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.
