The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments Part 8

(I) WHAT IT IS.

It is the supernatural conjunction of matter and spirit, of Bread and Wine and of the Holy Ghost. Here, as in Baptism, the "inward and spiritual" expresses itself through the "outward and visible". Both must be there. And, notice again. This conjunction is not a _physical_ conjunction, according to physical laws; nor is it a spiritual conjunction, according to spiritual laws; it is a Sacramental conjunction, according to Sacramental laws. As in Baptism, so in the Blessed Sacrament: the "outward and visible" is, and remains, subject to natural laws, and the inward and spiritual to spiritual laws; but the Sacrament itself is under neither natural nor spiritual but Sacramental laws.

For a perfect Sacrament requires both matter and spirit.[4] If either is absent, the Sacrament is incomplete.

Thus, the Council of Trent's definition of {84} _Transubstantiation_[5]

seems, as it stands, to spoil the very nature of a Sacrament. It is the "change of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, of the whole substance of the wine into the blood of Christ, _only the appearance_ of bread and wine remaining".

Again, the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation destroys the nature of the Sacrament. The Lutheran _Formula Concordiae_, e.g., teaches that "_outside the use the Body of Christ is not present_". Thus it limits the Presence to the reception, whether by good or bad.

The _Figurative_ view of the Blessed Sacrament {85} destroys the nature of a Sacrament, making the matter symbolize something which is not there.

It is safer to take the words of consecration as they stand, corresponding as they do so literally with the words of Inst.i.tution, and simply to say: "This (bread: it is still bread) is My Body" (it is far more than bread); "this (wine: it is still wine) is My Blood" (it is far more than wine). Can we get beyond this, in terms and definitions? Can we say more than that it is a "Sacrament"--The Blessed Sacrament? And after all, do we wish to do so?

(II) WHAT IT DOES.

Briefly, the Blessed Sacrament does two things; It pleads, and It feeds. It is the pleading _of_ the one Sacrifice; It is the feeding _on_ the one Sacrifice.

These two aspects of the one Sacrament are suggested in the two names, _Altar_ and _Table_.[6] Both words are liturgical. In Western Liturgies, _Altar_ is the rule, and _Table_ the exception; in Eastern Liturgies, _Table_ is the rule, and _Altar_ {86} the exception. Both are, perhaps, embodied in the old name, _G.o.d's Board_, of Thomas Aquinas. Both contain a truth.

_The Altar_.

This, for over 300 years, was the common name for what St. Irenaeus calls "the Abode of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ". Convocation, in 1640, decreed: "It is, and may be called, an Altar in that sense in which the Primitive Church called it an Altar, and in no other". This sense referred to the offering of what the Liturgy of St. James calls "the tremendous and unb.l.o.o.d.y Sacrifice," the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom "the reasonable and unb.l.o.o.d.y Sacrifice,"[7] and the Ancient English Liturgy "a pure offering, an holy offering, an undefiled offering, even the holy Bread of eternal Life, and the Cup of everlasting Salvation ".

The word Altar, then, tells of the pleading of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In the words of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to Leo XIII: "We plead and represent before the Father the Sacrifice of the Cross"; or in the words of Charles Wesley: "To G.o.d it is an {87} Altar whereon men mystically present unto Him the same Sacrifice, as still suing for mercy"; or, in the words of Isaac Barrow: "Our Lord hath offered a well-pleasing Sacrifice for our sins, and doth, at G.o.d's right hand, continually renew it by presenting it unto G.o.d, and interceding with Him for the effect thereof".

The Sacrifice does not, of course, consist in the re-slaying of the Lamb, but in the offering of the Lamb as it had been slain. It is not the repet.i.tion of the Atonement, but the representation of the Atonement.[8] We offer on the earthly Altar the same Sacrifice that is being perpetually offered on the Heavenly Altar. There is only one Altar, only one Sacrifice, one Eucharist--"one offering, single and complete". All the combined earthly Altars are but one Altar--the earthly or visible part of the Heavenly Altar on which He, both Priest and Victim, offers Himself as the Lamb "as it had been slain". The Heavenly Altar is, as it were, the centre, and all the earthly Altars the circ.u.mference. We gaze at the Heavenly Altar through the Earthly Altars. We plead what He pleads; we offer what He offers.

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Thus the Church, with exultation, Till her Lord returns again, Shows His Death; His mediation Validates her worship then, Pleading the Divine Oblation Offered on the Cross for men.

