Schmemann’s Critique of the West (Part 2): Placing the Lateran Council in Context

The Fourth Lateran Council, from Johannes de Columna o.p., “Mare historiarum” (source)

Last week I summarized Schmemann’s fundamental critique of Western sacramental and liturgical theology. Today I address the question: Did the Fourth Lateran Council give a bad and unpatristic definition of “real” as opposed to “mystical”?

A helpful historical resource for these questions is Fr James O’Connor’s book The Hidden Manna (which will be cited as HM). Although the Fathers did not contrast “reality” with “symbol” using exactly those words, they did contrast the “true” with the “figure.” For example, St Ambrose says:

Now consider which is more excellent, the bread of angels or the Flesh of Christ which is indeed the body of life. That manna was from heaven; this is from above the heavens. … The former was given in umbra; the latter is given in veritate. (HM 37–38)

This is similar to the contrast St. Cyril of Jerusalem draws regarding the “truth” of the oil of Chrismation and the “type” that its Old Testament precursors were. This contrast did not prevent St. Cyril from referring to the Eucharist as a “type” of the body of Christ; it was a helpful contrast, but not a carefully demarcated system of words.

It was Ratramnus of Corbie (d. 868) who first set out a stark opposition between “figure” and “truth,” and on that basis said some rather unclear things about the Eucharist. For example:

Figure is a kind of hiding … of what is meant to be shown. For example, … when Christ in the Gospel says, “I am the living Bread who have come down from heaven”, or when he calls himself the vine and his disciples the branches … all these things say one thing but imply another. Truth is the manifest setting forth of a reality such that it is not hidden by any images or shadows, or, to speak more clearly, it is the setting forth of things in their pure, open, and natural signification, as is the case when one says that Christ was born of the Virgin, suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried. In these cases nothing is hidden by figures that are obscure; the truth of the reality is set forth by the significance of the natural words; nothing other than what is said is to be understood. But in the cases mentioned above [when speaking of “figure”] it is not thus. Substantially the bread is not Christ or the vine Christ or the branches Apostles. Therefore these are a figure. (HM 92)

Berengarius took up the writings of Ratramnus and spoke unclearly in turn. The “Berengarians” were a diverse group according to contemporary report, and one Guitmund, Bishop of Aversa, avers that some of the Berengarians said “there is nothing at all of the Body and Blood of the Lord present in these Sacraments but that they are only umbras et figuras (HM 105). By this point, the original language used to affirm our faith in the Eucharist—the contrast between truth and figure—was being used to deny our faith in the Eucharist.

Lazzaro Baldi, “St Bruno defending the Sacraments against Berengar of Tours at the Council of 1079,” c. 1684 (source)

The East never endured a crisis around the Eucharist parallel to the Western Berengarian crisis (even as the West never endured a crisis around the divinity of the Holy Spirit parallel to the Eastern Macedonian crisis that prompted the insertion of a consecratory epiklesis in the Byzantine rite). Consequently, the East never experienced the weaponization of the venerable patristic “truth”/“figure” contrast. In the West, however, the faith had to be reasserted in terms of a denial that the Eucharist is merely a figure: for if it were, the New Testament Eucharist would not exceed the Old Testament figures of the Eucharist.

To complete the response, however, this simple reassertion of the Patristic contrast was not enough. There is indeed something symbolic about the Eucharist, as St. Cyril seems to indicate. So the West borrowed language from Augustine, language familiar from On Christian Doctrine: the distinction between (mere) “sign” and (full) “reality.” Again, it is worth noting that this distinction hails from one of the great Fathers—even if from a Father held in suspicion by (some in) the East.

In Book IV, Distinction X of his Sentences, Peter Lombard takes up the heresy of those who say that the body of Christ is on the altar in sacramento, id est, in signo, et tantum in signo manducari a nobis (in sacrament, that is, in sign, and only in sign is it eaten by us). Here “figure” has been replaced by “sign,” but it’s the same position we saw in the Berengarians. In response Lombard asserts the Catholic belief that “the true body of Christ is in the sacrament of the altar,” still staying close to the Patristic phrasing, but he also leverages the Augustinian distinction to distinguish between the sacramentum and the res sacramenti (often translated as the “reality of the sacrament”) and says that the res is the body of Christ. Also following Augustine, he says that “the bread is thus called the body of Christ, since it is truly the sacrament of the body of Christ which was placed on the cross.” Here we have “reality” [res] contrasted with “sign,” but (nota bene) in such a way that the Eucharist includes both, in different respects.

At the time of Lombard, no one has yet used the phrase “real presence” in reference to the Eucharist. In fact, the phrase “real presence” does not occur even in the works of St Thomas Aquinas! We’re getting close to that phrase with the res et sacramentum distinction, but we’re not there yet.

So what language does St. Thomas use? In the Summa, he raises the question: “It seems that the body of Christ is not in this sacrament secundum veritatem (according to truth, i.e., in truth), but only secundum figuram or as in signo (according to figure or as [meaning is] in a sign).” As we have seen, this is exactly the language the heretics have used to deny the faith.
 

The Angelic and Eucharistic Doctor (detail from an embroidered banner of St Dominic’s, Newcastle) Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew (source)

In his reply, St. Thomas first goes back to the old Patristic contrast between the Old Law and the New: since the Old Law already contained Christ’s passion in figura, it was necessary that the New Law should have something more, “namely, that it should contain Christ himself, the one who suffered, not only in signification or in figure, but also in the truth of the thing [in rei veritate].” Here we have the Patristic “truth” but with the addition of the word rei [“thing” or “reality”], seemingly to distinguish this “truth” from other ways in which the sacrament could be “true.” St. Thomas goes on to add a more medieval meditation:

Second, this belongs to Christ’s love, out of which for our salvation he assumed a true body of our nature. And because it is the special feature of friendship to live together with friends, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix), he promises us His bodily presence as a reward, saying (Matt. 24, 28): Where the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together. Yet meanwhile in our pilgrimage he does not deprive us of his bodily presence; but unites us with himself in this sacrament through the truth of His body and blood. Hence (John 6, 57) he says: He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him. Hence this sacrament is the sign of supreme charity, and the uplifter of our hope, from such familiar union of Christ with us.

