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| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
The word Mass (missa) first established itself as the general designation for the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the West after the time of Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604), the early Church having used the expression the "breaking of bread" (fractio panis) or "liturgy" (Acts 13:2, leitourgountes); the Greek Church has employed the latter name for almost sixteen centuries.
There were current in the early days of Christianity other terms;
With the name "Love Feast" (agape) the idea of the sacrifice of the Mass was not necessarily connected. Etymologically, the word missa is neither (as Baronius states) from a Hebrew, nor from the Greek mysis, but is simply derived from missio, just as oblata is derived from oblatio, collecta from collectio, and ulta from ultio. The reference was however not to a Divine "mission", but simply to a "dismissal" (dimissio) as was also customary in the Greek rite (cf. "Canon. Apost.", VIII, xv: apolyesthe en eirene), and as is still echoed in the phrase Ite missa est. This solemn form of leave-taking was not introduced by the Church as something new, but was adopted from the ordinary language of the day, as is shown by Bishop Avitus of Vienne as late as A.D. 500 (Ep. 1 in P.L., LIX, 199):
In churches and in the emperor's or the prefect's courts, Missa est is said when the people are released from attendance.
In the sense of "dismissal", or rather "close of prayer", missa is used in the celebrated "Peregrinatio Silvae" at least seventy times (Corpus scriptor. eccles. latinor., XXXVIII, 366 sq.) and Rule of St. Benedict places after Hours, Vespers, Compline, the regular formula: Et missae fiant (prayers are ended). Popular speech gradually applied the ritual of dismissal, as it was expressed in both the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful, by synecdoche to the entire Eucharistic Sacrifice, the whole being named after the part. The first certain trace of such an application is found in Ambrose (Ep. xx, 4, in P. L. XVI, 995). We will use the word in this sense in our consideration of the Mass in its existence, essence, and causality.
Before dealing with the proofs of revelation afforded by the Bible and tradition, certain preliminary points must first be decided. Of these the most important is that the Church intends the Mass to be regarded as a "true and proper sacrifice", and will not tolerate the idea that the sacrifice is identical with Holy Communion. That is the sense of a clause from the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. 1): "If any one saith that in the Mass a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God; or, that to be offered is nothing else but that Christ is given us to eat; let him be anathema" (Denzinger, "Enchir.", 10th ed. 1908, n. 948). When Leo XIII in the dogmatic Bull "Apostolicae Curae" of 13 Sept., 1896, based the invalidity of the Anglican form of consecration on the fact among others, that in the consecrating formula of Edward VI (that is, since 1549) there is nowhere an unambiguous declaration regarding the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Anglican archbishops answered with some irritation: "First, we offer the Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; next, we plead and represent before the Father the Sacrifice of the Cross . . . and, lastly, we offer the Sacrifice of ourselves to the Creator of all things, which we have already signified by the oblation of His creatures. This whole action, in which the people has necessarily to take part with the priest, we are accustomed to call the communion, the Eucharistic Sacrifice". In regard to this last contention, Bishop Hedley of Newport declared his belief that not one Anglican in a thousand is accustomed to call the communion the "Eucharistic Sacrifice." But even if they were all so accustomed, they would have to interpret the terms in the sense of the thirty-nine Articles, which deny both the Real Presence and the sacrifical power of the priest, and thus admit a sacrifice in an unreal or figurative sense only. Leo XIII, on the other hand, in union with the whole Christian past, had in mind in the above-mentioned Bull nothing else than the Eucharistic "Sacrifice of the true Body and Blood of Christ" on the altar. This Sacrifice is certainly not identical with the Anglican form of celebration.
The simple fact that numerous heretics, such as Wyclif and Luther, repudiated the Mass as "idolatry", while retaining the Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Christ, proves that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is something essentially different from the Sacrifice of the Mass. In truth, the Eucharist performs at once two functions: that of a sacrament and that of a sacrifice. Though the inseparableness of the two is most clearly seen in the fact that the consecrating sacrificial powers of the priest coincide, and consequently that the sacrament is produced only in and through the Mass, the real difference between them is shown in that the sacrament is intended privately for the sanctification of the soul, whereas the sacrifice serves primarily to glorify God by adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation. The recipient of the one is God, who receives the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son; of the other, man, who receives the sacrament for his own good. Furthermore, the unbloody Sacrifice of the Eucharistic Christ is in its nature a transient action, while the Sacrament of the Altar continues as something permanent after the sacrifice, and can even be preserved in monstrance and ciborium. Finally, this difference also deserves mention: communion under one form only is the reception of the whole sacrament, whereas, without the use of the two forms of bread and wine (the symbolic separation of the Body and Blood), the mystical slaying of the victim, and therefore the Sacrifice of the Mass, does not take place.
The definition of the Council of Trent supposes as self-evident the proposition that, along with the "true and real Sacrifice of the Mass", there can be and are in Christendom figurative and unreal sacrifices of various kinds, such as prayers of praise and thanksgiving, alms, mortification, obedience, and works of penance. Such offerings are often referred to in Holy Scripture, e.g. in Ecclesiasticus 35:4: "All he that doth mercy offereth sacrifice"; and in Ps. cxl, 2: "Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight, the lifting up of my hands as evening sacrifice." These figurative offerings, however, necessarily presuppose the real and true offering, just as a picture presupposes its subject and a portrait its original. The Biblical metaphors -- a "sacrifice of jubilation" (Ps. xxvi, 6), the "calves of our lips (Hosea 14:3), the "sacrifice of praise" (Hebrews 13:15) -- expressions which apply sacrificial terms to sacrifice (hostia, thysia). That there was such a sacrifice, the whole sacrificial system of the Old Law bears witness. It is true that we may and must recognize with St. Thomas (II-II:85:3), as the principale sacrificium the sacrificial intent which, embodied in the spirit of prayer, inspires and animates the external offerings as the body animates the soul, and without which even the most perfect offering has neither worth nor effect before God. Hence, the holy psalmist says: "For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt-offerings thou wilt not be delighted. A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit" (Ps. I, 18 sq.). This indispensable requirement of an internal sacrifice, however, by no means makes the external sacrifice superfluous in Christianity; indeed, without a perpetual oblation deriving its value from the sacrifice once offered on the Cross, Christianity, the perfect religion, would be inferior not only to the Old Testament, but even to the poorest form of natural religion. Since sacrifice is thus essential to religion, it is all the more necessary for Christianity, which cannot otherwise fulfil its duty of showing outward honour to God in the most perfect way. Thus, the Church, as the mystical Christ, desires and must have her own permanent sacrifice, which surely cannot be either an independent addition to that of Golgotha or its intrinsic complement; it can only be the one self-same sacrifice of the Cross, whose fruits, by an unbloody offering, are daily made available for believers and unbelievers and sacrificially applied to them.
