III

It was observed in a former chapter that in the proceedings of the Council of Trent any idea of a connection between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the heavenly life of our Lord was almost wholly out of sight, although such an idea was referred to in the reports of three of the theologians made to the council, in two cases in terms of approval, in one case in terms of condemnation. Any such idea is absent from the writings of the theologians whose teaching has so far been discussed in the present chapter except Melchior Cano; and, while it would not be inconsistent with the explanations of the sacrifice given by Salmeron, Vasquez, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Lessius, it would be wholly precluded by the teaching of De Lugo with its assertion of the complete independence of the Eucharistic sacrifice of any present action of Christ. But in the same century in which De Lugo was developing and extending the idea of destruction as an essential element in the sacrifice, and was making the Eucharist wholly independent of the present life of our Lord in heaven, a very different way of regarding the sacrifice was receiving careful expression in France.

Charles de Condren was born in 1588 at Vauxbuin near Soissons. After studying at the Sorbonne he held the office of professor of philosophy at the University of Paris for a year. In 1614 he was ordained priest. In 1617 he entered the Congregation of the Oratory. In 1629 he succeeded Cardinal de Berulle, the founder of the Oratory, as General of the Congregation. In 1614 he died. The treatise The Idea of the Priesthood and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ was published in 1677 after his death; and, though it may not in every part give his own actual words, it may be taken as indicating his teaching. Sacrifice is here described as having been instituted chiefly for four ends,—to honour God, to give Him thanks, to make satisfaction for sin, and to obtain gifts. As a recognition of the sovereign dominion of God it requires the destruction of the victim. Of the spiritual and divine sacrifice of the Christian religion our Lord is the Priest, being the Mediator of the new covenant, exercising the functions of priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. His first public act as Priest was on the cross; the priesthood there used was completed at the ascension; as High Priest He abidingly offers in heaven. Between the cross and the ascension was His resurrection, wherein His body was consummated as the victim in the sacrifice; and His resurrection thus corresponded in His sacrifice to the consuming of the body of the victim by fire in the burnt offerings of the Jews. The sacrifice of the Mass, which the Church on earth offers by Christ is the same as the sacrifice which the risen and ascended Christ offers in heaven; and this sacrifice thus now offered in heaven and on earth is the same as the sacrifice of the cross. Our Lord Himself is the “altar on high,” on which the offering made on the earthly altar is presented in heaven; and the angel whose hands bear the sacrifice to the “altar on high” is either our Lord or an angel of sacrifice representing Him and acting in His name and authority. In the future this sacrifice of Christ will be the eternal offering of the courts of heaven. The characteristic feature in this teaching—the close association of the earthly with the heavenly offering and the abiding activity of our Lord in the sacrifice—may be illustrated by the following quotations:—

“Jesus Christ being High Priest in heaven necessarily offers there. Since every priest is appointed to offer gifts and victims, He too must have something to offer. What can this be but that which He once offered on earth, the sacrifice of His own body, of which He perpetually renews and continues the oblation in heaven? The oblation of Jesus Christ has not been so completed and exhausted on earth as to have no further exercise in heaven; but rather it was only begun here below in order to be continued in heaven, where the perfection of sacrifice is found.”

“The spiritual Jews knew that the victim should be consumed in the most worthy way possible; for, besides the command of God to consume it by fire, they knew that fire was the symbol under which God was hidden; but only Christians know by faith the true fulfilment in the glorious resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ, the consummation of the adorable Victim in the truth which was symbolised by the fire. For after the immolation of His body on the cross and the destruction of His mortal life, it was still necessary that all the traces of mortality in the wounds which He had received, all disfigurement and lowliness and earthiness which He still retained, and all the likeness of the flesh of sin and of the infirmity of the children of Adam, should be entirely destroyed and consumed in glory. Thus the body of Jesus Christ as Victim was consummated and glorified in the resurrection. ‘He rose from the dead by means of the glory of the Father.’ He was raised by the divine fire of the glory of the Father, by which was consumed all that in His body, mortal and dead on the cross, was not worthy of the body of God.”