Notice that St. Thomas uses the word “presence,” which is not a major word in the Church Fathers, and we find this word in the phrase “bodily presence.” Taken by itself, “bodily presence” could lead to misunderstanding, but Aquinas rephrases it as a union of Christ with us “through the truth of His body,” thus going back to traditional wording as the final explanation.

Aquinas’ use of “bodily presence” brings us close to what O’Connor claims is the first use of “real presence” in history, namely, Pope Urban IV’s bull Transiturus of 1264, extending the feast of Corpus Christi to the entire Western church. Urban IV says:

This is the memorial most sweet and salvific in which we gratefully recall the memory of our redemption, in which we are drawn from evil, strengthened in good, and secure an increase in virtues and graces, the memorial in which we attain the corporeal presence [corporali praesentia] of the Savior himself. Other things whose memory we keep we embrace spiritually and mentally [spiritu menteque complectimus]: we do not thereby obtain their real presence [realem praesentiam]. However, in this sacramental commemoration of Christ, Jesus Christ is present with us in his proper substance [propria substantia], although under another form. (HM 194)

What does “real presence” mean here? In this text, the term “real presence” is used in parallel with “bodily presence” and with the phrase “present in his proper substance,” in contrast with things present to us in such a way that we can (only) embrace them with our mind or spirit. His point lines up with the second argument quoted above from Aquinas, because Aquinas is speaking in the context of friendship and Urban is speaking in terms of what we “embrace” in a memorial. When we commemorate other things, we embrace them in mind or in spirit, but when we commemorate Christ’s death we embrace Him with the body. (As we know, Urban entrusted Aquinas with composing the office for the feast of Corpus Christi, so he may even have relied on him for some of the text of Transiturus—this possibility cannot be ruled out.)

It seems that the Augustinian res / sacramentum distinction may have prepared the way for Urban’s use of realis praesentia. The obvious meaning of realis praesentia would be a presence “through the res,” and Urban puts this in parallel with corporali praesentia, which seems to be presence through the body itself. Perhaps we are supposed to see this against the background of the common view, expressed by Lombard in the text I quoted above, that the body is the res of the Eucharist. But since the contrast with realis here is not sacramentalis but memories embraced by the mind, the Augustinian language does not completely cover Urban’s usage.

To pull this all together, it seems that the contrast between Old Testament “figure” and New Testament “truth” was a normal way to speak about Christ in the Eucharist from Patristic times through the High Middle Ages. Heretics took up the contrast to say that the Eucharist is but a figure and not the true body, and in response, orthodox thinkers reasserted that the New Testament has the truth and not just a figure; they also worked out new distinctions, including the distinction between “res” and “sacramentum” (“reality” and “sacrament”). The word “presence” does not come up much prior to Urban, although St. Thomas’s reference to “bodily presence” does bring the word in, and his wording is reflected in Urban’s bull. Urban first uses the phrase “real presence” to indicate that Christ’s presence in the sacrament of the altar goes beyond the presence of other things or persons we commemorate in other commemorations, which he characterizes as embraced in mind and spirit. In short: “real” is not contrasted with “fake” but with “mental” or “spiritual.” (He does not use the term “real presence” in the context of the old contrast of figure/sign and truth, so it is hard to know whether he saw the term as helpful for that context.)

Nevertheless, the phrase “real presence” later became the dominant name for this mystery in the West. So dominant is the phrase “real presence” in later theology that translations tend to import it. For example, the Catechism of the Council of Trent quotes St. Hilary, who says, “There is no room for doubt regarding the truth of Christ’s body and blood,” but the TAN translation of the Catechism renders that “regarding the real presence of Christ’s body and blood.” Countless times I have found translations of older texts replacing “truly” with “really.”
 

Aristotle (source)

As an aside, Schmemann is mistaken to attribute a definition of “real” to the Lateran Council. Perhaps there is a concept of reality behind the language of the council, but neither the word “real” nor the word “mystical” come up in the council. I think what Schmemann is objecting to is the very notion of transubstantiation. And how ironic that would be, considering that the Eastern Orthodox Church’s 1672 Synod of Jerusalem clearly taught the doctrine of Eucharistic metaousiosis (that is, change of substance or change of being), which was already taught more commonly under the equally telling expression metastoicheiosis or “change of elements.”

Nor is it legitimate to say one is “merely rejecting” the Aristotelian physics behind the term, for, as Paul VI pointed out, Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident (whatever you wish to name them—the underlying thing and its logically posterior incidental or changeable features) is an inescapable concept in any realist philosophy whatsoever. The only alternatives are the philosophical systems of materialism and idealism. The former is patently absurd, since it can make no room for and give no account of the very concept of itself; and the latter, while defensible on its own terms, is impossible to reconcile either with an orthodox theology of creation or with an orthodox Christology, since it would obliterate the distinction between spirit and flesh, and thus give the lie to (among other things) the constant insistence of St John that the Word was made flesh.

Book Recommendation: Eucharist by Bishop Robert Barron

Eucharist, by Bishop Robert Barron, is an excellent explanation of the importance of the Eucharist as a sacred meal, sacrifice, and the Real Presence of Christ. It is short - a little over 100 pages long - but rich in content. Bishop Barron establishes his arguments by drawing on Salvation History, Church history, and Thomistic philosophy and theology. Throughout, he does so in an accessible style appropriate to a wide readership, one that both assumes the intelligence of the reader yet demands little prior knowledge of formal theology. Without relying on obscure jargon, he explains all his points from first principles, guiding the reader through to the conclusions, without shying away from the most conceptually difficult aspects of eucharistic theology.

As the Second Vatican Council famously told us, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. I propose in light of this that a focus on the Eucharist should be seen, therefore, as both the first and the final lesson of any scheme of catechesis, for it is the illuminating light that gives understanding and meaning to all other Christian teaching and the end to which it is all directed. The Eucharist is not simply the icing on the cake of the Faith, it is the principle that causes the existence of the fundamental matter from which cake and icing alike are formed; and which arranges it in such a way that it delights us. I would recommend this book as a worthy foundational text for such catechesis.

