Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

by T. W. Allies

For it is impossible, fifthly, to separate the gift of adoption from the Divine Sacrifice, which contains it and imparts it. Wherefore does the Son of the Eternal Father lie upon the altar in the state of death? He cries out aloud there, “Behold I and my children whom God has given Me.” It is precisely out of the act assuming our nature, and out of the act offering that nature to death, that He draws His human family. It is after the detailed account of His sufferings in the 21st Psalm that He concludes with the words which St. Paul has quoted in this connection:[105] “I will declare Thy name to My brethren: in the midst of the Church will I praise Thee.” It is in the act of priesthood that He creates His race. “Because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner has been partaker of them, that through death He might destroy him who had the empire of death.” Thus, “It behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest before God.” And the daily act of His Priesthood thus performed, the unbloody immolation for ever presented before God in the eyes of His people, is the bond and pledge to them of the communicated sonship. They who have the Church’s daily sacrifice have never fallen from the belief of the divine brotherhood, have never substituted for it the natural kinship of fallen man. They have not sunk away from the bond of redemption giving sonship, to the phantom of brotherhood, dispensing with faith, and vainly calling on men to unite in the midst of national enmity, broken belief, and thirst for material enjoyment. The Divine Sacrifice, as it is the instrument, so also it is the guardian of divine adoption, and perpetuates it upon the earth.

There are three parts, so to say, of adoption which are further distinctly contained in the Divine Sacrifice. The first of these is the derivation of spiritual life from the Person of Christ; for here especially is fulfilled what He said of Himself, “The Bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world.” In the act of sacrifice He becomes also the food of His brethren: here He was from the beginning daily; here He is to the end. This is the inmost junction of life with belief, so that the faithful people by its presence attesting belief in the Divine Unity and Trinity, in the Incarnation of the Son of God, in His redemption of the race, in the adoption of man by God, at the same time become partakers of the life which these doctrines declare. The perfection of the divine institution consists in this absolute blending of belief, worship, and practice. The unbelieving Jews strove among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Our Lord answered by establishing a rite on which His Church lives through all the ages, in which He bestows Himself on each believer individually, being as much his as if He was for him alone. Space and time disappear before the Author of life in the act of communicating Himself, and He is the sole Teacher of His Church, in that He alone feeds it with the Divine Food, which is Himself.

But this food is the source of sanctification: as that by which man fell away from God was sin, so that which unites him to God is holiness. It is from the Incarnate Son in the act of sacrifice that this holiness emanates to His people; and the gift of His flesh, the banquet at the sacrifice, dispenses it. No teaching of words could so identify the Person of our Lord with the source of holiness as the bodily act of receiving His flesh. It is the command, “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” expressed in action. This is the perennial fountain of holiness which wells forth in the midst of His Church; and beside it, as subordinate and preparatory, is the perpetual tribunal of penance: one and the other given to meet and efface the perpetual frailties of daily life, first to restore the fallen, and then to join them afresh with the source of holiness.

There is yet another gift consequent upon adoption, which completes as it were the two we have just mentioned. It is that the flesh of our Lord given in the Blessed Sacrament is the pledge and earnest of eternal life. This He has Himself said in the words, “He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” And St. Thomas, in the beautiful conclusion to the grandest of hymns, has summed up numberless comments of the Fathers on these divine words, where he sings—

“Bone Pastor, panis vere,
Jesu nostri miserere,
Tu nos pasce, nos tuere;
Tu nos bona fac videre
In terra viventium:
Tu qui cuncta scis et vales,
Qui nos pascis hic mortales,
Tuos ibi commensales
Cohæredes et sodales
Fac sanctorum civium.”

The Fathers[106] with great zeal insist that the physical Body of Christ in the Eucharist, being one in all the receivers, is a principle of unity of Christ’s mystical Body. St. Augustine especially dwells upon this effect in Christ’s mystical Body, but the effect presupposes the cause, which is that physical Body of Christ received by each.

Take an instance of the first statement, that is, the presence of Christ’s physical Body, in St. Chrysostom. Commenting on the words, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” he says, “Let us learn what is the marvel of the mysteries, what they are, why they were given, and what is their use. We become, He says, one body, members of His flesh and of His blood. Let those who are initiated follow my words. That we may be so, then, not only by charity but in actual fact, let us be fused with that Flesh. For it is done by that Food which He bestowed on us in the desire to show us the longing which He had for us. He mingled Himself with us, and made His Body one mass with us, that we may be one thing, as a body united with its head. This is what Christ did for us, to draw us to closer friendship and to show His own longing for us; He granted those who desired Him, not only to see Him but to touch Him, and to eat Him, and to fix their teeth in His Flesh, to be joined in His embrace, and to satisfy all their longing. Parents often give their children to be nourished by others; I not so, but I nourish you with My own Flesh; I set Myself before you. I wished to become your Brother, I have partaken of flesh and blood for you; again, I give to you that Flesh and Blood whereby I became your kinsman.”[107]

Of the effect proceeding from this cause St. Augustine says, “The whole redeemed city, the assembly and society of the saints, is offered as an universal sacrifice to God by the Great Priest, who also offered Himself in His Passion for us, according to the form of a servant, that we might be the Body of so great a Head. For this form He offered, in this He was offered, because according to this He is Mediator, in this Priest, in this Sacrifice. When, therefore, the Apostle exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice: ‘For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another:’ this is the sacrifice of Christians, many one body in Christ. Which also the Church constantly performs in the sacrifice of the altar, as the faithful know, where it is shown to her that she is offered herself in that which she offers.” As he says a little further on, “Of which thing (that is, Christ being, in the form of a servant, both Priest and Victim) He willed the daily sacrifice of the Church to be the Sacrament; for she being the Body, as He the Head, she learns to offer herself by Him. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have given way.”[108]

Thus, then, the question has been answered how our Lord impressed for ever on the world the double act of His Priesthood, the assumption of human nature to His Divine Person, and the offering of that assumed nature in sacrifice. For whereas He made the bloody sacrifice once for all upon the altar of the cross, He ordered the daily sacrifice of His Church to represent it for ever in the name of His people to God the Father, wherein He immolates Himself without blood. “What then?” says St. Chrysostom; “do we not offer every day? We do offer, but making a commemoration of His death. And this is one sacrifice, and not many. How is it one and not many? Because that was once offered which entered into the Holy of holies. This is the figure of that. For we offer ever the same; not to-day one lamb and another to-morrow, but always the same. So that the sacrifice is one. Otherwise, according to the objection, ‘Since it is offered many times,’ are there many Christs? By no means, but there is one Christ everywhere, complete here and complete there, one Body. As then He, being offered in many places, is one Body and not many bodies, so there is one sacrifice. Our High-Priest is He who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us; that same we offer now which was then offered, which is inconsumable. This is done for a commemoration of that which was then done; for, ‘Do this,’ He says, ‘in commemoration of Me.’ We offer not another sacrifice as the (Jewish) high-priest, but ever the same; or rather we make a commemoration of the sacrifice.”[109]

The one perpetual sacrifice thus instituted in His Church, to be offered from His first to His second coming, carrying in it indissolubly the great truths of His religion, the life and the unity of His people, this is the instrument which He used to impress His High-Priesthood on the world; and He set up the one episcopate as the bearer of the one priesthood. The government of His Church is not an external magistracy, but rests on the mass of worship and doctrine intimately blent together, so that the outward regimen and the inward belief form an indissoluble unity in the daily practice.