And we must remember that in this offering the whole Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity are at work. We must not in our worship so concentrate our attention upon the Second Person, as to exclude the other Persons from our thoughts. Indeed, if one Person is more prominent than another, it is G.o.d the Father. It is to G.o.d the Father that the Sacrifice ascends; it is with Him that we plead on earth that which G.o.d the Son is pleading in Heaven; it is G.o.d the Holy Ghost Who makes our pleadings possible, Who turns the many Jewish Altars into the one Christian Altar. The _Gloria in Excelsis_ bids us render worship to all three Persons engaged in this single act.

_The Table_.

The second aspect under consideration is suggested by the word _Table_--the "Holy Table," as St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen and St. Athanasius call it; "the tremendous Table," or the "Mystic {89} Table," as St.

Chrysostom calls it; "the Lord's Table," or "this Thy Table," as, following the Easterns, our Prayer Book calls it.

This term emphasizes the Feast-aspect, as "Altar" underlines the Sacrificial aspect, of the Sacrament. In the "Lord's Supper" we feast upon the Sacrifice which has already been offered upon the Altar.

"This Thy Table," tells of the Banquet of the Lamb. As St. Thomas puts it:--

He gave Himself in either kind, His precious Flesh, His precious Blood: In Love's own fullness thus designed Of the whole man to be the Food.

Or, as Dr. Doddridge puts it, in his Sacramental Ave:--

Hail! Sacred Feast, which Jesus makes!

Rich Banquet of His Flesh and Blood!

Thrice happy he, who here partakes That Sacred Stream, that Heavenly Food.

This is the Prayer-Book aspect, which deals with the "_Administration_ of the Lord's Supper"; which bids us "feed upon Him (not it) in our hearts by faith," and not by sight; which speaks of the elements as G.o.d's "creatures of Bread and Wine"; which prays, in language of awful solemnity, that we may worthily "eat His Flesh {90} and drink His Blood". This is the aspect which speaks of the "means whereby" Christ communicates Himself to us, implants within us His character, His virtues, His will;--makes us one with Him, and Himself one with us. By Sacramental Communion, we "dwell in Him, and He in us"; and this, not merely as a lovely sentiment, or by means of some beautiful meditation, but by the real communion of Christ--present without us, and communicated to us, through the ordained channels.

Hence, in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus is for ever counteracting within us the effects of the Fall. If the first Adam ruined us through food, the second Adam will reinstate us through food--and that food nothing less than Himself. "Feed upon _Him_." But how is all this brought about?

(III) HOW IT DOES IT.

Once again, n.o.body knows. The Holy Ghost is the operative power, but the operation is overshadowed as by the wings of the Dove. It is enough for us to know what is done, without questioning as to how it is done. It is enough for us to worship Him in what He does, without {91} straining to know how He does it--being fully persuaded that, what He has promised, He is able also to perform.[9] Here, again, we are in the region of faith, not sight; and reason tells us that faith must be supreme in its own province. For us, it is enough to say with Queen Elizabeth:--

_He was the Word that spake it;_ _He took the bread and break it;_ _And what that Word did make it,_ _I do believe and take it._[10]

[1] _Leitos_, public, _ergon_, work.

[2] Either when the service is over, or when those not admissible to Communion are dismissed. The "Ma.s.ses" condemned in the thirty-first Article involved the heresy that Christ was therein offered again by the Ma.s.s Priest to buy souls out of Purgatory at so much per Ma.s.s.

[3] E.g. St. Luke xxii. 17. "He took the cup, and eucharized," i.e.

gave thanks.

[4] _Accedit verium ad elementum, et fit Sacramentum_ (St. Augustine).

[5] This definition is really given up now by the best Roman Catholic theologians. The theory on which Transubstantiation alone is based (viz. that "substance" is something which exists apart from the totality of the accidents whereby it is known to us), has now been generally abandoned. Now, it is universally allowed that "substance is only a collective name for the sum of all the qualities of matter, size, colour, weight, taste, and so forth". But, as all these qualities of bread and wine admittedly remain after consecration, the substance of the bread and wine must remain too.

The doctrine of Transubstantiation condemned in Article 22, was that of a material Transubstantiation which taught (and was taught _ex Cathedra_ by Pope Nicholas II) that Christ's Body was sensibly touched and broken by the teeth.

[6] "The Altar has respect unto the oblation, the Table to the partic.i.p.ation" (Bishop Cosin).

[7] Cf. Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living," chap. iv. s. 10.

[8] Cf. Bright's "Ancient Collects," p. 144.

[9] Rom. iv. 21.

[10] "These lines," says Malcolm MacColl in his book on "The Reformation Settlement" (p. 34), "have sometimes been attributed to Donne; but the balance of evidence is in favour of their Elizabethan authorship when the Queen was in confinement as Princess Elizabeth.

They are not in the first edition of Donne, and were published for the first time as his in 1634, thirteen years after his death."