The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments

by E. E. Holmes

CHAPTER VI.

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 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 Agapé, 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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."