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_ Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/sacrificeofmassi00macd 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
Wibil Obstat: 
 G. H. JOYCE, S.J. 
 Censor deputatus. 
 
 Fmprimatut : 
 EDM. CAN. SURMONT, 
 Vic. Gen. 
 
 Westmonasterit, die 16 Augusti 1923. 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF 
 THE MASS 
 
 
 
 IN THE 
 BiG POO lA Se RET RE AN Dae a 
 TRADITION KS KAY OF PANES 
 
 Rr. Rev. ALEXANDER MACDONALD, DD. 
 
 BISHOP OF VICTORIA, B.C. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER FROM 
 
 Tue Rr. Rev. Monsicnor LEPICIER 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. 
 BROADWAY HOUSE: 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C. 
 1924 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND II YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH 
 
‘By One Sacrifice He hath perfected forever them 
 that are sanctified.”—Hebrews x. 14. 
 
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INTRODUCTORY LETTER 
 
 By the Right REVEREND MONSIGNOR LEPICIER, 
 the well-known Roman Theologian and Author 
 
 PrazzaA SAN Nicona DA T'oLENTINO 31, 
 Roma, 5, May 27th, 1923. 
 
 My Derar Lorp BisuHop, 
 
 You have asked me to go through 
 your Manuscript on the Sacrifice of the Mass, and 
 to let you know my opinion as to how you have 
 done justice to this great tenet of Catholic Theology. 
 It is a well-known fact that if the whole Catholic 
 Church holds that the Sacrifice of the Mass is the 
 true offering and immolation, in an unbloody manner, 
 of the great Victim once slain upon Calvary for our 
 sins, not all theologians are of one mind in assign- 
 ing the proper nature, or, as the schoolmen say, 
 the “ratio formalis constitutiva” of that sublime 
 sacrifice. 
 
 For, on the one hand, it must be acknowledged 
 as of faith that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is one with 
 the Sacrifice of the Cross, as far as the Victim and 
 the Principal Offerer, who is Christ, are concerned ; 
 on the other hand, it does not appear how there 
 can be a real sacrifice if no real immolation of the 
 
 victim takes place. 
 
Vill THE SACRIFICE -OF VLA Sida! 
 To solve this difficulty, your Lordship traces 
 
 back first the true notion of sacrifice in general, as 
 shown to us in those typical sacrifices of the Old 
 Law which foreshadowed the great Sacrifice of the 
 New Covenant; then, taking as your guide the 
 words of the Holy Council of Trent as interpreted 
 and brought into clearer light by the Great Pope, 
 Leo XIII, you show that as Our Lord in the 
 Last Supper offered Himself to the Father in view 
 of the bloody Sacrifice which was soon to follow, 
 and particularly in view of the Kucharistic Sacrifice 
 which was to be offered up by priests to the end 
 of time, so the Last Supper was the Sacrifice of 
 the Cross as begun, the immolation on Calvary 
 was the same Sacrifice consummated, and the Mass 
 is now the Sacrifice of the Cross as continued and 
 applied to us. Hence you justly infer the identity, 
 not only in kind, but also in number, between our 
 Mass and the Sacrifice of Calvary, of which the 
 Mass is at once the representation, commemoration, 
 and application, the only difference being that, on 
 Calvary, Christ’s blood was shed, whereas in the 
 Mass, it is not actually shed, though the shedding 
 of it on Calvary virtually perseveres on our altars, 
 just as the virtue of the plant virtually perseveres 
 in the seed and in the tree which springs from 
 that seed. 
 
 It may be that, in some minor details, I should 
 not entirely agree with the explanations given by 
 
INTRODUCTORY LETTER 1X 
 
 your Lordship; but, on the whole, your thesis, 
 beautifully worked out as it is, and brought out 
 by the testimony of the best writers on the subject, 
 makes upon the reader the most wholesome im- 
 pression, by bringing him to value, according to 
 its worth, that divine institution, the Holy Sacrifice 
 of the Mass, which, foretold by the prophet Malachi, 
 remains ever as the sun that illuminates and warms 
 up the cold darkness of this land of exile, the un- 
 quenchable source of all good for man in his way 
 to his eternal home in Heaven. 
 
 Rome, on the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, 
 1923, 
 
 Fr. ALEXIS MARY LEPICIER, 
 Ord. Serv. B.M.V. 
 

 
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POPE LEO XIII. ON THE MASS 
 
 {Extract from the Encyclical Caritatis Studium, 25th July 1898. ] 
 
 Lone before Christ was born the sacrifices of the 
 Old Law shadowed forth the Sacrifice of the Cross. 
 After His ascension into Heaven, that identical 
 Sacrifice is continued in the Mass. They greatly 
 err, therefore, who reject the Mass on the ground 
 that it detracts from the sufficiency of the Sacrifice 
 of Christ on the Cross, when He was offered once 
 to take away the sins of many (Heb. ix. 28). That 
 explation of sin was absolutely complete; nor is 
 it another, but the very same that is in the Mass. 
 For, since religious worship must express itself 
 sacrificially, our Divine Redeemer willed that the 
 Sacrifice once consummated on the Cross should 
 be prolonged forever. This is done, through the 
 Mass, which is not a mere image or nude memorial 
 of that Sacrifice but the self-same, though outwardly 
 different. And so the efficacy of the Mass, both 
 in explating sin and obtaining favours, derives wholly 
 
 from the Death of Christ. 
 
 oa 
 
1 
 a 
 A 
 
 ous 
 ee 
 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 For permission to reproduce much of the matter 
 contained in this volume I have to thank the editors — 
 of The Ecclesiastical Review and The Ave Mara. 
 The nucleus of the work is a little book given to 
 the public some eighteen years ago, under the same 
 title. I have been thinking and writing on the 
 subject, off and on, for nigh a quarter of a century. 
 My one aim has been to remove the question of 
 the sacrificial idea in the Mass from the realm 
 of theological speculation to the solid ground of 
 Scripture and Tradition. The great work of Father 
 de la Taille, S.J., entitled Mysterrum Fidei, which 
 was published two years ago, is on the same lines. 
 
 I know of no words that serve to set in bolder 
 relief the significance of the Mass than those of a 
 Protestant layman, Augustine Birrell. ‘If,’ he 
 wrote some years ago, “the Incarnation be indeed 
 the one divine event to which the whole creation 
 moves, the miracle of the altar may well seem its 
 
 restful shadow cast over a dry and thirsty land 
 
 xill 
 
XIV THE SACRIFICE (OR MRE Ai ASS 
 
 for the help of man, who is apt to be discouraged 
 if perpetually told that everything really important 
 and interesting happened, once for all, long ago, in 
 a chill historic past.” 
 
 Feast of the Epiphany, 
 1923. 
 
 Viororia, B.C. 
 
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAPTER I: THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE. 1 
 Sacrifice offering of victim to God—Victim must be 
 external and sensible—Must be immolated—Scripture 
 proof—Modern theory of sacrifice eliminates immola- 
 tion—Shown to be out of harmony with scriptural 
 notion of sacrifice—Animal victim, victim par eacellence— 
 Typical sacrifice of Old Testament taking of victim’s 
 life by shedding of blood—Sacrifice symbol of what 
 is due from man to God—Character of symbol fixed 
 by positive divine law—Looked onward to one great 
 Sacrifice — Objections met — Sacrificial destruction 
 essential, but not formal constituent—Levitical Law 
 —Without ceremonial offering by priest physical de- 
 struction but slaying of animal—Logical definition of 
 sacrifice not liturgical—True idea of sacrifice found only 
 in Great Ritual Code given by God to His people. 
 
 CHAPTER II: HISTORY OF THE SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN 
 THE MASS } i ; : é : ‘ 14 
 
 PERIODS IN History oF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN Mass. 
 —Only two really distinct—One marked by faith, 
 other by speculation. 
 
 I. Fathers and medieval theologians regard Mass 
 as simply one with Sacrifice of Calvary—Cloud of 
 witnesses—Own words cited in testimony—Concep- 
 tion of Eucharistic Sacrifice still unchanged after 
 seventh century—Stress laid on effects of Sacrifice 
 with view of showing its identity with Sacrifice of 
 Cross—Citations in point from some of most dis- 
 tinguished writers— Prayers of Mass attest formal 
 identity with Sacrifice of Cross— Eastern Church, 
 
 after schism, conserves pristine belief in same truth 
 XV b 
 
XV1 
 
 THE VSACRIFICE, OF WIRE MASS 
 
 —Testimonies of her theologians—Two points in con- 
 cluding review of medieval teaching: (1) Definition 
 of sacrifice by St Thomas—In content, as old as Old 
 Testament—(2) Singular opinion of Duns Scotus— 
 Logical outgrowth of general theory regarding 
 sacraments. 
 
 II. Renaissance and rise of Protestantism lead to 
 new conceptions of Eucharistic Sacrifice—Calvin’s ob- 
 jection against doctrine of Mass—Bellarmine’s answer 
 allows of rejoinder—Two ways of maintaining sacri- 
 ficial character of Eucharist—Theologians of time 
 enter upon way of theory and speculation—Traditional 
 teaching argumentum non apparenttum—Consequences 
 of new teaching—Two eminent theologians of sixteenth 
 century follow beaten way—Cardinal Cajetan’s con- 
 ception of Mass—Bloody Victim on Cross, unbloody 
 Victim in Mass, but one Sacrifice—Teaching of Melchior 
 Canus—Makes outward sacrifice in Mass symbol and 
 representation of inner and real Sacrifice of Christ’s 
 Body and Blood—Luminous extract from his great 
 work—True way of meeting Calvin’s objection. 
 
 CHAPTER III]: How THE MASss I8 A SACRIFICE 
 
 Two things of faith touching Mass—True view of 
 Mass looks beyond outward rite to bloody immolation 
 on Calvary—Precise point to be determined—Not 
 essence, but formal constituent, of sacrifice—Sacrifice 
 in formal sense includes victim and act of offering— 
 Act of offerer two-fold, internal and external—Latter 
 likewise twofold, immolation and ceremonial offering 
 —Possible objection considered—Formal constituent of 
 sacrifice consists in action—Action of Mass one and 
 same with action of Last Supper and Calvary—Not 
 three sacrifices, but One Sacrifice—Action of Sacrifice 
 of New Law Christ’s own—Christ’s action in Last 
 Supper virtually finished Sacrifice—Internal Act of 
 offering essentially sacerdotal act—Type and Antitype 
 —Sinner slays Victim; Priest offers sacrifice—Con- 
 secration Action of Christ’s Sacrifice—Parallel between 
 conservation of human species and perpetuation of 
 
 PAGE 
 
 35 
 
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS XVil 
 
 PAGE 
 Christ’s Sacrifice—-Mass numerically one and same 
 
 with Sacrifice of Calvary——Two citations in point 
 from St Chrysostom—Not Action alone, nor Passion 
 alone, but Action joined with Passion constitutes 
 Christ’s Sacrifice—Sacrifice of our Ransom forever 
 offered on our altars with ceremonial accessories lack- 
 ing on Calvary—True nature of mystic immolation— 
 Not sufficient of itself to constitute real sacrifice, else 
 Mass would be traced to Cenacle, not to Calvary— 
 Teaching of Trent on offering made at Last Supper— 
 Trevor’s criticism thereof—Comment thereon—Early 
 teaching in regard to offering made at Last Supper— 
 Christ from moment of offering dead in legal. and 
 ritual sense—Anticipated death by liturgical offering 
 of it—Ceremonial offering of Sacrifice of Cross made 
 in Mass—Mass absolute rather than relative sacrifice— 
 Corresponds to Commemorative Passover of Jews— 
 Relation of Mass to offering made by High Priest 
 within veil—Not essential—Rite of Sacrifice of Expia- 
 tion — Foreshadowed both offering within veil and 
 offering on our altars—Former offering also sacrificial 
 —Formal and solemn handing over to God of Life 
 once for all slain—Ransom wrought on Calvary ; paid 
 over in Heaven; applied in Mass—Our High Priest, 
 clad in livery of Passion, makes ceremonial offering 
 of Sacrifice—Beautiful One in His robe, descried from 
 afar by Seer—Same Sacrifice still offered on our altars 
 though seen not by eyes of flesh. 
 
 CHAPTER IV: THE ONE SACRIFICE . : ; : 59 
 
 Scripture and Traditicn witness to oneness of Christ’s 
 Sacrifice—Testimonies of St Matthew and St Paul— 
 The Christian Passover, like its type, one—Tradition 
 makes Mass continuation of Sacrifice of Calvary, and 
 essentially same—Testimonies of Fathers and ecclesi- 
 astical writers — Prayers of Mass— Teaching which 
 reached Trent Mass not other than Sacrifice of Cross— 
 What Council aimed to define—Decree reflects theo- 
 logical preoccupations of those who drew it up— 
 “Unbloody oblation” one and same with “bloody ”— 
 
XVIil 
 
 DHE SACRIFICE) OF V THE VMAs 
 
 Words of one of Fathers present—Sacrifice offered in 
 Supper consummated on Calvary—Action of Christ 
 in Supper still operative in Mass—Christ’s Sacrifice 
 shadowed forth in Old Testament—Holy Mass cere- 
 monial offering of Bloody Sacrifice—Separation of 
 Christ?s Body and Blood in Mass purely symbolical 
 —NMass sense-perceptible transcript of Sacrifice once 
 offered—W hat happened at Reformation. 
 
 CHAPTER V: CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE . 
 
 Pre-Reformation belief of whole Christian world about 
 Mass—Teaching of catechisms and manuals of instruc- 
 tion—Sacrifice liturgical offering and immolation— 
 Law and ritual of sacrifice laid down by God Himself 
 —Mass sacrifice in virtue of liturgical offering made 
 by Christ in Supper and His Death on Cross— 
 Teaching of St Thomas—Salient features of Old 
 Testament sacrificial rite followed out by Christ— 
 Supper, Calvary and Mass essential parts of One 
 Sacrifice—Death on Calvary rendered sacrificial by 
 Christ’s offering in Supper—Same continued in Mass 
 —Mass reiterated offering of One Sacrifice once offered 
 —Only after Reformation conceived of as other than 
 Sacrifice finished on Calvary—<Action of offering priest 
 formal constituent of sacrifice—Mass essentially same 
 sacrifice as that of Calvary—Cannot be essentially same 
 and essentially different—Exigency of modern theories 
 about Mass had led to whittling down of element of 
 destruction—Fallacy of this—Consecration not destruc- 
 tion but production of Victim slain on Calvary—Strik- 
 ing words of Greek Orthodox Bishop—In sacrifice both 
 thing offered and its immolation must be sense- 
 perceptible—Mystic immolation but image of real— 
 Liturgical symbol by effecting signifies—Teaching of 
 Cajetan and St Thomas—Passage from Petavius— 
 Mystic shedding of blood no real sacrifice—Victim of 
 Calvary still offered in Mass—Only sense-perceptible 
 object that placed on paten and poured into chalice 
 —Sacrifice considered from threefold point of view, 
 physical, ethical, liturgical. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 73 
 
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS X1X 
 
 CHAPTER VI: THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 96 
 
 To St Thomas, Supper, Calvary and Mass three stages 
 of One Sacrifice—This also traditional teaching— 
 Sacrifice finished on Calvary continued in Mass—To 
 continue, to keep in being— Words of St John 
 Chrysostom—Action in Last Supper primarily linked 
 with death on Calvary—What Christ did in the 
 Supper—What He offered there—Offering in Supper 
 not finished sacrifice—Christ legally and ritually dead 
 from that moment—Bloody Sacrifice and Unbloody 
 one and same—Our Sacrifice pre-eminently sin-offering 
 —KEssential elements thereof—Sacrifice of Calvary 
 ritually incomplete without ceremonial offering in 
 Mass—Priest, Victim, Action, Passion numerically 
 same make One Sacrifice—Attains complete essence 
 on Calvary, complete operation in Mass—Fourfold 
 end of sacrifice fulfilled in Mass only—Last Supper 
 not finished sacrifice—Inauguration of Sacrifice in 
 Supper, consummation on Calvary, liturgical com- 
 pletion and full operation in Mass—This last, the 
 fruit-bearing stage, most pleasing to God. 
 
 CHAPTER VII: THE PRIEST OF THE SACRIFICE DE A A 
 
 Christ offers Himself in Mass by ministry of priests— 
 These but instruments—Christ Principal Agent— 
 Testimonies of Fathers—Mass both representation and 
 re-presentation of Sacrifice of Calvary—Christ makes 
 His Body and Blood present on altar—Mode of 
 presence—Christ consecrates—Miraculous change can 
 be wrought only by Him—Priest’s action purely 
 instrumental—Power of working miracles proper to 
 God—Christ offered His Sacrifice as God and Man in 
 One Divine Person—Same still offers Sacrifice— 
 Human nature of Christ not agent—Godhead does 
 not offer Sacrifice, God does—Word spoken in Supper 
 operative evermore—Consecration offering of Sacrifice 
 —Both pragmatic and liturgical—“Our God and 
 Lord” offers Sacrifice to His Father. 
 
XX 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF OLEVIA SS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII: Tue First Mass 
 
 Last Supper not First Mass — Question of reality 
 underlying appearances—Supper different from Mass 
 —Separated by great gulf—Christ’s Body mortal 
 and passible in Supper—Nature of immolation shown 
 by what matter was apt for—Supper differs from 
 Mass as beginning from end that crowns it—Christ 
 offered, not Death only, but every item of Passion 
 in Supper—Mass Commemorative Sacrifice, Supper 
 foreshadowing of Sacrifice commemorated—Current 
 conception of Supper as sacrifice other than that of 
 Calvary not true conception—Supper sacrifice begun, 
 Calvary sacrifice completed, Mass sacrifice continued 
 —Sacrifice of Calvary operative in Mass—View that 
 Sacrifice of Calvary stands distinct from Supper and 
 Mass untenable—No offering on Calvary—Sum of 
 sufferings of Christ constituting His Sacrifice offered 
 in Supper, commemorated in Mass—Sacrifice of Ex- 
 piation prefigured Christ’s Sacrifice. 
 
 CHAPTER IX: OUR SIN-OFFERING 
 
 Christian partakers of altar that we have—Our 
 Sacrifice “mystery of faith”—Importance of Eucharist 
 —Old Testament sacrifices types of One Sacrifice of 
 Christ—This pre-eminently sin-offering—Parallelism 
 between old and new—Extends to person of priest— 
 Scriptural and Apostolic Conception of Mass—Ritual 
 offering of Victim slain on Calvary—Each generation 
 hands over to God price of ransom—Our communion 
 with Christianity in the unseen not the obsolete— 
 Mass in mind and worship of Church One Offering 
 for sins of world—Fountain source of Christ’s redeem- 
 ing grace—Through offering of, God pardons crimes 
 even though enormous. 
 
 CHAPTER X: THE CHRISTIAN PASSOVER 
 
 Passover most striking type of Christ’s Sacrifice— 
 Relation of type and antitype—Supper integral part 
 of Christian Passover ; offering in Supper and immola- 
 
 PAGE 
 
 122 
 
 130 
 
 137 
 
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS Xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 tion on Calvary essential parts—Not Last Supper alone 
 
 nor Calvary alone First Christian Passover—Ritual 
 directions in Book of Leviticus followed by Christ— 
 Twofold ceremonial offering, one before, other after 
 immolation—Former in Supper, latter in Mass— 
 Christ Priest forever according to order of Melchisedech 
 —His one oblation gets title of Eucharistic from form 
 of offering, name of Calvary from place of consumma- 
 tion—Christ Priest in Supper, Victim on Calvary— 
 Christian Passover follows Jewish—Original and Com- 
 memorative ; Bloody and Unbloody—For the Lord’s 
 Day the Lord’s Sacrifice. 
 
 CHAPTER XI: THE FEAST UPON THE SACRIFICE 146 
 
 Multiplication of loaves prelude to greater prodigy— 
 Jews went by what senses told them—Took Our Lord 
 to be carpenter’s son—Son of Living God—With Him 
 nothing impossible—Redeems promise in Last Supper 
 —Belief of all Christian antiquity—What bread does 
 for body Eucharist does for soul—Nourishes, makes 
 to grow, gives strength, is sweet to hungry—Must 
 have relish for Bread of Life—Should eat of it often— 
 Mortal sin sole bar to Communion—“ Suffer little 
 children to come unto Me”—Blessed Sacrament food 
 of soul, medicine of wounds, fountain source of true 
 happiness. 
 
 CHAPTER XII: THz MASS STIPEND . : peli) Ob 
 
 Mass stipend not alms but fee for service—Priest’s 
 title to stipend—Teaching of St Paul—Difficulty met 
 —Ministry of priest in class of service for which price 
 may be taken—Difference between case of priest and 
 that of doctor or lawyer—Difficulty raised by Suarez 
 —His own solution not satisfactory—True way of 
 solving difficulty — Stipend not given for Mass or 
 fruits of Mass but for service in saying Mass—Offerer 
 of stipend uses most efficacious means of obtaining 
 favours from God — Procures for God unspeakable 
 glory, for men unspeakable benefits. 
 
 APPENDIX . : : : . , t : : 163 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE 
 
 At the very outset it is needful to define precisely 
 what is meant by sacrifice. We cannot have a true 
 idea of the Mass if we have not first a true idea of 
 what sacrifice is. There is question of sacrifice in 
 the strict and proper sense, which may provisionally 
 be defined as the offering of a victim to God. This 
 is the elementary notion of sacrifice. ‘‘ Every high 
 priest,’ says St Paul, “is ordained to offer both gifts 
 and sacrifices; wherefore it is necessary that this 
 high priest also have something to offer.”—AHeb. 
 vill. 3. The victim must be externa] and sensible. 
 Sacrifice is an act of external worship, and the thing 
 sacrificed must therefore be perceptible by the senses. 
 Also, it must be suitable for sacrifice, that is to say, 
 such that it shall be acceptable to God. Under the 
 Mosaic dispensation God Himself made choice of and 
 set apart certain things to be offered in sacrifice. 
 Now, given a suitable victim, will the mere 
 offering of it to God by a priest, without anything 
 else, constitute a sacrifice? Scripture answers this 
 question emphatically in the negative. Not only is 
 there a distinction made between gifts and sacrifices, 
 
 both of which are said to be offered, but when God 
 : A 
 
2 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Himself laid down the law of sacrifice in the days 
 of Moses and Aaron, He gave explicit directions 
 that the thing offered should, in every case, be 
 immolated (Lev. i. seqg.). When the victim was an 
 animal, it was slain, and its blood poured out or 
 sprinkled, while at least part of the flesh was con- 
 sumed by fire. When a meal-offering was made, 
 part of it had, in like manner, to be consumed in 
 the same way. Immolation then, or the sacrificial 
 destruction of the thing offered, is, by God's own 
 institution, an essential element of sacrifice. The 
 victim is not a victim in the formal sense, that is, 
 in the sense in which the offering of it constitutes 
 sacrifice, until it isimmolated. Hven among heathen 
 peoples, who offered sacrifice to false gods, it was 
 regarded as consisting in the immolation of a 
 victim. 
 
 It is the more needful to insist upon this point 
 that there is a modern theory which would eliminate 
 the element of destruction from the essential concept 
 of sacrifice. It has been thus summed up: 
 
 ‘The external form of sacrifice seems to demand 
 some appropriate action done to the victim or gift, 
 by a lawful minister by which the gift is consecrated 
 or handed over to God. This, indeed, is implied in 
 the very word ‘sacrifice’ (sacrum facere), to make 
 a thing sacred, to consecrate it by some action of an 
 appropriate minister, whether he be priest or layman. 
 Such action of old was generally accomplished by 
 the outpouring or sprinkling of the blood or the 
 libation of the drink-offering, or the consumption of 
 the gift by burning. This, however, did not neces- 
 sarily imply that its destruction was essential to 
 
THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE 3 
 
 the idea of sacrifice, but was rather a means of 
 handing it over to God and thus making it sacred.” 
 
 “The burning or outpouring of the gifts hands 
 them over to God, and through their acceptance 
 God admits the giver to communion with Him; for 
 the essential character of the sacrificial gift is not 
 its destruction, but its handing over and consecra- 
 tion to God. The outpouring of the libations and 
 the killing of the animals are but the means for 
 handing over the gift to God and bringing the giver 
 into communion with Him. The killing necessarily 
 precedes the burning. ‘The victim is killed in 
 order to be offered’ (St Gregory, in Hzek. 1. 2, 
 hom. x. 19). In other words, the killing is pre- 
 paratory to the sacrifice.” 
 
 The word “‘ sacrifice,’ considering its derivation, 
 may properly be taken to mean the doing of a 
 sacred thing, the performing of a sacred rite, rather 
 than the making a thing sacred, or consecrating it. 
 The question, however, is not etymological, but theo- 
 logical. Does sacrifice involve the destruction of the 
 thing offered, or is it simply the ceremonial handing 
 over of it to God? The Scriptures do not seem to 
 leave any room for doubt on this point. We have 
 instances of a handing over and consecration of 
 things to God, which is not sacrificial. Aaron and 
 his sons were consecrated and made over to God, 
 with solemn and impressive ceremonial rites, but 
 this handing over was no sacrifice (cf. Haw. xxix. 
 and Levit. viii.). On the other hand, the offering 
 made of Isaac by his father was a true sacrifice, 
 because, though Isaac was not actually immolated, he 
 was in virtue of the obedience of his father and by 
 
4 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 proxy. God took the will for the deed, and Himself 
 
 provided a vicarious offering, for so it is written: 
 “And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered 
 him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.” 
 —(en. xxii. 13. Now the manner of the offering 
 of Isaac was this: ‘‘ Abraham built the altar there, 
 and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his 
 son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 
 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took 
 the knife to slay his son.”—Jb. xx. 9, 10. When 
 he slew the animal instead, after having laid it upon 
 the altar, the sacrifice was consummated without 
 anything more being done, though to make it a 
 holocaust, or whole burnt offering, the fire had to 
 be kindled and the victim consumed. But how are 
 we to know, it will be asked, that the sacrifice was 
 consummated by the slaying of the victim? We 
 can infer it from the fact this was so in the case of 
 the great Sacrifice of the New Law, of which all the 
 sacrifices of the Old Law were adumbrations. The 
 Sacrifice of Calvary was consummated by the death 
 of the Divine Victim upon the Cross. In token of 
 this, Our Lord, as St John tells us, said: ‘It is 
 consummated, and bowing his head gave up the 
 ghost.’—xix. 30. There was no ceremonial sprinkling 
 of the Victim’s blood on Calvary: it trickled slowly 
 to the ground from the pierced hands and feet. 
 There was no consuming of the Victim's flesh by 
 fire, save in a mystical sense; for the love greater 
 than which no man hath was as a fire which con- 
 sumed the Divine Victim. Yet a true sacrifice was 
 offered there, nay, in a high sense, the only true 
 sacrifice, for all the sacrifices that preceded were but 
 
THE ‘TRUE IDEA, OF SACRIFICE 5 
 
 the shadows which that Divine Event cast before. 
 Interpreting, then, the Old Testament by the New, 
 which reveals the truth clear of symbol and shadow, 
 we infer that the pouring or sprinkling of the 
 victim’s blood, in the Old Dispensation, was the 
 ceremonial offering of the sacrifice. The same may 
 be said of the consuming of the victim’s flesh by 
 fire, which, besides its symbolic meaning, figured 
 the coming Sacrifice in respect of the love that 
 inspired it. | 
 
 It may be urged that, at least in the case of the 
 meal-offering, the burning of “‘the memorial thereof 
 upon the altar” (Lev. ii. 2), was the true and only 
 sacrificial act. Granted; but this, instead of lending 
 support to the theory that would eliminate from 
 sacrifice the element of destruction, only makes 
 against it. For the sacrifice, in this case, consisted 
 in the very thing which that theory would eliminate. 
 Nor does it avail to say that destruction was only 
 the means of handing the victim over to God, since 
 it was the only means. You cannot eliminate that 
 which is the necessary means to an end, if you would 
 obtain the end. 
 
 It should be noted, moreover, that the meal- 
 offering was but a substitute for the offering of an 
 animal, which seems to have been the victim of God’s 
 own choice from the beginning of the world. Abel’s 
 sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock was acceptable 
 to God, while Cain’s, from the fruits of the earth, 
 was not (Gen. iv. 4). When Noah stepped out of 
 the ark and erected an altar to the Lord, it was the 
 ‘clean beast” and the ‘‘clean fowl” that he offered 
 in sacrifice thereon (Gen. viii. 20). The victim of 
 
6 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Abraham’s sacrifice, as we have seen, was an animal ; 
 so was the victim of the sacrifice offered by Moses 
 and his people in the land of Egypt (Lod. xii.) : so 
 was the victim in the principal sacrifices offered by 
 Aaron and his sons (Lev. i. 8): so was the victim 
 offered in the tabernacle from that time onward, and 
 afterwards in the Temple at Jerusalem, until the 
 coming of the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the 
 world. ‘And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake 
 unto him out of the tabernacle saying, Speak unto 
 the children of Israel and say unto them, When any 
 man of you offereth an oblation to the Lord, ye shall 
 offer your oblation of the cattle, even of the herd and 
 of the flock.”—Lev. i. 1, 2. From the fifth chapter 
 of Leviticus we gather that the meal-offering was a 
 concession to poverty in favour of those who were 
 unable to furnish an animal for the sacrifice: ‘‘ But 
 if his means suffice not for two turtle-doves, or two 
 young pigeons, then he shall bring his oblation for 
 that wherein he hath sinned, the tenth part of an 
 ephah of fine flour.”—TJbrd. v. 11. 
 
 The choice of an animal as the victim in the 
 sacrifices of the olden time was not without its 
 symbolic and figurative significance. God accepted 
 the life of the animal as an offering instead of the 
 life of the transgressor, and this in view of the Life 
 that was to be laid down in the after time. ‘‘ For 
 the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given 
 it to you upon the altar to make atonement ; for it is 
 the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the 
 life.” —Lev. xvii. 11. Once the life-blood of the 
 victim therefore, ebbed away, atonement was made, 
 and a sacrifice in the true and proper sense was 
 
THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE 7 
 
 offered. That which was over and above belonged 
 to the completeness of the sacrifice in its symbolic 
 and ceremonial aspect. The killing found its fitting 
 complement in the ceremonial offering of the victim 
 through the outpouring of its blood and the consum- 
 ing of its flesh by fire. 
 
 As the life of the flesh is in the blood, and life 
 becomes extinct when the blood is drained away, it 
 follows that the typical sacrifice of the Old Law 
 involved the taking of the victim’s life by the 
 shedding of its blood. And this it must needs have | 
 involved to correspond with its great Antitype in the 
 New Law. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, 
 that he lay down his life for his friend.” Such 1s 
 Our Lord’s own conception of the Sacrifice that He 
 offered: it was the laying down of His life for us. 
 Such, too, is the Apostle’s conception of that sacrifice : 
 “Nor yet that he should offer himself often, ... . 
 else must he have often suffered since the foundation 
 of the world.” —Heb. ix. 25, 26. 
 
 Sacrifice is symbolic of what is due from man to 
 God. There does not appear to be any reason in the 
 nature of things why the mere offering, or the conse- 
 cration and handing over of a gift to God, without 
 the physical destruction of it, should not serve the 
 purpose of this symbolism, though reasons of con- 
 oruity will suggest themselves. In any case, the 
 essential character of the symbol is not determined 
 by the law of nature. It is the positive divine law 
 that has determined it. And if it be asked why the 
 symbol expresses itself in the physical destruction of 
 the thing offered, the New Testament, faithful inter- 
 preter of the Old, will furnish, for our present pur- 
 
8 THE SACRIFICE, OF TRE MASS 
 
 pose, an adequate answer. “These things happened 
 to them in figure.” The Lamb was slain in type 
 “from the foundation of the world.” The physical 
 destruction of the victim, which served but as the 
 shadow of the good thing to come was essential, 
 because the physical destruction of the true Victim 
 was from eternity foreordained. This appears to be 
 the supreme reason why physical destruction is an 
 essential element of sacrifice. It also explains why, 
 of all the victims offered in the olden time, the 
 animal-victim was pre-eminently acceptable to God. 
 The shedding of its blood fitly symbolized the 
 shedding of that Blood which alone cleanses the 
 conscience from dead works that we may serve the 
 living God. 
 
 The advocates of the theory above referred to 
 appeal in support of it to the sacrificial terms 
 used in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It is deemed 
 significant that, of the many terms employed, 
 there is only one, the primary idea of which is 
 “slaughter.” The question, however, is not one 
 of words, but of facts and ordinances. It is a fact, 
 a hundred times made plain in the Old Testament 
 and attested by the Blood of the Victim in the 
 New, that physical destruction is, by the express 
 will of God Himself, an essential element of sacrifice. 
 Words, or names, are but the counters of ideas; 
 they set a thing before us under one or other aspect 
 of it; they do but throw out hints, while facts speak 
 plainly. Of the terms commonly employed in the 
 Old Testament in reference to sacrifice, two are 
 generic, “‘minchah,” from an obsolete root signifying 
 “to give” or ‘to offer,” and ‘‘korban,” which 
 
LOE PRUE IDEA ORV SACRIFICE 9 
 
 corresponds in sense to our “‘oblation”; one is 
 specific, “ zebach” from a root that signifies ‘‘ to 
 slaughter animals;” and four are not only specific 
 but distinctive, ‘“olaf,’ from a root signifying “to 
 ascend,” for the whole of the burnt offering ascended 
 in smoke to God; ‘‘shelem,” ‘‘to be in health,” 
 used to denote the peace offering or thanksgiving ; 
 ‘‘ chattath,”’ a ‘‘ going astray,” and “‘asham,” from a 
 root which means ‘‘to be guilty,” the names given 
 to the various sin offerings of the Jews. But 
 whether the Scriptural term employed be generic 
 or specific, the thing denoted by it, that is, the 
 sacrifice, in every case involved, not only the offering, 
 but the immolation of a victim. 
 
 Against the received notion of sacrifice as 
 involving necessarily the destruction of the thing 
 offered, it is urged that the victim in the Jewish 
 sacrifices was not unfrequently killed by the person 
 offering it, and not by the priest. If this objection 
 had any weight, it would prove too much—and 
 therefore proves nothing. It would prove that no 
 true sacrifice was offered on Calvary. For there 
 was no ceremonial offering of the Victim’s blood 
 on Calvary, and no consuming of the Victim's flesh 
 by fire. These rites of the Mosaic Law, in which 
 those who urge the objection place the whole essence 
 of sacrifice, were conspicuous by their absence on 
 Golgotha. With a gibbet for His altar, rude soldiers 
 to fasten Him thereon, gibes and derision instead 
 of prayer and ritual consecration, the great High 
 Priest of the New Law offered the Sacrifice of our 
 Ransom. It needs not, then, that the priest who 
 offers the sacrifice should himself slay the victim. 
 
10 THE, SACKIFICE \OF WLAEEM ASS 
 
 The one thing needful is that the victim be slain 
 by the will of the priest, as the Victim was 
 slain on Calvary—‘‘He was offered because He 
 willed it.” 
 
 It may still be urged that the killing is necessary, 
 indeed, but only as preparatory to the sacrifice. Is 
 not this what St Gregory means when he says, 
 “The victim is slain that it may be offered” ?? 
 Take a sentence out of its context, and it will 
 mean almost anything you like. The context, 
 including the sentence, runs thus: ‘‘ These, as has 
 been said, chastise their bodies, in accordance with 
 the words of the Apostle; that you may present 
 your bodies a living victim (Rom. xii. 1), (A living 
 victim may seem a contradiction in terms), for the 
 victim is slain that it may be offered. But the man 
 who is chastened for the Lord is a living victim. 
 He is said to be a victim and yet said to be alive, 
 because while his virtues live, his vices are slain. He 
 1s a victim, in sooth, in that he is dead to the vices 
 of this world, but alive, in that he does all the good 
 he can.” The words with their immediate context, 
 run in the Latin original, “‘ hostiam viventem. Hosta 
 quippe occiditur ut offeratur. Sed hostia vivens 
 est corpus pro Domino afflictum.” The particle 
 ‘““quippe” appears to be used here in an elliptical 
 sense, some such words as we have supplied being 
 understood. St Gregory is speaking of sacrifice in 
 the moral sense, and his allusion to sacrifice in the 
 strict sense, is purely incidental. The words of the 
 Apostle, ‘‘a living victim,” arrest his attention 
 
 1 In Ezxech., 1. 2, hom. 10, n. 19 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, tom. 76, 
 col. 1069). 
 
THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE wa 
 
 because of the paradox they involve, and he proceeds 
 to comment upon them: ‘A living victim. How 
 can this be, seeing that the victim is slain in order 
 that it may be a sacrifice? The explanation is that 
 a man may be slain and yet be alive—siain as to 
 his vices, alive by reason of his virtues. And in so 
 far forth as he is slain, in so far forth as he is dead 
 to the things of this world for the honour of the Lord, 
 he is a victim in the moral sense.” According to 
 St Gregory, then, the thing offered becomes a victim 
 and constitutes a sacrifice when slain unto the Lord. 
 “ Quod et hostia dicitur,. . . quia, . . . est a vitis 
 occisum, .. . quia jam hue mundo est a pravis 
 actibus mortuum.” The slaying, the death, the 
 destruction is, in his eyes, the consummation of the 
 sacrifice. He does not say that the thing offered 
 is a victim because it is offered, but because it 1s 
 slain, for sacrifice is the offering to God of a victim 
 that is slain. 
 
