Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Lord, we ask you to send us your spirit, so that we may penetrate more deeply into the mystery of this sacrifice of the mass, through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

So, in this episode, we're going to, um, enter into the sacrificial dimension of the Mass.

And this, I think, is less well-known by the faithful, even than the real presence, right?

Um, surveys have shown us the decline of faith, tragically, in the real presence among Catholics.

But I think it's, the decline is even, um, larger, in fact, I would say much larger, with regard to this aspect of the Mass as sacrifice.

During the first 15 centuries of the history of the church, the sacrificial dimension of the Mass was not controversial.

It was simply taken for granted by all, it was not the subject of any controversy, as far as I know.

Um, but in the 16th century, it became the center of huge controversy, and was rejected by the entire Protestant world.

And as a result, um, not only Protestants, but also Catholics, um, have come to have a much more shadowy, um, notion of the sacrificial dimension of the Mass.

And I think, th- for the most part, the Catholic faithful don't have a clear idea even why sacrifice should be offered to God in the first place, and how the sacrifice of Calvary is present, um, in the Mass, that the sacrifice of Calvary is made present in every Mass.

And so there's a great need for faith formation, um, precisely on this topic of the sacrificial dimension of the Mass.

And yet, it's so beautiful and profound, right?

We are allowed, in the Mass, to be present at Calvary, right?

I wasn't alive 2,000 years ago, nor were you, um, so as to be present at Calvary when Christ offered himself.

And so, Christ has given to us the Mass, so that we could be present there today, and offer him to his Father, right?

Together with the whole Church, and to offer ourselves with Him.

John Paul II, um, at the beginning of his pontificate, um, wrote a great, um, letter on Holy Thursday, Domine Cei Cene, On the Lord's Supper, it's from 1980, and he says there, "The Eucharist is, above all else, a sacrifice.

All who participate with faith in the Eucharist become aware that it is a sacrifice," should become aware, um, "a consecrated offering." And in a later document, from the end of his pontificate, um, the apostolic letter Mane Nobiscum Domine, Stay with Us, Lord, he writes, "There is no doubt that the most evident dimension of Eucharist is that it is a meal.

Yet, it must not be forgotten that the Eucharist meal also has a profoundly and primarily sacrificial meaning." Unquote.

Now, we've all probably heard this, um, kind of, um, alternative, "Is the Mass a banquet or a sacrifice?" And again, as we saw earlier, um, the posing of the question is bad, because it's posed as an either/or, and the answer, of course, is both/and, it is both meal and sacrifice.

But first, it's sacrifice before it's meal, and it's always a sacrificial banquet.

And we'll come back to that in our eleventh episode, when we look at holy communion.

John Paul II, in his Eucharistic encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia from 2004 writes, quote, "By virtue of its close relationship to the sacrifice of Golgotha," and I'll come back to that later in this talk, "the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the strict sense, and not only in a general or metaphorical way, as if it were simply a matter of Christ's offering himself to the faithful as their spiritual food." Right?

It is that, right?

But it's more than that.

He continues, "The gift of his love and obedience to the point of giving his life is, in the first place, a gift to his Father.

Certainly it is a gift given for our sake, yet it is first and foremost a gift to the Father.

In giving his sacrifice to the Church, Christ has also made his own the spiritual sacrifice of the Church, which is called to offer herself in union with the sacrifice of Christ." Unquote.

That's what happens in every Mass, right?

I may not be...

I'm certainly not fully aware of it, right?

I can't be.

But, um, we want to be as aware as possible of what's really going on.

Christ is offering himself to the Father in every Mass, and we're joining in the offering and offering ourselves with him, together with the whole Church.

Let's go back to basics here.

Why, why is sacrifice offered to God?

And I think that's one of the problems is we have a very shadowy notion of sacrifice, because we don't see other religions offering sacrifice, as would have been the case, for example, when Saint Paul, um, made his missionary voyages.

The whole, um, obviously the Jewish world, but also the whole pagan world, was very familiar with sacrifices, and probably understood its purpose.

Um, it's a part of-...

obviously, of religion, but the classical world understood religion in a way different than we do.

We tend to think of it as a kind of system of giving worship to God, or a system of belief, or a system of rights.

