Start with a riddle

Begin by restoring connection between liturgy & sacrament

(this precedes the connection between liturgy & ritual, liturgy & rubric, liturgy & history)

•

Sometimes in novels of fiction and fantasy the protagonist must engage in a contest of riddles in order to

cross a bridge, or win a prize.

•

In the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins wins such a contest of riddles against Gollum by asking, "what is a box

without hinges, key, or lid, yet a golden treasure inside is hid." (I guess the book has been out long

enough for me not to spoil it for anyone by divulging that the answer is an egg.)

“Are sacraments liturgical, or is liturgy sacramental?”

Now, if I were ever magically cast into a fantasy story, and faced a troll who would not let me cross a bridge

until I had answered his riddle, I believe the riddle I would receive would be this:

•

Christ is sent by the Father, and, obedient always to his Father's will, he fulfills the

divine plan for creation: he shatters the gates of Hades and gathers creation together

for his ascent back to the Father by sending the Holy Spirit to spiritualize things, both

human and material.

•

And the Church is Christ's mystical body, commissioned with the task of serving this

redemption and sanctification; Georges Florovsky said, “the doctrine of the Church

itself is but an „extended Christology,‟ the doctrine of the „total Christ,’ totus Christus,

caput et corpus.”

•

And liturgy is this Church in motion. It is the manifestation of the new creation

brought about by the paschal mystery and shared by a social, sacramental body until

the Lord of the Church returns as Lord of the world to hand all things over to the

Father.

•

And, finally, the sacraments serve our liturgical life by accompanying us from the •

That the two should be entangled, I most fully agree. Christ, the Church, the liturgy, and the

sacraments are interrelated, like nesting cups, one inside the next.

The Eucharist: Become What You Receive,

Receive What You Are

First task: thicken our definition of liturgyMonday, June 04, 201210:26 AM

NDCL 2012 Page 1

brought about by the paschal mystery and shared by a social, sacramental body until

the Lord of the Church returns as Lord of the world to hand all things over to the

Father.

And, finally, the sacraments serve our liturgical life by accompanying us from the

cradle to the grave, capacitating us for an earthly liturgy in tune with a heavenly

liturgy. The sacraments communicate divine life: they inaugurate it, heal it, and order

it – which is just how the sacraments have been categorized in the Catechism:

sacraments of initiation, sacraments of healing, and sacraments in the service of

communion.

•

How it looks under a Thin notion of liturgy and sacrament

Sacraments are the central thing Liturgy is the central thing

Liturgy is just the form, style, setting - like a ring is

the setting for a jewel

It is garlanded and festooned with sacraments -

occasionally, regularly, rarely

But this makes Sacrament into a simple band-aid

for sin

But this makes Liturgy into just official service, rites,

ceremonies, prayers of the Church

The Wittgenstein game: How do people use the word "liturgy" in a language game?

1. My first experience: One Sunday a Protestant service omitted the Gloria in order to save time, and I heard the

organist say, "So we won't have liturgy today?"

2. One time a certain person heard that I was coming to Notre Dame and said, "So you like liturgy, eh? Wait until you

see a football game here.”

3. Another time I was standing in line with my colleagues for commencement, all of us dressed in cap and gown, and

the person behind me said "You must like this sort of thing.”

From the fact that I studied liturgy it seemed a logical conclusion to both of them that I would like excessive

pomp, useless formality, ritual etiquette, and extravagant ceremony. These are the shiny things that they

thought caught my attention in liturgical studies.