If the Mass is to be a true sacrifice in the literal sense, it must realize the philosophical conception of sacrifice. Thus the last preliminary question arises: What is a sacrifice in the proper sense of the term? Without attempting to state and establish a comprehensive theory of sacrifice, it will suffice to show that, according to the comparative history of religions, four things are necessary to a sacrifice:
In contrast with sacrifices in the figurative or less proper sense, the sacrificial gift must exist in physical substance, and must be really or virtually destroyed (animals slain, libations poured out, other things rendered unfit for ordinary uses), or at least really transformed, at a fixed place of sacrifice (ara, altare), and offered up to God. As regards the person offering, it is not permitted that any and every individual should offer sacrifice on his own account. In the revealed religion, as in nearly all heathen religions, only a qualified person (usually called priest, sacerdos, lereus), who has been given the power by commission or vocation, may offer up sacrifice in the name of the community. After Moses, the priests authorized by law in the Old Testament belonged to the tribe of Levi, and more especially to the house of Aaron (Hebrews 5:4). But, since Christ Himself received and exercised His high priesthood, not by the arrogation of authority but in virtue of a Divine call, there is still greater need that priests who represent Him should receive power and authority through the Sacrament of Holy Orders to offer up the sublime Sacrifice of the New Law. Sacrifice reaches its outward culmination in the sacrificial act, in which we have to distinguish between the proximate matter and the real form. The form lies, not in the real transformation or complete destruction of the sacrificial gift, but rather in its sacrificial oblation, in whatever way it may be transformed. Even where a real destruction took place, as in the sacrificial slayings of the Old Testament, the act of destroying was performed by the servants of the Temple, whereas the proper oblation, consisting in the "spilling of blood" (aspersio sanguinis), was the exclusive function of the priests. Thus the real form of the Sacrifice of the Cross consisted neither in the killing of Christ by the Roman soldiers nor in an imaginary self-destruction on the part of Jesus, but in His voluntary surrender of His blood shed by another's hand, and in His offering of His life for the sins of the world. Consequently, the destruction or transformation constitutes at most the proximate matter; the sacrificial oblation, on the other hand, is the physical form of the sacrifice. Finally, the object of the sacrifice, as significant of its meaning, lifts the external offering beyond any mere mechanical action into the sphere of the spiritual and Divine. The object is the soul of the sacrifice, and, in a certain sense, its "metaphysicial form". In all religions we find, as the essential idea of sacrifice, a complete surrender to God for the purpose of union with Him; and to this idea there is added, on the part of those who are in sin, the desire for pardon and reconcillation. Hence at once arises the distinction between sacrifices of praise and expiation (sacrificium latreuticum et propitiatorium), and sacrifices of thanksgiving and petition (sacrificium eucharisticum et impetratorium); hence also the obvious inference that under pain of idolatry, sacrifice is to be offered to God alone as the begining and end of all things. Rightly does St. Augustine remark (De civit. Dei, X, iv): "Who ever thought of offering sacrifice except to one whom he either knew, or thought, or imagined to be God?".
If then we combine the four constituent ideas in a definition, we may say: "Sacrifice is the external oblation to God by an authorized minister of a sense-perceptible object, either through its destruction or at least through its real transformation, in acknowledgement of God's supreme dominion and of the appeasing of His wrath." We shall demonstrate the applicability of this definition to the Mass in the section devoted to the nature of the sacrifice, after settling the question of its existence.
It is a notable fact that the Divine institution of the Mass can be established, one might almost say, with greater certainty by means of the Old Testament than by means of the New.
1. Old Testament
The Old Testament prophecies are recorded partly in types, partly in words. Following the precedent of many Fathers of the Church (see Bellarmine, "De Euchar.", v, 6), the Council of Trent especially (Sess. XXII, cap. i) laid stress on the prophetical relation that undoubtedly exists between the offering of bread and wine by Melchisedech and the Last Supper of Jesus. The occurrence was briefly as follows: After Abraham (then still called "Abram") with his armed men had rescued his nephew Lot from the four hostile kings who had fallen on him and robbed him, Melchisedech, King of Salem (Jerusalem), "bringing forth [proferens] bread and wine for he was a priest of the Most High God, blessed him [Abraham] and said: Blessed be Abram by the Most High God . . . And he [Abraham] gave him the tithes of all" (Genesis 14:18-20). Catholic theologians (with very few exceptions) have from the beginning rightly emphasized the circumstance that Melchisedech brought out bread and wine, not merely to provide refreshment for Abram's followers wearied after the battle, for they were well supplied with provisions out of the booty they had taken (Genesis 14:11, 16), but to present bread and wine as food-offerings to Almighty God. Not as a host, but as "priest of the Most High God", he brought forth bread and wine, blessed Abraham, and received the tithes from him. In fact, the very reason for his "bringing forth bread and wine" is expressly stated to have been his priesthood: "for he was a priest". Hence, proferre must necessarily become offerre, even if it were true that the Hiphil word is not an hieratic sacrificial term; but even this is not quite certain (cf. Judges 6:18 sq.). Accordingly, Melchisedech made a real food-offering of bread and wine.
