Saturday, April 11, 2020
Well... No.
CWR Dispatch: “They Killed Him”: Deicide and Holy Saturday by Dr. Leroy Huizenga
Why Holy Saturday started to hit me differently a few years ago
Penal substitutionary atonement is not true at all, and worst of the satisfaction explanations of atonement.
Forget the Theotokos, the beloved disciple, the remaining apostles who fled and were in hiding, St. Mary Magdalene, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Arimathea, the women of Jerusalem crying in the streets... and probably there were many others as well. The whole entire world at that point in time, afterwards, and before, stood guilty of deicide? That is a bit of an exaggeration which might comport with certain tendencies in Western Christianity to pile on shame and create unnecessary guilt, but it isn't healthy. Is there any collective guilt because all of humanity is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ? Maybe some were guilty of indifference, others of fear, and so on. But not everyone else is guilty of killing or murdering Christ.
Now, one can say that we caused Christ to die, but not as an efficient cause but as a sort of final cause, in so far as Christ died (and chose to die) for us and our salvation. That is true. But that is not the same as having agency in killing Him.
Who isn't guilty of the sin of pride or disordered love? Only our Lord and the Theotokos are probably exempt from that one, and maybe St. John the Forerunner. With those exceptions, all are guilty of some sin worthy of death as a consequence (or a penalty, if you prefer). But that sin isn't necessarily the murder of Christ.
Who is guilty of killing God? Strictly speaking, maybe no one, as (the Son of) God, as divine, cannot be killed. The communication of idioms in this instance may be a bit tricky. Did those guilty of killing Christ believe He was God? It seems noi. They may have been culpable in rejecting the gift of belief that Christ is God, or culpable in denying that He was the Messiah. Does that make their sin formally "deicide"? I don't think so, even if it could be argued that their sin was materially "deicide." Were they guilty of murdering a man innocent of any crimes against Roman law? Yes.
I don't see any awareness of non-Latin soteriology and theories of atonement in this essay, and I don't think anyone with such an awareness would have written something like this. This seems like the product of a Western Christian, and reveals what is problematic in certain strands of popular Western Christianity.
Why Holy Saturday started to hit me differently a few years ago
Many Christians in modernity, I think, have a conception of the crucifixion restricted to a legal version of penal substitutionary atonement: Our problem is guilt, for which God must punish us, but loving us and desiring to forgive us, God punishes Christ in our place.
True enough as far as it goes, but when compared to classical soteriologies, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, it doesn’t go very far.
Penal substitutionary atonement is not true at all, and worst of the satisfaction explanations of atonement.
The cross isn’t just a component in the economy of our salvation, something God needed to do to Christ to acquit us. The cross also reveals the hatred of the human race towards God. They killed him: God comes into the World in Jesus Christ, and Jew and Gentile conspire to cooperate in killing God for reasons of convenience.
The World stands guilty of deicide.
And so on Holy Saturday I feel generally sick to my stomach. The one man who could have helped us, we hammered him to a cross. And that means two things: Deep down, I’m capable of murder and I’m liable to being murdered. We mustn’t deceive ourselves about our capacity for sin, and that of others.
Most people have a theologia gloriae, a theology of glory in which we bypass the cross as we affirm ourselves and affirm God for affirming us in a circle of moral therapeutic deist bilge. True theology, as Luther so rightly and so often stressed, is a theologia crucis, a theology of the cross in which God’s murderers are saved by God through the very instrument of His murder. Our salvation cannot consist in self-improvement; our salvation consists in our own crucifixion.
Forget the Theotokos, the beloved disciple, the remaining apostles who fled and were in hiding, St. Mary Magdalene, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Arimathea, the women of Jerusalem crying in the streets... and probably there were many others as well. The whole entire world at that point in time, afterwards, and before, stood guilty of deicide? That is a bit of an exaggeration which might comport with certain tendencies in Western Christianity to pile on shame and create unnecessary guilt, but it isn't healthy. Is there any collective guilt because all of humanity is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ? Maybe some were guilty of indifference, others of fear, and so on. But not everyone else is guilty of killing or murdering Christ.
Now, one can say that we caused Christ to die, but not as an efficient cause but as a sort of final cause, in so far as Christ died (and chose to die) for us and our salvation. That is true. But that is not the same as having agency in killing Him.
Who isn't guilty of the sin of pride or disordered love? Only our Lord and the Theotokos are probably exempt from that one, and maybe St. John the Forerunner. With those exceptions, all are guilty of some sin worthy of death as a consequence (or a penalty, if you prefer). But that sin isn't necessarily the murder of Christ.