But for the classical world, religion is first and foremost a virtue, a virtuous attitude of soul by which I'm rightly directed to God, and it's a part of justice.

Justice is that virtue by which we give each one their due, and so not only my neighbor has something due to him, but God has something due to him, and that is that we love him, we adore him, that we thank him, that we, um, are sorry for our sins that offend him, and we ask him for whatever we need.

Um, love abobo, right?

Those are the things, obedience, hope, and reparation for sin, those are the things that are due to God, right?

And therefore, religion is that virtue by which we seek to give him his due.

The problem, of course, is that we can't give him what is fully his due.

Only one human being could do that, right?

Jesus Christ, his son.

Um, and sacrifice is an act of this virtue.

Right?

It's an act by which we, um, outwardly, um, seek to give honor to God.

It's not the only act of the virtue of religion, right?

A more important act, even, more, I should say more primary is prayer, right?

Prayer being that act by which spiritually we give him honor and ask, right?

So we adore him, we thank him, we ask for all that we need, and in a particular way, we express our sorrow for sin and ask for his forgiveness of our sins.

Right?

Those are the four purposes of prayer, and they're likewise the four purposes of sacrifice.

The difference is that sacrifice is offered outwardly and socially, and the reason for that is that we're not pure spirits, we're not angels.

We're human beings who have bodies and are social beings, and God is the maker not just of our soul, but of our bodies and our social life, because he's made us social.

And so it's fitting and right that we give him honor in a way that includes our bodily dimension, that is in a visible way, a visible and sensible way, and in a social and communal way.

Right?

And that is, we do it together.

And in the offering of sacrifice, um, it makes sense, in order for it to be done sensibly and communally, it makes sense that some, um, act on behalf of the whole community, and those are the priests.

Right?

So sacrifice involves an offering, and that's social because it's offered by a priest on behalf of a community.

And we see this in all the cultures of the world.

Um, Saint Augustine speaks about the, the nature of sacrifice in his great work, The City of God, Book 10.

He says there, "We understand that the significance of those acts," he's talking here about the sacrifices of Israel, "was the same as that which is now performed among us." In other words, the sacrifice of the Mass and the different sacrifices of Israel had the same ultimate purpose.

Right?

And he, he says, "That is, the intention of which is that we may cleave to God and seek the good of our neighbor for the same end." In other words, to express our ordering to God, our adoration, thanksgiving, um, contrition, and, um, petition, um, and ask for the gift of unity.

And he says that, "The visible sacrifice is the sacrament that is the sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice of the heart." Right?

We're gonna come back to this notion more in a subsequent episode when we look at our participation in offering the Mass.

But in every sacrifice, there's the outward aspect and the inward aspect, and the outward aspect is the sacrament or sacred sign of the invisible sacrifice of the contrite and humbled heart.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria expresses a similar idea.

He says, quote, "In our sacrifices, we, to a certain extent, immolate and offer our soul as in an image to God." Right?

But we do it sensibly because we have our bodily dimension.

Back to Saint Cyril.

Um, "We do this when we die to the world and to the wisdom of the flesh, when we mortify our vices and are crucified with Christ, and we spend our days in submission to his holy will." Right?

That's what we're signifying.

That's the inner sacrifice that we're signifying or representing with the outward sacrifice.

So sacrifice, like prayer, is offered for four ends.

There's that handy acronym, Acts, to adore, um, to express contrition, to give him thanks, and to, um, make supplication for, um, all of our needs.

Right?

To adore, to thank, to make satisfaction, and to ask for what we need.

And sacrifice can only be offered to God alone.

Right?

It's a way of honoring him uniquely as our s- our source, our creator, and our final end.

Right?

And so sacrifice can only be offered to God alone, and it would be idolatry, right, to offer it, that kind of honor, to another.

And as I mentioned in the second episode, um, Israel, and likewise the pagan nations, understood that, um......

the sacrifice that would represent the interior sacrifice of the heart and does not, does not consist in, um, inanimate things or riches, right, gold or jewels, but rather, um, the life, right?

So, we, we want to offer our hearts, and so it's expressed through offering what sustains our life, um, bread, wine, and above all, the blood of, um, of animals expressing life, and their flesh.

