Is the Mass Idolatry?

[PetraG]

Adoration will of course seem like idolatry to anyone who lacks the faith to see the presence of Christ par excellence in what seems to the senses to be exactly the same as a round piece of distinctively-formed wheat flatbread, yes.

It’s just the same as those who didn’t believe that Our Lord, a man of no distinction who came from some nowhere backwater was God incarnate. Of course they thought he was a blasphemer when He presumed to forgive sins. Of course they did. What other conclusion could they draw?

How do you separate Christ incarnate, who looked like any other man, from Christ the Son of God?

You don’t. You would have seen what seemed to be an average Jewish man and by faith seen the Christ, the Son of God.

How is that?

 

[StAugustine]

That’s the best you can offer? I’m asking for help in understanding.

 

[PetraG]

Bad, because you imply I have no faith. Faith? In what? I believe in the reality indicated by transubstantiation.

But let me ask more slowly…

Are…the accidents…taken up…into…Christ?

Where is this taught? Where is this denied? How can the accidents of bread and wine have any relationship to Christ, they have no proper subject?

If they do not belong to HIM, the appearances of bread and wine, how can they be adored? They are created symbols that have no internal reality to any existing substance At ALL.

How… then… do… you… join…them…in…your…adoration… of…Christ?

The sensible has no relationship to the substantially present Christ, so HOW are the sensible signs worshipped? They are not God.

I didn’t say you had no faith. Are you saying that the religious authorities who rejected Christ were atheists? They were not.

I said you lacked the faith to look at a consecrated host and see Christ, just as some of the people who saw him in the flesh looked at a man and did not have the faith to see the Christ, the Son of God.

No one goes to adoration and adores the accidents–“Gee, Lord, you look good in whole wheat.” Please.

 

[StAugustine]

So here is the theological failure here-

When the substance of bread is changed into the substance of Christ, the accidents remain.

What is the specific relationship of the accidents to the Christ present in the altar?

In detail please.

 

[PetraG]

Try Jimmy Akin’s answer, which is sensible and sensitive:

Have you asked the Protestants questioning you how they explain to an atheist how an infinite God became incarnate?

 

[PetraG]

Why should the outward sensible signs be adored?

They aren’t

 

[StAugustine]

I will say it again- everything your senses tell you exist really does exist, but has no substance. These are creaturely realities and not godly realities- taste of bread, redness of wine, etc.

How can they be mixed in adoring Christ if they bear no relation to him?

 

[StAugustine]

So incensing the host at benediction and singing the divine praises to the Eucharist in a monstrance bears no relation to the sensible signs?

 

[PetraG]

You’re not talking about a materialist having this problem, but Christians, who believe that the 2nd Person of the Godhead, the Alpha and the Omega, became a human being. I don’t think the objection you are imagining is internally consistent.

 

[StAugustine]

It actually is because the Humanity Christ took is hypostatically united to his divinity and worthy of Worship. It’s Gods body.

But the sensible signs of bread and wine are not united to anything, they exist alone without any union to God.

So why do we involve them in an outward ceremonial worship?

 

[StAugustine]

I said sensible signs, not substance. The sensible signs are accidents which are not Christ.

If I cut the host, do I divide the body of Christ? No, I multiply the accidents.

If I pour the precious blood in two chalices do I multiply the instances of blood? No, I divide the accidents.

So tell me, since Christ’s presence is one thing and the appearances another, how can we mix adoring Christ with the appearances that are not Christ? And not only are the appearances not Christ, they have no relationship to him- they are appearances with no reality.

So how is that adorable?

 

[PetraG]

It actually is because the Humanity Christ took is hypostatically united to his divinity and worthy of Worship. It’s Gods body.

But the sensible signs of bread and wine are not united to anything, they exist alone without any union to God.

So why do we involve them in an outward ceremonial worship?

One of the most moving moments of the Synod came when we gathered in Saint Peter’s Basilica, together with a great number of the faithful, for eucharistic adoration. In this act of prayer, and not just in words, the assembly of Bishops wanted to point out the intrinsic relationship between eucharistic celebration and eucharistic adoration. A growing appreciation of this significant aspect of the Church’s faith has been an important part of our experience in the years following the liturgical renewal desired by the Second Vatican Council. During the early phases of the reform, the inherent relationship between Mass and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was not always perceived with sufficient clarity. For example, an objection that was widespread at the time argued that the eucharistic bread was given to us not to be looked at, but to be eaten. In the light of the Church’s experience of prayer, however, this was seen to be a false dichotomy. As Saint Augustine put it: “nemo autem illam carnem manducat, nisi prius adoraverit; peccemus non adorando” – no one eats that flesh without first adoring it; we should sin were we not to adore it. In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration. Receiving the Eucharist means adoring him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself. Indeed, "only in adoration can a profound and genuine reception mature. And it is precisely this personal encounter with the Lord that then strengthens the social mission contained in the Eucharist, which seeks to break down not only the walls that separate the Lord and ourselves, but also and especially the walls that separate us from one another.
(Sacramentum Caritatis, 66.)

 

[Fauken]

I am really disappointed by the failure to interact with the issue.

How is my question about Jesus appearing as a Lamb not relevant to the discussion? Would worshipping Him in such a form be idolatry or not, and if not, why not?

 

[StAugustine]

I explained it was a symbolic vision meant to convey a mystery. Christ is not a lamb in heaven. He is a man. And the appearance of a lamb is an appearance of him symbolizing himself in his totality, but it is a mystical symbol meant to indicate a facet of his earthly life, it can never be more than a symbol.