“This great sacrifice which Jesus Christ in union with the saints offers to God in heaven, offering Himself with them, is the same sacrifice which the priest offers on earth, and which the whole Church offers by Him in the holy Mass. For the Victim which they offer is the same, being the body and blood of Jesus Christ really present, united to God, existing in the Word and in this mystery. It is the same Priest who offers it by His ministers; it is offered on the same altar, which is the Subsistence or Person of the Eternal Word, in the same temple, namely, the bosom of the Eternal Father, to the same God on earth as in heaven; and the Victim is not merely the same but is in the same state of consummation and glory. The only difference is that, though present here as really as in heaven, He is not so after a visible manner.”

“The sacrifice of the Mass is the same as that of the cross, in as much as the one contains the other; for it is Jesus Christ immolated on the cross who is present on the altar after the consecration, and is there offered as having been immolated for us. He has in the Mass the state of death which the Jews inflicted on Him in His crucifixion, inasmuch as He there offers Himself as once immolated on the cross; and it is in memory and in virtue of that immolation that He is offered by the Church. This state of immolation and death is moreover shown and represented by the mystical separation of His body and blood under the different species of bread and wine separately consecrated; nevertheless the divine Victim is no longer there in the likeness of the flesh of sin but in glory and immortality.”

“The true altar of sacrifice in heaven is Jesus Christ.… In the canon of the Mass, … Jesus Christ is without doubt intended by the altar on high which is before the majesty of God.… The true altar of the great sacrifice is the Person or Subsistence of the Word, that is, of Jesus Christ. It was on this altar that the victim, His humanity, was laid in the mystery of the Incarnation.… On this altar all the parts of the sacrifice are carried out.… On this altar the oblation was made from the moment of the Incarnation.… On this altar the Victim was immolated, and the cross which bore Him in His death deserves to be called an altar only because it represented the invisible altar from which the sacred Victim was never separated.… On this altar the Victim was consummated and sanctified in the resurrection.… On this altar the blood of the Victim was carried into the invisible sanctuary by Him who is the High Priest when returning to His Father He re-entered as it were into His bosom.… Lastly, on this altar will the Victim, perfected by the union of all His members, be eternally presented to God, will adore Him, rendering to Him the love and praise and thanksgiving which are His due, and will continue for ever the sacrifice in which the eternal joy of the saints consists.”

John James Olier was born in Paris in 1608. At the age of eighteen he received the ecclesiastical preferments of the priory of the Holy Trinity at Clisson and the abbey of Our Lady at Pébrac. In 1633 he was ordained priest. He was the friend and disciple of De Condren. After De Condren’s death in 1641 he attempted to form a seminary for priests at Chartres with a view to raising the standard of life among the French clergy, but the attempt failed. A further attempt of the same kind at Vaugirard in the outskirts of Paris was somewhat more successful, and in 1642 Olier was appointed curé of the parish of Saint Sulpice, where he founded the famous Congregation and Seminary of Saint Sulpice, and in 1646 began the building of the new church. In his work at Saint Sulpice he had much to do with the revival of a true spirit of priestly life in France. He died in 1657. Olier’s book entitled Explanation of the Ceremonies of the Parochial High Mass contains teaching concerning the Eucharist which closely resembles that of De Condren; and it will be sufficient to quote a few passages from it:—

“To understand the mystery of the most holy sacrifice of the Mass, … one must know that this sacrifice is the sacrifice of heaven.… It is a statement strange to a great part of the world to say that there is a sacrifice in heaven, I mean for people as a whole, since those who know in what religion and its first duty of sacrifice consist have no doubt that there is a sacrifice in heaven.… Our Lord, made a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, is with God His Father to offer to Him the sacrifice always.… There is a sacrifice in heaven, which is at the same time offered on earth, since the victim which is presented is borne to the altar in heaven; and the only difference is that here it is presented under veils and symbols, and there it is offered without cover or veil.”

