - donec veniat!" These "conveniences" which we have just noted in the Ordo of Paul VI will help us to see how, in spite of the imperfections inherent in any work the Sovereign Pontiff, far from being In order to mislead the Church, the Church has established nothing but "propriety". If it is indeed "in its relation to the Church" and to guarantee the indefectibility of the latter that the assistance of the Holy Spirit was promised to Peter, it cannot allow the pope to impose on the Church a rite that would make it falter in the faith. Let us not forget, however, that while the Church is the recipient of this assistance, she is not its instrument. To await the acceptance or judgment of the universal Church before recognizing this guarantee in a pontifical act would be to fall back into the error formulated in the fourth of the Articles of the Gallican Church, condemned by Alexander VIII and reprobated again by Vatican II*. ù fn d ui (EhE L + Lux The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform CAUSES OF MISUNDERSTANDING The "appropriateness" of the liturgical reform called for by Vatican II will become clearer when it is situated within the general renewal of sacramental theology. At the same time, a reminder of the context in which this renewal took place will help us to grasp the causes of the misunderstandings as well as the counterfeits of which this reform is the victim. The renewal of sacramental theology was manifested in two ways areas : in the one, more restricted, of the disciples of saint This is the case for the whole of Catholic theology, thanks to a broadening of the method. The lack of knowledge of this renewal seems to have been a major factor in the misunderstandings of which the liturgical reform has been the object. Misunderstanding of the definition of the sacraments according to Saint Thomas When, at the end of his career, in the third part of the Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas tackles the systematic study of the sacraments, he begins, as a faithful disciple of Aristotle's method, by establishing their definition; and as any definition must be done by 186 Causes of misunderstanding the classification in a genus and the discovery of the specific difference, article 1* of question 60 seeks the genus in which the sacrament must be classified, and article 2 will specify the specific difference. Now, the first difficulty which St. Thomas encounters in seeking the genus, or rather the first genus which he discards in order to place the sacrament in it, is precisely that which he had chosen to classify it, when, at the beginning of his teaching career, he was "reading", i.e. commented on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard. There, following the Master and the various definitions of the sacraments collected by him in his Sentences, St. Thomas saw above all in the sacrament a remedy against the wounds of sin. The very presentation of the treatise makes this clear: it begins by recalling the parable of the Good Samaritan, who on the road picks up a traveller robbed by robbers and gives him oil and wine to bind up his wounds. The symbolism is clear: the Good Samaritan is the Lord; the robbers, the demons; their victim, the man wounded by sin; the oil and wine, the sacraments, effective remedies against sin and its consequences. The emphasis, as befits a remedy, is on efficacy. The sacrament is placed in the category, in the genre of efficient causes. Now it is precisely this classification, which he had stopped at in his first teaching, that Saint Thomas, in the Summa, rejects from the outset in the first article of question 60. The article is entitled: "Is the sacrament to be classified in the genus, the category of signs?" And the first objection to an affirmative answer there is this, which merely recalls the choice of the Sentences, "it seems on the contrary, that it ought rather, as a remedy against sin, to be ranked among the causes of holiness." This position is immediately rejected: Saint Thomas, supported by a text of Saint Augustine, substitutes the category of signs for that of causes in order to classify the sacraments. It is singularly enlightening to look for the reasons for such a about-face: between the Commentary on the Sentences and the third part of the Summa, St Thomas, at the end of the Prima secundae, had to The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 187 In the study of the ancient law he had sketched the great stages of salvation history. In the study of the ancient law he meets the divine precepts concerning the sacraments. But how can we, by remaining in the category of causes, bring them closer to the sacraments of the new law? For the latter are, and were, considered above all as causes of grace. On the other hand, before the Sacrifice of Christ, the sacraments could not cause what is the fruit of this sacrifice, namely grace (cf. 62:6). If they were causes, then, they could only be causes of an external holiness, they could only produce a purely legal purity. Such a conclusion was practically a defeat. The continuity of the two Testaments, the coherence of the Bible, and the fact that they are not the same, will be quite different. In both the divine plan and the role of the sacrament, if we classify it as a sign. This is what Saint Thomas does in the Summa. Sacred sign, we have the genus. But the sign is specified by the reality it signifies: the sacramental sign - therefore destined for men who alone use signs - will be the sign of a reality that sanctifies men: such is This will be - and art. 2 makes this clear - the specific difference which distinguishes the sacrament from every other sacred sign. What is this reality? Pursuing his research in art. 3, St. Thomas remarks that, in perfect unity, it is threefold: Passion, the cause of sanctification; grace, the form of this sanctification; and the sacrament of the Holy Spirit. In the category of the sign, the continuity between the two testaments, like the homogeneity of the notion of sacrament, which is impossible or difficult when one sees only causes, becomes perfect. In the category of the sign, the continuity between the two testaments, as well as the homogeneity of the notion of sacrament, impossible or difficult when one sees only causes, becomes perfect: at the center, the Passion of which the sacraments of the old law as well as of the new are the signs; but those of the old, prefigurative signs, which announce this future passion, those of the new, commemorative signs. In the end, the Glory, which all the sacraments, both of the law and of the It will put an end to all the sacraments. It will put an end to all the sacraments: there will be no more signs, but only vision and praise (q. 101/2). 188 Causes of misunderstanding In the middle, Grace. Herein lies the main difference: between the Old and New Testaments, the Passion intervened. From the beginning, no doubt, by basing their faith on these sacraments which announced the Passion to them, the faithful of the Old Covenant could, not by the action of the sacrament, but by the faith which was based on the announcement of the Passion of which it was the bearer, obtain grace, as if on credit on the future merits of Christ (62:6). The sacrament of the old law announced grace, was like a relay allowing an act of faith to be made; it was incapable of producing it. He is not only the meritorious cause of our grace, but the efficient one. He is the universal instrument by which God bestows it on all who are to receive it. He is the joint instrument, as the hand is the instrument, but an instrument which is one with the one who wishes to write. From then on, he can in turn use other instruments, like the hand that grasps a pen; he can use them for the work he wants to accomplish, in this case the communication of grace. Such will also be - and here in contrast to those of the old law - the sacraments of the new law. Like the old ones, they will be signs, but, in addition, they will be causes of grace. Therefore, taken as signs, classified in the type of sign, in the type of sign of a sanctifying reality, the sacraments, whether of the old law or of the new, will respond to the same definition. However, there is a difference: namely, that the sacraments of the new law will no longer be merely signs of the sanctifying reality, they will also be causes of it. And in this way, St. Thomas remarks, they will respond perfectly to the "reason" of sacraments, inasmuch as they will be doubly ordered to a sacred thing, both as signs and as causes. From this cohesion and difference follows the division of the history of salvation into three stages, a division masterfully sketched by the Angelic Doctor. At the end, in Heaven, the Beatitude where reality will be grasped in itself. same; there will be no more signs (q. 101, a. 2). The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 189 Here below, we are in the economy of faith, that of signs. But this economy is itself divided into two great stages: That of the prefigurative signs of the Old Testament, empty signs, which make reality known, but do not contain it or bring it about by themselves; they are only signs which allow those who have recourse to them to manifest their faith in the reality to come and to receive, thanks to this act of faith, the first fruits of it. That of the commemorative signs (memorial) of the past Passion, They contain and communicate the grace which it merits to those who have recourse to them. This is the liturgical perspective. where we brings back the new reform All this seems quite elementary; but only if one has been sufficiently attentive to the evolution of the