The Eucharist Sacrifice

The WTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on photograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited. But the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. Now here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. The subject of this lesson is the mass. It is a continuation of the Eucharist in the last lesson. It must be understood at the beginning that the Eucharist may be considered either in the point of view of a sacrament or in the point of view of a sacrifice. In order to understand this distinction, because it is rather a technical one, we go back to the analogy of nature. Every day of your life you partake of certain food, the products of wheat, vegetables, fish, meat. They all enter into the sustenance of your life. They near issue, they feed you. But if you ever thought of this other side, before they can ever near issue, they must be submitted to some kind of sacrifice. Before they can be the sacrament of your physical life, they must die or be sacrificed. The vegetables must be torn up in the roots, submitted to fire, the purification of waters. Animals must be submitted to the knife. Death, in other words, intervenes before you can live. The nature therefore suggests that before you can have a sacrament, you must have a sacrifice. Before you can have communion, you must have the sacrifice or the consecration. Now running through nature too is this other law that we live by what we slay. After all, we slay to some extent the vegetables and certainly the animals. When we slay them and they submit themselves to our living, they are transformed into our higher life. This law seems to be applied even on Calvary. Is it not true when we look at that cross that we live by what we slay? Who of us can claim innocence of the crucifixion? Which one of us can lay his hand upon the crucifixion say, I am innocent of the blood of this man? Our pride is there in crown of thorns, our abyss in the pinioned hands, our carnality in thorn flesh. And yet, though we are responsible for his death through our sins, he gives us his life. We live by what we have slay. We said that our best ador came to this earth in order to redeem us. There's always been an anticipation and history of sacrifice of this great sacrifice. Man, conscious of his own unworthiness has taken wheat and grapes and bollocks and dubs and sheep. May these things stand for himself. Then he destroyed them. In order that there might be some proof before God that he was not worthy to exist in his presence. You see, it was a vicarious sacrifice in the sense that they stood for man. Now in the Jewish religion, the sacrificial types were ordained by God himself. One of them was the Paschalene, but in all sacrifices, pagan and Jewish, the priest who offered was always the state from the victim which was offered. If we call the priest the offerer, he is the state from the fruit of the animal which was the offered. They are two and never together, always the state. You could pray for the priest on one hand, the victim and the other until our Lord appeared. Our vested Lord was both priest and victim. He differed from every other sacrifice in the world in the sense that he offered himself. He gave his own life. He was the offerer and the offered. He took our place, there was still a vicarious sacrifice. He took our place as if the sins were disowned. Now what is the mess? It is the commemoration of that death and the application of that sacrifice of the cross to ourselves. The car of this is rather a new idea, perhaps. Too many, we will have to use an analogy. And the analogy is that of memorial days. All the peoples have kept a memory of the soldiers who died in battle in order that their memory might evoke piety and love of country. In the United States we decorate soldiers graves on memorial day, recalling the sacrifice which they made in order that we might live and be preserved in freedom. Now our vested Lord died. There is the great captain of our salvation. He did not come to live. He came to die. That was the purpose of his coming. To offer himself in our stead to one due to one due our infinite guilt. His death in a certain sense was more important than the 33 years of his physical life because it was his death that purchased our salvation. And the bloody sacrifice on the cross began when he instituted the last supper. Notice the words now of our Lord just before he instituted this memorial. He is going to have a memorial not day but act. And immediately before he institutes this memorial, scripture states, Jesus already knew that the time had come for his passage from this world to the father. He still loved those who were his own, who he was leaving in this world. And he would give them the utmost proof of his love. Now he proposes to give that utmost proof. The last supper which is looking forward to his cross. He is not going to leave the memory of his death to the cans recollection of men because he knows that men are very short memories. He is going to himself institute the precise memorial. So in this night before he dies, at the last supper, he institutes not a memorial day but a memorial act. Here we must recall the words of our Lord the last supper. Coding the gospel of you. Then he took bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body given for you, continuing scripture. Then he took a cup and offered thanks and gave it to them saying, drink all of you of this. For this is my blood of the New Testament. Thus scripture. At that moment the substance of the bed became the substance of the body of Christ, the substance of the wine became the substance of his blood. Now he says to his church and I am quoting scripture. Our Lord said, what I have just done. Do you in your turn in commemoration of me? Certainly these words mean that if the apostles were to do what he did, they had to be given the power to do it. Now this night of the last supper when our Lord instituted this commemoration of his death, he was looking forward to Calibri on the next day. The cross would not be a distinct sacrifice. It would not be an entirely different ablation, but nearly a new presence of the same sacrifice. This last supper was beyond bloody. Presentation of his sacrifice on the next day would be bloody when our blessed Lord went to the cross. What we have to emphasize here is our Lord said, do this, prolong it, extend it through space and time, that all may share in my sacrifice. When we do this, we have the mass. Here we invoke another analogy and all analogies are incomplete, but here we use the analogy of a drama. Suppose that some great playwright wrote a magnificent drama, the greatest one that was ever composed. It might conceivably have been the story of how whole community of people who are suffering from neprosy were cured of that disease, how they were restored to peace and unity among themselves, and how they all began to live in charity. Suppose for the Lord that this drama was so well written and presented and acted, that it would be a shame if only the people of one city and in one theater at one moment of time saw it. What a tragedy we would say, a drama which did so much for the hearts of men, should have no other recall, no other memory than what say, four