Finally, he explains profoundly and powerfully why full acceptance of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist (aided of course by our best understanding) is so important in giving us the happiness that we all desire in this life.

When I was in the process of conversion to Catholicism in London nearly 30 years ago, the first books that were recommended to me before I began my personal instruction were short texts written by the English priest Msgr Ronald Knox, himself a convert, who died in 1957. These were the Mass in Slow Motion, The Gospel in Slow Motion, The Creed in Slow Motion, and finally The Belief of Catholics. These were foundational to my grasp of the Faith, each was a simple and accessible text that was nevertheless written on the assumption of an intelligent reader who is lacking the basic information, as good as any of this type that I have seen. It seems to me that Bishop Barron’ Eucharist is a good complement to Knox’s instructional booklets, focusing on particularly noteworthy lacks in our times: first, the lack of faith in the Eucharist as sacrifice and as Real Presence, and second, a lack of understanding as to why this sacrificial real presence is at the heart of the Christian Faith.

Barron begins in the introductory chapter with a description of the book (and film) called Babette’s Feast by the Danish author Karen Blixen, because, he says, poets often ‘say it best’. He explains how the different aspects of the Eucharist that he will focus on later on in the book are symbolized within the story of a maid who came into money and sacrificed it all, giving her mistresses, two austere Lutheran sisters, and their guests a sumptuous feast. He refers back to this imagery throughout the book.

One of the great flaws of contemporary instruction in the Faith, often coming from the pulpit but not restricted to it, is to oversimplify difficult topics, or to avoid them altogether. As a result, nearly all people are put off by this patronizing approach, which treats all as though they are too stupid to understand. Nobody likes to be treated as though they are stupid - least of all those of us who are - but all are flattered if they are treated as capable of intelligent thought, even if we are not. It is far better, it strikes me, to assume intelligence and lose a few in your explanations than to lose most by assuming the listener or reader will not understand and trot out trite simplifications. In this text, Bishop Barron, in the manner of the brilliant and natural teacher that he is, tackles theologically difficult ideas without ever resorting, at least without full explanation, to what would be, to many people, overly obscure jargon. Having said that, his use of language is deliberate and precise, and he had me reaching for a dictionary from time to time, which I didn’t mind at all. His chapter detailing the development of Eucharistic theology through centuries will be enlightening to many, I think. Certainly, I learned a great deal about the history of the perception of the Real Presence through this chapter.

As an example, here is a description of how he helps us to understand the principle of transubstantiation; referring to the work of theologian Msgr Robert Sokolowski, Barron writes:

Sokolowski argues that there are three ways to think about the relationship between spirit and matter. According to the first, which he calls ‘Darwinian’, matter is really all that there is, and we call ‘spirit’ is simply an epiphenomenon of matter. In this Darwinian reading, mind, and will, for example, are only refined brain functions.

A second way to understand the relationship between the two realities is what he characterizes as the ‘Aristotelian’. In this view spirit and matter exist more or less side by side and interact with one another in complex ways. Think for instance of the standard view of how the body and soul relate to each other.

But the third model, which Sokolowski calls ‘creationist’ or ‘biblical’ holds to the precedence of spirit over matter. According to this mode of interpretation, the properly spiritual - mind and will - preceded matter and can determine matter according to its purposes. Everything we have said about creation through the word is intelligible only in the context of this third framework.

Problems occur in Eucharistic theology, Sokolowski maintains, when we try to think of the Eucharist in either of the first two frameworks. Within a Darwinian framework, the Real Presence is just so much nonsense for matter is all that there is. Within an Aristotelian framework, the Real Presence comes to be thought of as a sort of inner-worldly change, some new and unprecedented way for finite natures - one spiritual and the other material - to relate to one another. But within the biblical context, things can make a bit more sense, for in this reading, God is not one nature among others, one being within the world, but rather the creator of the world, the ground of all finite things. And this God can relate to matter in a non-competitive way, become present through it, without undermining it. The supreme instance of this non-competitive involvement of God is of course the Incarnation and the Eucharist is nothing but a sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation. Thus God can use the material as a vehicle for his presence without ceasing to be God and without overwhelming the matter he uses. The Eucharist does not involve the supplanting of one fine nature by another - as though a tree becomes a leopard but continues to look and react like a tree - but the non-competitive presence of God within an aspect of the nature he has made. Thus concludes Sokolowski, when the Church speaks of Christ being substantially present in the Eucharist even as the material appearances of bread and wine remain, it is assuming this uniquely biblical perspective on the relation of spirit and matter.

In addition to explaining what the Eucharist is, he goes on, crucially in my opinion, to describe what this means for our lives, that is what happens to us Catholics who take communion as believers. We undergo a supernatural transformation - the partaking of the divine nature - that happens by degrees in this life so that we have, to put it simply, the greatest happiness that anyone can have in this life.

I became a Catholic not so much because the Faith is true - although I believed it to be so; not so much, even, because of the beauty of Catholic culture and the cosmos - although I responded so powerfully to both; but rather because I believed that both of these aspects of the Faith, so intimately bound up with it, indicated that I would be happiest as a Catholic who might be part of the very Truth and the Beauty that drew me into itself. In the years since I have wondered how many Catholics are really aware of what is on offer to them.

Fr Barron wrote of this happiness in just a couple of pages at the end of the book. It is a small proportion of this short book, but I hope people who read it will believe what he says:

Earlier in this chapter, we saw that many of the Church Fathers characterized the Eucharist as food that effectively immortalizes those who consume it. They understood that if Christ is really present in the Eucharistic elements, the one who eats and drinks the Lord’s Body and Blood becomes configured to Christ in a far more than metaphorical way. The Eucharist, they concluded, Christifies and hence eternalizes. Now, again, if the Eucharist were no more than a symbol, this kind of language would be so much nonsense. But if the doctrine of the Real Presence is true, then this literal eternalization of the recipient of communion must be maintained.

But what does this transformation practically entail? It implies that the whole of one’s life - body, psyche, emotions, spirit - becomes ordered to the eternal dimension, to the realm of God. It means that one’s energies and interests, one’s purposes and plans, are lifted out of a purely temporal context and given an entirely new spiritual valence. The Christified person knows that his life is not finally about him but is to be found above and not below. Wealth, pleasure, power, honor, success, titles, degrees, even friendships, and family connections are all relativized as the high adventure of life with God opens up. The eternalized person can say with Paul, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,’ (Gal. 2:20), and ‘Here we have no lasting city,’ (Heb. 13:14).

