The Eucharist:
Living Drama of the Universe in Christ
Edward Holloway
The Mass is a drama, and most of us, even the well taught, unconsciously think of it like most other dramas - the celebration of an heroic action of the past. It is not so. The Eucharist is the eternally Living Drama of Jesus risen, victorious and living among his people.
As living and risen he is ever interceding for us as our great High Priest. The Mass is the one same offering of the Cross because it is the person who gives value to the sacrifice. He is the very sacrifice of the Cross, but now bearing in his hands and bestowing among his people the fruits of a new creation. "Father, I will that the men you have given to me should see the gory I had with you before ever the world was made." (Jn ) Thus his prayer at the last supper, in which his sacrifice was "ratum non consumatum" (consigned but not consummated) begins to be answered within history on the altars of the People of God wherever they may be - in great basilicas, grass roots parish churches, in shanty towns and jungle huts.Thus his painful "comsummatum est" (it is consummated) is now crowned with its fruit. For we are the fruit of that obedient love, that reparation in justice and perfection in Humanity which is redemption in Christ. We are gathered around this same Person of God, Jesus Christ, in the Memoriale Domini (Memorial of the Lord), in the everlasting Passover in which our High Priest - Son of God and also Son of Man and Lord of the Cosmos - ever lives to intercede for us in the Flesh of his Resurrection.The expression ‘Memorial of the Lord’ and the words at the consecration 'do this in memory of Me' are misleading to the Western mind. Christ's reference at the first Eucharist is to the Passover and means do this as your new and everlasting Passover in Me until I come again. That is, until the Eucharist on earth is fulfilled in the 'wine drunk new' in the banquet of the Kingdom of my Father - the banquet of the Eucharist of eternal life.That is why in the Roman rite of the new order of Mass there is this insistence, (especially in Canon number three), upon "calling to mind the death your Son endured for our salvation, his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven, and ready to greet Him when he comes again, we offer you in thanksgiving (i.e. Eucharist) this holy and living sacrifice."We will see later that the age of the Church Fathers - the first five centuries of the Christian Church - linked the liturgy upon our altars to the liturgy of Eternal Life which is envisioned in the book of the Revelations of St. John. On earth and in heaven the Cross and the Eucharist are just one liturgy.
A Liturgy which spans all creation
For the Jews the Passover was, (and for the strictly orthodox still is) much, much more than a memorial of the redemption from bondage in Egypt and the translation into a land 'flowing with milk and honey'. It is also the hope and expectation of the Messiah - the One to come - the Long Expected. In him the Law and the Prophets and the unique sign of Messianism which transfuses the whole vast history of the Bible fulfils the inner meaning of that "memorial" which is the Passover.So it is for the Catholic Christian. The Eucharist we celebrate as a 'thanksgiving' for the mercies of the Lord fulfilled in the redemption won in Jesus Christ is no mere remembrance of the past mercy of the Lord. It is its continual working out in the Kingdom of God on earth - his Church - until the climax of the age of the Messiah itself. This is the climax prophesied by Christ before Caiphas, who asked him: "’Are you the Christ, the Son of God the Most Blessed ?’ And Jesus said to him ‘I am: "and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven’" (Mark 14: 61-2).The Mass therefore is the living drama of our Living Lord. At the altar we are called to live it with Him and in Him. It is the contemplation of God in all his mighty works, from the beginning even until now. The Eucharist is a universal, a cosmic communion with God. That which we offer on earth does not stand alone, it is part of the Eucharist which is the Communion of God with his saints, with the holy souls - the Church of the purification - and with ourselves - the Church pilgrim on earth. We must recover our ability to see and understand it that way.This last point is summarised in the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, which are themselves climaxed in the Feast of Christ the King at the conclusion of the Church's liturgical year, just as it will conclude creation itself.
Contemplation and Loving of God
The Eucharist is more than the Church's primary and central act of adoration. Before the altar it is hers and our primary act of contemplative insight into, and savoured love of, God in His real presence.The Person of Christ in His Mysteries is enveloped by the incense of the prayers of his people. Let it be the luminous cloud which shines in our faces in the beautiful and hope-filled Masses we celebrate. The Person of Christ who comes upon our altar at the moment of the consecration is the one source and origin of all our contemplation and all our action. For in us, as in the life of Christ, the works follow from the inner savouring of God in knowledge and in love.The Eucharist is our power house of sheer contemplative knowing, loving, savouring in joy and in sorrow. Live it that way, teach it that way. Love it, or rather love Christ Our Eucharist in that way. The preaching and teaching, the proclamation of the Good News of the revelation of God in Christ, proceed first from the presence and priesthood of the Son of God and the Son of Man. Then, that proclamation draws us back again around the Master, to live and learn, to be holy, to love holily and to ask a loving pardon when we fail.The essence of the beatific vision will not be in words and teaching, but in savouring and loving. So here on earth the word goes out from Jesus Christ to draw us back again to the fullness of loving and of understanding the Master himself. Our calling is to sanctification in the ‘truth’, as was his own. For he said of himself: "For them do I consecrate Myself, that they may be made holy in Me" (John 17:19).Never forget this draw to the reverent contemplation of God in Christ in every Mass, whether solemn and high, plainsong or polyphonic, or folk, or something in between. The emphasis is not of concert, nor of theatre, nor of pop festival. The drama is the Master Himself, in all he has done, is doing and will consummate in the life and history of mankind.The Mass is never a "holy meal" which we celebrate around his ambiguous ‘presence’. The Mass is the self-giving of the Son of God into which we are taken in humble love. It is not ‘Godspell’; it is more than ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’; it is the manifest fullness which we have always been seeking to fill up the emptiness of our souls.The sheer fullness of the great liturgies of East and West were complete in their adult beauty by the beginning of the sixth century after Christ. They simply thrill to the majesty of God in his works, celebrated not as ‘great things done’, but as the glory of the Master, living, present, known and loving His own in the supreme celebration on earth of The Word made Flesh.The Roman Canon is beautiful, but somewhat laconic and lapidary in style as was the ancient Roman temperament. For my part, I admit, I warm more to the lovely lyrical liturgies of the Greek-writing Fathers of the Church, to the liturgies of St John Chrysostom and above all St Basil. But do not knock the new Eucharistic prayers of the Latin rite, whatever may be thought of the shortcomings (and they exist) of the transatlantic dominated ICEL translation. The third Eucharistic prayer has strong overtones of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom,, while the fourth is a most beautifully rendered synopsis in all essentials of the liturgy of St Basil . Its theology follows the same lines with remarkable clarity as we have been promoting through the "Faith movement" from its outset. We have had the humility to enrich ourselves from the treasures of the East.Because it will be unfamiliar to Western Rite Catholics I reproduce here, with thematic headings added, some of the Greek Anaphora - or Eucharistic prayer - of St Basil from the Eastern Rite:Priest: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of our God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.People: And with your spirit.Priest: Lift up your hearts.People: We have raised them to the Lord.Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord.People: It is right and just to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and undivided Trinity.