dramatic critics wrote about it, telling about the characters, quoting a line you're in there. Do you think our Lord went through this tragedy of Calvary only once and intended to leave no other memory than what four, Lazarus Matthew, Mark, Luke and John might say about it? Of course not. Just as theater producers would organize road companies of that great drama, so our blessed Lord organized road companies as it were. Great tragedien Christ offered his life for the sins of the world in accordance with the script that had been written by his heavenly Father. And immediately afterwards, in accordance with his instructions, the tragedy of Calvary is repeated throughout the world thanks to the road companies as it were, which are claimed to pack houses every day even through this very hour. This re-presentation, this re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross applied to our day and to our lives is the mass. In the mass, the mystical body of Christ actually united to Christ it hid, offered through him and with him the sacrifice of Calvary. As our blessed Lord in the last supper looked forward to the cross, so in the mass, we looked back to the cross in the last supper, which brings up two questions. How did the sacrifice of the cross differ from the sacrifice of the mass? And are the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the mass the same? Let us take similarities. Then differences. First, what are the similarities between the cross and the mass? This is the basic similarity. There is the same priest in both Christ and the same victim in both Christ. Both on the cross and in the mass, our Lord is both the offerer and the offered. That is why scripture says, quote, we can claim a great high priest one who has passed right up through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Let us come only then before the throne of grace to meet with mercy and win that grace which will help us in our needs. Note the continuing exercise of this priesthood. In the mass, he offers to his father his sacrifice. He is pleading of high priest on our behalf. Now here's an image that cannot be pressed too closely, but imagine our blessed Lord in heaven in his glory holding out his scars, saying to his heavenly father, see what I suffered from him. As the epistle of the Hebrews said, if the sacrifices of the Old Testament gave out word purification, shall not the blood of Christ to offer himself through the Holy Spirit purify our consciences to serve the living God. Our Lord is the priest and the victim between our sins and his glory, he interposes his eternal sacrifice. Where you ask, what is the role of the priest, the earthly priest, he stands at the order. But when I, for example, offer the Holy Mass, I am merely the instrument of Christ. He offers the Mass. He is the offered. I am not an instrument like a pencil but an animated instrument. Every priest is the sacramental image of Christ. In this person and who with whose power he utters the words of consecration. We cannot repeat it too often. Christ is the priest. Christ is the victim. Now when we are ordained, we receive a power to act by the power of Christ and in his name. We lend our Lord our tongue. We give him the use of our hands to sacrifice his sins. He is the priest, he is the victim. But now are the differences. Among others we will mention too. The sacrifice of the cross was a very bloody sacrifice and the sacrifice of the Mass is unbloodied. That is to say on Calvary those who stood near it saw red ribbers, a redemption flow from hands and feet inside. But in the Mass there is no physical crucifixion. The crucifixion is symbolically represented under the species of bread and wine. The second difference and this is very important. On the cross our Lord was alone. In the Mass, mystical bodies with him. On the cross our Lord was alone. He redeemed us all. By that sacrificial act he put as it were a great deposit in a bank for the spiritually poor of the world. It will only be through the coming of the Spirit that we will be able to draw on that deposit. When Holy Spirit came and the church began to offer the Mass, then our Lord is not alone. We are with him. He is a head that makes use of his body. The mystical body is united with Christ the head, the offerer. That is why when we offer the Mass the prayers were in the plural. For example, we, thy servants, Lord, and with us all thy holy people offer to thy sovereign majesty this sacrifice. In the Mass our Lord, we offer to thy servants this sacrifice. In the Mass our Lord is no longer the sole priest, no longer the sole victim. First of all, he has associated with him a spiritually graceful by the instruments of his power, but he also has victims associated with him too. Namely, the sacrifices and the battles against the old Adam and the crucifixion of our lost and clinked cunque senses, in fact all of the trials of the mystical body of Christ. The Mass then is not a souvenir. When you assist at Mass it is not just the same as going, for example, to Calvary and chipping away Iraq and saying, this is the souvenir of the place where our Lord died. Now the Mass is a vision, it is a nation, in time and in eternity. In time because we see it, we see it taking place before our eyes on the order. It is also an eternity as regards the value of redemption. All of the merits of our Lord's death, resurrection, ascension, glorification are applied to us. We unite ourselves with that great eternal act of love. The Mass then is not a distinct sacrifice from the cross. If when the blessed mother and Saint John, the knowing night of them, if univirably put at the cross they had closed their eyes, and merely consecrated on the tremendous mystery of love being enacted before their eyes, they would have been assisting with the Mass. Then the rear of the Mass closed our eyes and constant freight on that mystery. We would equivalently be with Mary, and night of them and John at the foot of the cross. The Mass is not a new sacrifice. It is the re-presentation in space and in time of redemption. Why should we be penalized by the eternal because of the excellence of time? Are there not women today who want to be Veronica's and to offer bails to the suffering Christ? Are there not men like Simon's who want to help him carry the cross? Do we not want to take our own sufferings to have them united with him in order that they might be considered part of our expiation for sins? It is said that today that science might someday be able to go back and pick up all the sounds that were ever spoken and never uttered and never made in the universe because they exist some place in space. That means that we might recover the voice of Alexander and Gregory and the Mastines and even the voice of Christ. But what is that compared to going back? And finding and repeating the very sacrifice of the cross, of taking the cross of Calvary, transplanting it into New York to run the Nautopia in Berlin and to climb the benefits of redemption to our souls now. What a mystery of love. This is the Mass. God bless you. This has been Life's Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the US, call 818-3313-549. And please join us again next time for Life's Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.