Right?

The lifeblood being the most important element, representing our own life, right?

It's a, a sacred sign.

So, what is offered in sacrifice represents the life of the one who is offering, right?

The offering of nourishment and blood represents our dependence on God as the source of our life, and our need to offer what sustains us in thanksgiving for God sustaining us.

And to offer that life also as a sign of the contrite and humbled heart on account of sin, right?

And in all of this, all of these sacrifices of Israel and the nations were, as we said in the second episode, um, prefiguring the sacrifice of Christ made present in the Eucharist.

All right, and so even if there, sin had n- not entered the world, let's say in the Garden of Eden, it still would've been fitting to offer God something in adoration, um, thanksgiving and supplication.

But once sin has entered the world, um, with the original sin and the countless, um, personal sins of human history, um, we need to offer sacrifice also to seek to make satisfaction.

Right?

In other words, it's still a sacred sign of the interior, um, the contrite and humbled heart, but we represent it outwardly, um, by the offering of the blood of sacrificial animals, right?

Representing the death incurred, the pardon that is implored, um, the satisfaction that is offered, and the life that we seek to regain.

But, of course, the blood of sacrificial animals cannot make atonement, right?

It's a pure sign.

As Hebrews 10:4 says, "It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins." Right?

Such sacrifices, by their very inadequacy, in some way profess our implicit desire for a better sacrifice that could truly reestablish the ordering to God disrupted by sin.

Right?

And as I mentioned, sacrifice and priesthood are inseparably linked.

Right?

The priest serves as a mediator between God and man, acting on behalf of the community, um, in offering for the community to God, and then being a mediator, likewise, in the dispensing of his blessings, right?

So, priesthood involves this twofold mediation, ascending and descending.

The offering of sacrifice on behalf of all, and the, um, mediation of God's blessings.

Key text here is Hebrews 5:1, "For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of man in relation to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins." Right?

The Eucharist most perfectly realizes this.

Right?

The priest, acting in the person of Christ, offers up an infinite sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary to God the Father, and wins for us, right, an infinite blessing, holy communion.

Right?

So that's...

The, the Eucharist is the one perfect sacrifice, um, together with Calvary.

So let's look now first at Calvary though.

So, Calvary, Christ's sacrifice on Calvary is the one perfect sacrifice of human history.

Um, perfect also, so in its offering to God what is due, right?

We can't do that.

Christ could do it because He offered Himself, right?

He gave Himself totally to His Father, um, in His crucifixion, adoring His Father, thanking His Father, but above all, making satisfaction for the sins of the world.

And w- how do we...

How does that work, satisfaction?

So, satisfaction when, um...

We can know this intuitively in our personal relations.

Suppose, God forbid, I offend my wife.

What should I do?

I have to apologize, right?

First thing, apologize.

And even before that, um, turn my heart away from it.

Be...

Have sorrow over it, right?

Express that to her, apologize.

But, um, I should also do something else, and that would be offer her something that would be more pleasing to her than my sin was displeasing, and sometimes that can be hard to do, depending on what we do to disrupt the relationship.

All right.

Christ, likewise, on Calvary, wanted to offer something to His Father more pleasing than all human sin is displeasing, right?

Because He's our head and He wanted to make satisfaction for all His members, real or potential.

That is, all human beings who have ever lived before Him and after Him.

And so His sacrifice accomplished this because He offered Himself, a divine person, to His Father with a total self gift, having loved His Father enough to the end, that is, to the shedding of all His blood in, in the greatest difficulty, right, crucifixion....

above all, the love, right, that's motivating this and animating it, that was more pleasing, more in the line of good than all human sin put together from the beginning of history to its end is displeasing, right?

We can imagine justice has to do with, um, a balance, right?

And justice restores balance, and so sin, right, weighs...

So it's all human sin put on one scale, weighing down, Christ's sacrifice outweighs it, right?

Is more pleasing and thus is a true sacrifice of expiation or atonement, which will, could not have been the case for the sacrifices of Israel or the nations, right?

They, the blood of lambs and goats and bulls is not more pleasing than sin is displeasing, but Christ's sacrifice was.