The sensible signs in the Eucharist, the accidents, are disconnected portions of reality that have no connection to Christ or the substances of bread and wine or the substances of his body and blood.

How then do we involve them in public SENSIBLE ceremonial worship? They aren’t him. So why are they worshiped?

 

[StAugustine]

Where is the relationship to the accidents explained?

 

[StAugustine]

Probably because of at least what they represent, and because Christ is present substantially and spiritually. And they can only get at him through the accidents, yet no travesty to the accidents can really assault God himself.

 

[rom]

“Are the accidents of bread and wine taken into the Godhead or not?”

If yes, where is this taught? If no, where is this taught?

No, the accidents of bread and wine do NOT become the accidents of Christ. This is taught by the Council of Trent, in the last paragraph of the sub-topic “Three Mysteries of the Eucharist,” which says: (italics added)

“The third, which may be deduced from the two preceding. although the words of consecration themselves clearly express it, is that the accidents which present themselves to the eyes or other senses exist in a wonderful and ineffable manner without a subject. All the accidents of bread and wine we can see, but they inhere in no substance, and exist independently of any ; for the substance of the bread and wine is so changed into the body and blood of our Lord that they altogether cease to be the substance of bread and wine.”

Therefore, the accidents do Not exist as accidents of the Body of Christ.

Everything sensible in the Eucharist is not Christ- he is not the taste of wheat, he is not the taste of wine, he is not the feel of bread, he is not the wetness of wine, he is not the infinitesimal division of particle from particle, he is not anything apprehended by the senses at all-

What then does it mean to worship those things that ARE apprehended by the senses???

Who said we worship the accidents apprehended by the senses? When we worship the Eucharist, we worship the reality hidden by those accidents. And that is the reality of Christ’s Body.

Do you worship the whiteness and roundness of the wafer? Do you worship that which tastes of wine?

Do you worship the outward sensible exterior things?

We worship none of the above.

And if you don’t…why do you mingle these things with the worship of the hidden Christ? Why?

We didn’t mingle them. Christ did. He invented this sacrament. And come to think of it, He made a good choice of hiding behind the accidents of bread and wine. What do you think would happen otherwise? We will look like cannibals consuming his heart, his eyes, his flesh, etc.?

 

[StAugustine]

I will not admit that Christ mingled adoration of the Godhead with a creature not united to that Godhead.

That’s the point. How is the idolatry avoided?

 

[ZMystiCat]

Part 1

Now, the accidents have no subject, they no longer refer to anything in reality. Since the substance of bread is gone, they are mere appearances without a connection to anything. They have no subject!

Accidents are how we perceive things, yes. Our bodies are very much geared towards dealing with the accidents of all we interact with, from the senses to how it reacts. It’s why our associations tend to be on the accidental level.

Normally, this doesn’t create a problem, since the the association we make of the accident generally, as far as we know, is the same as the substance. The Eucharist is a case where things become difficult because the association by accident is no longer actually in-line with the substance. The accident is still, in actuality, associated with the subject Jesus Christ, but the association that we make, due to the accident, is that of bread and wine. It’s the dilemma of what something is versus how we perceive it.

It is why I personally find it very helpful to spend time meditating after receiving the Eucharist. Without that, it is too easy to think I just ate bread and sipped wine rather than go beyond my immediate association and understand that I just ate Christ and sipped his blood.

But if they have no subject, then they are Created parts of reality with NO relationship to Christ!

As already mentioned, they have the subject of Jesus Christ.

But of course, God did not create accidents per se, for if God merely created accidents then the substances have existed eternally with God, implying that all has existed eternally with God but was merely in need of His applying accidents to them. In this case, even bread and wine are not created things, just eternally existing things that God applied accidents to. Of course, God is Creator, not Applier, so this doesn’t work in an orthodox view of God.

Now there is a sense in which accidents are obviously part of created order, but even then, Christ is not opposed to being like created things. After all, His becoming human mandated a human body be created, though Christ is not Himself created. In the case of the Eucharist, we are perceiving accidents which are part of created order, but that does not imply that what, or Who, is before us is created any more than Mary holding the baby Jesus implied He was created.

Therefore, to adore the sensible elements of the Host is to adore that which is created and NOT connected to Christ, and therefore constitutes idolatry.

We don’t adore sensible elements. We adore Christ and must overcome our association of what is before us to properly do that. When I bow, I am not bowing to bread. When I adore, I am not adoring bread. I am, in faith, bowing before and adoring Christ.

(cont…)

 

[ZMystiCat]

Part 2

(cont…)

An analogy- suppose we went to the tomb of Christ while he was in it and adored the tomb itself for holding the body of God, offered incense to the tomb and proceeded about the tomb chanting and hailing the tomb and worshiping it. Is it idolatry? Yes, for the tomb is not God, it contains God.

The major difference is that bread and wine don’t contain Jesus. Jesus is given to us in the appearance of bread and wine.

So how do we arise above a paganistic way of thinking of God “contained” in something without altering the incarnation? Are the Eucharistic accidents taken up into the Godhead? How and where is it taught? This would be like a Eucharistic Monophysitism…

First of all, shed the rather materialistic view that sees accidents as what something is.

Second, practice orienting your mind towards the reality of what is happening, not just what you perceive to be happening. Meditate after the Eucharist and contemplating what really happened, not the mundane thing we perceive to happen.