How it looks under a Thick notion of liturgy and sacrament

- Two metaphors:

So on the one hand, liturgy directs its participants to a goal different from the cultic goal of attaining

contact with God [because Christ has effected union with God]. Everything that religious cult foreshadowed

has had its fulfillment in Christ. He is the new temple and the new sacrifice, as well as the new altar, priest,

king, prophet, Torah, Sabbath, and tabernacle. Everything we use in Christian liturgy has passed through

the hypostatic union. The goal of liturgy, in Schmemann‟s words, is “the Church as the manifestation and

presence of the „new aeon‟ of the Kingdom of God.” Christ did not found another religion; he founded a new

age, the age of the Church, which is populated by a new race of people in unity with himself. This is his

body, the totus Christus . . . . The liturgy is antinomous because what cult cannot contain is contained in

liturgical cult, just as what heaven and earth could not contain was contained in the womb of the

Schmemann on "cultic antinomy"

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liturgical cult, just as what heaven and earth could not contain was contained in the womb of the

Theotokos.

The fact that the Church finally adopted the word leitourgia to name her cult “indicates her special

understanding of worship, which is indeed a revolutionary one. If Christian worship is leitourgia, it cannot be

simply reduced to, or expressed in terms of, „cult.‟ The ancient world knew a plethora of cultic religions or

„cults‟. . . . But the Christian cult is leitourgia, and this means that it is functional in its essence, has a goal

to achieve which transcends the categories of cult as such.”

The goal of liturgy, in Schmemann‟s words, is “the Church as the manifestation and presence of the „new

aeon‟ of the Kingdom of God.”

Three Thick Definitions of Liturgy

Pius XII - Mediator Dei Virgil Michel - The Liturgy of the Church dwf

The sacred liturgy is, consequently, the

public worship which our Redeemer as

Head of the Church renders to the Father,

as well as the worship which the

community of the faithful renders to its

Founder, and through Him to the heavenly

Father. It is, in short, the worship rendered

by the Mystical Body of Christ in the

entirety of its Head and

members. (Mediator Dei ¶ 20)

The liturgy, through Christ, comes from the

Father, the eternal source of the divine life in

the Trinity. It in turn addresses itself in a

special way to the Father, rendering him the

homage and the glory of which it is capable

through the power of Christ. The flow of divine

life between the eternal Father and the Church

is achieved and completed through the

operation of the Holy Ghost.

The liturgy, reaching from God to man, and

connecting man to the fullness of the Godhead,

is the action of the Trinity in the Church. The

Church in her liturgy partakes of the life of the

divine society of the three persons in God.

Liturgy is the perichoresis of

the Trinity kenotically

extended to invite our

synergistic ascent into

deification.

In other words, the Trinity’s circulation of love turns itself outward, and in humility the Son and Spirit work the Father’s good pleasure for all creation, which is to cause our ascent to participate in the very life of God; however, this cannot

cult and cosmos, •sacred and profane, •church and world, •ritual liturgy and lived liturgy •– a connection between liturgy, theology and

asceticism.

•

To discover what the visible cult above the waterline is

connected to would involve discovering connections between

The liturgy is cosmic in scale and eschatological in scope.

NDCL 2012 Page 3

is the action of the Trinity in the Church. The

Church in her liturgy partakes of the life of the

divine society of the three persons in God.

Father’s good pleasure for all creation, which is to cause our ascent to participate in the very life of God; however, this cannot be forced, it must be done with our cooperation.

I was once asked whether I could teach a course in liturgical history. I thought to myself: “Yes, I can. Liturgical history is an important topic. It deserves a course. Where shall I begin? I suppose with Abraham, leading to Moses’ encounter at the burning bush, and then to Israel’s kings and prophets preparing for the Messiah and the new Israel. No, wait. Probably the covenant with Noah needs to be mentioned. Well, actually, liturgical history began with the cosmic priesthood of Adam and Eve, and their fall was the forfeiture of their liturgical career, and the long story of salvation history was designed to restore man and woman to their liturgical state by becoming apprentices to Christ, the premier liturgist. That would be a liturgical history.”

Then I realized the person who asked the question only wanted to know if I could teach a course on the history of the liturgy.