Who is guilty of killing God? Strictly speaking, maybe no one, as (the Son of) God, as divine, cannot be killed. The communication of idioms in this instance may be a bit tricky. Did those guilty of killing Christ believe He was God? It seems noi. They may have been culpable in rejecting the gift of belief that Christ is God, or culpable in denying that He was the Messiah. Does that make their sin formally "deicide"? I don't think so, even if it could be argued that their sin was materially "deicide." Were they guilty of murdering a man innocent of any crimes against Roman law? Yes.
I don't see any awareness of non-Latin soteriology and theories of atonement in this essay, and I don't think anyone with such an awareness would have written something like this. This seems like the product of a Western Christian, and reveals what is problematic in certain strands of popular Western Christianity.
A Long Essay for Holy Saturday
CWR: This Holy Saturday: Social Distancing, Solitude, Healing by Brad Bursa, Ph.D.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]
The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.
The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":
Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]
The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.
Following the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ratzinger does not view death in a one-sided manner, as if it were only an experience of bodily corruption that marks the end of one’s physical life. Instead, “death is present as the nothingness of an empty existence which ends up in a mere semblance of living.”v Ratzinger says, “Death is absolute loneliness…the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is — hell.”
The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":
In God, in the Trinity, person is pure relativity, of being turned toward the other. The concept of person does not refer to substance, but to relationality. God’s substance is one, and person, as the “pure relativity of being turned toward the other” does not lie on the level of substance, but on the “level of dialogical reality.” Thus, Ratzinger concludes that relation is recognized as a third fundamental category “between substance and accident.”xvii Therefore, in and through Christian faith, theology manifests “the Christian newness of the personalistic idea in all its sharpness and clarity,” for “it was faith that gave birth to this idea of pure act, of pure relativity…it was faith that thereby brought the personal phenomenon into view.”xviii
Ratzinger argues that the early developments in Trinitarian understanding offer profound insight in the area of anthropology as well. For the human being to be made in God’s “image and likeness,” must, in some way mean that the human being is a personal being. In other words, the human being is “not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being.”xix The human being exists as a personal being, precisely because the human being is a spiritual being. God takes the basic material of earth and forms the human being, but human being only enters into existence after God breathes into the formed earth the breath of life. Now, “the divine reality enters in,” for “in the human being heaven and earth touch one another….the human being is directly related to God.”xx Based upon what has been developed in the area of Trinitarian theology, to be in God’s image, according to Ratzinger, “implies relationality,” setting “the human being in motion toward the totally Other”….“it means the capacity for relationship…the human capacity for God.”xxi To be in God’s image means to be personal, it means the human being has the capacity for a personal relationship with God and to exist as a personal being, as a social being, in relation to others human beings.Is sociability a participation in the Divine? Can we say that primates participate in the Divine? Yes, but it may be foreign to some of us. All of His creation participates in God in its own way.
Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.
Friday, April 10, 2020
Charles Taylor on Solidarity and Fairness
Church Life Journal
This is how the source of the deep cracks in modern capitalist societies presents itself. There are two contexts that justify our deeds; we can define them as the “democratic” and the “capitalist.” To be honest, we cannot reject either one. We cannot reject the democratic context, because it has become a central, inseparable element of our vision of legitimacy. We also cannot reject the capitalist context, because we have long ago passed the stage where we would be satisfied with a stagnant economy. Thus, we have to come to terms with them both. The first context is a great source of solidarity. When we manage to awaken and activate the feeling of our common citizenship we are capable of acting in often surprising ways by authentically devoting ourselves to others or in the name of the common good. This is especially apparent during times of war or during movements of national liberation—in a certain sense the Polish Solidarity movement was an important instance of such a movement. The second context demands that we put solidarity to the side and agree to bend or even break the rules of reciprocity in the name of effectiveness, which, it is apparent, we cannot renounce.
These are the two contradictory principles -both are illusionary and the illusions of "democracy" and "greater wealth" are used by the oligarchy to provide a cover of legitimacy. Does Taylor realize this, or has he drunk the Kool-aid as well? Being subject to the same state is insufficient to create "solidarity" and Taylor fails to recognize "civic nationalism" cannot overcome substantial differences in group identity or culture. Comparing Canada (or the U.S.) to a rather homogeneous ethnic state like Poland is comparing apples and oranges.
