“When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present (Hebrews 7:25-27) ‘As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out.’ (Lumen gentium 3; cf. 1 Corinthians 5:7) Because it is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: ‘This is my body which is given for you’ and ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.’ (Luke 22:19-20) In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he ‘poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ (Matthew 26:28.) The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: ‘The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.’ ‘In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.’ (Council of Trent (1562): DS 1743; cf. Hebrews 9:14, 27).” Catechism of the Catholic Church 1364-1367.
In this interview, Fr. Reginald Lynch OP discusses the Sacrifice of the Mass and some of the best literature on it.
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In what sense the Eucharist is a sacrifice? There was a great deal of debate over this topic in the sixteenth century before and during the Council of Trent, even though it is a doctrine the Catholic Church had long held.
Aquinas has different answers on the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist, depending on the question being asked. In one sense, it is a moral act. In another sense, it is a feature of liturgical symbolism: the rite of the Mass makes present through signs the sacrifice of Christ in the same way that a painting of Cicero is said to represent Cicero himself.
In the Eucharist and its effects there is also a real participation in charity: in the sacrificial dimension of Christ's offering.
These are some of the ways in which we can think about the Eucharist as Catholics.
The Council of Trent states that the Mass is an unbloodied mode of Christ's bloodied sacrifice on the Cross. So, there is one sacrifice, but two separate modes. As Catholics, we have the great privilege to participate in that unbloody mode of the one offering of Jesus Christ, our eternal high priest.
For many of the faithful, the penny might not have dropped that the Eucharist makes present the sacrifice of the Cross. Is this just because of a lack of adequate catechesis or are there other reasons? Sometimes. It is hard to speculate about why certain aspects of the faith are less intelligible.
This has waxed and waned over the centuries. In early modern Catholicism, the sacrificial dimension of the Mass and Christ's presence in the Mass was heavily emphasised in catechesis. It was depicted in liturgical art with great frequency. This peaked in the years after Trent, partly as a polemic against the Protestant reformers and to correct some of their errors.
Medieval liturgical art has equally evocative depictions of the sacrificial dimension of the Mass: the connection between the Eucharist and the Cross.
Over the last forty or fifty years, we have been through various catechetical models that have emphasized different aspects of the Eucharist. Some of these models have a lot to contribute. It is not necessarily helpful necessarily to be polemical about them. However, at the same time, there has been a more robust sense of the Eucharist. Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici corporis is an example. It includes the sacrificial dimension of the Mass within a larger Eucharistic ecclesiology. The Church draws its life from the body of Christ in the present. Sacrificial language is not just a moralistic reminder of what Christ did in the past. As a moral virtue, sacrifice becomes a way of participating in the Christian religion: a mode of participation in the Cross of Christ.
This is incredibly important. The Eucharistic theologies of Vatican II and the early twentieth-century magisterium are more inclusive, broader, admittedly more complex, but in the end richer. Frankly, they are reminiscent of medieval models. Peter Lombard talks of an analogical division within the reality (res) of the Eucharist that is contained within it—Christ crucified—and the broader reality that is not contained within it, namely, the mystical body or the Church.
All these senses of Eucharist have indelibly sacrificial characteristics to them.
In many ways, the category of sacrifice captures the anthropological dimension of our liturgical participation in the Cross. Through sanctifying grace, we are beneficiaries of the fruits of the Cross: Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. We benefit from it in the sacrament of the Eucharist too, but as something we offer in grace as part of our liturgical life.
The Mass has an incredible power to transform the life of the Church: to become a space where not only we gather as some social organization or body, but as a sacrificial one: one which offers the sacrifice of praise that has been put upon our lips, as it were, by the Christ our High Priest.