 But while the slaying or destruction of the 
 victim is beyond question an essential element of 
 sacrifice and its very foundation, it is not the formal 
 constituent of it. That is the ceremonial offering, 
 which, in the Levitical Law, was twofold, one before, 
 the other after, the slaying. The victim was first 
 offered to God ‘‘at the door of the tabernacle” 
 (Lev. i. 3), that is, before the high altar, and the 
 second time when the priest went into the holy place 
 with the blood and there handed it over to God. 
 
 There is no denying that many theologians have 
 laid too much stress on destruction or immolation, 
 and so have made it appear to be the one essential 
 element of sacrifice. Physical destruction aftects 
 
12 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 only the victim, whereas in sacrifice, the priest, too, 
 plays an essential part. It is the priest who offers 
 the sacrifice, and without this offering physical 
 destruction would be but the slaying of an animal. 
 Hence it is that, when a man had to make an offering 
 for sin under the Old Dispensation, he was forbidden 
 to immolate the victim in the field on pain of being 
 cut off from the people. The thing stands to reason. 
 Sacrifice is essentially an act of public worship, 
 indeed the essential act of public worship, and as 
 such must be perceptible by the senses. But if the 
 man were to immolate the victim by himself in the 
 field, the action would be private, and the lookers-on, 
 if such there should be, would think that he was 
 butchering a beast. The offering must thus be 
 external and sensible, that is to say, a ceremonial or 
 ritual offermg, and this, not immolation, is the 
 formal constituent of sacrifice. 
 
 In logic we define by genus and difference. A logical 
 definition of sacrifice is, thus, the offering to God by a 
 priest of a victim that is slain. Here “offering” is 
 the genus, and ‘‘ victim slain” the specific difference, 
 which marks this offering off from all other offerings. 
 And as the genus is material and the specific differ- 
 ence formal in a logical definition, destruction or 
 slaying, viewed as logic views things in a state of 
 abstraction, is the formal constituent of sacrifice. 
 Under the influence of this purely logical view of the 
 matter, theologians have put the whole stress on 
 destruction and made it by itself the one essential 
 element. But while destruction, coupled with the 
 internal act of offering, might constitute a sacrifice 
 under the law of nature, under positive divine law 
 
THE TRUE IDEA OF SACRIFICE 13 
 
 sacrifice is essentially a rite or ceremony, and 
 the ceremonial offering of the victim is its formal 
 constituent. The constituent elements of a rite are 
 to be gathered from the law which regulates the rite, 
 and the law, as we have seen, requires a ceremonial 
 offering of the victim both before and after its 
 immolation, which ceremonial offering, as being the 
 part proper to the priest or official performer of the 
 rite, must needs be the formal constituent element 
 of it. The theory which eliminates destruction, and 
 makes ceremonial offering the one essential element, 
 sins by default. But, in a liturgical point of view, 
 it is nearer the truth than the theory which places 
 the whole essence of sacrifice in the destruction of 
 the victim. 
 
 The true idea of sacrifice is not to be found 
 among pagan peoples who lived under the law of 
 nature with no light to guide them but that of un- 
 aided reason. Nor is it to be arrived at by the 
 method of speculation and theory. God is to be 
 worshipped in the way that pleases Him, not accord- 
 ing to the notions or caprices of men. As sacrifice is 
 the supreme act of public worship, the true idea of 
 it is, therefore, to be found only among people who 
 worshipped the one true God under a law super- 
 naturally promulgated by Him. In the Book of 
 Leviticus, the great Ritual Code given by God to 
 His people after He had led them out of the house 
 of bondage and set apart a special tribe to perpetuate 
 a priesthood and sacrifice, we find God’s own idea 
 of sacrifice formulated by Himself. ‘This we are to 
 follow, not any theory of sacrifice propounded 
 by men. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HISTORY OF THE SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN THE MASS 
 
 ) 
 
 By “sacrificial idea” is meant the idea of what 
 makes the Mass a sacrifice, or the conception of the 
 sacrifice entertained by those who have given thought 
 to the subject. Dr Vacant, in a learned brochure,’ 
 marks out three periods for separate treatment: the 
 first, or Patristic period, from the sub-apostolic age 
 till the time of St Gregory the Great; the second, 
 from the time of St Gregory to that of St Thomas of 
 Aquin; the third, from the time of St Thomas down 
 to our own. A careful survey of the whole field has 
 satisfied the present writer that the question did not 
 enter upon a distinctly new phase till the rise of 
 Protestantism in the sixteenth century. Up till 
 then, indeed, it had not even been mooted. If the 
 theologians of the Middle Age touch upon it at all, 
 it is but incidentally. To them not less than to the 
 Fathers, the Mass is but the offering, day by day, 
 under the sacramental veil, of the Victim once for 
 all immolated on the altar of the Cross. We may 
 thus distinguish two well-defined periods in the 
 history of the sacrificial idea in the Mass; one 
 marked by simple faith in the identity of the Sacrifice 
 of the Mass with the Sacrifice of the Cross, the other 
 by theological speculation, wide divergence of opinion, 
 
 1 Historre de la Conception du Sacrifice de la Messe dans  Englise 
 
 Latine, Paris 1896. 
 14 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 15 
 
 oreat uncertainty, and, it must be added, great con- 
 fusion. The former extends from the first century 
 to the sixteenth, the latter from that time to the 
 present. 
 
 I 
 
 The distinct affirmation by the Fathers of the 
 sacrificial character of the Holy Eucharist, has not 
 associated with it any explanation of the way in, 
 which the Eucharist is a sacrifice. It is impossible 
 to compile from Patristic sources a clearly cut and 
 
 sharply defined theory about it.* 
 
 What is here said is true also of Scholastic 
 sources, and for the same reason. With medieval 
 theologians as with the Fathers, faith inthe Mass 
 made theory about it uncalled for. Their mental 
 attitude on the question is set before us in the 
 following words of a distinguished theologian of the 
 seventeenth century: ‘If it be established that the 
 Sacrifice of the Eucharist is the same as that of the 
 Cross, it will be proved by the same means that in 
 the Eucharist a true sacrifice is offered (for no one 
 ever questioned the Sacrifice of the Cross).”? This is 
 precisely the point of view of the Fathers and of the 
 Doctors of the Middle Age, only they do not at all 
 concern themselves to establish the sameness of the 
 two sacrifices—which are two in name and outwardly, 
 but one inwardly and in reality. They assume this 
 as a first principle in all they say on the subject, as 
 a point of faith revealed by God and taught by His 
 Church. The Sacrifice of the New Law is one, 
 
 1 The Holy Eucharist: an Historical Inquiry (The Church Quarterly 
 
 Review, July 1901, p. 359). 2 Thomassin, De Incarnat. Verbi, 1. 10, 
 c. 17 (ad init.). 
 
16 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 whereof the Victim was once for all really immolated 
 on Calvary, and is ever since really offered, under 
 the forms of bread and wine, in the Holy Eucharist 
 —such is the belief handed down in the Catholic 
 Church from the time of the Apostles, a belief which 
 has survived the theories of post - Reformation 
 theology, greatly as they have tended to confuse 
 and obscure it. A cloud of witnesses, in the first 
 fifteen centuries, rise up to attest this, as many 
 witnesses indeed as there are writers on the subject. 
 Knough for our purpose to cite the clearest and most 
 weighty among them. 
 
 To St Ignatius Martyr, the disciple of St John, 
 the Kucharist is: “the Flesh of our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, which suffered for our sins.’* The same 
 thought is expressed in a striking way by St Cyprian. 
 “Hor the Passion of the Lord,” he declares, ‘‘is the 
 sacrifice that we offer.” ? ‘‘ Having obtained eternal 
 redemption,” writes St Ephrem, ‘Thou dost daily 
 renew Thy Sacrifice on the altar.”* St Cyril of 
 Jerusalem calls the Hucharistic Sacrifice ‘‘the un- 
 bloody service upon that Sacrifice of Propitiation,” * 
 v.e. the Sacrifice of the Cross. St Macarius calls it 
 the “‘ Divine Mystery itself of the Body and Blood of 
 Christ,” ° and St Gregory of Nyssa says that ‘ Christ 
 offers Himself as a Sacrifice in a hidden kind of 
 Sacrifice (the Hucharist) which can not be seen of 
 men. °. St Ambrose sees in the Eucharist ‘‘ that 
 saving Sacrifice whereby the sins of the world are 
 
 1 Ad Smyrn. 7 (Migne, Patr. Greca, tom. 5, col. 718, or rather 
 Funk, Patres Apostolict, tom. 1, p. 280). 2 Kp. 63, n. 17 (Migne, 
 Patrologia Latena, tom. 4, col. 398). 3 Opera Omnia (Syriac. et lat.), 
 tom. 3, p. 555. 4 Catech. 23, n. 8 (Migne, P. G., tom. 33, col. 1116). 
 5 De Charitate, n. 29 (P.G., tom. 34, col. 932). 6 In Christy Resurr., 
 orat. 1 (Migne, P.G., tom. 46, col. 612). 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 17 
 
 blotted out”, and conceives of it as the offering of 
 the Body of Christ “since, though Christ is not now 
 seen to offer, yet Himself is offered on earth . . 
 
 yea, Himself is plainly seen to offer in us, whose 
 word sanctifies the sacrifice that is offered.”? ‘‘ Let 
 us reverence, then,’ says St Chrysostom, “let us 
 reverence the table of which we ail partake, the 
 Christ who has been slain for us, the Sacrifice that 
 is laid upon it.”* Elsewhere he appeals in proof of 
 the sacrifice to the fact that He who was slain for us 
 is offered on the altar. ‘‘ Consider attentively,” he 
 says, ‘the proof of this sacrifice: Christ lies slain. 
 And wherefore was He slain? To establish peace in 
 heaven and on earth.”* Such, too, is St Augustine’s 
 conception of the Eucharistic Sacrifice: it is the 
 offering of Christ's Body once slain on the Cross. 
 “For this Sacrifice succeeded all those sacrifices of 
 the Old Testament, which were immolated as a 
 shadow of that which was to come .. . because for 
 all those sacrifices and oblations His Body is offered, 
 and is ministered to the communicants.”° He 
 regards it as being simply identical with the Sacrifice 
 of the Cross, declaring, in his Confessions, that “ the 
 Sacrifice of our Ransom was offered up” for the soul 
 of his mother Monica.® “If, then, the priesthood of 
 the Old Law has come to an end,’ are the words 
 of Theodoretus, ‘‘and a Priest after the order of 
 Melchisedech has offered sacrifice, and rendered other 
 sacrifices needless, why do the priests of the New 
 
 1 Hxhort. Virgin, c. 14, n. 94 (Migne, P. L., tom. 16, col. 880). 
 2 In. Ps. 38, n. 25 (Migne, P. L., tom. 14, col. 1102). 3 In, Lip. ad 
 om., hom. 8, n. 8 (Migne, P. G., tom. 60, col. 465). 4 Hom. I. de 
 Prod. Tudae, ns,6; (signe BP, G3 tom. 49). 5 De Cwitate Dei, 1. 
 PA Ce207 na 2 (Migne, P els tom. 41, col. 556). G1 Dy) Ge L2en soo 
 (Ibid., tom. 32, col. 777). 
 B 
 
18 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Law perform the Mystery? But any one who is 
 versed in divine things knows that we offer not 
 another sacrifice, but celebrate the memory of that 
 one and salutary oblation. For so our Lord has 
 given us commandment: This do for a commemora- 
 tion of me.”+ In like manner St Leo the Great 
 proclaims the absolute oneness of the Sacrifice of the 
 New Law: ‘“ Now also the various carnal sacrifices 
 having come to an end, the one oblation of Thy 
 Body and Blood takes the place of every different 
 kind of victim; for thou art the true Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sins of the world (Js. 1; 29): 
 and thou dost so accomplish in Thyself all the 
 mysteries that, as there is one Sacrifice instead of 
 every victim, there may be one Kingdom out of 
 every nation.”? ‘‘ From this, then, let us consider 
 what kind of a sacrifice in our behalf this is,” says 
 another Pope who bears the title of Great, “‘ which 
 for our salvation ever represents the Passion of the 
 Only Begotten Son.”* “For, in a unique way,’ he 
 says, “does this Victim, which renews for us in 
 mystery the death of the Only Begotten, save the 
 soul from eternal death.” * 
 
 From the time of Pope Gregory the Great, in 
 other words, from the beginning of the seventh 
 century, till the close of the fifteenth, the conception 
 of the Hucharistic Sacrifice remained unchanged. 
 It was still based on faith, not on theory; afiirma- 
 tion, not speculation, lay back of it. It is true that 
 the writers of this period put stress more especially 
 on the effects of the Sacrifice, or as Dr Vacant says, 
 
 1 Super Ep. ad Hebraes, c. 8 (Migne, P. G., tom. 82). 2 Serm. 
 
 59, c. 7 (Migne, P. L., tom. 54, col. 341), 3 Dial., iv. 58 (Ibed., tom. 
 77, col. 425). 4 Ibid. 
 
BioalOnyY: OF SACKLBICIAL IDEA TNGMASS” 19 
 
 conceive of it by its effects. This, however, they do, 
 not by way of showing that the Mass is a sacrifice, 
 but by way of setting forth its identity with the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross. Thus, in the twelfth century, 
 Alger the Scholastic, declares that, because on the 
 altar and on the cross we find the same Body of 
 Jesus Christ and the same effect wrought, to wit, 
 our salvation, and because there is for us but one 
 salvation: therefore, on the altar and on the cross 
 the sacrifice is one and the same.!' Here we have 
 the keynote of the teaching that prevailed throughout 
 the early and later Middle Age. In this, indeed, as 
 in the earlier time, the Eucharist 1s spoken of as the 
 “memorial” or the ‘‘image” of Our Lord’s Passion ; 
 but its essential note as a true sacrifice is ever 
 regarded as lying, not in its being a commemoration 
 or representation of the Sacrifice of Calvary, but in 
 its being one and the same with it. Enough to give 
 a few citations in point from some of the most dis- 
 tinguished writers of the time : 
 
 Because, therefore, our Redeemer to this day 
 carries on, in the commemoration of His Passion, all 
 that which He once wrought in His Passion, I con- 
 sider this to be the main reason why we ever renew 
 the memory of His sacred death by immolating daily 
 His Most Holy Body and Blood on the altar.—S. 
 Paschasius Radbertus.’ 
 
 If our daily sacrifice were other than that once 
 offered in Christ, it would not be true but superfluous. 
 —Alger the Scholastic.’ 
 
 1 De Sacr. Corp. et Sang. Dni., 1.1, c. 16 (Migne, P. L., tom. 
 180, col. 786). 2 Lib. de Corp. et Sang. Dnr., c. 9,n. 2 (Lbid., tom. 
 120, col. 1295). 3 Loc. cit. 
 
20 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 It is not that a different sacrifice is offered now 
 from that which then was offered, but that whereof 
 it is said, Christ was offered once (Heb. ix. 28), He 
 left to His Church evermore to be offered up.—Peter 
 the Venerable.’ 
 
 On the Cross Christ died once, and there was He 
 offered in Himself; in the Mystery He is offered 
 daily, because in the Mystery there is a commemora- 
 tion of that which was done once. . Hence it is 
 gathered that what is done on the altar is and is 
 called a sacrifice, and that Christ has been offered 
 once andis offered daily, but in one way at that time, 
 in another way now.—TZhe Master of the Sentences 
 (Peter Lombard).? 
 
 Our sacrifice is not merely a representation but a 
 true immolation, that is, the offering by the hands 
 of the priests of that which has been immolated (rez 
 emmolate oblatio). Hence it includes two things, 
 a Victim slain and the offering of it; for immolation, 
 properly speaking, is the offering up of that which 
 has been slain for the worship of God.—Blessed Albert 
 the Great.® 
 
 As it beseemeth not now, under the new dis- 
 pensation of grace, that there should be any sacrifice 
 but such as is pure, pacific, and plenary ; and as there 
 is no other such save that which was offered on the 
 Cross, namely, the Body and Blood of Christ, there- 
 fore, the Body of Christ must needs be contained in 
 this Mystery, not in figure only, but in reality.—St 
 Bonaventure.* 
 
 The Sacrifice that is offered daily in the Church 
 is not other than the Sacrifice which Christ Himself 
 offered, but is the commemoration of it.—St Thomas 
 of Aquin.° 
 
 1 Tract. contr. Petrobus. (Migne, P. L., tom. 189, col. 798). | 2 Sent. 
 
 IV, dist. 12, n. 7 (Migne, P. L., tom. 192, col. 866). 74ND, 
 XIU, a. 23. 4 Brevil. VI, 9. cous 22, a. 3, ad 2. 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 21 
 
 To these extracts may fittingly be added a few 
 citations from the prayers and collects of the Mass, 
 some of which date from the medieval time, while 
 one or two may perhaps be traced back to an earlier 
 
 period : 
 
 As often as this commemorative Sacrifice is cele- 
 brated the work of our redemption is carried on.— 
 
 Secret of the Mass.’ 
 
 We offer Thee, O Lord, on occasion of the precious 
 death of Thy Servant, this Sacrifice which is the 
 fountain-source of all martyrdom. — Secret of the 
 
 Mass.’ 
 Accept, O Lord, we Beseech Thee, the offering 
 
 we have made, and mercifully grant that we may 
 receive with pious sentiments what we celebrate in 
 the Mystery of Our Lord’s Passion.—Secret of the 
 Mass.* 
 
 May this holy and spotless evening Sacrifice 
 sanctify us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, which Thy 
 Only Begotten Son offered up on the Cross for the 
 salvation of the world.—Secret of the Mass." 
 
 May this Sacrifice be acceptable to Thy Majesty, 
 we beseech Thee, O Lord, in which we offer Thee the 
 very wounds of Thy Only Begotten Son as the price 
 of our redemption.—Secret of the Mass.” 
 
 Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that this Sacrifice 
 may profit the soul of Thy servant, by the offering 
 of which Thou didst set the whole world free from 
 the bonds of sin.—Secret of the Mass.° 
 
 O, Lord Jesus Christ, who didst offer Thyself upon 
 the Cross a spotless and willing Victim to God the 
 1 Ninth Sunday = after Pentecost. 2 Thursday of third week im 
 
 Lent. 32Wednesday in Holy Week. 4 Feast of the Spear and Naals. 
 5 Feast of the Five Wounds. 8 Secret pro uno defta. 
 
FES THE SACKIAICL. OF YS TAE RMAs 
 
 Father, we earnestly pray that the most holy offering 
 of the same Sacrifice may obtain for us pardon of 
 our sins and everlasting glory.—Post. Comm. of 
 the Mass." 
 
 Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandr. The 
 belief of the Church about the great Sacrifice that 
 she offers from the rising of the sun to the going 
 down thereof, is mirrored in these beautiful prayers. 
 She regards it as carrying on the work of our re- 
 demption, as the Mystery of Our Lord's Passion, in 
 which the very wounds of the Only Begotten Son 
 of God are offered to the Father as the price of our 
 redemption. She declares it to be the spotless 
 evening Sacrifice which the Only Begotten offered 
 up on the Cross for the salvation of the world, the 
 Sacrifice by the offering of which Christ set the whole 
 world free from the bonds of sin, the offering again 
 of that same spotless and willing Victim that hung 
 upon the Cross for our sins. Here we have the 
 thought of the Church as she stands at God’s altar, 
 with the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation in 
 her hands. Words must be construed to mean the 
 reverse of what they say, else is the Sacrifice of the 
 Mass, in the mind of the Church that offers it, one 
 and the same, in the strictest and most formal sense, 
 with the Sacrifice of the Cross. 
 
 During the period under review, the schism begun 
 by Photius having been consummated two centuries 
 later by Michael Cerularius (4.p. 1054), the Eastern 
 Church was torn from the centre of Catholic unity. 
 She retained, however, her sacraments and _ her 
 Sacrifice, as well as her pristine faith in the formal 
 
 1 Feast of the Spear and Nauls, 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 23 
 
 identity of the latter with the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 Thus, Nicholas Cabasilas, Bishop of Thessalonica in 
 the fourteenth century, writes: ‘‘ This Sacrifice is 
 not an image or figure of a sacrifice, but a true 
 sacrifice. . . . The Sacrifice of the Lamb (Eucharistic) 
 and that Sacrifice which was once for all offered (on 
 Calvary) are one Sacrifice.”? And, much nearer our 
 own day, Macarius, a Russian Bishop: “The Sacrifice 
 offered to God in the Eucharist is in its character 
 precisely the same as that of the Cross. For to-day 
 we still offer on our altars the same Lamb of God 
 who once offered Himself on the Cross for the sins 
 of the world; the same Flesh, infinitely pure, which 
 suffered there; the same Blood, infinitely precious, 
 which was there shed. To-day this mysterious 
 Oblation is still invisibly accomplished by the same 
 Royal and Eternal High Priest who offered Himself 
 on the Cross.”2 To these two testimonies may be 
 added an earlier and not less striking testimony of 
 the belief of the Schismatical Greek Church. In his 
 Symbolism, Moehler relates how, in the twelfth 
 century, a certain Sotericus Panteugone was made 
 to recant, before a synod of Greek Bishops, a false 
 opinion he entertained regarding the Mass. He had 
 maintained, as would appear from the words of his 
 recantation, that the Mass was a sacrifice only in an 
 improper sense, basing his contention on the words 
 of Scripture that Christ was offered once. The re- 
 cantation runs : 
 
 I agree with the holy Synod herein, that the 
 Sacrifice now to be offered up, and once offered up 
 
 1 Liturg. Exposit. c. 32 (Migne, P. G., tom. 150, col., 440) 
 2Theol. Dogm. Orth., tom. 2, p. 492. (I am indebted to Dr 
 Mortimer, author of “The Eucharistic Sacrifice,” for this citation). 
 
24 THE SACRIFICE OF THE), MASS 
 
 by the Only Begotten and Incarnate Word, was once 
 offered up, and is now offered up, because it is one 
 and the same. To him who doth not so believe, 
 anathema; and if anything hath been found written 
 in contradiction hereof, I subject it to the anathema.’ 
 
 In closing our review of the medieval doctrine 
 regarding the Mass, there are two points that deserve 
 a passing notice. One concerns St Thomas’ definition 
 of sacrifice, the other a rather singular opinion about 
 the Eucharistic Sacrifice held by that keen and subtle 
 critic of the Angelic Doctor's teachings, the famous 
 Duns Scotus. ‘‘ That is properly a sacrifice,’ says 
 the Angelic Doctor, “when something is done to the 
 thing offered, as when animals were slain and burnt, 
 and bread is broken and eaten and blessed. And 
 this the name itself implies, for a sacrifice is so called 
 because man does something sacred. It is called an 
 offering simply when a gift is made to God and 
 nothing is done to it, as money or bread is said to be 
 offered when placed on the altar without anything 
 more being done. Hence every sacrifice is an offer- 
 ing, but not conversely.’* This passage evokes from 
 Dr Vacant the following comment : 
 
 By this sacred thing that man does, according to 
 the Angel of the Schools, we must not understand 
 (with William of Auvergne and Albert the Great) a 
 simple offering, but a change wrought in the thing 
 offered. This idea places sacrifice outside of the 
 sanctification and moral effects that flow from it. It 
 opens up new horizons in the domain of theology. 
 From this time forward sacrifice will be made to 
 consist in the physical change produced in the victim. 
 
 1 Cited in Moehler’s Symbolism (8rd ed. Cath. Pub. House, N. Y. 
 p. 233). 194 92 q. 85, a. 3, ad. 3, 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 25 
 
 Three centuries later, the principal question agitated 
 in the schools will be that of determining what is the 
 physical action affecting the Victim that constitutes 
 the essence of the Sacrifice of the Mass.’ 
 
 Both Dr Mortimer and the writer of the articles 
 in The Church Quarterly Review follow Dr Vacant 
 in affirming that St Thomas was the first to import 
 the element of destruction into the notion of sacrifice. 
 This is very far from the truth. The definition 
 given by St Thomas is in fullest harmony with that _ 
 contained in the words cited above from his teacher, 
 Albert the Great, according to whom sacrifice is rez 
 ummolatae oblatio, or, as he goes on to say, “‘ includes 
 two things: a victim slain, and the offering of it.” 
 St Thomas’s definition is, in its content, as old as the 
 Old Testament, the words of which he had before 
 his eyes when he framed it.” Nor did the Fathers 
 conceive of sacrifice as an offering merely : they were 
 too familiar with the teaching of Scripture to have 
 entertained any such notion. We have seen how 
 St Gregory the Great finds the distinctive note of 
 sacrifice, as Albert the Great does, in the offering of 
 a victim that is slain. When St Augustine describes 
 “any work done to unite us with God in holy 
 fellowship” as ‘‘a true sacrifice” *, it is the end or 
 object, not the essential concept, of sacrifice that he 
 has in mind. With him, as with St Thomas and the 
 rest, sacrifice, in its essential concept, involves the 
 destruction of the thing offered. ‘‘ To be immolated,” 
 he observes in his homily on the feast of SS Peter 
 and Paul, ‘‘is to die for God. The word is borrowed 
 
 1 Op. cit., p. 46. 4 Loe; ett, 3 De Cw. Det, 1. 10, c. 6 (Migne, 
 P. L., tom. 41, col. 283). 
 
26 DHE SACRIFICE, OF VEE ayia Ss 
 
 from the ritual of sacrifice. Whatsoever is sacrificed is 
 slain unto God.” * With what justice can St Thomas 
 be said to have ‘‘narrowed” the notion of sacrifice, 
 when St Augustine, eight hundred years before his 
 time, circumscribes it within such limits as these ? 
 
 There are two considerations that will perhaps 
 serve to account for Dr Vacant’s misconception. The 
 first is that, before the time of St Thomas, ecclesi- 
 astical writers did not concern themselves to define 
 sacrifice in the strict sense. And as the generic 
 notion is that of ‘offering,’ the generic term was 
 the one commonly used in speaking of sacrifice. 
 The second is that, when the earlier writers describe 
 sacrifice as an ‘‘ oblatio,” or offering, they have in 
 mind the Sacrifice of the Mass, whereas St Thomas 
 is setting forth the notion of sacrifice in general. 
 While there is a mystic, there is no real immolation 
 in the Mass, which is but the offermg of the Victim 
 slain once for all on Calvary. 
 
 A word now on the opinion of Scotus. The 
 Subtle Doctor held that, though Christ is the High 
 Priest of the Mass, He does not concur immediately 
 in offering it, for that it is not by an act of His will, 
 but by an act of the will of the priest who ministers 
 at the altar, the Mass is both applied and celebrated.* 
 This opinion has its roots in the tenet of Scotus that 
 the sacraments are instrumental causes of grace only 
 in so far as they are divinely given tokens and 
 pledges of the grace that God Himself immediately 
 produces in the soul. For, in this view, the minister 
 of the sacrament is not Christ's instrument, but 
 rather himself the principal agent, not of the spiritual 
 
 1 Serm. 299, n. 3 (Lbid., tom, 38, col. 1368). 2 Quodlvb, 20, 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA,IN MASS $27 
 
 effect produced, which he has nothing whatever to 
 do with, whether as agent or instrument, but of 
 the outward action or rite. Hence, in the outward 
 action of the Mass, Christ would not at all immedi- 
 ately concur, and the words of consecration would be 
 but declaratory, not effective. This particular opinion 
 of Scotus about the minister of the Mass is the 
 logical outcome of his general theory regarding the 
 sacraments. It is no longer tenable since the Council 
 of Trent has declared that Christ offers Himselfin the 
 Mass by the ministry of His priests. He is-thus the 
 principal agent of the sacrifice, and the priest is but 
 the instrument who lends Him his hands and his voice. 
 
 I] 
 
 Until the controversies of the sixteenth century 
 brought into question the doctrine of the Hucharistic 
 Sacrifice, no serious attempt was made by the 
 theologians of the Church to investigate the nature 
 of the Sacrifice itself.’ 
 
 When, however, the storm of Protestantism burst 
 upon the Church in the sixteenth century with a 
 denial of any sacrificial character in the Eucharist, 
 the attention of theologians was directed, as never 
 before, to the work of defining the term ‘“‘ sacrifice ” 
 and of proving that the LHucharist fulfilled this 
 
 definition.” 
 
 That the very concept of sacrifice includes the 
 element of destruction is indicated by the fact that 
 it still holds its place in the definitions framed by 
 theologians after the rise of Protestantism, when they 
 had every motive to be rid of it, if they could. John 
 Calvin, the ablest and most astute of those who led 
 
 1 The Eucharistic Sacrifice, by Rev. Dr Mortimer, p. 179. 
 2 Ibid., p. 205. 
 
28 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 the assault against the doctrine of the Kucharistic 
 Sacrifice, sought to break through the defence of his 
 opponents especially at this point. The victim that 
 is offered, he argues, must be immolated ; therefore, 
 if Christ is sacrificed in every Mass, He must be 
 cruelly put to death every moment and in a thousand 
 different places. Nor does it avail, he adds, by way 
 of pressing home his advantage, to say that the Mass 
 is an unbloody sacrifice, for the nature of sacrifice 
 cannot be changed at the will or caprice of men. 
 Bellarmine, who states this objection of Calvin’s for 
 us,’ replies that Christ is offered in the Mass, not 
 under his own form, but under the forms of bread 
 and wine, and that the destruction is such as befits a 
 victim offered in this way. He concludes, therefore, 
 that the element of destruction in the Mass consists 
 in manducation, not slaying. Calvin could have 
 rejoined that the eating of that which is offered in 
 sacrifice is no sacrificial act of destruction, no hand- 
 ing over of the victim to God, but a converting of it 
 to the use of man: in short, that manducation is not 
 an essential part of the Sacrifice proper, but of the 
 Feast upon the Sacrifice which he held the Lord’s 
 Supper to be, after a symbolic fashion. 
 
 Here was a grave objection, which the theologians 
 of the day would surely have met by a straight 
 denial that destruction is an essential element of 
 sacrifice, could they have seen their way to do so. 
 The plain teaching of Scripture blocked the way.’ 
 
 1 De Coutr., cap. xxvi.; de Missa, 1. 1, c. 25. 
 
 2“ All things soever that are called sacrifices in Scripture had 
 necessarily to be destroyed ; things that have life by slaying; things 
 without life, if solids, such as flour, salt, incense, by burning; if 
 liquids, such as blood, wine, or water, by pouring them out on the 
 ground.” Bellarmine, op. cit., cap. ii., de Missa, 1. 1, ¢. 2. 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 29 
 
 But how was the sacrificial character of the Mass to 
 be maintained? In all two ways offered themselves. 
 One was to insist upon the identity of the Sacrifice 
 of the Mass with the Sacrifice of the Cross, of which 
 the Mass is the continuation and repeated applica- 
 tion: the other was to find within the Mass itself, 
 as it is celebrated on our altars, something that 
 should answer to the requisite element of destruction. 
 This latter was the way adopted by the controversial 
 writers of the time. And it must be said that they 
 were all but driven to adopt it by the exigencies of 
 the controversy. So long as men were willing to 
 take the word of the Church that the Mass was a 
 sacrifice, and that it was identical with the Sacrifice 
 of the Cross, there was no need of examining more 
 minutely into the matter. But when men cast off 
 the Church’s yoke, and openly scoffed at her doctrinal 
 authority, and carried their appeal to the Scripture, 
 and set up reason as sole interpreter and judge, it 
 seemed needful to meet them on their own ground. 
 The traditional teaching of the Church that the Mass 
 was Calvary made present and brought home to the 
 believer in every age and in every clime, was an 
 argumentum non apparentium : it rested wholly on 
 faith, and with men who had discarded that faith 
 would have no weight whatever. On the other hand, 
 if it could be shown that the liturgical rite of the 
 Mass contained within itself everything needed to 
 satisfy the requirements of sacrifice, after its straitest 
 definition, a formidable objection was disposed of, 
 and the mouths of the objectors were stopped. This 
 we take to have been the reason that led the 
 champions of Catholic truth, in their controversies 
 
30 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 with Protestants, to leave the plain way of simple 
 faith trodden by the Schoolmen and the Fathers, and 
 enter upon the way of speculation and theory—a 
 dark and devious way, as the event has proved. 
 
 It was not, however, without protest on the part 
 of at least one theologian of eminence, that the old 
 way was forsaken. Cardinal Cajetan, the great com- 
 mentator of St Thomas, with his keen logical instinct, 
 scented danger in the new departure and pointed 
 out the error into which it would seem already in 
 his day to have led. “Observe,” he writes, “that 
 there is an error on this head in that the Sacrifice 
 of the Altar is reputed to be different from that 
 which Christ offered on the Cross, when in truth it 
 is the self-same, just as it is the self-same Body of 
 Christ and the self-same Blood of Christ that are on 
 the altar. But there is a difference in the manner 
 of offering.” 
 
 In vain did the last of the Scholastics utter his 
 note of warning. The Phaethon of the New Learning 
 had already clambered into the chariot of the Sun, 
 and under his driving the coursers ran no longer in 
 the safe and beaten way. By the end of another 
 century the theory of two immolations was in full 
 swing, and a past master in the science of theology 
 had thence drawn the inevitable conclusion that the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass was a different sacrifice from 
 that of the Cross. 
 
 Another eminent theologian of the sixteenth- 
 century who held to the traditional teaching of the 
 Kucharistic Sacrifice, was Melchior Canus. ‘‘ To the 
 doctrine of St Thomas,” says Dr Vacant, ‘‘ which had 
 
 1 Opusce. t. 2, tract. 2; de Huch., c. 9. 
 
HistORYAOR SACRIFICLAL, TREAAIN JMASS * 8x 
 
 up till then subsisted under the abstract form of a 
 definition, he gave concrete and bodily shape,’ * 
 St Thomas, as we have seen, had laid it down as 
 essential to the concept of sacrifice properly so-called 
 that something should be done to the thing offered, 
 as, for instance, “ when animals were slain and burnt, 
 and bread is blessed and broken and eaten.” ‘Taking 
 his cue from these words, Melchior Canus argues that, 
 in the Mass, “since nothing has been done of the 
 sacrifice, in regard to the species, before the fraction 
 (of the Host), the sacrifice has not been offered. 
 Also, since, by the institution of Christ, we ought to 
 set forth His death with the symbols of the reality, 
 if our Sacrifice is to be real and complete and a 
 perfect copy of that which Christ offered on the Cross, 
 and since there is no symbol of the real Sacrifice 
 until the species are broken and mingled and con- 
 sumed, we can conclude with certainty that the 
 sacrifice is not yet complete before the fraction. It 
 remains therefore that not only the consecration and 
 oblation, but also the fraction and consumption, are 
 requisite to the completeness of the outward sacrifice.’ * 
 Dr Vacant,® Dr Mortimer * and the writer of the series 
 of scholarly articles in The Church Quarterly Review* 
 infer from these words that Melchior Canus conceived 
 the element of destruction to be supplied in the 
 fraction of the Host and consumption of the con- 
 secrated species. The expression “‘ outward sacrifice ” 
 should have warned them against taking so inadequate 
 a view of the teaching of this profound theologian. 
 ‘And, to say nothing about the hidden and inner 
 
 2Op. ‘ctt., p. 52. 2 De Loc. Theol., 1. 12, c. 11 (Migne, Theolog. 
 Cursus Completus, Vol. I, col. 666). Soccer. 2) Op) cub. po oki: 
 5 January 1904, p. 389. 
 
32 THE SACRIFICE OF THEY MASS 
 
 Sacrifice of the Body and Blood,” are the words that 
 immediately precede in the context of the passage 
 cited above, ‘‘the outward and mystic sacrifice 
 certainly does not consist simply in the oblation.” 
 He therefore understands, and rightly, St Thomas to 
 mean that the blessing and breaking of the Kucharistic 
 Bread belong to this “outward and mystic sacrifice,” 
 not to ‘“‘the inner and hidden Sacrifice of the Body 
 and Blood.” A little further on,* he opens his mind 
 fully and clearly on the subject. He declares that 
 the outward and mystic sacrifice is but ‘the image 
 and representation of the Sacrifice of the Cross,” and 
 that, ‘in the Body and Blood of Christ which are 
 contained within, that same Sacrifice exists in its 
 reality.’ How far he was from thinking that any 
 symbolic action in the outward and sensible rite 
 adequately supplied the element of destruction in the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass, may be gathered from the 
 following luminous passage, which we need not 
 apologise for piacing before the reader in full: 
 
 But let us concede the point to those who argue 
 that there can be no perfect immolation unless the 
 victim is slain; for we, too, believe this to be 
 essential if there is to be a true sacrifice. Now 
 (they will urge) we offer a living and breathing 
 Victim, for the Body in the Eucharist is one and the 
 same with that which is in Heaven. Granted; but 
 though Christ’s Body in the Eucharist has life in it, 
 and though the Blood is in the Body, it is not 
 offered because it has life in it, nor is the Blood 
 offered because it is in the Body. The Body is 
 offered because it was slain, and the Blood because 
 it was shed upon the Cross. If the Victim of Calvary 
 
 1 Op. cit., 1. 12, c. 11 (Zbed., col. 668). 
 
HISTORY OF SACRIFICIAL IDEA IN MASS 33 
 
 had never been withdrawn from the sight of men, 
 but were to hang on the Cross before the eyes of all 
 the faithful in every place and time, there would, of 
 course, have been no need of Christ's leaving the 
 memorial of His death, and of transferring the 
 reality of the living original to a copy of it (nehdl 
 necesse erat ut exemplum facts relinqueret, et mm sumu- 
 lacrum ex animale exemplo veritas transferretur). 
 Those who then stood by the Cross, if it so be that 
 they were truly devout and understood what was 
 going on, offered with Christ the same Sacrifice to 
 the Father. So, too, if the same Victim immolated 
 on the Cross were to remain for all time visibly 
 before our eyes, we should need no memorial and 
 representation of it. But inasmuch as that offering 
 and visible immolation, though it is done and over, 
 is yet so acceptable to God and has such perennial 
 worth in His eyes, that it is not less efficacious 
 to-day than it was on the day when the Blood flowed 
 from the Saviour’s opened side; therefore do we 
 truly offer now the same Sacrifice of the Cross with 
 Christ as did those who stood beside the Cross. 
 They indeed had no representation of the Sacrifice 
 before them, because there was no need of one so 
 long as the bleeding Victim was there present and 
 they could see it with their eyes. For us, on the 
 other hand, Christ renews that Sacrifice after a 
 symbolic fashion, and sets it before us in a sort of 
 transcript of it. But this symbolism does not at all 
 stand in the way of our offering the self-same Blood 
 which Christ shed on the Cross, just as though it 
 were now being poured forth before our eyes.’ 
 