Now it is the express teaching of Scripture that Christ is "a priest for ever according to the order [kata ten taxin] of Melchisedech" (Psalm 109:4; Hebrews 5:5 sq.; 7:1 sqq.). Christ, however, in no way resembled his priestly prototype in His bloody sacrifice on the Cross, but only and solely at His Last Supper. On that occasion He likewise made an unbloody food-offering, only that, as Antitype, He accomplished something more than a mere oblation of bread and wine, namely the sacrifice of His Body and Blood under the mere forms of bread and wine. Otherwise, the shadows cast before by the "good things to come" would have been more perfect than the things themselves, and the antitype at any rate no richer in reality than the type. Since the Mass is nothing else than a continual repetition, commanded by Christ Himself, of the Sacrifice accomplished at the Last Supper, it follows that the Sacrifice of the Mass partakes of the New testament fulfilment of the prophecy of Melchisedech. (Concerning the Paschal Lamb as the second type of the Mass, see Bellarmine, "De Euchar.", V, vii; cf. also von Cichowski, "Das altestamentl. Pascha in seinem Verhaltnis zum Opfer Christi", Munich, 1849.)
Passing over the more or less distinct references to the Mass in other prophets (Psalm 21:27 sqq., Isaiah 66:18 sqq.), the best and clearest prediction concerning the Mass is undoubtedly that of Malachias, who makes a threatening announcement to the Levite priests in the name of God: "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the down, my name is great among the Gentiles [heathens, non-Jews], and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts" (Malachi 1:10-11). According to the unanimous interpretation of the Fathers of the Church (see Petavius, "De incarn.", xii, 12), the prophet here foretells the everlasting Sacrifice of the New Dispensation. For he declares that these two things will certainly come to pass:
As God's determination to do away with the sacrifices of the Levites is adhered to consistently throughout the denunciation, the essential thing is to specify correctly the sort of sacrifice that is promised in their stead. In regard to this, the following propositions have to be established:
It is easy to show that the sacrifice referred to by Malachias did not signify a sacrifice of his time, but was rather to be a future sacrifice belonging to the age of the Messiah. For though the Hebrew participles of the original can be translated by the present tense (there is sacrifice; it is offered), the mere universality of the new sacrifice -- "from the rising to the setting", "in every place", even "among the Gentiles", i.e. heathen (non-Jewish) peoples -- is irrefragable proof that the prophet beheld as present an event of the future. Wherever Jahwe speaks, as in this case, of His glorification by the "heathen", He can, according to Old Testament teaching (Psalm 21:28; 71:10 sqq.; Isaiah 11:9; 49:6; 60:9, 66:18 sqq.; Amos 9:12; Micah 4:2, etc.) have in mind only the kingdom of the Messiah or the future Church of Christ; every other explanation is shattered by the text. Least of all could a new sacrifice in the time of the prophet himself be thought of. Nor could there be any idea of is a sacrifice among the genuine heathens, as Hitzig has suggested, for the sacrifices of the heathen, associated with idolatry and impurity, are unclean and displeasing to God (1 Corinthians 10:20). Again, it could not be a sacrifice of the dispersed Jews (Diaspora), for apart from the fact that the existence of such sacrifices in the Diaspora is rather problematic, they were certainly not offered the world over, nor did they possess the unusual significance attaching to special modes of honouring God. Consequently, the reference is undoubtedly to some entirely distinctive sacrifice of the future. But of what future? Was it to be a future sacrifice among genuine heathens, such as the Aztecs or the native Africans? This is as impossible as in the case of other heathen forms of idolatry. Perhaps then it was to be a new and more perfect sacrifice among the Jews? This also is out of the question, for since the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70), the whole system of Jewish sacrifice is irrevocably a thing of the past; and the new sacrifice moreover, is to be performed by a priesthood of an origin other than Jewish (Isaiah 66:21). Everything, therefore, points to Christianity, in which, as a matter of fact, the Messiah rules over non-Jewish peoples.
The second question now presents itself: Is the universal sacrifice thus promised "in every place" to be only a purely spiritual offering of prayer, in other words a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, such as Protestanism is content with; or is it to be a true sacrifice in the strict sense, as the Catholic Church maintains? It is forthwith clear that abolition and substitution must correspond, and accordingly that the old real sacrifice cannot be displaced by a new unreal sacrifice. Moreover, prayer, adoration, thanksgiving, etc., are far from being a new offering, for they are permanent realities common to every age, and constitute the indispensable foundation of every religion whether before or after the Messiah.
The last doubt is dispelled by the Hebrew text, which has no fewer than three classic sacerdotal declarations referring to the promised sacrifice, thus designedly doing away with the possibility of interpreting it metaphorically. Especially important is a substantive Hebrew for "sacrifice". Although in its origin the generic term for every sacrifice, the bloody included (cf. Genesis 4:4 sq.; 1 Samuel 2:17), it was not only never used to indicate an unreal sacrifice (such as a prayer offering), but even became the technical term for an unbloody sacrifice (mostly food offerings), in contradistinction to the bloody sacrifice which is given the name of Sebach.
