IV

The detailed statement and the classification of the evidence make it possible to summarise the teaching of the period of the great councils in regard both to the presence and gift and to the sacrifice in the Eucharist.

1. The thought which runs through all the phraseology of the period is that the Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ. Careful attention to the use of the words “figure” and “symbol” in the early Church and to the general teaching of writers who employ these terms in regard to the Eucharist elicits that such a description of the Eucharistic elements does not indicate that they are regarded as, in the modern sense, simply figurative or symbolical of the body and blood. Consideration of the idea of their heightened efficacy shows that it does not imply that a change in use and power and effect is alone indicated. Those writers who speak of the elements as “symbols,” or as having heightened power, are seen also to believe that they are that which they symbolise and convey. This view of the elements as the body and blood of Christ is connected in different parts of the Church with the act of consecration, whether the crucial moment of this be represented as the recitation of the words of Christ, the invocation of God the Word, the invocation of God the Holy Ghost, or the invocation of the Holy Trinity. Attempts are made to explain the mystery of the presence of Christ’s body and blood. Emphasis is laid in some quarters on the spiritual character of the presence. The parallel to known physical processes is elsewhere insisted on. The bearing of the fact that Christians are the body of Christ by Baptism is pointed out. The difference between the state of the body in this life and its condition after the resurrection is suggested as affording an explanation. On one side the parallel of our Lord’s incarnate life is held to support a belief that the presence of His body and blood in the consecrated Sacrament does not lessen the reality of the bread and the wine; on another side the parallel of the conversion in physical processes tends towards a view which attaches less importance to or ignores the continued existence of the elements. The adoration of our Lord in the Sacrament is referred to by some writers in terms which imply that it was familiar and habitual in the Church.

2. The dedication of life to God is regarded as the true sacrifice of Christians. This sacrificial offering of life has one of its features in sacrificial worship. Thus, in the language specially characteristic of St. Augustine, in the Eucharist the Church offers itself, and Christians offer themselves. But this is only one part of the Eucharistic sacrifice. It is the memory of Christ, the act in which the Church remembers Christ, and in remembering Him presents the memorial of Him to the Father. As the memorial of Him, it is the memorial of every aspect of His human life. Consequently at one moment the stress is laid on the association with His passion and death, at another moment on that with His risen and ascended life. Of the Victim who is offered in His body and blood, that is His manhood, it is equally true to say that He has died and that He is now alive, risen, ascended, a High Priest in heaven. And as to the fathers the idea of sacrifice naturally included communion with God at least as much as propitiation of God, the culmination of the act of sacrifice is spoken of as being in the reception of Communion. These ideas are not found in any systematised or elaborated form. They occur separately rather than correlated. For the most part the Eucharist is simply referred to as a sacrifice as if that way of describing it were a matter of course which needed no explanation. By combining different statements this consistent representation of the Eucharistic sacrifice can be discerned.