thought of St. Thomas, to the causes of the progress of this thought and to the positions that it made him take. The lack of knowledge of this evolution has given rise to a double error. For want of having grasped the continuity of the two wills at the same time as their difference, either one remains with the position of the Sentences, and emphasizing efficacy, one is concerned only with the validity of the sacraments, with the conditions strictly required for their validity, and one slips into juridicism, to the detriment of symbolism, and consequently ignores the true meaning of the liturgy: the Mass is no longer understood as anything other than the means of making Christ present on the altar. Either the language of the sign is no longer heard, or the opposite extreme is taken, and the sacrament is seen as nothing more than a sign, without concern for the reality it contains and provides, while at the same time symbolizing it; it returns to the Old Testament perspective, an empty sign without reality. On the other hand, the rich synthesis of St. Thomas makes it possible to see how, even though "the sacrifice offered daily on the altar is no more than that which Christ himself offered, but his memorial", it is nevertheless a true sacrifice, insofar as, by the consecration, it makes the victim of Calvary real- on the altar, he renews the offering each time, 8 190 Causes of misunderstanding Moreover, by broadening our investigation, we shall find this dialectic, as well as this need for synthesis, in the general renewal of theology, especially that of the sacraments. This renewal, we have said, is that of a change of method. The one that has just been happily called into question owes its origin to Melchior Cano (1509-1560), the author whom famous for his classic work on "Theological Places". What interests us here is the method of teaching, for which, rightly or wrongly, he is credited*. Until then, in the works of the Fathers of the Church, catecheses or treatises, there was an overall exposition of doctrine, an explanation of Scripture or of a particular point for the treatises, an explanation of the symbolism of the sacramental rites for the catecheses, and the teaching of the history of salvation. Even in the Middle Ages, and in spite of the more systematic character of the teaching, it is still an overall exposition that we find in the Summits, as in the case of the that of Saint Thomas. With Cano, and the system of theses which was still in use until the last few decades, a twofold change takes place: - instead of an overall exposition, a division of theology into a certain number of theses which the students will have to support and "defend" in order to obtain their degrees; - for each one, the theories of the opponents who opposed it are recalled, the thesis is "noted" thanks to a theological qualification which indicates its exact relationship, more or less close, with the deposit of faith; - then come the proofs: drawn from Scripture, from Tradition, from theological reasons. As we can see from this last point, this change calls for another: instead of explaining and expounding the doctrine, placing it in the plan of the Redemption, in the whole deposit of faith, we apply ourselves rather to "proving" that it is indeed contained in it. The opponent must be convinced of error; but is the listener convinced? If the evidence has shown that to be the case they The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 191 have not made us see the why, the link of this point with all the others, the only way to satisfy the mind. Saint Thomas had remarked on this: he distinguished a double "disputatio", one "ad removendum dubitationem an ita sit - one intended to remove the doubt that it is so"; this is the one that must be used against the adversaries, relying on texts or arguments whose authority they recognize. the other "ad instruendum auditores - intended to instruct the listeners, to make them penetrate into the understanding of the truth". This second "disputatio" will have to employ other arguments: it will no longer proceed only by authorities, but it will use reasons which will lead to grasp the root, the starting point of the truth and which will show not only that it is so, but how what is put forward is true. "Otherwise," adds the holy Doctor, if we just of evidence, The listener will undoubtedly leave with the assurance that the truth is there, but he will have acquired nothing in the way of science or understanding of the truth, and he will leave as little advanced as when he arrived "et vacuus abscedet" (Qzodlibet IV, a. 18)." Decadence in a word of true theological science. This disadvantage of the method was not the only one: it gave rise to another, particularly serious at the time when such a method was adopted. The professor of theology who writes theses, or the textbook which contains them, has every advantage in proposing only sure doctrines, which he can affirm are intimately linked to the faith, that they are of the Catholic faith and even defined by a Council. He will therefore be inclined to take - and his task will be made easier - as the statement of his theses, the definitions of the Councils, and, as regards the sacraments, the definitions of the Council of Trent. There is nothing better or safer, it seems. There is, however, a serious drawback to this method of proceeding: we know how the Council of Trent proceeded. Its theologians, its experts we would say today, were invited to draw up a list of the errors contained in the books of the Reformers. Once these lists were drawn up, they were submitted to the Council Fathers for examination, 192 Causes of misunderstanding who withheld those that deserved condemnation. And it is these condemnations that the chapters and canons of the Council formulate. Consequently, a theology taught by theses, by theses repeating the definitions of the Council, will only know of Catholic doctrine what the adversaries had denied; it will leave in the shadows entire portions of doctrine which had not been the object of any dispute on the part of the adversaries. Thus, to speak only of sacramental theology, the emphasis will be placed on the efficacy of the sacrament, against which the Reformers, while its symbolism, which the Reformers had no contested, do will, in theology Catholic, touched only with a light hand. From then on, the truths contained in the deposit will appear isolated from each other, as as many spare parts, without the need for nor can the whole body be reconstructed, in which the various truths corroborate each other, a whole capable not only of convincing the adversaries of error, but of bringing them back to the truth, because of the lack of elements left in the shadows. on the way to the truth *. Moreover, theology, dispersing itself in the study of particular problems and disputed questions, will have lost its character of Wisdom, and with it, its appeal and its contemplative orientation. This is precisely what John XXIII spoke out against in his opening address to the Council on October 11, 1962: "What matters most to the Ecumenical Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be preserved and taught in an effective manner. ... The XXIst Ecumenical Council .... wishes to transmit Catholic doctrine in its purest form, without minimizing or distorting it.... "Our task is not primarily to discuss some fundamental articles of the Church's doctrine in order to repeat more abundantly the teaching which the Fathers and theologians have bequeathed to us... What is necessary now, so that Christian doctrine may be received by all in our time with a new interest, with a serene and peaceful soul, is that it be delivered to them in its entirety, without anything being taken away, with that precision of thought and of terms, which shines forth especially in the Acts of the Councils of Trent and of Vatican I... The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 193 "It is necessary that this doctrine, which is certain and unchangeable, and which is entitled to faithful adherence, be deepened and expounded in the manner required by our times. "For something else is the deposit of faith, namely, the truths It is one thing for us to find the most suitable ways of expounding our venerable doctrine, and another for us to find the most suitable ways of expounding it, but always in the same sense and with the same interpretation.... It will be necessary to find the modes of exposition best suited to the magisterium, whose character is above all pastoral." The astonishment, not to say the amazement, which this speech provoked, was a measure of how widespread and almost exclusively accepted was the method whose criticism we have just introduced. For many, John XXIII seemed to be breaking new ground. However, he was merely sanctioning with his authority a healthy renewal of theology, which is, like all true renewal, only a return to the ancient method, that of the Fathers and of St. Thomas, when he instituted, in its full maturity, his own problematic. Is it not this same astonishment, provoked by the misunderstanding Is it any wonder that the flaws of post-Tridentine theology explain why those who were formed only by it are today disconcerted by the liturgical reforms, by the return, not to Protestant positions, but to Catholic positions forgotten simply because Protestants had not contested them? How can we be surprised that the liturgical reforms, which re-emphasize the symbolism of the sacraments, scandalize those who had been accustomed by a theology focused on the anti-Protestant controversy over the efficacy of the sacraments to lose sight of the truth of their meaning. How can we be surprised that they reject the term "memorial" as a definition of the Eucharistic sacrifice, seeing in it only the empty figurative character of the sacraments of the old law, and forgetting the clarifications of the Doctor of the Eucharist, making it clear to us that the sacrifice offered each day on the altar is not something other than that offered by Christ himself, but his "memorial", but a memorial in harmony with the economy of the New Testament, a memorial in the sense of St. Thomas and the Council of Trent, i.e. not to say "empty", but "containing the immolated Christ himself". 