“In heaven our Lord offers Himself in a glorious state; He does not present Himself to God as prepared for death, which is the first state of a victim, but as a victim once immolated and already completed in God.”

“On the day of the resurrection, finding His Son immolated in the tomb, the Father came in His light and divine glory to complete the sacrifice in Him, not leaving in Him any trace of His weakness and of His former state, of His state of carnal (grossière) and passible and mortal flesh, so as by wholly consuming it to make it pass into His divine state, as iron passes into the state of fire.”

“This victim [in the Jewish sacrifices] changed in the fire is raised towards heaven to signify that Jesus Christ, once completed in His Father at His resurrection, is afterwards raised to Him at His ascension.”

“The altar of the sacrifice is the Person of the Word, who bears Jesus Christ in His sacred manhood, and ever shows Him as smoking and consumed by the glory of God on His Person, as on an altar.”

Louis Thomassin was born in 1619 at Aix in the south of France. He was a member of the Congregation of the Oratory. He taught at Lyons and Saumur and Paris. He died in 1696. In the section of his great work Theological Dogmas entitled On the Incarnation of the Word of God there is a very full treatment of sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ, and the Eucharistic sacrifice in connection with the priesthood of Christ. This treatment exhibits in a theological form with lengthy discussion and many patristic quotations the aspects of the sacrifice of Christ which were handled more devotionally than theologically by De Condren and Olier. The one sacrifice to which both nature and revelation looked forward is the death of Christ. When He died, animal sacrifices became obsolete. It was the purpose of the Incarnation that He who was God might be priest and victim in His death, and that there might be sacrifice as well as reconciliation to God. The offering of the sacrifice was begun when God the Word became man. The sacrifice offered in the death on the cross is abiding and eternal. In a pre-eminent degree Christ entered on His priesthood after His resurrection, and He began its fullest exercise at His ascension. The sacrifice which He offers in heaven is one and the same as the sacrifice of the cross. In heaven He abidingly offers His cross to the Father, and with it the sufferings and acts of the righteous which are sprinkled from His cross. By this heavenly priesthood the sacrifice of the cross, to which there was new life in the resurrection, is continually perpetuated. Though it the once shed blood is ever offered to the Father; and in His glorified manhood Christ continually offers a perpetual sacrifice. With Himself He offers the Church. In sacrifice there must be change, and the best kind of change is that which is for the better; and the new life of the risen body supplies what thus is best. For Christians the most real temple and sanctuary and altar are in heaven; and their one real and proper sacrifice is that which is on the cross and in the Eucharist and in heaven. In the Eucharist is Christ’s most notable exercise of the priesthood of Melchizedek, since the Eucharist is more congruous than the cross with the bloodless sacrifice of Melchizedek. The sacrifice of the Eucharist, as being one and the same with the sacrifice of the cross, is a mystical repetition of it. As it is essentially one with the cross as being of the same Victim, so this identity is outwardly shown by the ceremonial actions used. In the Eucharist, as in heaven, the whole Church is offered to God as being the body of Christ. The flesh of Christ is the same flesh as our own, but it is much more glorious and is now spiritual with the gifts of the risen life and the glory of the ascension. The sacrifice is not now of His body in its mortal state, but of His immortal life. The style of Thomassin is too lengthy and elaborate to lend itself readily to quotation, but a few extracts may be made to illustrate the summarised account of his teaching on the subject of the Eucharist which has been given.

“It is most clear that the sacrifice which the eternal law commands to be offered, which the will of God and the voice of nature and the consciousness of the soul destine for God, is offered only by means of the death of Christ. That one sacrifice is due to God, by it alone God is propitiated, by it alone the human race is cleansed.”

“When once the real sacrifice of the cross of Christ was offered, then at length all its shadows disappeared and the old and wonted practice of the nations everywhere of sacrificing beasts came to an end.”

