We are looking at a section from the Canon of the Mass each week, to learn what the ‘law of praying’ has to teach us about what we believe. You can find the previous posts in this series in our reflections archive.

Therefore, O Lord,
as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion,
the Resurrection from the dead,
and the glorious Ascension into heaven
of Christ, your Son, our Lord,
we, your servants and your holy people,
offer to your glorious majesty
from the gifts that you have given us,
this pure victim,
this holy victim,
this spotless victim,
the holy Bread of eternal life
and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.

As we saw from the consecration, the Mass makes Christ’s Passion and Death present through the apparent separation of his Body and his Blood. But the Mass is more than a symbol. Christ is in heaven. Wherever he is, that place becomes heaven. Now that he is on the altar, it is as if we too stand with him in heaven. And we see history from God’s perspective. All of time is present to us. And so not only do we have a symbol of the Crucifixion before us, but we are, ourselves, present at the foot of the Cross, through this mystery. We are present at all those events throughout time, but especially those most important events in the history of our salvation. And we are present at the empty tomb as Christ rises from the dead. We are there watching Christ ascend into heaven.

We speak of Christ as a ‘victim’ here not as we hear it used by the police, but in its original sense of a sacrificial animal. Which prepares us to recall those sacrifices in the Old Testament that have foreshadowed Christ’s own sacrifice.

Be pleased to look upon these offerings
with a serene and kindly countenance,
and to accept them,
as once you were pleased to accept
the gifts of your servant Abel the just,
the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith,
and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek,
a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.

Three sacrifices are mentioned, but not those ordered in the Law of Moses, like the Passover lamb. All three are found in Genesis, at the very beginning of salvation history. Which shows us that, from the very beginning, God knew what he would do to save us, and was already helping us to understand Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.

Cain and Abel both offered sacrifices to God. Cain offered ‘fruit of the earth’, while Abel sacrificed lambs. Abel offered a sacrifice acceptable to God where his brother Cain did not. What made his sacrifice acceptable was not God’s dislike for vegetarians, but the spirit in which each brother made his sacrifice. Abel was just, but Cain revealed the evil inside him when he gave into jealousy and murdered his brother. And so Abel gave us that first hint of a just man who offered a perfect sacrifice, and who would be killed for no reason other than that his spirit was perfectly united to God (Genesis 4).

Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22). ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,’ he was told, preparing us for another Son, only begotten and beloved of his Father, who would also climb a mountain to offer himself in sacrifice, carrying on his own back the wood he was to be sacrificed on. God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac, but we are told that it was because of his faith in God’s power to give life even to the dead that he was willing to do so (Hebrews 11). Christ’s willingness to give himself entirely to God surpasses the obedience even of Abraham and his son Isaac. And it is through his obedience that God’s ability to give life to the dead was demonstrated.

Abel and Abraham are some of the better known figures from the scriptures. But Melchizedek is not often spoken about. And that might be because he generally creates more questions than he answers.

Melchizedek appears without any introduction. Abraham is on his way home after winning a great military victory. Melchizedek offers a sacrifice and blesses Abraham, so Abraham gives him a tenth of everything he won in battle. But that creates a mystery. ’It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior’ (Hebrews 7:7), so who could this figure be, who is greater than Abraham? No one is greater than Abraham, surely? And why does Abraham give him a tithe of his goods — the priestly portion?

Melchizedek then disappears from scripture as quickly as he appeared, until a brief mention in Psalm 109, where the Lord swears an oath to the Messiah: ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’ For the first time, Melchizedek’s eternal priesthood is linked to the Messiah. And then, once again, Melchizedek disappears… until the New Testament. Finally, all is unpacked and explained for us in Hebrews.

‘He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace.’ (Hebrews 7:2) Can we think of another king of righteousness, a prince of peace, who is also a high priest, who offers sacrifice in Salem (known later as Jerusalem)? Everyone in Genesis is introduced by some kind of genealogy or description of his parents. But Melchizedek is not. ‘He is without father or mother or genealogy,’ Hebrews tells us and therefore ‘has neither beginning of days nor end of life.’ Can we think of a kingly, high priest of peace and righteousness, born before all ages and whose kingdom will have no end, who offers sacrifice in Jerusalem?

All of this does, of course, point to Jesus, but so far this foreshadowing hasn’t taught us very much. Abraham met someone who foreshadowed Jesus. So what? The key is what he sacrificed. 