Solidarity is a solution but Taylor has no adequate means to promoting it because he doesn't acknowledge real divisions. Moreover, the state itself is opposed to solidarity and will not permit any true solidarity (as opposed to companionship in subjugation) to exist because solidarity is a threat to its power and existence.
When Does Divine Adoption Take Place?
In an otherwise decent piece from last year about Christ and the Beatitudes, making use of the works of Fr. Jacques Philippe, Jared Staudt writes in The goal of Lent: Conformity to Christ:
"Traditional" Latin praxis forces him to write this, because of the separation of Baptism from Confirmation, so that Latin infants are not "baptized by water and Spirit" on the one same occasion, but at different points in their life, if at all. This despite the clear testimony of St. Paul that it is the by the Spirit, whom we have received [through the laying on of hands by the Apostles or their successors or by the ministering of blessed oil], that we are able to cry, 'Abba! Father!'" (Romans 8:15; cf. Galatians 4:4-7). Even if we say our adoption as sons of God begins with water Baptism, can we say it is completed without Confirmation? No. Does anyone wish to ponder what the [spiritual] consequences are for incomplete Christian initiation?
When do Protestants receive the Spirit of God, if they do not have the sacrament of "Confirmation"? And how do they know they have received the Spirit by the laying of hands if the one who is laying on hands simply claims he has received this power from God or from someone else? How do we know that they have the authority and power to pass the gift of the Holy Spirit, if they cannot show that they have received this authority from the Apostles?
Latins should not be seeking this dubious gift from Pentecostals or those imitating Pentecostals -- they should be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation. (And if they have doubts about the efficacy of the first time they received it because they were not properly subjectively prepared for it, should they ask for a conditional administering of the sacrament?)
We are called to become Christ, embracing the adopted sonship bestowed on us at Baptism and entering into the love of the Father. Jesus offers us his own grace and virtues and calls us to live and love like him in the world.
"Traditional" Latin praxis forces him to write this, because of the separation of Baptism from Confirmation, so that Latin infants are not "baptized by water and Spirit" on the one same occasion, but at different points in their life, if at all. This despite the clear testimony of St. Paul that it is the by the Spirit, whom we have received [through the laying on of hands by the Apostles or their successors or by the ministering of blessed oil], that we are able to cry, 'Abba! Father!'" (Romans 8:15; cf. Galatians 4:4-7). Even if we say our adoption as sons of God begins with water Baptism, can we say it is completed without Confirmation? No. Does anyone wish to ponder what the [spiritual] consequences are for incomplete Christian initiation?
When do Protestants receive the Spirit of God, if they do not have the sacrament of "Confirmation"? And how do they know they have received the Spirit by the laying of hands if the one who is laying on hands simply claims he has received this power from God or from someone else? How do we know that they have the authority and power to pass the gift of the Holy Spirit, if they cannot show that they have received this authority from the Apostles?
Latins should not be seeking this dubious gift from Pentecostals or those imitating Pentecostals -- they should be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation. (And if they have doubts about the efficacy of the first time they received it because they were not properly subjectively prepared for it, should they ask for a conditional administering of the sacrament?)
The Weeping of Christ
One more follow up to this post. I definitely need to become more familiar with the writings of St. Maximos, so I can't write a response to his writings on this topic.
What of the difference between Christ and the mourners for Lazarus? Did the mourners, including Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha, sin when they experienced grief, wept, and spoke and acted while in that condition, or was their sadness blameworthy?
It may be objected that Christ does not have any reason to weep for Lazarus as such, because of the knowledge that He possesses. He knows that Lazarus is not lost forever (but temporarily in Hades?). He knows that He will raise Lazarus from the dead (as a prefigurement of His own resurrection), and that Lazarus will be redeemed.
Is death an evil, something to be sad about, even if "everything will be ok in the end"? Even if we believe in the Resurrection of the righteous, when we grieve and weep for those who have passed away, is that a sin, a mark of imperfection or some sort? Can and did Christ feel sadness because someone has died, despite everything that He will do to remedy death? Christ knows as God that He saves; would it be objectionable to claim that Christ knows as man what he will do to redeem mankind ?
Does not Christ also know as man that He himself will be raised from the death on the third day? How could he make that prediction to His apostles if He did not know? And yet he nonetheless suffers in the garden before He is betrayed by Judas, and He has fear of death. How can such an emotion be justifiable (or sinless) if He knows that He will be triumphant over death? (And I know that St. Maximos at least does not claim that our Lord sinned in fearing His Passion and His Death, though St. Maximos has his way of explaining it, something along the lines of His fear not affecting or swaying His will.)