 Thus does Melchior Canus meet the objection 
 raised by Calvin, that in every real sacrifice there 
 must be a real immolation of the victim. It is the 
 way that Chrysostom, Augustine, or Aquinas would 
 
 1 Op. cit., 1. 12, c. 11 (Lbid., col. 660). 
 Cc 
 
34 HE NOAGCK LEITCH VOL i way awe, 
 
 have met it, for the sum of their teaching on this 
 point is that the Sacrifice of the New Law is one 
 and one only, begun in the Cenacle, finished on 
 Calvary, prolonged behind the Eucharistic veil for 
 evermore. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 
 
 THE Passion of the Lord is the Sacrifice that we 
 offer.—St Cyprian, Hp. lxiii., n. 17. 
 
 Against the Continental Reformers in general 
 (the Fathers of Trent) maintained that the Eucharist 
 is the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 identical with that which was offered on the Cross. — 
 Lhe Holy Eucharist ; an Historical Inquiry (The 
 Church Quarterly Review, July 1902, p. 282). 
 
 The second article (of the Decree of the Council 
 of Trent) affirms the Sacrifice of the Mass to be the 
 same with that of the Cross. The same Victim, 7.e. 
 Jesus Christ Himself, is offered, only after another 
 manner; an expression which is no longer allowed 
 to mean that then He was offered in reality, and 
 now by representation and figure. It is insisted— 
 at whatever hazard to reason and consistency —that 
 the Cross and its commemoration are one and the 
 same Sacrifice.—Sacrifice and Participation of the 
 floly Eucharist, by George Trevor, M.A., London, 
 1869 (p. 17). 
 
 The Papists can not be content with this doctrine 
 that the Supper of the Lord (which they most 
 gladly term “the Mass”) should be a memorial or 
 remembrance of that Sacrifice which Christ Himself 
 offered on the Cross, but they will have it the self- 
 same Sacrifice, of the same virtue, strength, efficacy, 
 might, and power, to save the souls both of the 
 quick and the dead.—A New Catechism, by Thomas 
 Becon, Chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer : p. 246. 
 
 35 
 
36 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 Christ in His most holy Supper, in which He 
 
 instituted this Sacrament, made of bread and wine 
 His own Body and Blood, and gave to His disciples 
 to be eaten and drunk. A few hours afterwards He 
 offered the same Body and Blood on the altar of the 
 Cross, a sacrifice to His Father for the sins of the 
 people, which sacrifice being finished, the testament 
 was consummated. .. He who diligently examines 
 this will find Christ to be the eternal Priest, who, in 
 place of all the sacrifices which were offered by the 
 temporary priesthood of Moses’s Law, whereof many 
 were but the types and figures of this holy sacrifice, 
 has instituted One Sacrifice, the greatest of all, the 
 plenitude of all, as the sum of all others, that it 
 might be offered to God and given for food to the 
 people. Assertio Septem Sacr., pp. 30-81. 
 
 Touching the Mass, two things are of faith, as 
 defined by the Council of Trent: (1) that it is a 
 sacrifice in the true and proper sense of the word; 
 (2) that it is essentially the same as the Sacrifice of 
 the Cross, the only difference being in the manner of 
 offering. Any theory of the sacrificial idea in the 
 Mass which conflicts with either of these two divinely 
 revealed truths, is by that very fact shown to be 
 false ; any theory which fails to account for both of 
 these truths is thereby shown to be inadequate. 
 
 It is not enough to account for the Mass being 
 a true and proper sacrifice. This, indeed, the Mass 
 is, but it is more. It is the Sacrifice of the New 
 Law, which is one and one only. There is question, 
 therefore, of determining not merely what makes the 
 Mass to be a sacrifice but, that which is of far more 
 vital moment, what makes it to be one and the same 
 with the Sacrifice of Calvary. For the Mass is not 
 
HOW (THE. MASS IS) A SACRIFICE 37 
 
 other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, but is that same 
 Sacrifice perpetuated under a sacramental or mystic 
 veil. The “sacrament” of the Eucharist is the 
 “mystery ’ of the Eucharist, the word sacramentum, 
 in the usage of the Latin Fathers, being the equival- 
 ent of what the Greeks call pucripiov, and this is 
 primarily the Sacrifice of the Mass, which the Church, 
 in the very act of offering it, speaks of as Mystervum 
 Fidei. Without the Sacrifice there would be no 
 Sacrament of the Eucharist, in the now received 
 sense of the term, for the consecration of the bread 
 and wine which effects the Sacrament is the 
 Sacrifice. 
 
 It is needful that we should have a clear idea of 
 the precise point to be determined in this inquiry 
 into the sacrificial idea in the Mass. The question 
 which theologians have set themselves to answer is 
 this: In quonam reponenda est formalis ratio 
 sacrificir Missae ? that is to say, what is the intrinsic 
 and formal constituent of the Mass as a sacrifice ? 
 The question is not wherein lies the essence of the 
 Eucharistic Sacrifice ; for all, or nearly all, are agreed 
 that this lies in the consecration. The question pre- 
 cisely is, assuming that the essential element of the 
 Sacrifice consists in the consecration, what it is that 
 gives the consecration its sacrificial character, and 
 makes the Mass, not merely a sacrifice, but the 
 Sacrifice of the New Law, one with that which Christ 
 offered at the Last Supper and on the Cross. It is 
 not the essence, but, as the Schoolmen would say, 
 the form, the formal constituent element, of the 
 Sacrifice that is in question. 
 
 Now, sacrifice in the formal sense must be care- 
 
38 THE SACRIFICE OF THE \MASS 
 
 fully distinguished from sacrifice in the material 
 sense. Sacrifice in the material sense is the victim 
 considered apart from the action of the priest who 
 offers it. Sacrifice in the formal sense is the victim 
 considered precisely as affected by the action of the 
 priest who offers it. Thus, the Paschal lamb, viewed 
 apart from the slaying and offering of it, was a 
 sacrifice in the material sense only, or, in other 
 words, the matter of the sacrifice; as slain and 
 offered, it was a sacrifice in the formal, that is, in 
 the full and proper sense of the word. From this it 
 appears that a formal sacrifice implies two things; 
 a victim, and the act of the priest who offers it; and 
 that the ratio formals, or formal constituent, of 
 sacrifice, is not the thing sacrificed, nor yet the state 
 or condition of the thing as sacrificed, but the action 
 which places the thing in that state or condition. 
 And the priest, or offerer of the sacrifice, it is who 
 performs the action that induces this state or condi- 
 tion by virtue of which the thing offered becomes a 
 sacrifice in the formal sense. 
 
 Further, the act of the priest, or offerer, is twofold, 
 internal, and external. The former is the act of the 
 will, which directs the doing of the thing to the 
 worship of God; the latter, the doing itself, which 
 is, more properly speaking, an action. This outward 
 action, which presupposes the internal act of the 
 will as the determining principle whence it proceeds 
 and derives its specific character, is again twofold ; 
 the ceremonial offering of the victim, and the 
 immolation of it. The latter need not be per- 
 formed by the priest himself, though it must needs 
 be performed by his will and under his direction. 
 
HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 39 
 
 The former must be performed by the priest and 1s 
 the formal constituent of sacrifice offered in accord- 
 ance with prescribed rites and ceremonies. 
 
 Against what has been said above, that the formal 
 constituent of sacrifice is the action which puts the 
 thing offered in the state of victim, it may be urged 
 that the formal constituent of a thing is intrinsic to 
 it, whereas an action is extrinsic, as being on the 
 part of the agent. Thus, the formal constituent of 
 man as man is the rational soul which is intrinsically . 
 united with the human organism. ‘The two cases, 
 however, are not parallel. Man as such is a physical 
 being, having an abiding existence in a physical 
 world; sacrifice, as such, is a moral entity, a work 
 performed for the worship of God, having but a 
 passing existence. Hence what the soul, in virtue 
 of which man is and abides, is to man, that the action, 
 by virtue of which the sacrifice is and is done and 
 over, by virtue of which the thing offered passes from 
 one state to another, is to the sacrifice. Man is by 
 virtue of a productive act, which unites the principle 
 of life with an organised body ; sacrifice is by virtue 
 of a destructive act, which, in the case of an animal 
 victim, separates the principle of life from the organism. 
 The formal constituent of that which results from a 
 production is in the thing produced; the formal 
 constituent of that which results from a destruction 
 proceeds from the agent who does away with or 
 destroys a thing, and is no other than the action 
 which does away with it. The state of the victim 1s 
 a state of privation whereof the action of the agent, 
 or offerer, is the formal constituent. 
 
 Since, therefore, the formal constituent of sacrifice 
 
40 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 consists in an action, and since the Mass is not other 
 than the Sacrifice once offered at the Last Supper 
 and on Calvary, it follows that the sacrificial action 
 of the Mass must be one and the same with the action 
 of the Last Supper and of Calvary. In the sacrifice 
 offered at the Last Supper, in the sacrifice offered on 
 Calvary, in the sacrifice offered on our altars, not 
 only is the Priest the same, but the Victim as Victim 
 is the same, and this implies that the sacrificial 
 action is one and the same. ‘They are thus not three 
 sacrifices, but One Sacrifice, as the Church has ever 
 proclaimed. 
 
 Let us now consider what this sacrificial action 
 consists in. In the Sacrifice of the New Law Christ 
 is both Priest and Victim. The action of the Sacrifice 
 must therefore be Christ’s own action. If any other 
 action concurs with His in offering the Sacrifice it 
 can only be instrumental, since He alone is the Priest 
 of the Sacrifice. Now, as has been pointed out above, 
 we may distinguish in the offering of sacrifice, the 
 internal act of the priest, directing the immolation of 
 a victim to the worship of God, the corresponding 
 external action, which consists in the physical 
 destruction of the victim, and a twofold ceremonial 
 offering of the victim, one before, the other after, 
 its immolation. The first, that is, the internal act, 
 is the root and determining principle of the rest, 
 which are but the embodiment and symbolic ex- 
 pression of it. Hence St Augustine says,’ and 
 St Thomas concurs, * that of this inner act, whereby 
 a man offers himself to God, which he calls the 
 
 1 De Cw. Der., 1. 10, c. 5 (Migne, P. L., tom. 41, col. 282). 
 2 3a, q. 22, a. 2. 
 
BOW THEN MASS) ESA Y SACKIFICE AI 
 
 ‘‘invisible sacrifice,’ every ‘“‘visible sacrifice is the 
 sacred sign or symbol.” 
 
 At the Last Supper, having duly celebrated the 
 Jewish Pasch, Christ the Man-God, High Priest of 
 the New Law, instituted the Christian Pasch, or 
 Sacrifice of the New Law. He who sat at the table 
 with the Twelve was the Word of God, by whom all 
 things were made, and without whom was made 
 nothing. By an act, then, of His all-powerful will 
 He offered Himself, His Body and His Blood, under 
 the appearances of bread and wine, as the Sacrifice 
 of our Ransom and the Food of our souls. From 
 that moment the Sacrifice was finished so far as He 
 as Priest was concerned with it, and in itself virtually 
 finished, since it was by virtue of the act wherewith 
 He offered Himself there that He became a Victim 
 on Calvary the next day: “He was offered because 
 He willed it.” “Noman taketh (my life) away from 
 me, but I lay it down of myself; and I have power 
 to lay 1t down, and | have power to take it up again.” 
 —John x. 18. 
 
 By the act of His own will Christ laid Himself 
 on the altar at the Last Supper to be slain. The 
 only thing wanting to the completeness of the Sacrifice 
 was the actual slaying, which took place some hours 
 after in virtue of that act, that is, in virtue of the 
 power which that act gave His executioners to put 
 Him to death. 
 
 It has been said that the act of offering a victim 
 to God, on the part of the priest, with its correspond- 
 ing external action in the slaying of the victim, is the 
 formal constituent, or, as it may also be called, the 
 action of sacrifice. Now the act of offering is the 
 
42 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 essentially sacerdotal act. Under the Levitical Law, 
 the priest did not slay the victim, except when he 
 made a sin-offering for himself (Lev. iv. 3, 4), or for 
 himself and the people (Zbzd. ix. 7-12). The principle, 
 in the case of sin-offerings, appears to have been, that 
 the sinner should slay the victim, and the priest should 
 make the ceremonial offering of it to the Lord. (Ibid. 
 iv. 13-16, 22-25, 27-80). There was thus a twofold 
 reason why the slaying of the victim, in the Sacri- 
 fice of the New Law, should not be done by the 
 High Priest: first, that He was Himself the Victim, 
 and self-slaying is forbidden by the law of nature ; 
 second, that though “ He was made sin for us,” He was 
 Himself the Sinless One. But because the slaying, as 
 we have seen, was contemplated, and willed, and thus 
 formally included, in the act of offering, therefore, 
 the Action of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the part borne 
 by Christ as the Priest of the Sacrifice, took place 
 once for all in the Cenacle; the Passion, or part borne 
 by Christ as Victim, began immediately after, and 
 ended the next day on Golgotha. Thus did the 
 Antitype correspond to its Type: the Sinner slew 
 the Victim, and the Priest offered the Sacrifice. 
 Truly, then, does St Cyprian declare that “the 
 Passion of the Lord is the Sacrifice that we offer,” 
 seeing that it was the Sacrifice which He offered, 
 when He bade His disciples: Do this for a Memorial 
 of Me. “The Lord’s Sacrifice,” the same Cyprian 
 declares, ‘“‘is not celebrated by a legitimate consecra- 
 tion unless our oblation and sacrifice correspond to 
 His Passion.”* And again: ‘For if in the Sacrifice 
 which Christ offered, Christ alone is to be followed, 
 1 Ep. 63, n. 9 (Migne, P. L., tom. 4, col. 392). 
 
HOWTITHE®S MASS #1 SAY SACKIFICE. -. 43 
 
 of a surety we ought to obey and do that which 
 Christ did, and which He commanded to be done.’ * 
 There is, then, in the Mass, a legitimate consecretion, 
 according to St Cyprian, when that is done which 
 Christ did and commanded to be done. Now the 
 Consecration is what Christ did, the Consecration is 
 the Action of His Sacrifice ; what He suffered is the 
 Passion. Therefore the Consecration is the Action 
 of the Mass. And the Consecration is the self-same 
 in His Sacrifice as in ours, which is His, for He it is 
 who consecrates, and He it is who is offered. It is 
 not by virtue of a new action that the Consecration 
 takes place in the Mass, that the Mass is a sacrifice, 
 but by virtue of the Action once for all performed by 
 our High Priest. Christ’s Action instituted the 
 Sacrifice, Christ’s Action perpetuates the Sacrifice. 
 The Word of God spoke at the first institution of 
 things, and things came into being, and things 
 continue to be by virtue of the Word. The Word 
 of God spoke at the institution of our Sacrifice, and 
 the Sacrifice came into being, and the Sacrifice con- 
 tinues to be by virtue of the Word. 
 
 Between the creation and conservation of the 
 human species and the institution and perpetuation of 
 the Sacrifice of the New Law there is a parallel, as well 
 as a divergence, which it will be instructive to con- 
 sider in detail. The creative act that first formed man, 
 uniting a rational soul with a body made out of the 
 earth, also conserves man, uniting each rational soul 
 with a body drawn from the parents. There is no 
 new creative act when a new individual of the human 
 species comes into existence. ‘l'he same creative act, 
 
 1 Hip. 63, n. 14, col. 396. 
 
44 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 the same fiat uttered at the beginning, still operates. 
 In like manner, the one Divine Action performed 
 at the institution of our Sacrifice perpetuates the 
 Sacrifice to this day, doing at every altar what was 
 done in the upper room at Jerusalem. So far the 
 parallel. Now for the divergence. Hach new-born 
 man is a new individual of the species, numerically 
 distinct from every other individual. On the 
 contrary, each new celebration of the Mystery is 
 not a new sacrifice, but the reiterated offering of the 
 Sacrifice once offered. ‘The reason of this is that, 
 whereas each individual man has for formal con- 
 stituent an individual rational soul, and for material 
 principle an organized body numerically distinct 
 from every other organism, each celebration of the 
 Kucharist has for material principle the self-same 
 Victim once immolated on the Cross and for formal 
 constituent the self-same Action of the High Priest 
 who first offered the Sacrifice. Hence the Mass is 
 not only specifically but numerically one and the 
 same with the Sacrifice of Calvary. ‘‘In the New 
 Testament,” observes Cajetan, ‘‘ the Sacrifice is not 
 repeated, but the one Victim once offered continues 
 in a state of immolation.” Priest, Victim, and 
 Sacrificial Action are the same in the Mass as they 
 were on the Cross; and the Passion of Christ and 
 the Death which He suffered on the Cross, He still 
 offers in the Mass. Thus is the Mass no new 
 sacrifice, but the showing forth of the Lord’s death 
 until He come. 
 
 This is no new theory of the Kucharistic Sacrifice, 
 but a plain statement of the Christian faith and 
 teaching from the first. In his commentary on the 
 
HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 45 
 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, St Chrysostom, after explain- 
 ing why it was needful for the Jews to repeat their 
 sacrifice day after day, goes on to observe: 
 
 But in the case of Christ it is different. He was 
 offered once, and it was enough for all time. . . Do 
 not we, too, offer up (the Sacrifice) daily? We do, 
 indeed, but making a commemoration of His death, 
 and this is one, not many. How is it one, not many? 
 Because it was once offered. . . We offer up always 
 the same; not one sheep to-day and another to- 
 morrow, but always the same. Wherefore the Sacri- — 
 fice is one. .. As, then, He that is offered up in 
 many places is One Body, not many bodies, so the 
 Sacrifice is one.? 
 
 It is not only the Priest and Victim, but the Sacri- 
 ficial Action, that are, according to St Chrysostom, 
 one in the One Sacrifice of the New Law. This 
 appears plainly from a passage in one of his sermons, 
 where, after comparing the institution of the Hucharist 
 with the institution of the human race which is 
 forever propagated by virtue of the word spoken at 
 the beginning, he says: 
 
 This word (hoc est corpus mewm) once spoken, 
 
 from that time to the present and unto His coming 
 effects a Perfect Sacrifice on every altar.’ 
 
 In the former of these citations, St Chrysostom 
 considers the Sacrifice of the New Law from the 
 point of view of the thing offered, and he concludes 
 that it is one, because Christ, having once died, 
 became a Victim for evermore. In the latter, he 
 considers it from the point of view of the offering, 
 and finds it likewise to be one, because the word 
 
 1 In. Ep. ad. Hebr., hom. 17, n. 3 (Migne, P. G., tom. 63, col. 131). 
 2 Hom. I. in Prod. Jude, u. 6 (Migne, P. G., tom. 49, col. 380). 
 
46 THE “SACRIFICE VOR Wie ial Ss 
 
 once spoken at the Last Supper effects a Perfect 
 Sacrifice on every altar till the end of time. Hence, 
 he recognises in the Mass two essential elements or 
 component parts, the Action of Christ at the Last 
 Supper and the Passion of Christ which was con- 
 summated on Calvary. It is not the Action alone 
 nor the Passion alone that makes the Mass the one 
 Perfect Sacrifice of the New Law, but the Action 
 joined with the Passion as the formal constituent of 
 the Sacrifice with its complementary material element. 
 
 The Action inaugurated by the High Priest at 
 the Last Supper, the Passion consummated by the 
 death of the Victim on Calvary, coalesce into the 
 one Sacrifice of the New Law, which is offered daily 
 on our altars from the rising of the sun even to the 
 going down of the same. Here again the Antitype 
 corresponds to its type in the Old Testament; the 
 reality is outlined in the shadow that it cast before. 
 In the Last Supper, we have the ceremonial offering 
 and consecration of the Victim, preparatory to the 
 immolation; on Calvary, the sacrificial destruction 
 of the Victim; in the Mass, the ceremonial offering 
 of the Body and Blood of the Victim—of the Blood 
 shed on the Cross and the Body consumed in the 
 fires of the Passion. ‘For the bodies of those beasts 
 whose blood is brought into the holies by the high 
 priest for sin are burned without the camp. Where- 
 fore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people by 
 His own Blood, suffered without the gate.” (Heb. 
 13: 11, 12.) Thus is the Sacrifice of our Ransom 
 perpetually offered on our altars with those ritual 
 accessories that it so conspicuously lacked on Calvary. 
 For the Christian Church, too, must offer its Sacrifice, 
 
HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 47 
 
 not indeed with bloody and carnal rites, as did the 
 Jewish Synagogue, but with rites befitting the Clean 
 Oblation of Him who is Priest forever according to 
 the order of Melchisedech. 
 
 It follows that the Mass derives its sacrificial 
 character and efficacy from the bloody immolation 
 of the Victim on Calvary. For “as it is appointed 
 unto men once to die... so also Christ was 
 offered once to exhaust the sins of many” (feb. ix. 
 27, 28) and “by one oblation He hath perfected 
 forever them that are sanctified” (Ibid. x. 14). The 
 mystic immolation of the Victim in the Last Supper 
 looked onward to the real immolation of the Victim 
 on Calvary, as the mystic immolation in the Mass 
 looks backward upon it. In the order of time, the 
 mystic immolation went before the real; in the order 
 of being and actuality, the mystic immolation pre- 
 supposed the real and came after it. Without the 
 real immolation on Calvary, the mystic immolation 
 in the Last Supper would not have been even the 
 semblance of a sacrifice. There can be no shadow 
 without the bodily substance that casts it. It was 
 a mystic immolation precisely because the real had 
 been already virtually accomplished in the voluntary 
 oblation which brought about the actual accomplish- 
 ment of it some hours afterwards on the Cross. 
 Hence it is that Christian worshippers in every age 
 have been taught to look, not to the Cenacle, but 
 to Calvary for the great Original whereof the Mass 
 is at once the memorial and representation, and, 
 by reason of the identity of Priest and Victim, the 
 continual reproduction. For the Mass is, as has well 
 been said: “Not only the shadow of Calvary, but 
 
48 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 it is also the reality.”* Now, if there had been a 
 sacrificial act of destruction in the Last Supper, 
 sufficient of itself to constitute a real sacrifice, the 
 Mass would be the continuation of that sacrifice, 
 not of the Sacrifice of Calvary. As a matter of 
 fact, the Mass continues the One Sacrifice which 
 was inaugurated in the Last Supper and finished — 
 on Calvary. From the Last Supper it takes its 
 commemorative and symbolic character ; to the Cross 
 it owes its sacrificial efficacy and infinite worth. 
 The mystic offering is blended with the real in the 
 One Oblation which reproduces both. 
 
 The Council of Trent has defined that Our Lord 
 did, at the Last Supper, in quality of Priest after 
 the order of Melchisedech, offer to God the Father 
 His Body and His Blood under the forms of bread 
 and wine, and gave His Body and His Blood under 
 the symbols of these things to His Apostles, com- 
 manding them and their successors also to offer 
 them.” The Anglican Trevor, in the work already 
 cited, after pointing out what he conceives to be 
 contradictions in the teaching of the Council con- 
 cerning the Mass, says of this particular passage : 
 
 The Council had a narrow escape from the further 
 contradiction of declaring that Christ commanded 
 His apostles to offer what He never offered Himself. 
 The clause ‘that He offered His Body and Blood 
 under the forms of bread and wine,’ was warmly 
 opposed, though all were ready to decree that He 
 commanded His apostles to do so. During several 
 congregations the theologians were almost equally 
 divided on this question, and the opposition was 
 so strong that the Cardinal legate Seripand at one 
 
 1 The Glorves of the Sacred Heart, v. 3. By ese. X11 cL Cake 
 
HOW, THE MASS ©1S. 0A YSACKIPIGE”, )* 40 
 
 time agreed to omit the assertion. One of the 
 weightiest arguments was that of a Portuguese 
 divine, who said that it could not be doubted that 
 the Mass was a sacrifice, since all the Greek and 
 Latin fathers called it so; but that Christ offered 
 Himself in the Supper was not proved by the example 
 of Melchisedech, or by the Paschal Lamb, which was 
 rather a type of the Sacrifice of the Cross. ‘To this 
 also the words of Institution plainly referred. He 
 urged that Christ’s Sacrifice in the Supper was a 
 point which theologians were not agreed upon, and 
 it was equally Catholic to assert or deny it. Hence 
 he desired its omission in the decree, and the: sacrifice 
 to be rested on apostolical tradition. The Archbishop 
 of Grenada was earnest to the same effect, and the 
 Bishop of Veglia insisted that to admit a propitiatory 
 sacrifice in the Last Supper was to deny the ransom 
 of the Cross, since it was absurd to say that the 
 Supper and the Cross were the same sacrifice. Yet 
 these very divines agreed that the Mass was the 
 same with the Cross, and that Christ gave it to His 
 apostles as a propitiatory sacrifice! It was this pre- 
 determined resolution, in fact, that occasioned all 
 the confusion. The Sacrifice of the Mass was at all 
 hazards to be held propitiatory, in the sense of 
 satisfaction for sin—the then popular conception 
 of a sacrifice. It was impossible to deny this char- 
 acter to the Sacrifice of the Cross, and equally so 
 to admit that Christ offered himself twice. Neither 
 could it be said that the Supper and the Crucifixion 
 were one and the same transaction. Hence the 
 proposal to assert upon tradition that our Lord 
 commanded His apostles to do what He never 
 did Himself, though the essence of the rite is 
 confessed to be in perpetuating his Institution. 
 Hence, too, the unanimous declaration that the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass is the same as that of the 
 Cross though it is beyond all question the same with 
 D 
 
50 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 the Supper, which many held to be quite a different 
 thing ! 3 
 
 Passing over the opinions here attributed to 
 theologians at the Tridentine Council, and the 
 writer's own comments thereon, we may be per- 
 mitted to make one or two observations upon the 
 statements of fact contained in the passage. These 
 statements are mainly two: first, that there was 
 no dissent, on the part of any of the Tridentine 
 theologians, from the traditional teaching of the 
 Church concerning the identity of the Sacrifice of 
 the Mass with the Sacrifice of the Cross; second, 
 that there was at first considerable divergence of 
 opinion as to whether the offering of Christ’s Body 
 and Blood at the Last Supper was of a sacrificial 
 character. On the first point Apostolical Tradition 
 was clear and explicit; all the Greek and Latin 
 Fathers bore witness to it. On the second point, 
 Tradition appeared to speak with less certain 
 sound. ‘T’he very fact, too, that Tradition traced 
 the Kucharistic Sacrifice to Calvary rather than to 
 the Cenacle seemed to tell decisively against the 
 sacrificial character of the offering made in the 
 Supper. In the face of these difficulties, however, 
 the Council finally affirmed that Christ did, on the 
 night whereon He was betrayed, offer to God the 
 Father His Body and His Blood under the forms 
 of bread and wine, and so inaugurated the Christian 
 Passover. This was part of the faith once delivered 
 to the saints, with regard to which ten thousand 
 
 + Op. cit., pp. 27, 28. Trevor’s account of the discussion which 
 
 took place at the Council is based an Fra Paolo Sarpi’s narrative. 
 The general accuracy of it, however, need not be questioned. 
 
HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 51 
 
 difficulties, as the Council conceived it, would not 
 make one doubt. Such has ever been and ever 
 will be, the attitude of the Church where Faith is 
 in question. What she has received that she holds 
 and affirms, be the difficulties in the way of such 
 affirmation, humanly speaking, insuperable. 
 Regarding the sacrificial character of the offering 
 made in the Supper, two citations may be made which 
 alone suffice to attest the faith of the early Church. 
 One is from St Irenzeus, and runs as follows: | 
 
 Christ took that which is part of the creation, 
 namely, bread, and gave thanks, saying, Zhis 1s my 
 Body. And the Cup likewise, which is of that 
 creation which appertains to us, He professed to be 
 His own Blood, and taught the new oblation of the 
 New Testament; which the Church receiving from 
 the Apostles offers unto God in the whole world.’ 
 
 Part of the second passage, from St Gregory of 
 Nyssa, has been cited already. ‘The whole passage, 
 including the part cited, runs: 
 
 In a hidden kind of sacrifice which can not be 
 seen of men (Christ) offers Himself as a Sacrifice and 
 immolates a Victim, being at the same time the 
 Priest and the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
 sin of the world. When did He do this? When 
 He gave to His assembled disciples His Body to eat 
 and His Blood to drink. Then He clearly showed 
 that the Sacrifice of the Lamb was now completed, 
 for the body of a victim is not fit to eat if it be 
 living. Wherefore, when He gave to His assembled 
 disciples His Body to eat and His Blood to drink, 
 then in a hidden and mysterious manner His Body 
 was immolated.* 
 
 1 Adv. Haer. 1. 4, c. 17, n. 5 (Migne, P. G., tom. 8, col. 1023). 
 2 Migne, P. G., tom. 46, col. 612, 
 
52 DHEMSACGRIEIGE OD LNI iwi Se 
 
 From the moment the halter is put on the head 
 of the animal, and it is led up to the altar, and the 
 priest consecrates it for the sacrifice, and takes in 
 his hand the sacrificial knife, it enters upon the 
 state of victim, and is as good as slain. So the 
 Victim of the Kucharist was as good as slain in the 
 Last Supper. In a legal and ritual sense, Christ 
 was dead from that moment; for the Action of 
 consecrating and offering Himself there was the 
 sacrificial knife which slew Him on Calvary. Christ 
 therefore offered Himself at the Last Supper in a 
 hidden kind of sacrifice which could not be seen of 
 men. Yet that hidden sacrifice was not other than 
 the Sacrifice of Calvary, which is the Sacrifice of 
 the New Law. And it was not in virtue of a mystic 
 immolation, or a moral destruction, of the Victim 
 it was that Sacrifice. The living Victim was not 
 in the slightest degree affected by either the mystic 
 or the moral immolation, neither of which, in any 
 case, was perceptible by the senses. It was the 
 Sacrifice of the New Law in virtue of the Action 
 of consecration and offering which had the effect of 
 anticipating the Death of the Victim on Calvary. 
 “I have a baptism,” says Christ, “to be baptized 
 with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” 
 (Luke xii, 50). In His eagerness to shed His Blood 
 for us our Redeemer anticipated His death by the 
 liturgical offering of it the evening before, in the 
 same spirit as His Spouse, the Church, in her 
 eagerness to celebrate His triumph over death, 
 anticipates, in her liturgical services, the festival of 
 His Resurrection. 
 
 The Mass is at once the ceremonial offering, the 
 
HOW WHE MASSEISVAMSACKIFIGE 53 
 
 mystical representation, and the commemoration of 
 the Sacrifice of the Cross. Or, to put this in another 
 way, the ceremonial offering of the Sacrifice of the 
 Cross, which is made in the Mass, is at once the 
 reproduction, the mystical representation, and the 
 commemoration of that Sacrifice. Not only the 
 consecration, but the whole rite of the Mass, the 
 altar which represents Calvary, the priestly vest- 
 ments, the crucifix, the signs of the cross, in short. 
 every action and ceremony, is symbolic and com- 
 memorative of the Passion of the Lord, which is the 
 Sacrifice that we offer. The outward and mystic 
 rite, which Melchior Canus calls the exterior sacrifice, 
 is but the sensible means whereby is represented to 
 the mind and commemorated the Passion and the 
 Death of the Victim that is there present on the 
 altar. And that Passion and Death, thus renewed 
 in mystery, still operates in the Mass, and continues 
 to produce in the souls of believers its sacrificial 
 fruits, and makes every altar a Calvary, not only 
 because the Action of the Mass is the Action which 
 brought about the Death on the Cross, but because, 
 though undergone but once, that Death has an 
 everlasting power of sanctifying; and because to 
 Him who takes in the whole course of time at one 
 glance, and with whom there is neither past nor 
 future, that death is an ever-present fact. Thus 
 are the Cross and its Commemoration, without any 
 hazard to reason and consistency, one and the same 
 Sacrifice; outwardly, indeed, and to the senses, 
 wholly different ; inwardly, to the eye of faith, and 
 in the sight of the Eternal, one and the same. Thus 
 also is the Mass at one and the same time a relative 
 
54 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 and an absolute sacrifice; relative, in so far as it is 
 commemorative and symbolical; absolute, inasmuch 
 as it is in fact the self-same Sacrifice as that 
 of the Cross. But because the outward rites and 
 ceremonies do not affect the inner essence of sacrifice, 
 the Mass is, properly speaking, an absolute rather 
 than a relative sacrifice. 
 
 One more point remains to be discussed: the 
 relation of the Mass to the offering which our High 
 Priest makes within the veil—not in a holy place 
 made with hands, but in Heaven itself, whither He 
 is ascended “now to appear before the face of God 
 for us.” (Heb. ix. 24.) The offering within the 
 veil, as St Paul also points out, is directly connected 
 with the Sacrifice of Expiation. ‘For Jesus is not 
 entered into a holy place made with hands, type of 
 the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear before 
 the face of God for us: nor yet that He should offer 
 Himself often, as the high priest entered into the 
 holy place year by year with blood not his own” 
 (Ibid.) But the Sacrifice of Expiation offered on the 
 Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.) also foreshadowed the 
 Sacrifice of Calvary. And inasmuch as the Mass 
 reproduces the Sacrifice of Calvary as well as the 
 Feast upon that Sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Expiation 
 must have foreshadowed the Mass also. Now the 
 rite of that Sacrifice was as follows. First the 
 victim was offered and slain; then the high priest, 
 taking of the blood of the victim went alone with it 
 within the veil, to sprinkle it in the holy place ; this 
 done, he came out to the altar that wasin the tabernacle, 
 or tent of meeting, and again, after prayer, taking 
 of the blood of the victim, poured it upon the horns of 
 
HOW THE MASS IS A SACRIFICE 55 
 
 the altar. The former of the two ceremonies may be 
 taken to represent the entry of Christ into Heaven, 
 there to appear before the face of God for us: the 
 latter, the action of Christ as High Priest in the 
 Mass, where, by the ministry of His priests, His 
 Blood is poured out on the altar to expiate our sins, 
 and He Himself is ever living, under the veil of the 
 Eucharist, to make intercession for us. ‘‘ We have 
 seen the High Priest coming to us,” says St Ambrose, 
 “we have seen and heard Him offering for us His 
 Blood: we priests follow, as we can, that we may 
 offer sacrifice for the people, though weak in merit 
 yet honourable in sacrifice, since though Christ 1s 
 not now seen to offer, yet Himself is offered on 
 earth when the Body of Christ is offered; yea Him- 
 self is plainly seen to offer in us, since His word 
 sanctifies the Sacrifice that is offered.”* It would 
 appear that the Sacrifice of the Mass was not offered 
 by the Apostles until after the High Priest had gone 
 within the veil. At any rate, it was not offered in 
 every place till Christ had sent the Holy Spirit to 
 establish the Church and inaugurate the solemn 
 offering of her Sacrifice in every land. 
 
 It is a question that has been much debated 
 whether the offering that Christ makes in Heaven is 
 sacrificial in the strict sense. St Paul would seem 
 to imply that it is. In the ninth chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews he gives us clearly to under- 
 stand that the offering made by the Jewish high 
 priest in the holy place was typical of the offering 
 that Christ makes within the veil, and that offering 
 was undoubtedly sacrificial. Let us call to mind 
 
 1 Enar. in Ps. 38, n. 25 (Migne, P. L., tom. 14, col. 1102). 
 
56 THEN SAORLEICE SOP Adah aimtios. 
 
 again the distinction already made between the im- 
 molation of the victim and the ceremonial offering 
 of it. Sacrifice consists in the freewill offering of 
 the priest which finds its fitting symbol and comple- 
 ment in the destruction of the victim. Thus, when 
 Aaron, acting as high priest of God slew the goat 
 of the sin-offering (Lev. xvi. 15), the sacrifice was 
 finished ; when he brought its blood within the veil 
 and sprinkled the mercy seat with it, he made the 
 ceremonial offering of the same sacrifice. The life of 
 the victim was first offered to God, when it was 
 consecrated ; the offering within the sanctuary was 
 the formal and solemn handing over to God of the 
 life once for all immolated. The blood shed is at 
 once the symbol and the testimony of the life once 
 taken, and, as it were, the vehicle of it: hence God 
 Himself declares that it is ‘the blood which maketh 
 atonement by reason of the life” (Lev. xvii. 11). 
 When therefore, “Christ having come a high priest 
 of the good things to come, through the greater and 
 more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that 
 is, not of this creation, nor yet through the blood of 
 goats and calves, but through His own blood, entered 
 once for all into the holy place, having obtained 
 eternal redemption” (Heb. ix. 11, 12). He made 
 within the veil the ceremonial offering of the Sacrifice 
 finished outside the sanctuary. It was no new sacrifice 
 He offered, but the self-same that was once offered on 
 the Cross, just as it is no new sacrifice that is offered on 
 earth to-day but the self-same that was then offered. 
 “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them 
 that are sanctified.”—Heb. x. 4. 
 
