IV

The instances which have been given from theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show sufficiently the tendencies in regard to the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice which have been operative in the later theology of the Church of Rome. In the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth centuries there has been general agreement that the essential point in the sacrifice is the consecration. With that agreement as a basis, there have been different lines of thought as to the nature of the sacrifice; and theologians may be divided into four groups, not all mutually exclusive. The great influence of the powerful mind of De Lugo has led to the acceptance by many of his opinion that in the Eucharistic sacrifice the manhood of our Lord is reduced to a lower state, and that the necessary element of destruction is thereby supplied. The view of Salmeron and Vasquez and Lessius that a mystical destruction is enough, and that this consists in the separate consecration of the two species has had very many advocates. The contention of Suarez that no destruction is necessary, but that the production of the body and blood of Christ on the altar in honour of God is all the change that is needed for the sacrifice, has not been without its adherents. The assertion of the connection with the heavenly sacrifice of our Lord by Thomassin and others, which follows a wholly different line of thought from the theory of De Lugo but is not inconsistent with the opinions either of Vasquez or of Suarez, has been maintained by some. It may be convenient to mention a very few of the supporters of these four ways of regarding the sacrifice.

1. The most notable advocate of the theory of De Lugo is Cardinal Franzelin. John Baptist Franzelin was born in the Tyrol in 1816. In 1834 he entered the Society of Jesus. After being a student and teacher at Rome, in 1848 he left that city because of the political troubles of the time, and for a short while was a teacher of Hebrew in France. Returning to Rome, he became a teacher of Oriental languages in the Jesuit College there. In 1857 he became Professor of Dogmatic Theology. In 1876 he was made a cardinal by Pope Pius IX. In 1886 he died. His treatise On the Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Most Holy Eucharist was first published in 1868. In the part of this treatise dealing with the sacrifice, Franzelin, after giving his reasons for thinking the opinions of Vasquez and Lessius and Suarez inadequate, and for accepting that of De Lugo, and while carefully stating that what he says on this point is the expression of a theory only and not part of the doctrine of the Church, explains his own view of the lower state of our Lord’s manhood which supplies the element of destruction as follows:—

“Let that state now be considered in which Christ the Lord, the High Priest, constitutes Himself as the victim by means of the consecration in His body and blood under the species of bread and wine. The First-begotten of all creation, the Head of the Church, holding in all things the pre-eminence, gives Himself to His Church by means of His ministers the priests, to be constituted in His body and blood in such a mode of existence under the species of bread and wine that He is really in the state of food and drink, so that (formally in so far as He is constituted under these species) every act connatural with the bodily life and dependent on the senses ceases, so that He can do nothing connaturally as a body, so that His body and blood, in so far as His presence is attached to the species, is somehow granted to the will of creatures not otherwise than if it were an inanimate thing; but He has constituted Himself in such a condition that He Himself, the High Priest, for the whole Church whose Head He is, and the Church through Him, may express in His most sacred body and blood the supreme dominion of God and the absolute dependence of every creature, of which Jesus Christ Himself as Man is the First-begotten, and may at the same time express and show forth the satisfaction for guilt formerly consummated on the cross in the surrender of this very body and the shedding of this blood. And yet such an ‘exinanition,’ to express the majesty of the absolute dominion of God and the satisfaction for our guilt completed by death, is not sufficiently understood simply as being really and properly sacrificial, but further with the exception of the bloody sacrifice on the cross we can conceive no more sublime or more profound method of real and proper sacrifice. Therefore there is no doubt that in the sacramental way of existence itself the fitness of the body and blood of Christ and, granting the institution, the actual sacrificial signification, and consequently the inward method of a real and proper sacrifice, are not only sufficiently but also eminently contained.”