It would seem that even for Christ, knowledge that Death does not have the last word, etc. does not exclude the possibility of associating emotions relating to death as an evil. So could it not be reasonable, then, for someone to be sad that a friend has death? And if it is reasonable, is it therefore sinless? And if sinless, could we not say that Christ did experience sadness that Lazarus had died, and not just out of compassion for the suffering of those who still live, not just sympathy, but a true sympathy, a suffering with others?
As I stated before, I hardly know the writings of St. Maximos, so I don't know if these objections are answered or deal with by him. I don't know if he (or St. Cyril of Alexandria) makes a mistake of applying a priori reasoning about human passion on Christ or the Theotokos. Perhaps the mourning of Martha and Mary was "imperfect," as their sadness lead to them being tempted to have doubts about Christ or to experience other disordered movements in the soul. We have their words at least to claim as evidence of this at least.
Is self-love bad? Disordered self-love that is so because of a rejection of God? Yes. But does that mean that everything that is done through disordered self-love is evil in itself? Is any passion associated with something perceived as evil necessarily blameworthy or sinful? Or only that which is motivated or left unchecked by disordered self-love? And would not passion motivated by a rightly-ordered love that is one with the Divine Agape be not blameworthy but praiseworthy? (If it is indeed possible to be righteous and yet experience the passions associated with evil or loss.) It seems that St. Maximos or St. Cyril of Alexandria might accept these distinctions, but need confirmation.
What of the difference between Christ and the mourners for Lazarus? Did the mourners, including Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha, sin when they experienced grief, wept, and spoke and acted while in that condition, or was their sadness blameworthy?
It may be objected that Christ does not have any reason to weep for Lazarus as such, because of the knowledge that He possesses. He knows that Lazarus is not lost forever (but temporarily in Hades?). He knows that He will raise Lazarus from the dead (as a prefigurement of His own resurrection), and that Lazarus will be redeemed.
Is death an evil, something to be sad about, even if "everything will be ok in the end"? Even if we believe in the Resurrection of the righteous, when we grieve and weep for those who have passed away, is that a sin, a mark of imperfection or some sort? Can and did Christ feel sadness because someone has died, despite everything that He will do to remedy death? Christ knows as God that He saves; would it be objectionable to claim that Christ knows as man what he will do to redeem mankind ?
Does not Christ also know as man that He himself will be raised from the death on the third day? How could he make that prediction to His apostles if He did not know? And yet he nonetheless suffers in the garden before He is betrayed by Judas, and He has fear of death. How can such an emotion be justifiable (or sinless) if He knows that He will be triumphant over death? (And I know that St. Maximos at least does not claim that our Lord sinned in fearing His Passion and His Death, though St. Maximos has his way of explaining it, something along the lines of His fear not affecting or swaying His will.)
It would seem that even for Christ, knowledge that Death does not have the last word, etc. does not exclude the possibility of associating emotions relating to death as an evil. So could it not be reasonable, then, for someone to be sad that a friend has death? And if it is reasonable, is it therefore sinless? And if sinless, could we not say that Christ did experience sadness that Lazarus had died, and not just out of compassion for the suffering of those who still live, not just sympathy, but a true sympathy, a suffering with others?
As I stated before, I hardly know the writings of St. Maximos, so I don't know if these objections are answered or deal with by him. I don't know if he (or St. Cyril of Alexandria) makes a mistake of applying a priori reasoning about human passion on Christ or the Theotokos. Perhaps the mourning of Martha and Mary was "imperfect," as their sadness lead to them being tempted to have doubts about Christ or to experience other disordered movements in the soul. We have their words at least to claim as evidence of this at least.
Is self-love bad? Disordered self-love that is so because of a rejection of God? Yes. But does that mean that everything that is done through disordered self-love is evil in itself? Is any passion associated with something perceived as evil necessarily blameworthy or sinful? Or only that which is motivated or left unchecked by disordered self-love? And would not passion motivated by a rightly-ordered love that is one with the Divine Agape be not blameworthy but praiseworthy? (If it is indeed possible to be righteous and yet experience the passions associated with evil or loss.) It seems that St. Maximos or St. Cyril of Alexandria might accept these distinctions, but need confirmation.
Thursday, April 09, 2020
A Latin Perspective
First Things: Go to the Altar by Jane Stannus
1 Peter 2:9 in Greek and Latin (Nova Vulgata).
Priest: sacerdos. Priesthood: sacerdotium.
It is standard for the same word to be used for both Greek terms in English and in Latin.