The paradox is this: such a reconfiguration actually makes such people more rather than less effective and happy in this world. G.K. Chesterton said that when he was an agnostic and was convinced that he could be happy only through the use of this world’s goods, he was actually miserable. But when he realized that he was not meant to be finally satisfied here below - when he was eternalized through the Eucharist - he found, to his infinite surprise, that he became happy...This is why I tell people to be very careful when they approach the Eucharist. Were the elements simply symbols - inventions of our own spiritual creativity and desire - they would pose no particular threat. But since they are the power and presence of God, they will change the one who consumes them. When the communicant says ‘Amen’ and receives the proffered host and chalice, he’d better be prepared to live an eternal life.

The Catholic Christian life well lived is a happy life. That happiness is more authentic, deeper and more permanent than anything on offer to those who do not consume, authentically, the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and it is a happiness that transcends all human suffering. And I really mean the happiness of the sort that all people, regardless of their level of education know, deep down, that they desire - there is no need for nuance, or the depends-what-you-mean-by sophistry that in academic circles so often seems to accompany discussions of this goal in life. It is no-holds-barred happiness.

This is a truth, it seems to me at times, that even pious Catholics hesitate to believe is possible, and so diminish, at best, its realization in their own lives. And if we who are part of the mystical body doubt it, why should any who are outside the Church believe it either? This then is the task of evangelization for Christians: to demonstrate the art of living happily in good times and bad. Those who see such happiness and belief, and to whom we communicate knowledge of its source will, without any exception, convert if they believe it is available to them too..

Bishop Barron’s book cannot in itself transmit such happiness to anyone, but my hope is that it will lead people to the eternal banquet which is its source.

Buy here. Author: Robert Barron, ISBN: 978-1-943243-82-2, 136 pages; Publisher: Word on Fire Institute, Dimensions: 6 x 9

A New Scholarly Work on the History of Transubstantiation

We have just received word about a new book which looks very interesting on the history of Transubstantiation as a theological concept, The Secret History of Transubstantiation: Pulling Back The Veil On The Eucharist, by Fr Christian Kappes, the academic dean at Ss Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Mr William Albrecht, author of the apologetics website Patristic Pillars. The book has been endorsed by His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Zen, Dr Scott Hahn and Dr Robert Fastiggi.

The major chapters are divided as follows:

– Forerunners of Transubstantiation (From Genesis to Revelation in the Jewish and Early Christian Sources)

– Greek Patristic Tradition of Transubstantiation: From its Beginnings to Culmination (From the 3rd to 5th centuries)

– Adoption of Transubstantiation (metousiôsis): A Tradition of Three Churches (From the 5th to 11th centuries)

– The Latin Reception of Transubstantiation (From the 4th to 11th centuries)

– From the Beginnings of Scholasticism to Aquinas and the Definition Of Trent

And here is the authors’ own description of their work: “Jerusalem was the center of the world for early Christians. Anyone who wants to understand the Bible needs to know the mysterious role of Jerusalem and the many symbols and prophecies surrounding her in the Scriptures. The present work’s readability has everyman in mind and thus avoids technicalities and dizzying vocabulary and concepts that cause boredom or confusion. The code or insider vocabulary of the Bible presupposes Christian knowledge of anything from local plants to animals and the Temple on Zion. The reader’s mind will be initiated into every mystery surrounding the Jerusalemite technical term: “transubstantiation,” as witnessed among Christians of the Holy City. The reader will marvel how the Bible constantly refers to it from Genesis through to Revelation. The Bible’s underlying message will never be the same again. Anything from the fiery coals of manna falling from heaven to the fiery Seraph on the manna or frankincense tree all have a role in this intense drama. The authors meticulously trace Biblical and Jerusalemite use of transubstantiation from Antiquity by all the major Churches of ancient Christendom whose witnesses culminate in defining the mystery officially in the 1500s. No significant philosopher or theologian is neglected with new names and sources (never before explored on the topic) now made available in plain English and presented in a readable narrative. This is the final word on the history, origins, and meaning of transubstantiation in the Bible and Church history.”

East-West Disagreements about the Epiclesis and Transubstantiation

Back in February, Hieromonk Enoch published an article entitled “Pre-Schism West Against the Scholastic View of Eucharistic Consecration.” The author weaves together a fabric of half-digested quotations from Western and Eastern authors to argue his claim that it was not the words of institution (Hoc est enim Corpus meum, Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei, etc.) but the Supplices te rogamus prayer that was seen by “pre-Schism” Latins as the prayer that effected the mystery of transubstantiation.

It is certainly true that the Eucharistic Prayer was understood in a more holistic sense by our predecessors who were not yet in the grips of what can be called “neoscholastic reductionism,” but it is certainly going too far to claim that granting a special status to the words of Christ spoken over the elements was a medieval scholastic development.

Ludwig Ott’s ever helpful Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (I shall be referring to the revised edition from Baronius Press, with a corrected translation newly typeset) qualifies the following proposition as sententia certa: “The form of the Eucharist consists in Christ’s Words of institution, uttered at the Consecration” (416). He continues:

While the Greek-Orthodox Church wrongly placed the power of change either in the Epiclesis alone, following after the narrative of the institution, or in the connection of the words of institution with the Epiclesis (Confessio orth. I 107), the Catholic Church adheres firmly to the view that the priest consummates the transubstantiation solely by the uttering of the words of institution.

Ott then cites the Decretum pro Armenis of Florence and the parallel passage of Trent, and makes an argument from the Gospel narrative. He then cites testimonies from Tertullian (“He took bread…and made it into His Body, by speaking: ‘This is my Body,’” Adv. Marc. IV 40), St. Ambrose (“The words of Christ bring about this Sacrament,” De sacr. IV 4,14), and St. John Chrysostom (“The priest stands there and sets up the outward sign, while speaking these words; but the power and the grace are of God. ‘This is my body,’ he says. These words transmute the gifts,” De proditione Judae, Hom. I 6). Implicit testimonies are cited from St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, and Origen; St. John Damascene metnions both the words of institution and the Epiclesis (De fide orth. IV 13).

