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| After surviving being shot (1968), Andy Warhol vowed to go to Mass on Sundays, a vow he fulfilled. The maker of "icons" met Pope John Paul in 1980. Photo Lionello Fabbri / Source |
We can break out of the natural world and enter the supernatural realm, to know the reality of how close God is to us.
One of the most important ways in which we on earth are in communion with God in heaven is through the ceremony Catholics call the Mass. At Mass the priest brings into the world the death on the cross of Jesus Christ, man and God in the same person, and by this historical death 2000 years ago, Jesus' act of doing justice to God for the offences of all people, past present or future. God is so good, that any evil act or neglect of the good, the true or the beautiful is abhorrent by way of insult to his absolutely pure qualities. Justice, of the absolute degree, demands a punishment, a recompense for the insult.
Contrary to a lot of poor Protestant understanding of what the Church from the beginning has believed, the Mass — also known as the Eucharist — does not presume to supplement with repeated sacrifices Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary on behalf of the human race. Catholics continue what was the teaching of the Church fathers, allowing time to mean nothing as we share in the act of Christ's worship of the Father.
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. And since 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…” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1367)
The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit: [Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper “on the night when he was betrayed”, [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented. (CCC #1366)
Matthew Becklo draws out the supernatural element of our coming together in worship:
[...] What a mountain of difference hinges on that one word: re-present. What’s being said here? Not that “every time Mass is said, the sacrifice of Christ is offered over again”. Re-presenting doesn’t mean repeating, reproducing, or redoing. The sacrifice is not being double-checked, dittoed, or duplicated to ensure completeness. On the Catholic view, it’s already complete; the ... Catechism passages make that very clear.
No—the truth is stranger than fiction. To re-present is to make present—to manifest an eternal reality here and now. “Since Jesus is divine,” Bishop Robert Barron writes in his book Eucharist, “all of his actions, including and especially the sacrificial act by which he saved the world, participate in the eternity of God and hence can be made present at any point in time” [My emphasis - BS].The Catholic Church teaches that this is precisely what the Mass does: makes present, from eternity, the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.
And while the manner of presentation is different, the sacrifice remains the same. [...] The Mass is the cross re-presented—not on our own initiative, but on the initiative of Jesus; not through our own work, but through the work of Christ; and not to try and supplement the perfect offering of the only begotten Son as if God needs it, but to participate in that offering and apply its fruits down the ages because humanity needs it.
Can the sacrifice of the Son to the Father be perpetuated mysteriously through time? Can Calvary suddenly be made present, mystically but truly, in another place—say, Santa Barbara, California? Can the faithful then radically unite their lives to it, not just spiritually but physically? [...] Protestants and Catholics are not split on the completeness of the sacrifice of Christ; we are split on the metaphysical depth and breadth of that one sacrifice.
Becko captures the meaning of Mass beautifully when he states that "the Mass as a single, trans-historical sacrifice across time and space", a concept that may make the typical modern-day materialistic person balk. His idea in full:
The idea of the Mass as a single, trans-historical sacrifice across time and space may be difficult to conceptualize, much less accept. It may run so counter to a million other beliefs and intuitions that it just looks and feels grotesque. Fair enough. But [...]
Therefore, let Protestants understand that for Catholics "the Eucharist is not an invitation to surpass the unsurpassable sacrifice of Christ".
On the contrary, it’s a far more mysterious and beautiful invitation: to surpass the dimensions of time and space and participate, body and soul, in the New Covenant. And this invitation is not a medieval corruption; instead, it stretches back to the Apostolic Fathers and indeed to the Last Supper, where (as Scott Hahn, a former Protestant pastor, has pointed out) the Lamb of God fulfills and transforms all Passover sacrifices; sacramentally anticipates the definitive sacrifice of Calvary; and then commands his disciples to continue to do likewise among themselves (Luke 22:17-20). And so they have, in awe of the inexhuastible mystery before them. As Bishop Barron puts it in Eucharist: “Those who are gathered around the altar of Christ are not simply recalling Calvary; Calvary has become present to them in all of its spiritual power.”
Pope Francis drew attention to the trans-historical nature of the Mass in a daily homily in 2014 . He said:
"When we celebrate the Mass, we don't accomplish a representation of the Last Supper: no, it is not a representation. It is something else: it is the Last Supper itself."
The source article continues:
The Pope centered his reflections on the "theophany" spoken of in the first reading, taken from the First book of Kings, in which David's son Solomon, the new king, places the ark of the covenant in the temple, and God's presence descends upon it in the form of a cloud.
Listing the many ways that God speaks to his people, Francis emphasized that a theophany [...] speaks in a different way than prophets or scripture because "it is another presence, closer, without mediation, near. It is His presence."
He then observed how this same thing happens during the Mass, highlighting that it is not just a "social act" or a prayer gathering, but "the presence of the Lord is real, truly real."
"When we celebrate the Mass, we don't accomplish a representation of the Last Supper," noted the Pope, explaining that "it is the Last Supper itself," and that it "is to really live once more the Passion and the redeeming Death of the Lord."
"It is a theophany: the Lord is made present on the altar to be offered to the Father for the salvation of the world."
Calling to mind how some people say that they are going to "to hear Mass," the pontiff emphasized that "the Mass is not 'heard,'" but "it is participated in," and that "it is a participation in this theophany, in this mystery of the presence of the Lord among us."
