The Eucharist: Mystery of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion by Lawrence Feingold

Author:Lawrence Feingold
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
Published: 2018-04-08T14:00:00+00:00

THE SACRIFICE OF THE CHURCH

It is fitting, however, that the New Covenant not be without a sacrifice. But how can this be if the sacrifice of Calvary puts an end to sacrifice? The divine answer is that the New Covenant should have a sacrifice that is the same as Calvary, one by which the Church offers herself in offering her Lord.

Christ did not want His Church to be merely the beneficiary of His sacrifice, but also a co-offerer. He wanted her to be able to enter into the glorification of His Father accomplished by His sacrifice, for, as we have seen, the offering of sacrifice to God is both a duty and an inner need of man, a law written on our hearts. It was not enough for Christ to sacrifice Himself for His Bride. He wanted his Bride to be able to offer to the Father, together with Him, the perfect sacrifice. And since His Bride was to remain on earth until His Second Coming, He wanted her to be able to offer the perfect sacrifice in every place until His return.31

So, on the night before He died, Jesus wished to leave a perfect sacrifice to His Church. But what sacrifice could He give to His Church to offer to God, since He Himself in person was about to offer everything to the Father on the Cross? He could not give His Church a figure or prophecy of His own sacrifice, as God did to ancient Israel, for the figures were fulfilled on Calvary. Nor could He give the Church, His Bride, merely a symbol or remembrance of His great sacrifice, for that would be too little.

The solution was worthy of both the divine wisdom and the divine omnipotence. Christ willed to leave to his Church the same sacrifice that He offered His Father on Good Friday. By instituting the miracle of transubstantiation, Christ made Himself present in the Eucharist as the divine Victim, the same Victim who was offered in a bloody manner on Calvary. Furthermore, by instituting the priesthood at the same moment, He arranged to be continually present as High Priest offering His own Body and Blood in the sacrifice of the Mass through the ministerial priests ordained to act in persona Christi throughout the ages until His second coming. Nothing less than the Sacred Heart of Jesus Himself, burning with love for man, is present, mystically immolated together with His entire humanity and offered in this holy and immaculate sacrifice.

He is offered, however, not in the cruel and bloody manner of Calvary, in which His Blood was physically separated from His Body, but in an unbloody and sacramental fashion worthy of the Heart of God, in which His Blood is sacramentally separated from His Body, for, having risen from the dead, His Body and Blood can be physically separated no more. A second difference is that, on Calvary, Christ alone offered Himself. In the Mass, He allows Himself to be offered by His whole Mystical Body through His ordained ministers.

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