Discussion on the Mass

[thinkandmull]

Dear Friends, I’ve been meditating on the Mass today, and ended in confusion. If the Sacrifice of Christ is perfect, why does it need to be offered to the Father again? The other sacraments apply the fruits of Salvary, but the Mass claims to be indentical with a past event, which doesn’t make philosophical sense to me. Is there any true sensible way of understanding it, or do we accept it as beyond us, as mysticism?

 

[Della]

We are not offering it again–Jesus offered it once to the Father–we are re-presenting it, not “offering it again”. Jesus’ one time offering of his body and blood was outside time, in eternity. We re-present Christ’s one offering as he commanded us to do: “Do this in memory of me.” Memory in this case doesn’t simply mean to bring to mind someone we once knew–it means to reconnect with him. The Eucharist makes the one sacrifice of Christ present at each Mass.

Jesus wanted us to do this again and again because we need it again and again–like eating meals every day. Why do we eat 3 meals a day? Why wouldn’t just one do it for the rest of our lives? Well, we know that we need it that many times a day. The Mass is perfect–it is we who are imperfect and need it over and over again because we sin daily and need God’s graces daily. This is the deeper meaning in the Our Father Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread”. Jesus didn’t just mean physical food, but God’s graces. The primary means of receiving God’s graces are the Sacraments and the highest Sacrament is the Eucharist because in it we receive the body and blood Jesus offered once for all to the Father.

Exactly how the bread and wine are transformed into the Eucharist at the words of consecration is truly a mystery. It is an act of the Holy Spirit, just as being cleansed of our sins in baptism and in reconciliation. I doubt we’d understand exactly how God enacts this miracle even if he told us for we are finite and he is infinite.

 

[thinkandmull]

Its more than just a re-presentation, because we don’t just present Jesus’s sacrifice (am event which happen in history at a certain time) to the Father, as if we are pointing it out to Him again. The perfect Sacrifice at Calvary should have satisfied the Father, right? Eating meals is analogous to communion, but the Sacrifice is different. Why do we need to bring an event from the past into the present if that event accomplished everything it intended to? An even better question is HOW this is possible. What does it mean to have a past time transferred to latter times and locations?

Perhaps scholastics were wrong to try and analyze mysticism. But the Church has supported these efforts in Her defense of Thomism…

 

[WMM]

Its more than just a re-presentation, because we don’t just present Jesus’s sacrifice (am event which happen in history at a certain time) to the Father, as if we are pointing it out to Him again. The perfect Sacrifice at Calvary should have satisfied the Father, right? Eating meals is analogous to communion, but the Sacrifice is different. Why do we need to bring an event from the past into the present if that event accomplished everything it intended to? An even better question is HOW this is possible. What does it mean to have a past time transferred to latter times and locations?

Perhaps scholastics were wrong to try and analyze mysticism. But the Church has supported these efforts in Her defense of Thomism…

For man, it is impossible. But for God, all things are possible. God wants each of us there at the foot of the Cross with Mary and John, so he makes that possible in a spiritual way.

 

[Gorgias]

Its more than just a re-presentation, because we don’t just present Jesus’s sacrifice (am event which happen in history at a certain time) to the Father, as if we are pointing it out to Him again.

Except that Jesus’ sacrifice transcends the event of 33AD; it exists eternally. If you read Revelations, you’ll see that the Feast of the Lamb occurs in heaven, in eternity. So, we’re not looking to an event that happened once, ended, and can never be made present to us – we’re looking at an event that is eternal.

thinkandmull:

Why do we need to bring an event from the past into the present if that event accomplished everything it intended to?

Well, we’re not bringing the sacrifice into the present – we’re taking ourselves out of the present and into the presentation of the sacrifice.

An even better question is HOW this is possible. What does it mean to have a past time transferred to latter times and locations?

That’s why we point to the eternal presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus to God. It’s not just the temporal event of Calvary, although it proceeds from it.

 

[thinkandmull]

The Feast of the Lamb is distinct from Sacrifice.

The Bible says that it was Jesus Passion that saved us, not His Eternal determination to suffer that Sacrifice. It was Jesus’s love in the face of pain in on that specific day which saved us. Scott Hahn likes to say we enter Heaven, but again, that is mysticism; the “present” temporal reality of every Mass shouldn’t be denied.

I am trying to fathom this somehow…

 

[R_C]

Please, do review the proper chapters of the Catechism, which can be found online on the Vatican website. I believe most (if not all) of your questions are answered there.

 

[Della]

The Feast of the Lamb is distinct from Sacrifice.

The Bible says that it was Jesus Passion that saved us, not His Eternal determination to suffer that Sacrifice. It was Jesus’s love in the face of pain in on that specific day which saved us. Scott Hahn likes to say we enter Heaven, but again, that is mysticism; the “present” temporal reality of every Mass shouldn’t be denied.

I am trying to fathom this somehow…

Jesus doesn’t and didn’t make any determination to suffer eternally. He offered his one time death and suffering within eternity:

Hebrews 7:27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

His was a one time offering. Ours is merely a re-presenting of his one time offering. His is an eternal sacrifice in that we can draw on it throughout time. In the OT the sacrifices made on the altars of bulls and goats were looking forward to the one time sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Now that Christ’s sacrifice has been made, we re-present Christ’s one time sacrifice to the Father within our time. The crucifixion is the apex around which all the biblical sacrifices turn, and the one event we re-present. Christ doesn’t suffer and die again–he did that once for all. But he established a way we could “tap into” his sacrifice through the celebration of the Eucharist. We use physical means to gain a spiritual reality.

 

[Gorgias]

Please, do review the proper chapters of the Catechism, which can be found online on the Vatican website. I believe most (if not all) of your questions are answered there.

This is a good idea. thinkandmull, you can find the appropriate sections beginning at paragraph 1322 of the CCC

Here’s a quick selection, reiterating what’s been said here in this thread so far:

1362 The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice, in the liturgy of the Church which is his Body.

[1364] When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ’s Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.

1365 Because it is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: “This is my body which is given for you” and “This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.”

1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit

1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: “The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.” “And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner. . . this sacrifice is truly propitiatory.”