194 Reasons for counterfeiting REASONS FROM COUNTERFEIT A correct knowledge of sacramental theology and its renewal is not only necessary to allow the liturgical reform to be welcomed, it is also required so that its limits are not exceeded by making it degenerate into a tragic upheaval, which could often be called a real sabotage. By not leaving the dialectic: sign vs. cause, sign vs. reality, and by ignoring the harmonious union of these two aspects in the sacraments of the new law, or else, as we have just seen, one is scandalized to hear recall, another means character However, following St. Thomas, the Mass is not only the sacrifice of the Cross, but the memorial which both contains and is contained in it, in full harmony with the sign and reality combined, which is that of all the religions. sacraments of the new law; Or, paying attention only to the character of the sign brought back into value by the renewal, one sees in the sacrifice of the altar only its representative value, the reminder of the character of the Mass as a sign of Calvary, going so far as to disregard, with its character The real presence, under the eucharistic species, of the Victim of Calvary is a true sacrifice. We would have grasped only one side of the difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform if we did not try to find the origin of these counterfeits. It seems that it must be placed in the phi, losophical and theological context in which the renewal took place. The new nominalism We know, in fact, that modern philosophy is largely dependent on Kant as and Hegel, and, before a beginning them, by Descartes, presented absolute in philosophy, as the Revo- lution of 1789 in history. Even when they try to free themselves from it, the various systems The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 195 Modern theologians almost always retain the assumption that our intelligence is incapable of grasping "what is" outside of it, but only the impact of reality on thought. Now, many modern theologians, believing that they cannot Without having the audience of our contemporaries, they try to build a theology on such bases, and thus return, under a new formulation, to the nominalistic system of Occam, who, as we know, was, through one of his disciples, Luther's master of thought. If "the beyond of thought is unthinkable", only the sign can be known, but not the reality which it is intended to make known and of which it is the instrument. In the sacrament we shall see only the sign, only the character of representation, and we shall have returned, by this detour, to the sacrifices of the old law, figurative of the Calvary, but incapable by themselves of distributing its fruits. We will no longer speak, with regard to the Eucharist, of transubstantiation, nor even of the total conversion of the substances of the bread and wine into those of the body and blood of Christ; it will only be a question of a change in what these substances signify for us, in the meaning of their purpose; we will say: "transsignification", "transfinalization". We will no longer say that Christ makes his body present for us in the Eucharist, we will write that he "injects his love into a piece of bread". Will it be a question of baptism? The ambiguity here will be complete and how many will be taken in! It will undoubtedly be presented as an "effective sign", and the reader will think that it produces grace. But if we are attentive and continue reading, we will see that it is only the efficacious sign of the love that God had for a child when he created him: a creation that was certainly prior to the reception of the sacrament, and which consequently could not be its effect; and as on does not speak of grace, that baptism produces no change in the Soul of the child, the efficacy is that of a meaning, nil- of a production of grace*. As St. Thomas wrote, rejecting the system of the only moral causality of the sacrament, but how much more rightly must we say here: "non transcendit rationem signi," as the 196 Reasons for counterfeiting If the reality of sacramental causality is not explicitly denied, then the only thing that matters is the efficacy of the meaning. Therefore, if the reality of sacramental causality, without being explicitly denied, is thus bracketed, the only thing that will matter is the efficacy of the meaning. It will no longer be a question of transmitting, through the instrumental cause of the sacrament, the very fruits of Calvary, of producing grace in the souls of those who receive it, but rather of making the meaning as meaningful and evocative as possible in their eyes, even if this is to the detriment of recalling the reality contained and produced, of the respect due to it. On the pretext of making the meaning more accessible, the hieratic character of the liturgy, a character intended to incite respect for the transcendent character of the mysteries, will be eliminated in wild celebrations; celebrations will be "vulgarized" in both senses of the word, by making them more accessible on the one hand, but also by aligning them with "profane" shows, without any concern for the precise rules and limits laid down by the rubrics drawn up by the competent authority. This explains what we have taken the liberty of calling the sabotage of the liturgical reform. Nominalism he disregard for authority This contempt of legitimate prescriptions is still a consequence of the resurgence of nominalism in the various systems of modern idealism. Indeed, lacking, for our knowledge, an objective content, a reality independent of the knowing subject, how can we could be done What is the state of something other than what each person understands and feels? We are sliding into subjectivism. From then on, there is no objective truth to be received from God by revelation, or through those he has "sent", no doctrine to be transmitted by the Church. Therefore, no authority not to "declare" what is not, to order - not an individual prayer of the Mystical Body as more is in conformity with the revealed truth or does not bring order - Ja liturgy which is not to be invented by each one, but the prayer society, prayer which must consequently be The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 197 regulated by the authority which has received from God the charge to govern this society. If the truth is not "objective" it cannot be "received" through a presentation to which our faith is invited to adhere; it must be sought for oneself, discovered, through personal reflection, or, for who is incapable of doing so, letting himself be conditioned by the environment in which he lives, by social pressure, which is all the more constraining because it is cloaked in the clothes of freedom. For it is necessary to arrive at a certain unity. If we reject the principle of this unity laid down by Christ, the mission entrusted by him to the apostles and their successors, and particularly to Peter, if we lay down the principle that doctrine is not the fruit of acceptance but of research, there is no other way of unifying minds than to present to them what is called the general opinion. But how does this opinion express itself? It needs masters, it needs organs. In order to recognize the masters, we no longer refer to a mission The only thing left to do is to follow those who will follow the success of the day, the propaganda, the fashion, the criteria which make the success of the stars of sports or shows. The well-known theologians, who call themselves or are called such, whose teaching is in line with the taste of the day, whether or not it conforms to that of the Church*. How timely are the Apostle's warnings! "A time will come - he wrote to Timothy (11 Tim. IV, 3) - where men will no longer support sound doctrine, but on the contrary, at the whim of their passions, and the ear itchy, they will give themselves of The criterion will often be that of novelty. The criterion often will be that of novelty. We know how Tertullian, in his "De prescriptione haereticorum", gave this very novelty as a proof of the inauthenticity of a doctrine. If it is new, if it cannot claim an uninterrupted possession since the Apostles, by that very fact it is suspect to the point that the terms heretic or innovator are practically used for each other. 