Some might object that the Mass’s character as a sacrifice is less apparent in the Missal of Paul VI than the pre-conciliar Roman Missal or simply in the ars celebrandi that is widespread in certain parts. Is that a valid objection? It is always good for the priest to be reverent. There is a sense in which you can never have too much of that. For Aquinas, religion is a moral virtue that comes to be operated by the higher virtue of charity. To be reverent in this sense is to perform with charity the inner acts of the virtue of religion: devotion and prayer. The external acts that flow from them are signs of these internal acts. Hence, the ars celebrandi and the externalities of the liturgy are very important. They are what Aquinas would call specified external signs. They can form the intellect by presenting us with what is to be done.
There are many rules the priest is meant to follow and many things he is meant to do in a certain way, but not out of empty external legalism. They are meant to form the heart of the priest, not just in his own offering but also inasmuch as he is offering the Mass on behalf of the Church. They are more than a play or a show for others. Real reverence is rooted in an internalization of the rubrics of the rite as an external sign of one's authentic devotion and prayer.
Changing the rite or celebrating without reverence is perhaps a sign of a lack of attention to the rite or of devotion.
In the Missal of Paul VI there is plenty of sacrificial language in the newer Eucharistic prayers. Eucharistic Prayer IV has quite a lot of sacrificial symbolism. It is perfectly possible to celebrate the Missal of Paul VI with great reverence. It has just as much sacrificial language as the Roman Canon. Most of the collects are either the same or very similar. There is a significant amount of textual overlap between the two missals. It is hard to argue that the change of missal alone is materially responsible for a diminished sense of the sacrificial character of the Mass. It might have been the occasion for, following the council, but the connection is accidental or anecdotal, not causal.
Some might find it repugnant to imagine that God desires sacrifices. What would you say to those who have such misgivings? The models of sacrifice to which Catholic theologians reacted or objected during the twentieth century, beginning with the liturgical movement, emphasised destruction or killing. There was a motif of violence, even if only metaphorical, in these models. Hence, some early modern Catholic authors, such as those of the French school of priestly spirituality, which has many good elements, associated the priest’s utterance of the words of the consecration with a mystical slaying or a reenactment of the violence of the cross.
A more careful reading of Aquinas, even using some of the earlier Thomistic commentators, can be helpful in that regard. He avoids a physicalist approach to sacrifice, where violence is the archetype.
Some early modern Catholic theologians emphasised the sacrifice of Isaac or the violent sacrifices of the Old Covenant as the archetype of all sacrifice. That actually began with the Protestant Reformers. Zwingli and Calvin argue the Mass cannot be a sacrifice precisely because all sacrifices involve a violent death whereas there is no violent death in the Mass, only a symbol thereof. Hence, in their view, the Mass in not a real sacrifice.
Sometimes Catholic theologians, in their polemical response, accepted too many of their interlocutor’s first premises. They aimed to show that a violent death does occur in the Mass.
This carried over into the textual interpretation of Aquinas. What, for example, does Aquinas mean, in his discussion of the virtue of religion, when he describes the breaking, blessing, and consumption of bread as a sacrifice? He is drawing a parallel between the sacrifices of the Old Law and the Eucharist. This is biblical and not hard to justify. For Aquinas, a sacrifice is a moral act. It is similar to a holocaust offering. There is a change in the offering, which is then consumed.
In Book 10 of City of God, which was a major source for medieval theology, St. Augustine offers some ways for talking of sacrifices. In discussing the Eucharist, he sees the internal offering of charity as the consumptive offering—i.e. a holocaust. He does not focus on the exterior violence of the Old Testament offerings as an archetype for all sacrifice. That is not to say there is something wrong with the Old Testament offerings. However, they are imperfect in comparison to that of the New Testament.
Here, Aquinas is following the Venerable Bede, many other high medieval authors, and the Greek Fathers, who argue that the New Law fulfils what was foreshadowed allegorically in the Old, particularly with regard to the priesthood of Christ and the temple. The Eucharist, the Cross and the life of the Church fulfil in reality what was foreshadowed in type by the entrance of the high priest into the Holy of Holies each year. The Letter to the Hebrews is a significant hermeneutical key in this sense. The liturgical life of the Church and charity are an allegorical fulfilment of the rites and ceremonies of the Old Law.