And thus it's the one perfect sacrifice that perfectly accomplishes the virtue of religion in this act of sacrifice.

And furthermore, Christ's sacrifice had a perfect unity.

This is something Saint Augustine points out in his great work on the Trinity, book four.

He says there are four things to be considered in every sacrifice, whom it is offered to, whom it is offered by, what it is that is offered, and who it is offered for.

Right?

And, um, the point of sacrifice is to mediate, right?

And so in Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, all four of those come together.

This on- so this is Saint Augustine, quote, "This one true mediator in reconciling us to God by His sacrifice of peace would remain one with Him to whom He offered it." Right?

Because He and His Father are one.

He made Himself one with those for whom He offered it, us, in the incarnation becoming our head.

And what did He offer?

Himself.

Right?

The same He Himself who offered and what He offered was one and the same, the sacrifice of Himself.

Right?

Priest and victim being the same.

Right?

And so you have a perfect unity of the Father and the Son, Son offering to the Father, the Son as priest of His own sacrifice, both priest and victim offering on behalf of His potential members, that is all mankind.

All right.

So Calvary was the one perfect sacrifice, and we might think, might be tempted to think, "Well, we're done.

Jesus did everything on Calvary, we're done.

There doesn't need to be any more sacrifice offered to God." But that would not be a good conclusion, because we saw at the beginning of this talk that sacrifice is in the nature of man, because it's an expression of the crucial virtue of religion.

It's part of human nature that we make sacrifices, each one of us, to represent the interior sacrifice of our heart, because we're social and sensible bodily creatures.

We need to do this, um, in an outward way that's expressing the inward self gift, and so we still have to offer sacrifice.

And Jesus would not have been perfecting religion if He abolished sacrifice by doing it all Himself.

Rather, Jesus in, in sacrificing Himself the night before, He gave to His bride, we saw this in the first episode, that very sacrifice to be hers.

That is to belong to the church, to be the church's most precious possession, His very sacrifice, so that she could offer it to the Father every day of her life.

Church offering this in every Mass.

Right?

So it's fitting that the new covenant perfect religion, not destroy it or diminish it, and perfect it precisely by giving to His church the one perfect sacrifice of human history, a sacrifice that would be essentially identical with Calvary, because it would be a sacrifice in which Christ Himself is offered to the Father, and we offer ourselves with Him.

That is Christ gave not only Himself, Um, to the church in the real presence, but He gave Himself to His bride to be offered day after day in every place throughout the centuries until His second coming.

In other words, He wanted to make the sacrifice of Calvary, which is the center of human history, He wanted to make it the center of the life of His church and the life of each of His members, which is each one of us.

He wanted to make it the center of our lives by making it the center of our weeks.

In other words, He wanted to enter into human time and be offered again and again and again without multiplying it, because we offer always one and the same sacrifice.

Saint John Chrysostom has a great quote about this.

He says, "We always offer the same lamb, not one now and another tomorrow." Right?

That's because of transubstantiation makes the same Christ present.

So always the same one so that the sacrifice is one.

Right?

Because we're offering the same victim, not a different victim.

He continues, "As then while offered in many places, he is one body and not many bodies, so also He is one sacrifice.

He is our high priest who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us.

We now offer that victim which was then offered, which cannot be exhausted." And so every Mass is ultimately the same sacrifice, because we have the same victim and the same priest, Jesus, who working through the ministerial priest, offers Himself to the Father and not-Right?

It's the same sacrifice, because we have the same lamb, we have the same priest to offer that lamb, and we have the same intention of Christ's sacred heart in offering himself to the Father for our redemption.

And the Council of Trent made this its own in, in the explanation of the sacrifice of the Mass, saying, "It is one and the same victim.

The same person now offers it by the ministry of his priest, who then offered himself on the cross, the manner of offering alone being different." And that manner is, on Calvary it was a bloody offering resulting in physical death.

In the Mass, the one who becomes present is the risen Lord who dies no more.

Right?

And so it doesn't involve...

It's an un-bloody sacrifice that doesn't bring about a new death of the victim, right?

Because he can die no more, but which makes present in power and mystery that same deed of his self-gift, his loving us to the end, every day of the church's life in every place.