198 Reasons for counterfeiting It seems that the criterion is reversed today. Everything old is suspect, only the new attracts, only those who bring a new doctrine are successful with the public. And to justify this tendency, which is only curiosity and frivolity, reference is made to the Council. Since the Council spoke of renewal (which is something quite different: a return to the old teaching and practice, as we have seen with the new Ordo Missae), renewal has been confused with a return to the old. and novelty, rejected everything that is not such, and, under the pretext of following the indications of the Council, did the opposite of what was intended. that he asked for. It is the newness that has become the criterion of liturgies as well as theologies. Mass media Let us beware, however, of a trial of intention; there is an explanation more oblique than the mere malice or lightness of men, and which at least multiplies its effects almost infinitely. We have seen that the unification desired by St. Pius V had gone far beyond the requirements he had imposed: the sole concern for economy, at a time when the printing of a missal cost a considerable amount of money, had led many of those who could have availed themselves of a long-standing custom, to adopt the new Roman missal for this reason alone. Today it is not only the printing press, even in its most rapidly informative form, but also radio and television, which immediately make known to the whole world what is happening in the most remote corner of the globe. It is no longer the decisions of Rome, the decrees of the Pope or of the competent Congregations, which regulate the order of celebrations, although they would be more rapidly and widely transmitted and with greater accuracy. With its fascinating images, the most heterogeneous novelties are presented as the last word in liturgical reforms. For these information companies, only what is new and strange pays off and attracts readers and viewers. The normal does not attract person. What is broadcast are the boldest initiatives, The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform 199 those which today outdo what was new yesterday... And it is these eccentricities, which, having been seen and seen again, It is there that too many priests, alas, perhaps in good faith, seek the way in which they should celebrate. What would St. Paul have said, when he denounced the teachers of lies, if he had been able to foresee the instrument that would be offered to them? Conclusion Perhaps we can now better grasp, after having looked into their historical and psychological context, the motives that lead some to refuse reforms and others to adopt only counterfeits. However, just as the examination of their causes cannot justify the excesses, the excesses themselves cannot be an excuse for the refusal of reforms. the prescriptions of legitimate authority. This is what Pius XII recalled as early as 1947, and which we take the liberty of reproducing as a conclusion to this modest essay: "If, on the one hand, We note with sorrow that... the sense, knowledge and taste of the sacred liturgy are sometimes insufficient and even almost non-existent, on the other hand, We note, not without concern and fear, that some are too eager for novelty and stray from the paths of sound doctrine and prudence. For in wishing and desiring to renew the sacred liturgy, they often bring in principles which, in theory or in practice, compromise this holy cause, and sometimes even sully it with errors which touch upon the Catholic faith and ascetic doctrine. "Let not the inert and lukewarm, however, think that they have our approval because We rebuke those who err, or rebuke the bold; but let not the unwise imagine that they are covered with praise because We correct the negligent and the lazy. "Let all Christians listen with docility to the voice of the common Father, whose most ardent desire is that all, intimately 200 Reasons for counterfeiting united with him, approach the altar of God, professing the same faith, obeying the same law, participating in the same sacrifice, so that, sincerely accepting the same truths and willingly obeying the rightful pastors in the exercise of their worship of God, they form a community fraternal: "since, while we are many, we Let us form one body, all of us partaking of the same bread" ({Cor., X; 17): Enc. Mediator Dei, 20 November 1947. Notes CHAPTER 1. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Swmma 1 Theologica, of which references doi- 3a: Terfia pars (third part) / 62: quaestio G2 / 5 articulus 5 / 2: ad 2um: answer to the second objection. 2. "Dicendum quod innocentem hominem passioni et morti tradere contra ejus voluntatem, est imbium et crudele. Sic autem Deus Pater Christum non tradidit, (3a/47/3 Ium). sed insbirando ei voluntatem patiendi pro nobis " 3. "Unde patet quod non fuit imbium et crudele quod Deus Pater Chrisium mori volt. Non enim coegit invitum sed comblacuit ei voluntas qua ex caritate Christus mortem suscebit. Et hanc etiam caritaiem in ejus anima operatus est. (No. 3949) - St. Thomas Aquinas, Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium, which we quote thus: C. G., or Contra Gentiles, 1 - book, c - chapter. The numbers are those of the Marietti edition, 1961. 4, "Modus ... reparationis talis esse debuit, quod et naturae rebarandae conveniret et morbo. "Naturae dico reparandae, quia cum homo sit rationalis naturae libero arbitrio pracditus, non ex necessitate exterioris virtutis, sed secundum propriam voluntatem ad Statum rectitudinis revocandus fuit. Morbo etiam, quia cum morbus berversitate voluntatis consisteret, oportuit quod voluntas ad rectitudinem reduceretur. Voluntatis autem bumanue rectitudo consistit in ordinatione amoris, qui est principalis affectio. Ordinatus autem amor est ut Deus suber omnia diligamus quasi summum bonum, et ut in ibsum referamus omnia quae amamus tamquam ad ultimum finem..." (De rationibus fidei contra saracenos, c. V). 5. For an account of these theories, see M. Lepin, L'idée du Sacrifice de la Messe d'après les théologiens, Paris, 1926. 202 Notes to Chapter 1 6. For the study of this further, ch. II, note 3. text 7. "Ad consummationem and justification from translation, see totius theologici negotii, post considerationem ultimi finis bumanae vitae et viriutum ac vitiorum, de ibso omnium Salvatore ac beneficiis ejus bumano generi praestitis, nostra consideratio subsequatur" (3a, Prol.). 8 "Deo reverentiam et honorem exhibemus non propier seibsum, quia seibso est gloria plenus, cui nibil a creatura adjici potest, sed propter nos; quia videlicet per hoc quod Deum reveremur et honoramus, mens nostra ei subjicitur, et in hoc ejus perfectio consistit; .Mens autem bumana indiget ad boc quod conjungatur Deo, sensibilium manuductione... Et ideo in divino cultu necesse est aliquibus corboralibus uti, ut eis, quasi signis quibusdam, mens bominis excitetur ad spirituales actus, quibus Deo conjungitur. Et ideo religio babet quidam interiores actus quasi principales et per se ad religionem pertinentes ; exteriores vero actus quasi secundarios, et ad interiores actus ordinatos " (2a 2ae/81/7/0c). 9. "Est ergo tam in nobis quam in Deo circulatio quaedam in oberibus intellectus et voluntatis; nam voluntas redit in id a quo fuit princibium intelligendi : sed in nobis corculus clauditur ad id quod est extra, dum bonum exterius movet intellecium nostrum, et intellectus movet voluntatem, et voluntas tendit per abbetitum et amorem in exterius bonum ; sed in Deo iste circulus clauditur in seibso. Nam Deus, intelligendo se, concepit Verbum suum, etiam ratio omnium intellectorum per ibsum, pbropter hoc quod omnia intelligit intelligendo seibsum : et ex hoc Verbo procedit in amorem ommium et sui ipsius; ... Postquam autem circulus conclusus sit, nibil ultra addi potest; et ideo non potest sequi tertia processio in natura divina" (De Potentia, q. IX, a. 9). 10 "Per sacrificia rebraesentabatur ordinatio mentis in Deum, ad quam excitabatur sacrificium offerens. Ad rectam autem ordinationem mentis in Deum pertinet quod quae bomo babet recognoscat a Deo tanquam a primo Drincipio, et ordinet in Deum tanquam in ultimum finem. Et hoc repraesen- tabatur in oblationibus et sacrificiis, secundum quod homo ex rebus suis, quasi in recognitionem quod haberet ea à Deo, in honorem Dei ea offerebat. Et ideo in oblatione sacrificiorum protestabatur bomo quod Deus esset Drimum princibium creationis rerum et ultimus finis, ad quem essent omnia referenda " (la 2ae/102/3/0). 11. "Considerandum est quod mors Christi tripliciter considerari potest : Uno modo, secundum ibsam rationem mortis. Et sic dicitur Sab 1, 13, Deus mortem non fecit in bumana natura, sed est per beccatum inducta. Et ideo mors Christi, ex communi mortis ratione, non fuit sic Deo accepta, ut per eam reconciliaretur, quia Deus non laetatur in perditione vivorum, ## dicitur Sap. 1, 13. Alio modo potest... considerari... in actione occidentium.. Tertio modo potest considerari secundum quod processit ex voluniate Christi patientis, quae quidem voluntas informata fuit ad mortem sustinendam, cum ex obedientia ad Patrem, Phil. IL, 8 : Factus obediens Patri usque ad mortem : tum ex caritate ad bomines. Ebb. V, 2: Dilexit nos et tradidit Notes 203 se pro nobis. Er ex hoc mors Christi fuit meritoria et satisfactoria pro Deccatis, et intantum Deo accepta quod sufficit ad reconciliationem bominum etiam occidentium Christum...". (St. Thomas, # Romanos, c. V. lect. Il, ed. Cai, n. 403). 12 "Tantum bonum fuit quod Christus voluntarie passus est, quod bropter hoc bonum in natura bumana inventum, Deus placatus est super omni offensa generis bumani" (3a/49/4/o). CHAPTER 2 1. Dicendum quod sacriticium novae legis, id est Eucharistia, continet ipsum Christum qui est sanctificationis auctor. Et ideo hoc sacrificium etiam est sacramentum (la, 2ae/101/4/2um). 