Trinitarian theme
Priest: Immmutable Being, Master, Lord God, adorable Father almighty, it is truly right and just and proper in view of the magnificence of Your holiness, to praise You, to bless You, to worship You,to give thanks to You,to glorify You who are the one only true God, and to offer to You, with contrite hearts and in a spirit of humility, this our rational adoration, because it is You who have given us the knowledge of Your Truth. Who is able to tell of Your powerful deeds, proclaim all Your praises or explain all the wonders which You have performed in every age'?Master of all things, Lord of heaven and of earth and of all creation, visible and invisible: You who are seated on a throne of glory and look down upon the depths below; You who are without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, boundless, immutable; the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of our great God and Saviour, of our Hope; of Him who is the image of Your goodness, the seal of Your likeness, who in Himself is the revelation of You, the Father; who is the living Word, true God, eternal Wisdom, Life, Sanctification, Power, the true Light, from whom the Holy Spirit shines forth, who is the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of adoption in sonship, the Pledge of future inheritance, the First-fruits of eternal benefits, the life-giving Power, the Source of sanctification, by whom every creature, rational and intellectual, is enabled to adore You and to extol You with eternal glorification; for all creation serves You.Angels praise You, Archangels, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and the many-eyed Cherubim; the Seraphim stand round about You, six wings to each and every one; and with two they cover up their faces, with two their feet, and with two they fly, the while they cry aloud to each other, with voices unceasing, Your never silent praises . .People: Holy, holy, holy ...
Christological theme: the Mystery of Christ
Priest: Together with this blessed company, Master and Lover of mankind, we sinners too cry aloud and say: truly holy are You, and all-holy; nor is there any limit to the magnificence of Your holiness, and You are holy in all Your works because all that You do is done in justice and in true judgment.
The History of Salvation
Part I: The nature of God's original planFor You shaped man, taking soil of the earth, and honouring him with Your image, You placed him in the paradise of delights, promising him immorality of life and enjoyment of eternal benefits if he would but keep Your commandments.
The frustration of the plan
But he disobeyed You, the true God who created him and when he succumbed to the deceit of the serpent and by his transgressions sentenced himself to death, You, 0 God, in Your just judgment, drove him out of paradise into this world, and made him return again to the earth from which he bad been taken,
The promise of a Redeemer
while disposing that by means of a new birth he should obtain salvation again, salvation in Your Christ.
Renewal in Christ the Redeemer
For You, good Creator, did not reject forever the creature whom You had made, nor did You forget the work of Your hands. but in Your mercy You visited him in many ways.
Preparation in the Old Testament
You sent the prophets; You worked wonders through Your saints, who were pleasing to You in every generation; You spoke to us by the mouth of Your servants, the prophets, foreannouncing to us the future salvation; You gave us the Law to help us; You assigned angels to guard us.
First coming: The Incarnation
Then when the fullness of time had come, You spoke to us in Your own Son, through whom also You created the world. He, being the brightness of Your glory and the imprint of Your substance, and sustaining all things by the word of His power, did not think it a thing to be clung to, to be equal to You, who are God and Father; but, remaining eternal God, He appeared on the earth and went about among men; and having taken flesh from the Virgin, He lowered Himself, taking the form of a slave, made in like form to the body of our lowliness, in order that He might make us in like for to the image of His glory.For since through a man sin had come into the world, and, through sin, death, Your only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of You, God and Father, being born of a woman, the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and being born under the Law, was pleased to condemn sin in His own flesh, so that those who had died in Adam might be brought to life in Him, Your Christ.
Realisation of the plan and of prophecy in the Life …
And having become a citizen of this world. He gave us the precepts of salvation, set us free from the seduction of idols and brought us the knowledge of You, the true God and Father, acquiring for Himself as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Death …
and puriying us in water and sanctifying us in the Holy Spirit, He gave Himself in our place to the death into whose power we had been sold because of sin.
Resurrection …
might fulfil all things in Himself, He loosed the painful bonds of death; and on the third day He rose again, and opened to all flesh the way of the resurrection from the dead. Since it was not possible for the Author of life to be overcome by corruption, He became the first fruits of those who have been laid to rest, the first-born from among the dead, so that He might hold first place in all things.
Ascension of Christ:
And ascending to heaven, He sat at the right of Your majesty on high.And completion in His Second ComingAnd He will come again to render to each one according to his works.
Sacramental Realisation in the Eucharist:
And He left us these memorials of His redemptive suffering which we have now brought forward in accord with His command.