The concept of sacrifice is rooted in the religious anthropology of the human person. It does not have to be a violent offering that God demands. One way to think about it is to consider the offering oneself a holocaust offering. Aquinas does this is in his treatment of the ceremonies of the Old Law (Summa theologiae I-II, q. 102). He compares the holocaust offering to the profession of religious vows: the offering of one's life to Christ. So, there are all sorts of ways in which the Christian life itself can be viewed as an offering. These have a long tradition in the Church. That would be my preliminary response.
"In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner." Council of Trent
What is the proper framework for understanding the Eucharist’s character as a sacrifice: the covenants of the Old Testament or the general characteristics of the sacrifices of all religions? This was a major topic of debate among Catholic theologians during the sixteenth century, in and around Trent.
Even well into the twentieth century, certain presentations of the sacrifice of the Mass began with natural law or human nature and built a Eucharistic theology out of that.
Others began with the Old Testament and built forward into the New.
There are examples of this in the patristic era. I mentioned Ambrose of Milan, but there are many other Church Fathers who see the typology of the Bible as the ground for understanding Christian liturgy.
During the early modern period, however, there was much more emphasis on natural law. The School of Salamanca was responsible for this development of natural law theory. A lot of scholarship on this has come out over the last generation or so.
I address this in the third chapter of my book. The Dominican School of Salamanca latched onto the sacrifices due under natural law because they were concerned with the Spanish Americas, the natural rights of the Native Americans, and with applying international law to them. They argued that religion is a natural virtue. Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas do so too. This was not a new idea. New rather was this understanding of natural law as the foundation for building a Christian account of the human person and the Gospel.
The School of Salamanca was interested in dialoguing with the religions that the missionaries encountered. From a Thomistic perspective, you can bring in the virtue of religion and the opposing vices to do so. Dominican theologians of the period, such as Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Domingo Báñez did just that. Religion was a way of naming what was right and wrong about what the missionary encountered. It allowed them to acknowledge that the underlying inclination was part of the natural law yet exercised in ways that were both highly problematic and not part of the covenant.
The virtue of religion is directed towards sacrifice as one of its external acts. Idolatry and superstition are ways in which the natural teleology of religion is twisted and deformed.
From Aquinas' perspective, the typological approach and that of natural law are different but not contradictory.
You can start with the Old Covenant. Its ceremonial precepts are a species of positive law and specify what the external acts of religion should be.
We see something similar in pre-Christian Rome. It had a socially established and state-sponsored religion. The law of the high priest (ius pontificis) was even a category of Roman law. It was very codified.
In cultures that are not as well-developed or have developed in different ways, custom, which is law by analogy, is more prevalent. It captures the social dimension of religion.
For Aquinas, religion is a potential part of justice. It is an inherently social reality. It is directed to God rather than juridical obligations to one’s neighbour. However, as a praxis, social consensus plays a certain role. We can identify natural iterations of religion and the religious part of a culture. We can do so without in any way confusing it with supernatural divine Revelation and the gift of a divine covenant, which comes with its own ritual precepts for the external exercise of religion.
The moral and ceremonial precepts continue into the law of charity. Aquinas says that the Law of the Gospel has ceremonial precepts effectively. Hence, charity, the internal life of the heart in Christ, has an externality in the liturgical form of the Church's life.
You can take either of the aforementioned approaches.
Which are the most important magisterial documents on the Sacrifice of the Mass? Session 22 of the Council of Trent cannot be underestimated. It was not the first time that the Church had mentioned the Sacrifice of the Mass. The liturgy had certainly done so. However, Trent offers a very clear and biblical exposition of the doctrine.
All the major Catholic theological schools of the time were present at Trent with a fairly large contingent. However, early on a decision was made not to use too much scholastic language. So the Doctrine and Canons on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Massis written in a biblical mode. This was partly for apologetical reasons. There was a need to address Protestant critiques and show that the Sacrifice of the Mass is a biblical doctrine. The decree also avoids taking sides in the disputes that were going on within the Church. That was probably prudent at the time.