Anecdote -

and as sacrament is more than souvenir. as symbol is more than sign

as Scripture is more than poetic wisdom and historical narrative,

as homily is more than instruction, as icon is more than picture,

as Church is more than the Jesus club, Liturgical history is more than a history of the liturgy,

"Across this continuous chain of creation, in which the triune fellowship of

the divine persons has, as it were, extended and propagated itself, moves the

ebb and flow of the creating Agape and of the created eucharistia.

Descending further and further towards the final limits of the abyss of

nothingness, the creating love of God reveals its full power in the response it

evokes, in the joy of gratitude in which, from the very dawn of their existence

creatures freely return to him who has given them all. Thus this immense

choir of which we have spoken, basing ourselves on the Fathers, finally

seems like an infinitely generous heart, beating with an unceasing diastole

and systole, first diffusing the divine glory in paternal love, then continually

gathering it up again to its immutable source in filial love." - Bouyer

Golden chain –

Dionysius

The goal of a hierarchy, then, is to enable beings to be as like as

possible to God and to be at one with him.

•

A hierarchy has God as its leader of all understanding and action. It

is forever looking directly at the comeliness of God.

•

Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God in all respects,

to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial

light and indeed of God himself.

•

The aim of every hierarchy is to imitate God so as to take on his

form; the task of every hierarchy is to receive and pass on

undiluted purification, the divine light, the understanding which

brings perfection.

•

The function of hierarchy in Christian understanding is not to posit

a distance between the divine

and the human, but to establish their connectedness.

•

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We join a liturgy already in progress. •The liturgy is not the activity of the Jesus Club, it is coming to be

connected into God‟s own perichoresis.

•

What starts the liturgical ball rolling, the ignition switch in the

liturgical engine, is not us, it is the Trinity.

•

The bulb from which the liturgical tulip grows is not a human

decision, but a divine decision that is intertwined with the reason

why God created in the first place: (liturgy is protological &

eschatological)

•

It would seem, then, that the liturgy originates in a place where scholars

forget to look when they are investigating it. Liturgy‟s beginning is not

ancient history, religious purity rituals, human need for fellowship; it is

the Trinity.

Maximus the Confessor, 400 Chapters on Love - Q "Seek the reason why God created, for this is true knowledge."

Maximus' answer God made us so that we might become 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet.

1:4) and sharers in His eternity, and so that we might come to be like Him (cf. 1

John 3:2) through deification by grace. It is through deification that all things

are reconstituted and achieve their permanence; and it is for its sake that

what is not is brought into being and given existence.

Gregory Palamas' answer The world was founded with this in view from the beginning. The heavenly, pre-

eternal Counsel of the Father, … was for this end: to enable man at some time

to contain the greatness of God‟s kingdom, the blessedness of God‟s

inheritance and the perfection of the heavenly Father‟s blessing, …. Even the

indescribable divine self-emptying, the theandric way of life, the saving passion,

all the sacraments were planned beforehand in God‟s providence and wisdom

for this end, …

Nicholas Cabasilas' answer The reason for creation was so that one day God could have a mother.

(It's a habitat for divinity)

And by the sacraments "we are begotten and formed and wondrously united to

the Savior.”

Blessed Columba Marmion Christ attaches a grace to each of His mysteries in order to help us to reproduce

within ourselves His divine features in order to make us like unto Him.

Liturgy … holiness … participation in the life of God … cosmological eschatological … sacramental

That liturgy is sacramental means its inside is bigger

than its outside, the grace is bigger than the ritual that

contains it.

That sacraments are liturgical means that they are not

just band-aids for sin in this life, they are ordered to

deification.

Sacramental liturgy is the barque of Peter that brings

us to beatitude.

Liturgical sacraments root us in the new Adam.

“Sacramental liturgy” – because liturgy is an opus Dei,

and not Robert‟s Rule of Order for the Jesus club.

“Liturgical sacraments” – because sacraments

capacitate us for participating in the activity of the

mystical body.

and as sacrament is more than souvenir.

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Definitions of "Qahal"

Louis BouyerLiturgical Piety, “From the Jewish Qahal to the

Christian Ecclesia”

Any true understanding of the Church must consist of an

adequate study of the idea of the People of God.

