THE EUCHARIST AS MEAL, SACRIFICE, AND COVENANT

Corpus Christi, Year B. Heb. 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16. 22-26.

AIM  To enhance the hearers’ ability to worship by explaining the meaning of the Eucharist.

 

          Most Catholics over fifty can still remember “the old Mass.” The priest had his back to the people most of the time. This didn’t make much difference, since the Mass was largely silent. The little we could hear was in Latin, so we couldn’t understand it.  Here is how the Mass of those days is described by the American Jesuit, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who died in December 2008 at the age of 90. Raised a Presbyterian, he became a Catholic as an undergraduate at Harvard. 

          “There was little external unity to be discerned,” Dulles wrote about his early experiences of the silent Latin Mass. “The priest ... carried out his tasks almost as though he were alone. The congregation, for their part, were not watching with scrupulous exactitude the movements of the celebrant. Some, on the contrary, were reciting prayers on mysterious strings of beads, which Catholics call rosaries. Others were thumbing through pages of prayer-books and Missals, which, for all I knew, might have been totally unrelated to the Mass. Not even a hymn was sung to bring unity into this apparently dull and disconnected service.” (Avery Dulles, A Testimonial to Grace [Sheed & Ward, 1996] p. 63)  

          Unaccustomed to Catholic ways, the young Avery Dulles failed to perceive that in what he called “this apparently dull and disconnected service” there was one point of unity. In the middle of the long silence the ringing of a bell or gong heralded a dramatic climax. Suddenly the church was hushed. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the priest’s back, as he raised above his head the host which he had just consecrated.  A moment later the bell rang again as he elevated the chalice with the Precious Blood. Children in Catholic schools were taught the words which the priest whispered in Latin just before the elevation of host and chalice: “This is my body ... This is my blood.”

          Jesus spoke those words, of course, at the Last Supper. Actually, Jesus said more than that. He embedded each of those statements in a command: “Take this, all of you, and eat it. ... Take this, all of you, and drink from it.” Those words show that the Eucharist is a meal. The important thing about the consecration of the bread and wine is not merely that Jesus comes to be present on the altar; but that he is present as food. Just as bread exists not merely for its own sake, but to be eaten, and as wine exists to be drunk, so Jesus offers us his body and blood in the Eucharist as our spiritual food and drink.

          The Eucharist, however, is unlike all other meals: it is a sacrificial meal. At every Mass the priest, acting in the name of Jesus who is the true celebrant of every Eucharist, repeats not only Jesus’ words over the cup, “This is my blood,” but also the words he immediately added: “It will be poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” For Jesus, as for all those steeped in the Jewish scriptures he loved, the pouring out of blood symbolized the offering of a life. Jesus laid down his life for us on Calvary, offering to his Father a perfect, unblemished sacrifice for the sins of all humanity in all ages, our own sins included.

          Our second reading says that Jesus offered his life on Calvary “once for all.”  That is important. There is no repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice in the Mass. Rather it is sacramentally commemorated. This means that in the unseen, spiritual realm Calvary becomes, for us, a living, present reality.  We express this in the third eucharistic acclamation, based on some words of St. Paul: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.” (Cf. 1 Cor. 11:26)

The Mass, therefore, is a meal, but it is also a sacrifice.

          Finally, this sacrificial meal is also a covenant. At every Mass we repeat words from today’s gospel: “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” A covenant is a solemn pact which unites those who make it.  The marriage vows are a covenant, uniting husband and wife “in one flesh,” as the Bible says.

          When, in obedience to Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, we “do this’ with the bread and wine — sharing the one bread and drinking from the one cup — we are united in fellowship with the Father, in the love of his Son, who is present in the Eucharist in and through to power of his Holy Spirit. United in this way with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are also joined in fellowship with all other sharers in this sacrificial meal and covenant.

          Another way of stating this is to say that it is the Eucharist which makes us Church; for the Church is the fellowship of those who are united with God, and with one another. The Mass is not a form of private prayer — “the soul alone with God.” It is the common banquet of all God’s people. The Greeting of Peace which we exchange before coming to the Lord’s table is not an intrusion on our personal prayer. It is the acting out of one of the Eucharist’s essential aspects.

          In the Eucharist Jesus nourishes us with his body and blood. At every Mass we are present spiritually, but truly, in the Upper Room, and at Calvary — with but one exception: we cannot see Jesus with our physical eyes, only with the eyes of faith. Whenever the Holy Sacrifice is celebrated, all the benefits of Jesus’ one, unrepeatable sacrifice become available to us. In this sacrificial meal we become sharers in Christ’s “eternal covenant” which unites us sinners with the all-holy God, and with one another. So much drama, so much wonder, so much spiritual treasure! Are we really aware of it when we come to Mass? Do we truly worship?

          That is the homily I have prepared for you on this beautiful feast.  I would like to conclude with a personal testimony. Though I remember well the old Mass which I described at the outset, it is not the Mass I grew up with. For the first thirty-two years of my life I was an Anglican — or as we say in this country, an Episcopalian.  For six of those years I had the great privilege of serving, like my father and grandfather before me, as an Anglican priest.

          The Mass I celebrated in those years, and which nourished me from childhood, was in English. It had full congregational participation, including hearty and often fervent singing of hymns which puts Catholics to shame. It was deeply reverent. I often attended Mass in Catholic Churches. Like the young Avery Dulles, I found it, with rare exceptions, hurried and slapdash; the Latin (when it was audible, which was seldom) so gabbled and garbled that it could have been Chinese. There was little reverence and precious little beauty.

          Leaving the Anglican Church of my heritage and entering the Catholic Church fifty-five years ago was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Today, looking back, I can also say that it was the best thing I have ever done. It was some years, however, before I could say that. For me the best and most wonderful thing about being a Catholic, and a priest, is being able to lead you, the holy people God, as we obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this in my memory.” 

          Three decades ago the editor of the international Catholic weekly, The Tablet, published in England, wrote words that I have treasured ever since I first read them: “Those who have had the fortune to travel widely and meet priests in many countries will agree that, though they may have met embittered and frustrated men here and there, for the most part their encounter has been with dedicated men: unselfish to a degree, simple and honest and above all happy in their vocation. Such travelers must ask themselves if they can say the same of all their married friends.”

          Priests would give different reasons for this happiness. For me the supreme reason is the privilege, so far beyond any man’s deserving, of offering daily the sacramental memorial of the one, full, perfect, and all-sufficient sacrifice of Calvary and being nourished by — and distributing to you, the Lord’s holy people — that daily bread for which Jesus taught us to pray.