‘And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High.’ (Genesis 14:18)

Melchizedek doesn’t foreshadow Christ’s righteousness (as Abel) or his perfect obedience (as Abraham), but the means by which that sacrifice would be continued for the rest of time: under the forms of bread and wine. God had people looking forward for thousands of years in expectant hope of the great mysteries we now celebrate and can encounter every day.

We are looking at a section from the Canon of the Mass each week, to learn what the ‘law of praying’ has to teach us about what we believe. You can find the previous posts in this series in our reflections archive.

On the day before he was to suffer,
he took bread in his holy and venerable hands,
and with eyes raised to heaven
to you, O God, his almighty Father,
giving you thanks, he said the blessing,
broke the bread
and gave it to his disciples…

Just as we begin to reach those pivotal words of the Canon, we have to pause. Because we are looking forward to the consecration itself with so much excitement, we might ignore the profound point being made in what we have just said. If we were to look for these words in the scriptures, we wouldn’t find them exactly. This is not simply an account of Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, but it blends in also elements from the feeding of the 5000. This shows us how the early Church read that miracle, where the Apostles distributed miraculous food to the crowds, food that came from Christ himself and that never ran out, even though all ate as much as they wanted. That event was understood to foreshadow the far greater miracle of Holy Communion.

During this most sacred part of the Mass, we also stop asking God for anything. It makes it clear that God is not responding to our cleverness. However beautiful or profound the rest of the words of our prayer may have been up to this point, at the heart of the Mass is simple obedience to Our Lord’s instruction to ‘Do this’. We don’t bring about the consecration because we impress God with our words. God brings it about when we do what he told us to.

And what exactly did he tell us to do? You might wonder why it is that the priest looks up as he says ‘with eyes raised to heaven’, but when he says ‘broke the bread’, the priest doesn’t break the bread he is holding. When Christ said ‘Do this’, clearly he did not mean ‘recreate this exactly’. We’re not taking part in a historical reenactment. We don’t require the priest and congregation to recline around a low table, to celebrate Mass in an upper room in Jerusalem, to speak in Aramaic and Hebrew, or to dress as first century Jewish men. Those who argue that the Mass should resemble the Last Supper exactly have missed the point, and are trying to do something impossible. What is possible — what is essential — is to take bread and wine, to consecrate them using the words Christ gave us, to offer his Body and Blood in sacrifice, and to receive it in Holy Communion.

The words of Our Lord that follow don’t match any of the biblical accounts exactly. It might be that they are part of an independent oral tradition that handed down these words of Christ from the Last Supper, but it is also clear that we continue to draw together references from many parts of the scriptures, stitching them together into a whole.

…saying:
Take this, all of you, and eat of it,
for this is my Body,
which will be given up for you.
In a similar way, when supper was ended,
he took this precious chalice
in his holy and venerable hands,
and once more giving you thanks, he said the blessing
and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying:
Take this, all of you, and drink from it,
for this is the chalice of my Blood,
the Blood of the new and eternal covenant,
which will be poured out for you and for many
for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in memory of me.
The mystery of faith.

These are the words at the heart of the Mass, the ‘words of consecration’. Before this moment, we have only bread and wine on the altar. From this moment on, there is on the altar Jesus Christ himself, present under the appearances of bread and wine. To mark the change, the priest raises the Host and the Chalice for all to see and adore, and genuflects himself in adoration.

This miracle we call ‘transubstantiation’: a change of the underlying substance of what the bread and wine are, without changing any of their external appearances. There is no change perceptible to the senses, and yet the bread and wine are bread and wine no more.

Bread and wine are consecrated separately, reminding us of the separation of Christ’s Body and Blood on the Cross. If a person’s blood is separated from his body, then he dies. So this apparent separation represents Christ’s death on the Cross. However, Christ is no longer dead. ‘For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.’ (Romans 6:9) Therefore, wherever his Body is, there too is his Blood, and the two can never be separated again.

In a similar way, the separation of body and soul is precisely what we mean by death. And so Christ’s Soul must also be wherever his Body and Blood are, and can never be separated from them. And ever since the moment of the Incarnation, when the Eternal Word, the Son of God, become man, he joined his Divine Nature inseparably to that human soul. So that after these words of consecration, whether we speak of what still has the appearance of bread, or what has the appearance of wine, they are each of them Jesus Christ himself, whole and entire, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, as the traditional definition of transubstantiation expresses it.

On that altar is found something more precious than anything else in the world. Indeed, St Peter tells us that the ‘Precious Blood of Christ’ is far more valuable than anything perishable like silver and gold (1 Peter 1:18). It is enough to ransom the whole world. What lies on that altar, what is contained in that chalice, is worth more than the entire universe. If we consider how carefully we would handle a priceless work of art that someone placed into our hands, how much more care should we take in handling and approaching that which is worth more than all those other treasures put together?