So, then, what are we to make of the Epiclesis? I find the next bit in Ott especially interesting:

In agreement with Cardinal Bessarion, the words of the Epiclesis are to be taken as referring to the time to which they are related, and not to the time at which they are spoken. That which happens in one single moment in the consecration is liturgically developed and explained in the subsequent words of the Epiclesis. It has only a declaratory, and no consecratory, significance. The view of H. Schell that the Greeks consecrate by the Epiclesis alone, and the Latins by the words of institution alone, must be rejected, since the substance of the Sacraments is not within the disposition of the Church. DH 3556. (417)

Cardinal Basilios Bessarion (1403-1472)

An enlightening discussion of this issue is found in Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s grand commentary on the Summa theologiae, much of which, sadly, has never been translated. For my students in Gaming, Austria, some time ago I produced a translation (available here) of interesting passages in De Eucharistia et Poenitentia. On Tertia Pars, question 78, we find this commentary:

It is clear that the questions that have arisen between Catholics and schismatics concerning the form of consecration and the epiclesis may only now be treated, the questions of the Real Presence and of transubstantiation being presupposed.
       To begin with, we have before our eyes definitions of the Church. The Church has declared that the form of this sacrament are the words of Christ, not the epiclesis (the subsequent prayer, as the Greeks call it). Cf. Denz. 414, 698, 715, 876, 938, 3043, 3035. [1] The Council of Florence (D. 698) says: “The form of this sacrament are the Savior’s words, with which he confected this sacrament; the priest then speaking in persona Christi, confects this sacrament. For by the power of those words the substance of bread is converted into the body of Christ, and the substance of wine into His blood.” ... The Council of Trent (D. 876) says: “By the force of the words [of consecration], the body of Christ is under the appearance of bread and the blood under the appearance of wine.” [See also D. 938 and 949.]
       Innocent IV, in the year 1254, concerning the Greek rite, declares: “The Greeks should be permitted to celebrate Masses at the hour which is according to their own custom, provided that they observe, in the confection or consecration, the very words expressed and handed down by the Lord” (D. 3043). In fact, Pius X, in the year 1910 (D. 3035), condemning doctrine recently defended, declares against certain errors of the Orientals: [in brief, consecration is effected by the words of consecration, not by the epiclesis, which is not strictly necessary]. Denziger notes here that many earlier popes have declared that the epiclesis is not required for consecration, namely Benedict XII (D. 532), Clement VI, Benedict XIII, Benedict XIV and Pius VII.
       From the fourteenth century on, schismatic Greeks say that the Eucharist is confected by the prayers which are poured out after the words “This is my body, This is my blood” have been pronounced, according to their liturgical prayers as follows: “We beseech you, Father, that you send Your spirit over us and over these gifts set before us, and make this bread the precious body of your Son and that which is in the chalice the precious blood of your Son.” To say that this prayer is necessary for consecration is to affirm that the Masses celebrated in the Roman Church are invalid and is, moreover, contrary to the declaration of the Council of Florence (D. 698 and 715). The chief proponents of this error were Cabasilas, Mark of Ephesus, and Simeon of Thessalonica, who were refuted by Cardinal Bessarion in his work De Eucharistia, as well as by Allatius and Arcudius. (Cf. Dict. Théol. Cath., s. v. «Epiclèse», P. Salaville.)

Then Garrigou-Lagrange proceeds to give an account of the liturgical meaning of the epiclesis:

There is a twofold explanation of the meaning of the epiclesis after the words of consecration.
       (1) One explanation is: When it is read after the consecration, as it now is [in the Greek rite], the epiclesis invokes the Holy Spirit, not to effect transubstantiation, which is already accomplished, that is, not so that the bread become the body of Christ, but that it may become this for us, namely, that it may profit the priest and the faithful, especially those who are going to receive communion. In this way speak Vasquez, Bellarmine, Suárez, de Lugo, Billuart, and among the recent authors, Billot. But this explanation does not seem literal enough [i.e., it doesn’t account for the seemingly obvious meaning of the prayer].
       (2) The second explanation, which is more common, was proposed by Cardinal Bessarion. The epiclesis invokes the Holy Spirit exactly inasmuch as the consecration, being a work ad extra, is common to the three divine Persons, and accordingly the Holy Spirit is invoked, so that, with the Father and the Son already having been invoked, He Himself [in unity with them] may bring about transubstantiation. Indeed, this transubstantiation is accomplished in an instant, by the words of consecration already pronounced; but because, by our human speech, all these things cannot be expressed in one and the same instant, “things which are completed in an instant are declared one after another.” In this way speak Bessarion, Bossuet, Ferraris, Cagin, Franzelin, Salaville.

Later, Garrigou notes that a similar principle is at work in the narrative of the Last Supper, where Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and speaks the words: “narration is successive and announces words after facts, when really the words spoken are simultaneous with the facts.” [2]

These two theories, in spite of their superficial disagreement, help us to understand the “moment of consecration” in a non-reductionist sense. Even if there must be a moment after which the real Body or Blood of Our Lord is present and thus deserving of the worship of latreia, as we can extrapolate from the behavior of clergy in every traditional Eucharistic rite [3], nevertheless beings like ourselves, who live, think, and speak in time, must pray in such a way that our anaphoras (and our liturgies as a whole) draw out, step by step as it were, the meaning of mysteries that occur timelessly.

The reason why this kind of temporal disjunction happens is not hard to see. We humans can only speak of an instantaneous coming-to-be in language of change and therefore of measurable duration (consider all the troubles theologians have had to face when speaking of “creation ex nihilo”). Thus, every orthodox Christian liturgy speaks at length of the conversion of the gifts—it calls down the Spirit, recalls or repeats the institution, offers up the gifts to the heavenly Father, and so on (in different sequences for different rites)—but really, these things are occurring simultaneously. This we cannot express with our time-bound language.