 Let us look at the same thing from another point 
 
HOW VIHEGMASS HIV VAWwoACKT RICE (0557 
 
 of view. The Blood of Christ is the Price of our 
 Ransom. That Blood He shed on Calvary and 
 thereby “ obtained eternal redemption.” Our ransom 
 was then wrought, but the price was not yet paid 
 over and accepted with all the requisite legal formal- 
 ities. That is now being done both here on earth 
 and in heaven, where our High Priest is ever living 
 to make intercession for us; where He pleads in our 
 behalf the merits of His Passion. ‘‘ Himself,” says 
 St Ambrose, “offers Himself as Priest that He may — 
 remit our sins; here in image, there in truth, where 
 He intercedes for us with the Father as our ad- 
 vocate.’* We are not, of course, to understand that 
 He offers, within the veil, the Blood itself which is 
 the Price of our Ransom. What He offers is the life 
 of which the Blood is the symbol, for neither symbol 
 nor shadow can find entrance there; the Life which 
 He once laid down, and took up again. ‘“I am the 
 first and the last, and the Living One; I was dead, 
 and behold I am alive for evermore.”—Apoce. 1: 19. 
 He entered Heaven to make the ceremonial offering 
 of that Life once laid down for us. Isaias sees Him 
 from afar, clad in the livery of His Passion, and cries 
 out: “ Who is this that cometh from Hdom, with 
 dyed garments from Bosra? this Beautiful One in 
 his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength ?” 
 And the answer is given in the person of the Beauti- 
 ful One: “I that speak righteousness, and am mighty 
 to save.” And once more is the question asked, 
 “Wherefore, then, is thy apparel red, and thy 
 garments like theirs that tread in the winepress?” 
 
 1 De Offic., 1. 1, c. 48 (Migne, P.L., tom. 16, col. 101). The word 
 “image” is here contrasted with the “shadow” of the Law, not with 
 the “truth” of the heavenly places. 
 
58 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 And in answer there comes: ‘‘I have trodden the 
 winepress alone.’—Isa. 63: 1-3. 
 
 In the Mass, we have the same Sacrifice once 
 offered on the Cross, and now pleaded in Heaven by 
 our High Priest. The things that are seen, the 
 things that appear and pass away, are, to the eye of 
 faith, but shadows of the one Reality—shadows that 
 fall athwart altars of wood or stone, and flit about 
 earthly tabernacles, where hides the Sun behind a 
 veil “ till the day break and the shadows flee away.” — 
 Canti2 U7, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE ONE SACRIFICE 
 
 INTIMATELY bound up with the question of the formal 
 constituent in the Mass is this other question: Did 
 Christ offer two sacrifices, or only one? For, if | 
 Christ offered only One Sacrifice, the formal con- 
 stituent in the Mass cannot be other than the formal 
 constituent of the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 
 Now both Scripture and Tradition witness to 
 the oneness of the Sacrifice offered by Christ. His 
 sacrifice is always spoken of in the New Testament 
 as one. ~ “Christ also hath loved us and hath 
 delivered Himself for us an offering and sacrifice to 
 God for an odour of sweetness.’—Hph. 5: 2. This 
 offering and sacrifice was the laying down of His lite 
 ‘a ransom for many.’—Matt. 20: 28. The author 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews rings the changes on 
 the oneness of Christ’s sacrifice. Christ, ‘‘now once 
 at the end of the age, hath appeared to put away 
 sin by the sacrifice of Himself.’—Heb. 9: 26. 
 “Christ also, having been once offered to bear the 
 sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from 
 sin.”—ZJbid., 28. ‘‘But He, when He had offered 
 one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right 
 hand of God.”—Jbid., 10: 12. ‘For by one offering 
 He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” 
 —Ibid., 14. 
 
 It may be said that the Apostle does not in these 
 
 59 
 
60 THE VSACRIFPICE VOR THEM VedisS. 
 
 passages mean to exclude another sacrifice, first 
 offered in the Last Supper and continued in the Mass. 
 By this is meant a sacrifice other than that of 
 Calvary, and this the Apostle certainly does mean 
 to exclude, and does exclude. For throughout this 
 Kpistle he is speaking expressly of the priesthood of 
 Christ “forever after the order of Melchisedech.” 
 It is of Christ as “ Priest forever after the order of 
 Melchisedech” that he says, ‘by one offering He 
 hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” 
 Now without question the sacrifice offered in the 
 Last Supper and continued in the Mass is to be 
 referred to the priesthood of Christ forever after the 
 order of Melchisedech. Therefore, according to the 
 Apostle, it is not other than, but one and the same 
 with, the “one offering” whereby our High Priest 
 ‘“hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” 
 
 The same appears from this, that the Sacrifice 
 of the New Law is the Christian Passover, which 
 had its type in the Jewish Passover. But the 
 Christian Passover is one sacrifice, not two sacrifices. 
 ‘For Christ our Pasch is slain,” says the Apostle ; 
 and St John tells us expressly that the typical Pasch 
 of the Jews was fulfilled on Calvary.—ZJb., xix. 36. 
 Therefore the offering made in the Last Supper under 
 the form of unleavened bread was not consummated, 
 and did not constitute our Pasch, till the Lamb 
 was slain on Calvary. The teaching of the New 
 Testament simply excludes the notion that Christ 
 offered two sacrifices, or was offered twice. 
 
 So also does Tradition. It is the Tradition of 
 the Catholic Church that the Mass is the continua- 
 tion, not of the Last Supper simply, but of the 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 61 
 
 Sacrifice of Calvary. In order to realise what this 
 means, let us take a parallel case. It is the teaching 
 of theologians that conservation is continued creation, 
 i.e. the creative act continued evermore. In other 
 words, creation and conservation are not two acts, 
 but one act continued. Similarly the Mass and 
 Calvary are not two sacrifices, but one sacrifice 
 continued; for the action which made Calvary a 
 sacrifice was put forth once for all in the Last Supper 
 and is continued forever in the Mass. 
 
 Again, it is the teaching of the Cathohe Church 
 that the Mass is essentially the same as the Sacrifice 
 of Calvary. In essence they are the same, and only 
 differ in non-essentials. Now destruction or im- 
 molation and ceremonial offering are the two essential 
 elements of sacrifice, as an act of public worship 
 regulated by positive divine law. The ceremonial 
 offering is the priest’s part in the sacrifice, the 
 immolation the victim’s part. The essence of the 
 sacrifice thus includes a twofold element, the action 
 of the priest and the passion of the victim. Both 
 together constitute the essence, the one as formal 
 constituent, the other as the material element. 
 But it is the “form” or formal constituent which 
 determines the specific character of a thing, according 
 to the axiom of the schoolmen, forma dat esse rev. 
 In our case the ceremonial offering stamps upon the 
 slaying of an animal the character of a sacrificial 
 immolation, and so differentiates it from the slaying 
 that is done by the huntsman or in the shambles. 
 The ceremonial offering in the Last Supper, therefore, 
 made the death on Calvary a sacrificial immolation, 
 and the Mass is that same ceremonial offering 
 
62 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 prolonged forever. Hence St Cyprian declares that 
 “the Passion of the Lord is the Sacrifice that we 
 offer’ *, for this is what the Lord Himself offered in 
 the Last Supper. Our Sacrifice cannot be other 
 than His, and He would have us show forth His 
 death till He come.—1 Cor. ii. 26. 
 
 To St Ambrose the Mass is “that saving sacrifice 
 whereby the sin of the world is blotted out.”? To 
 St Augustine it is “the Sacrifice of our Ransom.” * 
 To St Jerome it is ‘‘the one Sacrifice of Christ.” 
 To St Leo the Great it is ‘the one oblation” of 
 Christ's Body and Blood which “takes the place of 
 every different kind of victim.”*® Coming down to 
 the middle age we find Alger the Scholastic affirming 
 that “if our daily sacrifice were other than that 
 once offered in Christ, it would not be true but 
 superfluous” ;* and Peter the Venerable, that “it is 
 not that a different sacrifice is now offered from that 
 which was then offered, but that whereof it is said: 
 Christ was offered once, He hath left to His Church 
 evermore to be offered up’’;’ and Blessed Albert 
 the Great, that our sacrifice is the offering by the 
 hands of the priests of the Victim slain on Calvary ° 
 and St Bonaventure, that it is that Sacrifice “pure, 
 pacific, and plenary” which ‘‘ was offered on the 
 Cross’ ;* and St Thomas of Aquin, summing up the 
 tradition of preceding ages, that ‘the sacrifice which 
 is offered daily in the Church is not other than 
 that which Christ Himself offered.”*° Finally, Holy 
 
 Ep CSAs ts 2 Hexhort. Virg., c. 14, n. 94. © Conf. oye 
 12 m3) * Pi, tom: 25; <ol./ 931: 5 Serm., 59, c. 7 (Migne, 
 P. L., tom. 54, col. 341). 6 P. L., tom. 180, col. 786. * Ihd., 
 tom. 189., col. 798. 64.5, De I eee) ® Brevil., VI, 9. 
 10 32,,q) 22, a. 3,.ad 2'um. 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 63 
 
 Church herself in the very act of offering the Mass 
 declares it to be ‘‘the spotless evening sacrifice 
 offered up on the Cross for the salvation of the 
 world” (Feast of the Spear and Nauls); the sacrifice 
 “by the offering of which Thou didst set the whole 
 world free from the bonds of sin” (orat pro uno 
 defuncto); ‘the most holy offering of the same 
 sacrifice” offered on the Cross by Jesus Christ ‘a 
 spotless and willing Victim to God the Father” 
 (Feast of the Spear and Nails). 
 
 Here then is a body of teaching, in Scripture and 
 Tradition, regarding the oneness of the Sacrifice of 
 the New Law and the identity of the Mass with that 
 One Sacrifice, which held throughout the Universal 
 Church for fifteen hundred years before the assembling 
 of the Council of Trent. The teaching which reached 
 Trent was that the Mass is not other than the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross, but is the representation and 
 continuation and participation of it. The decree of 
 the Council has to be interpreted in the light of the 
 teaching and belief of the Church during the fifteen 
 hundred years that went before. To take the text of 
 the decree by itself and interpret it without reference 
 to the pre-existing body of doctrine would be like 
 taking a text of Scripture, say: “The Father is 
 greater than I,” and interpreting it without reference 
 to other texts and the whole context of Scripture. 
 We must guard against thinking that the mind of 
 the Church concerning the great Sacrifice that she 
 offers daily is to be gathered from the decree of Trent 
 alone. ‘That decree is serviceable as far as it goes. 
 But it was no part of the Council’s purpose to define 
 precisely wherein lies the sacrificial idea in the Mass. 
 
64 THE VSACGRIFICE OPAL AE Wy hoo 
 
 This is shown by the Acts of the Council as well as 
 by the freedom with which theologians have since 
 discussed the point, and the existing conflict of 
 opinion upon it. 
 
 The Council did not define the nature of the 
 Kucharistic Sacrifice. It simply aimed to define as 
 of faith, against the heretical denials of the time, 
 that in the Mass is offered a true, proper, and pro- 
 pitiatory sacrifice; that the Priest and Victim of 
 Calvary are its Priest and Victim; that it does but 
 apply to men the fruits of the Sacrifice once offered ; 
 that to this, therefore, it is not derogatory. When 
 it speaks of the Mass as ‘this,’ and of the Cross as 
 ‘that, sacrifice, it does but condescend to human 
 modes of conceiving and speaking of things, and 
 apply to things eternal the language of things that 
 are in space and time. It does this without imply- 
 ing that they are really two sacrifices. Outwardly 
 they are two; inwardly they are one. Hence the 
 Council declares that the Mass “represents,” 2.e. not 
 only puts before us in symbolic fashion but sets up 
 again or renews the Sacrifice of Calvary, as appears 
 from the words in which the Catechism of the Council 
 reproduces its teaching, ‘a visible sacrifice, by which 
 the bloody sacrifice that was a little after to be 
 offered up once on the Cross was to be renewed— 
 unstauraretur.” Hence also it makes the two differ 
 only in the manner of offering, which implies a 
 difference, not in essence, but in accidental forms ; 
 not in the sacrificial action but in its outward mani- 
 festations. Hence, in fine, it teaches that the Mass 
 “is that sacrifice which was shadowed forth by the 
 various typical sacrifices of the law and of the time — 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 65 
 
 before the law,’ which is true only on condition of 
 its formal identity with the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 True, the Council adds: ‘‘ because, as being the 
 perfection and completion of them all, it comprises 
 all the good things which they signified.” But, 
 plainly, it is only as being identical with the Sacrifice 
 of Calvary that it can be ‘“‘the perfection and com- 
 pletion” of all the sacrifices of the law and of the 
 time before the law. 
 
 For the rest, the interpretation put upon the © 
 Council’s teaching by the Catechism of the Council 
 may well be taken as authentic. ‘‘ We therefore 
 confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is one and the 
 same with that of the Cross, and so it is to be re- 
 garded. It is one and the same Victim, viz., Christ 
 our Lord who offered Himself once only a bloody 
 sacrifice on the altar of the Cross. The bloody 
 Victim and the unbloody are not two victims, but 
 one only, whereof the Sacrifice is daily renewed in 
 the Mass, according to the Lord’s command: Do this 
 for a remembrance of me.” One Priest, One Victim, 
 One Sacrifice—such has been the faith of the Church 
 in every age. 
 
 Even from the brief account given by Pallavicini 
 one gathers that there were long and animated dis- 
 cussions at Trent about the Mass. And the language 
 of the decree no doubt reflects the theological pre- 
 occupations of those who drew it up. But there is 
 nothing in the decree itself to imply the mind of the 
 Council to have been that the Mass is really other 
 than the Sacrifice of the Cross, or that they are 
 really two sacrifices. True, the Fathers speak of the 
 
 one as an ‘‘unbloody oblation,’ of the other as a 
 E 
 
66 THE SACRIFICE .OF THE MASS 
 
 > 
 
 “bloody one”; of the same Christ being “‘ immolated 
 in an unbloody manner” in the Mass “ who once 
 offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of 
 the cross.” But the Catechism of the Council ex- 
 plains that, as the bloody victim and the unbloody 
 are not two victims, but one only, the Mass is not a 
 new sacrifice of Christ, but the daily renewal upon 
 the altar of the sacrifice once offered upon Calvary. 
 It will not do to lay too much stress on the word 
 ‘“‘unbloody,” as if the meaning were that in the Mass 
 the Blood of Christ is not really offered, for it is 
 really offered, though under the appearance of wine. 
 When the Council speaks of Christ being immolated 
 in an unbloody manner in the Mass, all that it means 
 is that the Blood is not really shed there as it was 
 on Calvary, but only in a mystical manner. Now 
 this mystical shedding of the Blood, being wholly 
 relative to the real, the symbol and image of the 
 real, does not constitute an immolation formally 
 distinct from it, seeing that an image does not differ 
 formally from that of which it is the image. And as 
 in the Mass the matter is also the same, for the 
 Victim is the Victim of Calvary, it follows that the 
 unbloody sacrifice differs neither formally nor materi- 
 ally from the bloody, but is, as it has been always 
 and everywhere believed, the self-same. Hence, as 
 the Council teaches, it has no fruits of its own, and 
 does but apply to men the fruits of the Sacrifice once 
 offered on the Cross. 
 
 The original draft of the Tridentine decree con- 
 tained these words: ‘‘ Christ exercised on the Cross 
 the Aaronic priesthood.” One after another of the 
 Fathers took strong exception to this statement. 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 67 
 
 Finally, on motion of the Archbishop of Cologne, it 
 was struck out. Particularly noteworthy is the 
 discourse of the learned archbishop in support of his 
 motion : 
 
 ‘Christ, being Priest according to the order of 
 Melchisedech, kept indeed the forms of bread and 
 wine in His Sacrifice, but changed the bread and the 
 wine into nobler things and a better oblation. Under 
 these appearances He offered with His own hands to 
 His Heavenly Father in the Supper the Sacrifice of — 
 His Body and Blood, which was to be consummated 
 on the Cross by the hands of others. As the priest- 
 hood of Melchisedech shadowed forth the divine 
 priesthood of Christ, so the former’s sacrifice of 
 bread which could be broken and eaten, and of 
 wine, symbolized the divine sacrifice of Christ which 
 was broken on the Cross but not consumed, and 
 is by us consumed, in the sacrament. ... His 
 hour had come when He was to be delivered into 
 the hands of sinners and pass out of this world 
 to the Father. To the Father, therefore, with His 
 own hands He offered Himself, while the wicked 
 men to whom He was given over ceased not from 
 their buffeting, and scourging, and crucifying of Him, 
 till they consummated on the Cross the Sacrifice 
 which was offered in bread and wine. ... All the 
 Scriptures and Fathers agree in this. They separate 
 not the Sacrifice of the Cross from the Sacrifice of 
 the Supper, but include the one in the other in an 
 unbloody way. Yet in this way it was not other 
 than the Sacrifice that was already being offered (in 
 the Supper). As thisis the true and Catholic doctrine, 
 I am of opinion that certain words which might be 
 interpreted in a different sense should be changed.” 
 
 I am indebted for this extract to Father de la 
 Taille, S.J., who reproduces it in his great work on 
 
68 THE SACRIFICE (ORC HEMMZLS > 
 
 the Mass, entitled Mysteriwm Fider, to which I refer 
 the reader. 
 
 That the Fathers were led by this utterance to 
 strike out the offending statement is very significant. 
 It implies the mind of the Council to have been that 
 Christ was Priest after the order of Melchisedech on 
 Calvary. But in the Supper He plainly exercised 
 His Priesthood after the order of Melchisedech. His 
 Priesthood, therefore, is one, and His Sacrifice one, 
 and the Supper one with Calvary. This One Sacrifice 
 is continued in the Mass. 
 
 Outwardly the Mass is an unbloody sacrifice ; 
 yet the Blood of Christ is truly offered on the altar. 
 If physical destruction by itself constituted the 
 essence of sacrifice, then the Mass would not at all 
 be a sacrifice, or, at the most, would be a sacrifice of 
 bread and wine. But physical destruction by itself 
 does not constitute the essence of sacrifice. The 
 priest offers the sacrifice, and without this offering 
 the physical destruction would be but the slaying of 
 an animal. The offering by the priest is the formal 
 constituent of sacrifice; it is the action of the 
 sacrifice, and sacrifice is, formally speaking, an action. 
 This, and not merely the bloody immolation on the 
 Cross, is the essential element that makes the Mass 
 a sacrifice. And it is precisely because this action 
 of the Hternal High Priest, once for all put forth in 
 the Last Supper, is still operative in the Mass, or, as 
 St John Chrysostom has it: “ from that time to the 
 present and unto His coming perfects the sacrifice on 
 every altar,” that there is formal identity between 
 the Mass and the Sacrifice once offered in the Last 
 Supper and on the Cross. 
 
LH ONEwSACKIFICE 69 
 
 In the Old Law, the victim was first slain outside 
 the holy place. Then the priest entered the holy 
 place with the blood of the victim, and offered it there 
 to God. Was the sacrifice done and over when the 
 animal was slain and its blood shed? If so, how 
 could the priest offer the same sacrifice within the 
 holy place? In the case of a sin-offering the priest 
 had no share in the slaying, for the sinner himself 
 it was that slew the animal. The physical immolation 
 was over at the instant of death. A point of time — 
 is as absolutely over after ten seconds as after ten 
 thousand years. And yet the priest of the Old Law 
 was deemed to have offered the sacrifice to God 
 within the holy place, because he handed over there 
 to God in due ritual form the blood of the victim 
 that was slain. And how shall not we priests of the 
 New Law, lending our hands and our voices to Him 
 who is Priest forever after the order of Melchisedech, 
 be deemed to offer still the Sacrifice of our Ransom 
 when we appear daily within the holy place with 
 the Blood of the Victim that blotted out on Calvary 
 the handwriting of the decree that was against us 
 
 As Holy Mass is the ceremonial offering to God 
 within the Christian sanctuary of the Victim slain 
 on Calvary, it follows that we are not to look in it 
 for the destruction essential to sacrifice. ‘That was 
 the death of Christ upon the Cross, and “ Christ 
 rising from the dead dieth now no more ; death hath 
 no more dominion over Him.”—fom. 6: 9. “There 
 is now no shedding of blood,’ to quote Cardinal 
 Manning’s striking words on the subject in Lhe 
 Glories of the Sacred Heart—‘that was accom- 
 plished once for all on Calvary. The action of the 
 
70 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Last Supper looked onward to that action on Calvary 
 as the action of the Holy Mass looks backward upon 
 it. As the shadow is cast by the rising sun towards 
 the west, and as the shadow is cast by the setting 
 sun towards the east, so the Holy Mass is, I may 
 say, the shadow of Calvary, but it is also the reality. 
 That which was done in the Paschal Supper in the 
 guest-chamber, and that which is done upon the 
 altar in the Holy Mass, is one and the same act— 
 the offering of Jesus Christ Himself, the true, proper, 
 propitiatory, and only Sacrifice for the sin of the 
 World” (The Last Will of the Sacred Heart). 
 
 As in a living organism the blood is in the body, 
 there is no real separation of the Precious Blood from 
 the Body of Christ at the consecration. The dis- 
 tinctive note of what is spoken of as “the unbloody 
 separation” lies in its not being real. True, the term 
 of transubstantiation of the wine is the Blood of 
 Christ. But it is the Blood as in the Body, not the 
 Blood as separated from the Body—which it never is 
 and never more can be. The elements of bread and 
 wine are, indeed, separate, and there is a separate 
 consecration of each. Also, the term in the one case 
 is really distinct from the term in the other. And it 
 is enough that they be really distinct to found a basis 
 for the double consecration and the really distinct 
 relations arising from it. But real distinction and 
 real separation are two entirely different things. 
 The Blood of Christ is really distinct from His Body 
 as it isin Heaven. And yet, whether in Heaven or 
 on the Altar, the Blood is really in the Body, not 
 really separated from the Body. It has been said 
 that “if separated in the Sacrament, it is really, not 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 7 
 
 figuratively separated.” Not “figuratively” in the 
 sense of ‘‘ metaphorically,” it is true; for the mystery 
 of the Eucharist lies altogether beyond the region of 
 metaphor. But “figuratively ” in the sense of ‘‘sym- 
 bolically,” yes, and thus also opposed to “really.” 
 The metaphorical is in the imagination ; the mystical 
 or symbolical in the intellect ; the real alone is wholly 
 outside of the mind. And the Blood of Christ, as 
 it exists outside of the mind, whether in Heaven or 
 on the Altar, is really in His Body. 
 
 The whole rite of the Mass, the altar representing 
 Calvary, the priest mounting the altar representing 
 Christ, the repeated signs of the Cross, the mystic 
 slaying, the words and the action of the liturgy, the 
 very vestments—in short, the Mass from beginning 
 to end is, as St Thomas observes, an wmago quaedam 
 repraesentativa passions Christt, a symbolic repre- 
 sentation and reproduction of the Passion of Christ, 
 which, St Cyprian attests is “the Sacrifice that we 
 offer.” Thus is the Mass, as the Council of Trent has 
 declared, ‘“‘a visible sacrifice,” a sense-perceptible 
 transcript of the Sacrifice once offered, and at the 
 same time that very Sacrifice itself evermore pro- 
 longed. For the Mass is, as Manning has so aptly 
 said: ‘‘the shadow of Calvary, but it is also the 
 reality.” The mystic slaying, though the central 
 act, is not the only constituent of the mystic rite 
 and visible sacrifice; nor was it so regarded by the 
 great theologians of the middle age. For the Last 
 Supper is fused into one with Calvary in Christ's 
 Commemorative Pasch which comforts Ged’s people 
 on their pilgrimage, and on every altar, ‘from the 
 rising of the sun to the going down of the same,” 
 
72 THE SACKIFIGE ORGTHE WWASS 
 
 pleads for them with a better pleading than that 
 of Abel. 
 
 The idea that there are two sacrifices in the New 
 Law, or that Christ offered Himself twice, or that the 
 Kucharistic Sacrifice is other than that of Calvary is 
 foreign to the mind of the Church in every century 
 of her existence from the days of the Apostles. 
 
 After the Reformation, Scholastic Philosophy, 
 with its exactness of thought and precision of 
 language, was driven from its place of honour in 
 seminaries of learning, and fell into abeyance, if not 
 into contempt. Once granted that the Mass is 
 essentially the same as the Sacrifice of the Cross— 
 and this our faith affirms—no one versed in the 
 philosophy of the schools would ever dream of 
 questioning that they have the same formal con- 
 stituent. It was ever axiomatic in the schools that 
 the formal constituent is the determining principle 
 of the essence, and where this is one must needs be 
 one and the same. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE 
 
 Berore the sixteenth century the whole Christian 
 world believed the Mass to be one and the same _ 
 with the Sacrifice which Christ began at the Last 
 Supper and finished on Calvary. It was believed 
 to be not other than the Sacrifice of the Cross, not 
 distinct from it, but the continuation and offering 
 over again in every place and time of the One 
 Sacrifice once offered. The citations made in a 
 former chapter amply bear out this statement. 
 Many more might be added, but let one or two 
 suffice. ‘Our High Priest,” says St John Chrysostom, 
 “it was who offered up that Sacrifice which cleanses 
 us. ‘That same Sacrifice do we also offer up now, 
 which was then offered up—that Sacrifice which 
 cannot be exhausted.”* In the twelfth century, 
 the Venerable Peter of Cluny, tells us that the 
 Church “‘ offers for herself Him who offered Himself 
 for her, and what He did once by dying she does 
 evermore by offering” ;* and that, “This is our 
 Sacrifice, this the holocaust of the Evangelical Law, 
 of the New Testament, of the New People, which was 
 once offered on the Cross by the Son of God and Son 
 of Man, and instituted and ordered to be offered by 
 the same evermore on the altar for His people.” * 
 
 1 In. Ep. ad Hebr., c. 10, hom. 17, n. 3 (Migne, P.G., tom. 63, col. 
 131). * Migne, P. Z., tom, 189, col. 789. 3 Ibid., col. 798, 
 43 
 
74 THE SACRIFICE: OF (THE MASS 
 
 At the very dawn of the Reformation we find 
 the same teaching and belief of the Church set 
 forth clearly in the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum 
 (pp. 80-381), which bears the name of Henry VIII. 
 “On the Cross,” we there read: ‘ (Christ) con- 
 summated the Sacrifice which He began in the 
 Supper. And therefore the commemoration of the 
 whole thing, to wit, of the consecration in the 
 Supper and the oblation on the Cross, is celebrated 
 and represented together in the Sacrament of the 
 Mass, and therefore the Death is more truly repre- 
 sented than the Supper.” What is more, this un- 
 changing faith of the Church in the formal identity 
 of the Sacrifice of the Mass with that of Calvary is 
 to be found in all our catechisms, and in all manuals 
 of Catholic instruction other than the text-books of 
 theology used in seminaries. Thus Father Schouppe, 
 S.J., in his Abridged Course of Religious Instruc- 
 tton, voices the tradition of the Church from the 
 beginning when he declares the Mass to be “the ° 
 unbloody continuation throughout all ages and 
 generations of the bloody Sacrifice which was offered 
 on Mount Calvary”; and Bishop Hayes in his 
 Sincere Christuan, when he says that, “If the Mass 
 were a distinct sacrifice from that of the Cross... 
 the Mass might justly be said to be injurious to it; 
 but as it is the self-same” it cannot; and Wetzer 
 and Welte’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Catholic 
 Theology, which teaches that “in the New Law there 
 is but One Sacrifice, that this one and only Sacrifice 
 was offered but once on the Cross, and that it was 
 there it was consummated,” and that “The Holy 
 Mass is numerically the same (sacrificowum numero 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE 75 
 
 wdem) as the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.” A 
 mass of other citations from many various sources 
 will be found in an appendix at the end of the 
 volume. 
 
 Sacrifice in its essential concept is a liturgical 
 offering and immolation. These two enter into the 
 very notion of it. The priest is the efficient cause 
 of the latreutical action, and the victim, that which 
 is offered and immolated, is the material element. 
 The latreutical action itself, which comprises both a | 
 liturgical offering and immolation, is, strictly and 
 properly speaking, the sacrifice. This is the ancient 
 and true notion. Thus St Augustine’ says: “‘T'o 
 be immolated is to die for God. The word is 
 borrowed from the ritual of ‘sacrifice. Whatever is 
 sacrificed is slain for God.” And St Thomas of 
 Aquin, after declaring that “every sacrifice is an 
 offering, but not conversely,” * goes on to say: “ The 
 word offering is common to all things that are made 
 over to the worship of God. Hence if anything is 
 so made over to divine worship that it 1s to be con- 
 sumed in the sacred rite of which it is the material 
 element, it is both an offering and a sacrifice... . 
 But if it is so made over to divine worship that it 
 remains whole, or is devoted to the use of the priests, 
 it is an offering, not a sacrifice.” ® 
 
 This teaching is founded on the Old Testament, 
 where God Himself lays down the law and ritual of 
 sacrifice. And of course we have here the only true 
 notion. ‘All things whatever,” says Bellarmine, in 
 words already cited, ‘that are called sacrifices in 
 
 1 Serm., 299, n. 3. 2 2a, Qae, q. 85, a. 3, ad 3um. 3 Ihnd. 
 q. 86, a. 1. 
 
76 IE SACKIFICE OF) THEAMASS 
 
 Scripture had necessarily to be destroyed; things 
 that had life, by slaying; things without life, if 
 solids, such as flour, salt, incense, by burning; if 
 liquids, such as blood, wine, or water, by pouring 
 them out on the ground.”* And Outram in his 
 classic work De Sacrificus: “Those things that 
 were so offered to God before the altar, or placed on 
 the sacred table in the outer court, that they should 
 be consumed in due ritual form, the Jews reckoned 
 as sacrifices. Accordingly sacrifice, in their view, 
 may be defined as an offering consumed in due ritual 
 form.”* For the rest, one has only to read for 
 oneself Leviticus, chs. i-x., and xvi-xvii. to see what 
 sacrifice is and how it is to be offered according to 
 the law laid down by God. As for the “ shew-bread ” 
 or ‘“‘loaves of proposition” mentioned in ch. xxiv., 
 it appears to have been a true meal-offering like that 
 described in ch. ii, whereof the “memorial” with 
 frankincense was burnt upon the altar; else it would 
 have been no sacrifice in the strict sense, though 
 it did serve as a sacred meal for Aaron and his 
 sons (v. 9). 
 
 Now, inasmuch as the Mass is, according to the 
 belief that has been handed down in the Church from 
 the beginning, not other than the Sacrifice of the 
 Cross, not distinct from it, not a new sacrifice, but 
 the continuation, 2.e. the offering over again In every 
 place and time of the One Sacrifice once offered, it 
 follows necessarily that the formal constituent of the 
 Mass is not other than that of the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 The formal constituent it is that makes the sacrifice, 
 so that if there be but one and the same sacrifice 
 
 1 De Mussa, lib. 1, c. 2. 2 Ibid., p. 82. 
 
GONEINOUARION: Off; TERE VSACRKI DICE” 79 
 
 there can be but one and the same formal constituent. 
 This is what Thomassin means when he says: * 
 ‘Tfit be established that the Sacrifice of the Hucharist 
 is the same as that of the Cross, it will be proved by 
 the same means that in the Eucharist a true sacrifice 
 is offered, for no one ever questioned the Sacrifice of 
 the Cross.” To put the thing in another way. It is 
 the unchanging faith of our Church, which finds ex- 
 pression in all our catechisms and in all our manuals 
 of Christian Doctrine, that the Mass is essentially — 
 the same as the Sacrifice of Calvary, and “ differs 
 only in the manner of offering,” as the Council of 
 Trent has it—not, observe, in the immolation, nor 
 in the offering, but in the manner of offering, 
 ‘now offering by the ministry of His priests.” But 
 liturgical offering and immolation are the very 
 essence of the religious rite known as sacrifice. It 
 follows that the Mass is a sacrifice in virtue of the 
 liturgical offering once made by Christ Himself, and 
 the death on the Cross which that liturgical offering 
 made a true immolation, investing it with a sacrificial 
 character. 
 
 Worthy of note here is the way St Thomas 
 answers an objection to his thesis that Christ 1s 
 a Priest forever. The objection is that Christ's 
 passion and death was the sacrifice which He offered, 
 and that ‘having risen from dead He dieth now no 
 more.” Ifthe Eucharistic Sacrifice were other than 
 that of Calvary, the obvious and proper way to meet 
 this objection would be to point out that Christ 1s 
 styled a Priest forever after the order of Melchisedech, 
 and that though the death on the Cross, by which 
 
 1 De Incarnat. Verbt, 1. 10, c. 17, ad inct. (tom. 4, p. 368). 
 
78 THE SACRIFICE OF | THE MASS 
 
 the Sacrifice of Calvary was consummated, cannot 
 be repeated, Christ offers evermore the Hucharistic 
 Sacrifice by the hands of His priests. But this is 
 St Thomas’s answer: ‘“‘To what is urged in the 
 second place, I reply that though the passion and 
 death of Christ is not to be repeated, yet the eficacy 
 of the Sacrifice once offered endureth evermore.’” 
 This is but another way of saying what he says in 
 the words already quoted, that the Sacrifice which 
 is daily offered up in the Church is not other than 
 that which Christ Himself offered, and so has the 
 same formal constituent. 
 
 Sacrifice 1s the supreme act of external worship. 
 As such it lies in the world of sense and is essentialiy 
 a religious rite or ceremony. The salient features of 
 the rite, as outlined in Leviticus, are four: (1) the 
 offering and consecration of the living victim ; (2) 
 the immolation; (3) the ceremonial offering, or 
 formal handing over to God of the Victim slain by 
 the carrying of the blood into the sanctuary and the 
 pouring-out or sprinkling of it about the altar; (4) 
 the feast upon the sacrifice. The first three, as we 
 gather from the specific directions given by God Him- 
 self, are essential parts of the sacrifice; the last is 
 understood to be only an integral part. Moreover, and 
 this is to be noted particularly, ALL FoUR ARE PARTS 
 OF ONE AND THE SAME SACRIFICE. ‘Therefore, when 
 “the Word was made flesh,” and ‘“ by one Sacrifice 
 perfected forever them that are sanctified ”—Heb. 
 x. 14, He fulfilled as Antitype the law laid down by 
 Himself, which ‘‘ had the shadow of the good things 
 to come.” And so He made, in due ritual form, the 
 
 1 3a. q. 22, a. 5. 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE 79 
 
 offering and consecration of Himself as Victim in 
 the Last Supper, was immolated on the Cross, and 
 left His Body and Blood to be offered up ever- 
 more on the altars of the Church and given as food 
 to the people. And the offering and consecration 
 in the Supper, the immolation on the Cross, the 
 liturgical offering, or handing over to God upon our 
 altars of the Body pierced for us and the Blood 
 poured out for us—these three are essential parts of the 
 One Sacrifice of our Kternal High Priest. Therefore, 
 according to the law of sacrifice laid down by Himself, 
 and His express purpose in instituting His Sacrifice, 
 the offering and consecration in the Supper are 
 an essential part of the One Sacrifice, and the 
 immolation on Calvary is an essential part of the 
 One Sacrifice, and the liturgical offering in the Mass 
 is an essential part of the One Sacrifice. 
 
 From this it follows that the death on the Cross 
 would not have been at all a sacrifice without the 
 offering and consecration in the Supper, continued 
 by Christ’s own institution in the Mass. Tor sacrifice 
 is essentially a religious rite, and lies in the world of 
 sense. But in the world so far as the senses discern 
 it, the death on Calvary, by itself and apart from 
 what took place at the Supper and what takes place 
 in the Mass, was not a religious rite at all. It was, 
 in form of law, an execution; in fact, a judicial 
 murder. Furthermore, the shadow which the coming 
 Sacrifice cast before in the Old Testament enables us 
 to see that it was not done and over on Calvary ; for 
 the ceremonial handing over to God upon Christian 
 altars of the Victim there slain, and the dispensing 
 from these same altars of the same Victim whereby 
 
‘80 THEW SACRIFICE VOR THE MMs 
 
 ] 
 
 “the handwriting of the decree that was against us’ 
 is “‘ blotted out,” are still going on, and will go on to 
 the end of time. So Holy Church declares in the 
 very act of offering the Sacrifice, that “As often as 
 this Commemorative Sacrifice is celebrated, the work 
 of our redemption is carried on” ;* and most earnestly 
 prays the Lord Jesus Christ, “ who didst offer Thyself 
 on the Cross a spotless and willing Victim to God 
 the Father, that the most holy offering of the same 
 Sacrifice may obtain for us pardon for our sins and 
 everlasting glory.” * 
 
 The Mass is, in the eyes of the Church that offers 
 it, not a new sacrifice, not a sacrifice other than that 
 of Calvary, but the offering again of the same Sacrifice 
 once offered on the Cross. St Thomas puts in a nut- 
 shell the ancient faith of the Church when he declares 
 that the Sacrifice which is offered daily on our altars 
 is not other than that which Christ Himself offered. 
 It was only after the Reformation, that the Mass came 
 to be conceived of as other than the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 And it was especially with a view to meet the objections 
 of the founders of Protestantism that Catholic theo- 
 logians began to put forward theories about the Mass 
 which necessarily led to its being conceived of as other 
 than the Sacrifice of our Ransom. They too readily 
 conceded to their adversaries that the Sacrifice of our 
 Ransom was done and over, and so sought to establish 
 the existence of another sacrifice in the Mass ; whereas, 
 according to the law of sacrifice laid down by the 
 Word of God Himself in the Old Testament and His 
 institution in the New, the Sacrifice of our Ransom, 
 
 1 Secret of the Mass: Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. 
 * Post Comm. of the Mass: Feast of the Spear and Naals. 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE 81 
 
 far from being done and over, is still offered up in 
 every place from the rising of the sun to its going 
 down. 
 