John Paul II, in Ecclesiae Eucharestia, and, speaks about this.

He says, "This sacrifice is so decisive for the salvation of the world, of the human race, that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father only after he had left us a means of sharing in it as if we had been present there.

Each member of the faithful can thus take part in it and inexhaustibly gain its fruits." And we saw this in the third episode, that Jesus in- didn't tell his apostles the place of the, the upper room, because he didn't want the, um, to be interrupted, right?

He didn't want to be, um, taken, um, before he had instituted the Eucharist.

He had to institute the last, the Eucharist so as to make the sacrifice of Calvary present throughout the life of the church.

John Paul II continues, "Even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world.

It unites heaven and earth.

It embraces and permeates all creation." Because it, right, it unites it, making peace, reconciling all creation with the Father by being more pleasing than all sin is displeasing.

Every Mass.

"The Son of God became man," this is John Paul II still, "in order to restore all creation in one supreme act of praise to the one who made it from nothing.

He, the eternal high priest, who by the blood of his cross entered the eternal sanctuary, thus gives back to the creator and Father all creation redeemed." So we have to think at every Mass, yes, Jesus is offering himself to the Father, but not alone, right?

He wants the whole church to join in that offering, and in some way, the whole of creation is offered with him.

Right?

But again, we can do it more intentionally or tragically less intentionally, and we want to make it more intentionally and more configured to the Lord's self-gift.

Now, so is this time travel?

Not exactly, but, um, Christ's sacrifice in Calvary was different than other human acts that simply pass into the past, right?

Because Christ's sacrifice in Calvary was the act of a divine person with an infinite efficacy and power that is un- inexhaustible, right?

So St. Thomas Aquinas says, "Christ's passion had a virtue which was neither temporal nor transitory, but everlasting," according to Hebrews 10:14.

"For by one oblation, he has perfected forever all those who are sanctified." Right?

And so Christ's passion has the same efficacy today as it did then, which is inexhaustible.

Joseph Ratzinger speaks about this, and saying, "This true sacrifice that turns us all into sacrifice, that is a sacrifice that is big enough to accept our little sacrifices and incorporate them into it..." He continues, quote, "...unites us with God and causes us to become godlike." Right?

"It's fixed and founded on an historical event, but doesn't lie behind us as a thing in the past, but becomes contemporary with and accessible to us in the communion of the believing, praying church." Right?

That is what the sacrifice of the Mass means.

And then he speaks of Luther, right?

Luther rejected the sacrifice of the Mass.

We'll look at that in the next talk.

And he says, "It lay, his error was a false concept of historicity, a misunderstanding of what is unrepeatable.

Christ's sacrifice is not sim- behind us as a thing of the past.

It touches all times and is present to us.

The Eucharist is not merely the distribution of something, but is rather the presence of Christ's paschal mystery, right, his sacrifice, which transcends and unites all times." And this idea made it into the catechism, a marvelous paragraph, a difficult one, but marvelous, 1085, which says, "His paschal mystery, Christ's paschal mystery is a real event, occurred in our history, but unique.

All other historical events happen once and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past.

The paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is, all that he did and suffered for all men participates in the divine eternity and so transcends all times while being made present in them all," right?

Through the Mass.

And ultimately, the, the last point here I want to make is, it's a Trinitarian event.

Every Mass is the sacrifice of the Son to his Father, made present through the power of the Holy Spirit, who also works on us and transforms us so that we can be incorporated into the offering and configured to the victim that we offer.

Right?

And so there's a...

For this reason, the Holy Spirit is invoked in every Mass twice, to transform the gifts into Christ's body and blood, transubstantiation.

That's the easy part, and then the difficult part, to transform us into union with one another and into union with Christ's self-gift.

So, every Mass is directed to the person of the Father.

It's a configuration with the Son in his sacrifice, but we can't do that without the Holy Spirit who configures us to the Son and empowers us.

And, um, I'm gonna leave it there.

Um, and in the next talk, we'll look at some of the objections to the sacrifice of the Mass and how we can, um, respond to them, um, through the Catholic faith.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

We give you thanks, Almighty God, for the gift of the sacrifice.

Help us to enter into it more fully every day.

Through Christ our Lord.