The World’s Salvation is the Eucharist
The World’s Salvation is the Eucharist
The Eucharist as Redemptive Sacrifice
“The world’s salvation is in the Eucharist. This is not a hyperbolical phrase; it is a sober statement of spiritual reality. The world’s salvation is its entering into the redemptive mystery of Christ. If this mystery becomes the constant preoccupation of human society, its daily deed, its chief concern, its highest aspiration, then society is saved.” (Page 169, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist by Abbot Vonier.)
If we are to enter into “the redemptive mystery of Christ” in the Eucharist, as Abbot Vonier says in the quote above, we ought to appreciate the Holy Mass as a representation of the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. When Christ instituted the Mass as a sacrifice, He did so in some keeping with Israelite ritual. Indeed, the worship of the Israelites centered on a sacrifice that is offered to God. But at the Last Supper, a new kind of sacrifice becomes the focus of Christian worship, where God Himself is the sacrifice being offered as well as the one who offers the sacrifice.
Then having sent certain young men of the Israelites to offer holocausts and sacrifice young bulls as peace offerings to the LORD, Moses took half of the blood and put it in large bowls; the other half he splashed on the altar. Taking the book of the covenant, he read it aloud to the people, who answered, “All that the LORD has said, we will heed and do.” Then he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.” (Ex. 24:5-8)
This is the reading for the feast of Corpus Christi (Year B), the feast that celebrates the Eucharist. From this reading, it’s clear that the element of sacrifice is central to worship for the Israelites. This sacrifice has a unifying element. The splashing of blood on both the altar and the people symbolizes a unity between the two. Furthermore, by this blood, the Israelites are renewed in the Covenant with the Lord God. This is, however, only one example of sacrifice in the Old Testament. Grain offerings and drink offerings or libations were other examples of offerings priests made in early biblical times. Jesus’ words at the Last Supper are related to this description of sacrifice in Exodus.
Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you. (Luke 22:19-20)
When our Lord states his body is given up and his blood is shed, he is using sacrificial language. Additionally, when he calls the cup that of the New Covenant, it reminds one of rituals like the one described in the Exodus passage. The very blood of Jesus, not the blood of beasts becomes the new ritual sacrifice that unites us to God and cleanses us of our sins. For if the blood of goats and bulls…can sanctify those who are defiled…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God (Heb. 9:13-14). Just as the blood splashed on the altar and on the people represents a bond in the covenant God made with His, so too is the Eucharist a sharing in the New Covenant. We are brought into communion with our God through the Mass, a much deeper communion than what the Israelites enjoyed.
If the Mass is a sacrifice, is there a certain part of the Mass we can call the moment of sacrifice? Could it be the reception of Holy Communion by the faithful? By the priest? What about when the priest breaks the Host? The moment of sacrifice in the Mass is the consecration of the bread and wine. It’s the moment of transubstantiation where the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Let’s go into the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation. Philosophical terminology will be helpful in our explanation of this process. First we must make a distinction between two philosophical terms substance and accidents. Substance is the what-ness of the thing. It’s what makes a thing that thing and not another thing. Accidents are things that can change about a thing without changing what the thing is. If that sounds confusing, here’s an example to help. Let’s say we have a violin. I can paint the violin purple with orange stripes, and it is now ugly but still a violin. I have changed the accidents of the violin, namely its color, but not the substance. Now, if I were to light the violin on fire, it is in fact no longer a violin; it is a pile of ash. I have changed the substance of the violin. Transubstantiation is unique because it is a change of substance but not a change in accidents. The substance of the bread and wine no longer remain after the priest says the prayers of Consecration. The substance of Christ’s flesh and blood is present. However, the accidents of bread and wine still remain. This type of presence is unique to the Eucharist. Nothing else on earth can claim to be the very substance of Christ’s flesh.
Jesus is both Priest and Victim. He is Priest because He is the one offering the sacrifice. He offers it through His priest on earth, but He is indeed the One offering the sacrifice. Christ is also Victim because He Himself is the sacrifice. The Mass is a representation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. This is not to say that the crucifixion happens again and again each time the Mass is celebrated; to say so would mean that the person of Christ is harmed with every Mass, which is not the case. But we can say that Christ is truly sacrificed on the altar because the one sacrifice of the Cross is here made present to us. Christ is truly present in the Eucharist on the altar. Our reception of Holy Communion at Mass puts our soul in direct contact with the saving work of the Cross. Holy Mass is the means by which the graces merited by our Lord on the cross are communicated to the faithful.
This distinctive contact of the soul with Christ’s redemptive work is a beautiful reality. For no act was more loving than Jesus handing Himself over to be crucified for our sins. The letter to the Ephesians says Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:25-27). In the Eucharist, our Lord Jesus means to cleanse and sanctify His Church, making it spotless and beautiful because of His sacrifice on the cross. It’s easy to think solely of the universality of Christ’s saving work; he died for all mankind, not just for you or for me. However, in the Eucharist, Christ’s sacrifice becomes more personal. The merits of His Passion and death are applied to a specific person in his or her own circumstances, in his or her own struggles and sorrows. One can know this because of the intimate and immediate contact one has with Christ in the Holy Eucharist. This is a beautiful gift Catholics have received.
“The world’s salvation is in the Eucharist,” says Abbot Vonier. Understanding how the Mass connects us to Christ’s salvific work on the Cross will help us enter into the redemptive mystery of Christ. Now it is our task to make the latter in society “its daily deed, its chief concern, its highest aspiration.”