Institution and present renewal:
For, about to go to His voluntary and celebrated and life-giving death, on the night when He surrendered Himself for the life of the world, taking bread into His holy and immaculate hands, and lifting it up to You, God and Father, giving thanks, blessing it, sanctifying it, breaking it, He gave it to His holy disciples and Apostles, saying: 'Take, eat, this is My Body, broken for you unto the remission of sins'.People: Amen.Priest: In like manner also, taking the cup of the fruit of the vine, tempering it,giving thanks, blessing it, sanctifying it, He gave it to His holy disciples and Apostles, saying: 'Drink of this, all of you, this is My Blood, that of the new covenant, shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins'.People: Amen.Its value as efficacious and prophetic memorialPriest: Do this in memory of me. For every timethat you eat this Bread and drink this Chalice, youwill beproclaiming My death and confessing Myresurrection.'"We too, Master, calling to mind, therefore, the redemptive sufferings accomplished through the life-giving Cross, the three days in the tomb, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven, Your being seated at the right of Your God and Father, and Your glorious and fearsome parousia - we offer to You from Your gifts that which belongs to You absolutely and completely."This anaphora of St Basil takes in just about the whole of all the works of God! But notice, it is not a commemoration of the past, it is a living exultation of God - living and present among his works - and it consummates with the bread and wine becoming God Incarnate - the fruit of Mary's womb - at the moment of climax, the moment of the words of Christ through which the Eucharist is constituted, whether as sacrifice or as the sacrament of God dwelling (literally "pitching his tent") among his people. In the anaphora of St Basil the people answer 'Amen!' to each of the words of consecration, over the bread and over the wine. I wish to God they did the same also in our Roman liturgy. It would reinforce their confused and muzzy faith.The Eastern rites too are full of the joy and presence of the angels of God. They are invoked in the Eucharist and just as fully in the sacraments of the Church. It used to be the same in the Roman rite and in the administration of our sacraments.The reference to the angels of God has not perished entirely in the Mass thank God, but almost entirely in our new rituals of the sacraments, which, taken as a whole, especially in the rite of the Communion of the sick and the anointing of the sick, are poor, emasculated, cut-down things. Even in the Mass, the vision of God enthroned above the "twelve legions of Angels" (Matt. 26:53) as Lord, God of hosts, has been enervated to ‘God of power and might’ - not a translation of what is there.All this must one day be put right. In the Middle Ages the churches of our parishes, even the humbler ones, had the walls of the sanctuary, and often the roof vaulting too, covered with frescoes of the angels of God. Just pretty medieval superstition? No: a realisation and explicit teaching that the Eucharist in which we participate with Christ is a Cosmic reality. It is the liturgy - i.e. public celebration - of the King of Kings, surrounded by his court and that means the angels and saints in blessedness, as well as ourselves, the plodding pilgrim Church on earth.
The rightful companionship of the angels
The angels of God are a reality, Christ refers to them frequently, including the guardian angels of the little ones who are never to be despised. The liturgies of the Greek-writing Fathers, (for they were of the Hellenic civilisation but not in fact Greek for the most part) abound in references to the angels, especially in the hymn the Cherubikon accompanying the Great Entrance.
In the West it is the preface at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass which joins the angels of God to our celebration on earth of the Oblation of Christ. The ‘angel of the sacrifice’ occurs in all the great ancient liturgies of East and West, and we have it in our original and oldest Canon, the Roman Canon, in which we pray:
"Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrificee to your altar in heaven. Then, as we receive from this altar the sacred body and blood of your Son, let us be filled with every grace and blessing."
A lovely thought: the body of Jesus upon the altar is borne by the Angel of the Sacrifice to the altar of the Father in heaven. There, in the love who is the Holy Spirit, Jesus is received and accepted as our pledge of peace and reconciliation and given back to us in all the fruits of his grace and blessing.It is because of this that we then exchange the sign of 'that peace' with each other. For this reason I am sure it is better and more fitting that the sign of peace should be given at the communion and not at the offertory, as some would wish because it was the practice of the early times. In time the Church saw a better and a deeper symbolism in giving his peace to one another and the gift of reconciliation with each other in that ‘forgiveness’ which we have just prayed for in the "Our Father", just before our Holy Communion in and with Christ.
The divine unity of Christ
We will have enormously more joy in God if we see the Eucharist in the dimensions of the first five centuries of the Church, the centuries in which all the great questions concerning the one personality, but twofold nature - one human and one divine - of Christ were hammered out in the fiercest of fires in controversy and General Councils.We never will or would get to the divine and human unity of the great liturgies of the Church from a Christology ‘from below’ (starting from ‘Jesus the man’ and trying to work towards some account of his divinity) which must always end up either with two people in Christ, or else a super-man adopted into the Divinity as an irrevocable sign and pledge of redemption.The emphasis of the Mass, as in Christology, is always upon the Divine - upon that eternal, pre-existent Word who, in taking flesh as man, said ‘mine’ of his human being. In Him there is unambiguously only the one Divine Me. Thus the great liturgies of East and West are all Christologies of the Divine descending in grace and favour to His creatures. They contemplate the glory of God shining in his angels - the purely spiritual creation - and the glory of God shining in the face of man, because the Eternal Word has taken flesh as Son, or Prince of Man, and dwells among us - his very flesh being the Tent of Meeting between God and mankind.Therefore all the liturgies of East and West link the Eucharist on earth to the Eucharist eternally celebrated in heaven as the everlasting joy and happiness of God, in which God interpenetrates all; and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the one principle of beauty and joy in all the works of God and in all the stages and degrees of his creation.The fourth Eucharistic Prayer of the New Order of the Roman rite allows us to savour something of the reality which we have been talking about in the more abstract written word. It summarises beautifully and simply the cosmic sweep of the vision of the glories of God which we also found in the anaphora of St Basil.The vision of the Eucharist in this fourth Canon is full of the vision of Christ we expound in the Faith Movement - the Incarnation decreed from the beginning of creation and not simply because of the Fall of man; the Kingship of Christ as the crowning glory over all creation of Him who is the Son of God and, as source and origin of humankind, Son of Man; the unity of all creation in God and his works fulfilled in Jesus Christ; and the tongue of man which speaks and praises God "in the name of every creature under heaven".Because nature without a soul cannot know and love God personally, but man, who in his body is the summit of all creation, and in body and soul is made for God in Christ, he can and must praise and love God in the name of all creation, whose final, crowning glory he is.There is so much of Christ as ‘heir to the ages’ in both the anaphora of St Basil and the fourth Canon of the Mass, although the anaphora of St Basil perhaps declares this aspect even more gloriously than our fourth Eucharistic prayer. You will find it again in the Apocalypse of St John, which the Christians of the first five centuries of the Church saw as the vision of the final end and meaning of the Eucharist - the glory of heaven; the final banquet of the Lamb of God; the New Jerusalem; the Thanksgiving or Eucharist of all the Saved, men and angels around the glory of the Holy Trinity.The references which the great liturgies of East and West took from the Apocalypse of St John are too many and too scattered