2. Some Reformed writers claim that Calvin admitted the character of the of the Mass. Cf. J. de Watteville, Le Sacrifice dans les textes eucharistiques des premiers siècles. Delachaux et Niestlé, 1966. It may be useful to give the reasons for the translation adopted here: "Non est alind - Is not something else". To translate: "is not a different sacrifice" would be ambiguous, to say the least: understood in terms of the object offered, it would signify similarity, not identity; understood in terms of the act of offering, it would no longer allow the distinction made by the Council of Trent between the two ways of offering, bloody and non-bloody. Commemoratio. Etymologically it is a verbal noun - action of recalling: to remember, to recall, which coexists with the strong sense: that which revives a thing. One must choose according to the context. Here, after "non est aliud a sacrificio" it is the strong sense which is imposed, because one could not say that the remembrance of a thing is not other than that thing. We must therefore understand commemoratio as that which revives the thing or makes it present, representing it in the double sense of the term. The most adequate word is memorial. It is the one that St. Thomas will use later (q. 73. A. 5, ad 3um). "This sacrament was instituted at the Lord's Supper, so that in the future it might be a memorial (memoriale) of the Lord's Passion, once it had been accomplished. And St. Thomas writes this in the article where he contrasts the sacrifice of the new law with those of the Old Testament, as the full sign (containing what it signifies) with the empty and only prefigurative signs. Memorial: "that which makes a thing come alive again"; either in the subjective sense of that which makes one relive (in thought) a past event, or in the objective sense of that which makes the thing come alive again. Here, in accordance with the immediate context and with other texts of St. Thomas, it is in the objective sense that we must understand it, as that which makes an event present again. 204 Notes to Chapter 2 Sacerdos ipse offerens - St. Augustine's text is somewhat different in construction from the one quoted here: "Per hoc (Christus) est sacerdos ibse offerens, ipse et oblatio - Thus (Christ) is the priest. He himself offers and he himself is the oblation. The quotation from St. Thomas "The priest (is) Christ reads literally: himself doing the action of offering, himself also what is offered. Oblatio: the word can have an active or passive meaning: actus offerendi or guod offertur. Here the passive sense is imposed, because of the opposition between offerens and oblatio, as if one had: The priest is Christ who offers, he is also what is offered. Note how this last incision comes, in addition to the rest, as if to omit nothing of what makes the sacrifice of Calvary original. The sentence in fact began with sacerdos and could therefore end after offerens. The rest comes as if not to leave in the shade the The role of victim that Christ fulfilled at the same time as that of priest. It may be added that this translation shows the complete homogeneity of the doctrine of Saint Thomas with that of Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose S.S. Paul VI, in the Encyclical Mysterium Fidei, states that in material It is a faithful witness to the tradition of the Eucharist. Longer texts will be found in the last pages of this chapter. It will suffice here to report these three lines: "It is therefore evidently a sacrifice, without it being anything new, but it is a memorial of this true immolation" (Hom. XV, 15, translation R.M. Tonneau). See also À. Vanhoye, "The Relationship of the Ministerial Priesthood to the Common Priesthood ", N.R.T. 1975, p. 202: "The Mass does not constitute a sacrifice added to that of Calvary, but is only a sacrament of that unique sacrifice. 4. See Ch. Paliard, Le Baptême des enfants, in Gatéchèse, n. 26, January 1967, p. 35. 5. "Similiter etiam per suam passionem initiavit ritum christianae religionis, offerens seipsum oblationem et bostiam Deo, ut dicitur Epb. V, 2. " (3a/62/5/c) 6. "Hoc sacramentum babet triplicem significationem : unam quidem praeteriti, in quantum scilicet est commemorativum dominicae respect passionis, quae fuerit verum. sacrificium... et secundum boc nominatur sacri- ficium" (3a/73/4/c) - "hoc sacramentum dicitur sacrificium in quantum rebraesentat 1bsam passionem GChristi" (Ibid. ad 3um). 7. "Dicendum quod id quod est commune omnibus sacramentis, attribuic bropter ejus excellentiam > (3a/73/4/2um). buitur antonomastice 8. "Hoc sacramentum non solum est sacramentum sed etiam sacrificium. In quantum enim in hoc sacramento rebraesentatur pbassio Christi, qua Christus obtulit se bhostiom Deo, ut dicitur, Eph. 5,2, habet rationem sacrificii" (79/7/0c). Celebratio bujus sacramenti... imago quaedam rebraesentativa est bassionis Christ, quae est vera ejus immolatio >" (83/1/1um). 10. Cf. supra, note 6. 11. "Sacrificia enim veteris legis illud verum sacrificium bassionis Notes 205 Christi continebant solum in figura... Et ideo oportuit ut aliquid plus haberet sacrificium novae legis a Christo institutum, ut scilicet contineret ipsum Christum passum, non solum in significatione vel figura, sed etiam in rei veritate" (75/1/0). 12. "Sacrificinm autem quod quotidie in Ecclesia offertur, non est alind a sacrificio quod ipse Christus obinulit, sed ejus commemoratio. Unde Augustinus dicit (De Civit. Dei, X, 20): Sacerdos ipse Christus offerens et se oblatio, cujus rei sacramentum quotidianum voluit esse Ecclesiae sacrificium >" (3a/22/3/2um) - For the justification of our translation, see above, note 3. 13. St. Thomas will also speak of the breaking of the bread, in connection with the rites of the Eucharist. But he will not see in it the sacrificial action, but only a secondary rite, and this in connection with a difficulty which saw in it a contradiction with a text of Saint Paul. The reasons of convenience which he gives for this rite are quite other than the affirmation of a sacrificial character. Also, this rite is performed on the species, while what is offered is Christ himself (cf. 3a/83/5/7um). 14. Council of Trent, Session XXII, c. 2; Denzinger-Rahner, Erchiridion Symbolorum, 31st ed, 1960 (which we quote: DZ), n. 938; Dumeige, La Foi Catholique (which we quote: F.C.), n. 766. 15. Eÿ quoniam in divino hoc sacrificio, quod in missa beragitur, idem ille Christus continetur et incruente immolaiur, qui in ara crucis semel se ipsum cruente obtulit (Hebr. IX, 27) : docet sancta Synodus, sacrificium istud vere propitiatorium esse (can. 3) per ipsumque fieri, ut, si cum vero corde et recta fide, cum metu ac reverentia, contriti ac paenitentes ad Deum accedamus, misericordiam opportuno (Hebr. IV, consequamur 16). Hujus et gratiam quibbe inveniamus oblatione placatus in auxilio Dominus, gratiam et donum boenitentiae concedens, crimina ef peccata etiam ingentia dimittit. Una enim eademque est bhostia, idem nunc offerens sacerdotum ministerio, qui se ipsum tunc in cruce obtulit, sola offerendi ratione diversa. Cujus quidem oblationis (cruentae, inquam) fructus ber banc incruentam uberrime percipiuntur : tantum abest, ut illi per banc quovis modo derogetur (bid., 940). 16 "Si quis dixerit missae Sacrificium tantum esse laudis et gratiarum actionis aut mudam commemorationem propitiatorium..... A.S." (DZ. 950). 17. sique (Paris, 18. sacrificii in cruce beracti, non autem If one wishes to see them in detail, one may refer to the clasde M. Lepin, L'idée du Sacrifice de la messe d'après les théologiens 1926). See below, Chapter V, note 22. 19. "Sacrificinm quod quotidie in Ecclesia offertur, non est alind a sacrificio quod Christus ipse obtulit, sed ejus commemoratio" (32a/22/3/ 2um). - Ut in futurum esset memoriale dominicae passiomis, ea perfecta >" (75/5/3um). "Ezcharistia est sacramentum pberfectum dominicae tanquam continens ipsum Christum passum" (Gbid. 2um). - bassionis "Virtus illius bostiae semel oblatae bermanet in aeternum > (22/5/2um). 20 "Oportunitas sacrificium offerendi attenditur... princibaliter per 206 Notes to Chapter 3 respectum ad Deum, cui offertur" (3a/82/10/c) - in consecratione bujus sacramenti sacrificium " Hoc sacramentum perficitur in consecratione Eucharistiae, in qua sacrificium Deo offertur" (ibid., 1um). 21. Which we read in the Commentary of St. Thomas, Seriptum suber Sententias Magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. Moos, vol. IV; Paris 1933. 22. "Post haec, quaeritur si quod gerit sacerdos proprie dicatur sacrificium vel immolatio, et si Christus quotidie immoletur, vel tantum semel immolatus est. "Ad hoc breviter dici potest, illud quod offertur et consecratur a sacerdote vocari sacrificium et oblatio, quia memoria est et rebraesentatio veri sacrificii et sanctae immolationis factae in ara crucis. Et semel Christus mortuus est in cruce in semetipso; quotidie autem immolatur in Sacramento, quia in sacramento recordatio fit illius quod factum est semel >". (1.C. Distinction XII, Textus, n. 7). 23. "Unde abbaret sanguinem Christi non offerri, si desit vinum calici, nec sacrificium dominicum legitima sanctificatione celebrari, mnisi oblatio et sacrificium nostrum resbonderit bassioni" (Ep. 63, ad Caecilium, IX, 3). CHAPTER 3 1. Summa Theologica, Wa, Ilae, qq. 8458. 2. "Inter omnia dona quae Deus bumano generi jam ber pbeccatum lapso dedit, praecibuum est quod dedit Filium suum unde dicituwr (Jn. IX, 16): "Sic Deus dilexit mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret, ut ommis qui credit in ibsum non pereat sed habeat vitam aeternam. "et ideo potissimum sacrificinm est quo ibse Christus " seipsum obtulit Deo in odorem suavitatis " ut dicitur " (Eph. V, 2). "Et propter hoc omnia alia sacrificia offerebantur in veteri lege ut boc unum singulare et praecibuum sacrificium figuraretur, tanquam perfectum ber impberfecta" (1-2ae, 102/3/0). Sine fide passionis Christi, nunquam botuit esse salus... Et ideo oportuit omni tempbore abud bomines esse aliquid rebraesentativum Dominicag Dassiomis. "Cujus in veteri guidem Successit autem ei in Novo Testamento Eucharistiae sacramentum, quod est rememorativum praeteritae passions, sicut et illud fuit praefigurativum futurae" (3a, 73, 0). 