 Since the Reformation theological science has been 
 at sixes and sevens on this point. It has been at sea, 
 and will never fetch port until the helm is put down 
 once more. Theories must be built on the lines of 
 Scripture and Tradition; else they are built on the 
 sand. 
 
 The unchanging faith of the Church from the » 
 beginning in Hast and West is that the Mass is the 
 same sacrifice as that of the Cross. On the other 
 hand, current theories of the sacrificial idea in the 
 Mass necessarily imply that it is not the same. And 
 at least one theologian, who is deservedly held in the 
 highest repute, a trained logician and skilled to use 
 words aright, declares plainly that there is an essential 
 difference between the Mass and the Sacrifice of 
 Calvary. This is Saurez.’. ‘The thing is plain,” he 
 says, “for the sacrificial rite 1s essential, and it is 
 altogether different. It is not enough that what is 
 offered should be the same, because sacrifice does not 
 consist essentially in the abiding thing itself, but in 
 the action, or that which is done to it. Hence, if the 
 action is altogether different, though the material 
 element be the same, the sacrifice is different.” The 
 logic of this is beyond question. In the strict and 
 proper sense the action is the sacrifice. It is the 
 formal constituent. Hence an essential difference in 
 the action is an essential difference in the sacrifice. 
 Though the priest be the same, and the victim the 
 game, if the action is different there will be, not one 
 
 1 De Missae Sacrificio, q. 83, a. 1., n. 6 (Op. Omnia, tom. 21, p. 683). 
 . F 
 
82 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 and the same sacrifice, but two different sacrifices. 
 In the precise Scholastic phrase, while the same 
 secundum quid (in a certain sense) they will be 
 sumpliciter (essentially) different. A difference that 
 touches the inner essence of a thing is always a 
 difference sempliciter ; if it touches only the qualities 
 or accidents, it is a difference secundum quid. Thus 
 there is but a difference secundum quid between a 
 child and the same now. grown to man’s estate. And 
 if you are asked whether man and child are the same 
 person, the only true answer will be, yes; though 
 you may qualify your answer and say that they are 
 simply the same, yet differ in certain non-essential 
 respects, le. secundum quid. So, if a thing remain 
 essentially the same, and you are required to give a 
 categorical answer—yes or no, without a qualifying 
 or limiting word—to the question whether it is the 
 same, you are bound to say, yes, else you will be 
 saying the thing which is not. 
 
 Now, the Fathers of the Church say, the great 
 theologians of the Middle Age say, pastors to their 
 people say, and teachers of Catechism to the little 
 ones, that the Mass is the same sacrifice as that of 
 Calvary—essentially the same. When asked whether 
 it is the same, Catholics have always been taught to 
 answer, yes; never, no. But current theories about 
 the Mass logically require those who hold them to 
 answer the question with a categorical, no. They 
 even lead a recent writer so far out of the beaten 
 way of Catholic thought as to affirm that, while the 
 Sacrifice on the Cross is the Sun of the redeemed 
 world, “the sacraments and the Mass are only the 
 planets that revolve round the central body.” But 
 
CONTEINUALLONGORS LAE NSACKIPIGE 1°83 
 
 the sentiment of the Catholic Church is that the Sun 
 suffered momentary eclipse on Calvary only to shine 
 the more brightly after in every place and time. In 
 the very act of offering Holy Mass, she prays: “ May 
 this holy and spotless evening Sacrifice sanctify us, 
 O Lord, we beseech Thee, which Thy Only Begotten 
 Son offered up on the Cross for the salvation of the 
 world.”* In the thought of the Church, as she offers 
 her great Sacrifice, the Mass is not a planet that shines 
 with borrowed radiance, but the very Sun itself which 
 still sheds its light and warmth upon all the earth. 
 
 To say that the Mass is the same as the Sacrifice 
 of the Cross and yet a different Sacrifice; that they 
 are really one sacrifice, and really two sacrifices, is 
 either to say contradictory things, or to juggle with 
 words. Both contradictories cannot be true in the 
 formal sense. But the formal meaning of a word is 
 the proper meaning of it. Thus, the formal meaning 
 of a ‘‘ contract” is the agreement between the parties, 
 not the thing on which they agree; and the formal 
 meaning of “ almsdeed,” is the giving of alms, not the 
 giver, nor the getter, nor yet the alms itself. In like 
 manner the formal meaning of “ sacrifice”’ is not the 
 victim, nor the priest, but the sacrificial action. Now 
 when the child is taught to say that the Mass is the 
 game sacrifice as that of Calvary, what it says is true 
 in the formal sense, or itis not. If itis, the Mass is 
 not other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, nor are they 
 two sacrifices. If it is not, all our catechisms ought 
 to be revised, beginning with the Catechism of the 
 Council of Trent. 
 
 We have seen that sacrifice in its essential con- 
 
 1 Secret of the Mass: Feast of the Spear and Nails. 
 
84 LHE SACRIFICE -OF THE WIAS.> 
 
 cept involves a real destruction or immolation of 
 the thing offered. In the law of sacrifice that God 
 Himself has laid down, a law that ‘‘ had the shadow 
 of the good things to come,” He requires this, and 
 certainly we cannot require less. But the exigency 
 of theories put forward by post-Reformation theo- 
 logians has led to the framing of new definitions 
 of sacrifice, in which the element of destruction is 
 whittled down into ‘‘ quasi-destruction,’ or “ equiva- 
 lent destruction,” or ‘‘ moral destruction,” 2e. de- 
 struction in the moral estimation of men, or ‘real 
 transformation.” Upon this last it is obvious to 
 remark that there is no real transformation of the 
 Victim in the Mass, the only real change being 
 that wrought in the elements of bread and wine by 
 transubstantiation. 
 
 There could scarce be a more signal instance of 
 the fallacy of begging the question than is involved 
 in these definitions. They are simply made to 
 order. The Mass is proved to be a real sacrifice 
 by means of a definition into which there has been 
 quietly smuggled the notion that there is no need 
 of a real destruction of the victim. De Lugo* seems 
 to be alive to the necessity of squaring with Scripture 
 his theory of a moral immolation, and so seeks a 
 parallel for his status decliwor (state of exinanition 
 or emptying out) in the libation of the ancients. 
 Franzelin, following in his footsteps, reckons libation 
 a destruction in the moral estimation of men, and 
 argues that, as it was a true sacrificial destruction, 
 so also is the exinanition of our Lord in the Holy 
 Kucharist. But there is no real parallel between 
 
 1 Tom. 4, disp. 19, sect. 5, n. 65, 66. 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE | 85 
 
 the two cases. In the case of the status decliwor, 
 the destruction is moral only, in the world of faith, 
 invisible, subjective; in that of the libation 1t was 
 physical, in the world of sense, visible, objective 
 and real. Wine poured out on the ground no longer 
 conserves its species, but is dissolved and absorbed 
 by earthly elements. ‘True, the destruction is not 
 instantaneous, but neither is the slaying of an animal 
 by the shedding of its blood. De Lugo himself? 
 cites with approval the statement of Bellarmine that 
 ‘“a true and real sacrifice requires a true and real 
 destruction of the thing sacrificed,” and uses it to 
 confute the theory of Vasquez, forgetful for the 
 nonce that it confutes his own theory as well. Of 
 course, the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ 
 under the forms of bread and wine is true and real, 
 but the destruction is moral only. It is of faith 
 that Christ Himself is the Victim of the Sacrifice, 
 and the act of consecration which puts Him in the 
 state of Victim is not a true and real destruction 
 of Him, but, as Suarez has it, a true and real pro- 
 duction, or placing of Him as Victim upon the altar, 
 1.e. the Victim slain on Calvary. ‘Because,’ as 
 the Greek Bishop Cabislas, at the close of the 
 passage already cited, well observes, “this Sacrifice 
 is effected, not by the slaying of the Lamb here 
 and now, but by the change of bread into the Lamb 
 that was slain, it is evident that there is a change 
 wrought, but that there is not then a slaying. And 
 so that which is changed, indeed, is multifold, and 
 the change takes place over and over again, yet 
 not the less for this is that into which the change 
 1 Tom. 4, disp. 19, sect. 4, n. 57. 
 
86 THE SACRIFICE OF THE: MASS 
 
 one Body and one 
 
 
 
 is made one and the same 
 slaying thereof.” 
 
 Within more recent times certain theologians 
 have sought wholly to eliminate from sacrifice the 
 element of destruction. They argue that since we 
 know with the certainty of faith that the Mass is a 
 true sacrifice, and since there is no real destruction 
 of the Victim in the Mass, real destruction cannot 
 be an essential element of sacrifice. Even if we 
 were to grant the validity of this argument, there 
 would remain the difficulty of squaring our faith 
 with Scripture, as well as with the consensus of 
 mankind ; for ‘‘the idea of kenosis,” as the writer 
 in the Catholic Encyclopedia justly observes, ‘in 
 the minds of all men is intimately linked with the 
 notion of sacrifice.” But the validity of the argument 
 is not granted. It assumes the Mass to be other 
 than the Sacrifice of Calvary, whereas it is one and 
 the same. 
 
 Sacrifice, as being an act of external worship, lies 
 in the world of sense. Hence not only the thing 
 oifered, but that which is done to the thing offered, 
 viz., its immolation, must be sense-perceptible. But 
 neither the mystic nor the moral immolation of the 
 Victim in the Mass is perceptible by the senses. It 
 belongs to the domain of faith, and is perceptible 
 only by the faith-illumined intellect. 
 
 It may be urged that neither is the Victim in 
 the Mass sense-perceptible, and that, as the Body 
 and Blood of Christ are offered under forms not their 
 own, a mystic immolation is enough to constitute a 
 real sacrifice. To this it is replied that, as the Mass 
 is not other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, but the 
 
GONTINUATIONT OF LHR, SACRIFICE,» 87 
 
 continuation and commemoration of it in every place 
 and time, it was constituted a sacrifice once for all 
 by the visible offering and consecration of Himself 
 as Victim which the High Priest made in the supper- 
 room, and the subsequent visible immolation on 
 Calvary. ‘True, that consecration was a mystic rite, 
 and the offering of the Body and Blood was made 
 under forms of bread and wine, but it was visible as 
 a ritual offering. 
 
 That which is no longer capable of being really — 
 immolated is no longer capable of being really 
 sacrificed, supposing, that is, a new immolation to 
 be required here and now to constitute it a real 
 victim. It is no longer apt matter for immolation, 
 as St Thomas expresses it, where he says that Christ's 
 body ‘‘from the fact of its having been passible and 
 mortal was apt matter for immolation.”* Moreover, 
 that which is incapable of being really immolated 
 must, if it is to be a victim at all, at least be 
 immolated in the guise of another thing after the 
 manner of immolation proper to that other thing. 
 For, as Bellarmine pointedly observes, ‘‘the change 
 which is set down as the formal constituent of an 
 external and sensible sacrifice must itself be external 
 and sensible.”? But there is no real destruction of 
 the species of bread and wine in the Mass, if you 
 except that which is involved in the partaking of 
 the Body and Blood by the priest, which is not a 
 sacrificial act of destruction—not the sacrifice proper, 
 but the feast upon the sacrifice. Again, the essence 
 of the Mass is in the consecration. But the words 
 of consecration, which effect what they signify, are 
 
 1 3a. q. 48, a. 3.ad 1 um. 2 De Missa, |. 1, ¢. 27. 
 
88 TBE VWSACKIFPICE VOR NIA to wii ss 
 
 not destructive of the Victim, but productive of it. 
 They place the Victim, slain once for all on Calvary, 
 in such state and under such form that it may be 
 offered anew to the Father and given to priests and 
 people for their spiritual nourishment. 
 
 Consider, moreover, that the mystic immolation, 
 or death, is not a different formal constituent from 
 the real immolation or death, of which it is the 
 image and shadow. Look at an image and you look 
 at the thing represented by 1t—Motus in wmaginem 
 est motus im rem per imaginem representatam, is a 
 saying honoured in Scholastic philosophy ; and indeed 
 it may be said that if the philosophy of the schools 
 had not undeservedly fallen into disrepute about 
 the time of the Reformation, the ground would not 
 to-day be cumbered by so many conflicting theories 
 about the Mass. An image is intrinsically and 
 wholly relative to the thing of which it is the image, 
 and has its whole significance, its whole value, its 
 whole raison d’étre, from the thing. So the mystic 
 immolation in the Mass has its whole significance, 
 its whole value, from the real immolation on Calvary, 
 and coalesces with it into one formal constituent. 
 It does not, therefore, by itself make the Mass a real 
 sacrifice, but is merely a finger-post to point those who 
 believe in the ‘‘ mystery of faith” to the real immola- 
 tion which once for all made the Mass a sacrifice. 
 
 Nor does it avail to say that the mystic immola- 
 tion may serve as an adequate symbol of the supreme 
 worship due to God alone. It is true that sacrifice 
 is a sign or symbol, but this is its generic definition 
 only, not its specific. There are signs and signs. 
 There is the speculative sign, and there is the 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE 89 
 
 practical sign, and there is the liturgical sign or 
 symbol, which is sacrifice. The first merely signifies ; 
 the second effects what it signifies; the third by 
 effecting signifies. By the slaying of the victim and 
 handing over to God of the victim slain is symbolized 
 that which man owes to God as Lord of life and 
 death. But it must be a real slaying and a real 
 handing over to God of the victim slain else we have 
 only the shadow of a sacrifice, not the reality. Now, 
 in the Mass we have both the shadow and the reality 
 —the shadow in the mystic slaying, the reality in 
 the real slaying on the Cross, which still operates in 
 the Mass, having, as St Thomas says, everlasting 
 efficacy, and in the real handing over to God of the 
 Body and Blood of the Victim slain “without the 
 gate.” And this is the strictly liturgical part of the 
 sacrifice, for the slaying of the victim is but the 
 physical basis of it. 
 
 That great Scholastic theologian, Cardinal Cajetan, 
 and, long before him, his greater master, St Thomas, 
 pointed out that the mystic immolation is not a 
 distinct formal constituent from the real, and that 
 this it is which makes the Mass a real sacrifice. Says 
 the former: “Though there is a difference in the 
 manner of offering, yet because this mode, to wit, 
 of unbloody immolation, was not instituted as a 
 disparate mode of immolation, but only as having a 
 relation to the bloody immolation on the Cross, hence 
 it is that, as with the wise and the discerning, where 
 one is solely on account of another there 1s but one 
 only—hence, I say, it is that it cannot, in the strict 
 sense, be affirmed that there are two sacrifices, or 
 two victims, or two immolations, which ever you 
 
go THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 may choose to call it, in the New Law, because 
 there is a bloody Victim, Christ on the Cross, and 
 an unbloody Victim, Christ on the Altaraiiiep 
 Thomas puts to himself this objection, where he 
 inquires whether Christ is immolated in the Mass: 
 “Tt is written (Heb. 10) that Christ by one sacrifice 
 hath forever perfected them that are sanctified. Now, 
 that sacrifice was His immolation. Therefore Christ 
 is not immolated in the celebration of this mystery.” * 
 His answer is that in the Mass there is a twofold 
 immolation, one in the strict and proper sense, the 
 other mystic, and that, as there was also a mystic 1m- 
 molation of Christ in the sacrifices of the Old Law, 
 it is the real immolation which makes the Mass the 
 distinctive Sacrifice of the New. Now, the real 
 immolation, which St Thomas says is in the Mass, 
 because it still operates there, took place on Calvary. 
 So, in the sacrifices of the Old Law there was only 
 the shadow, for the real immolation was yet to be; 
 in the Sacrifice of the New Law there is both the 
 shadow and the reality, for the real immolation has 
 taken place, as is shadowed forth in the Mass, and 
 the Body and Blood of Him who has become a Victim 
 evermore in virtue of that real immolation are really 
 offered to God on the altar under the forms of bread 
 and wine and given as food to the people. 
 
 There is a passage in Petavius (whom Alzog 
 speaks of as, ‘‘ beyond all question, the most learned 
 theologian that the Society of Jesus has produced”) 
 which bears out this idea of the Mass as at once the 
 shadow and the reality of Calvary, in the most formal 
 sense. [or be makes the bloody immolation on tke 
 
 1 Tract. 10 de Mrssae Sacreficro, c. 6. 2 3a, q. 83. a. 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE — gt 
 
 Cross to be the true energizing principle, and real 
 “ratio” of the bloodless renewal and memorial of it 
 on our altars. And what is more, in this he is but 
 setting forth—as who was better fitted to set forth ? 
 —the teaching of the Fathers, both in the Hast and 
 in the West. First he cites the striking words of 
 St John Chrysostom, quoted in a former chapter. 
 Whereupon he observes: ‘‘ The other Greek Fathers, 
 Theodoretus, Theophylactus, Gicumenius, make the 
 same answer (to the objection that the Kucharistic 
 Sacrifice is offered again and again) in their com- 
 mentaries on Heb. 10; which is worthy of note. 
 For the Sacrifice (of the New Law) is not multifold 
 (multeplec), but one, and the same often renewed. 
 In the Old Law there were many sacrifices because 
 there were many victims, the one independent of the 
 other; to-day a lamb, or sheep, or steer, was im- 
 molated ; to-morrow another and different one. But 
 in our Sacrifice the Victim that is offered is one and 
 one only, namely Christ, nor is He slain (yugulatur) 
 each time. Once for all on the Cross was there 
 offered by the alone High Priest, Christ, the primary 
 and bloody Sacrifice which continues to put forth 
 (diffundit) its virtue and efficacy unto all ages. The 
 daily oblation of the Church, which is without blood- 
 shedding, is but the reiterated commemoration of 
 that one and same Sacrifice. Hence it is everywhere 
 spoken of as anaimaktor thusiar; as here by ‘Theo- 
 phylactus and Cicumenius. For which reason it 1s, 
 by Christ’s own institution, anamnesis, and a true 
 commemorative Sacrifice, that is, thusiar anamnesikat, 
 inasmuch as it really contains the Victim that was 
 immolated on the Cross. It is not a bloody sacrifice, 
 
Q2 THE “SACRIFICE \ORURAE iiAys 
 
 but the image and symbol of the one and single 
 oblation ; just as the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body 
 and Blood is, at one and the same time, the reality, 
 in that it really contains Christ’s Body, and the 
 symbol of that reality; for the Body as there con- 
 tained is present in a different way from that in 
 which it was offered on the Cross.” 
 
 It is of faith that the Mass is a propitiatory 
 sacrifice, and it is at any rate theologically certain 
 that its intrinsic value as a propitiatory sacrifice is 
 infinite. Butif the Last Supper had been a finished 
 sacrifice, it, too, would have offered to God a satis- 
 faction for sin that would have been infinite. It 
 would therefore have made more than ample satis- 
 faction for the sins of the world, and so would have 
 ‘blotted out the handwriting of the decree that was 
 against us.” But it is also of faith that it was on 
 the Cross this was done. Hence any theory that 
 makes the Mass other than the Sacrifice of our 
 Ransom is in conflict with the faith of the Church. 
 
 Nor let it be said that the Last Supper would 
 have redeemed the world had it not been decreed 
 that ‘‘ without the shedding of blood there is no re- 
 mission”; for the point is that it was so decreed, 
 and that, therefore, the sacrifice was not finished till 
 the blood was shed. Moreover, if the mystic shedding 
 of the Blood in the Last Supper had been in itself a 
 real sacrifice, the text quoted would have first found 
 its application there, whereas it is certain that it did 
 not find its application there at all. Therefore the 
 mystic shedding did not constitute a real sacrifice, 
 and was nothing in itself apart from the real. 
 
 The Victim offered to God in the Mass and given 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE — 93 
 
 as food to the people is, of course, the Victim of the 
 Sacrifice that is now and here offered. But it is the 
 age-long belief of Christians that the Victim offered 
 up to God in the Mass and dispensed to the people 
 is, as St Augustine has it, “that Victim whereby 
 the handwriting that was against us is blotted out,” 
 2.e. the Victim of Calvary. Therefore the Mass is 
 not other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, but is the 
 continuation, commemoration, and application of it ; 
 and any theory which implies it to be other con- 
 tradicts the age-long belief of the Church. 
 
 When our blessed Lord offered to His Father in 
 the Last Supper His Body and Blood in such wise 
 that they appeared as if in death, He plainly gave 
 us to understand that what He offered was the death 
 He was next day about to undergo. Therefore the 
 liturgical offering made in the Last Supper, and 
 continued in the Mass, was the offering of His passion 
 and death, or—which is the same thing—of the life 
 He gave as a ransom for many. And it became a 
 finished sacrifice only when that life was actually 
 laid down. Hence St Cyprian declares that ‘The 
 Passion of the Lord is the Sacrifice that we offer” 
 for that is the Sacrifice the Lord Himself offered, and 
 ours is not different from His. Hence, too, St Paul 
 teaches that, in the celebration of the holy mystery, we 
 ‘show forth the death of the Lord until He comes.” 
 
 “Sacrifice,” to quote the definition given by a 
 theologian of our own day, “is the external oblation 
 to God of a sense-perceptible object, either through 
 its destruction or at least through its real trans- 
 formation, in acknowledgment of God’s supreme 
 dominion and for the appeasing of His wrath.” The 
 
04 THE SACRIFICE ORF Wir iiis> 
 
 only real transformation in the Mass is the change 
 that is wrought by transubstantiation in the bread 
 and wine. And there is in the Mass no sense- 
 perceptible object but these. So long as it is held 
 to be identically the same as the Sacrifice of Calvary, 
 there is no real difficulty in this. For Christ in the 
 Last Supper made the external oblation of Himself 
 as the Victim of Calvary, and as Priest in the Supper 
 and Victim on the Cross, was, of course, a sense- 
 perceptible object. But on the theory that the 
 Mass is other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, that it 
 contains within itself as celebrated on our altars all 
 the essential elements of a true sacrifice, there is a 
 difficulty—an insuperable difficulty. For the only 
 sense-perceptible object in the Mass, as celebrated on 
 our altars, is that which is placed on the paten and 
 poured into the chalice. From this it would follow 
 that the Mass is merely an offering of bread and wine. 
 Therefore, any and every theory that makes the Mass 
 to be other than the Sacrifice once offered on the Cross 
 is felo de se, or in plain English, cuts its own throat. 
 
 Sacrifice may be considered from a threefold 
 point of view, physical, ethical, and religious. In the 
 physical world, it is a fact or phenomenon; in the 
 ethical, it is a human act; in religion, it is a sacred 
 rite carried out in due form according to liturgical 
 law. As a phenomenon in the physical world, its 
 essential feature is the shedding of blood even to the 
 laying down of life. This shedding of blood gets its 
 distinctive ethical colour from the intention with 
 which it is done. Further, it is invested with a 
 religious character by the due following out of an 
 appropriate ritual. rom this it appears that the 
 
CONTINUATION OF THE SACRIFICE — 95 
 
 basic element in the Sacrifice of the New Law, viewed 
 as an event of the physical world, was the Passion 
 and Death of Christ. This was the foundation on 
 which the Sacrifice was built, and without which 
 it would have neither ethical nor religious value. In 
 an ethical point of view, the Death of Christ, on the 
 part of those who compassed it, was a murder; on 
 part of Him who laid down His life for us, was a 
 visible proof of love greater than which no man hath. 
 Yet in this it is not without parallel, for others, too, 
 have out of love laid down their lives for their friends, 
 and the martyrs have shed their blood for the faith. 
 That the Passion and Death should receive a liturgical 
 character as the supreme act of external worship, it 
 was needful that He who suffered should first have 
 become a Priest forever after the order of Melchisedech, 
 that as such He should have visibly consecrated and 
 offered Himself a willing Victim, and that the 
 Sacrifice of the Life laid down under these conditions 
 should find its final and adequate liturgical expression 
 in the handing over to God of the Body and Blood 
 of the Victim on the altars of the Christian Church 
 within the holy place, with fitting rite and ceremony. 
 Under the Old Law, this was, in a liturgical sense, 
 the most solemn and significant part of the sacrifice, 
 and was never performed by other than the priests. 
 Whence we may rightly conclude that this also is the 
 most vital liturgical action in the Sacrifice of the 
 New Law. And this it is that we priests perform 
 daily the wide world over, magnifying among the 
 Gentiles the Name of the Lord of Hosts by the offering 
 of a Clean Oblation in every place, from the rising 
 of the sun to its going down. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 
 
 In his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 St Thomas of Aquin says: 
 
 In chapter nine, verse twelve, the Apostle, dis- 
 coursing on the virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ, 
 attributes to it everlasting efficacy, saying, having 
 obtained eternal redemption. Now that which has 
 everlasting efficacy suttices to take away all sin, 
 future as well as past; and therefore is not to be 
 repeated. Hence, Christ by one Sacrifice cleansed 
 forever them that are sanctified, as will presently be 
 said (chapter ten, verse fourteen). And if it be 
 objected to this that we offer daily, I reply that we 
 do not offer other than that which Christ offered 
 for us, namely, His Blood. Hence ours is not 
 another Sacrifice, but is the commemoration of 
 that Sacrifice which Christ offered, as we read in 
 Iuke xxii. xix.: “This do for a commemoration 
 
 of Me.” 
 
 To St Thomas the Last Supper, Calvary, and the 
 Mass are One Sacrifice. He calls it the Sacrifice of 
 Christ, which has everlasting efficacy. ‘This is the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross, for by that, and by no other, 
 Christ “obtained eternal redemption.” Note how 
 the Saint says “ ours,’ ze. the Mass, ‘‘1s not other 
 than that Sacrifice which Christ offered” and of 
 which He said: “‘Do this for a commemoration of 
 Me.” Now Christ said this in the Last Supper of 
 
 9 
 
LHREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 97 
 
 the Sacrifice He was offering then, and which we 
 continue to offer in the Mass. Therefore, according 
 to St Thomas, Christ offered in the Last Supper the 
 Sacrifice by which He redeemed the world; and the 
 Supper, Calvary, and the Mass are three stages of 
 the One Sacrifice. 
 
 The teaching of tradition is explicit as well as 
 clear in the same sense, and follows faithfully that 
 of Scripture. The Mass is the memorial of the 
 Sacrifice of Calvary ;* is not other than the Sacrifice 
 of Calvary ;’ is the Sacrifice of our Ransom ;* is the 
 Sacrifice offered on the Cross for the salvation of 
 the world ;* is the Sacrifice which Christ once offered 
 and which He left to His Church evermore to be 
 offered up;° is the Sacrifice begun in the Last 
 Supper, finished on Calvary, and prolonged forever 
 on the Altar ;* is the continuation of the Sacrifice of 
 Calvary. The Sacrifice begun in the Last Supper, 
 was consummated on Calvary, and is perpetuated in 
 the Mass by the express will and institution of 
 Christ. This is the pre-Reformation teaching and 
 tradition as embodied in the Defence of the Seven 
 Sacraments, of Henry the Highth. 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Cross is a finished sacrifice, 
 just as the sun is a finished work. And even as this 
 had its beginning and its consummation, and has its 
 continuation, so has that. God first created the 
 elements, including hight. Then out of the element 
 or elements of light, He formed the sun. And by 
 virtue of the act whereby He formed it, the sun 
 continues to give light and warmth to the earth. 
 
 1 St Augustine, Contra Faustum, 1. 6, c. 5 and passim. 2 Alger 
 the Scholastic. 3 St Augustine. 4 Secret of the Mass. 5 Peter 
 the Venerable. § Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE SACKIFICE NOL Win wiaos 
 
 So Christ chose the sacrificial elements and in- 
 augurated the Sacrifice of our Redemption in the 
 Last Supper, finished it on Calvary, and by virtue of 
 the original institution His Sacrifice continues to 
 give glory to God and light and life to men. So 
 Holy Church declares in a certain collect: “ As often 
 as this Commemorative Sacrifice is offered, the work 
 of our redemption is carried on.”* The word spoken 
 in the Supper makes the Sacrifice of our Ransom go 
 round the whole earth with the dawn, when the 
 Price of our Ransom is handed over to God anew 
 on every altar. 
 
 To continue a thing is not to make it over again, 
 but to keep it in being. Hence the question, What 
 makes the Mass a sacrifice? is superfluous; for the 
 Mass is no more made anew when it is offered on 
 our altars daily than the sun is made anew when it 
 rises daily to give light and warmth to the earth. 
 What, then, was the action which first made, or 
 formally called into being, the Sacrifice that is con- 
 tinued on our altars? Without any doubt at all it 
 was the action of Christ in the Last Supper institut- 
 ing the Sacrifice, when the hour was come on which 
 He willed to seal the New Covenant with His Blood. 
 ‘“He was offered because He willed it,” and He 
 willed it, and put His will into effect, in the Last 
 Supper. By virtue of His Last Will and Testament 
 in the Supper, whereby He gave Himself up to 
 death with due ritual solemnity and bequeathed to 
 the faithful of all generations His Body and Blood 
 under forms of bread and wine, He was slain on 
 Calvary, and so His Sacrifice was consummated. By 
 
 1 Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. 
 
THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 99 
 
 virtue of that same Will and Testament the Sacrifice 
 so consummated is offered up daily on our altars 
 “from the rising of the sun to its going down.” 
 The Mass is the continuation of a Sacrifice con- 
 summated, not by a mystic or moral, but by a real 
 immolation on the Cross. 
 
 There is a striking passage in St Chrysostom’s 
 Homily on the Betrayal of Judas which brings out 
 this point very clearly: “It is not man who makes 
 the elements laid on the altar to be the Body and 
 Blood of Christ, but Christ Himself, who was crucified 
 for us. The priest stands as representative pro- 
 nouncing those words, but the power and grace is 
 God’s. This is My Body, the priest says, and this 
 word transmutes the elements.”* And again: “ He 
 did not then only take away sins when He suffered, 
 but from then until now takes them away ; not cruci- 
 fied again and again (for He offered one Sacrifice for 
 sins), but by that one Sacrifice evermore cleansing.” ? 
 The sacrificial action in the Mass is Christ’s. The 
 priest does but pronounce the words of consecration ; 
 it is Christ who consecrates. And it is the word, 
 once spoken at the institution of the Sacrifice which 
 took away the sins of the world and was once offered, 
 that evermore perfects the Sacrifice on every altar. 
 
 The sacrificial action is the formal element of 
 sacrifice. And as the action in the Last Supper is 
 continued in the Mass, it follows that the Mass is 
 formally one with the Last Supper. But the action 
 in the Last Supper was primarily linked with the 
 death on Calvary. Its immediate effect was to clothe 
 our Lord and lay Him out in the guise of a Victim 
 
 1 Migne, P. G., tom. 49, col. 380. 2 Lbid., tom. 59, col. 116. 
 
100 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 to be slain. The mystic slaying shadowed forth the 
 real. When the real followed, the Bloody Sacrifice 
 was consummated. And when the Apostles were 
 gathered together for the first time to do that which 
 Christ bade them do for a commemoration of Him, 
 then was inaugurated, by virtue of the word once 
 spoken in the Supper, the Unbloody Sacrifice of 
 the New Law. 
 
 The Council of Trent never speaks of the Last 
 Supper as the Unbloody Sacrifice of the New Law, 
 but expressly affirms that this is the Mass. Our 
 Blessed Lord, according to the decree of Trent, did 
 two things in the Supper. ‘He offered up to God 
 the Father His own Body and Blood under the 
 appearances of bread and wine”; and “ He instituted 
 the New Passover, Himself to be immolated under 
 visible signs by the Church through the ministry 
 of the priests” in memory of His bloody immolation 
 on the Cross. His own offering of Himself in the 
 Supper and the bloody immolation on the Cross 
 constitute the original Christian Passover, known 
 as the Bloody Sacrifice of the New Law; the 
 subsequent offering through the ministry of the 
 priests is the Commemorative Christian Passover, 
 known as the Unbloody Sacrifice of the New Law, 
 or the Holy Mass. Here the antitype corresponds 
 to the type; for in that original Passover of the 
 Hebrew people in the land of Egypt the sacrifice was 
 consummated, not by the offering of the lamb, but 
 by the slaying of it and the actual shedding of its 
 blood. 
 
 It was not to be immolated after a mystical or 
 moral manner merely that our Lord offered Himself 
 
THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE tot 
 
 in the Last Supper. Not for this was a body fitted 
 to Him. Not by such a shadowy immolation was 
 our redemption to be wrought. Not on such purpose 
 was He intent when He went up on the eve of His 
 Passion to Jerusalem. What our Lord offered in the 
 Supper was the passion and death He was about to 
 undergo; or, to be precise, His Body to be broken 
 and His Blood to be shed for us. What He offered 
 was what He willed to be commemorated, and this 
 was His passion and death. The offering in the 
 Supper was not a finished sacrifice till that was done 
 which the Son of God came into the world to do. 
 
 Since Our Lord in the Supper willed that the 
 “clean oblation” foretold by the prophet should be 
 offered up in commemoration of Him, He must 
 first have willed to offer that by merit and virtue 
 of which the world was redeemed and His own Body 
 was glorified, viz. the passion and death He was 
 about to undergo. It was through His death on the 
 Cross that He merited the salvation of mankind and 
 His own exaltation. Therefore He must have willed 
 first to offer that which came first, and without 
 which that which He ordered to be offered for a 
 commemoration of Him could never have existed at 
 all. He alone offered the Bloody Sacrifice, and left 
 to His Church the Unbloody Sacrifice evermore to 
 be offered up. 
 
 Pallavincini tells us (History of the Council 
 of Trent, Book XVIII, Chap. V.) that while the 
 Tridentine Fathers affirmed our Lord’s offering of 
 Himself in the Supper, they purposely forbore to 
 define the character of the offering. So the idea 
 that the offering was purely mystical or moral is 
 
102 THE ISAGRIFICE (Ol THE Wiis 
 
 but a guess, and a guess that as ill accords with the 
 nature of sacrifice and the circumstances of the case 
 as 1t does with Scripture and Tradition. 
 
 Any one who seriously reflects on the matter 
 will not fail to see that the liturgical offering made 
 by our Lord in the Supper, ‘‘on the night before 
 He suffered,” when His soul was filled with the 
 thought of His approaching end, must have looked 
 onward to Calvary, and must have been meant as 
 the solemn inauguration of the Sacrifice which 
 redeemed the world. This is what the character 
 of the occasion imperatively called for. 
 
 Our Lord told the Apostles in the Supper: “ Do 
 this for a commemoration of Me.” Suppose the 
 mystical or moral immolation made the offering in 
 the Supper a finished sacrifice. The doing of “this” 
 would, in that case, reproduce and commemorate the 
 sacrifice in the Supper. But as a matter of fact 
 the doing of ‘‘this” reproduces and commemorates 
 the Sacrifice of Calvary, for of this Holy Mass is 
 the standing memorial. The conclusion is inevitable 
 that ‘‘ this,” viz., what was done in the Supper, was 
 inseparably bound up, by causal and liturgical and 
 mystical bonds, with what followed on Calvary. 
 “Do this,” meant “Do what I am doing.’ When 
 the Apostles did “this,” Christ our Pasch had been 
 sacrificed by virtue of what He Himself had done 
 in the Supper. His own action in consecrating and 
 offering Himself there was the sacrificial knife that 
 slew Him on Calvary. And his own action still 
 reproduces and commemorates that same Sacrifice in 
 the Mass. 7 
 
 In computing the triduum of Christ’s death, St 
 
THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 103 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa places the beginning of it in the 
 Supper. From the moment that our Lord offered 
 Himself there He was legally and ritually dead. 
 His own words in the Supper indicate a present 
 Sacrifice. He had entered on the state of Victim, 
 which found its culmination on Calvary, and is con- 
 tinued in the Mass; for it is the Victim of Calvary, 
 not of another sacrifice, that is offered upon our 
 altars and given as food to the people. 
 
 Of the Sacrifice offered in the Last Supper the 
 Victim was mortal and passible, as became One 
 whose Blood was to be shed for many unto the remis- 
 sion of sins. Of the Sacrifice offered by the Apostles 
 in that same upper room the Victim was immortal 
 and impassible. His blood had been shed, and the 
 price of our Ransom had been paid. His body had 
 been baked in the ashes of His mortality and of our 
 sin, by the fire of His love and the hate of sinners. 
 And now the Body, risen from its ashes and purged 
 of everything earthly, is offered in our gloriost 
 corporis mysterium. And the blood, made new in 
 the Kingdom of God, speaks better things than that 
 of Abel on our altars. The Bloody Sacrifice and 
 the Unbloody are one and the same. One is the 
 Priest, and one the Victim, and one the Action of 
 the Priest, and one the Passion of the Victim, and 
 one the merit and the efficacy of the Sacrifice. 
 