2. In spite of the increased currency given to the theory of De Lugo by the able advocacy of it by so weighty a theologian as Franzelin, it is probable that the view still most widely held in the Church of Rome is that the mystical destruction which consists in the separate consecration under the two species is the essential point in the sacrifice. One of the most distinguished advocates of this theory in the nineteenth century was John Perrone. Perrone was born in 1794 in Piedmont. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1815. After teaching dogmatic theology at Orvieto and in the Jesuit College at Rome, he was obliged to leave Italy in consequence of political troubles in 1848, and took refuge in England. On his return to Italy he continued his work of teaching at Rome. He died in 1876. The Theological Lectures which he delivered in the Jesuit College at Rome contain a treatise On the Eucharist. In the section on sacrifice he clearly describes the teaching of Vasquez, and then adds:—

“We do not at all contend that this is the only way of asserting the reality of our sacrifice; but we say this one thing, that it seems to us more suitable for attaining the proposed end, whether because it removes the chief difficulty by which this reality is attacked, or because the words of the fathers are most in agreement with it, or lastly because the Protestants, if it is once established, have nothing more by which to be drawn away from the Catholic doctrine to be received concerning this article. For in this opinion only two things are required, and are enough, in order that the reality of the sacrifice of the Mass be maintained, namely, the actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, … and the representation of the sacrifice of the cross.”

With a slight modification, probably rather of expression than of thought, the theory of Vasquez has been accepted by the living writers Dr. Van Noort, the Professor of Theology in the seminary at Warmond in Holland, and the Roman Catholic Bishop (J. C. Hedley) of Newport. Dr. Van Noort in his treatise On the Sacraments writes:—

“Many agree so far as to say that they think the sacrificial mark of the Mass is to be placed in the separate consecration of the body and blood of the Lord under the two species, of which one represents the body and the other the blood; but they differ as to the further explanation. Vasquez and Perrone are of opinion that the Mass is a real sacrifice of the present because the separate consecration represents the sacrifice of the cross. But this certainly is not to the point; for it seems impossible that any offering is formally a sacrifice of the present because it represents another sacrifice. Lessius with more followers lays down that it is counted a real sacrifice because the words of consecration of themselves tend towards making an actual separation of the body and blood of the Lord, which separation is nevertheless by accident hindered because Christ being now glorified dies no more. But this, again, cannot be admitted; for, to pass by other reasons, it is not understood how a sacrificing designed and, if one may say so, intended but hindered is sufficient for the nature of a sacrifice. Therefore keeping the common marrow of these opinions, Billot has corrected their defective explanations by teaching that the Mass is a real sacrifice because in the consecration Christ is made present in the external guise of a violent death, inasmuch as His flesh and blood are so shown to our senses by means of the sacramental signs as if they were separated in death.”

Bishop Hedley writes in his book The Holy Eucharist:—

“In order then to understand—as far as we are permitted to understand—where the essential point of the sacrifice lies, and how a real ‘immutation’ can take place and yet the glorified body of Christ be in no way physically affected, we must carefully bear in mind that it is Christ in the Sacrament that is sacrificed, not Christ absolutely.… By the consecration of the bread, the bread is changed into the body of the Lord, the sacred blood, soul and divinity and the whole Christ becoming present at the same time by what is called concomitance, that is, because Christ can no longer be divided, or be without any part of His sacred being. But in the consecration of the chalice, it is not our Lord’s body which is the object of Transubstantiation, but His precious blood. The wine is changed, not into the body, but into the blood. True, the body, soul, and divinity at once become present by concomitance. But the Transubstantiation is an entirely different Transubstantiation.… One’s senses take note of certain visible appearances which one knows to be Christ’s body (and the whole Christ) and others which one knows to be Christ’s blood (also the whole Christ). This is visible; and as there was first the action upon the bread and afterwards on the chalice, the separation of the blood from the body really effected sub speciebus may be well said to be visibly transacted. The second consecration has a plain, visible, and intended relation to the first. Thus the very thing in which the passion is represented carries in its inmost actuality the essentials of a true sacrifice. No one … maintains that our Blessed Lord in His natural glorified state dies again; or even that so much as a tremor of the most delicate of the nerves or tissues of His sacred flesh is caused by the words of consecration. It is sufficient that in His sacramental state and as present under the species He should be the subject of some real occurrence which should congruously represent the blow of the sacrificial knife.… It is very probable that if Vasquez had lived to answer the difficulties raised against his position by men who followed him, he would have made himself a little more explicit. He has been taken to mean that the mere presence on the altar of the body and blood of Christ under the two species, since it is the representation of the Lamb that is slain, is the sacrifice. But it is probable that he did not mean the mere presence, but the presence as brought about by the consecrating act. One thing may represent another thing, and one act may represent another act; and if the matter which has to be represented is precisely the resultant of an action, the representation may be said to stand for the thing, but the representation will then itself include representative action. We cannot conceive that Vasquez would have maintained that the Mass was a mere representation of the cross. The Council of Trent had already defined. By ‘representation,’ therefore, he must have meant the consecrated species not precisely as they lie on the altar, but as the resultant of consecration. That is to say, the host and cup represent the slain Lamb, but it is the host and cup as consecrated, that is, as affected by an action done by the priest. That action is the production of the body, and then separately of the blood, by the words of consecration. And this seems to me to coincide with what I have called the plain Catholic tradition.”