Representations, he said, are things like nativity scenes or even praying the Stations of the Cross, but the Mass "is a real commemoration" in which "God approaches and is with us, and we participate in the mystery of the Redemption."
"The liturgy is to really enter into the mystery of God, to allow ourselves to be brought to the mystery and to be in the mystery."
"All of you here, we are gathered here to enter into the mystery: this is the liturgy. It is God's time, it is God's space, it is the cloud of God that surrounds all of us."
[T]he pontiff encouraged all present to ask that the Lord give each of us "this 'sense of the sacred,'" and that "to pray at home, to pray in Church, to pray the Rosary, to pray so many beautiful prayers," is one thing, but "the Eucharistic celebration is something else."
"In the celebration we enter into the mystery of God, into that street that we cannot control: only He is the unique One, the glory, the power...He is everything.
"Let us ask for this grace: that the Lord would teach us to enter into the mystery of God."
This is an echo of the words of the Church fathers.
Lawrence Feingold, in his 2018 book The Eucharist: Mystery of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion, writes:
In his On the Priesthood, John Chrysostom (died 407) extols the office of the priest by speaking of the Eucharist as the sacrifice of the Lord who, through the priest, is mystically immolated on the altar. He who sits at the right hand of the Father is continually touched and held by the priest and offered to the faithful:
When you see the Lord sacrificed and lying before you, and the High Priest standing over the sacrifice and praying, and all who partake being tinctured with that precious blood, can you think that you are still among men and still standing on earth? Are you not at once transported to heaven? … Oh, the loving-kindness of God to men!
He who sits above with the Father is at that moment held in our hands, and gives himself to those who wish to clasp and embrace him—which they do, all of them, with their eyes.
He continues later: But when he invokes the Holy Spirit and offers that awful sacrifice and keeps on touching the common Master of us all, tell me, where shall we rank him? What purity and what piety shall we demand of him? … At that moment angels attend the priest, and the whole dais and the sanctuary are thronged with heavenly powers in honor of Him who lies there.
When he [Jesus] gave his apostles the bread he did not say, “This is the symbol of my body,” but, “This is my body.” So too with the chalice he did not say, “This is the symbol of my blood,” but, “This is my blood”—and with good reason. For he wanted us to turn our attention from the nature of the bread and the chalice once they received the grace and the presence of the Lord…. But if the life-giving Spirit gave our Lord’s body [in the Resurrection] a nature it did not possess before, we too, who have received the grace of the Holy Spirit by sacramental symbols should not regard the offering as bread and chalice any longer, but as the body and blood of Christ. It is the descent of the grace of the Holy Spirit that transforms them, obtaining for those who receive them the gift which we believe the faithful obtain by means of our Lord’s body and blood.
We can break out of the natural world and enter the supernatural realm. It is possible to cultivate in ourselves an openness to the experience of the holy that a religious event such as the Mass arouses. We need to know the way our hearts and minds work concerning, as Becklo states, "[our] background convictions, assumptions, and imaginations (either/or vs. both/and, dialectical vs. sacramental, etc.) to any doctrinal question"—and much more, such as our regard for our neighbours.
Paul, as usual, has words of wisdom. In effect, he says we should teach ourselves to recognise the closeness of God and his goodness. Consider the rains God sends, he says, the fruitful seasons, and the way he "filled you with nourishment and gladness for your hearts".
For this awareness, we have to open our hearts, minds and imaginations to God's presence, and make space in our lives for our response to the extra dimension God makes possible, and into which we can extend our lives.
There's a final thought that follows on from the insights of Chrysostom and Theodore one expressed well by Scott Hahn, a former evangelical Calvinist pastor, but now a Catholic scripture scholar. He titled his 1999 book on the Mass—The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth.
Hahn gives an account of his first encounters with the Mass. Taking just one instance, he writes:
In less than a minute, the phrase "Lamb of God" had rung out four times. From long years of studying the Bible, I immediately knew where I was. I was in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is called the Lamb no less than 28 times in 22 chapters. I was at the marriage feast that John describes at the end of that very last book of the Bible. I was before the throne of heaven, where Jesus is hailed forever as the Lamb. I wasn't ready for this, though—I was at Mass!
Yes, we can participate in heaven on earth, we can know that God is in our hand and we take him into our body so that each of us can be absorbed into him. "Mystery", "mystical": words to describe the reality beyond what is commonplace, though what is commonplace can reveal the supernatural.
To conclude, as we strive to participate in heaven on earth, there are two scriptural quotations that are apposite in relation to how we must cultivate the ability to grow in right perception.
The first is of the words of the father who came to Jesus to ask for the healing of his epileptic son. In the course of his interaction with Jesus he made this prayer: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)
The second entails the prophecy of Isaiah that Jesus quoted when he taught his disciples about why many of the people they met had difficulty in understanding the message about the kingdom of God. Jesus said:
You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people's heart has become calloused; their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, for fear they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and be converted, and I would heal them. (Mt 13:13)
We can break out of the natural world and enter the supernatural realm—if we cultivate the hearing and the seeing of God's goodness in the ordinary, and the Holy Spirit at hand in walking with us (as paraclete) in our interactions with the people, the world around us.
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