4. When we speak of the elaboration of dogma, we do not mean, obviously, that of a new doctrine. On the contrary, we shall see that faith in the Real Presence goes back to the very origin of the Church, that it has foundations clearly expressed in Scripture, and that it was accepted without question by the first Christian generations. Notes When we talk about elaboration, theological, Heaven, can the altars of contradiction we hear 207 that of explanations How can the living Christ be present in the Eucharist? How can he be present in all the world? How do these revealed truths not pose a problem for reason? It is from these questions, from the solutions to It is from this point on, too, that the Magisterium of the Church, in order to bar the way to error, has increasingly specified the limits by defining dogma. 5. "Una vero est fidelium universalis Ecclesia... in qua idem ipse sacerdos est sacrificium Jesus Christus, cujus corbus et sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transusbtantiatis pane in corpus et vinum in sanguinem potestate divina" (DZ. 430). 6. "Quod Christi corpus per essentiam et realiter... adsit... id vero non tantum negamus, sed errorem esse qui verbo Dei adversatur, constanter adseveramns." 7. C. Fabro, L'aventura della teologia progressista, Milan, 1974. 8. C. Fabro, Introduzione all'ateismo moderno, 2nd ed., Rome, 1969. 9. Rivista di Pastorale Liturgica, May 1966. 10. Marist Documentation Centre, 108, rue de Vaugirard. Imprimatur of January 6, 1967. The passages underlined in the quoted text were in the original. 11. At the bottom of these errors, of that of E. Schillebeeckx, in particular, it seems that there is confusion between what the philosophers call "act and "second act"; the first act being the subject in the act of being, in possession of the actuality of its essence; the second act, the exercise of its business In God, there is no need to make this distinction: pure act, it is both an act of being and an act of acting. In God, there is no need to make this distinction: pure act, he is both act of being and act of acting. In him, being and acting are one and the same act. Consequently, he is present through his being wherever he acts. It is different for Christ in his human nature, for his body of flesh. It is another thing for him to be a living man, another thing to exercise his human faculties, another thing to give his love or a sign of his love, another thing to make his body present in this or that place under the species of bread. 12 AAS. vit (1965), p. 753. On the authority to be given to the encyclical, as to the Profession of Faith which we shall quote later, we refer to our article in the "Chronicle of the Nuns". d'Ozon" of December 1968. In it, we asked ourselves in what capacity the Church hierarchy was entitled to our assent and, we might add, our obedience. "We must admit that the question is often badly put. In the presence of a document from the Holy See, the first question many ask is that of its infallibility. If it can be answered in the affirmative, one If not, his right to our full adherence (or obedience) is contested. Now "the right of the Church hierarchy to be heard, to claim our 208 Notes to Chapter 3 The Church's faith in the truths she proposes to us on behalf of God is not her infallibility, but her authority, that is to say, the mission she has received to transmit revelation to us (or to govern us) as an extension of the Mission of the Word himself. "But God (who promised infallibility to the Church, building her on Peter) must - since he is the Truth itself - guarantee the authentic transmission of his Message. "At the same time that the Father sends his Son to speak to us, the Father and the Son have sent the Holy Spirit to assist the hierarchy in the unimpaired preservation of the deposit and its faithful exposition " #2 sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent " (DZ. 1836). It is in this sense that the Lord, transmitting his Mission to the apostles, assures them of his assistance: "I am with you until the consummation of the ages" (Mt. XXVIII, 18); and that he promises them the Paraclete who will remind them of all that he himself has taught them (Jn. XIV, 28). Since this assistance was promised with a view to the indefectibility of the universal Church, it is impossible that a doctrine proposed as revealed to the universal Church, by the authority having received the mission to do so, should not be that of the apostles, impossible that a practice, imposed by this same authority on the whole Church, should be able to mislead it. But if the universal Church is the beneficiary of the assistance promised to the legitimate authority, she is not its instrument. It is because his decisions are binding on the whole Church that the pope is assured of the assistance of the Holy Spirit: it is not on the Church's acceptance of these decisions that this assistance depends. See in this sense the 4th article of the Gallican Church, condemned by Alexander VIII, namely: "That the pope has the principal share in questions of faith, and that his decrees concern all the churches and each church in particular: that yet his judgment is not irreformable, unless the consent of the Church intervenes" (DZ. 1325); trans. Martimort, Le Gallicanisme, "Que sais-je?", P.U.F. 1973, p. 96. See also our articles in the "Revue thomiste", 1956, pp. 389ff. and 1962, pp. 341ff. See also Labourdette R.T. (1957). 13. For the meaning of this term and the theological explanation, see chapter Iv. See also P.L. Carle, o.p., Consubstantiel et transubstantiation, Bordeaux, 1974. 14. Handwritten notes. 15. On this subject, M.J. Le Guillou, Le Mystère du Père, Fayard 1973, could be consulted with great profit. 16. À. Vanhoye, s.j., La structure littéraire de l'Epître aux Hébreux, Bruges, 1963. Notes CHAPTER 209 4 1. It has become fashionable to declare the categories of substance and accident "obsolete". However, this is not the opinion of a specialist in child psychology, Dr Piaget. For him, the idea of substance is the first to which the child's reason awakens. Witness the question that the child keeps asking: "What is this? wood? iron? If we want to avoid the term, it is easy to express faith by asking: "What is the liquid in the chalice? wine, blood? No doubt this liquid retains the physical and chemical properties of wine. This is a more modern term, if one prefers, to designate the accident. But in this matter, as in others, and particularly in such delicate matters, it is always detrimental to abandon the precise language that is proper to it. Therefore, for those who no longer remember these notions, we will briefly recall their meaning: Substance is "that which is appropriate to exist in itself and not in another "In other words, it is the thing that exists, the subject of its pro- and its activities. The acident, on the other hand, is defined as "that which is appropriate to exist not in itself, but in another, its subject". These abstract definitions will be easily clarified by a few examples: this bird that flies or lands on a branch is a substance. Indeed, it is the subject of its existence, of its flight, of its weight, of the colour of its wings. It is this magpie that exists, not as the attribute of some other subject, but as a distinct being; it is of it that we say that it has just hatched from the egg, that it is a bird, that it steals the objects that shine, that it has white and black feathers, etc. It will also be said that this piece of metal that I have between my hands is iron, that it weighs such and such a weight, that it rusts in the humidity... The magpie and the piece of iron are substances. On the other hand, the whiteness and blackness of the magpie's wings are not substances, they do not exist in themselves. We do not say: here is a whiteness that flies. The whiteness exists only in the wing of the magpie. It is the magpie that flies, that has a white wing. They don't say that 15 kilos exist, what exists and to which they attribute the weight of 15 kilos is this iron ingot that I have in my hands, it's the one that weighs 15 kilos. Of the whiteness, the weight, or, if you like, the whiteness, of the 15 kilos, we will say that they are accidents, from "accidere", "to happen to". It happens to a piece of iron to weigh 15 kilos, to a magpie to fly. It is neither colour nor weight that exist in nature, but the subjects that are affected by them. It is these subjects, these substances (from s#b-stare: to stand under) that weigh or are coloured. Strictly speaking, it is not the accident that exists, it is the subject, which, in addition to 210 Notes to Chapter 4 It is the iron that weighs, it is the magpie that is black and white. It is the iron that weighs, it is the magpie that is black and white. 2. "Quia non est consuetum bhominibus, sed horribile carnem bhbominis comedere et sanguinem bibere" (3a/75/5/0). 3. We know that biologists have come to suppose the presence, for the development of each living being, of an "organizing principle", which corresponds strangely to the "soul" of which Aristotle spoke. In the same way, according to R. Ruyer, American scientists, having reached the end of their "positive science", also tend to go beyond it, and, at a time when certain Catholic theologians question the distinction between body and soul, scrutinize the reverse side of the pure phe- nomenes and call for a return to hylémorphism (The Princeton Gnosis, Fayard 1974). (5) "Dicendum quod omnino necesse est confiteri secundum fidem cathoLicam quod totus Christus sit in hoc sacramento" (16/1/c.). 