for the scope of this paper. One can refer especially to the souls of the just "under the altar of God" who plead for the quick coming of the Kingdom and the end of all evil, to whom are given "white robes". We can note too - in chapter five - the vision of the Lamb, standing as once-slain with His escort of elders with harps and "golden vials which are the prayers of the saints". The same imagery occurs also in chapter eight where, before the altar of God, an angel is given "much incense" which represents the prayers of all the saints to be offered upon the golden altar before the face of God. And there is especially the final vision - in the final chapters of the book of Revelation - of God as the Light and Life and Food of all his creatures.We should bear in mind when reading the Book of Revelation that the references to the souls and prayers of "the saints" refer not only to those who are in heaven. It is the old meaning of ‘The People of God’. It means you. It means all of us. The Eucharist on earth is one Eucharist - in different phases and stages - with the Eucharist in heaven where Christ reigns in glory. On earth He both reigns in His beloved - us his people - and suffers in his witnesses, his ‘saints’ who "fill up in their bodies what is wanting to the Passion of Christ" (Col 1:24).This is how the Church in her liturgy sees and understands the Mass we offer, the Mass at which - on every Sunday without fail and daily in generous souls who are able - we assist and share with Christ. We are part of His ‘action’ in the Mass. We are also his friends in the Mass, bound to Him and to each other in a mutual bond of love around his altar. He said: "You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. I will not now call you servants, for a servant does not know his master's business. I have called You friends because everything I have learned of my Father I have made known to you. I have chosen you; I have appointed you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last. So that whatever you ask the Father in my Name, he may give it to you. This is my commandment to you, that you love one another". (John 15: 1517).This is how the Eucharist should be lived, loved and offered. It is an act of contemplative love unto the person of Jesus Christ: an act also of love for each other through Him, with Him and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.Do not love ‘it’, rather love ‘Him’. Jesus is our Eucharist. This is how the Mass should be taught. The Mass follows the very structure of the history of salvation as we love to teach and expound it in the Faith Movement: the fact of God, the ascent of his creation, the vision of ‘the Woman clothed with the sun’ - i.e. the meaning of the womb in creation as being for Mary and the Incarnation of Christ the King of the universe: then, too, the reality of the soul, its place in creation and evolution, the knowledge of God and the knowledge and consent to sin - i.e. the Fall and the inheritance of original sin: then the promise to the woman – "the seed who will crush the serpent's head": the revelation of God in the inner spirit of man and the public revelation in bible and tradition, growing through the ages and reaching its climax in Christ.In the Mass we teach also as we celebrate the Mystery of the Kingdom working out its triumph over the Mystery of Iniquity: the wonderful works and the glories, the wretched betrayals and the failures. We thrill to the prophets and the consummation of their vision in the Incarnation of God in Christ. We thrill to Our lord in preaching and in parable, in love and in contemplation. We agonise with Him in Golgotha - we who were and so often are the principle of His sweat of blood.We go to Him in a union and holy communion of mutual being - The Bread of our very life and being and of our transformation into co-sharers of the Divine Nature. All of this is The Holy Eucharist: The Mass.The Mass for me has always, even from boyhood, been a living joy and delight, but never until I read Dom Cyprian Vagaggini's Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy did I realise the fullness of its gift. In conclusion I quote from there the generous commendation of a modern non- Catholic theologian:It is interesting to see how a Protestant, G. Harbsmeier (Das wit. die Predigt und sein Wort nicht verachten, Munich 1958, pp. 161-162), profoundly hostile to the liturgy by reason of the dogmatics of his own confession, has understood so well that, in the logic of Catholic dogmatics, the Mass is necessarily the central point and the epitome of the mystery of salvation in action and that it reveals a perspective of prodigious grandeur."The Eucharist," he writes, "is not celebrated simply in memory of that night on which the Saviour was delivered up and betrayed. This also it does. But along with this … it represents ritually, in symbol, in gesture, in word, in song, just about the sum total of what the Scriptures contain. Those who perform this representation introduce there the sum of all that the world knows about the act of religion … There is presented to our gaze a vast translation into worship of the salvation event: a work complete and perfect …Here it is understood that if worship can possibly serve as the realisation of the mystery, such a realisation ought to be total. In this sense the Eucharist is truly Catholic, because it translates into worship, really and in a global manner, the totality of the mystery of salvation. As interpretation it is a marvellous realisation".(p. 162)Harbsmeier is indeed generous in his assessment of Catholic teaching, but the Eucharist for us is not simply the ‘marvellous realisation of an interpretation’. It is Our Living Lord; it is His Life in which we share, in which we sorrow, in which we love, in which we hope and to which we commend ourselves in our own "consummatum est" in the last moments of life. Do not love ‘it’ that way; love Him that way.Notes1. The simile is linked to the "luminous cloud" which in the Old Testament is the accompaniment of the presence of the Living God. It is found at the "Tent of Meeting", it fills the Temple of Solomon on the day of its dedication. It is called the "shekinah", (i.e., the ‘abiding’ or ‘real presence’) and is present sometimes as 'glory' without the veil of cloud. It is clearly implied in Luke 1.3., of the conception of Christ, and again at the annunciation to the shepherds of the birth of the Saviour. It is present in its classic form in the transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor. A certain similar "glory" is manifest in the face of Moses "radiant" from familiar converse with God (Ex 34:29). The implication is that something similar may be seen in the sincere face at prayer from the power of the grace of God. It is not suggested that it always lasts! The deep, inner love of God is the fruit of long, patient, and humble obedience to the will of God.2. In discussing (Theological Dimensions of the liturgy p.324) the Liturgy and the involvement of the infrahuman world in worship, Dom Cyprian Vagaggini raises the question of the relevance of an orthodox theory of evolution to the liturgy of the Eucharist. In a footnote he writes: "In such a perspective the connection between man and the infrahuman world, and hence the unity of the cosmos appear still more wonderful ... all the lower creatures co-operate in a vast organised process to the formation of the human body, endowed by God with a spiritual soul and the human composite enters into participation in the divine life. Man has his apex in Christ in whom the lower world, the human world, the angelic, and the Divine have their greatest unity".Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy by Cyprian Vagaggini OSB (Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1976) p. 164.
We have heard too much damaging nonsense in the years since the Council, concerning our alleged excessive emphasis on the Divinity of Christ, to the forgetfulness of his being "human"etc. This theology which tends to demean the full understanding of the Eucharist and even more devotion to the Blessed Sacrament reserved, is implicit in a number of theologians. There is no way of ever understanding the Mystery of the Incarnation, except by beginning with the Christ of the prologue of the Gospel of St John, and of the Creed. There is no sense is which Jesus, the One Person, is not God. For this reason I would myself totally reject the foundations of the Christology of Karl Rahner S.J. Page 13
Edward Holloway
The Mass is a drama, and most of us, even the well taught, unconsciously think of it like most other dramas - the celebration of an heroic action of the past. It is not so. The Eucharist is the eternally Living Drama of Jesus risen, victorious and living among his people.