Though not explicitly mentioned, the separate consecration of the two species was probably in view in the phrase “a mystic representation of the blood-shedding of Calvary,” which occurred in a statement of the “Catholic doctrine on the sacrifice of the Mass” in a letter put forth by the Roman Catholic Archbishop and Bishops in England in 1898 under the title A Vindication of the Bull “Apostolicœ Curœ”. This statement is as follows:—

“The Mass, according to Catholic doctrine, is a commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross, for as often as we celebrate it ‘we show the Lord’s death till He come’. At the same time it is not a bare commemoration of that other sacrifice, since it is also itself a true sacrifice in the strict sense of the term. It is a true sacrifice because it has all the essentials of a true sacrifice: its Priest, Jesus Christ, using the ministry of an earthly representative; its Victim, Jesus Christ, truly present under the appearances of bread and wine; its sacrificial offering, the mystic rite of consecration. And it commemorates the sacrifice of the cross because, whilst its Priest is the Priest of Calvary, its Victim the Victim of Calvary, and its mode of offering a mystic representation of the blood-shedding of Calvary, the end also for which it is offered is to carry on the work of Calvary, by pleading for the application of the merits consummated on the cross to the souls of men. It is in this sense that the Mass is propitiatory. To propitiate is to appease the divine wrath by satisfaction offered and to beg mercy and forgiveness for sinners. The sacrifice of the cross is propitiatory in the absolute sense of the word. But the infinite treasure of merit acquired on the cross cannot be diminished or increased by any other sacrifice. It was then offered once and for all, and there is no necessity of repeating it. That plenitude, however, of merit and satisfaction by no means excludes the continual application of such merit and satisfaction by the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass. Thus the sacrifice of the Mass is also propitiatory. And, as according to Catholic doctrine even the dead in Christ are not excluded from the benefits of this sacrifice, we call the Mass ‘a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead’.”

3. The theory of Suarez that the essential point in the Eucharistic sacrifice is rather in what is positive than in what is negative, rather in the presence and presentation of the body and blood of Christ on the altar than in any kind of destruction however mystical, has received powerful advocacy from the very able theologians Joseph Scheeben, who was professor in the seminary of Cologne until his death in 1888, in his monumental treatise Handbook of Catholic Dogmatic Theology, and Dr. Paul Schanz, the Professor of Theology in the University of Tuebingen, in his work The System of the Holy Sacraments of the Catholic Church, which was published in 1893. This view of sacrifice with its elimination of the idea of destruction is adopted in the treatise giving for the most part the teaching of Scheeben in a shortened form entitled A Manual of Catholic Theology, the two volumes of which were published in 1890 and 1898 respectively, by Dr. Joseph Wilhelm and Dr. Thomas Scannell, without excluding the notion of the mystical commemoration of the death of Christ in the separate consecration under the two species. The passages in which Dr. Wilhelm and Dr. Scannell express this wider doctrine of sacrifice and their application of it to the Eucharist are so clear and careful as to justify somewhat lengthy extracts from them.

“Sacrifice is an act of worship in which God is honoured as the Beginning and End of man and of all things by the offering up of a visible creature, which, for this purpose, is submitted to an appropriate transformation by a lawful minister. An internal sacrifice is offered whenever man devotes himself to the service of God by either ‘reforming or giving up’ his life for God (Ps. 50:19). No external sacrifice is perfect without an accompanying internal sacrifice, whereby the soul associates itself with the meaning and object of the external rite.

“1. The object of sacrifice is that of practical religion in general: to acknowledge God as the Beginning and End of man and of all things; that is, to profess in deed our entire dependence on Him, both for existence and for ultimate happiness. Some post-Tridentine theologians have narrowed the idea of sacrifice to mean the expression of God’s dominion over life and death, or of the divine power to dispose of all things, or of the divine majesty as exalted above all; and have restricted its primary object to the atonement for sin.

