THE BLESSED SACRAMENT.
The Blessed Sacrament!--or, as the Prayer Book calls it, "The Holy
Sacrament". This title seems to sum up all the other titles by which
the chief service in the Church is known. These are many. For
instance:--
_The Liturgy_, from the Greek _Leitourgia_,[1] a public service.
_The Mass_, from the Latin _Missa_, dismissal--the word used in the
Latin Liturgy when the people are dismissed,[2] and afterwards applied
to the service itself from which they are dismissed.
_The Eucharist_, from the Greek _Eucharistia_, thanksgiving--the word
used in all the narratives {82} of Institution,[3] and, technically,
the third part of the Eucharistic Service.
_The Breaking of the Bread_, one of the earliest names for the
Sacrament (Acts ii. 42, 1 Cor. x. 16).
_The Holy Sacrifice_, which Christ once offered, and is ever offering.
_The Lord's Supper_ (1 Cor. xii. 10), a name perhaps originally used
for the _Agape_, or love feast, which preceded the Eucharist, and then
given to the Eucharist itself. It is an old English name, used in the
story of St. Anselm's last days, where it is said: "He passed away as
morning was breaking on the Wednesday before _the day of our Lord's
Supper_".
_The Holy Communion_ (1 Cor. x. 16), in which our baptismal union with
Christ is consummated, and which forms a means of union between souls
in the Church Triumphant, at Rest, and on Earth. In it, Christ, God
and Man, is the bond of oneness.
All these, and other aspects of the Sacrament, are comprehended and
gathered up in the name which marks its supremacy,--The Blessed
Sacrament.
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Consider: What it is;
What it does;
How it does it.
(I) WHAT IT IS.
It is the supernatural conjunction of matter and spirit, of Bread and
Wine and of the Holy Ghost. Here, as in Baptism, the "inward and
spiritual" expresses itself through the "outward and visible". Both
must be there. And, notice again. This conjunction is not a
_physical_ conjunction, according to physical laws; nor is it a
spiritual conjunction, according to spiritual laws; it is a Sacramental
conjunction, according to Sacramental laws. As in Baptism, so in the
Blessed Sacrament: the "outward and visible" is, and remains, subject
to natural laws, and the inward and spiritual to spiritual laws; but
the Sacrament itself is under neither natural nor spiritual but
Sacramental laws.
For a perfect Sacrament requires both matter and spirit.[4] If either
is absent, the Sacrament is incomplete.
Thus, the Council of Trent's definition of {84} _Transubstantiation_[5]
seems, as it stands, to spoil the very nature of a Sacrament. It is
the "change of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, of the
whole substance of the wine into the blood of Christ, _only the
appearance_ of bread and wine remaining".
Again, the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation destroys the nature
of the Sacrament. The Lutheran _Formula Concordiae_, e.g., teaches
that "_outside the use the Body of Christ is not present_". Thus it
limits the Presence to the reception, whether by good or bad.
The _Figurative_ view of the Blessed Sacrament {85} destroys the nature
of a Sacrament, making the matter symbolize something which is not
there.
It is safer to take the words of consecration as they stand,
corresponding as they do so literally with the words of Institution,
and simply to say: "This (bread: it is still bread) is My Body" (it is
far more than bread); "this (wine: it is still wine) is My Blood" (it
is far more than wine). Can we get beyond this, in terms and
definitions? Can we say more than that it is a "Sacrament"--The
Blessed Sacrament? And after all, do we wish to do so?
(II) WHAT IT DOES.
Briefly, the Blessed Sacrament does two things; It pleads, and It
feeds. It is the pleading _of_ the one Sacrifice; It is the feeding
_on_ the one Sacrifice.
These two aspects of the one Sacrament are suggested in the two names,
_Altar_ and _Table_.[6] Both words are liturgical. In Western
Liturgies, _Altar_ is the rule, and _Table_ the exception; in Eastern
Liturgies, _Table_ is the rule, and _Altar_ {86} the exception. Both
are, perhaps, embodied in the old name, _God's Board_, of Thomas
Aquinas. Both contain a truth.
_The Altar_.
This, for over 300 years, was the common name for what St. Irenaeus
calls "the Abode of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ". Convocation,
in 1640, decreed: "It is, and may be called, an Altar in that sense in
which the Primitive Church called it an Altar, and in no other". This
sense referred to the offering of what the Liturgy of St. James calls
"the tremendous and unbloody Sacrifice," the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom
"the reasonable and unbloody Sacrifice,"[7] and the Ancient English
Liturgy "a pure offering, an holy offering, an undefiled offering, even
the holy Bread of eternal Life, and the Cup of everlasting Salvation ".
The word Altar, then, tells of the pleading of the Sacrifice of Jesus
Christ. In the words of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to Leo
XIII: "We plead and represent before the Father the Sacrifice of the
Cross"; or in the words of Charles Wesley: "To God it is an {87} Altar
whereon men mystically present unto Him the same Sacrifice, as still
suing for mercy"; or, in the words of Isaac Barrow: "Our Lord hath
offered a well-pleasing Sacrifice for our sins, and doth, at God's
right hand, continually renew it by presenting it unto God, and
interceding with Him for the effect thereof".