 The Last Supper was the solemn inauguration 
 of the Sacrifice of our Ransom. ‘There our Blessed 
 Lord played the part of Priest for ever according 
 to the order of Melchisedech ; there He consecrated 
 Himself as Victim under forms of bread and wine ; 
 
 1 In Ohristi Resurr. Oratio (P. G., tom. 46, col. 612). 
 
104 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 there He made the ceremonial offering of His Sacrifice; 
 there He established the New Testament, which had 
 to be sealed with the Blood of His Sacrifice on 
 Calvary. ‘‘ For,” as the Apostle reminds us, “ where 
 there is a testament, the death of the testator 
 must necessarily intervene. For a testament is not 
 of force till men are dead; otherwise it is not yet 
 of force while the testator liveth.”—Heb. ix. 10, 11. 
 The Passion of the Victim thus coalesces with the 
 Action of the Priest into the One Sacrifice of the 
 New Testament. “This,” says the Author of it, 
 ‘is My Blood of the New Testament which shall 
 be shed for many unto the remission of sins.” The 
 tradition of the Church in every age proclaims 
 the Mass to be the continuation of the Sacrifice 
 finished on Calvary; of the Sacrifice of which it is 
 the commemoration ; of the Sacrifice by virtue and 
 merit of which the Body of Christ was glorified and 
 His Blood was made new in the Kingdom of God. 
 Let us turn to the Old Testament for confirma- 
 tion of this doctrine. Our Sacrifice is pre-eminently 
 a sin offering. Now God Himself laid down for 
 His people in the Old Testament the law of the 
 sin offering, and theirs was, as the Apostle expressly 
 teaches, the shadow of ours. The Coming Event 
 cast its shadow before, and in that shadow its out- 
 lines are clearly discernible. From the Book of 
 Leviticus we gather that the essential elements of 
 the sin-offering were these three: (1) the offering 
 and consecration of the victim ; (2) the immolation 
 of the victim through the shedding of its blood; 
 (3) the handing over of the blood of the victim to 
 God in the holy place. The man who had to offer 
 
 * 
 
THREE STAGES OF THE ONE SACRIFICE 103 
 
 a victim for sin did not dare to offer and slay it 
 himself in the field, but was commanded, on pain 
 of being cut off from the people, to bring it to the 
 priest in the place set apart for the sacrifice. Then, 
 in the outer court, the sinner slew the victim. 
 Finally, the priest brought the blood into the 
 sanctuary, and there handed it over to God as the 
 price of sin. If the sinner had himself offered and 
 slain the victim in the field, there would have been: 
 no act of public worship. Hence the -ceremonial 
 offering of the victim before the slaying. If there 
 had been nothing more after the offering and con- 
 secration of the victim than the shedding of its 
 blood by the sinner, the price of the sin, though 
 actually existing, would not have been handed over 
 to God in His sanctuary. Hence the ceremonial 
 offering of the blood of the victim by the priest 
 after the slaying. 
 
 As then, the antitype must correspond to the 
 type, our sin-offering must needs comprise these three 
 essential elements. And it does, plainly. Christ is 
 both Priest and Victim of our Sacrifice. As Priest 
 He offers and consecrates Himself in the Last Supper ; 
 as Victim He is slain on Calvary by the sinners of 
 the world, both Jew and Gentile; as Priest, He offers 
 Himself again in the holy place, the Christian 
 Sanctuary, and here hands over to the Hternal Father 
 daily the Blood of the New Testament as the Price 
 of our Ransom. 
 
 Without the ceremonial offering in the Mass, the 
 Sacrifice finished on Calvary would have been ritually 
 incomplete. The public worship of sacrifice has 
 always been offered to God within a sanctuary and 
 
106 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 on an altar. The Apostle plainly implies that the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross had to be completed ritually, 
 where he says, ‘‘ We have an altar whereof they have 
 no power to eat who serve the tabernacle. For the 
 bodies of those beasts whose blood for sin is brought 
 into the holy place by the high-priest are burned 
 without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He 
 might sanctify the people through His own Blood, 
 suffered without the gate”—Heb. xi. 10.12. ‘The 
 implication is clear that as the high-priest of the Old 
 Law brought the blood for sin into the old-time 
 sanctuary, so the High-Priest of the New brings His 
 Blood for sin into ours, and offers it on the “altar” 
 that ‘“‘we have.” The Apostle does not say in so 
 many words, but it goes without saying, that an altar 
 exists primarily for the offering of sacrifice. For 
 (1) the sacrifices of the Old Law were handed over to 
 God on an altar, and they did but shadow forth the 
 One Offering of the New; and (2) Christians are to 
 “eat” of the “altar” that “we have’; or, as the 
 Apostle elsewhere expresses it (1 Cor. x. 18) are to 
 be made “ partakers ” of the altar, 2.e. of the Sacrifice 
 that is offered there. ‘The chalice of benediction 
 which we bless,’ he had already said, ‘‘ is it not the 
 communion of the Blood of Christ?” (v. 16). The 
 Blood of Christ is first handed over to God on the 
 Christian Altar. And so, according to the Apostle, 
 the rite of the Old Testament sin-offering is carried 
 out in the New. Of course it is faith alone that 
 gives power to discern the Blood of Christ upon our 
 altar, and to partake of the Mystery. 
 
 The formal and numerical identity of the Mass 
 with the Sacrifice begun in the Last Supper and 
 
PORE. SAGO OGL DEeON EASACKIBICE 107 
 
 finished on Calvary will always prove a stumbling 
 block to the imagination, shackled as this faculty is 
 by limits of time and space. But it should offer no 
 difficulty to reason enlightened by faith. “Jesus 
 Christ,” says the Apostle, “yesterday, to-day, and 
 the same forever.” He is at once Priest and Victim 
 of the Sacrifice. The Priest is numerically the 
 same; the Victim is numerically the same; the 
 Action of the Priest, once performed in the Supper, » 
 is numerically the same; the Passion of the Victim, 
 once consummated on Calvary, is numerically the 
 same. ‘These are the essential constituents of sacrifice. 
 And so the Sacrifice is numerically the same. 
 
 It may not be amiss to note here that, in the 
 Supper as in the Mass, the mystic immolation is but 
 the shadow of the real which follows in the one and 
 goes before in the other. Cardinal Manning has well 
 said that the Mass is the shadow of Calvary, but is 
 also the reality. The setting sun casts the shadow 
 one way, the risen sun in the opposite way, but the 
 sun that sets is the same that rises again and shines 
 in the fulness of its splendour. 
 
 Dealing with this point in his treatise on the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass, Cardinal Cajetan says : ‘‘‘ Which 
 is broken and given for you’ is the same as if Christ 
 said, ‘which is immolated for you, for not otherwise 
 is His Body broken and given than as it is broken 
 and given (z.e. immolated) on the Cross (c. 11.) ... 
 It follows that the Victim is one only, once offered 
 on the Cross and continuing in a state of immolation” 
 (c. vi.). For the rest, faith, which tells of things 
 unseen, must needs have its obscurities, and Holy 
 Mass is, as we are taught in the very words of its 
 
108 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Consecration, a Mystery of Faith. The great thing 
 to bear in mind is that the Action of Christ in the 
 Supper, by reason of its causal and liturgical con- 
 nexion with the Passion that followed, combined 
 with this to constitute the Bloody Sacrifice of the 
 Cross; and that the self-same Action continued re- 
 produces on our altars the self-same Sacrifice in an 
 unbloody manner. For Christ having died once, 
 dieth now no more, and so ours is gloriosi corporis 
 mystertum. Christ passible and mortal was Priest 
 in the consecration, and Victim in the consummation, 
 of the Bloody Sacrifice. In the continuation of the 
 Sacrifice on our altars, He is both Priest and Victim, 
 but glorious and immortal. 
 
 As a help to the reason I would call to mind a 
 distinction of the Schoolmen. They speak of actus 
 primus and actus secundus, meaning by the former 
 the “act of the essence,” or the existence of a thing, 
 by the latter its operation. And they lay down this 
 principle: Omne ens est propter suam operationem— 
 Every being is for its operation, 2.e. it exists for doing 
 something. Our Lord’s Sacrifice of Himself attained 
 its actus primus, or complete essence, on Calvary ; 
 it attains its actus secundus, or complete operation, 
 on our altars. Or, to put this in another way, the 
 Sacrifice of Calvary 1s operative in the Mass. 
 
 What is sacrifice for? To render to God a worship 
 worthy of Him; to take away sin; to thank God for 
 favours received ; to impetrate fresh favours; in one 
 word, as St Augustine has it, to unite us with God in 
 holy fellowship. For each of these specific ends 
 there was offered under the Old Law a distinet kind 
 of sacrifice. But the One Sacrifice of the New Law 
 
POREEY STAGES OF THE SONE SACRIFICE 109 
 
 fulfils all these ends, and fulfils them perfectly. It 
 is only in the Mass, however, that they are perfectly 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Let us consider each in detail. First the Mass is 
 our thanks-offering for the sovereign favour of our 
 Redemption, wrought in the Last Supper and on 
 Calvary. Hence it is known as the Hucharistic 
 Sacrifice. Thanks are offered when the favour has 
 been received, not before. Again, in every genera- | 
 tion, believers have sought and found fresh favours 
 through the Mass. As for the latreutic function of 
 sacrifice, there was neither sanctuary, nor altar, nor 
 priestly rite, nor public worship of God on Calvary, 
 when the Bloody Sacrifice was consummated. On 
 the other hand, the public worship of God goes on 
 perennially in the Mass. It is true that the expia- 
 tion of sin was completed on Calvary, where the 
 handwriting of the decree that was against us was 
 blotted out. But of the taking away of sin in the 
 individual, only a bare beginning was made, while 
 through the Mass, from generation to generation, 
 God, asthe Fathers of Trent teach, “‘ being appeased, 
 grants grace and the gift of repentance, and pardons 
 sins and crimes though they be enormous.” Tinally, 
 even after the Sacrifice of Calvary was finished, the 
 gates of Heaven were closed to Adam and to all his 
 children. They remained closed until they were 
 thrown wide open for the triumphal entry of our 
 High Priest on the Day of the Ascension, when He 
 went in to make the solemn offering of His Sacrifice 
 behind the veil. And for this final breaking down 
 of all the barriers of sin, together with the faculty 
 thus afforded of a complete union of men with God in 
 
IIO THE SACRIFICE OF TAEe Mass 
 
 holy fellowship the moment their souls pass through 
 the portals of death, Holy Church evermore returns 
 solemn thanks to God in the Sacrifice of the Altar. 
 This is what is meant by saying that the Sacrifice of 
 Calvary is operative in the Mass. 
 
 Observe now that none of these four ends of 
 sacrifice was fulfilled in the Last Supper. Not the 
 latreutic, for the holocaust was not completed. The 
 Victim went forth from the Supper to die, indeed, 
 but went forth alive. Not the expiation of sin, for 
 it had been decreed from all eternity that nothing 
 short of the actual shedding of the Saviour’s Blood 
 on the Cross should take away the sins of the world. 
 Not the impetration of fresh favours, for these waited 
 on the supreme favour of our Ranson. Not the 
 giving of thanks, for our Ransom was not yet 
 wrought. From which it follows necessarily that 
 the offering in the Last Supper was not a finished 
 sacrifice. 
 
 By the mouth of His prophet God told the 
 Hebrew people that He had no pleasure in their 
 sacrifices. He declared that the acceptable sacrifice, 
 ‘a clean oblation,’ was to be offered up among the 
 Gentiles from the rising of the sun to its going down 
 —Mal.i.10-11. This is the One Sacrifice of the New 
 Law, which has three stages, its inception in the 
 Last Supper, its consummation on the Cross, its 
 liturgical completion of full operation in the Mass. 
 Here, in its fruit-bearing stage, it is most pleasing to 
 God. Hence this it is that is mentioned by the 
 prophet. Christ Himself is the seed which was sown 
 on Calvary and died there, that it should not 
 remain alone. It was sown in dishonour; it rises 
 
Picea AGH OF aN ES AGCRT RICE: 71% 
 
 in glory. Not when the seed lies buried in the 
 sround is the husbandman pleased the most, but 
 when he sees it sprout and grow and multiply 
 and ripen into harvest. As it is written: “They 
 went their way in sorrow, sowing the seed; they 
 shall come again in gladness, bringing their sheaves 
 with them.” The Precious Blood, which seeped 
 into the earth beneath the Cross, yields its rich 
 harvest of souls in the Holy Mass. And so, even | 
 as saith the prophet, from every altar there goes up 
 to God a sweet savour, and His Name is magnified 
 among the Gentiles. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE PRIEST OF THE SACRIFICE 
 
 THE Council of Trent has defined that Christ Our Lord 
 offers Himself in the Holy Mass by the ministry of the 
 priests.» What are we to understand by ministry? Are 
 priests principal agents in the offering of the Sacrifice, 
 or is Christ Himself Principal Agent and they but the 
 instruments? It is here maintained that Christ alone 
 is Principal Agent, and that He, therefore, it is who 
 really offers the Mass. An axiom of Scholastic Phil- 
 osophy attributes the effect to the principal agent, not 
 to the instrument. 
 
 The Fathers and Doctors of the Church implicitly 
 affirm that Christ is Principal Agent in the offering of 
 the Mass when they declare the Mass to be the same 
 as the Sacrifice once offered on the Cross. At least 
 two of the greatest of them explicitly affirm it. In 
 his Commentary on Ps. xxxvii. (n. 25) St Ambrose 
 says: ‘Christ Himself is plainly seen to offer in us, 
 since 1t is His word which sanctifies the Sacrifice that 
 is offered,” and St John Chrysostom : “It is not true 
 that this banquet is prepared by a man while that 
 was prepared by Himself, but both this banquet and 
 that one are prepared by Himself.”*? And again, even 
 more clearly: “It is not man who makes what is 
 present become the Body and Blood of Christ, but 
 Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The priest 
 
 Se LO AN ED ee Wael P. G., 58, col. 507. 
 
DAENPRIEPSD SOM Ea) SAGRIRIC EY) 113 
 
 stands as representative pronouncing those words, but 
 the power and grace is God’s (tou theou, i.e. Christ’s).” * 
 When St Augustine says: “That bread which you 
 see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the 
 Body of Christ,” ? his teaching accords with that of 
 the other two. 
 
 Holy Mass is not only the representation of the 
 Sacrifice begun in the Last Supper and finished on 
 Calvary, but is also the re-presentation or renewal of | 
 it. It is the representation by virtue mainly of the 
 mystic immolation which takes place through the 
 twofold consecration; it is the re-presentation by 
 virtue of the consecration itself. By virtue of the 
 consecration the Victim offered in the Last Supper and 
 immolated on Calvary is introduced into the Christian 
 sanctuary, laid upon the altar that ‘“‘ we have” (feb. 
 xiii. 10) and there re-presented or handed over once 
 again to God the Father. This handing over of the 
 blood of the victim in the holy place was the strictly 
 liturgical element of the Old Testament sin-offering, 
 and is so in its Antitype, the One Sin-Offering of the 
 New; for the coming Event cast its shadow before. 
 Who, then, introduces the Victim of Calvary into the 
 Christian Sanctuary? Itis Christ Himself. The part 
 that the priest plays in the tremendous drama 1s so 
 subordinate as to be all but negligible. It should be 
 plain to every thinking mind that only Christ Himself 
 can make His own Body and Blood to be present on 
 the altar. ‘‘The word of God,” says St Thomas, 
 “operated in the creation of things, and it is the same 
 which operates in this consecration.” ° 
 
 1 Migne, P. G., 49, col. 380. 2 Serm., 227 (Migne, P. L., tom. 38, 
 
 col. 1099). 3a q. 78, a. 2, ad. 2um. 
 H 
 
114 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 Christ could make His Body and Blood to be 
 
 present on the altar under different forms and in a 
 different way from that in which He actually does 
 so. But He is Priest after the order of Melchisedech, 
 and so He willed to present His Body and Blood 
 under forms of bread and wine. The Church has 
 defined the mode of the presence to be transubstantia- 
 tion. The bread is changed into the Body of Christ 
 and the wine into His Blood. Who, then, is principal 
 agent in effecting this stupendous change? We priests 
 know that we are not. He has told us Himself that 
 without Him we can do nothing; much less can we 
 do this thing. We but lend our hands and voice, and 
 Christ consecrates. ‘‘In this Sacrament,” to quote 
 again the great Master of Scholastic Theology, “the 
 consecration of the matter consists in the miraculous 
 change of the substance, which can only be done by 
 God” (z.e. by Christ, for Christ it is who offers by the 
 ministry of priests); “ hence the minister in per- 
 forming this sacrament has no other act save the 
 pronouncing of the words.”* It follows that Christ 
 Himself is Principal Agent in the offering of the Mass, 
 for the whole essence of the offering lies in the con- 
 secration, and it is Christ who consecrates. So, to 
 quote once more the words of St Ambrose, ‘“ Christ 
 Himself is plainly seen to offer in us since it is His 
 word which sanctifies the Sacrifice that is offered.” 
 When the Council of Trent declares that Christ 
 offers the Mass by the ministry of His priests, it 
 means by “ministry” certainly not more than the 
 exercise of the power which priests have in the 
 administration of the Sacraments. Priests have far 
 1 3a q. 78,/a. 12 
 
Dnt, PRIBSD CORGT AEM SACRIFICE 115 
 
 less to do with the consecration in the Mass than they 
 have with the dispensation of the sacraments, which 
 is indicated by the fact that they speak in their own 
 person when administering the sacraments, and do 
 but repeat Christ’s own words in consecrating. Now 
 the power they have of dispensing grace through the 
 sacraments is purely instrumental. As St Thomas 
 teaches, ‘‘ a minister is of the nature of an instrument; 
 since the action of both is applied to something ex- 
 trinsic, while the interior effect is produced by the 
 power of the Principal Agent, who is God.” With 
 much stronger reason is it affirmed that Christ Himself 
 is Principal Agent in the offering of the Mass, and we 
 priests but His instruments. 
 
 The principal agent produces an effect by its own 
 virtue, 2.e. by virtue of a power inherent in itself; the 
 instrument by virtue of the principal agent. When 
 the effect produced is supernatural, 7.e. beyond the 
 natural power of the agent, that agent can only be 
 employed as instrument in producing it. This stands 
 to reason ; for the natural power of the agent extends 
 only to effects that lie within the natural order. Hence, 
 men and even angels can give grace or work miracles 
 only as instruments of the Godhead, both grace and the 
 power of working miracles being so proper to God that 
 they cannot belong by nature to any created agency. 
 It is plain, then, that the miraculous power of changing 
 bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 wherein lies the re-presentation of the Sacrifice first 
 offered in the Last Supper and on Calvary, belongs to 
 Christ alone as Principal Agent, and to priests only 
 as His instruments. 
 
 1 Ib., q. 64, a. 1. 
 
116 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 In his Select Treatises of St Athanasius, Newman 
 affirms the Catholic doctrine to be that Christ is 
 Priest, “neither as God nor as man simply, but as 
 being the Divine Word in and according to His 
 manhood.”? This is also what the Apostle says: 
 “For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts 
 and sacrifices ; wherefore it is necessary that he also 
 should have something to offer.”-—Heb. viii. 3. To 
 be Priest the Son of God had to become man, that 
 He might be able to offer His humanity, His soul 
 and body, to suffer the Passion and undergo the 
 Death upon the Cross. This is the Sacrifice that 
 He offered. We are prone to think of it as the 
 Death alone, because that was the consummation 
 of it. But it really began with the offering in the 
 Supper, and the Passion which led up to the Death 
 was as truly part of it as the Death itself. So the 
 Passion had to be offered as well as the Death. 
 When Our Lord, immediately upon leaving the 
 supper room and crossing the torrent of Kedron, 
 said: “‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” He 
 had already entered on the state of Victim, and 
 was in the very act of suffering the Passion which 
 culminated in His Death. | 
 
 “My soul is sorrowful.’ Who said this? He 
 said it who had already said in the Last Supper: 
 “This is My Body, This is My Blood.” God the 
 Son said it. His soul it was that suffered the agony, 
 as it was His Body that was nailed to the Cross. 
 The soul that was sorrowful even unto death 1s in 
 a more absolute sense the soul of God the Son than 
 our souls are ours. Our souls are ours only because 
 
 1 1.c.,' Vol. IL. p. 241; 
 
TOR PRIEST OPMBEENSACKIEICE Tle? 
 
 He created them. “In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
 was God... All things were made by Him, and 
 without Him was made nothing.” His soul is His, 
 not only because He created it, but because, having 
 no existence of its own before the hypostatic union, 
 it subsists in His Person. Though Christ suffered 
 only as man, though it was only as man He could 
 undergo the agony in the garden and suffer death | 
 on the Cross, yet we must never lose sight of the 
 fact that it was God who underwent the agony and 
 died between two malefactors. 
 
 Only as man could Christ suffer and die. But 
 He offered Himself in the Sacrifice of our Ransom 
 not as man simply nor yet simply as God, but as 
 God and man in one Divine Person. Not as God 
 simply did He make the offering, but as man also, 
 for His soul was endowed with free-will as are all 
 human souls, and could and did render voluntary 
 obedience, even unto the death of the Cross. Still 
 it was God who reclined at table with the Twelve; 
 it was God who offered His Body and Blood in the 
 great Sacrifice of the New Law; it was God who 
 was Priest of the Sacrifice. To offer is to act, and 
 as St Thomas observes, “To act is not attributed 
 to the nature as the agent, but to the person, since 
 acts belong to supposits and singulars, according to 
 the Philosopher.’ The humanity of Christ is the 
 instrument of the Godhead, not separate but con- 
 joined, as a man’s hand or foot is to the man himself ; 
 and, as the same Angelic Doctor again observes, 
 “The action of the instrument as instrument Is 
 
 1 3% q. 20, a. 1, ad 2um. 
 
118 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 not distinct from the action of the principal agent, 
 though it may have another operation inasmuch as 
 it is a thing. Hence the operation of Christ’s 
 human nature, inasmuch as it is the instrument of 
 the Godhead is not distinct from the operation of 
 the Godhead; for the salvation wherewith the 
 manhood of Christ saves us and that wherewith His 
 Godhead saves us are not distinct.” ? 
 
 If God the Son did not offer the Sacrifice of our 
 Ransom, it was never offered at all. Some one, 
 some individual, some person, offers sacrifice, and 
 there was no one to offer that Sacrifice but He, since 
 the human nature of the Word has no personality 
 of its own. So in the continuation of the same 
 Sacrifice upon our altars the same Christ, Son of 
 the living God, offers it, or it is not offered at all. 
 
 The point is of such capital importance that it 
 will be well to labour it, even at the risk of repeating 
 oneself. The Council of Ephesus has defined that 
 the very Word of God became our High Priest 
 (Pt. ii. ch. L.). The action of Christ, therefore, in 
 offering His sacrifice is the action of the Word of 
 God. Some theologians speak as though the sacri- 
 ficial action were to be referred to the human nature 
 of Christ. But His human nature is not an agent. 
 It can only be the instrument of the Word of God, 
 because it has no personality of its own. The human 
 nature of Christ is to Himself, z.e., to the Person of 
 the Word, as the hand is to the man. If a man 
 presents a gift, it is the person who presents, though 
 the gift is given in and by the hand. Anyhow, 
 it is not the nature that acts but the person in 
 
 1 34, q. 19, a. 1, ad 2Qum. 
 
THE PRIEST OF THE SACRIFICE 11g 
 
 and by the nature. So it is Christ Himself who 
 offers the Sacrifice. And He offers it, not as man 
 only, but as God. He offers it as being what 
 He is, and He is God, Second Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity. 
 
 Of course if you refer ‘‘as God” to the divine 
 nature of Christ, which He has in common with the 
 Father, He does not offer as God in this sense, for 
 thus He is one with the Father. He offers it, to. 
 quote the words of the Council of Trent, as “‘ our 
 God and Lord.” And so “as God” does not refer 
 to the divine nature, but to the Second Person of 
 the Blessed Trinity who acts in and by both natures. 
 The Godhead does not offer the Sacrifice, but God 
 does. 
 
 The word “God,” as St Thomas points out, is a 
 common noun, and stands for any of the three Divine 
 Persons. We say that the Virgin Mary is the Mother 
 of God, and that God died on the Cross. So, too, 
 we say that God, the Second Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity, born of the Virgin Mary, offers God the 
 Father His own Body and Blood in the Sacrifice of 
 the Altar. And He offers it immediately, because 
 He offers as Principal Agent. The fact that the 
 agent uses an instrument, or many instruments, 
 does not affect the immediacy of the operation, for it 
 is the agent that operates and produces the effect in 
 and through the instrument or instruments. 
 
 All this becomes the more clear when we consider 
 the way the offering is made. It is made by the 
 change of bread into the Body, and wine into the 
 Blood of Christ. That is the way the offering was 
 first made; that is the way it is made now; that is 
 
120 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 the only way it ever can be made, according to 
 Christ’s own institution. ‘“ How can this man give 
 us His flesh to eat?” queried the Jews, who looked 
 upon the One that stood before them as the son of 
 Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth. No son of Joseph 
 could have done it. But the One who stood before 
 the Jews on that day, and so multiplied a few loaves 
 and fishes as to feed five thousand, was, as Simon 
 Peter on that same day confessed Him to be, Son of 
 the Living God. And it is the same Son of the 
 Living God who daily offers His Sacrifice on our 
 altars, by the ministry of His priests; who daily 
 changes bread and wine into His Body and Blood; 
 who daily feeds the multitude of believers with the 
 Bread of Life. And He does it, not by a new 
 sacrificial action, not by a new offering, but by the 
 word once spoken in the Supper and operative to 
 the end of time. For the word of the Omnipotent 
 and Kternal is of everlasting efficacy, and needs not, 
 like the puny word of man, to be repeated as often 
 as the same thing is to be done over again. And go, 
 while the words of consecration are said over again 
 day after day by us mortal men, it is the word once 
 spoken in the Supper which perfects the Sacrifice on 
 every altar—which makes the ‘clean oblation ” fore- 
 told by the prophet mount up daily to the throne 
 of God for an odour of sweetness, “from the rising 
 of the sun to its going down.” 
 
 The consecration is the offering of the Sacrifice. 
 The form of words is pragmatic. It effects what it 
 signifies. It is also liturgical. It presents on the 
 altar the Body and Blood of Christ under the appear- 
 ances of bread and wine. Here is at once the re- 
 
CPHEePRIEST OG PRES SAGRIEICE 121 
 
 presentation and the re-presentation of the Sacrifice 
 first offered in the Last Supper and on Calvary. 
 Here we have the Holy Mass. Now, it is not because 
 Christ spoke these words as man, but because He 
 spoke them as God, that they are effective. And so 
 Christ as God was Principal Agent in the offering of 
 His Sacrifice, and is so still. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE FIRST MASS 
 
 Tue Last Supper is commonly regarded as the First 
 Mass. But the first Mass was not celebrated till 
 after the resurrection and ascension of Our Lord into 
 Heaven. 
 
 The question is not one of words nor of appear- 
 ances. ‘There is question of the reality underlying 
 these. As far as words go there is identity, though 
 the expression ‘‘ Mystery of Faith,” which is found 
 to-day in the form of consecration, is believed to 
 have been added by the Church. As far as that 
 which appears to the senses is concerned, Our Lord 
 was seen to offer Himself visibly in the Supper, while 
 it is some one else who is seen to offer Him in the 
 Mass. And yet, to the eye of faith, as St Ambrose 
 points out, “Christ Himself is plainly seen to offer 
 in us, since it is His word which sanctifies the 
 Sacrifice that is offered.” * 
 
 The Supper was different from the Mass. An 
 indication of this difference is to be found in the 
 fact that the Sacrifice of the Supper was offered 
 once and could never again be offered, while the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass is offered over and over again 
 “in every place, from the rising of the sun to 
 its going down.” As ‘It is appointed unto men 
 once to die,” so Christ died once, and being risen 
 
 1 Comm. on ne 38, n. 25, 
 
THE FIRST MASS 123 
 
 from the dead, ‘‘ dieth now no more: death hath no 
 more dominion over him.” Our Lord in the Supper 
 was mortal and passible ; in the Mass He is immortal 
 and impassible. And so by a gulf as deep as death 
 and hell, the death He underwent on Calvary and 
 the hell He descended into after death, is the Supper 
 divided and differentiated from the Mass. 
 
 St Thomas says of the Body of Christ that 
 ‘inasmuch as it was mortal and passible it was apt 
 matter for immolation.”* It was this in the Supper. 
 In the Mass it is immortal and impassible, and 
 therefore not apt matter for immolation. And 
 because it was apt matter for immolation in the 
 Supper, it was there offered to be immolated, 2.e. to 
 undergo the Passion and the Death on the Cross. The 
 nature of the immolation is shown by what the matter 
 was apt for. Being passible and mortal the Victim 
 was to suffer and to die. Till He did suffer and die, 
 the immolation was not accomplished, the sacrifice 
 was not finished. It follows that the Supper was 
 but a sacrifice begun, not a completed one. In the 
 Mass, on the other hand, there is offered a finished 
 sacrifice. So, the Supper and the Mass differ as that 
 which is only begun differs from that which 1s 
 completed. 
 
 Under symbols of wheaten bread and the Juice of 
 grape, Our Lord offered Himself in the Supper. In 
 the Mass He is offered as the Bread baked by the 
 fires of the Passion in the ashes of our sin and of His 
 mortality, as the Wine made new in the Kingdom 
 of God when the Beautiful One in His stole came 
 with dyed garments from Bosra, treading the wine- 
 
 1 3a q. 48, a. 3, ad lum. 
 
124 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 press alone. As, then, the beginning differs from the 
 end that crowns it, and the materials differ from the 
 finished product, so does the Supper differ from the 
 Mass. 
 
 “The Passion of the Lord,” says St Cyprian, “is 
 the Sacrifice that we offer.’* Upon this also St 
 Thomas rings the changes. ‘The Eucharist,” he 
 says, ‘1s the perfect Sacrament of the Lord’s Passion, 
 containing as it does Christ who suffered.”? And 
 again : “It is manifest that the Passion of Christ was 
 a true Sacrifice.”* And once more: “Though the 
 Passion and Death of Christ is not to be repeated, 
 the virtue of that Sacrifice, once offered, endures 
 forever.”* ‘We do not offer other than that which 
 Christ offered for us, His Blood namely. Hence ours 
 is not another sacrifice, but is the commemoration of 
 that sacrifice which Christ offered, as we read in 
 Luke xxii., 19, “This do for a commemoration of 
 Me.” * 
 
 We offer in the Mass what Christ offered in the 
 Supper, when He said, ‘‘ Do this for a memorial of 
 Me.” He offered all that which led up to and ended 
 in His death upon the Cross. He offered not His 
 Death only, but His Passion, and every item of His 
 Passion, every pang of the mental and bodily torment 
 which He was about to endure. Even in the Supper 
 the mental anguish began. There weighed upon His 
 soul the treason of Judas, which He made public, as 
 did the denial of Peter. This was part of the price 
 He had to pay for our betrayals and our backslidings 
 —part of the Sacrifice of our Ransom which He 
 
 1 Kp. 63, n. 17. 2 3a q. 73, a. 5, ad 2Qum. 3 Ibid., q. 48, a. 3. 
 4 Lbid., q. 22, a.5,ad2um. ° porn ‘on Ep. to the Hebrews, c.10, 1718 
 
 ? 
 
PAE PE ERS AAs Ss 125 
 
 offered there. Now, as there was but a beginning 
 of the Passion in the Supper, and as the virtue of the 
 whole Passion and Death is in the Mass, it follows 
 that the Last Supper was not the First Mass. 
 
 This follows also from the fact that the Mass is 
 a Commemorative Sacrifice. When Our Lord said: 
 “This is My Body, This is My Blood,” He offered 
 the Sacrifice of our Ransom which was consummated 
 upon the Cross—a bloody sacrifice, for without the 
 actual shedding of blood there was to be no remission 
 of sin. When He said: “This do for a commemora- 
 tion of Me,” He instituted the Commemorative 
 Sacrifice which we call the Mass. He instituted it, 
 He did not offer it; just as He instituted baptism, 
 but did not Himself baptize. What is the Mass 
 commemorative of? The Passion and Death of 
 Christ. Did Christ in the Last Supper commemorate 
 His own Passion and Death? Of course not. We 
 keep the memory of what is done and over. The 
 offering in the Supper was but an earnest and fore- 
 tokening of what is commemorated in the Mass. 
 And so the Last Supper was not the First Mass. 
 
 The current conception of the Last Supper is that 
 of a Sacrifice other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, and 
 complete in itself. If this were the true conception, 
 the Mass would be the continuation of that Sacrifice, 
 and the Last Supper would have been the First 
 Mass. But the traditional teaching of the Church 
 from the beginning makes the Mass to be the con- 
 tinuation of the Sacrifice of Calvary. The inference 
 is plain and necessary that the Sacrifice offered in 
 the Supper was completed on Calvary, since the 
 Mass is the continuation of the completed Sacrifice. 
 
126 THE SACRIFICE OF ‘THE MASS 
 
 The same is to be inferred from the teaching of 
 St Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He there 
 sets Christ before us as “‘ priest forever according to 
 the order of Melchisedech,” and declares that ‘by 
 one Sacrifice He hath perfected forever them that 
 are sanctified.” This was the Sacrifice of Calvary. 
 Hence, according to the Apostle, Christ offered the 
 Sacrifice of Calvary as Priest according to the order 
 of Melchisedech, which He did in the Supper accord- 
 ing to the rite of Melchisedech, and only in the 
 Supper. And so Calvary intervenes between the 
 Supper and the Mass, the Supper being the inaugura- 
 tion, Calvary the consummation, the Mass the un- 
 bloody continuation and commemoration of the One 
 Sacrifice which redeemed the world. 
 
 The Sacrifice of Calvary is operative in the Mass. 
 The Mass alone fulfils perfectly the fourfold end of 
 sacrifice : (1) public worship of God ; (2) propitiation 
 for our sins; (3) thanksgiving for the sovereign 
 favour of our redemption; (4) impetration of fresh 
 favours. Now, a thing must be before it is operative, 
 and the Sacrifice of Calvary was not till Christ died 
 on the Cross. It follows that the Supper could not 
 be the first Mass, for the Supper came before Calvary 
 and the Sacrifice of Calvary itself did not become 
 operative until it was finished. 
 
 The view that the Sacrifice of Calvary stands by 
 itself, apart and distinct from the Supper and the 
 Mass, is untenable for two reasons. The first is that 
 the Sacrifice is made to consist in the Death only, 
 whereas it consists also in the Passion. The second 
 is that by the positive ordinance of God Sacrifice 
 comprises a liturgical offering as well as an immola- 
 
THE FIRST MASS 127 
 
 tion of the victim, and there was no liturgical offering 
 on Calvary. Indeed there was no offering there. 
 For to offer is not actually to give or hand over, but 
 to tender or present for acceptance, and this presenta- 
 tion had to be made before the giving actually began. 
 The Passion of the Lord, as says St Cyprian, is the 
 Sacrifice that we offer, and every pang that our 
 Saviour suffered from Thursday evening when He 
 reclined at table with the Twelve till the afternoon 
 of Friday, when He gave up His spirit on Calvary, 
 was part of what is known as the Passion, and part 
 of what He offered for us. 
 
 The Death of Our Lord upon the Cross was the 
 direct result of His sufferings. But it was not any 
 one of these sufferings by itself that brought about 
 His Death—not the betrayal which Judas left the 
 Supper room to accomplish, not the agony in the 
 garden, not the buffetings and shameful treatment 
 of Him before the high-priest, not the scourging and 
 crowning with thorns, not the carriage of the cross, 
 not the nailing thereon, not the agony of any one 
 moment of the three hours that He hung upon the 
 cross—it was not any one of these but the sum of 
 them all that caused His Death and so had to be 
 offered to constitute the Sacrifice of our Ransom. 
 Therefore the offering of His Sacrifice was the offer- 
 ing of the sum of all His sufferings, and this was 
 made once for all in the cenacle. Those who conceive 
 of the Sacrifice of Calvary simply as the Death upon 
 the Cross, and separate it from what took place in 
 the Supper, forget that it was the sum of the suffer- 
 ings of Christ, and not any one of them by itself, 
 which caused His Death and constituted His Sacrifice. 
 
128 HE SSACRITT COR 0 Faia biagviad > 
 
 It is the sum of these His sufferings that we com- 
 memorate in the Mass and offer up again to the 
 Father. 
 
 The Sacrifice of the New Law was prefigured by 
 the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and especially 
 by the great Sacrifice of Expiation which was offered 
 once a year for the sins of the whole people, and was 
 to be ‘‘an ordinance forever.”—Levit. xvi. It is no 
 poetic conceit that the Coming Event cast its shadow 
 before; it is a truth of divine revelation. ‘The rite, 
 therefore, of the New Testament Sacrifice, which 
 alone “blotted out the handwriting of the decree 
 that was against us,” is outlined for us in the Old 
 Testament offering for sm. On the Day of Atone- 
 ment the high-priest first made the ceremonial offer- 
 ing of the victim at the door of the tabernacle of the 
 testimony, then shed its blood, and last of all went 
 with the blood into the holy of holies to hand it over 
 there to the Lord. Immediately afterwards he came 
 out into the holy place, and on the altar that was 
 there made the offering of the blood, smearing with 
 it the horns of the altar.—Jb., v. 18. So our High 
 Priest first made the ceremonial offering of His 
 Sacrifice according to the rite of Melchisedech, then 
 shed His Blood to the last drop on the Cross, and 
 after His resurrection went up to the holy of holies 
 in the heavenly places to make there the solemn 
 offering of His Sacrifice, ‘‘ having obtained eternal re- 
 demption.” Immediately afterwards the Apostles are 
 gathered together in the Cenacle, and, as St Ambrose 
 says in the already cited words, the same High Priest 
 is ‘‘plainly seen to offer” in them, for it is of divine 
 faith that He is the Priest of the Sacrifice. There, 
 
ETE hI S ISVEAS S 129 
 
 then, where the Eucharistic Sacrifice was instituted, 
 the First Mass was offered up, even as it is offered up 
 to-day, ‘‘in memory of the passion, resurrection, and 
 ascension of Jesus Christ Our Lord.”* Fittingly 
 were these stupendous events commemorated by the 
 apostles in the First Commemorative Passover of the 
 New Testament, for He who suffered, and rose from 
 the dead, and ascended into Heaven, had withdrawn 
 from them His visible presence ; and He had bidden 
 them: “ Do this for a commemoration of Me:” 
 1 Ordinary of the Mass. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 OUR SIN-OFFERING 
 
 _ We have an altar, whereof they have no power to 
 eat who serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of 
 those beasts whose blood for sin is brought into the 
 holy place (as an offering) by the High Priest, are 
 burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, 
 that He might sanctify the people through His own 
 blood, suffered without the gate.-—Heb. xii. 10-12. 
 