Christ uses words that are so simple, actions that are so simple, even bread and wine — everyday essentials in the ancient world — which are so simple and easily available, to make the greatest mystery ever encountered by man easily accessible. He makes himself present on Catholic altars across the world every day. Our response to this great mystery hidden under simple forms must also be simple. This moment of the Mass, when Christ becomes present among us, must be for us no only the focal point of the Mass, but the focus of our week — of each day if possible — and of our entire lives.

We are looking at a section from the Canon of the Mass each week, to learn what the ‘law of praying’ has to teach us about what we believe. You can find the previous posts in this series in our reflections archive.

Therefore, Lord, we pray:
graciously accept this oblation of our service,
that of your whole family;
order our days in your peace,
and command that we be delivered from eternal damnation
and counted among the flock of those you have chosen.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Roman way of praying draws on very ancient Roman ways of speaking to God. A covenant is a legal contract. The New and Eternal Covenant that the priest is taking part in is a legal exchange between the Church and God — and therefore there are hints of legal terminology as we form our prayer. This ‘therefore’ is not the first we have seen in our prayer so far. We are building an argument. This ‘therefore’ follows on, but from what? We have already seen that because we are in communion with the Pope and the Bishop therefore we are members of the Church founded by Christ. And because we are members of his Church therefore we know we are in communion with the saints in heaven. And because we are in communion with the Church on earth and in heaven therefore we have the confidence to pray…

Therefore, we ask God to accept the offering of our service (an ‘oblation’ is simply an ‘offering’), which is Pope St Leo the Great’s rather fancy way of saying, ‘accept the offering we make of ourselves, your servants’. We unite ourselves to Christ as he offers himself to the Father. We are reminded that the Church is a family. We ask for some rather obviously good things for that family, including that we be numbered among the sheep rather than the goats (Matt. 25). But if anything, this section builds suspense. It’s like the deep breath before plunging underwater, since things are now about to get really serious.

Be pleased, O God, we pray,
to bless, acknowledge,
and approve this offering in every respect;
make it spiritual and acceptable,
so that it may become for us
the Body and Blood of your most beloved Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we really want to get the sense of this section, we might translate the beginning of this paragraph as follows:

Which aforesaid offering, we ask you, O God, in every respect:
deign to make blessed, written-up [adscriptam], ratified [ratam], rational and acceptable…

Just as a legal document covers every base so as to close off every loophole, we leave no room for misunderstanding in what we are asking from God. This is not the first time we have had this kind of repetitive pattern and it certainly won’t be the last. The Canon is filled with them. Here, we insist that God makes note of our sacrifice on a list. He must write it down so that there’s a record that we were here and we fulfilled our duties towards him. We’re not taking any chances! We want it ratified too — we want to make sure that what we do is valid and approved. And we ask him to make it ‘reasonable’ or ‘rational’. We are asking him to make sure our offering has a rational soul — that is, a human soul. This is not the sacrifice of a dead irrational animal like the sacrifices of the Temple. It is not even the offering of Christ’s dead body, separated from his rational soul. Our bread and wine are about to become the living Body and Blood of Christ, united forever with his rational human soul, united forever with the Logos, the eternal Word.

This is not your everyday language of the Roman street. In fact, this use of legalism, repetition and rhetoric is an echo of pre-Christian Roman prayer. It shows us that the first Christians did not in fact speak to God in their normal Latin, but from the earliest centuries knew that they needed a sacred language to remind them they were doing something special. To create this sacred language, they borrowed heavily from even more ancient ways of speaking.

The very ancient Romans thought that the gods were constantly trying to catch them out, much like a genie in a story who finds the loophole in a person’s wish and grants them something they definitely didn’t want. So the Romans were terribly precise and legalistic when they spoke to their gods, and made sure they left nothing out. Now, we do not believe that God deals like that with us. We are talking here to our loving Father, who wants to give us fish, eggs and bread even when we ask for snakes, stones and scorpions (cf. Luke 11). But this way of thinking led to a way of praying that we have inherited. It has become part of our God talk. Just as we don’t think God listens to us more if we call him ‘thou’, and yet we still like to because it’s helpful for us to have a sacred language, so we don’t think that God will catch us out if we forget to ask for the right thing in our prayer. We speak in this way because we find it helpful. It puts us in the right frame of mind for speaking to God, and it means we can be confident that we have asked God for everything that we should.