The Sacrifice does not, of course, consist in the re-slaying of the
Lamb, but in the offering of the Lamb as it had been slain. It is not
the repetition of the Atonement, but the representation of the
Atonement.[8] We offer on the earthly Altar the same Sacrifice that is
being perpetually offered on the Heavenly Altar. There is only one
Altar, only one Sacrifice, one Eucharist--"one offering, single and
complete". All the combined earthly Altars are but one Altar--the
earthly or visible part of the Heavenly Altar on which He, both Priest
and Victim, offers Himself as the Lamb "as it had been slain". The
Heavenly Altar is, as it were, the centre, and all the earthly Altars
the circumference. We gaze at the Heavenly Altar through the Earthly
Altars. We plead what He pleads; we offer what He offers.
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Thus the Church, with exultation,
Till her Lord returns again,
Shows His Death; His mediation
Validates her worship then,
Pleading the Divine Oblation
Offered on the Cross for men.
And we must remember that in this offering the whole Three Persons in
the Blessed Trinity are at work. We must not in our worship so
concentrate our attention upon the Second Person, as to exclude the
other Persons from our thoughts. Indeed, if one Person is more
prominent than another, it is God the Father. It is to God the Father
that the Sacrifice ascends; it is with Him that we plead on earth that
which God the Son is pleading in Heaven; it is God the Holy Ghost Who
makes our pleadings possible, Who turns the many Jewish Altars into the
one Christian Altar. The _Gloria in Excelsis_ bids us render worship
to all three Persons engaged in this single act.
_The Table_.
The second aspect under consideration is suggested by the word
_Table_--the "Holy Table," as St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Athanasius
call it; "the tremendous Table," or the "Mystic {89} Table," as St.
Chrysostom calls it; "the Lord's Table," or "this Thy Table," as,
following the Easterns, our Prayer Book calls it.
This term emphasizes the Feast-aspect, as "Altar" underlines the
Sacrificial aspect, of the Sacrament. In the "Lord's Supper" we feast
upon the Sacrifice which has already been offered upon the Altar.
"This Thy Table," tells of the Banquet of the Lamb. As St. Thomas puts
it:--
He gave Himself in either kind,
His precious Flesh, His precious Blood:
In Love's own fullness thus designed
Of the whole man to be the Food.
Or, as Dr. Doddridge puts it, in his Sacramental Ave:--
Hail! Sacred Feast, which Jesus makes!
Rich Banquet of His Flesh and Blood!
Thrice happy he, who here partakes
That Sacred Stream, that Heavenly Food.
This is the Prayer-Book aspect, which deals with the "_Administration_
of the Lord's Supper"; which bids us "feed upon Him (not it) in our
hearts by faith," and not by sight; which speaks of the elements as
God's "creatures of Bread and Wine"; which prays, in language of awful
solemnity, that we may worthily "eat His Flesh {90} and drink His
Blood". This is the aspect which speaks of the "means whereby" Christ
communicates Himself to us, implants within us His character, His
virtues, His will;--makes us one with Him, and Himself one with us. By
Sacramental Communion, we "dwell in Him, and He in us"; and this, not
merely as a lovely sentiment, or by means of some beautiful meditation,
but by the real communion of Christ--present without us, and
communicated to us, through the ordained channels.
Hence, in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus is for ever counteracting within
us the effects of the Fall. If the first Adam ruined us through food,
the second Adam will reinstate us through food--and that food nothing
less than Himself. "Feed upon _Him_." But how is all this brought
about?
(III) HOW IT DOES IT.
Once again, nobody knows. The Holy Ghost is the operative power, but
the operation is overshadowed as by the wings of the Dove. It is
enough for us to know what is done, without questioning as to how it is
done. It is enough for us to worship Him in what He does, without {91}
straining to know how He does it--being fully persuaded that, what He
has promised, He is able also to perform.[9] Here, again, we are in
the region of faith, not sight; and reason tells us that faith must be
supreme in its own province. For us, it is enough to say with Queen
Elizabeth:--
_He was the Word that spake it;_
_He took the bread and break it;_
_And what that Word did make it,_
_I do believe and take it._[10]
[1] _Leitos_, public, _ergon_, work.
[2] Either when the service is over, or when those not admissible to
Communion are dismissed. The "Masses" condemned in the thirty-first
Article involved the heresy that Christ was therein offered again by
the Mass Priest to buy souls out of Purgatory at so much per Mass.
[3] E.g. St. Luke xxii. 17. "He took the cup, and eucharized," i.e.
gave thanks.
[4] _Accedit verium ad elementum, et fit Sacramentum_ (St. Augustine).
[5] This definition is really given up now by the best Roman Catholic
theologians. The theory on which Transubstantiation alone is based
(viz. that "substance" is something which exists apart from the
totality of the accidents whereby it is known to us), has now been
generally abandoned. Now, it is universally allowed that "substance is
only a collective name for the sum of all the qualities of matter,
size, colour, weight, taste, and so forth". But, as all these
qualities of bread and wine admittedly remain after consecration, the
substance of the bread and wine must remain too.
The doctrine of Transubstantiation condemned in Article 22, was that of
a material Transubstantiation which taught (and was taught _ex
Cathedra_ by Pope Nicholas II) that Christ's Body was sensibly touched
and broken by the teeth.
[6] "The Altar has respect unto the oblation, the Table to the
participation" (Bishop Cosin).
[7] Cf. Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living," chap. iv. s. 10.
[8] Cf. Bright's "Ancient Collects," p. 144.
[9] Rom. iv. 21.
[10] "These lines," says Malcolm MacColl in his book on "The
Reformation Settlement" (p. 34), "have sometimes been attributed to
Donne; but the balance of evidence is in favour of their Elizabethan
authorship when the Queen was in confinement as Princess Elizabeth.
They are not in the first edition of Donne, and were published for the
first time as his in 1634, thirteen years after his death."
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