“The object of this chapter is to show, first, that the purpose of the Incarnation of the Word was nothing else than the appointment of a Priest who could make expiation for the human race; secondly, that Christ from the first beginning of His life had the dignity of priesthood; and, lastly, that from this point His sacrifice began to be accomplished, and that the Incarnation itself was a sacrifice.… You see for what purpose mortal nature was joined to immortal Godhead in one Person, namely, that the immortal righteousness of the Godhead might become mortal by means of the mortal nature which was taken, and might by dying perform the offices of priest and victim.… There was need of this victim, in which the whole race of men should not only be reconciled to God, but should also be sacrificed.… It was necessary that in one Man, who should be Head of all and the union and universality of all, all of us as a universal but also a perpetual victim and an immortal sacrifice should be consecrated to God, that we all should be grafted into that One, all die with Him, all rise together with Him, all be immortally sacrificed together with Him by a continual sacrifice of love. This was afforded by the Incarnation, whereby One from among men was taken for Victim and Priest, set as Head and Leader to the rest, in whom all should be, in whom all should be grafted together in God to die and to live together.… God the Word abounded in all manner of rich life, but was in want of death, to obtain which He was conceived and born as Man. Therefore the Incarnation is the taking not of human life but of mortality and death. Therefore the Incarnation is a sacrifice.… The taking of mortality is already a kind of anticipation of death and a sacrifice.… This manhood from its first existence He began to show to the Father as a Victim, therefore to sacrifice.”

“The sacrifice of the cross is not only general or universal and spread over the whole world, but it is also ever continual. For once offered to God, it does not cease to be offered, and the whole race of men does not cease to have expiation by means of it.… The sacrifice of the cross of Christ is continual and eternal because to His one cross are fixed all the righteous, who, whether they are earlier or later members of His body, at whatever time they have lived, cleave to Him as their Head.”

“After His resurrection Christ most of all took to Himself the dignity and office of High Priest, as Paul testifies. … He says that the Aaronic high priests were wont once in the year to enter into the innermost shrine of the temple not without blood, and that Christ, in order that He might illuminate and put to flight the shadows by the reality, entered once in the heavenly sanctuary by means of His own blood, as High Priest of good things to come.”

“The sacrifice of the cross and of heaven is the same and one.… No other is the sacrifice of heaven than the sacrifice of the cross; but here the victim is once slain, there through the veil, that is, His flesh, it is borne into the innermost sanctuary, that is, the most hidden deity, and there is consumed and is immortally devoured by the deity as by most pure and glowing fire.… Christ having been once slain, is incorruptibly consumed by fire that is not shadowy but real, I mean by God, and by means of His resurrection and immortality His human nature is devoured and received into the deity.… The sacrifice of Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father is universal, whereby the eternal High Priest ever offers His cross to the Father and also eternally sacrifices as pieces of His cross and portions and complements of His own death the crosses and deaths of all the righteous and all their works unquestionably smeared and sprinkled with the blood and power of His cross.… His own abode and dwelling place is the heaven, and the sacrifice itself is altogether heavenly, because, although the victim is slain on earth, it is slain here in order that it may be placed there on its proper altar, and may be offered there for an eternal burnt offering.”

“He was made a sacrifice on the cross, but in the resurrection the Victim renewed and restored to life is consecrated as first fruits to God, and all we in it.… The immortal Priest ever offers to the Father the blood which was once shed.… Christ rising from the dead and ascending into heaven, as a sheaf of corn and as a lamb, is sacrificed to God for a sacrifice now bloodless, though bearing the smell and marks of His most recent offering.… The lamb once slain was not offered and sacrificed only when He was slain; but so long as the marks of His death remain and are presented to the Father, so long is He offered and sacrificed by the perpetuated sacrifice of the cross.… Christ entered heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father for this purpose, that He may show His shed blood, and present His passion and cross, and set forth His death and sacrificing as abiding.… That Christ in glorified manhood stands before the Father in heaven is the same as not to cease to offer a solemn sacrifice and to plead and to offer Himself, and without intermission to sacrifice a burnt offering and a perpetual sacrifice.”

“Christ would not be the universal and collective burnt offering unless with the Head Himself His body also, I mean His whole Church, were burning in the same fire.”