The Church (ekklesia) is the final perfection of what the

Hebrew Bible called Qahal Yahweh – “the Assembly of

Yahweh.”

Martimort, The Church at Prayer

“This assembly was convoked by God himself. When the

Israelites were gathered, God was present in the midst of his

people. He spoke his Word there. The gathering ended with

the covenant sacrifice.”

Lucien Deiss, God's Word and God's People

The Greek translation of the OT uses ekklesia for the Hebrew Qahal

two-thirds of the time. The noun ekklesia is derived from the verb

ek-kalein which means “to call apart,” “to convoke,” and, in the

middle voice, “to call to oneself.” In secular Greek literature

ekklesia was the assembly of the people at Athens or any Greek

city; the assembly was convoked by a herald, and those who were

its members were “the called” (ek-kletoi).

Four distinctive features of a Qahal

The Wittgenstein game on the word "Church" ...

I work at a Church•My grandfather built this Church•How long is Church this morning?•Is the Church going to tell me what to do?•They are so unchurched?•He belongs to the Church•After Church the Church will gather in the Church basement to discuss the

future of the Church

•

Clean the Church•"I don‟t get anything out of Church"•

Building

Organization

Parish

Business/institution

Location

Community

Worship

Higherarchy

Authority

Community

Congregation

Catechesis, faith,

Institution

Mission

Community

Body of Christ

Second task: Thicken our definition of ChurchMonday, June 04, 201210:32 AM

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And how do the gathered ones called the Church, the new Israel, worship?

Four distinctive features of a Qahal Bouyer's Definition of liturgy The Catholic Mass

Summoned by God A meeting of God‟s people called

together by God

assembly rite

to hear a Word proclaimed (God

offers covenant)

in order that the people may

hear God‟s word (Logos)

liturgy of the Word

people respond (actions: praise,

adoration, supplicate)

adhere to that Word by prayer

and praise

prayer/praise/supplication

sacrificial offering to ratify the

covenant

seal the covenant by sacrifice. eucharistic sacrifice

Eschatological QahalDe Lubac, Catholicism: The Nature and Destiny of Man

Now the people called to the Mountain has expanded.

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food” where

death will be destroyed and every tear wiped away.

Isaiah (25) prophesied that the Messiah is coming to gather the human race from the four

corners of the world into a huge eschatological Qahal on Zion:

1. The Passover was the feast of the Israelite‟s Exodus from Egypt to attend the first Qahal

3. The Messianic Banquet of Isaiah is promise of the feast for all at the fulfillment of time

2. Jesus said he is the Son of Man who calls the Gentiles to the Messianic Banquet

This was the expectation of the fathers:

• HIPPOLYTUS: like the queen bee, Christ comes to muster humanity around him.

• GREGORY NAZIANZUS: "There were at that time all kinds of miracles: God on the Cross, the

sun darkened ... the veil of the temple rent ... water and blood flowing from his side, the earth

quaking, stones breaking, the dead rising ... Who can worthily extol such wonders? But none is

to be compared with the miracle of my salvation: minute drops of blood making the whole

world new, working the salvation of all men, as the drops of fig-juice one by one curdle the milk,

reuniting mankind, knitting them together as one.

• PASCHASIUS: For a change of metaphor there is that in which Christ is likened to a needle the

eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the

Qahal <file://C:\Users\dfagerbe\Documents\Dropbox\ND - Classes\Prezi\Qahal\Qahal.exe>

NDCL 2012 Page 7

eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the

tunic rent by Adam, stitching together the two peoples of Jew and Gentile, making them one for

always.

Erik Peterson

• “The worship of the Church is not the liturgy of a human religious society, connected with a

particular temple, but worship which pervades the whole universe and in which sun, moon, and

all the stars take part .... [T]he Church is no purely human religious society. The angels and

saints in heaven belong to her as well. Seen in this light, the Church‟s worship is no merely

human occasion. The angels and the entire universe take part in it.”