“2. So, too, the external form of sacrifice—an appropriate transformation of the creature offered—has been limited by Vasquez and later theologians to the ‘transformation by destruction’. Neither historical nor theological grounds can justify such limitations; for instance, the burning of incense, θυσία, which has furnished the Greek name for all sacrifices, is not so much the destruction of the incense as its conversion into ‘an odour of sweetness,’ the symbol of the soul of man transformed by the fire of charity. Similar remarks apply to all sacrifices without exception. In the sacrifice of the Mass, the immutatio, as the fathers technically call the sacrificial act, is not the destruction, but the production of the victim.”

“In Christ’s sacrifice the immutation of the victim is brought about by an internal act of His will.… His death is the source of new life to Himself and mankind. The immutation, therefore, is spiritual, accomplished by the Eternal Spirit of the Sacrificer. This spiritual character is manifest in the glorious resurrection of Christ’s body, and likewise in the Eucharistic sacrifice.”

“The sacrifice of the cross is chief amongst the sacerdotal functions of Christ, because it crowned His work on earth, and laid the foundation of His eternal priesthood in heaven. It alone realises all the aims and objects of the ancient sacrifices.… The sacrifice of the cross is also the central function of Christ’s priesthood, inasmuch as all its other functions are based on this, and are only its consummation or perpetuation. It is virtually continued—not repeated—in heaven, where the sacrificial intention of the Priest and the glorified wounds of the Victim live for ever in the Divine Pontiff. One circumstance alone prevents the heavenly sacrifice from being actually the same as that of the cross: and that is the absence of any real immutation of the victim.… The ‘odour of sweetness’ of the Saviour is His glorified Self ascending into heaven, and as the Lamb slain, standing in the midst of the throne before God, as an eternal sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving.… From His heavenly throne Christ, through His priestly ministers on earth, continually consecrates and sacrifices in His Church, making Himself the sacrifice of the Church, and including the Church in His sacrifice. He thus brings down to earth the perennial sacrifice of heaven in order to apply its merits to mankind, and at the same time enables the Church to offer with Him and through Him a perfect sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving. The Mass, then, like the eternal offering in heaven, completes the sacrifice of the cross by accomplishing its ends; viz. the full participation of mankind in its fruits. Although the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered on earth and through human hands, it is none the less the formal act of Christ Himself as heavenly Priest.… The final consummation of Christ’s sacrifice is the perfect participation in its fruits, in time and in eternity, by those on whose behalf it was offered. The sanctifying graces thus obtained consecrate the faithful with the Holy Ghost, and transform them into God’s holy servants and priests, and make them members of the mystical body of Christ. With Christ they sacrifice and are sacrificed in the universal offering of the Holy City to God.”

“The notion of offering (oblatio, προσφορά) may be taken as the fundamental notion of all sacrifices.… The burning or outpouring of the gifts hands them over to God, and through their acceptance God admits the giver to communion with Him. For the essential character of the sacrificial gift is not its destruction, but its handing over and consecration to God.… The killing necessarily precedes the burning, but the killing is not the sacrifice.… More importance attaches to the blood of the victim which is gathered and poured out at the altar. For, according to ancient ideas, the life, or the soul, is the blood. When, therefore, the blood is offered, the highest that man can give, namely, a soul or a life, is handed over to God.… The pouring out of the blood is the special function of the priest, whereas the killing … may be performed by a layman.… The eating of the victim accepted by God is simply the symbol of the union with God intended by those who offer the sacrifice.… The burning on the altar … was regarded as the means of conveying the victim to God, or, when the fire was kindled from heaven, it was God’s acceptance of the sacrifice. Many of the Hebrew sacrifices may be described as things given to God to secure His favour, or to appease His wrath, or as thank and tribute offerings; but frequently also they meant an act of communion with God, either by means of a feast, which God was supposed to share with His worshippers, or by the renewal of a life-bond in the blood of a sacred victim.… These reasons justify the elimination of the element of destruction, real or equivalent, from the essential constitution of sacrifice in general. With Scheeben and Schanz we revert to the definitions commonly adopted before the time of Vasquez.”