As to the third and last proposition, no lengthy demonstration is needed to show that the sacrifice of Malachias cannot be formally identified with the Sacrifice of the Cross. This interpretation is at once contradicted by the Minchah, i.e. unbloody (food) offering. Then, there are other cogent considerations based on fact. Though a real sacrifice, belonging to the time of the Messiah and the most powerful means conceivable for glorifying the Divine name, the Sacrifice of the Cross, so far from being offered "in every place" and among non-Jewish peoples, was confined to Golgotha and the midst of the Jewish people. Nor can the Sacrifice of the Cross, which was accomplished by the Saviour in person without the help of a human representative priesthood, be identified with that sacrifice for the offering of which the Messiah makes use of priests after the manner of the Levites, in every place and at all times. Furthermore, he wilfully shuts his eyes against the light, who denies that the prophecy of Malachias is fulfilled to the letter in the Sacrifice of the Mass. In it are united all the characteristics of the promised sacrifice: its unbloody sacrificial rite as genuine Minchah, its universality in regard to place and time its extension to non-Jewish peoples, its delegated priesthood differing from that of the Jews, its essential unity by reason of the identity of the Chief Priest and the Victim (Christ), and its intrinsic and essential purity which no Levitical or moral uncleanliness can defile. Little wonder that the Council of Trent should say (Sess XXII, cap.i): "This is that pure oblation, which cannot be defiled by unworthiness and impiety on the part of those who offer it, and concerning which God has predicted through Malachias, that there would be offered up a clean oblation in every place to His Name, which would be great among the Gentiles (see Denzinger, n. 339).
2. New Testament
Passing now to the proofs contained in the New Testament, we may begin by remarking that many dogmatic writers see in the dialogue of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well a prophetic reference to the Mass (John 4:21 sqq.): Woman believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain [Garizim] nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father.... But the hour cometh and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth." Since the point at issue between the Samaritans and the Jews related, not to the ordinary, private offering of prayer practised everywhere, but to the solemn, public worship embodied in a real Sacrifice, Jesus really seems to refer to a future real sacrifice of praise, which would not be confined in its liturgy to the city Jerusalem but would captivate the whole world (see Bellarmine, "De Euchar., v, 11). Not without good reason do most commentators appeal to Hebrews 13:10: We have an altar [Thysiastesion, altare], whereof they have no power to eat [Phagein, edere], who serve the tabernacle." Since St. Paul has just contrasted the Jewish food offering (Bromasin, escis) and Christian altar food, the partaking of which was denied to the Jews, the inference is obvious: where is an altar, there is a sacrifice. But the Eucharist is the food which the Christians alone are permitted to eat: therefore there is a Eucharistic sacrifice. The objection that, in Apostolic times, the term altar was not yet used in the sense of the "Lord's table" (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21) is clearly a begging of the question, since Paul might well have been the first to introduce the name, it being adopted from him by later writers (e.g. Ignatius of Antioch died A.D. 107).
It can scarcely be denied that the entirely mystical explanation of the "spiritual food from the altar of the cross", favoured by St. Thomas Aquinas, Estius, and Stentrup, is far-fetched. It might on the other hand appear still more strange that in the passage of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Christ and Melchisedech are compared, the two food offerings should be only not placed in prophetical relation with each other but not even mentioned. The reason, however, is not far to seek: parallel lay entirely outside the scope of the argument. All that St. Paul desired to show was that the high priesthood of Christ was superior to the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament (cf. Hebrews 7:4 sqq.), and this is fully demonstrated by proving that Aaron and his priesthood stood far below the unattainable height of Melchisedech. So much the more, therefore, must Christ as "priest according to the order of Melchisedech" excel the Levitical priesthood. The peculiar dignity of Melchisedech, however, was manifested not through the fact that he made a food offering of bread and wine, a thing which the Levites also were able to do, but chiefly through the fact that he blessed the great "Father Abraham and received the tithes from him".
The main testimony of the New Testament lies in the account of the institution of the Eucharist, and most clearly in the words of consecration spoken over the chalice. For this reason we shall consider these words first, since thereby, owing to the analogy between the two formulas clearer light will be thrown on the meaning of the words of consecration spoken over the chalice. For this reason we shall consider these words first, since thereby, owing to the analogy between the two formulae, clearer light will be thrown on the meaning of the words of consecration pronounced over the bread. For the sake of clearness and easy comparison we subjoin the four passages in Greek and English:
The Divine institution of the sacrifice of the altar is proved by showing
The present form of the participle ekchynnomenon in conjunction with the present estin establishes the first point. For it is a grammatical rule of New Testament Greek, that, when the double present is used (that is, in both the participle and the finite verb, as is the case here), the time denoted is not the distant or near future, but strictly the present (see Fr. Blass, "Grammatik des N.T. Griechisch", p. 193, Gottingen, 1896). This rule does not apply to other constructions of the present tense, as when Christ says earlier (John 14:12): I go (poreuomai) to the father". Alleged exceptions to the rule are not such in reality, as, for instance, Matt., vi, 30: "And if the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the oven (ballomenon) God doth so clothe (amphiennysin): how much more you, O ye of little faith?" For in this passage it is a question not of something in the future but of something occurring every day. When the Vulgate translates the Greek participles by the future (effundetur, fundetur), it is not at variance with facts, considering that the mystical shedding of blood in the chalice, if it were not brought into intimate relation with the physical shedding of blood on the cross, would be impossible and meaningless; for the one is the essential presupposition and foundation of the other. Still, from the standpoint of philology, effunditur (funditur) ought to be translated into the strictly present, as is really done in many ancient codices. The accuracy of this exegesis is finally attested in a striking way by the Greek wording in St. Luke: to poterion . . . ekchynnomenon. Here the shedding of blood appears as taking place directly in the chalice, and therefore in the present. Overzealous critics, it is true, have assumed that there is here a grammatical mistake, in that St. Luke erroneously connects the "shedding" with the chalice (poterion), instead of with "blood" (to aimati) which is in the dative. Rather than correct this highly cultivated Greek, as though he were a school boy, we prefer to assume that he intended to use synecdoche, a figure of speech known to everybody, and therefore put the vessel to indicate its contents.