The liturgy is not one of Adam's religions; it is the cult of the New Adam

Bouyer

• The patristic interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep shows us how this way, this truth,

this life are all found in Christ. The 99 sheep in the fold are the cosmos of the spiritual creation,

of which our own world, very far being the whole, is only the lower fringe. The hundredth sheep,

gone astray, is mankind, with its own particular world, the material universe, of which it is the

head. The shepherd leaving the fold in the depths of night to plunge into the dark and lonely

ravines of a mountain lying under a curse in search of the one lost sheep, is the Word stooping

down, even to us. As if the immensity of the angelic world which had remained faithful was

nothing to him and the Father in comparison … we see him coming forth from his Father‟s

house and going down to the deepest part of the chasm. Sharing all its sufferings, stripping

himself of his divine glory, he finds the sheep in the abyss. Then he lifts it on his shoulders and,

bent under the burden, retracing the painful road which it had trodden, he brings it back to the

fold. As they both come in sight of the sheepfold, shepherd and sheep covered with the same

wounds, their blood mingling, the unanimous joy of the faithful sheep ... is transfigured.

The Church is not the Jesus Club where like-minded believers get together.

The Church is …

Panayiotis NellasDeification in Christ

The Church is not a static situation. It is a dynamic, transformative movement. It is the

perpetual marriage in space and time of the Creator with His creation, the enduring

mingling of the created with the uncreated. Through this unconfused mingling in Christ

of created with uncreated nature, the created is subsumed into the flesh of Christ, is

rehabilitated sacramentally, is transformed, become the body of Christ and lives as

such.

Church = Creation grafted onto Christ and dignified by the Spirit. The Church is creation

reassembled and restructured sacramentally. It is higher than the first creation. The world

is no longer the house of man only, but the house of the living God.”

Balai - 5th c. Syrian

Murray, Symbols of

Church and Kingdom: Early Syriac Tradition3

he has built himself a house among those with bodies.He has established altars like mangers where the Church may feed on life.

9. That he may be accessible to earth-dwellers,

let us enter the sanctuary and see him.10. Make no mistake, the King is here;

And where shall we seek thee? Behold, in the sanctuary.Heaven is too high for us, we cannot reach it; We see thee in thy Church, where we have access.

41. Where art thou, Lord? Behold, in heaven.

Olivier ClementOrigins of Christian

Mysticism“the Church is nothing other than the world in the course of transfiguration.”

NDCL 2012 Page 8

Mysticism“the Church is nothing other than the world in the course of transfiguration.”

Charles JournetThe Church of the Word

Incarnate“The Church is the world being reconciled to God,” and “Thus the frontier of the

Church passes through each one of those who call themselves her members, enclosing

within her bounds all that is pure and holy, leaving outside all that is sin and stain …”

Benedict XVIMary: the Church at the

Source“The Church is not a manufactured item; she is, rather, the living seed of God that must

be allowed to grow and ripen. This is why the Church needs the Marian mystery; this is

why the Church herself is a Marian mystery.”

von Balthasar:, “In Mary, the Church is embodied even before being organized in Peter”

Ambrose The baptized are beautiful for having the Holy Spirit now living in them, looking out from

their eyes, so to speak; they are beautiful for being transparent to the light of the

indwelling Spirit and showing forth the beauty of what the Church really is, as it is

intended by God. Therefore, Ambrose concludes, “the Church is beautiful in them.”

He reverses our ordinary grammar. He doesn’t speak about the Church we go into, but the Church that comes into us; he doesn’t speak about us being in the Church, but the Church being in us.

Emile Mersch, SJ,

The Whole Christ: 44 “Christ has a twofold life on earth: one visible and historical, the other invisible and

mystical; the first is the preparation for the second, and the second is the prolongation of

the first. In the second, which is His mysterious existence in the depths of souls, Christ is

far more active, far more truly alive than ever He was in the days when He walked and

preached in Judea.