“The Mass is a sacrifice ‘relative to the sacrifice of the cross’.… The relation, external by institution and internal by nature, belongs uniquely to the Eucharistic sacrifice.… The mystical effusion consists in placing the divine body and blood on the altar under distinct and separate species. Of course Christ is wholly present under either species, yet so that the words of consecration which strike our ears, and the species which strike our eyes, convey a first impression (only to be rectified by reason and faith) of a divided presence. Considering the glorified state of the victim on the one hand, and on the other the manner in which the human memory is awakened by sense perceptions, it seems impossible to devise a better commemoration of the death on the cross.… The suspension of the lower life in Christ on the altar [that is, as asserted by Franzelin] is a theological deduction not easily understood; at any rate, it is too dark to throw light upon other dark questions. Again, the state of meat and drink, and all the rest, do not produce in the real victim, that is, Christ glorified, any change for the worst which may be called, or likened to, destruction. Christ dieth no more. The painful efforts of some theologians to inflict at least a semblance of death on the Giver of life, are entirely due to their narrow notion of sacrifice. If we eliminate the ‘change for the worse’ from the notion of ‘victim,’ and replace it by ‘a change for the better,’ we obtain a notion of the sacrificial act which throws new light upon all sacrifices. That we are justified in so doing, has been shown above.”

4. While the opinions thus expressed by Dr. Wilhelm and Dr. Scannell, following Scheeben and Schanz, postulate a very close association of the Eucharistic sacrifice with the sacrifice of our Lord in heaven, they fall short of affirming, though they are not necessarily inconsistent with, characteristic features of the teaching of De Condren and Olier and Thomassin concerning the oneness of the Eucharistic sacrifice with the sacrifice in heaven and the abiding priestly activity of our Lord alike in heaven and on earth. Recent instances of more definite and complete agreement with the French writers of the seventeenth century may be seen in the works of Thalhofer and the Abbé Lepin.

A very complete treatment of this subject occurs in the books The Sacrifice of the Old and the New Covenants and Handbook of Catholic Liturgical Theology by Dr. Valentin Thalhofer, a Bavarian theologian, who had been Professor of Pastoral Theology in the University of Munich, Director of the Munich Seminary, Dean of the Cathedral and Professor in the Seminary at Eichstætt, and died in 1891. In these treatises Thalhofer sets out his interpretation of the sacrifice of Christ, and supports it by lengthy and detailed discussions of the evidence on the subject from Holy Scripture and the writers of the Church. He regards surrender as an essential element in the offering of sacrifice. There was surrender on the cross when our Lord exhibited the outward acts of submission to death and the inward acts of dedication to the will of God the Father. It is shown in the offering of the same sacrifice in heaven as He maintains abidingly the inner submission which led Him to death and presents the marks of the wounds to which that death was due. It is found also in the Eucharist as He sets forth the same sacrifice in the sacramental separation between His body and His blood. From the Eucharistic sacrifice all sacramental grace and forgiveness of sins and sanctification for the present life of the Church are derived. The following quotations from the treatise The Sacrifice of the Old and the New Covenants illustrate his teaching on these points:—

“In His soul, in His will, He retains the wholly willing and obedient renunciatory act of the surrender of His life on earth; and the willing act of His mediation on the cross abides in Him in the form of glory without strife or bitterness.… The inner sacrifice was manifested on the cross in the actual shedding of the blood as a visible surrender of the life of the body in death; the sacrifice of Jesus must be a complete sacrifice, in which both soul and body are included, accomplished throughout the whole Man. That the heavenly sacrifice also relates to the bodily nature of the Lord, that the permanence of the sacrifice of obedience in the soul of Christ must also be manifested somehow in His glorified bodily nature, can be understood of itself; probably the marks of the wounds which according to Scripture and tradition Christ still bears in His body on high in heaven, are to be considered as the visible, bodily manifestation of the one abiding sacrifice in the soul.”