As to the establishment of our second proposition, believing Protestants and Anglicans readily admit that the phrase: "to shed one's blood for others unto the remission of sins" is not only genuinely Biblical language relating to sacrifice, but also designates in particular the sacrifice of expiation (cf. Leviticus 7:14; 14:17; 17:11; Romans 3:25, 5:9; Hebrews 9:10, etc.). They, however, refer this sacrifice of expiation not to what took place at the Last Supper, but to the Crucifixion the day after. From the demonstration given above that Christ, by the double consecration of bread and wine mystically separated His Blood from His Body and thus in a chalice itself poured out this Blood in a sacramental way, it is at once clear that he wished to solemnize the Last Supper not as a sacrament merely but also as a Eucharistic Sacrifice. If the "pouring out of the chalice" is to mean nothing more than the sacramental drinking of the Blood, the result is an intolerable tautology: "Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood, which is being drunk". As, however, it really reads "Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood, which is shed for many (you) unto remission of sins," the double character of the rite as sacrament and sacrifice is evident. The sacrament is shown forth in the "drinking", the sacrifice in the "shedding of blood". "The blood of the new testament", moreover, of which all the four passages speak, has its exact parallel in the analogous institution of the 0ld Testament through Moses. For by Divine command he sprinkled the people with the true blood of an animal and added, as Christ did, the words of institution (Exodus 24:8): "This is the blood of the covenant (Sept.: idou to aima tes diathekes) which the Lord hath made with you". St. Paul, however, (Hebrews 9:18 sq.) after repeating this passage, solemnly demonstrates (ibid., ix, 11 sq) the institution of the New Law through the blood shed by Christ at the crucifixion; and the Savior Himself, with equal solemnity, says of the chalice: This is My Blood of the new testament". It follows therefore that Christ had intended His true Blood in the chalice not only to be imparted as a sacrament, but to be also a sacrifice for the remission of sins. With the last remark our third statement, viz. as to the permanency of the institution in the Church, is also established. For the duration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is indissolubly bound up with the duration of the sacrament. Christ's Last Supper thus takes on the significance of a Divine institution whereby the Mass is established in His Church. St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:25), in fact, puts into the mouth of the Savior the words: "This do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me".
We are now in a position to appreciate in their deeper sense Christ's words of consecration over the bread. Since only St. Luke and St. Paul have made additions to the sentence, "This is My Body", it is only on them that we can base our demonstration.
Once more, we maintain that the sacrifical "giving of the body" (in organic unity of course with the "pouring of blood" in the chalice) is here to be interpreted as a present sacrifice and as a permanent institution in the Church. Regarding the decisive point, i.e. indication of what is actually taking place, it is again St. Luke who speaks with greatest clearness, for to soma he adds the present participle, didomenon by which he describes the "giving of the body" as something happening in the present, here and now, not as something to be done in the near future.
The reading klomenon in St. Paul is disputed. According to the best critical reading (Tischendorf, Lachmann) the participle is dropped altogether so that St. Paul probably wrote: to soma to uper umon (the body for you, i.e. for your salvation). There is good reason, however, for regarding the word klomenon (from klan to break) as Pauline, since St. Paul shortly before spoke of the "breaking of bread" (1 Corinthians 10:16), which for him meant "to offer as food the true body of Christ". From this however we may conclude that the "breaking of the body" not only confines Christ's action to the strictly present, especially as His natural Body could not be "broken" on the cross (cf. Exodus 12:46; John 19:32 sq.), but also implies the intention of offering a "body broken for you" (uper umon) i.e. the act constituted in itself a true food offering. All doubt as to its sacrificial character is removed by the expresslon didomenon in St. Luke, which the Vulgate this time quite correctly translates into the present: "quod pro vobis datur." But "to give one's body for others" is as truly a Biblical expression for sacrifice (cf. John 6:52; Romans 7:4; Colossians 1:22; Hebrews 10:10, etc.) as the parallel phrase, "the shedding of blood". Christ, therefore, at the least Supper offered up His Body as an unbloody sacrifice. Finally, that He commanded the renewal for all time of the Eucharistic sacrifice through the Church is clear from the addition: "Do this for a commemoration of me" (Luke 32:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24).
Harnack is of opinion that the early Church up to the time of Cyprian (d. 258) the contented itself with the purely spiritual sacrifices of adoration and thanksgiving and that it did not possess the sacrifice of the Mass, as Catholicism now understands it. In a series of writings, Dr. Wieland, a Catholic priest, likewise maintained in the face of vigorous opposition from other theologians, that the early Christians confined the essence of the Christian sacrifice to a subjective Eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving, till Irenaeus (d. 202) brought forward the idea of an objective offering of gifts, and especially of bread and wine. He, according to this view, was the first to include in his expanded conception of sacrifice, the entirely new idea of material offerings (i.e. the Eucharistic elements) which up to that time the early Church had formally repudiated.
Were this assertion correct, the doctrine of the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, c. ii), according to which in the Mass "the priests offer up, in obedience to the command of Christ, His Body and Blood" (see Denzinger, "Enchir", n. 949), could hardly take its stand on Apostolic tradition; the bridge between antiquity and the present would thus have broken by the abrupt intrusion of a completely contrary view. An impartial study of the earliest texts seems indeed to make this much clear, that the early Church paid most attention to the spiritual and subjective side of sacrifice and laid chief stress on prayer and thanksgiving in the Eucharistic function.