51 Christ appears for a brief time on the face of our earth and then vanishes. His historical

life is but a preparation for a more expansive life. … Jesus' life appears to be a total failure

when it is considered without reference to the Mystical Body in which it is continued.

Florovsky says the doctrine of the Church itself is but an „extended Christology‟, the

doctrine of the „total Christ‟]

131 The Church is the continuation, the fullness, the pleroma of Christ. Christ's actions

and sufferings are prolonged and consummated in the action of Christians.

139 Look carefully at those many different Christians. They are no longer a mere crowd;

the unity of Christ has penetrated them and united them. They are one new man.

283 The hypostatic union does not affect our Lord alone, but it is somehow prolonged in

us, the members; we are the prolongation of the Head, and the hypostatic union renders

us divine by reason of our continuity with the God-man.

304 The divine life we receive is the life given in all plenitude to Christ's human nature.

356 The same hypostatic union causes to flow into our human nature the life that it imparts

to the humanity of Christ.

408 A progressive extension of the hypostatic union to all the faithful.

312 Gregory Nazianzus: 'He still possesses the body which he assumed in order to make

NDCL 2012 Page 9

312 Gregory Nazianzus: 'He still possesses the body which he assumed in order to make

me god."

455 The whole life of grace in the members of the mystical body is a prolongation of that

supreme grace whereby the head of the body is constituted the Son of God and holy of

holies.

NDCL 2012 Page 10

We have tried to

thicken def of Liturgy -

it's not just the ceremony above the waterline,

Instead that ceremony is connected to the oikonomia of God which from the

beginning was intended to work our deification.

And we have tried to

thicken def of Church -

it's not the Jesus Club following liturgical Roberts' Rules for Order.

Instead the Church is the part of creation which is being renewed and directed toward

its final eschatological end.

This is manifested & accomplished in the Eucharist

What does our thickened definition of Liturgy & Church teach us about the Eucharist?

the transubstantiated Host is “the anticipation of the transformation and divinization of matter in the

Christological „fullness.‟”

Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy

the Eucharist is “the real „action‟ for which all of creation is in expectation. The elements of the earth are

transubstantiated, pulled, so to speak, from their creaturely anchorage, grasped at the deepest ground of

their being, and changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord."

"Thickened Eucharist"

In C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Eustace

meets an Old Man who is a star now retired

from the celestial dance, but who is being

rejuvenated by a fire bird that each morning

brings him a fire berry to eat.

Eustace:

"In our world a star is a huge

Ball of flaming gas."

"Even in your world,

My son, that is not

what a star is but

Only what it is made of.""Science" = the power which puts reason into

a state in which it can judge certain objects

of knowledge soundly. (Etienne Gilson)

Natural science looks at what a thing is made of

Theological science looks at what stands under

the highest magnification setting on the microscope:

the sub-stance.

Physis

Eucharist makes the ChurchMonday, June 04, 201211:07 AM

NDCL 2012 Page 11

Natural eating

The National Digestive Diseases

Information Clearing House

A: What is Digestion?"Digestion is the process by which food and drink are broken down into their smallest parts so that the body can use them to build and nourish cells and to provide energy."

Answer: "Digestion involves the movement of food through the digestive tract, and the chemical breakdown of the large molecules of food into smaller molecules."

Q: How is food digested?

Answer: because "when we eat such things as bread, meat, and vegetables, they are not in a form that the body can use as nourishment. Our food and drink must be changed into smaller molecules of nutrients before they can be absorbed into the blood and carried to cells throughout the body."

Q: And why is digestion important?

Sinful eating

Screwtape Letters

One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

Mystical Eating When the good and humble mare, named Hwin, meets Aslan for the first time, she shakes all over as she trots up to the Lion. And she says

“Please, you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”

Eucharistic Eating

Augustine

Confessions, Bk 7, ch 10[Augustine is still undergoing his conversion ]

When I first knew you, you raised me up so that I could see that there was something to see and that I still lacked the ability to see it..