6. "Si quis negaverit, in sanctissimo Eucharistiae sacramento contineri vere, realiter et substantialiter, corbus et sanguinem una cum anima et divinitate Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, ac broinde totum Christuwm.... AS." Sess. XIII, canon 1; DZ. Cf. supra, note 1. CHAPTER 5 1. Thomas Aquinatis, Scriptum super quarto Libro Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, Paris, 1947; D. XII, q. 5. 2. 3a pars, q. 83, a. I, ad 1um. 3. Prayer over the offerings of Holy Thursday and the second ordinary Sunday; formerly the ninth after Pentecost. 4. Contra Gentiles, 1. III, c. 97. 5. But just as the world created by God is not necessarily the best of all worlds, so the assistance of the Holy Spirit, though it preserves the Church from doing anything that is erroneous or unreasonable, does not assure her that what she does is always the best. 6. For this, see above, c. IL, n. 12. 7. AAS. 40 (1948), p. 5, XL (1948), p. 5 ff. 8. AAS. 1909, p. 5; or Acts of St. 8. This can be seen by rereading the Constitution Missale Romanum of 3 April 1969, printed at the head of the official editions of the new Missal. 10. These Bulls or "Constitutions" can be read at the beginning of all the old Breviaries or Missals. Notes 2 11. AAS. 3 (1911), p. 633; The Liturgy, Solesmes ed., no. 328. 12. AAS, 5 (1913), p. 449, The Liturgy, no. 3417. 13. AIL of 22.90.56, AAS. 46 (1956), p. 711; The Liturgy, no. 793. 14. Mediator: AAS. XXXIX (1947), pp. 521 ff. The Liturgy, Solesmes edition, no. S08 ff; Musicae sacrae disciplina: AAS. XLVIIL (1956), pp. 5ff. The Liturgy, no. 744ff; AIL. Congress of Assisi: AAS. XLVIII (1956), pp. 711 ff; The Liturgy, no. 793. 15. On the simplification of the rubrics. AAS. XLVII (1955), p. 218. 16. Easter Vigil : AAS. XLIII (1951), pp. 1285ff. Week saint : AAS. XLVII (1955), pp. 838 ff. 17. For all that concerns the canonical problem of the obligation of the Missal, one may refer to the work of Dom Guy Oury, La Messe de saint Pius V à Paul VI, Solesmes, 1975. 18. Andrieu, Les Ordines romani du haut Moyen Age, pp. 467-468, quoted by D.AL. "Ordines", p. 2405. 19. To see this, it is sufficient to open the Rabricae generales, printed at the beginning of the Missals of St. Pius V. Let us take, for example, paragraph XV: De hora celebrandi missam. We find at once: 1) Msssa privata saltem post matutinum..... and only then in no. 2) Missae autem conventuales et solemmes...; in paragraph XVI: De bis quae clara voce aut secreto dicenda sunt. We read: In Missa privata... and only in 3) In missa solemni....; in paragraph XVII : De ordine genuflectendi: In missa privata..., 3) in missa solemmi.... This anteriority of the so-called "private" Mass and the rejection at the end of the paragraph of what concerns the solemn Mass are still evident in the first editions of the Missal of St. Pius V, by the printing in italics of what concerns the solemn Mass. It should be noted, however, that the starting point of Burchard's work was the pontifical Mass: it was from this that he published, on the one hand, that which concerns the ceremonies of the papal Mass, and which resulted in our Pontificals and Ceremonials of the Bishops, and on the other, "the order to be followed by the priest in the celebration of private Mass". 20. M. Denis-Boulet, Eschariste, on la Messe dans son histoire et ses origines, Paris, 1953, p. 164. 21. There is no lack of examples in the history of the Church of the impossibility of accepting a doctrine, even one which is very legitimate in itself, as long as it is presented as intimately linked to a heresy or an error. The recognition of the humanity of Christ as instrument (organon) of The instrumentality of grace, professed without hesitation by St. Thomas, had once been rejected from the perspective of Nestorianism, which understood this instrumentality as a negation of the hypostatic union. Luther's reliance on Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) and its individual interpretation would, in turn, lead to a distrust of Scripture and the prohibition of the faithful from reading it in anything other than an appropriately commented text. Closer to home, the presence in the Parisian liturgy of trends 717 Notes to Chapter 5 The fact that this was not the case in the Gallican tradition led Dom Guéranger to speak out violently against it, sometimes to the detriment of certain happy elements which were to be found in it. See also: Dom Oury, Esprit et Vie, 1976, Aux origines du mouvement liturgique: Les Inst. Lit. de Dom Guéranger, pp. 120-127; 139-143; 157-160. 22. See swpra, chapter ...1 - The Council of Trent. - The reading of the conciliar texts in their original language could have avoided certain errors. The author of one article, in an attempt to contest the legitimacy of the term "memorial", substituted the term "simpblex commemoratio" for "nuda commemoratio" in a quotation from the Council, which he wished to give more weight by using Latin, as clear proof that he had merely highlighted an imprecise French translation. The value of the conclusions drawn from such quotations can be judged. 23. When, for example, Dom Guéranger published his Année Liturgique, in order to show the faithful the riches of liturgical prayer, he could not insert the text of the canon, but had to conform to the custom, which, faced with the prohibition of placing the translation in the hands of the faithful, offered them instead "prayers during the holy Mass". 24. On will be able to to this For more information, see comments from cardinal Duval on "Some Anomalies in Liturgical Celebrations". Documentation Catholique, 1975, p. 371. 25. We shall endeavour, in a future note, to seek out the theological confusions or social circumstances which seem to explain, at least partially, these counterfeits. It will suffice, for the moment, to compare the reaction which, on this point, followed the reform of St. Pius V, with that which we observe after the promulgation of the Ordo of H.H. Paul VI: We have seen that one of the reasons which made, after St. Pius V, the unification more complete than it had been requested, was the high price of printing a local Missal. On the contrary, today printed materials, such as mimeographed sheets, are multiplying and can spread rapidly the smallest initiatives. Moreover, the mass media, always in search of the spectacular and the new, only make known celebrations that contravene the provisions of the authority. And many, without bothering to refer to the Roman prescriptions, which are so often modified, prefer or find it easier to reproduce what they have seen on television, or even, in order to do something new, to go back to the "wild" Masses. Moreover, at the time of St. Pius V, liturgical science was still somewhat embryonic. Today it has been widely disseminated, and to put it more accurately, popularized, that is to say, disseminated in a very superficial manner. A few vague ideas are enough for most people to improvise, in contradiction with what they would have learned from a true liturgical science or even some elementary notions of sound theology. 26. It is not the abuses or forgeries of which a rite may have been the occasion which can modify its nature or legitimacy; nor can it be the case that the rite is not used in the same way as the other rites. It is important not to confuse the liturgy as prescribed by the Holy See and the Notes 213 It is not the fault of those who worked on the liturgical reform that there is anarchy in some countries. Those who worked on the liturgical reform are not responsible for the anarchy which reigns in certain countries. (B. Botte, o.s.b., Le Mouvement Liturgique, Paris, 1973, p. 200). 27. See the report of Cardinal Knox to the 1974 Episcopal Synod (Catholic Doc. 1975, pp. 365-366). 28. Would this distinction marked by the rites of the new Ordo not suffice to explain the favourable reception it has received from several Reformed theologians? For it makes more clearly apparent, as did St. Thomas, the sacramental character of the altar sacrifice and its relation to Calvary, and removes the apparent contradiction between its daily repetition and the oft-repeated "semel" of the Epistle to the Hebrews, an apparent contradiction which seems to have been one of the stumbling blocks of the Reformation. 29. Matt. V, 23. 30. Cf. DZ. 1326, quoted above, ch. II, note 12; and Vatican II, Const. Lumen Gentinm, n° 25. CHAPTER 6 1. The wording of the definition of sacrament given by St. Thomas in art. 2 of question 60: "Signum rei sacrae in quantum est sanctificans bomines - Sign of a holy thing, inasmuch as it sanctifies men", is grammatically ambiguous, since the subject of sanctificans can be sign or Tes Sacra. Only the context can fix us: It is fortunately very precise. First of all in the beginning of the body of the article, where St. Thomas seeks the specific difference which distinguishes the sacrament from any other sign pertaining to sanctification not in the sign itself, but in the thing signified. This is even more clearly confirmed by the answers to the objections, to each of which St. Thomas replies, not by analyzing the sign, but each time by answering that the thing signified by the other signs which are opposed to it is not sanctifying, (ad. lum and 2um), or is so only in a preparatory way (ad. 3um). This interpretation is also confirmed by the body of art. 4, where it is affirmed that what man is sanctified by are the sacred things signified by the sacraments "res sacrae quae ber sacramanta significantur sunt bona quibus bomo sanctificatur", not the signs themselves. This alone makes it possible to grasp the homogeneity of the sacraments of the old and the new law, both signifying equally, though from different perspectives (that of the past and that of the future) the same