The Mass - Meal and Sacrifice - Liturgical Developement - PART 7

PART 7 - LITURGICAL DEVELOPMENT

For the first couple of hundred years, the concept gradually shifted from the concept of a meal to the final reality of a liturgical sacrificial celebration. Both views have always been held, but each has taken their turn being emphasized during different periods of Church history.

As we have seen earlier, at the start of the Church, the idea of meal was the dominant view. Gatherings for the Eucharist included people bringing actual food, sharing it in a joyous gathering, and showing their charity by also feeding the poor.

In the fourth century, the rise and defeat of Arianism caused many of the Church Fathers to stress the divinity of Christ in their sermons and theological writings. This caused Christians to begin to pray directly to Christ as a member of the Divine Trinity. This change in Christian worship also led to a change in the way it was referred to. Just as the usual name for Christian worship changed from Lord’s supper to Eucharist when the communal meal was dropped, now the words offering and liturgy became more common names for the ritual action. The word Eucharist henceforth designated not the act of thanksgiving, but the sacred elements of bread and wine which were offered to God. As Christian worship developed more and more into a religious service done by the bishop and his assistants for the congregation, it came to be referred to as a liturgy.

Despite all of the variation in liturgy in the 4th century, all of the liturgies kept the standard parts of the earlier Eucharistic service: a bringing of the gifts of bread and wine, a prayer over the gifts which included a recalling of the Last Supper, and a distribution of the bread and wine to the congregation.

A very significant change in the western liturgy was the development of the private Mass. The private Mass, the Eucharist offered by a single priest with no attending congregation, began in the monasteries and in the mission territories to where the monks were sent. Some of the Protestant Reformers thought that a private Mass was invalid because there was no community. This reformation error, and many others, were settled at the Council of Trent:

“If anyone says that Masses in which the priest alone communicates sacramentally, are illicit and are therefore to be abrogated, leet him be anathema” (Council of Trent, Dz 955, principle 14).

Another development in the West was not a change at all, but just the opposite. When the Eastern Churches sent missionaries north into the Slavic territories, the Bible and the liturgy were translated into the languages of the new converts, but this did not happen in the West. Wherever the Eucharistic sacrifice was offered it was said in latin, and since few but the clergy understood that language, the Mass for most people became a religious performance to watch and listen to rather than a liturgy to participate in. Not understanding the language, the people understood nothing about the Mass except what they were told, and what they were told was that the Mass was a sacrifice in which the flesh and blood of God’s Son became present on the Altar, was offered for their sins, and was eaten and drunk.

The uniformity of language did not mean uniformity in style. Outside of Rome, bishops were free to compose their own liturgies, as before the beginning of the Middle Ages, Spain, England, and France had liturgical styles which were very different from that of Rome. 

In the 7th century, this began to change, and the influence of Rome was felt in England, Spain, and throughout the West. After the eleventh century, the only Church that still had a distinctive different liturgical style was Milan, which continued to use the rite inherited from its early bishop Ambrose, despite Papal edicts to the contrary.

As the centuries progressed, the celebration of the  Eucharist was affected by various influences; the local culture, a growing clericalism, a diminished sense of worthiness among members of the assembly, and the use of ancient languages no longer commonly understood. With the introduction of private Mass and the exclusive use of Latin in the West, the Eucharistic celebration became in many places a solo activity of a priest separated from the majority of the people who silently watched from afar.

In the year 831, Paschase Radbert,  Abbot of the monastery of Corbie, took the notion of sacrifice one step further and concluded that the real flesh and blood of Christ must be physically present on the altar during the Mass. Erring in the other direction two centuries later, Berengar of Tours challenged this interpretation of Christ’s presence and reasoned that since the bread and wine did not change their appearance after the words of consecration were spoken, they must still be bread and wine. Berengar used St. Augustine’s definition of a sacrament as “a sign of the sacred reality” to support his position. Berengar denied that Christ was physically present in the Eucharist, and he denied that the body and blood of Christ could logically be called a sacrament. This controversy has two main results. Theologically it led to the development of the concept of a sacramental reality, by means of which the Eucharistic bread and wine could be referred to as both a sacrament and a reality. Practically it led to an increased sense of realism about the Eucharistic elements.

This increased sense of “physical realness” did have its problems. It led more and more people to abstain from communion altogether, and since they could not participate in the Mass by hearing and responding to the prayers, their worship came to focus on the adoration of the Host. This physical view of Christ’s Presence in the Host produced some novel beliefs and superstitions about the Eucharist. Some people believed that gazing upon the elevated Host would keep away sickness or death, others that it would cure illness or change their luck. There were even priests who feared for their faith because the bread and wine that they consecrated still tasted like bread and wine, not like meat and blood.

During the Scholastic Period (1100 - 1700), the great theological issue of the day was not how Christians should worship, for the format of the Mass was now pretty well set. Nor was there any real question about the nature of the Mass; everyone accepted it as a representation and continuation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. Rather, the important questions came to be two: At what point in the Mass did the sacrifice take place? And, how were the bread and wine changed into the body and blood of Christ? To the first question the scholastics gave no unanimous answer. The basically agreed with Peter Lombard, that what took place in the Mass was “the memorial and representation of the true sacrifice and holy immolation” which Christ had made on the Cross (Sentences IV, 12, 7). 

But when in the Mass did the destruction and immolation of the victim occur? Some theologians proposed that it took place in the separate consecration of the bread and wine, reasoning that this represented in an “unbloody manner” Christ’s death from loss of blood on the Cross. This is a very reasonable conclusion as discussed previously. Others saw the breaking of the Host or its being eaten in communion as being more representative of the destruction of the victim, which was needed for a sacrifice. St. Thomas Aquinas chose the former view, but for a different reason. All those who attended the Mass were said to participate in the sacrifice, but not everyone received communion, and so he regarded the sacrifice as being completed in the consecration of the elements. The second theory, known as the “destruction theory”, is shown to be illogical by the teaching of the Church:

“The essential Sacrificial Action consists in the Transubstantiation alone. (Sent. Communis)

The Transubstantiation instituted by Christ is effected by the priest in the name of Christ on the sacrificial  gift, properly so-called, and is a representation of the Sacrifice of the Cross. For the completion of the sacrifice the double consecration is necessary, since Christ thus consummated the sacrifice at the Last Supper. Apart from Christ’s example, the double consecration is necessary, in order to represent in a sacramental manner the real separation of the Body and Blood of Christ, which took place in the sacrifice of the Cross.

Church teaching also logically pokes some very big holes in the destruction theory. Here is one to them:

“…according to this theory, the essence of the sacrifice is the destruction of the sacrificial gift. Quite apart from the validity of the notions underlying the theory, we not that, in fact, no destruction of the sacrificial gift, properly so-called, occurs in the Communion, but merely a destruction of the species.”

As to the second question, how the bread and wine were changed into the body and blood of Christ, the scholastics did reach agreement at least for a time. The answer was “transubstantiation” meaning a. Change in substance of reality. During the 13th century the nature of this change was rather precisely worked out in terms of Aristotelian philosophy. 

Aquinas also adopted the conceptual scheme developed in terms of a sacrament. The physical appearance  of bread and wine was “only a sacrament”. The consecrated elements themselves were “both sacrament and reality” since they both signified the body and blood of Christ and were in fact the reality that they signified. But Aquinas also identified that which was “only a reality”, for when the host and wine were consumed, the sacrament disappeared and only the reality of Christ’s presence remained. This shows why the concept of “sacrament” is vitally important to viewing the sacrifice correctly.

END OF PART 7