As living and risen he is ever interceding for us as our great High Priest. The Mass is the one same offering of the Cross because it is the person who gives value to the sacrifice. He is the very sacrifice of the Cross, but now bearing in his hands and bestowing among his people the fruits of a new creation. "Father, I will that the men you have given to me should see the gory I had with you before ever the world was made." (Jn ) Thus his prayer at the last supper, in which his sacrifice was "ratum non consumatum" (consigned but not consummated) begins to be answered within history on the altars of the People of God wherever they may be - in great basilicas, grass roots parish churches, in shanty towns and jungle huts.Thus his painful "comsummatum est" (it is consummated) is now crowned with its fruit. For we are the fruit of that obedient love, that reparation in justice and perfection in Humanity which is redemption in Christ. We are gathered around this same Person of God, Jesus Christ, in the Memoriale Domini (Memorial of the Lord), in the everlasting Passover in which our High Priest - Son of God and also Son of Man and Lord of the Cosmos - ever lives to intercede for us in the Flesh of his Resurrection.The expression ‘Memorial of the Lord’ and the words at the consecration 'do this in memory of Me' are misleading to the Western mind. Christ's reference at the first Eucharist is to the Passover and means do this as your new and everlasting Passover in Me until I come again. That is, until the Eucharist on earth is fulfilled in the 'wine drunk new' in the banquet of the Kingdom of my Father - the banquet of the Eucharist of eternal life.That is why in the Roman rite of the new order of Mass there is this insistence, (especially in Canon number three), upon "calling to mind the death your Son endured for our salvation, his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven, and ready to greet Him when he comes again, we offer you in thanksgiving (i.e. Eucharist) this holy and living sacrifice."We will see later that the age of the Church Fathers - the first five centuries of the Christian Church - linked the liturgy upon our altars to the liturgy of Eternal Life which is envisioned in the book of the Revelations of St. John. On earth and in heaven the Cross and the Eucharist are just one liturgy.
A Liturgy which spans all creation
For the Jews the Passover was, (and for the strictly orthodox still is) much, much more than a memorial of the redemption from bondage in Egypt and the translation into a land 'flowing with milk and honey'. It is also the hope and expectation of the Messiah - the One to come - the Long Expected. In him the Law and the Prophets and the unique sign of Messianism which transfuses the whole vast history of the Bible fulfils the inner meaning of that "memorial" which is the Passover.So it is for the Catholic Christian. The Eucharist we celebrate as a 'thanksgiving' for the mercies of the Lord fulfilled in the redemption won in Jesus Christ is no mere remembrance of the past mercy of the Lord. It is its continual working out in the Kingdom of God on earth - his Church - until the climax of the age of the Messiah itself. This is the climax prophesied by Christ before Caiphas, who asked him: "’Are you the Christ, the Son of God the Most Blessed ?’ And Jesus said to him ‘I am: "and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven’" (Mark 14: 61-2).The Mass therefore is the living drama of our Living Lord. At the altar we are called to live it with Him and in Him. It is the contemplation of God in all his mighty works, from the beginning even until now. The Eucharist is a universal, a cosmic communion with God. That which we offer on earth does not stand alone, it is part of the Eucharist which is the Communion of God with his saints, with the holy souls - the Church of the purification - and with ourselves - the Church pilgrim on earth. We must recover our ability to see and understand it that way.This last point is summarised in the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, which are themselves climaxed in the Feast of Christ the King at the conclusion of the Church's liturgical year, just as it will conclude creation itself.
Contemplation and Loving of God
The Eucharist is more than the Church's primary and central act of adoration. Before the altar it is hers and our primary act of contemplative insight into, and savoured love of, God in His real presence.The Person of Christ in His Mysteries is enveloped by the incense of the prayers of his people. Let it be the luminous cloud which shines in our faces in the beautiful and hope-filled Masses we celebrate. The Person of Christ who comes upon our altar at the moment of the consecration is the one source and origin of all our contemplation and all our action. For in us, as in the life of Christ, the works follow from the inner savouring of God in knowledge and in love.The Eucharist is our power house of sheer contemplative knowing, loving, savouring in joy and in sorrow. Live it that way, teach it that way. Love it, or rather love Christ Our Eucharist in that way. The preaching and teaching, the proclamation of the Good News of the revelation of God in Christ, proceed first from the presence and priesthood of the Son of God and the Son of Man. Then, that proclamation draws us back again around the Master, to live and learn, to be holy, to love holily and to ask a loving pardon when we fail.The essence of the beatific vision will not be in words and teaching, but in savouring and loving. So here on earth the word goes out from Jesus Christ to draw us back again to the fullness of loving and of understanding the Master himself. Our calling is to sanctification in the ‘truth’, as was his own. For he said of himself: "For them do I consecrate Myself, that they may be made holy in Me" (John 17:19).Never forget this draw to the reverent contemplation of God in Christ in every Mass, whether solemn and high, plainsong or polyphonic, or folk, or something in between. The emphasis is not of concert, nor of theatre, nor of pop festival. The drama is the Master Himself, in all he has done, is doing and will consummate in the life and history of mankind.The Mass is never a "holy meal" which we celebrate around his ambiguous ‘presence’. The Mass is the self-giving of the Son of God into which we are taken in humble love. It is not ‘Godspell’; it is more than ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’; it is the manifest fullness which we have always been seeking to fill up the emptiness of our souls.The sheer fullness of the great liturgies of East and West were complete in their adult beauty by the beginning of the sixth century after Christ. They simply thrill to the majesty of God in his works, celebrated not as ‘great things done’, but as the glory of the Master, living, present, known and loving His own in the supreme celebration on earth of The Word made Flesh.The Roman Canon is beautiful, but somewhat laconic and lapidary in style as was the ancient Roman temperament. For my part, I admit, I warm more to the lovely lyrical liturgies of the Greek-writing Fathers of the Church, to the liturgies of St John Chrysostom and above all St Basil. But do not knock the new Eucharistic prayers of the Latin rite, whatever may be thought of the shortcomings (and they exist) of the transatlantic dominated ICEL translation. The third Eucharistic prayer has strong overtones of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom,, while the fourth is a most beautifully rendered synopsis in all essentials of the liturgy of St Basil . Its theology follows the same lines with remarkable clarity as we have been promoting through the "Faith movement" from its outset. We have had the humility to enrich ourselves from the treasures of the East.Because it will be unfamiliar to Western Rite Catholics I reproduce here, with thematic headings added, some of the Greek Anaphora - or Eucharistic prayer - of St Basil from the Eastern Rite:Priest: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of our God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.People: And with your spirit.Priest: Lift up your hearts.People: We have raised them to the Lord.Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord.People: It is right and just to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and undivided Trinity.