 That the “altar” here spoken of is such in the 
 first and proper sense of the word is undeniable. It 
 is sharply contrasted with the altar of the Jews; it 
 is within the sanctuary, or holy place, where the 
 blood of the victim is handed over to God; from it 
 is dispensed to the people the feast upon the sacri- 
 fice. Hence the Apostle says elsewhere: “ Behold 
 Israel according to the flesh; are not they that eat 
 of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?”—1 Cor. x. 
 18. And in the same chapter he adds: ‘‘ You can 
 not drink the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of 
 devils; you cannot be partakers of the table of the 
 Lord and the table of devils.”—Jb., 20-21. All 
 this simply excludes the idea that the word “altar” 
 can here be understood in any other than a secondary 
 or figurative sense of Christ Himself, or the Cross to 
 which He was nailed on Calvary. 
 
 Now, mark the sequence of the thought in this 
 
 passage. ‘To one who takes but a surface view of it, 
 130 
 
OUR SIN-OFFERING 131 
 
 the reasoning is not convincing. One must delve 
 beneath the surface, and grasp the mystic and hidden 
 meaning. The inspired writer finds in the fact that 
 the Jews had no power to partake of their own sin- 
 offering a token divinely given that they should 
 have no power to partake of ours—the One Offering 
 for the sins of the world which their offering 
 shadowed forth. And it is instructive to note why 
 they have not the power. It is because they have 
 not faith in Christ. When He told the Jews of His 
 day that the bread He would give was His flesh for 
 the life of the world, they queried: ‘How can this 
 man give us His flesh to eat?’’ You may well ask 
 of a man how he is going to do what is not given 
 unto men to do; and to them the One who stood 
 there was but a man—‘“‘Jesus, the son of Joseph, 
 whose father and mother we know.” But you may 
 not ask this of God; for there is no limit to His 
 power, and no measuring the reach of it by the finite 
 intellect of man. When, therefore, many, for want 
 of faith, had found this saying hard, and had gone 
 their way and ‘walked no more with Him,” He 
 turned to His Apostles and said: ‘‘ Will you also go 
 away?’ And the one of them who, because of his 
 strong faith, was to be made the Rock on which the 
 Church is built, and the confirmer of his brethren, 
 made answer and said: ‘‘ Lord, to whom shall we go? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have 
 believed and we know that Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of God.”—John vi. 69-70. 
 
 Our Pasch, the Sacrifice itself together with the 
 feast upon the Sacrifice, is,in the words that Holy 
 Church puts in our mouths at the moment of conse- 
 
132 LITE SACRIFICE ORT AEM ASS 
 
 cration, a ‘‘mystery of faith.” It is faith that tells 
 us that the chalice of benediction which we bless is 
 the communion of the blood of Christ, and the 
 bread that we break is the partaking of the body of 
 the Lord.—1 Cor. x. 16. It is faith that assures us 
 also that, what time we are made “ partakers of the 
 altar’ even as was “Israel according to the flesh,” 
 we truly offer to God within the Christian sanctuary, 
 the Sacrifice of Him who “suffered without the 
 gate.” “I feel,” says an Anglican divine, “that in 
 some deep, mysterious sense—a sense which it is 
 hardly possible to express in language, for language 
 is of things in space and time—the function, so to 
 say, of that Sacrifice is not ended, but is eternal as 
 itself. I can imagine nothing that speaks to man’s 
 need more than the conception of being associated 
 with the perpetual pleading of the eternal Sacrifice ; 
 it is there that the importance of the Eucharist 
 comes in.” What Holy Mass does is to associate 
 each successive generation of Christians with the 
 perpetual pleading of the eternal Sacrifice, because 
 it is the solemn ritual handing over to God on 
 Christian altars of the Victim of Calvary, in every 
 place, from the rising of the sun to its going down. 
 “When the Lord declares,” says St Augustine, 
 “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and 
 drink His blood you shall not have life in you’— 
 John vi. 54, what means it that the Jewish people 
 were so strictly forbidden to taste the blood of sacri- 
 fices offered for sins, seeing that by these sacrifices 
 was prefigured this One Sacrifice in which the re- 
 mission of sins is really effected, while no one is 
 forbidden to take the blood of this sacrifice for food, 
 
OUR SIN -OFFERING 43 
 
 but all rather are urged to drink who would have 
 life?”* He does not answer his own question. 
 But he identifies the Eucharist with the One Sacri- 
 fice as being, so far forth as it is a sacrament, the 
 participation of, or feast upon, that Sacrifice. 
 
 It is a commonplace of New Testament teaching 
 that the sacrifices of the olden times were types of 
 the One Sacrifice which we offer up. But in the 
 passage, cited at the head of this chapter, the re- 
 lation of type and antitype is specifically “insisted 
 upon. The Sacrifice of the New Law fulfils, of 
 course, all the ends of sacrifice; but it is pre- 
 eminently a sin-offering. He who gave His life ‘“‘a 
 ransom for many’’ was, in the strong words of the 
 Apostle, ‘“‘made sin for us.” And we are taught that 
 He suffered for our sins “ without the gate,” in order 
 that the typical sin-offering might be fulfilled; for 
 that the bodies of those beasts whose blood was 
 brought into the holy place as an offering for sin 
 were burned “‘ without the camp.” 
 
 The parallelism is complete. Just as in the 
 typical sin-offering the blood of the victim had to be 
 brought into the holy place to make atonement, so 
 is it in the One Offering for sin which that of the 
 olden time shadowed forth. It is the blood of the 
 Victim slain on Calvary, ‘‘ without the gate,” that 
 we offer on our altars to-day within the Christian 
 sanctuary. And just as that which was done by the 
 Jewish high-priest within the holy place was not 
 a new sacrifice, but the ritual offering or solemn 
 handing over to God of the blood of the victim 
 slain, so that which is done to-day within the 
 
 1 Quest. in Heptat., 1. 3, n. 57 (Migne, P. L., tom. 34, col. 704). 
 
134 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Christian sanctuary is not a new sacrifice, but the 
 ritual offering or solemn handing over to God of the 
 blood of the Victim of Calvary. 
 
 And the parallelism extends to the person of the 
 priest. It is the high-priest of the Old Dispensation 
 who brings the blood of the Victim into the 
 sanctuary and offers it there ; it is the High Priest of 
 the New Dispensation- who brings into our sanctuary 
 His own blood and offers it. ‘‘ Yea, Himself,” says 
 St Ambrose, ‘‘is plainly seen to offer in us, since His 
 word sanctifies the Sacrifice which is offered.”* And 
 St John Chrysostom: “This word once spoken from 
 that time to the present and unto His coming 
 perfects the Sacrifice on every altar.”* It is not by 
 any power of the priest that this great mystery is 
 wrought. If “without Me you can do nothing ” is 
 true of the least act in the supernatural order, much 
 more is it true of that which may well be esteemed 
 the most stupendous act of all. 
 
 Here, then, is the Scriptural and Apostolic con- 
 ception of the Holy Mass. It is the ritual offering 
 within the Christian sanctuary of the Victim slain 
 on Calvary—of the body that was nailed to the 
 cross for us, and the blood that blotted out the 
 handwriting of the decree that was against us. 
 Therefore is Christ a ‘ Priest forever according to 
 the order of Melchisedech,’ because He first offered 
 up His Sacrifice, and continues to offer it up ever- 
 more after the rite of Melchisedech. Once was the 
 blood shed; evermore is the blood offered up. And 
 the shedding and the offering up are not two 
 sacrifices, but one sacrifice; as in the Old Testament, 
 
 1 Enarr. in Po. 38, n. 25, 2 In Produit. Jude Homil. I., n. 6. 
 
OUR SIN-OFFERING 138 
 
 so in the New. What, then? Was the Sacrifice 
 not finished on Calvary? Yea, there the blood was 
 shed once for all, and the ransom once for all was 
 wrought. But not there was made the ritual offering 
 of the Sacrifice. The blood had still to be handed 
 over to God within the holy place after the rite 
 established by the High Priest of the Sacrifice; the 
 ransom had to be applied to each successive genera- 
 tion of Christians. It is not enough that the means 
 of paying a debt be found: the money has to be 
 handed over to the one to whom payment is due. 
 Christ on Calvary founded for all generations of 
 men an infinite treasury of merits in His Precious 
 Blood. But because, as St Augustine says, He who 
 made man without his doing anything will not save 
 him without it, each generation has to hand over 
 to God, in faith not wavering, the price of its 
 ransom. And if faith should die out of the world, 
 then would ransom cease to be paid. 
 
 Our communion with Christianity, to quote on 
 this subject the striking words of Cardinal Newman, 
 ‘“‘is in the unseen, not in the obsolete. At this very 
 day its rites and ordinances are continually eliciting 
 the active interposition of that Omnipotence in which 
 the religion long ago began. First and above all is 
 the Holy Mass, in which He who once died for us 
 upon the cross brings back and perpetuates, by His 
 literal presence in it, that one and the same Sacrifice 
 which can not be repeated.” * 
 
 Such in the mind and in the worship of the 
 Church is the Holy Mass, the One Offering for the 
 sins of the world, the sum and compendium, as 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent., p. 475. 
 
136 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 it is the standing memorial, of Our Lord’s most 
 wonderful works. Here is no rivulet or channel, but 
 the very fountain source of Christ's redeeming grace. 
 ‘When the priest celebrates,” says the author of the 
 Inatation, “he honours God, rejoices the angels, 
 edifies the Church, helps the living, obtains rest 
 for the dead, and makes himself partaker of all good 
 things.” The same Body which was pierced for us 
 on Calvary is present on the altar; the same Blood 
 which flowed from the wounds in those blessed hands 
 and feet and trickled from the spear wound in the 
 heart, is again poured out for us. Through this 
 adorable sacrifice, as the Council of Trent teaches, 
 God, being appeased, grants grace and the gifts of 
 repentance, and pardons sins and crimes even though 
 they be enormous. If we did but realize the treasure 
 we have here, as the saints of God have realized it 
 in every age, we should be found daily assisting at 
 Holy Mass, like the mother of Augustine, “ who 
 never for a day absented herself from the altar 
 whence she knew that Victim to be dispensed by 
 which the handwriting that was against us is blotted 
 
 OU h 
 1 Confessions, bk. 9, ch. 18, n. 36. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE CHRISTIAN PASSOVER 
 
 THE most striking figure of Christ’s Sacrifice in the 
 olden time was the Pasch or Passover. Our Divine 
 Lord first kept the Jewish Pasch the evening before 
 He suffered, and then instituted His own. Like the 
 other ritual sacrifices of the Old Law, the Passover 
 included as an integral part of the rite, the eating of 
 the flesh of the victim, in the feast upon the sacrifice. 
 The Lamb was offered and slain, and its flesh was 
 eaten with unleavened bread. The relation of type 
 and antitype between it and the Christian Passover 
 requires that the like should have place also in the 
 latter. Therefore, the Supper formed an integral 
 part of the Christian Passover, and the offering and 
 consecration of the Body and Blood of the Victim, 
 which took place at the Supper, an essential part of 
 it as a ritual oblation, and the immolation on the 
 Cross an essential part of it as a true and real sacrifice. 
 “Hor Christ our Pasch is slain” declares the Apostle. 
 It was no mystic nor moral slaying that made the 
 Christian Passover a true and real and visible sacrifice, 
 corresponding to and fulfilling as antitype the Jewish 
 Passover. The death of Christ upon the Cross must 
 be counted in with the offerme and consecration of 
 His Body and Blood at the Last Supper to make the 
 Christian Pasch a real sacrifice, just as the real eating 
 
 of the Victim under the form of unleavened bread 
 137 
 
138 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 must be counted in to make a real feast upon that 
 sacrifice. Therefore, not the Last Supper alone is 
 the first Christian Passover, for the lamb is not yet 
 slain; nor Calvary alone, for the lamb there slain is 
 not there offered up with befitting rites, nor given as 
 food under the form of unleavened bread; but the 
 Last Supper together with Calvary is the first 
 Christian Passover. Mere figurative or mystic slaying 
 no more makes the Christian Passover a real sacrifice 
 than mere figurative or mystic eating of the lamb 
 makes a real feast upon that sacrifice. Therefore, 
 every subsequent Christian Passover corresponding 
 to the commemorative Passover of the Jews, since it 
 is by Christ’s institution the continuing of what was 
 done once for all, must reproduce the moment of 
 Calvary as well as the moment of the Last Supper, 
 which, because of the oneness of the sacrificial action, 
 and the causal connection between action and passion, 
 are so linked together as to form not two moments 
 but one only. And so the Mass prolongs forever, 
 and presents on every altar from the rising of the sun 
 to its going down, both the Sacrifice of Calvary and 
 the Feast upon the Sacrifice. 
 
 Sacrifice is the supreme act of external worship. 
 From the cradle of the race it was offered to God, but 
 not till the time of Moses did God Himself give His 
 chosen people the law and ritual of sacrifice. Thence- 
 forward sacrifice was offered in accordance with that 
 law and ritual, first in tent and tabernacle, and later 
 in the temple, till the new covenant with the new 
 people of God came into force. 
 
 St Paul expressly tells us that the sacrifices 
 offered by the Jewish priests were the type and 
 
DHE OGHRISTIAN (PASSOVER 139 
 
 shadow of the heavenly things (feb. viii, 5), and 
 that the law had the shadow of the good thing to 
 come (ibid. x., 1), that is, of the one perfect and 
 eternal Sacrifice that was offered by Christ, together 
 with the sacraments that draw their virtue from it. 
 Between the sacrifices of the Old Law and the One 
 Sacrifice of the New there is the express relation of 
 type and antitype. So the Christian Church has 
 always understood. Thus St Augustine declares that 
 ‘God clearly foretold by the mouths of the Hebrew 
 prophets that there should be an end of the sacrifices © 
 which the Jews offered to shadow forth the one that 
 was to be, and that this One Sacrifice the Gentiles 
 should offer from the rising of the sun to its going 
 down,”* and again that ‘‘the former sacrifices of 
 whatever kind were figures of that which the faithful 
 know in the Church.” ? So, too, the Council of Trent 
 teaches that the Hucharistic Sacrifice ‘‘ was prefigured 
 by the various typical sacrifices of the law and of the 
 time before the law.” The great bulk of those 
 typical offerings, it is to be observed, were made in 
 the blood of animals, and expressly shadowed forth 
 the bloody immolation on Calvary. 
 
 God Himself commanded the people of old to 
 offer sacrifices, and prescribed the rites. These are 
 contained in the Book of Leviticus. In the ritual 
 directions there given, four things stand out pro- 
 minently: (1) the offering and consecration of the 
 living victim ; (2) the immolation or sacrificial slaying 
 of the victim; (3) the offermg or handing over to 
 God of the victim slain, by the sprinkling or pouring 
 
 1 De Civit. Dei, 1. 19, c. 23, n. 5 (Migne, P. L., tom. 41, col. 655). 
 2 Cont. Adv. Leg. et Proph., lib. 1, ¢. 18 (Migne, P. L., tom. 62, 
 col. 624). 
 
140 THE, SACRIFICE OPV E Ov eos 
 
 out of its blood round about the altar or the con- 
 suming of its flesh by fire; (4) the sacrificial meal, 
 or feast upon the sacrifice. The first offering of the 
 victim was made at the door of the tabernacle by the 
 owner of the animal, or by the priest, who laid his 
 hand upon the animal’s head. In the case of sin- 
 offerings, the animal was slain by the sinner for whom 
 the victim was offered. The second offering, that is 
 to say, the offering of the victim slain, was always 
 made by the priest. We thus see that the law of 
 sacrifice, as laid down by God Himself, requires that 
 the twofold offering of the victim, namely, the one 
 before as well as the one after the immolation, should 
 be, like the immolation, external and sensible. And 
 this requirement is rooted in the very nature of 
 sacrifice as an act of external worship. 
 
 So much for the type; let us now come to the 
 antitype. And let us not forget that it was He who 
 gave the law of sacrifice to the Hebrew people who 
 was afterwards found in fashion as a man and ful- 
 filled the law by the offering of Himself as a ransom 
 for many. At the very moment of the Incarnation 
 He made the internal offering of His Sacrifice, as it 
 is written: ‘‘ Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, 
 but a body thou hast fitted unto me. . . then said 
 I: Lo, I am come, in the head of the book it is 
 written of me that I should do Thy will, O God.”— 
 Heb. x. 5. When and where did He make the 
 external and strictly sacrificial offering of it? When 
 His hour was come. On the eve of His Passion, 
 when He reclined at table with the Twelve, He 
 consecrated Himself a Victim for the Sacrifice, say- 
 ing: ‘This is My body which is given for you” ; 
 
DHE (CHRISTIAN, PASSOVER I41 
 
 “this is My blood which is poured out for you.” 
 The Greek tense in both cases is the present, but the 
 action looks onward to the morrow’s immolation on 
 Calvary. So the Vulgate in the second case has the 
 future ; and so the continuing of the same thing that 
 Christ did is declared by St Paul to be the ‘“ showing 
 forth of the Lord’s death till He come.” 
 
 That the external offering of the One Sacrifice of 
 the New Law was made in the Supper follows from 
 the fact that it was made nowhere else; not before 
 then, for the time to offer the Sacrifice was not 
 come ; not after, for there is nothing that resembles 
 it in any of the events that followed in the course 
 of Our Lord’s Passion, and the crucifixion was the 
 immolation of the Victim, not the external offering. 
 Neither is there aught in all that the Divine Victim 
 said or did on the Cross which can be construed as 
 an external offering, or at all corresponds to the 
 ceremonial offering and consecration of the living 
 victim in the Old Law. We must, therefore, con- 
 clude that the consecration of His Body and Blood, 
 which our Divine Lord made at the Last Supper, 
 was the external offering of His Sacrifice, and is to 
 be reckoned as constituting with the bloody im- 
 molation on Calvary the One Sacrifice of the New 
 Law. Thus does the antitype correspond to its type, 
 for Our Lord was at once the owner of the Victim 
 offered, which was His own Body, and the Priest of 
 the Sacrifice; also, the sinner slew the Victim, and 
 the Priest offered the Sacrifice. 
 
 Consider, moreover, that our Divine Lord offered 
 His One Sacrifice as Priest forever after the order 
 of Melchisedech, for so the Apostle expressly declares. 
 
142 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Introducing Our Lord as Priest forever after the 
 order of Melchisedech, he goes right on to speak of 
 His “‘ one offering,” which is that of Calvary, giving 
 us to understand that the Melchisedech type of 
 sacrifice was fulfilled in the oblation that was con- 
 summated on the Cross. He thus identifies the 
 Kucharistic Sacrifice with that of Calvary, which is 
 what we should expect; for the Kucharistic Sacrifice 
 though after the Melchisedech type in the form of its 
 offering, was finished on Calvary, and was made a 
 sacrifice by the death of the Victim on the Cross. 
 Christ's one oblation gets its title of Kucharistic 
 from the form of its offering, its name of the Sacrifice 
 of Calvary from the place of its consummation. 
 Were the Kucharistic Sacrifice other than that of 
 Calvary, a distinct oblation containing within itself 
 all the elements of a real sacrifice, the Apostle could 
 not have associated, as he does, the eternal priest- 
 hood after the order of Melchisedech with the bloody 
 immolation on Calvary; nor could the Christian 
 Church have traced, as she has ever done, her 
 Sacrifice to Calvary, but rather to the Cenacle, and 
 only to the Cenacle. 
 
 Let us look a little deeper into this matter. The 
 very notion of sacrifice involves two things, priest 
 and victim. Our Lord is at once the Priest and 
 Victim of His Sacrifice. As Priest, He offers Him- 
 self; as Victim, He is offered and immolated. We 
 thus find in His Sacrifice, as in every sacrifice, an 
 active and a passive element. But it is the active 
 element, or action of the priest, that gives its specific 
 character to sacrifice. That it is which transforms 
 what would be in itself but the slaying of an animal 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PASSOVER 143 
 
 into the supreme act of religious worship. Where, 
 then, did the action of Christ’s Sacrifice have place 2 
 At the Last Supper, and only at the Last Supper. 
 Jesus Christ instituted there in due ritual form 
 His Sacrifice, and took measures to perpetuate the 
 institution. There He made the sacrificial offering 
 of His Body and Blood; there He bore the part of 
 Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech, 
 the word “order” being taken in its full and formal 
 sense to signify both dignity and rite; there He 
 appointed men to do that same thing which He did, 
 fora memorial of Him. ‘Then, the rite being done 
 and over, laying aside His priestly dignity, He went 
 forth in His character of predestined Victim, suffered 
 Himself to be led as a lamb to the slaughter, and so 
 finished on Calvary what was begun in the upper 
 room. He offered as Priest, and Priest forever after 
 the order of Melchisedech; He suffered as Victim, as 
 the lamb that was “slain from the foundation of 
 the world.” He was not yet actually Victim when 
 He made the offering ; He was less than Priest, yea, 
 in the words of the Prophet, ‘‘a worm and no man,” 
 when he finished the Sacrifice. True, He was Priest 
 on Calvary and Victim in the upper room, but in 
 a material rather than formal, in a virtual rather 
 than actual sense. To speak of what was upper- 
 most in each case, He was Priest in the Cenacle 
 and Victim on Calvary. Therefore He offered His 
 Sacrifice truly and literally as Priest forever according 
 to the order of Melchisedech. We may not divorce 
 the Action of the Last Supper from the Passion and 
 Death which followed in virtue of it, that is to say, 
 in virtue of the voluntary and visible offering of 
 
144. THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 Himself as Victim to be slain for sinners and by 
 sinners, which our Saviour there made, for that His 
 hour was come. What God hath joined together let 
 no man put asunder. 
 
 The Christian Passover follows the Jewish and 
 fulfils it. In theirs a lamb was offered and slain; 
 in ours is slain and offered the Lamb that taketh 
 away the sins of the world. Theirs wrought redemp- 
 tion of the first-born from temporal death, and 
 deliverance from bondage to a tyrant: ours works 
 redemption from eternal death and deliverance of 
 God’s people, both Jew and Gentile, from a far worse 
 bondage to a far harder taskmaster and more heart- 
 less tyrant. They ate the flesh of a lamb with un- 
 leavened bread; we eat the flesh of the Lamb under 
 the form of unleavened bread. ‘The bread that I 
 will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” And 
 just as every subsequent Passover of the Jews, though 
 typical and commemorative, was a true sacrifice, so 
 is every subsequent Christian Passover, though com- 
 memorative and symbolic, a true sacrifice, nay the 
 one true Sacrifice of the New Law. But while in 
 each subsequent Jewish Passover a different lamb 
 was slain, and the sacrifice was therefore numerically 
 different from the preceding, in each subsequent 
 Christian Passover the same Lamb is offered and 
 partaken of which was slain once for all on Calvary. 
 The sacrifice is thus numerically the same as that 
 which was offered at the last Supper and on the 
 Cross, both Priest and Victim being numerically the 
 same. And so, in all that appertains to the con- 
 stitution of sacrifice, in its inner essence, in every 
 essential respect, Holy Mass is the same sacrifice as 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PASSOVER 145 
 
 that of the Cross; is, indeed, the Sacrifice of the 
 Cross in a mystery and by a miracle of Christ’s 
 power prolonged forever. LHvery altar is a Calvary 
 where the same Victim is ever offered by the same 
 High Priest under the veil of the things that appear 
 to sense. 
 
 Holy Church lays it upon the conscience of all 
 who have reached the years of discretion to hear 
 Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. The 
 Lord’s Day is set apart for the worship of the Lord. 
 We acquit ourselves of our duty to the Lord on that 
 day by assisting at the Sacrifice by which He re- 
 - deemed us from our sins and led us out of the house 
 of bondage. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE FEAST UPON THE SACRIFICE 
 
 WITHIN sight of the Sea of Galilee, and within sound 
 of its waves when it lifts its voice in anger, is “the 
 desert place apart’ where Our Blessed Lord fed five 
 thousand men with five loaves of bread and a few 
 fishes. The miracle was a striking and palpable one. 
 There were as many witnesses of it as there were 
 men whose hunger was satisfied in so wonderful a 
 way. Nature, or rather God working in nature, 
 multiplies the seeds that are sown in the springtime. 
 But the seed must be put in the ground, and await 
 the dews and showers to make it sprout; the grain 
 must ripen under the summer’s sun, and must be 
 threshed, and winnowed, and made into flour; the 
 flour must be kneaded into dough and baked into 
 bread. This is the natural process of multiplying 
 bread, gradual and slow. But the grain that is 
 already ground into flour and baked into bread will 
 never grow again and multiply in the ordinary 
 course of nature. Of this we are as sure as that we 
 have hands and feet, or a stomach that feels the 
 pangs of hunger. Now it was baked bread that Our 
 Lord caused to multiply—to multiply on the instant, 
 and to such an extent that after the five thousand 
 were fed, ‘‘ they gathered up and filled twelve baskets 
 with the fragments of the five barley loaves which 
 
 remained over and above to them that had eaten.’— 
 146 
 
LAE PEAS PIORONP VALE NSAGRILPIGE.svA7 
 
 John 6-13. Little wonder that those who witnessed 
 the multiplication of the loaves and fishes should 
 have cried out: ‘ This is of a truth the prophet that 
 is to come into the world.”—J0. 14. 
 
 The miracle thus wrought by Our Lord was but 
 a prelude to the far greater prodigy which He was 
 about to work in the spiritual order. This is not a 
 miracle in the received meaning of the word. It is 
 not within the sphere of things that are seen and 
 felt, and so are fitted to cause wonder. But it in- 
 volves, and that in a marked way, the exercise of 
 omnipotent power. Only the Almighty could feed 
 five thousand men with five loaves; only the 
 Almighty can feed successive generations of men 
 with His own body in the guise of bread. 
 
 Our Lord took occasion of His multiplying the 
 loaves to speak of the greater wonder He was about 
 to work. “The bread that I will give,” He told His 
 hearers, “is My flesh for the life of the world.” 
 ‘Not as your fathers did eat manna in the desert 
 and are dead; he who eats of this bread shall live 
 forever.” And when many of the Jews murmured 
 among themselves and said: “How can this man 
 give us His flesh to eat?” He abated not one jot or 
 tittle of what He had said, but, on the contrary, 
 reaffirmed it in yet more emphatic fashion : “ Verily, 
 verily, | say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the 
 Son of Man and drink His blood, ye shall not have 
 life in you.” 
 
 Let us consider the grievous mistake made by the 
 Jews, and the blindness of that perverse, though 
 highly favoured people. They took the One who 
 stood before them to be a man merely like one of 
 
148 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 themselves—‘‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?” 
 was their unspoken thought. And so they would 
 not believe that He could do what He said He was 
 going to do. “‘ How,” they queried, ‘“‘can this man 
 give us his flesh to eat?” By the secret chemistry 
 of nature, bread and wine are changed into flesh and 
 blood, but who can tell how this is done ? 
 
 In the things of faith we can never go by what 
 the senses tell us. The Jews went by what their senses 
 told them, and so set down Jesus as the son of 
 Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth. Yet the wonders 
 that He wrought before their very eyes should have 
 satisfied them that He was indeed what he avowed 
 Himself to be, what Peter confessed Him to be, “‘ the 
 Son of the Living God.” That was the error of the 
 Jews, to go by what their senses told them ; as it 1s 
 the error of those who pronounce the Hely Eucharist 
 to be a wafer, a bit of ordinary bread, just because it 
 is such to the senses. 
 
 The blindness and perverseness of the Jews lay in 
 their refusal to believe what Jesus said He would do 
 because they couldn’t see how He was going to do it. 
 The mysteries of faith are not only beyond the ken 
 of the senses, but beyond the reach of human reason ~ 
 when left to itself. Those same men could not 
 understand how Jesus multiplied the five loaves so 
 as to feed five thousand. Yet they were witnesses 
 of the astounding fact. How, then, could they 
 presume to question His power to give them His 
 flesh to eat? How but that their first error led 
 logically to the second. Of course if Jesus were — 
 simply the son of Joseph he could no more give his 
 flesh for the life of the world than can any of the 
 
THE FEAST UPON THE SACRIFICE 149 
 
 other sons of men. And even if he could, his giving 
 it would serve no purpose, for it would not give life 
 to the world. Therefore all who believe that Jesus 
 is the Son of God, having the same almighty power 
 as the Father, ought to believe that He was able to 
 keep His promise, however impossible of fulfilment 
 it may seem. For what is impossible to men is 
 possible to God, with whom nothing is impossible. 
 
 The Jews fancied that Our Lord was going to give 
 His Flesh to eat as meat is given in the market. 
 But the words He spoke to them were “ spirit and 
 life.” Being carnally-minded they could not perceive 
 the things that are of the Spirit of God. And yet, 
 there are instances in the Law and the Prophets, 
 which they held to be God’s own book, that shadow 
 forth the how of the Eucharistic process. For even 
 as the flesh of the Paschal lamb had to be roasted, and 
 the bread given by the Angel to the prophet Khas 
 had to be baked in the ashes, to become meat and 
 food for the body ; so the Flesh of the Lamb of God, 
 who taketh away the sins of the world, had to be 
 roasted in the fires of the Passion, and His body to 
 be baked in the ashes of our sins and His mortality, 
 to become the Bread of Life to all generations of men, 
 and the Meat that endureth unto life everlasting. 
 
 At the Last Supper Jesus redeemed His promise. 
 He took bread into His hands, broke it, and gave it 
 to His disciples, saying: ‘This is my Body.” In 
 like manner, the chalice, in these words: “This 1s 
 the chalice of my Blood of the New Testament, 
 which shall be shed for many unto forgiveness 
 of sins.” It is the Feast upon His Sacrifice, real 
 as that Sacrifice is real. No mere symbol or 
 
150 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 shadow does He give, but His body under the form 
 of bread, and His Blood under the form of wine. 
 The Old Law had but the shadow of the good 
 things to come, as the Apostle tells us; the New 
 Law holds the reality. So, the same Apostle, speaking 
 of this great mystery, teaches that the Bread we 
 break is the partaking of the Body of Christ, and the 
 Chalice we drain, the Communion of the Blood of 
 Christ. So all Christian antiquity believed; such 
 has been the faith of the overwhelming majority of 
 Christians in every age. And He who reclined at 
 table with the Twelve, being the Son of the Living 
 God, eternal and omniscient, knew that His followers 
 would take the words which He spoke in their literal 
 and obvious meaning ; would believe His Body to be 
 present in the Holy Hucharist under the form of 
 bread, and His Blood under the form of wine. 
 Therefore, unless we are prepared to say that He 
 deliberately uttered words on the most solemn 
 occasion of His life here on earth, which were caleul- 
 ated to lead us into error, we must hold that He left 
 to His Church, by His last will and testament, His 
 Body as meat indeed, and His Blood as drink indeed 
 —the banquet of the soul, in which as Holy Church 
 declares, “Christ is received, the memory of His 
 Passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and 
 a pledge is given of future glory.” As surely as 
 Jesus Christ is God, so surely is He present on the 
 altar, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the 
 appearances of bread and wine. 
 
 What bread does for the body that, and much 
 more, the Holy Kucharist does for the soul. Bread — 
 is the staff of life. It nourishes the body, makes it 
 
THE “FEAST: UPON “THE, SACRIFICE "151 
 
 grow, gives it strength, and is sweet to the hungry. 
 Such to the soul is the Holy Eucharist. “Not as 
 your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are 
 dead,” said Our Blessed Lord to the Jews: “ He who 
 eats of this bread shall live forever.” And again: 
 “Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for 
 that which endureth unto life everlasting, which the 
 Son of Man will give you.” 
 
 As the body grows in bulk, so does the soul of 
 the one who eats worthily the Bread of Life grow in 
 erace and goodness, in purity and truth. No wonder 
 that so many souls are stunted in spiritual growth 
 and starved, when they fail to eat the living Bread 
 that came down from Heaven. 
 
 This, too, is the Bread of the Strong. How weak 
 they become who eat not their food, or eat without 
 relish! What labourer ever went without his daily 
 bread and did his daily tasks? What soldier ever 
 fought without his rations? And how can we, 
 labourers in the Master’s vineyard, and soldiers of 
 Christ, hope to bring forth fruit in His service and 
 win the final goal, if we do not often eat the Bread 
 of the Strong? The prophet Klas went a day’s 
 journey into the wilderness, and being weary of his 
 journey, weary even of life itself, flung himself down 
 under a juniper tree. But having been fed in the 
 morning by an Angel with bread baked in the ashes, 
 he walked in the strength of that bread forty days 
 and forty nights to Mount Horeb, where he had a 
 vision of God. So we, if we are to see the Face of 
 God in glory, we wayfarers in the wilderness of this 
 world of sin, must feed upon the Bread of Angels, 
 upon the immortal Son of God, who becoming mortal 
 
152 LHE SACRIFICE, OPA TAR WTA Ss 
 
 and ‘being made sin for us,” was baked in the ashes 
 of His mortality and our sin, until purged of His 
 earthly part, He rose from His ashes, a Living Bread 
 that dieth now no more; death hath no more 
 dominion over Him.”—Rom. vi., 9. 
 
 We must have a relish for the Bread of Life, 
 Bread is sweet, but only to the hungry. How are 
 we to get hungry for the Bread of Life? How, but 
 by fasting—fasting from worldly desires and from 
 sinful pleasures. This Bread, as Holy Church tells 
 us in dispensing it, ‘“‘hath in Itself all sweetness.” 
 Yea, for He who made all good things and all sweet 
 things, He Himself is this Living Bread. And as 
 He who made all good things and all sweet things is 
 infinite Goodness and Sweetness, how is He not 
 infinitely better and sweeter than the things He has 
 made? So have the saints and all devout souls 
 found Him in every age. 
 
 How often should we partake of this Bread 2 
 The oftener the better, if we have the proper dis- 
 positions. ‘‘Let a man prove himself,’ says the 
 Apostle, ‘‘and so let him eat of that Bread.” And 
 he adds that he who eats of this Bread or drinks of 
 the Chalice unworthily, eats and drinks judgment, 
 that is condemnation, to himself, “ not discerning the 
 Body of the Lord.” One proves oneself by examin- 
 ing one’s conscience. To go to Holy Communion 
 with the consciousness of mortal] sin upon one’s soul, 
 would be to commit the awful crime of sacrilege, 
 which St Paul denounces so strongly. On the other 
 hand, the consciousness of mortal sin is the only bar 
 to the worthy reception of the Holy Sacrament. 
 Venial sin will not even lessen the grace that flows 
 
THE FEAST UPON ‘THE SACRIFICE | 153 
 
 into the soul from Holy Communion, if only we are 
 sincerely desirous of being rid of it. From this it 
 follows that confession of sin, though always highly 
 commendable, is not necessary to the worthy and 
 fruitful reception of the Holy Eucharist, except when 
 there is grievous sin upon one’s conscience. Indeed, 
 the Church obliges us to go to confession only once 
 a year. The late Pope Pius X ordained that those 
 who communicate daily, or even frequently during 
 the week, can gain all the indulgences by confession 
 once in the month. In the case of less frequent 
 communion, weekly confession is necessary to the 
 gaining of the indulgences that fall within the week. 
 But neither weekly nor monthly confession is neces- 
 sary to fit one to receive worthily. The best rule is 
 so to live that one need not go to confession even 
 once a month. | 
 
 Few Christians approach this Holy Sacrament 
 frequently. It is the old story. One bought a farm, 
 the other a yoke of oxen, a third married a wife and 
 couldn’t come. Not a few are held back by human 
 respect. Piety, they think, betokens weakness and 
 want of spirit. And what will people say about 
 them if they become too pious? As if it mattered 
 what people said! Piety is profitable alike for the 
 life that now is, and that which is to be. Noone 
 can be too pious, nor can indeed, be pious enough. 
 Without exaggeration does Scripture declare that 
 the number of fools is without end. Anyone who 
 for any reason neglects the things that are eternal, 
 for one day, or even for one hour, is a consummate 
 fool. And we are all of us, to a greater or less 
 extent, guilty of this supreme folly—busied about 
 
154 LHE ‘SACRIFICE VOR) DHET VASS 
 
 many things, when the Wisdom of God has taught 
 us that one thing is necessary. 
 
 “Suffer little children to come unto Me,” says 
 Our Blessed Lord, ‘for of such is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven.” Pope Pius Tenth of blessed memory has 
 thrown the Eucharistic gates wide open to the little 
 ones. As soon as the child reaches the years of 
 discretion, which is commonly at about seven, and 
 is able to discern the Body of the Lord, it not only 
 can, but should, go to Holy Communion. 
 
 Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the fountain 
 of living water that leaps up unto life everlasting. 
 But few come to draw from this fountain. Men 
 seek to slake their thirst for happiness at the broken 
 cisterns of this world, which can hold no water. 
 They go to theatres, to moving picture shows, for 
 recreation, for consolation ; they forsake the God of 
 all consolation Who is evermore present in the taber- 
 nacle. They visit earthly friends; they neglect to 
 visit their Heavenly Friend. It is pitiful to see how 
 few observe the pious and truly Catholic practice 
 of visiting the Lord Jesus in the Sacrament of His 
 love. St Alphonsus tells us of a Countess of Feria, 
 who was known as the Spouse of the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment because of her devotion to Our Lord in this 
 great mystery of His love. Being asked what she - 
 did during the long hours she spent at the foot of 
 the altar, she made answer: ‘‘l would remain there 
 for all eternity. The Holy Sacrament contains the 
 essence of God, who is the food of the elect. Good 
 God, I am asked what I do in the presence of my 
 Saviour! Why am I not rather asked what I don’t 
 do! I love Him, I praise Him, I thank Him for 
 
THE FEAST UPON THE SACRIFICE 185 
 
 His favours, | implore His mercy; I do what a 
 beggar does in the presence of a rich man; what 
 a sick man does in the presence of his physician ; 
 what a person parched with thirst does before a 
 clear fountain; or what one fainting from hunger 
 does before a table loaded with the choicest viands.” 
 
 Jesus, in the Blessed Sacrament is the food of 
 our souls, the medicine of our wounds, the one true 
 comfort in affliction, the fountain source of that 
 happiness which our hearts ever hunger after, and 
 seek elsewhere in vain. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE MASS STIPEND 
 
 Tue Mass stipend is. a money offering made to a 
 priest to get him to say Mass for some special 
 intention. In early days the offermg was in bread 
 and wine and the like. But the underlying idea 
 has always been the same. It finds expression in 
 the words of St Paul, that “they who serve the 
 altar partake with the altar,’ and in the words of 
 Our Lord, that ‘‘ the labourer is worthy of his hire.” 
 
 But what is the precise character of this offering ? 
 Is it an alms, or is it, as the word “stipend” implies, 
 a fee, or payment for service rendered? The New 
 Code of Canon Law seems to leave the question an 
 open one. It says “alms or stipend.” An alms is 
 something given for God’s sake to a person in need. 
 Its distinctive feature is that it is given gratis. 
 The one who gives wants no return. He does not 
 give on condition of the recipient's giving or doing: 
 he gives freely and absolutely. No doubt the offer- 
 ing for a Mass may at times take the character of 
 an alms, both on the part of the giver, who means 
 to give simply for God’s sake, and of the recipient, 
 who may really be in need here and now of that 
 which is thus bestowed. But this is the exception. 
 As a rule, the offering is a stipend or fee for service 
 rendered, or to be rendered. In the former case, it 
 
 is due in strict justice; in the latter, it begets an 
 156 
 
THE MASS STIPEND 157 
 
 obligation in justice on the part of the priest to 
 say the Mass for the intention of the giver. 
 
 The title that a priest has to a stipend is that 
 he must live. Our Lord never meant His priests to 
 live on alms. ‘There are religious orders in the 
 Church whose members take vows to live on the 
 bounty of those who give simply for God's sake. 
 These, however, do but follow to the uttermost a 
 counsel of perfection, and are exceptions to the rule. 
 The rule is that which Christ Himself laid down, 
 when He first sent out His disciples. In preaching 
 the Gospel, “the labourer is worthy of his hire” ; 
 so is he in saying Mass. 
 
 If the priest could not take a stipend for his 
 service, he would be the only one in the world pre- 
 cluded from earning his living. But upon him, too, 
 the primeval injunction was laid, that he should 
 eat his bread in the sweat of his face. This means 
 that man must work for his living. ‘If a man,” 
 says the Apostle bluntly, ‘will not work, let him 
 not eat.” Therefore, if he works, at his trade or 
 profession, be it what it may, he has a right to a 
 living wage. Is the priest to be in worse case than 
 men of other professions? His chief business 1s to 
 offer sacrifice. 
 
 St Paul is quite emphatic in his assertion of the 
 right of the priest to a living wage for his service, 
 and particularly his service at the altar. He rings 
 the changes uponit. “‘ Have we not power to eat and 
 drink?” He says, in the ninth chapter of the Furst 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. And again: ‘Who 
 ever serveth as a soldier at his own expense?” which 
 means, as applied to the matter in hand, that, even 
 
158 THE SAGRIF ICE MORON Ea ase 
 
 when a priest has money of his own from some other 
 source, he may take a stipend for his service. 
 
 The Apostle cites the law of Moses, which forbids 
 the muzzling of the treading ox, and asks if God 
 has a care of oxen and not of men. Once our High 
 Priest trod the winepress alone. Now others tread 
 it with Him, and He would have those who so serve 
 the altar partake with the altar. Such is the teach- 
 ing of His Apostle, who goes on to say: “So also 
 the Lord ordained that they who preach the gospel 
 should live by the gospel.” He tells us, indeed, 
 that he himself ‘“‘used none of these things” but 
 leaves us in no doubt as to his right to use them— 
 a right founded upon service and the title to a living 
 wage that faithful service gives. “If we have sown 
 unto you spiritual things. Is it a great matter if 
 we reap your carnal things ?’’—Jbid. v. 11. 
 
 But here we are met with a difficulty. The offer- 
 ing of Mass is a spiritual service. It would seem, 
 therefore, that a priest cannot take money for it, 
 which would be simony—the selling of a spiritual 
 thing for a price. When Simon Macus offered St 
 Peter money for the power of giving the Holy Ghost, 
 he was told, ‘‘ Keep thy money to thyself to perish 
 with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of 
 God may be purchased with money.”—Acts viii. 20. 
 We may have here the reason why it has been held 
 that the offering for a Mass is an alms. But really 
 the giving or taking a stipend for a Mass is free 
 from the slightest taint of simony. For simony is in 
 the thought that the gift of God may be purchased 
 with money, and there is no such thought in the 
 mind of the one who gives or in that of the one 
 
THE MASS STIPEND 150 
 
 who takes a Mass stipend. We say “in the mind,” 
 though the words may appear to convey it. A man 
 comes to a priest and says: ‘“‘ Will you offer up a 
 Mass for my intention?” The priest says ‘I will,” 
 and accepts the proffered stipend. It is not for the 
 Mass that the money is given or taken, nor for the 
 fruits of the Mass, but for the saying of the Mass— 
 the priest’s service in the celebration of the Mass. 
 The transaction is on all fours with that of the doctor 
 who takes a fee for giving a prescription, or of the 
 lawyer who is paid for counsel expressed in writing 
 or by word of mouth. While the knowledge or skill 
 in law or medicine is a spiritual entity, and not 
 therefore in the category of things that are sold for 
 a price, use is made of it, as St Thomas points out,’ 
 by bodily service. On the other hand, neither doctor 
 nor lawyer is bound—at any rate, not always bound 
 —to give his services free of charge, and so he 
 may take a price for them. In like manner, while 
 the action of the Mass is spiritual, the ministry of 
 the priest in the offering of it 1s bodily, and so in the 
 class of services for which a price may be taken. We 
 have here the conditions needful for lawful buying and 
 selling—a thing that is saleable, to wit, the service of 
 the priest, and the right to dispose freely of it, which 
 exists as often as the priest's Mass is not already en- 
 gaged. This is confirmed by the already quoted saying 
 of the Master to those whom He was sending forth to 
 preach the gospel. The gospel itself is neither bought 
 nor sold. But one may lawfully take a price for the 
 preaching of it. This is precisely what “‘ hire” means 
 —‘‘the price or compensation for labour and services. "* 
 
 12 ae.g. 71, a. 4. 2 The Standard Dietronary. 
 
160 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 There is, however, this great difference between — 
 the case of the priest and that of the doctor or lawyer, 
 that the former has hired himself out once for all to 
 work for the Master, who is to be his ‘‘ reward exceed- 
 ing great,” while the latter has no such engagement. 
 Therefore he may set himself to “‘make money, as 
 the saying is, and take a fee twenty times a day, if 
 he can get it, whereas the priest, as a rule, can say 
 Mass but once a day, and take but one stipend. ‘This 
 is why St Thomas calls it ‘‘ stupendiwm sustenta- 
 teonis,” for the priest takes the stipend as a means 
 of support, and not as a means of enriching himself. 
 Hence, too, the amount of the stipend is fixed by the 
 Church at a low figure. 
 
 The great Jesuit theologian, Suarez, deals at con- 
 siderable length with this question. He holds that 
 there is a real contract, of the bilateral kind, that is, 
 binding on both sides, between the one who offers 
 the stipend and the priest who accepts it—an in- 
 nominate contract, do ut facias, “I give on the 
 condition of your doing.” He states the view set 
 forth above, and says it tallies well with the Scripture. 
 But it does not altogether satisfy him. To his mind, 
 the ministry of the priest is so bound up with the 
 action of the Mass as to be simply one with it. ‘This 
 being purely spiritual, that also must be spiritual, 
 and so can’t be bought nor sold. He concludes that 
 the stipend cannot be the price of the priest's service, 
 but a something given solely for his support. The 
 person for whom the priest offers the Mass takes upon 
 himself, he says, the obligation of supporting him.* 
 
 1 Op. Omnia, tom. 21, quest. Ixxxiil., art. vi. disp. Ixxxi., sect. 
 hse vel ey 
 
LAE MASS STIPEND 161 
 
 The saying of the Master furnishes the readiest 
 and most effective answer to the contention of Suarez. 
 It is concrete ; it is authoritative ; it is peremptory. 
 If a price may be taken for the preaching of the 
 gospel, even though that price be but just enough to 
 support the preacher, why may not a price be taken 
 for the saying of Mass, especially when the price 1s 
 less than enough to support the celebrant. Is not 
 the service of the one who preaches the gospel just 
 as intimately bound up with the gospel as: is the 
 service of the one who says Mass bound up with the 
 Mass? And yet the Master speaks of that which is 
 given for the service of the preacher as “ hire,’ and 
 says plainly that he earns it. And really there is a 
 human element in these services, quite distinct from 
 the divine, for which a price may be given or taken. 
 
 Suarez’s own solution of the difficulty is far from 
 satisfactory. In the first place, the assumption that 
 the one who gets a priest to say Mass for his in- 
 tention takes upon himself the obligation of support- 
 ing him may well be challenged. And if he does take 
 upon himself this obligation, it is certain he does not 
 fulfil it ; for the stipend he gives is quite inadequate. 
 Moreover, the obligation he takes on himself and the 
 corresponding one the priest assumes, arise, accord- 
 ing to Suarez himself, out of a real bilateral contract, 
 binding in justice on both parties. And so, after all, 
 there is the payment of a price for a service, which is 
 nevertheless held to be unsaleable. We have to fall 
 back on the distinction of St Thomas, made in a 
 parallel case : the thing itself is spiritual, but use is 
 made of it by bodily service, for which a price may 
 
 be taken. 
 L 
 
162 THE} SACRIFICE SOP MLE ai tos 
 
 It remains to deal with the second point. What 
 is the stipend given for? The answer to this has 
 been anticipated. The stipend is not given for the 
 Mass, nor for the fruits of the Mass. This would be 
 simony. It is given solely for the service of the 
 priest in saying the Mass, and as a contribution 
 toward his support. Hence, when the priest has 
 offered the Mass for the intention of the donor, he is 
 quit of all obligation. The intention may be the 
 obtaining of a spiritual favour, or of a temporal one ; 
 it may fail of being realized, for God may not see fit 
 to grant the favour; it may be known to the priest, 
 or it may not. But once the priest has said the 
 Mass, he has fulfilled his part of the contract. And 
 the person who gave the stipend may well be assured 
 that he has made use of the most efficacious means 
 known to men of obtaining favours from God, and 
 that, if he does not get the particular favour sought, 
 it is because God has something better in store for 
 him—if he deserves it. For he has done that which 
 puts God Himself under an obligation to him. He 
 has procured for God the unspeakable glory and for 
 man the unspeakable benefits which come from the 
 offering up again of the One Eternal Sacrifice. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE following passages have been taken at random 
 from various sources. They witness to the unity 
 of Catholic belief concerning the Sacrifice of the 
 Mass. They also serve to show that the Church 
 to-day, as in the early ages and in medieval times, 
 holds the Mass to be the same Sacrifice that was 
 offered on Calvary—not repeated but continued. 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Mass in the sensible world is 
 a special act of the priest offering simple bread and 
 wine, and yet it is the one real sacrifice made by 
 our Lord of Himself on Calvary. It is not simply 
 a symbolic representation of that sacrifice; it is not 
 even its renewal or repetition in an unbloody manner, 
 but is that identical sacrifice itself, that one and the 
 same universal and ever-present sacrificial act. They 
 who assert only one sacrifice, made once and for 
 all, are right; but they who deny the reality of the 
 sacrifice of the Mass daily on our altars, place the 
 real sacrifice and the whole sacrifice in its mimetic 
 or sensible accidents, and see, conceive, believe 
 nothing above them.—Brownson, Works, vol. xiv. 
 p. 586. 
 
 God would not receive any sacrifice from man 
 until Christ came and offered His own body upon 
 the Cross, which was acceptable to His heavenly 
 Father; and then, lest we should fail in obtaining 
 His favour forever, He left us the same identical 
 sacrifice, under the mystery of the most holy 
 
 163 
 
164 THE |SACKIFICE( OR (THEY MASS 
 
 Sacrament of the Kucharist.—The Lenten Lectures 
 of Rev. Thomas Maguire, delivered in Dublin in 
 1842 (Cincinnati: John P. Walsh, p. 265). 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Mass is one and the same 
 with the Sacrifice of the Cross, for it is the same 
 Saviour who once offered Himself as a bleeding victim 
 on the Cross that continues to offer Himself in an 
 unbloody manner upon our altars. . . 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Mass in the Catholic belief 
 is a continual commemoration of the Sacrifice of the 
 Cross, and yet really one with that which is com- 
 memorated. — The Catholic Review (New York), 
 August 17, 1889, p. 107. 
 
 Jesus Christ being present in the Kucharist, by 
 virtue of the consecration which He Himself appointed, 
 presents Himself, says St Paul, and appears for us 
 before the face of God. (Heb. ix. 24.) Here then 
 is a continuation of the great Sacrifice of the Cross; 
 here Jesus Christ continues to present to His 
 heavenly Father the merits of His passion and death ; 
 He perpetuates the memory of His obedience, even 
 to the Death of the Cross, which includes an 
 acknowledgment of God’s supreme dominion; of 
 course here is a true and real sacrifice, and yet not 
 a second sacrifice, but only a continuation of the 
 great Sacrifice of the Cross —A Defence of Catholic 
 Principles, by the Rev. Demetrius A. Gallitzin. 
 
 Are the Sacrifice of Calvary and the Sacrifice 
 of the Mass the same? Yes; there is the same 
 priest, Jesus Christ; the same victim, Jesus Christ ; 
 and the same thing done.—A New Catechism of 
 
APPENDIX 165 
 
 Christian Doctrine and Practice, by the Right Rev. 
 James Bellord, D.D. 
 
 ‘““Is the Mass the same sacrifice as that of the 
 Cross?” ‘* Yes; the Mass is the same sacrifice as 
 that of the Cross.”—Catechism of the Council of 
 Baltwmore. 
 
 ‘Ts the Mass a different sacrifice from that of 
 the Cross?” ‘ No.”—Butler’s Catechism. 
 
 The Holy Mass is not a new sacrifice, but one 
 and the same sacrifice with that of the Cross... It 
 is a continuation or renewal of the Sacrifice of the 
 Cross. The essential parts of the Sacrifice of the 
 Mass are the very same as those of the Cross, but 
 the circumstances are different—Holy Mass Hax- 
 planation Book (approved by His Eminence Cardinal 
 Vaughan). 
 
 Now, we have already said that in the New Law 
 there is but One Sacrifice, that this one and only 
 Sacrifice was offered but once, on the Cross, and that 
 it was there it was consummated... The Holy 
 Mags is numerically the same (sacrificowm numero 
 idem) as the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.— 
 Wetzer & Welte’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of 
 Catholic Theology. 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Mass is the Sacrifice of 
 Calvary—not repeated, for Jesus Christ dieth now 
 no more, but shown forth until He comes. Time is, 
 as it were, annihilated. Jesus Christ, as High Priest, 
 offers His Body and Blood to His Eternal Father 
 as a sacrifice of adoration, homage, thanksgiving, 
 and also of atonement and impetration.—Christ wm 
 
166 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 is Church (New York; Imprimatur of Card. 
 McCloskey). 
 
 My little work bears the title “The Sacrifice of 
 Jesus Christ”; for although we distinguish by 
 different names the Sacrifice of the Cross from the 
 Sacrifice of the Altar yet it is substantially the 
 same sacrifice... The Sacrifice of the Altar is a 
 continuation and renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross, 
 and differs from it only in the manner in which it 
 is oftered.—The Holy Eucharist, by St Alphonsus 
 
 de Liguori. 
 
 The Sacrifice of Calvary is made present to us by 
 the Holy Mass in a more perfect way (than it was 
 to the Jews of old), as was to be expected, being at 
 once the memorial and renewal of the same Sacrifice, 
 so that our Lord is “standing, as it were slain” 
 from the beginning to the end of creation.—Skeleton 
 Sermons (Dr Bagshawe). 
 
 In Holy Mass the sacrifice consists not in a fresh 
 immolation of the Victim, but in the renewal, with- 
 out bloodshed, of the oblation of our Paschal Lamb, 
 Christ the Lord, who was slain upon the Cross and 
 brought to life again by His Resurrection.—lIllustrated 
 Explanation of the Holy Sacraments (from the 
 German of Rev. H. Rolfus, D.D.). 
 
 One sacrifice has forever redeemed the world, and 
 is offered continually in heaven and on earth.—The 
 
 Eternal Priesthood, by Card. Manning, c. 1, n. 2. 
 This is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the 
 
 unbloody continuation throughout all ages and 
 generations of the bloody Sacrifice which was offered 
 
APPENDIX 167 
 
 on Mount Calvary.—Abridged Course of Religious 
 Instruction, Rev. F. X. Schouppe, 8.J.). 
 
 ‘Ts this the same sacrifice as that of the Cross?” 
 «Veg; for it is still the same Host and same Sacrifice 
 whether on the Cross or on the Altar; whatever 
 difference there may be is only in the manner.’— 
 Doctrinal and Scriptural Catechism, by Rev. P. 
 Collot, Doctor of the Sorbonne. 
 
 Hane autem oblationem vivam, quam tu misisti 
 ad altare crucis immolandam pro nobis, hance eandem 
 tibi nunc offero, passionem ejus et mortem recolens et 
 repraesentans : sicut ipse praecepit, cum dixit, ut idem 
 in ejus commemorationem faceremus.—De Sacrificvo 
 Missae, Tractatus Asceticus, auctore, D. Joanne Bona 
 (Oratio). 
 
 Saepe dictum est in hoc incruento sacrificio cruen- 
 tum illud, quod semel in Cruce peractum est, non 
 verbis sed re ipsa repraesentari.—Lbid. 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Cross is continued in the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass daily offered on our altars.—The 
 Sacraments Explained, by Rev. Arthur Devine, C.P. 
 
 In the Holy Mass that One Sacrifice on the 
 Cross once offered is renewed, continued, applied 
 to our benefit. — Meditations and Devotions, by 
 Card. Newman, p. 203. 
 
 If that great deed was what we believe it to be, 
 what we know it is, it must remain present, though 
 past; it must be a standing fact for all times.—JO., 
 p. 406. 
 
 The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is essentially the 
 vene sacrifice as-thab of the Cross. — 1. he Pulpot 
 Orator, vol. v. 
 
168 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 The Sacrifice of the Mass is essentially the same 
 sacrifice as that of the Cross; the only difference is 
 in the manner of offering.—Deharbe’s Catechism. 
 
 Its (the Blessed Eucharist’s) worth, as a memorial 
 lies in this, namely, that it perpetuates the Redeemer 
 in His character of Victim. There He is, “the Lamb 
 slain from the foundation of the world.”—Sermons 
 by the Paulasts (preached during the year 1863). 
 
 (The Mass) is identically the same sacrifice as 
 that of the Cross—not repeated, but perpetuated.— 
 Sermons by the Paulists (preached during the year 
 1865 and 1866). 
 
 (The Mass) is a true Sacrifice... . A certain 
 destruction or change takes place; this destruction 
 was real on the Cross. The Mass is a continuation 
 of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and has a direct con- 
 nection with it, representing sacrificially the im- 
 molation which took place on the Altar of the Cross, 
 in the same way as when the High Priest of old 
 offered, in the sanctuary, the blood of the victim 
 which had been previously slain on the altar, he 
 offered a true sacrifice, although the bloody im- 
 molation did not take place then and there. 
 
 Nor is there any multiplication of sacrifices: all 
 the Masses offered up in the world are one with the 
 Sacrifice of the Cross. Of the above two truths we 
 have a figure in the sin sacrifices of the Jews; the 
 priest offered the victim to God in slaying it, yet he 
 atterwards carried the blood of this victim to the 
 sanctuary, and offered it there again. The second 
 sacrifice was one with the first, of which it was a 
 continuation, and the two acts were but one sacrifice. 
 
APPENDIX 169 
 
 —Catechism of the Christian Religion (being a 
 compendium of the Catechism of Montpellier), by the 
 Rey. Stephen Keenan. 
 
 The Mass is the perpetuation of the Sacrifice of 
 Christ on the Cross. It is not a different sacrifice, 
 for all others are now abolished ; it is not a repetition 
 of the same; for Christ died but once (Hed. ix. 
 25-28). But the Sacrifice of Calvary did not cease 
 when our Lord was removed from the Cross. He is 
 an eternal Victim, continuing now within the veil 
 His first and only oblation; and He is forever ‘in 
 the midst of the throne . . . a Lamb standing as it 
 were slain,’ Apoc. v. 6). He appears daily on our 
 altars in the same character of Priest and Victim, 
 and continues His sacrifice there as before the throne. 
 —Meditations on Christian Dogma, vol. i., by the 
 Right Rev. James Bellord. 
 
 We, therefore, confess that the Sacrifice of the 
 Mass is one and the same Sacrifice with that of the 
 Cross ; the Victim is one and the same, Christ Jesus, 
 who offered Himself, once only, a Bloody Sacrifice on 
 the Altar of the Cross. The bloody and unbloody 
 Victim is still one and the same, and the oblation of 
 the Cross is daily renewed in the Hucharistic Sacrifice, 
 in obedience to the command of our Lord: ‘ Do this 
 for a commemoration of Me.”—Catechism of the 
 
 Council of Trent. 
 
 (a) In that last Paschal Supper, when Jesus sat 
 at the table, and took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave 
 it, and said: “This is My Body,” and the chalice, 
 when He had blessed it, and said: “This is My 
 Blood,” He began the act of oblation, finished on 
 
170 THEO SAGKITIG EW OL MIR Divino 
 
 Calvary, which redeemed the world. He offered that 
 sacrifice first without blood-shedding ; but it was the 
 same true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice which 
 redeems the world because therein He offered Himself. 
 We read in the Gospels that ‘“‘ No man laid hands on 
 Him, because His hour was not yet come” (John vii. 
 80); that is, no man had power to take Him until 
 He delivered Himself into their hands. We read 
 again that the servants of the high-priest who came 
 out to seize Him in the garden, when they heard 
 Him say “Tam He” (John xviii. 6), went backward 
 and fell to the ground—the majesty of His divine 
 presence awed them. ‘They were cast at His feet in 
 fear; and in proof that, when they took Him and 
 bound Him, it was of His own free will. When He 
 stood before Pilate, He said once more: ‘Thou 
 shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it 
 were given thee from above” (/b. xix. 11). Bound 
 as He was still no man had power over Him. Twelve 
 legions of angels would have surrounded Him: they 
 would have cut His bonds and set Him free, if it had 
 been His divine will. Therefore at His Last Supper 
 He made a free and voluntary offering of Himself. He 
 had not yet shed His Blood, but throughout His 
 whole hfe He had offered His will, and He now 
 offered His death ; and that which He began at the 
 Last Supper He accomplished on the morrow upon 
 Calvary by the shedding of His Blood; for that 
 shedding of Blood was the completion of His 
 sacrinice, ) 10. 
 
 (6) When He said, “This is My Body,” and 
 ‘This is My Blood,” He instituted the Holy Sacrifice ; 
 and when He said: ‘Do this in commemoration of 
 
APPENDIX L7i 
 
 Me” He consecrated His Apostles to be priests, to 
 offer forever that same sacrifice of Himself. There- 
 fore, what the Church offers, day by day, is the 
 continuance of that same divine act which Jesus at 
 that hour began. It is nothing new, nothing distinct 
 from it, nothing added to it, for in itself it was 
 perfect—a Divine Sacrifice admitting of no addition. 
 The Sacrifice of the Altar is the same sacrifice pro- 
 longed forever. He who offered Himself then offers 
 Himself now. He offered Himself then by His own — 
 hands; He offers Himself now by the hands of his 
 priesthood. There is now no shedding of blood— 
 that was accomplished once for all upon Calvary. 
 The action of the Last Supper looked onward to 
 that action on Calvary, as the action of the Holy 
 Mass looks backward upon it. As the shadow is 
 cast by the rising sun towards the west, and as the 
 shadow is cast by the setting sun towards the east, 
 so the Holy Mass is, I may say, the shadow of 
 Calvary, but it is also the reality. 
 
 That which was done in the Paschal Supper in 
 the guest-chamber, and that which is done upon the 
 altar in the Holy Mass, is one and the same act— 
 the offering of Jesus Christ Himself, the true, proper, 
 propitiatory, and only Sacrifice for the sin of the 
 world.—The Glories of the Sacred Heart, by 
 Cardinal Manning (The Last Will of the Sacred 
 Fleart). 
 
 Appeased by the offering of this (Sacrifice), the 
 Lord bestows grace and the gift of repentance and 
 forgives offences and sins even though they be 
 enormous. For the Victim (of the Mass) is one and 
 
172 LHE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS 
 
 the same (with the Victim of Calvary), and the same 
 now offers Himself by the ministry of the priests that 
 then offered Himself on the Cross, the manner only 
 of offering being different.—The Council of Trent, 
 ess ALLE ein 
 
 To these may be added some extracts from state- 
 ments on the same subject by leading Anglican 
 divines, which are remarkable alike for their Cathol- 
 icity and their profundity. They are culled from 
 the account of the Reports of the Oxford Conference 
 on Priesthood and Sacrifice and of the Fulham 
 ‘Round Table’ Conference, published in Appendix 
 Hi of the Rev. Dr Mortimer’s work on the Eucharistic 
 Sacrifice. 
 
 From what has been said it seems clear that the 
 principal words used by our Lord at the institution 
 of the Eucharist, and also the elements which He 
 appointed to be used in that rite, point in the same 
 direction, and indicate the sacrificial character of the 
 ordinance ; and it would require very explicit and 
 authoritative statements in the opposite direction to 
 induce me to give up my belief that the Holy 
 Kucharist was instituted by our Lord as a sacrifice, 
 the earthly counterpart of the sacrificial oblation 
 which is being carried on in the heavenly tabernacle. 
 
 —F ather Puller. 
 
 As to the sacrifice of Christ, I want still to plead 
 what I have said before, that the inward motive is 
 not, in itself, sacrificial until it has obtained an 
 outward realization—until it can succeed in making 
 an offering. The ‘Lo! I come to do Thy will’ 
 becomes sacrificial when it has completed its intention 
 
APPENDIX 173 
 
 in the offering of the Body prepared for it. The 
 will that is to be done is that He should have a 
 Body to present in sacrifice. And so it is that our 
 own offerings of spiritual thanks and praises only 
 gain the right to use sacrificial language through the 
 sacrifice, present in their midst, of the Body and 
 Blood. It is this that constitutes them sacrifices.— 
 Canon Scott Holland. 
 
 As to the very profound subject of the nature of 
 our Lord’s Sacrifice, surely it is necessary-from His 
 own language to feel that there was more in the 
 sacrifice than the mere dedication and sacrifice of 
 His own will—that He looked forward to the Death 
 on the Cross as the great deed that was to work 
 some great achievement; that that achievement was 
 to be done once; and that once done it was to have 
 eternal significance and efficacy. Whatever the act 
 of death meant, it was at least the completion of the 
 sacrifice in time, but its significance and efficacy were 
 to be eternal. I agree with Father Puller that in 
 thinking of the sacrifice of Christ—of the Hternal 
 Son—it is impossible to think of it merely as an 
 event past in time—something that has come to an 
 
 end.— Rev. C. G. Lang (now Archbishop of York). 
 
 I believe that the Holy Communion was ordained 
 “for the continual remembrance of the Sacrifice of 
 the Death of Christ, and of the benefits which we 
 receive thereby”; and that this ‘“‘remembrance ” is 
 in the first place a memorial before God, because 
 “Christ instituted not only a remembrance of the 
 Sacrifice to ourselves, but also a special mode of 
 pleading it before God” whereby we offer the same 
 
174 THE SACRIFICE .OF THE MASS 
 
 Body once for all sacrificed for us, and the same 
 Blood once for all shed for us, sacramentally present, 
 to the Father.—Rev. Canon Newbolt. 
 
 For the occasion, the action, and the full words 
 of the Institution, all define the sacred Body in our 
 Lord’s thought to be the Body as in death, and the 
 sacred Blood to be the Blood as in death. ‘That is, 
 as in the act and process of the one Sacrifice which 
 is our Redemption.—Rev. Dr Moule. 
 
 The Johannine and Pauline conceptions find a 
 meeting-point, when we go on to consider the food 
 offered to us in the Eucharist as Sacrificial Food. 
 Whether or not we supply the word “given” or 
 “broken” to the phrase “My Body which is on 
 your behalf,” a reference is clearly intended to the 
 Crucifixion; and the sacrificial aspect is yet more 
 plainly indicated in the words ‘“‘My Blood of the 
 Covenant, which is being poured forth on behalf of 
 many. —Rev. Canon Robinson. 
 
 Canon Gore desired to urge two points: (a) That 
 it may be emphatically stated that down to the time 
 of St Thomas Aquinas inclusive, the memorial of our 
 Lord’s death made in the Holy Communion is re- 
 garded as commemorative only, and is not connected 
 with any idea of actual immolation; (b) That it 
 would be generally agreed that that which differ- 
 entiates our relation to the Sacrifice of Christ as 
 commemorated in the Holy Communion from our 
 relation to that Sacrifice on any other occasion, when 
 we might agree to commemorate His death, is the 
 fact that this sacrament is the ordained occasion on 
 
APPENDIX 175 
 which our Lord gives us His Body and Blood, 
 
 sacramentally identified with the bread and wine. 
 
 It is impossible to dissociate that conception of 
 the office of the living and eternal Christ from the 
 Sacrifice which He has achieved once and for all. 
 With Father Puller I am still feeling that that Sacri- 
 fice is not a thing completed in the sense of being 
 past in time, and therefore ended. It is completed 
 in the sense that it is perfect—there is nothing to 
 be added to it—it is eternal. That is why I cannot 
 quite agree with Professor Ryle’s words; because | 
 feel that in some deep, mysterious sense—a sense 
 which it is hardly possible to express in language, 
 for language is of things in space and time—the 
 function, so to say, of that Sacrifice is not ended, 
 but is eternal as itself. I can imagine nothing that 
 speaks to one’s lifes need more than the conception 
 of being associated with the perpetual pleading of 
 the eternal Sacrifice ; it is there that the importance 
 of the Eucharist comes in. In the Kucharist, we 
 have the assurance of the Divinely appointed pledge 
 and symbol of being identified with the eternal 
 Sacrifice of the Lamb of God. And so I cannot 
 conceive it as being a mere commemorative rite. It 
 is in some mysterious sense a real sharing of the 
 Body and Blood of a living Christ, who ts the 
 eternally perfect Sacrifice. The symbolic act is not 
 in itself expiatory. It is nothing in itself apart from 
 Christ, through Whom it is offered. It is not, there- 
 fore, to my mind, expiatory, but it associates us 
 with the eternal presentment by our Lord—our 
 eternal High Priest—of His Sacrifice for the sins of 
 the world. It is an act by which we are permitted, 
 
176 THE (SACRIFIGE VOR WIRE OM ASS 
 
 by Divine condescension, in some degree to share in 
 what Christ is doing.—Rev. C. G. Lang. 
 
 Dr Robertson drew attention to the early use of 
 sacrificial terms in the primitive Church, which he 
 thought arose inevitably from the connection of the 
 Eucharist with the Passover, which was a sacrificial 
 meal, the expression Gvew +d wacxa being used by S¢é 
 Mark xiv. 12 and St Luke xxii. 7, and Qvew being a 
 sacrificial word. But> he thought that if we got to 
 the real meaning of early Christian writers in the 
 use of such language, their idea is always that of a 
 retrospective reference to the Sacrifice on the Cross, 
 and he quoted passages from St Chrysostom (fom. am 
 Heb. xvii.), and St Augustine (Cont. faust. xx. 18) in 
 which this view is expressed in almost identical terms. 
 
 Lord Halifax then presented a statement which 
 he had drawn up, from which the following is ex- 
 tracted : 
 
 “That expressed devotionally, in the words of 
 Prof. Moule, ‘I see in the Holy Hucharist, which is 
 primarily and before all things the memorial of the 
 Lord’s death, Christ my Lord at the Holy table, 
 coming to me and saying: This is My Body which 
 was broken for you, this is My Blood which was shed 
 for you,—or, as was expressed by Canon Gore, 
 Canon Newbolt, and Lord Halifax, ‘That in every 
 Kucharist Christ is the real Consecrator ’ who, in the 
 service which He has instituted for the perpetual 
 memory of His death, gives to His faithful people 
 His Body as broken, His Blood as poured out, 
 mystically represented and exhibited under the act 
 of death by the separate Consecration of the bread 
 and wine.”—p. 69. 
 
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THE SYMBOL OF THE 
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 CATHOLIC TRADITION. 
 
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TRE SYMBOL OF ATHE APOSTLES 181 
 
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 “ The refutation of Harnack by our author, and the 
 support which he draws from the Protestant scholars, 
 Dr Kattenbusch, A. E. Burn, Professor McGiffert, and 
 IT. Zahn for his thesis are of great interest and sugges- 
 tion. 1s readers will thank him for yielding to the 
 request to add the very satisfactory closing chapter on 
 the Catholic name. The book is well indexed, and 
 there 15 a list of the authorities consulted in its prepara- 
 tion. Dr MacDonald’s style 1s clear and simple with 
 the unobtrusive beauty of a man of fine literary taste 
 but no literary self-consciousness.”—The Boston Pilot. 
 
 “We have read it twice, parts of it oftener. We are 
 of opinion that 1f some of those who felt called upon to 
 review it had done the same they would hardly have 
 come to the conclusion with respect to 1t which they seem 
 to have reached. Dr MacDonald’s splendid history of 
 the Apostles Creed has a fresh interest now for tts 
 closing chapters dealing with the name ‘ Catholic’ and 
 when and how it came to be the distinct title of the 
 Church.’—New York Freeman’s Fournal. 
 
THE SYMBOL IN 
 SERMONS 
 
 A SERIES OF TWENTY-FIVE SHORT SERMONS 
 ON THE ARTICLES OF THE CREED. BY 
 THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 “We think that this volume of Dr MacDonald’s will 
 take a high place among works of this class... . 
 Altogether, in matter and method, these sermons are 
 well suited both to serve as sources to which preachers 
 can have recourse and models for their own work.?— 
 
 The Homiletic Monthly. 
 
 “ His sermons are what one would expect from the 
 author of * The Symbol of the Apostles, to which ‘ The 
 
 Symbol 1n Sermons’ is a companion volume.”—The 
 
 Ave Maria. 
 
 “There are tn all five and twenty sermons on the 
 articles of the Creed, all short and all fragrant of the 
 faith. The sum of faith is the Creed and in these 
 sermons we have the entire body of Christian doctrine 
 growing out of the creed most admirably reviewed.” — 
 
 The Catholic Register. 
 
 “ Preachers who have to explain the Apostles’ Creed 
 will find this volume a mine of information on which 
 they can draw with confidence. Dr MacDonald brings 
 forth the old arguments in a captivating style.””—T he 
 Catholic Transcript. 
 
 “It 1s clear, plain and most excellent exposition of 
 the doctrine and will prove of great benefit also to many 
 of the laity who are in need of its careful perusal.” — 
 
 The Ghurch Progress. 
 
 “We have just returned from the bedside of a dying 
 man to whom we read the twenty-fifth sermon, ‘ I 
 
 believe in the life everlasting,’ and we felt that nothing 
 183 
 
184 LHE SYMBOL IN SERMONS 
 
 we had ever seen in print was better suited to our pur- 
 
 pose.” —T he Casket. 
 
 “He shows how the profoundest doctrines can be set 
 forth in diction, dignified indeed, but that can be under- 
 stood by the humblest of the flock.?—The Catholic 
 Record. 
 
 “ After a very careful perusal of your ‘ Symbol in 
 Sermons, I can say honestly that it pleased me im- 
 mensely.... You have given us pure doctrine in 
 choice, chaste English?’—Rev. Alfred A. Sinnott, 
 D.D., Secretary to His Excellency Mgr. Sharretti. 
 
 “Ibis volume contains a series of twenty-five 
 discourses on the different portions of the Apostles’ 
 Creed—all most admirable in style and spirit. Al- 
 though they present no new truths, their exposition of 
 doctrine 15 faultless as to lucidity and simplicity, and 
 so each sermon may well be studied by those who are 
 destined for the pulpit and the mission in all English- 
 speaking countries. The Christian Press is doing 
 excellent work in publishing such literature at a 
 moderate cost.” —T he Catholic Standard and Times. 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND II YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH 
 
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