I don't know when the Latin sacerdos first began to be used to translate for the Greek hiereus and prebyteros. Is this true of all of the languages (especially European) in use in the patriarchate of Rome? It is the case that the English word priest is derived from the Latin presbyter, a borrowing by Jerome from presbyteros. Somewhere along the line, ecclesiastical Latin came to prefer sacerdos over Jerome's presbyter? Even though this goes against its normative translation of Holy Scripture?
wiktionary
wikipedia
From Google:
And a related blog post by "Hadley Rectory": The Etymology of English "Priest"
So for these languages (and French, but not necessarily the other Romance languages?) that the word used to translated presybter/presbyteros (and referring to that Holy Order) was also used to translate hiereus, rather than the word for hiereus being used to translate presbyteros as in Latin.
Denzinger (in Latin)
Renewal? Is that the same as "repeated"? I think Latins in general prefer a word like "re-presented." It is clear that she does not mean repeated from the second and third paragraph. As for "offering it up," how far does this go back in popular Latin piety?
The question is, in sacrifice do we "give" anything to God in thanksgiving, other than the thanksgiving?
The cassocked one answered seriously, “A priest is one who primarily offers sacrifice.”I'll have to see if there are any dogmatic statements by Latin churches before Trent. From the Concil of Trent, Session XXIII:
CHAPTER I.Only now do I understand the implications of what my friend said many years ago, regarding the confusion that arises from having the same word translate ἱερεύς and πρεσβύτερος.
On the institution of the Priesthood of the New Law.
Sacrifice and priesthood are, by the ordinance of God, in such wise conjoined, as that both have existed in every law. Whereas, therefore, in the New Testament, the Catholic Church has received, from the institution of Christ, the holy visible sacrifice of the Eucharist; it must needs also be confessed, that there is, in that Church, a new, visible, and external priesthood, into which the old has been translated. And the sacred Scriptures show, and the tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught, that this priesthood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, and that to the apostles, and their successors in the priesthood, was the power delivered of consecrating, offering, and administering His Body and Blood, as also of forgiving and of retaining sins.
1 Peter 2:9 in Greek and Latin (Nova Vulgata).
Priest: sacerdos. Priesthood: sacerdotium.
It is standard for the same word to be used for both Greek terms in English and in Latin.
I don't know when the Latin sacerdos first began to be used to translate for the Greek hiereus and prebyteros. Is this true of all of the languages (especially European) in use in the patriarchate of Rome? It is the case that the English word priest is derived from the Latin presbyter, a borrowing by Jerome from presbyteros. Somewhere along the line, ecclesiastical Latin came to prefer sacerdos over Jerome's presbyter? Even though this goes against its normative translation of Holy Scripture?
wiktionary
wikipedia
From Google:
Origin
And a related blog post by "Hadley Rectory": The Etymology of English "Priest"
So for these languages (and French, but not necessarily the other Romance languages?) that the word used to translated presybter/presbyteros (and referring to that Holy Order) was also used to translate hiereus, rather than the word for hiereus being used to translate presbyteros as in Latin.
Denzinger (in Latin)
Let us continue with the First Things essay:
“Yes, He offered Himself for us on Calvary nearly two thousand years ago. However, in order for us to come into contact with the merits of His sacrifice, the priest renews it in an unbloody way each day.”Merit. What Christ merited in His sacrifice are the benefits which are given to us by God. A Tridentine view, derived from Aquinas? (How dominant was this opinion about Christ's merits among the schoolmen?) Does merit imply some sort of exchange or return? Not necessarily but it does entail God giving something on condition of some requirement being satisfied. Can Latin "merit" be harmonized with the soteriology of the early Church? In a somewhat roundabout way, a way that needlessly complicates our understanding of the Divine Agape.
Writing for Rorate Caeli on March 24, Father Richard Cipolla suggested that Catholics’ greatest anxiety at this time of locked churches isn’t missing Mass per se, but rather missing an opportunity to receive Communion, overlooking, he fears, the true nature and importance of the Mass itself. This time of waiting and deprivation offers an excellent opportunity to consider the enormous significance of each Mass—with or without communion of the faithful.
Why is the Mass so important? Well, quite simply, the Mass is the sum and substance of our religion. It is the jewel that blazes at the very heart of Christianity, the unbloody renewal of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, carried out continuously in every time and place until the end of the world. It is the heart of our Christian lives, for to be a Christian, as one of the greatest missionaries of the 20th century said, is to be one “who offers himself as a victim on the altar with Our Lord.”