This admission, however, is not identical with the statement that the early Church rejected out and out the objective sacrifice, and acknowledged as genuine only the spiritual sacrifice as expressed in the "Eucharistic thanksgiving". That there has been an historical dogmatic development from the indefinite to the definite, from the implicit to the explicit, from the seed to the fruit, no one familiar with the subject will deny. An assumption so reasonable, the only one in fact consistent with Christianity, is, however, fundamently different from the hypothesis that the Christian idea of sacrifice has veered from one extreme to the other. This is a priori improbable and unproved in fact. In the Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles", the oldest post-Biblical literary monument (c. A.D. 96), not only is the "breaking of bread" (cf. Acts 20:7) referred to as a "sacrifice" (Thysia) and mention made of reconciliation with one's enemy before the sacrifice (cf. Matthew 5:23), but the whole passage is crowned with an actual quotation of the prophecy of Malachias, which referred, as is well known, to an objective and real sacrifice (Didache, c. xiv). The early Christians gave the name of "sacrifice"; not only to the Eucharistic "thanksgiving," but also to the entire ritual celebration including the liturgical "breaking of bread", without at first distinguishing clearly between the prayer and the gift (Bread and Wine, Body and Blood). When Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107), a disciple of the Apostles, says of the Eucharist: "There is only one flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, only one chalice containing His one Blood, one altar (en thysiasterion), as also only one bishop with the priesthood and the deacons" (Ep., ad. Philad. iv), he here gives to the liturgical Eucharistic celebration, of which alone he speaks, by his reference to the "altar" an evidently sacrificial meaning, often as he may use the word "altar" in other contexts in a metaphorical sense.
A heated controversy had raged round the conception of Justin Martyr (d. 166) from the fact that in his "Dialogue with Tryphon" (c. 117) he characterizes "prayer and thanksgiving" (euchai kai eucharistiai) as the "one perfect sacrifice acceptable to God" (teleiai monai kai euarestoi thysiai). Did he intend by thus emphasizing the interior spiritual sacrifice to exclude the exterior real sacrifice of the Eucharist? Clearly he did not, for in the same "Dialogue" (c. 41) he says the "food offering" of the lepers, assuredly a real gift offering (cf. Leviticus 14), was a figure (typos) of the bread of the Eucharist, which Jesus commanded to be offered (poiein) in commemoration of His sufferings." He then goes on: "of the sacrifices which you (the Jews) formerly offered, God through Malachias said: 'I have no pleasure, etc'. By the sacrifices (thysion), however, which we Gentiles present to Him in every place, that is (toutesti) of the bread of Eucharist and likewise of the chalice Eucharist, he then said that we glorify his name, while you dishonour him". Here "bread and chalice" are by the use of toutesti clearly included as objective gift offerings in the idea of the Christian sacrifice. If the other apologists (Aristides, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Arnobius) vary the thought a great deal -- God has no need of sacrifice; the best sacrifice is the knowledge of the Creator; sacrifice and altars are unknown to the Christians -- it is to be presumed not only that under the imposed by the disciplina arcani they withheld the whole truth, but also that they rightly repudiated all connection with pagan idolatry, the sacrifice of animals, and heathen altars. Tertullian bluntly declared: "we offer no sacrifice (non sacrificamus) because we cannot eat both the Supper of God and that of demons" (De spectac., c., xiii). And yet in another passage (De orat., c., xix) he calls Holy Communion "participation in the sacrifice" (participatio sacrificii), which is accomplished "on the altar of God" (ad aram Dei); he speaks (De cult fem., II, xi) of a real, not a mere metaphorical, "offering up of sacrifice" (sacrificium offertur); he dwells still further as a Montanist (de pudicit, c., ix) as well on the "nourishing power of the Lord's Body" (opimitate dominici corporis) as on the "renewal of the immolation of Christ" (rursus illi mactabitur Christus).
With Irenaeus of Lyons there comes a turning point, in as much as he, with conscious clearness, first puts forward "bread and wine" as objective gift offerings, but at the same time maintains that these elements become the "body and blood" of the Word through consecration, and thus by simply combining these two thoughts we have the Catholic Mass of today. According to him (Adv. haer., iv, 18, 4) it is the Church alone "that offers the pure oblation" (oblationem puram offert), whereas the Jews "did not receive the Word, which is offered (or through whom an offering is made) to God" (non receperunt Verbum quod [aliter, per quod] offertur Deo). Passing over the teaching of the Alexandrine Clement and Origen, whose love of allegory, together with the restrictions of the disciplina arcani, involved their writings in mystic obscurity, we make particular mention of Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) whose celebrated fragment Achelis has wrongly characterized as spurious. He writes (Fragm. in Prov., ix, i, P. G., LXXX, 593), "The Word prepared His Precious and immaculate Body (soma) and His Blood (aima), that daily kath'ekasten) are set forth as a sacrifice (epitelountai thyomena) on the mystic and Divine table (trapeze) as a memorial of that ever memorable first table of the mysterious supper of the Lord". Since according to the judgment of even Protestant historians of dogma, St. Cyprian (d. 258) is to be regarded as the "herald" of Catholic doctrine on the Mass, we may likewise pass him over, as well as Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) and Chrysostom (d. 407) who have been charged with exaggerated "realism", and whose plain discourses on the sacrifice rival those of Basil (d. 379), Gregory of Nyssa (d. c. 394) and Ambrose (d. 397). Only about Augustine (d. 430) must a word be said, since, in regard to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist he is cited as favouring the "symbolical" theory. Now it is precisely his teaching on sacrifice that best serves to clear away the suspicion that he inclined to a merely spiritual interpretation.
For Augustine nothing is more certain than that every religion, whether true or false, must have an exterior form of celebration and worship (Contra Faust., xix, 11). This applies as well to Christians (l. c., xx, 18), who "commemorate the sacrifice consummated (on the cross) by the holiest oblation and participation of the Body and Blood of Christ" (celebrant sacrosancta oblatione et participatione corporis et sanguinis Christi). The Mass is, in his eyes (De Civ. Dei, X, 20), the "highest and true sacrifice" (summum verumque sacrificium), Christ being at once "priest and victim" (ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio) and he reminds the Jews (Adv. Jud, ix, 13) that the sacrifice of Malachias is now made in every place (in omni loco offerri sacrificium Christianorum). He relates of his mother Monica (Confess., ix, 13) that she had asked for prayers at the altar (ad altare) for her soul and had attended Mass daily. From Augustine onwards the current of the Church's tradition flows smoothly along in a well-ordered channel, without check or disturbance, through the Middle Ages to our own time. Even the powerful attempt made to stem it through the Reformation had no effect.