Trinitarian theme
Priest: Immmutable Being, Master, Lord God, adorable Father almighty, it is truly right and just and proper in view of the magnificence of Your holiness, to praise You, to bless You, to worship You,to give thanks to You,to glorify You who are the one only true God, and to offer to You, with contrite hearts and in a spirit of humility, this our rational adoration, because it is You who have given us the knowledge of Your Truth. Who is able to tell of Your powerful deeds, proclaim all Your praises or explain all the wonders which You have performed in every age'?Master of all things, Lord of heaven and of earth and of all creation, visible and invisible: You who are seated on a throne of glory and look down upon the depths below; You who are without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, boundless, immutable; the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of our great God and Saviour, of our Hope; of Him who is the image of Your goodness, the seal of Your likeness, who in Himself is the revelation of You, the Father; who is the living Word, true God, eternal Wisdom, Life, Sanctification, Power, the true Light, from whom the Holy Spirit shines forth, who is the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of adoption in sonship, the Pledge of future inheritance, the First-fruits of eternal benefits, the life-giving Power, the Source of sanctification, by whom every creature, rational and intellectual, is enabled to adore You and to extol You with eternal glorification; for all creation serves You.Angels praise You, Archangels, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and the many-eyed Cherubim; the Seraphim stand round about You, six wings to each and every one; and with two they cover up their faces, with two their feet, and with two they fly, the while they cry aloud to each other, with voices unceasing, Your never silent praises . .People: Holy, holy, holy ...
Christological theme: the Mystery of Christ
Priest: Together with this blessed company, Master and Lover of mankind, we sinners too cry aloud and say: truly holy are You, and all-holy; nor is there any limit to the magnificence of Your holiness, and You are holy in all Your works because all that You do is done in justice and in true judgment.
The History of Salvation
Part I: The nature of God's original planFor You shaped man, taking soil of the earth, and honouring him with Your image, You placed him in the paradise of delights, promising him immorality of life and enjoyment of eternal benefits if he would but keep Your commandments.
The frustration of the plan
But he disobeyed You, the true God who created him and when he succumbed to the deceit of the serpent and by his transgressions sentenced himself to death, You, 0 God, in Your just judgment, drove him out of paradise into this world, and made him return again to the earth from which he bad been taken,
The promise of a Redeemer
while disposing that by means of a new birth he should obtain salvation again, salvation in Your Christ.
Renewal in Christ the Redeemer
For You, good Creator, did not reject forever the creature whom You had made, nor did You forget the work of Your hands. but in Your mercy You visited him in many ways.
Preparation in the Old Testament
You sent the prophets; You worked wonders through Your saints, who were pleasing to You in every generation; You spoke to us by the mouth of Your servants, the prophets, foreannouncing to us the future salvation; You gave us the Law to help us; You assigned angels to guard us.
First coming: The Incarnation
Then when the fullness of time had come, You spoke to us in Your own Son, through whom also You created the world. He, being the brightness of Your glory and the imprint of Your substance, and sustaining all things by the word of His power, did not think it a thing to be clung to, to be equal to You, who are God and Father; but, remaining eternal God, He appeared on the earth and went about among men; and having taken flesh from the Virgin, He lowered Himself, taking the form of a slave, made in like form to the body of our lowliness, in order that He might make us in like for to the image of His glory.For since through a man sin had come into the world, and, through sin, death, Your only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of You, God and Father, being born of a woman, the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and being born under the Law, was pleased to condemn sin in His own flesh, so that those who had died in Adam might be brought to life in Him, Your Christ.
Realisation of the plan and of prophecy in the Life …
And having become a citizen of this world. He gave us the precepts of salvation, set us free from the seduction of idols and brought us the knowledge of You, the true God and Father, acquiring for Himself as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Death …
and puriying us in water and sanctifying us in the Holy Spirit, He gave Himself in our place to the death into whose power we had been sold because of sin.
Resurrection …
might fulfil all things in Himself, He loosed the painful bonds of death; and on the third day He rose again, and opened to all flesh the way of the resurrection from the dead. Since it was not possible for the Author of life to be overcome by corruption, He became the first fruits of those who have been laid to rest, the first-born from among the dead, so that He might hold first place in all things.
Ascension of Christ:
And ascending to heaven, He sat at the right of Your majesty on high.And completion in His Second ComingAnd He will come again to render to each one according to his works.
Sacramental Realisation in the Eucharist:
And He left us these memorials of His redemptive suffering which we have now brought forward in accord with His command.