[Not unlike the mare, Hwin, when she first saw Aslan.]

And you beat back the weakness of my sight, blazing upon me with your rays, and I trembled in love and in dread ...

[The voice does not say "feed on me and you shall grow," it seems to say that every year you grow, you will find Me bigger and be able to feed on Me more completely].

… and I found that I was far distant from you, in a region of total unlikeness, as if I were hearing your voice from on high saying: "I am the food of grown men. Grow and you shall feed upon me."

"And you will not, as with the food of the body, change me into yourself, but you will be changed into me."

NDCL 2012 Page 12

At communion you are given the body of Christ to eat, and you will not change Christ into you, as with the food of the body, but you will be changed into him. You will become his body; you will be made Church.

Eustace had to learn the difference between what a star is and what it is made out of; in other words, learn the

difference between reality and materiality. Augustine had to learn the same lesson:

"What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges

you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice the Blood of Christ. ... How is the bread His

Body? And … what is in the chalice, how is it His Blood? Those elements, brethren, are called Sacraments,

because in them one thing is seen, but another is understood. [Augustine - Sermon 272]

One thing is seen, but our meta-nous can understand another. And then we see also the true reality of the Church.

"You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members." If, therefore, you are the Body of Christ and His

members, your mystery is presented at the table of the Lord, you receive your mystery. To that which you are,

you answer: "Amen"; and by answering, you subscribe to it. For you hear: "The Body of Christ!" and you answer:

"Amen!" Be a member of Christ's Body, so that your "Amen" may be the truth. [Sermon 272]

Augustine continues:

So much theology exchanged between the minister of communion saying "The Body of Christ" and the communicant

replying "Amen"! The Eucharist makes the one body of Christ, and Augustine commands his parishioners, and us, "Eat

your bond lest you disintegrate." [Sermon 228]

Eucharist is a "sacramental sign"

Real Presence yet points to a reality yet to come

This was the whole point behind scholastic distinctions ...

The Church-at-Eucharist is a sacramental sign that the human race will be mended.

It is a sign because the complete mending of the image of God is still to come;

but it is a sacramental sign because the Church-at-Eucharist gives us a foretaste of eschatological health.

(not like there are three things in a sacrament; it's more like one can attend to the sacrament on three

different levels. )

A sacrament had three degrees of depth, so to speak.

For example, in baptism the outward sign is water,

in anointing of the sick it is oil,

in eucharist it is bread and wine.

If one looks at the simplest level and only notices the outward sign itself, one would see the sacramentum

tantum ("tantum" means "only").

1.

In baptism the sacramentum et res is the bestowal of an indelible character,

in anointing of the sick it is recuperation of the soul,

and in the eucharist the sacramentum et res is the body and blood of Christ.

But a sacramental sign is efficacious, and it causes another reality, so one could attend to a second level

one and think about both the sacramentum and the res it causes (res means a truth, the real thing).

2.

But here's the interesting fact. There is a third and final and highest degree – a res tantum. 3.

The sign (level one) signifies a reality (level two);

but that reality, in turn, signifies something (level three).

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but that reality, in turn, signifies something (level three).

And what is the final truth, the real thing, the final effect of the Eucharist?

Bread and wine are the sacramentum;

the body and blood of Christ is the sacramentum et res;

but what is the res tantum, the final, real effect of the Eucharist?

So ultimate reality (res of Eucharist) = spiritual union with Christ.

Certainly, the Body of Christ is real in the holy Eucharist, as real as in paradise, since it is the same. It is

substantially present here in place of the bread; and yet, real and substantially present though it be, it is a

figure, it is in its very reality a symbol; itself, the Body of Christ, is a sign and a sacrament.