This explains why traditional rites grow, over time, in their textual witness to the substance of what is happening: they grow in doctrinal precision, spiritual amplitude, poetic grandeur, and ascetical demands. It would be unworthy of the magnitude of the moment of consecration to treat it cheaply and to think that, having said “the magic words,” we’re pretty close to being done with what we have come to do. The attitude of a true believer is quite the opposite: so great is this moment that it must be surrounded by wall after wall of language, silence, chant, incense, gesture; it must be placed like a mighty jewel in the most exquisite setting; it must be approached by many steps, and these not always audaciously forward-moving, but sometimes circular, hesitant, reiterative.

Thus, so far from supporting a reductionist view of consecration, the position summarized by Garrigou-Lagrange works against it, and in favor of the fullness of expression one finds in the Greek tradition as well as in the undeformed Latin tradition.


NOTES

[1] These are not the most up-to-date Denzinger numbers; they would reflect the edition nearest 1948.

[2] We need not linger here over the issue of whether or not the traditional Roman Rite has or ever had an epiclesis, and whether its absence is anything of a defect. The debate has gone back and forth for a long time. Readers today are likely to encounter it in two authors: Martin Mosebach and Fr. John Hunwicke. Mosebach claims that the Veni Sanctificator of the Offertory is an epiclesis. Hunwicke, having noted that the Roman Canon predates the Macedonian controversy through which the epiclesis entered the Greek liturgy, argues that the Roman Canon rests on a theology of the Father’s omnipotent good pleasure sufficient to account for the transformation of the gifts when He is asked to do so in the Name of His beloved Son (see here for an NLM round-up).

[3] I defend this position in my article “On ‘Pinpointing’ Consecration: A Letter for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.” I also defended this position in the hardest possible case, namely, for an anaphora that seems to lack the words of institution. See my article “Doing and Speaking in the Person of Christ: Eucharistic Form in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 313–79. Br. Ansgar Santogrossi has subjected my arguments to a welcome critique; some portions of this may be found here and here. I am not particularly wedded to a defense of this anaphora. My stated goal was simply to see if any way could be found, on the basis of principles of Thomistic sacramental theology, to explain how transubstantiation might be efficaciously signified and recognized without the words of institution.

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On “Pinpointing” Consecration: A Letter for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

I happened recently upon a letter I had sent in 2007 to a priest with whom I was having an amicable disagreement. It is more than likely that some NLM readers are confronted with similar objections or rude remarks about St. Thomas, the scholastics, and traditional Eucharistic devotion and piety. I offer it today in homage to the Angelic Doctor, who departed to his heavenly reward on this day in the year 1274.

March 1, 2007

Dear Father ———,

Thank you for the conversation we had recently. I’ve been pondering your claim that people who think there is a definite moment of consecration have gotten lost in trivial details and are missing the point, which is, according to you, that “the Eucharist is about our transformation.” Moreover, you expressed concern that any claim about a “moment of consecration” subjects mystery to rational dissection and that it’s more honest to say “we don’t know.” I hope you will not mind if I challenge these views.

People are concerned to know about the moment of consecration for quite legitimate reasons, and certainly not because they have no sense of mystery. After all, some of the most poignant expressions of the conviction that consecration occurs through the “words of institution” are to be found in St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Ambrose, none of whom could even remotely be considered rationalistic. On the contrary, they, with St. Thomas Aquinas, were well-known mystics of the Holy Eucharist.

But they were also practical and pastoral men. They knew that the Lord truly present in His body and blood deserves our inward and outward adoration (latria). Therefore they quite reasonably wondered when they should show such adoration to the gifts on the altar. To do so towards ordinary bread is idolatry. But to fail to do so when the Lord is truly present would be irreverence. As parents know, little children will ask questions like: “Daddy, when does Jesus come to the altar?” “Mommy, why is the priest kneeling now?” “Is the host Jesus yet?” I would submit that these humble, child-like, and yes, “naïve” questions — some of them not very accurate theologically — are not at all displeasing to our Lord; they are “faith seeking understanding.” I believe that Jesus is more pleased by a naïve realism than by sophisticated postconciliar theories that leave us devotionally dry.

In his final encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul II called St. Thomas Aquinas “supreme theologian and impassioned singer of the eucharistic Christ,” summus theologus simulque Christi eucharistici fervidus cantor. We know the beauty of Aquinas’s Corpus Christi hymns and prayers. In his case, it was the very depth of his faith and the intensity of his desire to surrender himself to the mystery with all the force of his powerful intellect that propelled him to formulate such a “scholastic” question as “When does consecration take place? When is it completed or perfected?” And his answer is as serene as it is inherently plausible: when the priest finishes saying the entire formula “This is my body” or “This is my blood.” The reason is that only the entire statement has the meaning that sufficiently signifies what is taking place by divine power. “This is my…” without completion, or merely the words “my body,” would not signify that, but “This is my body” does. By Christ’s institution, these words have power to bring about what they mean to say (or, in the older language, they effect what they signify).

(As an aside, it is clear that if a priest were to die after consecrating the bread alone, the body of Jesus — and concomitantly the blood, soul, and divinity — would be fully present, but the representation of the sacrifice would be imperfect and therefore another priest would have to be called in to consecrate the blood. After all, as Pius XII teaches in Mediator Dei, the fundamental reason for the separate consecrations is to re-present, in a sacramental fashion, the bloody immolation of the Victim on Calvary.)

You were concerned that my interest in “explaining” the Anaphora of Addai and Mari in terms of Thomistic sacramental theology[1] might have been motivated by a reductionism or rationalism that sees itself as capable of “proving” what is and will always remain mysterious. This was absolutely not my intention! Rather, I sought to interpret an unusual anaphora in light of a familiar theological account that is reasonable and hallowed by tradition. My conclusion was that this familiar account did not have to be abandoned, because it has a more profound meaning than most people realize.

I do not believe that speaking of a moment of consecration in any way lessens the mysteriousness of the event; on the contrary, for me at least, it heightens that mysteriousness by dramatically underlining the infinite divine power required to accomplish such a miraculous change, and the quasi-infinite faith it takes to accept it as fact. For me, the Mass has the shape of a mountain in which we climb to the summit and join our Savior on the Cross, to share His life; then we climb down, as it were, to our everyday life in the valley, carrying something of that immense love to everyone we meet. In that sense, the special sacramental presence of Jesus at the heart of the Eucharistic liturgy gives shape and order to the whole. He is not present in just that way on the credence table or on the altar during the Sanctus; He becomes present, and in a definite, priestly, liturgical, ecclesial way, when the gifts are transformed. To me, this speaks volumes about the drama of the divine; there is a narrative, a movement, a climax, and we are then allowed to share in that victorious redemption. God seems to like to paint in bright colors and bold strokes, rather than an indistinguishable haze of grays and browns.