“Any sacrifice is a change of the victim. But a change has two kinds; the one is for the worse; the other is for the better. Which kind of change, I ask, does God most delight in?… The most complete change of the whole man takes place by means of resurrection, wherein nothing is destroyed except destructibility, wherein soul and body are changed for the better to a form indescribably more glorious than their former state. This then will be a sweeter and more fitting sacrifice for God, whereby it shall come to pass that those things which are dedicated to Him are not destroyed but gain profit and honour.… These spiritual sacrifices [that is, prayer and love and martyrdom and virtue], although when compared with the Mosaic and other sacrifices, … they may seem to be real and to be the more real in that they are more spiritual and accepted by God, yet, when they are compared with the one real and proper sacrifice of Christ on the cross, in the Eucharist, in heaven, they are only improperly sacrifices, and only so at all so far as they are parts of it, and derive from it whatever nature of sacrifice they possess”

“Of the most splendid priesthood of Christ from the prerogative of the order of Melchizedek the head and sum is found in the sacrifice of the Eucharist, wherein He offered bread and wine, that is, His body and blood.… To that bloodless and really Melchizedekian sacrifice, which really is superior to the Aaronic sacrifice, the Eucharist is more congruous than the cross, which represents the gore and appearance of the Aaronic sacrifice.”

“One is the victim of the Eucharist and the cross, one is the death of the victim, one is the oblation of the death.… The sacrifice of the Eucharist is celebrated for a memorial of the cross; therefore it is not a different sacrifice from the cross, but it is a mystic repetition of the cross.… On the cross the victim is put to death, in the Eucharist it is at once set forth to be eaten; that putting to death is connected with this eating, this eating has relation to that putting to death; the cross serves the Eucharist, the Eucharist depends on the cross; there is one sacrifice of the victim slain on the cross, eaten on the altar.… This offering of the sacrifice and death of Christ is not different from and like to that first offering, but is one and the same with it, one and the same past and present, or never past but ever present.… The whole Christ with His whole cross is offered in the Eucharist as the sacrifice, is distributed as the victim, is paid as the price.… Not only is the same Christ, the same victim, the same passion and death, the same offering contained inwardly, but outwardly also the breaking of the host, the distribution, the eating, the pouring out of His blood imitate most closely the savage sacrificing of the cross.”

“The end and fruit of the priesthood of Christ are not only that He offer Himself, but also that He offer the whole Church to God in Himself.… Unless we depart from the very elements of the Christian faith, there is no other sacrifice to God anywhere than the body of Christ. How then do these three things agree, that there is no other sacrifice than the body of Christ, that we ourselves are the most splendid sacrifice, that real and true virtues are a rich sacrifice to God? Can these three agree in one, the flesh of Christ, we ourselves, the flock of virtues? Certainly they can be united and coalesce into one victim. For the Church is the flesh of Christ; we are members of Christ. Again, all virtues are united and joined together with Christ; for this is the flesh of the Word, the flesh of righteousness, the body of wisdom and holiness.”

“The flesh of Christ is of the same substance with our own, but of far different glory; in nature it agrees, but it surpasses by an infinite distance of majesty; it is the most real flesh, but it is the dwelling place of all truth, the partner of deity, most rich in gifts of spiritual wealth, and a “spiritual body” far more splendid than that which we wait for, as the Apostle Paul testifies. … Christ has ascended into heaven, that His flesh which is here eaten, and His flesh which is drunk, may be understood not carnally but spiritually. For that very flesh which sits at the right hand of the Father on high is sacrificed here. Is not that flesh which has been raised above all the ranks of angelic spirits spiritual?… In that Christ died, He died to sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth to God; wherefore mortal life could be sacrificed once, but immortal life returning in victory from death is now sacrificed for ever by a more blessed sacrifice.… The blessed and eternal Priest Christ after His resurrection continually and immortally sacrifices Himself and us all in Him to God; and He sacrifices the Eucharist as a large portion even here of that blessed sacrifice on high and the sacrificed blessedness of God.”