“At the consecration the heavenly High Priest, and with Him His heavenly sacrifice, now enters into the earthly state of time and therefore into the earthly conditions of place; when the words of transformation are spoken, He makes Himself present on the altar after the manner of the separation, in the form of sacrifice, He places on the altar, also in the state of time, essentially the whole identical sacrifice which He once placed on the cross and continually places on the heavenly altar. There is the same Priest of sacrifice as on the cross, there is the same Victim of sacrifice, namely His holy manhood in soul and body, there is the same act of sacrifice really maintained and renewed (reproduzirt) in relation. At the moment of consecration the soul of Jesus is moved by really the same sacrificial obedience and spirit of renunciation as at the time when the Saviour hung on the cross and in the visible shedding of blood accomplished and manifested His sacrificial obedience, as also at the moment of consecration each fibre of the body of Jesus is glowing through and through with really the same devouring sacrificial love as the burning pain that glowed and burnt in all the fibres of the bodily sacrifice hanging on the cross. And that the faithful may be assured, and may so far as is possible have a representation which the senses can discern, that at the consecration there happens what is essentially the same as at the time when the Saviour shed His blood, He is present at the consecration not only under the species of bread but after the manner of the separation. The mystical separation of the flesh and blood in the act of the consecration is the outward form for the invisible act of sacrifice that is identical with the act of sacrifice on the cross, which Christ during the consecration places on the altar, and manifests Himself as the sensible subject of the invisible act of sacrifice, as a proof and testimony. First at the conjunction with the act of sacrifice that is invisible to us, which Christ makes at the consecration, the separation of the species has its whole meaning. When the flesh and blood of Christ are placed on the altar in a sacramental (not physical) separation, the body of Christ is really and now surrendered to the sacrificial death, the blood of Christ is so far shed, that Christ in the act of the consecration effects essentially that same whole sacrificial action which He once accomplished in the sensible surrender of His body to death by means of the shedding of His blood. In the act of the consecration the Saviour exercises in His inner being on the altar essentially the same sacrificial obedience, the same sacrificial love, which He once exercised on the cross in the sacrifice of His body and the shedding of His blood, and in this way He can say by His minister at each holy Mass with literal truth, This is My body, which (even now) is sacrificed; this is My blood, that (even now) is shed. When at the Last Supper Christ consecrated and instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice, He had not yet outwardly sacrificed His body, He had not yet visibly shed His blood; but in His will He had already decreed the sacrifice of His body and the shedding of His blood as God required; and just at the moment when He consecrated He aroused in Himself the intensive act of the sacrifice of His body to death with the shedding of blood, and in this inner act, so far as was then possible, He accomplished the sacrifice of His life, He already actually destroyed it so far as it could come to outward destruction in consequence of that inner act, in obedience to the destruction of His life willed by God He entered on His determined act of will, already there was essentially the destruction of His life, already the sacrifice of His body, the shedding of His blood, so that the Saviour could say with entire conformity to truth, ‘the body which is being given for you, the cup which is being poured out for you’. Since the Saviour could thus actually anticipate the sacrifice of the cross, although it did not yet exist in outward history, it is not in the least inconceivable that, when it has been outwardly accomplished as an historical fact, He can essentially renew or continue (recapituliren oder continuiren) it in His will. Anticipation and renewal (Recapitulation) exist only in their inner relation to the historical, sensible offering of sacrifice on the cross; if this had not followed that inner act of sacrifice which was accomplished at the Last Supper, the latter would have had no value, at least it would not have had the value of an act of sacrifice; just so since the death of Jesus the act of consecration has the value and the meaning of an act of sacrifice only because of its inner relation to that sacrificial death, which as a willing surrender of life it affirms anew and continues (continuirt) and renews (recapitulirt).… In the days of His flesh Christ exercised His eternal priesthood by means of the shedding of His blood and the surrender and offering of His life. At the act of consecration He places on our altars the same sacrificial action of the cross, and manifests Himself therein as the High Priest and Mediator of His Church on earth; He is … the one and only Priest and High Priest of His Church.”

“From the Eucharistic sacrifice flows all the expiatory and sanctifying grace which is ministered by the Church and in the Church in Sacraments and sacramental rites.… The Eucharistic altar of sacrifice is the source of the birthplace of the new life; the vanquishing of death and glorifying are grounded and ministered in Sacraments and blessings. Be it never so impossible to establish the inner relation of the sacrifice to the Sacraments and the sacramental rites in detail and exactly, in general and on the whole it may stand unalterably fast that it is related to them as the source to the streams and brooks, which it feeds, as the beating heart to the veins, by which the life blood runs into all the limbs of the body.”