I hope you will not mind a final comment about the example you used, namely, of communion in the hand. You say it makes little difference whether the host touches my hands first or my tongue, because the hands and tongue of a sinner are sinful, while a man with a pure heart has pure hands. But as you well know, there is a phenomenological question here, too: what if kneeling to receive the host on the tongue were more conducive to the devotion of most people and helped to accentuate the seriousness of what they are doing, and what if standing in line to receive on the hand encouraged a more casual, relaxed, and unreflective attitude? Would this not be spiritually and pastorally relevant? Moreover, what if a certain posture had centuries of practice and symbolism behind it, while another was self-consciously new and lacked that benefit? Only a rationalist could ignore such immense aspects of the question.

I believe that St. Thomas, like his patristic predecessors, was not preoccupied with “pinpointing” a miracle, but rather with submitting mind and heart to the mighty mystery that descends, like the flames of Pentecost, upon the altar of sacrifice. Their concern was the concern of the lover who wishes to be maximally attentive to the beloved, the mother who wants to be right there when her baby walks for the first time, the poet who does not wish to miss the sunrise or the sunset. I don’t see it as trivial at all; it shows a sensitivity to what is at stake in the act of adoration. I know that when Jesus comes, I want to be awake and ready to meet him. This is as true for his sacramental advent as for his Second Coming.

I appreciate your taking the time to consider these ideas. I hope the foregoing clarifies what moves me to follow in the footsteps of St. Thomas in regard to Eucharistic consecration.

Sincerely yours, in Christ,

Peter Kwasniewski

NOTE
[1] The letter is referring to my article "Doing and Speaking in the Person of Christ: Eucharistic Form in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari," Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 313–79, available here.

Going Up to Heaven with the Blessed Sacrament (Part II)

(Co-authored with Dr. Jeremy Holmes)

In the first part, we looked at how the Roman Canon and St. Thomas alike seem to bear out the claim that the Eucharist is more our being brought to God than God being brought to us. To go a step further, let us consider the arc of Thomas’s own thinking on the matter. Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell remarks:

In the earlier phase of his thought, Thomas preferred to avoid speaking about a ‘corporal’ presence of Christ in the sacrament, for it appeared to him linked with a ‘localization’, while the presence ‘in loco’ pertained only to the accidents. It is only in the Tertia Pars, several years later, that he will accept speaking of corporal presence, but, as we will see later, in an entirely different sense.[1]

Some pages later, Torrell addresses this “different sense.” In the office of the Blessed Sacrament, St. Thomas

centered the celebration on the mystery of Christ, God and perfect man, entirely contained in the sacrament, to such a point that he does not say: receive the body or the blood of Christ, but indeed: receive Christ (Christus sumitur, or even: Deus sumitur). The notion of presence also begins to be refined, and we intuit what will become the definitive formulation in the Summa: Christ does not become present to us (a ‘localizing’ conception that Thomas continued to discard), it is we whom He renders present to Himself.[2]

Then Torrell cites the corpus of Summa theologiae III, q. 75, a. 1, where St. Thomas gives as the second reason for the Christ’s true presence in the sacrament:

This befits the charity of Christ, out of which he assumed, for our salvation, a true body of our nature. And since what belongs to friendship most of all is dwelling together in a common life, as the Philosopher says (Ethics IX), He promises us His bodily presence as our reward (Matthew 24: “Where the body shall be, there the eagles will be gathered”). Yet meanwhile he has not left us destitute of His bodily presence in this pilgrimage, but by the truth of His body and blood He has joined us to Himself in this sacrament. Hence He says in John 6: “Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” Hence this sacrament is the sign of the very greatest charity and a support of our hope, from such an intimate association of Christ with us.

On this magnificent passage, Torrell comments:

This evocation of hope in connection with the Eucharist does not occur by chance: full of the memory of the Passion, the celebration is entirely turned toward the eschatological achievement, since it is the pledge, the pignus, of future glory. According to Father Gy, who is quite convincing, this displacement of Thomas’s eucharistic theology toward eschatology . . . is entirely in line with his theological and spiritual personality, so deeply marked by a straining toward the vision of God.[3]

Thus the Eucharist is closely connected with the vision of God because in it, in a mystical way, we are already brought into God’s presence, brought before His throne, carried to Him, and embrace Him in the darkness of faith, not yet seeing the Beloved, but full of confidence and trust that He will reveal Himself to us when the fullness of time has come, when the period of trial is over: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone . . . Let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely” (Song of Solomon 2:10-11, 14).

The liturgy of the Roman Rite bears witness to this Thomistic teaching, in the “Supplices te rogamus” of the Roman Canon:

Most humbly we implore Thee, Almighty God, bid these offerings to be brought by the hands of Thy Holy Angel to Thine altar on high, before the face of Thy Divine Majesty; that as many of us as shall receive the most Sacred Body and Blood of Thy Son by partaking thereof from this altar, may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

This prayer, so beautiful and rich, seems to be woven of paradoxes. It asks God to command that the offerings (which are already divine) be brought by the hands of the “angel” (which, as St. Thomas suggests, is Christ himself) to the altar in heaven (which I take to mean: the throne where the Lamb reigns, as in the Apocalypse), so that those who receive the true body and blood from this earthly altar will be filled with the blessings of that heavenly altar. Those who participate in the earthly offering, as represented by the species, will participate in the heavenly offering of the ipse Christus passus—Christ Himself, as having suffered for our sakes—to the Most Holy Trinity. By participating in the Eucharist, the communicant is, like the Victim Himself, brought up to heaven, to the face of the Divine Majesty, by the Angel. Communion is to be re-located at the throne of the Lamb; it is divinization. This is why the sacrament is pignus futurae gloriae, the pledge or earnest of future glory, for that glory is nothing other than to be divinized by the face-to-face vision of God.