sanctifying realities, enumerated in art. 3: namely, the Passion, grace and glory, 214 Notes to Chapter 6 We shall see in the following note to what confusions the misinterpretation leads regarding the choice of the subject of "sanctificans", in "in quantum sanctificans bomines", and placing it in the sign. 2. Hence the ambiguity of the definition often used to designate the sacraments of the new law as an "efficacious sign of grace". In fact a sign is effective in its order, that is to say as a sign, and it is thus that must be heard, in speaking properly, the term sign effective, if it means effective. For example, the green light at a road junction: if there is no power outage, it effectively means that the lane is clear; red, it effectively means that it is not. If there is a blackout or if the sun hits it hard, it is unreadable, it does not signify effectively. But even when it does mean effectively, it produces nothing. This is in contrast to the photocell, which makes a door close or open. In order to speak correctly - in conformity, moreover, with the distribution of the articles of Saint Thomas - we would have to say that the sacrament of the new law is not only an effective sign in the order of signification (that of the old law can also be so, and even in a more meaningful way, as St. Thomas notes this for the bloody sacrifices of the ancient law), but in addition "instrument" or effective instrumental cause of grace. The following term should be used: "sign and effective instrument". It seems that Cardinal Billot, in his definition of the sacrament, has sought the efficacy of efficiency in the meaning itself, for want of noticing it. Cano was the first inspirer of modern theology"... "the method he advocates is very rowvelle and gives a preponderant importance to the simple research of the data of faith". F. Cayré A.A., Précis de Patrologie, Paris, 1930, vol. II, p. 741. The A. quotes the article by M. Jacquin, Melchior Cano et la théologie moderne, published in the R.S.P.T., 1920, p. 135: "The general aspect of this work is quite different from that presented by the works of a St. Thomas or of the other masters of scholasticism. While here reasoning dominates, there it is erudition", and A. Cayré adds: "From this came the development of the theological theses adopted by all in our day." (Ibid.). 4. The historical circumstances which led to a separation of eleven years between the elaboration of the chapters and canons on "Sacrament" (1551) and those on "Sacrifice" (1562) in particular, caused the sacramental character of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the sign of the Passion and the bearer of its fruits, to be disregarded for whole generations. 5. This last term has unfortunately been too often understood as opposed to "doctrinal". On the contrary, as was recalled several times during the discussions at Vatican I, one of the first obligations of the Shepherd is precisely to "feed", that is, to give his flock doctrine, the food of faith. (See on this subject J.P. Torrel, o.p. La Théologie de l'épiscopat au premier Conseil du Vatican, Paris, 1961, pp. 11955.) It is therefore equally futile to rely on this alleged opposition Notes 219 to contest the doctrinal character of Vatican II than, under the pretext of the pastoral character that John XXIII wanted to give it, to no longer worry about keeping, as recommended that at the same time time the pope, "the doctrine It is one thing to say that the Council did not provide definitions, which was expressly stated by its General Secretary; it is another thing to deny it a doctrinal authority: that of what might be called a Doctrinal Authority. - It is one thing to say that the Council did not carry definitions, which its General Secretary expressly affirmed; it is another thing to deny it a doctrinal authority: that of what might be called an < extraordinary teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium>. - See above, ch. II, note 12. 6. Encyclical Mysterium Fidei of 3 September 1965. 7. See above, ch. III, page 108 and note 10. 8. Ch. Paliard, Le Baptême des enfants, réflexions doctrinales, in " Catéchèse > revue de pastorale catéchistique, published under the patronage of the Commission Nationale de l'Enseignement religieux. IN. 26, January 1967, pp. 31-47, especially 35. 9. "There is for us a more serious reason for affliction: the spread of a tendency to desacralize, as one has the audacity to say, the liturgy (if it can still be called by this name) and, with it, inevitably the Christian religion. " "This new mentality, whose troubled origins it would not be difficult to detect, and on the basis of which this destruction of authentic Catholic worship is being attempted, is introducing such disturbances into doctrine, discipline and pastoral care that We do not hesitate to consider it an aberration" (Pope Paul VI, 19/4/1967, in the Concilium). "There is a tendency to secularize and desacralize everything. Would this tendency be in keeping with the spirit of the Council? Would it be able to animate the renewal which the Council wishes to promote? Given that the necessary distinctions have been made, it does not seem to be the case" (id. 28/8/67). The dangers which threaten (the faith) are grave and numerous: perils (AII. at the opening of the Synod of 1967, cf. DC. col. 1732). 11. See also: II Cor. XI, 13-15; Jn. I, 10, etc. Cf. C. Spicq, Théologie morale du Nouveau Testament, Paris 1965, vol. II, pp. 278-279. 12. At the opposite extreme of this kind of contempt for authority, we must mention the tendency of theologians who, arrogating to themselves, in the words of Pius XII, in magistri Magisterti, bring before them and their own interpretation of Tradition the decisions of the living Magisterium of the Church, the immediate rule of faith (DZ. 1792). See the speech of Pius XII, at the Con- Mariological Congress, 24/11/54: "One cannot scrutinize and explain the documents of 'Tradition' while neglecting or minimizing the sacred magisterium, life and worship of the Church as it has manifested itself over the centuries. Throughout its secular existence, the Church is truly governed and guarded by the Holy Spirit, not only in the teaching and definition of the faith, but also in worship, in the exercises of piety and devotion of the faithful. (The Church, Solesmes ed., no. 1389). nr ET ES A : # me # à A MUR ES bag M. Vue Ta a Het ARE SAN PE. pren£L mas ee) VeLa At 13 5x L AA 8 NRP deg RE # His ver ie # And MEME a ae € PATES Hbte | Apr ge in 6 ue J T'able of materials SWISS FAILURE Er in ee The will ae lens eeDee a Nan LR fe Pers Cnitiecdeds the UT. panda. comfortable one EN FAONS d'étré Au SACNIIGE RL. nom à ane n ve à cenete ne LA eroce un) Cle ER NT die e ane ie Eucharistic eniice DIMM: Area nuervacs The sacraments according to St Thomas .................. The Eucharist, perfect sacrament of the Passion .......... The Doctrine of St. Thomas in the Tradition .......... Nidoome.de la presence reclle 04. ue The progressive elaboration of the dogma .................... The errors CONOMPOTaInES ss cuesunssss esse The ercycharer Mystermn, Fidel... ,...f4..sau PROTEIN nee Danish dede at ae Te ds nee sale The teaching of VEcriture ........:....:.....,, . The theological explanation of the real presence .......... WATER EM AE COMIENMANCE nue The do to ve nale golden to de Transubstantiation: how Christ makes himself present Consequences of transsusbstantiation ................ The Presence of Christ Lines eh eee pacs Condition of accidents that remain ................ MlevOIution of the tites dlMONMONR study 2 ir Nr nt do ot Sen Data todau to Words and rites of celebration ................... to De dl The modifications of the Ordo Missae .................. 155 The constants of the successive reforms ............... 163 The hbvre of the Pie VER ES RC RS eee 169 The Orde-Missae OF Pan VI SE Ar SRE 174 . The difficulties encountered by the liturgical reform .... CAUSES, ÆIMCOPTCNONSIONX 0e la helene toi ei Gti e Et ae MOIS LTES LOMME ATOM À Aa see eletie ere Se ME eee 185 185 194 This book was printed on the presses of Imprimeries Aubin in Poitiers/Ligugé, printing number 9131. Re. For the cover : Imprimerie Coconnier 72300 Sablé-sur-Sarthe Printed June 17, 1976 Feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord ct 6 © Ererian'Z ne ft en Adnéfelre Aie. d Hd SERPRSE Fat qui soihot RELE: sonata. ba * 1 SR tale" RAT ù Etai NCE "M What is the mass? How is it sacrificed? How did its rites come about? It is to answer these questions that conferences gathered is it a pu vary? what have been in this volume. The author, Dom Paul Nau, a monk at Solesmes, taught for over thirty years, He had the joy of discovering the attraction of the theology of St. Thomas for these young people, as well as its effectiveness in helping them to find themselves. between of disarray doctrinal current. The lack of knowledge of this teaching, as well as the lack of knowledge of the evolution of rites in the course of history, seems to have been at the origin of the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the past, as well as those which still risk dividing the latter today. When travellers have lost sight of each other by taking divergent paths, where will they find the indications that will enable them to agree on the true direction to take, if not at a point on the road before the forks? Ask the Doctor Common the light of a doctrine prior to the controversies, go back in history to illuminate the changes by those that preceded them. recent of such seems rites be the aspiration of many minds, tired of vain polemical. It is to this aspiration that this essay hopes to provide an answer