The teaching of Thalhofer on the Eucharistic sacrifice was the object of a very severe attack from Father Ferdinand Stentrup, a member of the Society of Jesus, a theological professor in the University of Innsbruck. As an advocate of the theory of De Lugo and Franzelin, Stentrup was naturally strongly opposed to the ideas of Thalhofer on the sacrifice in heaven, and he went through Thalhofer’s arguments in order and in detail with a view to refuting them; further, he charged Thalhofer with resuscitating the error, which Stentrup like some older theologians ascribed to Catharinus, of making the Eucharistic sacrifice independent of the sacrifice of the cross and of parallel value and power and application. A great part of the passage on which this last charge was based has been quoted above. It is probable that Stentrup’s hostility to Thalhofer’s teaching led him to an estimate of the meaning of the passage which he would have avoided if he had been more careful to remember the stress which Thalhofer lays on the value of the sacrifice of the cross, and the connection of the Eucharistic sacrifice with it as well as with the sacrifice in heaven.

The defence of the theory of De Condren and Olier closely associating the Eucharistic sacrifice with the sacrifice of our Lord in heaven by the Abbé Lepin, formerly Director of the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Issy near Paris and now Professor in the Seminary at Lyons, occurs in his book The Idea of Sacrifice in the Christian Religion, which was published in 1897. In his view the sacrifice of our Lord cannot be separated from any part of His human life. He was a Priest and a Victim, and He offered sacrifice, when He was conceived in the womb of His holy Mother, during His mortal life, on the cross, in His resurrection, and at His ascension. He now offers an abiding and eternal sacrifice in heaven; and He offers sacrifice on the altar on earth in His Eucharistic life. In spite of all the separate acts involved, there is one sacrifice of the surrender of His manhood to God the Father in His dedication to do the Father’s will.

“It is by His Incarnation that Jesus Christ received His essential characteristic of Mediator between God and man. It is by His Incarnation that He was constituted the supreme Priest, the High Pontiff of the true religion.”

“Being thus consecrated in His Incarnation by the anointing of the Holy Ghost eternal and perfect Priest after the order of Melchizedek, Jesus Christ is also constituted as the Victim of His priesthood.”

“Because He is about to expiate by His blood the sin of man, and to reconcile mankind to God by His death, Jesus Christ is a Victim devoted to be sacrificed at the first moment of His life.… At the first moment of His life … the Saviour offers Himself to promote the glory of His Father by His sufferings and by His death.… Jesus Christ is no sooner Priest and in possession of His Victim than He begins the formal act of His adorable sacrifice.”

“Inaugurated in the womb of Blessed Mary, the sacrifice of the Saviour continues throughout the different parts of His hidden life and His public life.… The oblation of Himself which Jesus made at His entrance into the world, He continues thenceforth without ceasing.”

“From the Agony in the garden to the last breath on the cross Jesus continues His spiritual surrender of atoning worship, uninterrupted since the first moment of the Incarnation, and, as we have seen, inseparable from His holy soul. On the other hand, He does not cease to make to His Father that oblation of Himself which has marked every moment of His life. Lastly, the physical surrender render, realised thus far in the humiliation and sufferings and mortality, continues and is completed in the supreme lowliness of the passion, the bloody sacrifice and death.… There is then, in spite of the novelty of the outward circumstances, the same offering infinitely acceptable to God, which we have seen inaugurated in the most pure womb of the Virgin, and continued without interruption throughout the mortal life of the Saviour. It is ever the same adorable sacrifice, the one and unceasing sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ”

“The sacrifice of Jesus Christ continues during the time when His soul was separated from His body. From the hour when He breathed His last breath to the morning of the resurrection the work of His death really existed.… In the real sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ it is at the resurrection that the consummation of the Victim and the communion with God is fulfilled.… The mystery of the resurrection continues and completes, from an outward point of view, the adorable sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Still more, if we consider attentively the inner side of this great mystery, we shall find everything which is required for the continuation and completion of the real sacrifice. Certainly, the holy manhood of Jesus does not any more undergo an actual expiatory surrender; the time of the actual expiation has passed; the death and suffering and humiliation have no more place in it because it has been wholly glorified in God. The soul of the Saviour, none the less, continues that inner surrender of atoning worship which it has never ceased since the first moment of the Incarnation, and which it can henceforth rest on the infinite merits of the actual and physical surrender, realised during its mortal life. On the other hand, His holy body continues to undergo a kind of surrender, but a surrender new and infinitely honourable, in that it is absorbed by the glory and as it were loses its own nature in the fire of the Godhead.… This holy manhood, thus gloriously surrendered, Jesus, ever Priest, does not cease to offer to His Father.… There is ever then, although in a new condition, the same adorable sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“This perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, consummated in glory, does not cease during the forty days when He still remained on earth. It continues, ever actual, ever infinitely acceptable to God, to the great day of the ascension. Nevertheless, this new mystery completes, from an outward point of view, the work begun by the resurrection, that is to say, the obvious consummation of the Victim, and the manifestation of the communion with God.”