To assist at Mass is not merely to attend a commemoration or a memorial of an event that happened long ago. The holy sacrifice is an action that happens now, in the present. The priest, acting in persona Christi, approaches the altar—not a table, for this event is not reducible to a meal—to perform the sacrifice, accomplished in consecrating the bread and wine. When the priest pronounces the words of consecration, Saint Gregory Nazianzus tells us, he “sunders with unbloody cut the Body and the Blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword.” The faithful assisting at Mass unite their hearts to the priest and unite their lives and sufferings to the Victim, that all may be offered to God together.
Renewal? Is that the same as "repeated"? I think Latins in general prefer a word like "re-presented." It is clear that she does not mean repeated from the second and third paragraph. As for "offering it up," how far does this go back in popular Latin piety?
Can the Mass be properly and efficaciously accomplished in the absence of the faithful? A group of progressives recently argued on blog Pray Tell that it cannot. Questioning the theological basis for Mass without a congregation, they claim that the Second Vatican Council changed the liturgy into a communal and public action of the baptized, which the priest can’t accomplish without them.Has the act of sacrifice been separated from the Sacrament and its reception by the faithful, so that without the latter, it doesn't matter as it is the former that is more important?
But they’re wrong. Vatican II said nothing about private Masses. Rather, we ought to look to Session 22 of the Council of Trent. As we consider the locked doors of our churches in this time of crisis, we can take comfort from one fact: Christ is both priest and sacrifice, and therefore a valid Mass is always efficacious, meaning that it always accomplishes the ends for which it is offered. Its efficacy is not determined by the presence of the faithful; the sacrifice of the Mass, Ott tells us, is the sacrifice of the Church, and in that sense is never “private.” Nor are the faithful needed to offer the sacrifice since it is Christ Himself who offers it through His priest.
The efficacy of the Mass was so beautifully explained to me by the priest who kindly permitted me to publish the story about the construction worker that it’s worth reproducing his words here:
“The holy Mass,” he said, “is the supreme act of religion that renders to God what is due to Him: adoration, thanksgiving, and propitiation for sin, after which we can then present to Him our petitions.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ perpetuates this supreme act Himself throughout the ages, through the ministry of His priests upon our holy altars. He abases Himself in perfect adoration before the Godhead, acknowledging our utter dependence upon Him. The most perfect praise of the excellence of God above all wells up from His Sacred Heart.
“He offers nothing less than His own Sacred Body and Precious Blood, united to His Soul and Divinity, as the perfect gift of thanksgiving in the Eucharist… by which we render to God fitting and perfect gratitude for all of His goodness and mercy towards us.
“He likewise perpetuates the offering of His Sacred Body and Precious Blood in propitiation for sin. In and through the same sacrifice, Jesus presents our petitions (for we utterly depend on Him for all things)…
The question is, in sacrifice do we "give" anything to God in thanksgiving, other than the thanksgiving?
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Fr. Blankenhorn on Spiritual Communion
The Exodus took Israel through a long period of profound physical penance and spiritual purification: the two seem to be inseparable in the spiritual life. The desert became the only way for Israel to reach the Promised Land, and by God’s saving will, the people could only traverse this barren place by turning to the Lord each day for manna and quail. Israel had to learn radical trust in God, to recognize her utter dependence on him for everything: the direction of travel, the way to order the community’s life, and, of course, the reception of sufficient food and water.
Related:
Updated (4/9):
An essay touching upon the same topic, but much shorter. Still, it refers to the same two sources, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
St. Augustine's Journey to Easter by C. C. Pecknold
Yet it is precisely in this exile that we must find our way to Calvary this year. We may be weary pilgrims, spiritually gaunt for so much sacramental fasting, but we are still pilgrims who must press our lips to the Cross. We cannot enter into the Paschal Triduum through Skype or Zoom. So what are we to do, we poor banished children of pandemic?
St. Thomas Aquinas gives us a hint: “the reality of the sacrament can be had through the very desire of receiving the sacrament.” He makes a distinction here between the signum and the res—the sacrament and the reality that the sacrament communicates. It is a distinction that goes back to St. Augustine.
There is at least one objection to this in the combox, concluding that if it is true, it renders going to Church superfluous. (Actually, it would render receiving the Sacraments superfluous.) I would think that desire is not enough -- one needs to ask God for the gift of life and trust in His goodness and mercy.
Αἰτεῖτε καὶ δοθήσεται ὑμῖν. -- Matthew 7:7 (cf. Luke 11:9)
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