A briefer demonstration of the existence of the Mass is the so-called proof from prescription, which is thus formulated: A sacrificial rite in the Church which is older than the oldest attack made on it by heretics cannot be decried as "idolatry", but must be referred back to the Founder of Christianity as a rightful heritage of which He was the originator. Now the Church's legitimate possession as regards the Mass can be traced back to the beginnings of Christianity. It follows that the Mass was Divinely instituted by Christ. Regarding the minor proposition, the proof of which alone concerns us here, we may begin at once with the Reformation, the only movement that utterly did away with the Mass. Psychologically, it is quite intelligible that men like Zwingli, Karlstadt and Oecolampadius should tear down the altars, for they denied Christ's real presence in the Sacrament. Calvinism also in reviling the "papistical mass" which the Heidelberg catechism characterized as "cursed idolatry" was merely self-consistent since it admitted only a "dynamic" presence. It is rather strange on the other hand that, in spite of his belief in the literal meaning of the words of consecration, Luther, after a violent "nocturnal disputation with the devil", in 1521, should have repudiated the Mass. But it is exactly these measures of violence that best show to what a depth the institution of the Mass had taken root by that time in Church and people. How long had it been taking root? The answer, to begin with is: all through the Middle Ages back to Photius, the originator of the Eastern Schism (869). Though Wycliffe protested against the teaching of the Council of Constance (1414-18), which maintained that the Mass could be proved from Scripture; and though the Albigenses and Waldenses claimed for the laity also the power to offer sacrifice (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", 585 and 430), it is none the less true that even the schismatic Greeks held fast to the Eucharistic sacrifice as a precious heritage from their Catholic past. In the negotiations for reunion at Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) they showed moreover that they had kept it intact; and they have faithfully safeguarded it to this day. From all which it is clear that the Mass existed in both Churches long before Photius, a conclusion borne out by the monuments of Christian antiquity.
Taking a long step backwards from the ninth to the fourth century, we come upon the Nestorians and Monophysites who were driven out of the Church during the fifth century at Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). From that day to this they have celebrated in their solemn liturgy the sacrifice of the New Law, and since they could only have taken it with them from the old Christian Church, it follows that the Mass goes back in the Church beyond the time of Nestorianism and Monophysitism. Indeed, the first Nicene Council (325) in its celebrated eighteenth canon forbade priests to receive the Eucharist from the hands of deacons for the very obvious reason that "neither the canon nor custom have handed down to us, that those, who have not the power to offer sacrifice (prospherein) may give Christ's body to those who offer (prospherousi)". Hence it is plain that for the celebration of the Mass there was required the dignity of a special priesthood, from which the deacons as such were excluded. Since, however, the Nicene Council speaks of a "custom that takes us at once into the third century, we are already in the age of the Catacombs with their Eucharistic pictures, which according to the best founded opinions represent the liturgical celebration of the Mass. According to Wilpert, the oldest representation of the Holy Sacrifice is the "Greek Chapel" in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla (c. 150). The most convincing evidence, however, from those early days is furnished by the liturgies of the West and the East, the basic principles of which reach back to Apostolic times and in whch the sacrifical idea of the Eucharistic celebration found unadulterated and decisive expression (see LITURGIES). We have therefore traced the Masses from the present to the earliest times, thus establishing its Apostolic origin, which in turn goes back again to the Last Supper.
In its denial of the true Divinity of Christ and of every supernatural institution, modern unbelief endeavours, by means of he so-called historico-religious method, to explain the character of the Eucharist and the Eucharist sacrifice as the natural result of a spontaneous process of development in the Christian religion. In this connection it is interesting to observe how these different and conflicting hypotheses refute one another, with the rather startling result at the end of it all that a new, great, and insoluble problem looms of the investigation. While some discover the roots of the Mass in the Jewish funeral feasts (O. Holtzmann) or in Jewish Essenism (Bousset, Heitmuller, Wernle), others delve in the underground strata of pagan religions. Here, however, a rich variety of hypotheses is placed at their disposal. In this age of Pan-Babylonism it is not at all surprising that the germinal ideas of the Christian communion should be located in Babylon, where in the Adapa myth (on the tablet of Tell Amarna) mention has been found of "water of life" and "food of life" (Zimmern). Others (e.g. Brandt) fancy they have found a still more striking analogy in the "bread and water" (Patha and Mambuha) of the Mandaean religion. The view most widely held today among upholders of the historico-religious theory is that the Eucharist and the Mass originated in the practices of the Persian Mithraism (Dieterich, H. T. Holtzmann, Pfleiderer, Robertson, etc.). "In the Mandaean mass" writes Cumont ("Mysterien des Mithra", Leipzig, 1903, p.118), "the celebrant consecrated bread and water, which he mixed with perfumed Haoma-juice, and ate this food while performing the functions of divine service". Tertullian in anger ascribed this mimicking of Christian rites to the "devil" and observed in astonishment (De prescript haeret, C. xl): "celebrat (Mithras) et panis oblationem." This is not the place to criticize in detail these wild creations of an overheated imagination. Let it suffice to note that all these explanations necessarily lead to impenetrable night, as long as men refuse to believe in the true Divinity of Christ, who commanded that His bloody sacrifice on the Cross should be daily renewed by an unbloody sacrifice of His Body and Blood in the Mass under the simple elements of bread and wine. This alone is the origin and nature of the Mass.