“The ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven fulfils the sacrificial rite of the oblation of the blood, represented in the ancient sacrifices; it completes the manifestation of the consummation of the adorable Victim and also the Communion with God; thereby it brings the sacrifice of the Saviour to its perfection. But, does it also mark the end? Or, does the divine sacrifice continue in heaven?… The sacrifice of Jesus Christ continues eternally in heaven.… On the day of the ascension Jesus Christ, His consummation being completed, entered on the possession of His eternal priesthood.… This unceasing presentation by Jesus Christ of His body marked with the scars of the passion, and of His blood that was shed for us on the cross, is a really sacrificial oblation, the eternal act of a real sacrifice.… In spite of the change in the outward conditions of the Victim, it is ever the same homage of perfect religion rendered by the incarnate Word to His Father. It is ever the same and one sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, infinitely acceptable to the divine majesty.… This is the great and sublime reality of the heavenly sacrifice. All is divine, the Priest, the Victim, the Altar, the Temple.”

“The same Jesus Christ, High Priest, who in heaven fulfils eternally the act of His sacrifice, likewise offers Himself here on earth under the Eucharistic species, presenting to His Father the infinite worship of His holy soul, and the satisfaction, ever real, ever perfect, which He rests on the unceasing oblation of His holy body.… The faith teaches us that Jesus Christ is present whole and complete under the species of bread, whole and complete under the species of wine; and yet His body is represented to us as separated from His blood.… The double consecration reproduces mystically the sacrifice of the Saviour.… Absolute in other respects, the sacrifice of the Mass is also essentially relative to the sacrifice of Calvary, which it renews by a mystical representation.… The inner essence of this sacrifice appears to reside, not exactly in the placing of Jesus Christ under the species, but in His being under the two separate species in representation of the bloody sacrifice of the cross.… The sacrifice of the Mass is ever the one and unceasing sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sacrifice begun on earth from the Incarnation to the ascension; continued, so as never to end, in heaven; brought to our altars in time, while we wait for the blessed eternity. Throughout these three phases, therefore, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is one under the different forms. As expiatory on earth, it was fulfilled in a physical surrender of humiliation and suffering and death, begun at the Incarnation and finished on the cross. In the resurrection and eternally in heaven, it is continued in the consummation of glory, wherein it has the real mark of the expiatory surrender of the past. In the Eucharist, it is perpetuated on earth, through space and time, in an outward real surrender, although without humiliation properly so called and without suffering, yet with a real mark of the former expiatory offering. In other words, the Mass is the sacrifice of heaven brought to the altar by the presence of Jesus Christ under the Eucharistic species, but placed under a particular form which makes it a real sacrifice specially for the Church militant.”

“With Jesus Christ surrendered under the species of bread and wine and marked by the signs of His death our Communion with the adorable Victim must be made here on earth. The Communion is made according to the nature of the offering and the condition of the communicants. In heaven, where the glorious manhood of Christ has no veils to hide its glory from the gaze of the saints, and where the saints themselves are freed from the bondage of the flesh, the Communion is wholly spiritual. On earth, where the faithful are still subject to sense, and where the divine Victim is presented in a state fitted to their condition, the Communion is for the time spiritual and bodily (matérielle).… We do not communicate only with Jesus Christ incarnate; it is also with Jesus Christ sacrificed for our salvation, raised for our justification; we communicate with the Victim, offered and completed, of the real sacrifice.… The Communion of the Eucharist begins to conform our body to the most holy flesh of the Saviour, while we wait for our share in His glorious consummation, of which it now gives us the pledge. Nevertheless, the bodily eating is chiefly for the Communion of the spirit; and the Jesus of the Eucharist comes to the body chiefly to reach the soul.… Wonderful Communion of time while we wait for that of eternity! Communion with Jesus Christ hidden under the species, while we wait for the Communion of heaven which shall be made without concealment or veil! The ancient law had only shadows; the new has the reality together with the figure; in heaven the reality will be unmingled. Here on earth we have the first-fruits; there in heaven we shall have the fulness; on the earth it is a foretaste; the full delight will be in heaven.”