Separate notice may be taken of a theory of the Eucharistic sacrifice which was suggested by the Spanish Jesuit theologian Cardinal Cienfuegos, who was born in 1657 and died in 1739. In his treatise entitled The Life Hidden or Veiled by the Sacramental Species Cardinal Cienfuegos followed the opinion of some earlier theologians that, while our Lord does not use His bodily senses in the Eucharist by any natural power, nevertheless He does so act supernaturally. Upon this opinion he built up a theory that in the Eucharistic sacrifice our Lord offers this life of the senses and suspends these vital actions until the mystical representation of the resurrection in the commixture of the consecrated elements at the placing of a fragment of the host in the chalice; and that this suspension constitutes the sacrifice.
“This life Christ the Lord Himself as High Priest alone sacrifices and offers inasmuch as by the sway of His human will He suspends or removes the vital actions miraculously produced, and determines not to elicit any further action or to use the instrumental power of producing them according to His will, until by a kind of resurrection in the commemoration of the resurrection in the commixture of the body and the blood He resumes the actual life and free use of instrumental power.”
The usual judgment on this theory is probably accurately expressed by Cardinal Franzelin when he says that the prudent theologian will beware of it.