In regard to the physical character there arises not only the question as to the concrete portions of the liturgy, in which the real offering lies hidden, but also the question regarding the relation of the Mass to the bloody sacrifice of the Cross. To begin with the latter question as much the more important, Catholics and believing Protestants alike acknowledge that as Christians we venerate in the bloody sacrifice of the Cross the one, universal, absolute Sacrifice for the salvation of the world. And this indeed is true in a double sense first, because among all the sacrifices of the past and future the Sacrifice on the Cross alone stands without any relation to, and absolutely independent of, any other sacrifice, a complete totality and unity in itself; second because every grace, means of grace and sacrifice, whether belonging to the Jewish, Christian or pagan economy, derive their whole undivided strength, value, and efficiency singly and alone from this absolute sacrifice on the Cross. The first consideration implies that all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, as well as the Sacrifice of the Mass, bear the essential mark of relativity, in so far as they are necessarily related to the Sacrifice of the Cross, as the periphery of a circle to the centre. From the second consideration it follows that all other Sacrifices, the Mass included, are empty, barren and void of effect, so far and so long as they are not supplied from the mainstream of merits (due to the suffering) of the Crucified. Let us deal briefly with this double relationship.
Regarding the qualification of relativity, which adheres to every sacrifice other than the sacrifice of the Cross, there is no doubt that the sacrifices of the Old Testament by their figurative forms and prophetic significance point to the sacrifice of the Cross as their eventual fulfilment. The Epistle to the Hebrews (viii-x) in particular develops grandly the figurative character of the Old Testament. Not only was the Levitie priesthood, as a "shadow of the things to come" a faint type of the high priesthood of Christ, but the complex sacrificial cult, broadly spread out in its parts, prefigured the one sacrifice of the Cross. Serving only the legal "cleansing of the flesh" the Levitical sacrifices could effect no true "forgiveness of sins"; by their very inefficacy however they point prophetically to the perfect Sacrifice of propitiation on Golgotha. Just for that reason their continual repetition as well as their great diversity was essential to them, as a means of keeping alive in the Jews the yearning for the true sacrifice of expiation which the future was to bring. This longing was satiated only by the single Sacrifice of the Cross, which was never again to be repeated. Naturally the Mass, too, if it is to have the character of a legitimate sacrifice must be in accord with this inviolable rule, no longer Indeed as a type prophetic of future things, but rather as the living realization and renewal of the past. Only the Last Supper, standing midway as it were between the figure and its fulfilment, still looked to the future, in so far as it was an anticipatory commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross. In the discourse in which the Eucharist was instituted, the "giving of the body" and the "Shedding of the Blood" were of necessity related to the physical separation of the blood from the body on the Cross, without which the sacramental immolation of Christ at the Last Supper would be inconceivable. The Fathers of the Church, such as Cyprian (Ep., lxiii, 9), Ambrose (De offic., I, xlviii), Augustine (Contra Faust., XX, xviii) and Gregory the Great (Dial., IV, lviii), insist that the Mass in its essential nature must be that which Christ Himself characterized as a "commemoration" of Him (Luke 22:19) and Paul as the "showing of the death of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Regarding the other aspect of the Sacrifice on the Cross, viz. the impossibility of its renewal, its singleness and its power, Paul again proclaimed with energy that Christ on the Cross definitively redeemed the whole world, in that he "by His own Blood, entered once into the holier having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12). This does not mean that mankind is suddenly and without the action of its own will brought back to the state of innocence in Paradise and set above the necessity of working to secure for itself the fruits of redemption. Otherwise children would be in no need of baptism nor adults of justifying faith to win eternal happiness. The "completion" spoken of by Paul can therefore refer only to the objective side of redemption, which does not dispense with, but on the contrary requires, the proper subjective disposition. The sacrifice once offered on the Cross filled the infinite reservoirs to overflowing with healing waters but those who thirst after justice must come with their chalices and draw out what they need to quench their thirst. In this important distinction between objective and subjective redemption, which belongs to the essence of Christianity, lies not merely the possibility, but also the justification of the Mass. But here unfortunately Catholics and Protestants part company. The latter can see in the Mass only a "denial of the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ". This is a wrong view, for if the Mass can do and does no more than convey the merits of Christ to mankind by means of a sacrifice exactly as the sacraments do it without the use of sacrifice, it stands to reason that the Mass is neither a second independent sacrifice alongside of the sacrifice on the Cross, nor a substitute whereby the sacrifice on the Cross is completed or its value enhanced.
The only distinction between the Mass and the sacrament lies in this: that the latter applies to the individual the fruits of the Sacrifice on the Cross by simple distribution, the other by a specific offering. In both, the Church draws upon the one Sacrifice on the Cross. This is and remains the one Sun, that gives life, light and warmth to everything; the sacraments and the Mass are only the planets that revolve round the central body. Take the Sun away and the Mass is annihilated not one whit less than the sacraments. On the other hand, without these two the Sacrifice on the Cross would reign as independently as, conceivably the sun without the planets. The Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. iv) therefore rightly protested against the reproach that "the Mass is a blasphemy against or a derogation from the Sacrifice on the Cross" (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", 951). Must not the same reproach be cast upon the Sacraments also? Does it not apply to baptism and communion among Protestants? And how can Christ Himself put blasphemy and darkness in the way of His Sacrifice on the Cross when He Himself is the High Priest, in whose name and by whose commission His human representative offers sacrifice with the words: "This is my Body, this is my Blood"? It is the express teaching of the Church (cf. Trent, Sess. XXII, i) that the Mass is in its very nature a "representation" (representatio), a "commemoration" (memoria) and an "application" (applicatio) of the Sacrifice of the Cross. When indeed the Roman Catechism (II, c. iv, Q. 70) as a fourth relation, adopts the daily repetition (instauratio), it means that such a repetition is to be taken not in the sense of multiplication, but simply of an application of the merits of the Passion. Just as the Church repudiates nothing so much as the suggestion that by the Mass the sacrifice on the Cross is as it were set aside, so she goes a step farther and maintains the essential identity of both sacrifices, holding that the main difference between them is in the different manner of sacrifice -- the one bloody the other unbloody (Trent, Sess. XXII, ii): "Una enim eademque est hostia idem nunc offerens sacerdotum