Of what, if you please? Of what can it be the symbol and the figure? That the shadows of the Old Testament

should serve in advance to typify him, like the paschal lamb, like the bread of Melchisedech, we have no

difficulty in understanding. That in the New Testament, the species of the bread and of the wine should

serve also to figure him - this, too, fits into the order of things. But that he himself should serve to figure

something else, he, the Lord of glory, the ultimate goal and term of everything - that is unbelievable. What is

there beyond the Lord, beyond the Christ, what is there great and grand enough, august and sacred enough,

that he should use himself to be its symbol?

There is ourselves, you and I, the Christians of the whole world; ourselves, but assuredly not ourselves

separated and isolated from Christ; ourselves united to Christ, aggregated to Christ, incorporated in Christ,

one in Christ; there is the Christ living in us and we living on his life. This is why Christ in his own person

wished to become a sacrament, in order to be the efficacious sign of all that. He placed himself in the order

of signs, in the order of symbols, to have the joy of symbolizing and, by symbolizing it, of building up the

mystical body of which we are members.13

The person who finally made this come clear to me was Maurice de la Taille in his 1925 classic The Mystery of

Faith.

The Eucharist: Become What You Receive, Receive What You Are

Pope Benedict XVI

Principles of Catholic

Theology

"The essence of original sin is the split into individuality, which knows only itself.

The essence of redemption is the mending of the shattered image of God, the

union of the human race through and in the One who stands for all and in

whom, as Paul says (Gal 3:29), all are one: Jesus Christ." ( Principles of Catholic

Theology p. 30.)

Cyril of Alexandria "Satan has broken us up,"

Sin

Augustine "Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side, forged them in the fire

of love, and welded into one what had been broken … He who remade was

himself the Maker, he who refashioned was himself the Fashioner."

De Lubac It is human nature that he united to himself, that he enclosed himself, and it is

the latter, whole and entire, that in some sort he uses as a body. … Whole and

entire he will bear it then to Calvary, whole and entire he will raise it from the

dead, whole and entire he will save it. Christ the Redeemer does not offer

salvation merely to each one; he effects it, he is himself the salvation of the

whole.

Redemption

The Eucharist is a bond with the whole Church.

And the Church with whom we are bound in the Eucharist is not merely the tiny part of the Church that

happens to be alive right now.

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happens to be alive right now.

“Liturgy is an „action‟ of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who even now celebrate it without signs

are already in the heavenly liturgy, where celebration is wholly communion and feast” [para 1136].

As the Catechism says,

God is seated upon it,

the Lamb is standing by it as though it had been slain,

and a river of life (the Holy Spirit) flows from the throne.

The book of Revelation pictures the heavenly liturgy with the three persons of the Trinity present around a

throne:

To whom? To whom does the river of life carry the Father‟s love through the Son‟s mediation?

The Catechism gives the guest list it sees:

the heavenly powers,

all creation (the four living beings),

the servants of the Old and New Covenants (the twenty-four elders),

the new People of God (the one hundred and forty-four thousand),

especially the martyrs "slain for the word of God,"

and the all-holy Mother of God (the Woman), the Bride of the Lamb,

and finally "a great multitude which no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes, and

peoples and tongues."

"Recapitulated in Christ," these are the ones who take part in the service of the praise of God and the

fulfillment of his plan:

It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the church enable us to participate whenever we celebrate

the mystery of salvation in the sacraments. [CCC 1138-39]

By the light which pours out of the doors of the temple to flood the world in transfiguring light,

see the cosmos theologically, as sacramental gift from God and raw material for eucharist; •they see man and woman in their role as cosmic priests; •they see time no longer as a whirlpool circling nothingness, but rather as a training school for eternal

happiness.

•

the members of the mystical body

The life in Christ originates in this life and arises from it. It is perfected, however, in the life to come,

when we shall have reached that last day. It cannot attain perfection in men’s souls in this life, nor even

in that which is to come, without already having begun here. … It is this life which is the workshop for all

these things.

But, Nicholas Cabasilas warns, we cannot conclude then what we do not begin now.

Therefore the gift of the Eucharist to make us into Church.

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