One of the most surprising treats our family ever received was a German Christmas cookie called lebkuchen. The spiced glazed cookie is made with honey, nuts, citrus peel, marzipan and, most importantly, oblaten, paper thin wafers. According to the story, monks and nuns in medieval Bavaria are credited with making the first lebkuchen as a way of making good use of old, unconsecrated hosts. Today, German bakers make their own oblaten, but the German-American family who baked the lebkuchen for us used the three-inch hosts commonly used by and for the celebrant at Mass.
And consequently, I must confess, our original reaction was one of shock. Was it not sacrilegious to munch on something that had been made for no other reason than to become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ? Were not these wafers dedicated from their inception for a most sacred purpose and was not using them in a Christmas cookie therefore a profanation?
Little did I know then that my initial shock was a useful stimulus in thinking through the two competing theologies of offertory regarding the Mass. The more recent theology contends that the offertory in the Mass is a mere presentation of the gifts and nothing more; to suggest anything else (that is, that it is a genuine offering to God) is to detract from the unique sacrifice that takes place during the Consecration. The older theology agrees that there is but one sacrifice of the Mass, and that it occurs during the Consecration, but it also maintains that the Offertory Rite is somehow a part of that sacrifice. Specifically, it is the first stage in a three-act sacrifice: preparation and consecration (Offertory), transubstantiation (Canon), and consumption (Holy Communion). In the traditional Roman Rite, understanding the Offertory as the beginning of the sacrifice of the altar is reinforced by its proleptic language (calling the wafer the “Victim” and plain wine the “Chalice of Salvation” before their transubstantiation), and by the rule that anyone who arrives at Mass after the beginning of the Offertory Rite (namely, when the priest removes the chalice veil from the chalice) has missed part of the sacrifice and therefore has not fulfilled his Sunday obligation.
The older theology of offertory is in harmony with the Old Testament portrayals of sacrifice. During their journey to Mount Moriah for what is supposed to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, an ignorant Isaac asks his father: “Behold… fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust?” (Gen. 22, 7) The central sacrificial act of shedding blood is days away from happening, but Isaac is already referring to the creature to be sacrificed as the victim. Similarly, when the people offer one of their livestock to the priests in the Holy Temple for a sacrifice, the animal is already thought of as the victim even though it has not yet been immolated.
Ambiguities in our language make it difficult to appreciate the difference between consecration and transubstantiation. To consecrate is to set apart for divine or sacred use, while to transubstantiate is to change the substance of one thing into another, as when during the Words of Institution bread and wine are turned into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. We refer to this act as “Consecration,” but strictly speaking, the elements are consecrated (set apart for divine use) earlier, during the Offertory. The bread is consecrated when it is offered to God during the Suscipe Sancte Pater, and the wine is consecrated when it is offered during the Offerimus tibi. From that moment on, the bread and wine are sacred and special, even though they are certainly not yet Body and Blood.
To appreciate this distinction, I recommend the lebkuchen litmus test. A host (wafer) can have three modes of existence: 1) mundane or profane, 2) consecrated (in the strict sense of the word as set apart), and 3) transubstantiated, in which case it only retains the appearance of a wafer and is now in fact the glorified flesh of the Risen Christ. Can any of these be used to make lebkuchen?
1) Even in the case where a wafer-host has been manufactured exclusively for use at Mass, and even if the German word oblaten is related to the word “offering,” the wafer nevertheless remains an ordinary, profane object and may therefore be used to make lebkuchen. Indeed, it may be salutary for people to make cookies with such wafers as a way of reminding themselves of the enormous difference between ordinary bread and the miracle of the Eucharist.
2) To use a transubstantiated Host for anything other than Adoration or pious reception by a baptized Catholic in a state of grace is a grave sacrilege.
3) That leaves the case of hosts that have been consecrated during the Offertory Rite but have not been transubstantiated during the Canon. What happens if the celebrant has a heart attack as he is saying the Orate fratres and the Mass is discontinued: can one take the hosts from the altar and make lebkuchen with them? If an expanded edition of the De defectibus Missae is someday issued, I believe that it should answer in the negative. Although not transubstantiated, these hosts have been sacralized, designated as “victims,” and to return them to profane use would be a desecration. They should be used for another Mass or disposed of reverently in the manner of a so-called Consecrated Host.
The more interesting question is whether the same can be said for hosts in the New Mass. On one hand, the prayers do not explicitly offer bread and wine to God (a de facto consecration); on the other, it can be argued that because the prayer formerly known as the Secret is now called the Prayer over What Has Been Offered (Oratio super oblata) and that in so far as a sacrifice is still mentioned in the prayers In animo contrito and the Orate fratres, an offertory (the first stage of sacrifice) is implied. In any event, if the new Offertory Rite is nothing more than the preparation of the gifts, and if the Mass should be discontinued before the Eucharistic Prayer, then perhaps those gifts could be returned to sender and used for cookies, since they were never formally given back to God in the first place.