Institution and present renewal:
For, about to go to His voluntary and celebrated and life-giving death, on the night when He surrendered Himself for the life of the world, taking bread into His holy and immaculate hands, and lifting it up to You, God and Father, giving thanks, blessing it, sanctifying it, breaking it, He gave it to His holy disciples and Apostles, saying: 'Take, eat, this is My Body, broken for you unto the remission of sins'.People: Amen.Priest: In like manner also, taking the cup of the fruit of the vine, tempering it,giving thanks, blessing it, sanctifying it, He gave it to His holy disciples and Apostles, saying: 'Drink of this, all of you, this is My Blood, that of the new covenant, shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins'.People: Amen.Its value as efficacious and prophetic memorialPriest: Do this in memory of me. For every timethat you eat this Bread and drink this Chalice, youwill beproclaiming My death and confessing Myresurrection.'"We too, Master, calling to mind, therefore, the redemptive sufferings accomplished through the life-giving Cross, the three days in the tomb, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven, Your being seated at the right of Your God and Father, and Your glorious and fearsome parousia - we offer to You from Your gifts that which belongs to You absolutely and completely."This anaphora of St Basil takes in just about the whole of all the works of God! But notice, it is not a commemoration of the past, it is a living exultation of God - living and present among his works - and it consummates with the bread and wine becoming God Incarnate - the fruit of Mary's womb - at the moment of climax, the moment of the words of Christ through which the Eucharist is constituted, whether as sacrifice or as the sacrament of God dwelling (literally "pitching his tent") among his people. In the anaphora of St Basil the people answer 'Amen!' to each of the words of consecration, over the bread and over the wine. I wish to God they did the same also in our Roman liturgy. It would reinforce their confused and muzzy faith.The Eastern rites too are full of the joy and presence of the angels of God. They are invoked in the Eucharist and just as fully in the sacraments of the Church. It used to be the same in the Roman rite and in the administration of our sacraments.The reference to the angels of God has not perished entirely in the Mass thank God, but almost entirely in our new rituals of the sacraments, which, taken as a whole, especially in the rite of the Communion of the sick and the anointing of the sick, are poor, emasculated, cut-down things. Even in the Mass, the vision of God enthroned above the "twelve legions of Angels" (Matt. 26:53) as Lord, God of hosts, has been enervated to ‘God of power and might’ - not a translation of what is there.All this must one day be put right. In the Middle Ages the churches of our parishes, even the humbler ones, had the walls of the sanctuary, and often the roof vaulting too, covered with frescoes of the angels of God. Just pretty medieval superstition? No: a realisation and explicit teaching that the Eucharist in which we participate with Christ is a Cosmic reality. It is the liturgy - i.e. public celebration - of the King of Kings, surrounded by his court and that means the angels and saints in blessedness, as well as ourselves, the plodding pilgrim Church on earth.
The rightful companionship of the angels
The angels of God are a reality, Christ refers to them frequently, including the guardian angels of the little ones who are never to be despised. The liturgies of the Greek-writing Fathers, (for they were of the Hellenic civilisation but not in fact Greek for the most part) abound in references to the angels, especially in the hymn the Cherubikon accompanying the Great Entrance.
In the West it is the preface at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass which joins the angels of God to our celebration on earth of the Oblation of Christ. The ‘angel of the sacrifice’ occurs in all the great ancient liturgies of East and West, and we have it in our original and oldest Canon, the Roman Canon, in which we pray:
"Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrificee to your altar in heaven. Then, as we receive from this altar the sacred body and blood of your Son, let us be filled with every grace and blessing."
A lovely thought: the body of Jesus upon the altar is borne by the Angel of the Sacrifice to the altar of the Father in heaven. There, in the love who is the Holy Spirit, Jesus is received and accepted as our pledge of peace and reconciliation and given back to us in all the fruits of his grace and blessing.It is because of this that we then exchange the sign of 'that peace' with each other. For this reason I am sure it is better and more fitting that the sign of peace should be given at the communion and not at the offertory, as some would wish because it was the practice of the early times. In time the Church saw a better and a deeper symbolism in giving his peace to one another and the gift of reconciliation with each other in that ‘forgiveness’ which we have just prayed for in the "Our Father", just before our Holy Communion in and with Christ.
The divine unity of Christ
We will have enormously more joy in God if we see the Eucharist in the dimensions of the first five centuries of the Church, the centuries in which all the great questions concerning the one personality, but twofold nature - one human and one divine - of Christ were hammered out in the fiercest of fires in controversy and General Councils.We never will or would get to the divine and human unity of the great liturgies of the Church from a Christology ‘from below’ (starting from ‘Jesus the man’ and trying to work towards some account of his divinity) which must always end up either with two people in Christ, or else a super-man adopted into the Divinity as an irrevocable sign and pledge of redemption.The emphasis of the Mass, as in Christology, is always upon the Divine - upon that eternal, pre-existent Word who, in taking flesh as man, said ‘mine’ of his human being. In Him there is unambiguously only the one Divine Me. Thus the great liturgies of East and West are all Christologies of the Divine descending in grace and favour to His creatures. They contemplate the glory of God shining in his angels - the purely spiritual creation - and the glory of God shining in the face of man, because the Eternal Word has taken flesh as Son, or Prince of Man, and dwells among us - his very flesh being the Tent of Meeting between God and mankind.Therefore all the liturgies of East and West link the Eucharist on earth to the Eucharist eternally celebrated in heaven as the everlasting joy and happiness of God, in which God interpenetrates all; and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the one principle of beauty and joy in all the works of God and in all the stages and degrees of his creation.The fourth Eucharistic Prayer of the New Order of the Roman rite allows us to savour something of the reality which we have been talking about in the more abstract written word. It summarises beautifully and simply the cosmic sweep of the vision of the glories of God which we also found in the anaphora of St Basil.The vision of the Eucharist in this fourth Canon is full of the vision of Christ we expound in the Faith Movement - the Incarnation decreed from the beginning of creation and not simply because of the Fall of man; the Kingship of Christ as the crowning glory over all creation of Him who is the Son of God and, as source and origin of humankind, Son of Man; the unity of all creation in God and his works fulfilled in Jesus Christ; and the tongue of man which speaks and praises God "in the name of every creature under heaven".Because nature without a soul cannot know and love God personally, but man, who in his body is the summit of all creation, and in body and soul is made for God in Christ, he can and must praise and love God in the name of all creation, whose final, crowning glory he is.There is so much of Christ as ‘heir to the ages’ in both the anaphora of St Basil and the fourth Canon of the Mass, although the anaphora of St Basil perhaps declares this aspect even more gloriously than our fourth Eucharistic prayer. You will find it again in the Apocalypse of St John, which the Christians of the first five centuries of the Church saw as the vision of the final end and meaning of the Eucharist - the glory of heaven; the final banquet of the Lamb of God; the New Jerusalem; the Thanksgiving or Eucharist of all the Saved, men and angels around the glory