NOTES

[1] Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. I: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 131. Torrell refers us to Sent. IV, d. 10, a. 1, ad 4, and Resp. de 36 art., prop. 33: “corpus Christi non est in sacramento ut in loco.”

[2] Ibid., 135.

[3] Ibid., 135–36. See also M.-J. Nicolas, O.P., What is the Eucharist?, 53–55.

Going Up to Heaven with the Blessed Sacrament (Part I)

(Co-authored with Dr. Jeremy Holmes)

St. Thomas Aquinas

The mystery of the Eucharist is so unlike anything else we experience that we struggle to find language to describe it. A venerable tradition speaks of Jesus descending to the altar at the consecration to become present among us. But even so pious a way of speaking has sometimes caused trouble. The Benedictine monk Guitmund, a classmate of St. Anselm’s writing in the eleventh century, reports that the heretic Berengar of Tours took it as an occasion to attack the doctrine of the real presence:

To this day St. Peter is a stumbling block to Berengar, saying of the Lord, “whom heaven must receive until the time of the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21). If he must be received by heaven until the end, Berengar says, then he never leaves heaven such that he could be detained on earth at some time.[1]

Although Guitmund points out that Jesus reigns in heaven rather than being incarcerated there as prisoner, he doesn’t conclude that Jesus in fact leaves heaven:

But far be it from the prudence of Christians to say that Christ is sacrificed on earth, or eaten, in such a way that in the meantime he necessarily abandons heaven. For he is entire in heaven, while his entire body is truly eaten on earth.[2]

Guitmond’s instinct is surely correct: Christ does not depart from heaven to descend on the altar every time a Mass is said anywhere on earth. But how, then, are we to describe his truly coming to be among us? The honor of advancing our Eucharistic language remained for the scholastic theologians, using Aristotelian texts that came to Europe after Guitmond’s time. And the pinnacle of the scholastic effort came in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Thomas’s work was technical but ultimately fruitful for piety. He frequently made use of a distinction between a “real” relation and a “logical” relation (also known as a relation of reason). A real relation is one in which two realities stand to each other in such a way that when one changes, the other also changes. For example, if I press on an apple, the apple returns the favor by resisting my pressure; if I eat the apple, not only is the apple changed, but I, too, am changed by adding the apple to my substance. But things are different when we speak God’s relation to the world. Being absolutely unchanging and unchangeable, God is not metaphysically bound to any creature in such a way that a change in the creature causes a change in Him.

Thus St. Thomas would say God has a “logical” relation to the creature, namely, the relation of a perfect cause (altogether in actuality) to an imperfect effect (in potency to His causality). All the change that God causes is therefore located in the creature, not in the Creator. In fact, God is called “Creator” because of a dependency that creatures have on Him, not because He changed when He created. On the other hand, the creature, which depends entirely on God for anything it is or does, is really (i.e., in its very being) related to Him. Thus we have a lop-sided relationship: the creature could not exist for a moment without God causing it to do so, whereas God depends in no way on the existence of any creature.

St. Thomas sometimes expresses the doctrine of transubstantiation in terms of the relation which the Eucharistic species acquire to the body of Christ. On the one hand, something happens to the being of the bread and wine at the consecration: the species acquire some real relation to Christ’s body, such that Christ is substantially present under them, although we do not know what exactly that relation is because there is nothing else like it in the created universe. On the other hand, since acquiring a real relation requires a change in the thing related, it would seem that Christ’s glorified body does not acquire a real relation to the species, despite the fact that the species acquire a real relation to it. If his glorified body acquired a real relation to the Eucharistic species, we would have to say that Christ’s body is somehow impinged upon and affected by all the innumerable consecrations which occur every day. The relation between Christ and the Eucharistic species is real in only one direction.

Nevertheless, as St. Thomas shows in the case of the word creator, to say that a relation is only real in one direction does not make the relation in any “fake” or unimportant. The “logical” relation between the glorified Body of Christ in heaven and the sacramental species parallels exactly the logical relation of God vis-à-vis creation and re-creation or the justification of sinners, as well as the relation between the divine and human natures in Christ. God is in no way changed when he creates, and yet nothing could be more real or important than our dependence on him as creatures. At the moment of the Incarnation, it is not the Eternal Word who acquires something new but a human nature that changes, being assumed to the Person of the Son to subsist in Him; and yet nothing could be more real or important than the fact that Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God. The point can be illustrated at a lower level by a physical analogy: the sun does not become less bright or warm when another flower comes under its light, and yet the flower’s entire dependence on the sun is the chief fact of its life. In a parallel way, the glorified body of Christ is not moved or changed at the consecration, and yet the species of bread and wine are really and truly changed such that when we touch the species of bread or wine we touch the body of God.

The New Jerusalem (14th cent. tapestry)

Now if our speculation is right on this matter, it seems less true to speak of Christ descending to the altar than to speak of us—via the species—ascending to the heavenly temple. The metaphysical movement is upwards. This should not be taken as a disparagement of the age-old way of speaking about Christ coming into our midst, but rather, as an emphasis on another part of the tradition, which sees the Mass as a joining-in with the perpetual heavenly Mass, from the Sanctus when we lift up our hearts and sing with the angels, to the invitation “Ecce Agnus Dei” when we are invited to partake of the Lamb who reigns in the City of God, our faint participation in what the angels enjoy in heaven. The sacramental species become, so to speak, a miraculous portal which pulls us upwards and inwards—a small rent in the veil, through which we can peer into glory.

Both St. Thomas and the Roman Canon itself seem to bear out the claim that the Eucharist is more our being brought to God than God being brought to us. Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell notes that St. Thomas’s office for Corpus Christi conspicuously lacks the vocabulary of praesentia corporalis which is strong in Bonaventure, Peter of Tarentaise, and the bull Transiturus. Rather, he speaks of “the ineffable mode of the divine presence in the visible sacrament” (Matins).

(Part II will appear on Thursday, the Feast of Corpus Christi.)

[1] Guitmund, De corporis et sanguinis Jesu Christi veritate in Eucharistia, PL 149:1466.

[2] Ibid.