Trent had mentioned the Sacrifice of the Mass offhand in one way or another: in the initial creed and its treatment of the sacraments and the Eucharist. However, its dogmatic teaching on the Sacrifice of the Mass has become an ubiquitous source on the subject.
Largely, it follows the trajectory of the Letter to the Hebrews. It teaches that the Old Testament archetypes are fulfilled in the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Although Trent is arguing from the Bible and does not explicitly cite Aquinas, similar arguments from Scripture were made by earlier biblical theologians. Trent’s distinction between the unbloodied mode and the bloodied mode, the Mass and the Cross, of the one single sacrifice had already been made by Cajetan. From a scholarly perspective, the strongest claim that I can make is that there are some textual parallels between Cajetan’s work and the eventual document of Trent.
Johann Eck also likely influenced the Tridentine Decree.
However, many other theologians were present and involved in the process. The Council of Trent was definitely a collective project. At least two generations had passed between Cajetan’s original response to the Reformers in the 1520s and the wrapping up of the council.
Beyond Trent, Pius XII’s Mystici corporisand Mediator Dei are excellent documents. They are very important texts for understanding the nature of the liturgy and the Eucharist’s relation to the Church.
Moreover, Mediator Dei probably contains most of what the magisterium has ever said about which part of the Mass constitutes the sacrifice.
Trent affirms that the mass is a sacrifice but does not resolve other questions, such as how we the offertory is related to the priest’s consumption of the Eucharist. It doesn't get into the weeds of these more liturgical questions. However, it clearly endorses the idea—found in Aquinas, earlier authors, and many other places within the tradition—that the double consecration is a mystical separation of the body and blood of Christ.
Vatican II also needs to be mentioned. Its documents are surprisingly rich on all these subjects and in deep continuity with the Church's earlier magisterium and theological tradition.
Each of the books that you have selected is representative of the Thomist tradition. They also address the biblical and patristic teachings on the Eucharistic sacrifice, and alternative theological explanations of it. Where would you point some for a non-Thomistic account of the Sacrifice of the Mass? Marius Lepin’s L’idee du Sacrifice de la Messe d’après les théologiens depuis l’Origine jusqu’à nos joursis an excellent comprehensive text from the early twentieth-century. I would not say that is methodology is outdated but it is not one that I would adopt. Still, it is an excellent resource and a powerful treatment of the Eucharist and the Sacraments. It is a historical survey by broad thematic categories and a very useful book.
Maurice la Taille SJ’s book on the Mass is from around the same period, though he would have considered himself to be broadly Thomistic. It is another book to read.
For a classic patristic author’s treatment of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, read Augustine's City of God: Book 10 if you do not have time to read it all.
Book 10 of the City of God is an incredible resource for thinking about the Eucharist and the Church in sacrificial terms.
We have inherited certain conversations from early modernity, which, as you mentioned, sometimes are a bit distasteful perhaps for some contemporary theologians. However, within the Church’s tradition there is a much broader range of paradigms for thinking about the Eucharist and sacrifice. Some of the earlier martyrs—such as St. Polycarp, St. Justin, and the Scililitan martyrs—also talked about the Mass as a sacrifice or connected their martyrdom to the Eucharist and the Church. From the persecutions of the Church during the second and third centuries, emerged an ecclesiology and Eucharistic theology with a deeply sacrificial quality.
These sources provide an excellent picture of the theological theme of sacrifice, one that is broader than some of the early modern debates about which gesture of the priest is the most sacrificial.
Besides the books you have recommended, are there any good overviews of the biblical testimony to how the Eucharist is a sacrifice and the consummation of those of the Old Covenant? Yes, there is James T. O’Connor’s The Hidden Manna, a book that I cite when I teach the Eucharist. It contains a beautiful treatment of the Eucharist in the Bible and the early Church. It also covers the theme of sacrifice.