of the Holy Trinity.The references which the great liturgies of East and West took from the Apocalypse of St John are too many and too scattered for the scope of this paper. One can refer especially to the souls of the just "under the altar of God" who plead for the quick coming of the Kingdom and the end of all evil, to whom are given "white robes". We can note too - in chapter five - the vision of the Lamb, standing as once-slain with His escort of elders with harps and "golden vials which are the prayers of the saints". The same imagery occurs also in chapter eight where, before the altar of God, an angel is given "much incense" which represents the prayers of all the saints to be offered upon the golden altar before the face of God. And there is especially the final vision - in the final chapters of the book of Revelation - of God as the Light and Life and Food of all his creatures.We should bear in mind when reading the Book of Revelation that the references to the souls and prayers of "the saints" refer not only to those who are in heaven. It is the old meaning of ‘The People of God’. It means you. It means all of us. The Eucharist on earth is one Eucharist - in different phases and stages - with the Eucharist in heaven where Christ reigns in glory. On earth He both reigns in His beloved - us his people - and suffers in his witnesses, his ‘saints’ who "fill up in their bodies what is wanting to the Passion of Christ" (Col 1:24).This is how the Church in her liturgy sees and understands the Mass we offer, the Mass at which - on every Sunday without fail and daily in generous souls who are able - we assist and share with Christ. We are part of His ‘action’ in the Mass. We are also his friends in the Mass, bound to Him and to each other in a mutual bond of love around his altar. He said: "You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. I will not now call you servants, for a servant does not know his master's business. I have called You friends because everything I have learned of my Father I have made known to you. I have chosen you; I have appointed you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last. So that whatever you ask the Father in my Name, he may give it to you. This is my commandment to you, that you love one another". (John 15: 1517).This is how the Eucharist should be lived, loved and offered. It is an act of contemplative love unto the person of Jesus Christ: an act also of love for each other through Him, with Him and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.Do not love ‘it’, rather love ‘Him’. Jesus is our Eucharist. This is how the Mass should be taught. The Mass follows the very structure of the history of salvation as we love to teach and expound it in the Faith Movement: the fact of God, the ascent of his creation, the vision of ‘the Woman clothed with the sun’ - i.e. the meaning of the womb in creation as being for Mary and the Incarnation of Christ the King of the universe: then, too, the reality of the soul, its place in creation and evolution, the knowledge of God and the knowledge and consent to sin - i.e. the Fall and the inheritance of original sin: then the promise to the woman – "the seed who will crush the serpent's head": the revelation of God in the inner spirit of man and the public revelation in bible and tradition, growing through the ages and reaching its climax in Christ.In the Mass we teach also as we celebrate the Mystery of the Kingdom working out its triumph over the Mystery of Iniquity: the wonderful works and the glories, the wretched betrayals and the failures. We thrill to the prophets and the consummation of their vision in the Incarnation of God in Christ. We thrill to Our lord in preaching and in parable, in love and in contemplation. We agonise with Him in Golgotha - we who were and so often are the principle of His sweat of blood.We go to Him in a union and holy communion of mutual being - The Bread of our very life and being and of our transformation into co-sharers of the Divine Nature. All of this is The Holy Eucharist: The Mass.The Mass for me has always, even from boyhood, been a living joy and delight, but never until I read Dom Cyprian Vagaggini's Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy did I realise the fullness of its gift. In conclusion I quote from there the generous commendation of a modern non- Catholic theologian:It is interesting to see how a Protestant, G. Harbsmeier (Das wit. die Predigt und sein Wort nicht verachten, Munich 1958, pp. 161-162), profoundly hostile to the liturgy by reason of the dogmatics of his own confession, has understood so well that, in the logic of Catholic dogmatics, the Mass is necessarily the central point and the epitome of the mystery of salvation in action and that it reveals a perspective of prodigious grandeur."The Eucharist," he writes, "is not celebrated simply in memory of that night on which the Saviour was delivered up and betrayed. This also it does. But along with this … it represents ritually, in symbol, in gesture, in word, in song, just about the sum total of what the Scriptures contain. Those who perform this representation introduce there the sum of all that the world knows about the act of religion … There is presented to our gaze a vast translation into worship of the salvation event: a work complete and perfect …Here it is understood that if worship can possibly serve as the realisation of the mystery, such a realisation ought to be total. In this sense the Eucharist is truly Catholic, because it translates into worship, really and in a global manner, the totality of the mystery of salvation. As interpretation it is a marvellous realisation".(p. 162)Harbsmeier is indeed generous in his assessment of Catholic teaching, but the Eucharist for us is not simply the ‘marvellous realisation of an interpretation’. It is Our Living Lord; it is His Life in which we share, in which we sorrow, in which we love, in which we hope and to which we commend ourselves in our own "consummatum est" in the last moments of life. Do not love ‘it’ that way; love Him that way.Notes1. The simile is linked to the "luminous cloud" which in the Old Testament is the accompaniment of the presence of the Living God. It is found at the "Tent of Meeting", it fills the Temple of Solomon on the day of its dedication. It is called the "shekinah", (i.e., the ‘abiding’ or ‘real presence’) and is present sometimes as 'glory' without the veil of cloud. It is clearly implied in Luke 1.3., of the conception of Christ, and again at the annunciation to the shepherds of the birth of the Saviour. It is present in its classic form in the transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor. A certain similar "glory" is manifest in the face of Moses "radiant" from familiar converse with God (Ex 34:29). The implication is that something similar may be seen in the sincere face at prayer from the power of the grace of God. It is not suggested that it always lasts! The deep, inner love of God is the fruit of long, patient, and humble obedience to the will of God.2. In discussing (Theological Dimensions of the liturgy p.324) the Liturgy and the involvement of the infrahuman world in worship, Dom Cyprian Vagaggini raises the question of the relevance of an orthodox theory of evolution to the liturgy of the Eucharist. In a footnote he writes: "In such a perspective the connection between man and the infrahuman world, and hence the unity of the cosmos appear still more wonderful ... all the lower creatures co-operate in a vast organised process to the formation of the human body, endowed by God with a spiritual soul and the human composite enters into participation in the divine life. Man has his apex in Christ in whom the lower world, the human world, the angelic, and the Divine have their greatest unity".Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy by Cyprian Vagaggini OSB (Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1976) p. 164.
We have heard too much damaging nonsense in the years since the Council, concerning our alleged excessive emphasis on the Divinity of Christ, to the forgetfulness of his being "human"etc. This theology which tends to demean the full understanding of the Eucharist and even more devotion to the Blessed Sacrament reserved, is implicit in a number of theologians. There is no way of ever understanding the Mystery of the Incarnation, except by beginning with the Christ of the prologue of the Gospel of St John, and of the Creed. There is no sense is which Jesus, the One Person, is not God. For this reason I would myself totally reject the foundations of the Christology of Karl Rahner S.J. Page 13