Sacrament

And so the community gathers, acknowledging father, son, and holy spirit. It gathers for prayer, and to read the scriptures – making Christ present once again – and to break bread in the ceremony Jesus himself instituted, when he said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. I cannot guarantee what you will find in your local anglican (Church of England / Episcopalian) or protestant or free church, but in the local Roman Catholic church, in your own town, within a few miles or less, a diverse community gathers weekly, and in smaller numbers daily, for the mass, as here described.

On the night before his crucifixion, at the event which has become known as The Last Supper, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples, saying ‘Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me’.²⁹⁰ Similarly after the meal Jesus took a cup of wine, gave thanks, and said ‘Drink this all of you: this cup is the new covenant in my blood,’ or even ‘this is my blood’ – my life-blood.²⁹¹

The mass reproduces the entire sequence, ‘in remembrance’: the taking, the giving thanks, the breaking of the bread, and the giving of the bread and the cup. Bread and wine are placed upon the altar; the Great Thanksgiving or Eucharistic Prayer is offered, the text varying according to the calendar; the bread is broken; and the bread and the cup are given.²⁹²

The placing of the bread and the wine upon the altar retains the symbolism of sacrificial offering: self-giving and thanksgiving expressed through the offering of gifts; the offering of the self to Yahweh Elohim, to life itself. These simple gifts of bread and wine will be returned to us as the body and the life-blood of Christ. In the midst of this transaction, they represent the sacrifice of Jesus himself.

The Great Thanksgiving recalls the gifts and works of God – with variations according to the seasons of the church calendar – and makes explicit the connection between the original Last Supper and this event. Recalling the words ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ and ‘do this in remembrance of me,’ it affirms the faith of the church that in every mass the gifts of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation is a doctrine much maligned. It does not assert any change in the molecules or atoms of the bread and wine, or in their overall appearance to the five senses, which Aquinas calls their form. The term substance in this context relates to the Platonic notion that any existing thing has a true essence, a true nature, invisible to our limited senses. This true nature stands behind, or upholds, the form we observe; literally stands under it, as its sub-stance. It is this sub-stance which changes. The atoms, molecules and form of the bread and wine are unchanged, but their sub-stance, their true nature, their invisible essence, become the broken body and poured-out life-blood of Christ, as the community does what Jesus did, and says what Jesus said, in remembrance of him.

In sharing one bread and one cup, the community is united; in the sacramental presence of Christ – as sub-stance to the forms of bread and wine – the community is united also with the crucified and risen Christ, who becomes the nourishment, the life-blood, the bread for the journey, both for the community and for each individual within it.

The event as a whole is heavy with imagery. Christ is the host, as at the Last Supper, and also the meal, ‘this is my body, this is my blood’. Christ is both the priest, making the offering, and the sacrificial victim who is offered. He is both broken, in the broken bread and the poured-out wine, and alive, as the risen and life-giving one. He is the one remembered, ‘do this in remembrance of me’, and is also present, in the reading of the gospels, the bread and wine, and the community itself. There is the gathering around one table for a meal – after the example of Jesus himself – and also a holy exchange of gifts: bread and wine exchanged for God himself. The bread and the cup assert the power of the resurrection: pain and death and separation converted into life and beauty and community. The mass, like all the sacraments, represents God made tangibly present in the ordinary elements of our physical world, an ongoing incarnation. The priest declares, ‘This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world; happy are those who are called to his supper.’²⁹³ The people respond, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’²⁹⁴

Baptism – for children or adults – is the mark of membership of this community, with confirmation the independent declaration for those coming of age in a household where they were previously baptised as infants.²⁹⁵ The sacrament of holy order then sets apart some to serve as deacons, priests and bishops. This is not – or should not be – a declaration of special holiness or privilege: the sacrament of holy order applies to the whole church; it is the way the whole church chooses to organise or order itself.

There are issues about whether the current regime is too hierarchical in its structures, too authoritarian in its exercise of power, unnecessarily discriminatory in its holy order, too sure of itself in its supposed infallibility, too proud in regard to other gatherings of the faithful outside its own structures²⁹⁶ – but perhaps most significantly for the newcomer it could be more liberal in its sharing of the broken bread. Jesus was content to share his bread with all who would come; the church currently asks for attendance at classes before admitting its own seven-year-olds, or admitting adults through the contemporary Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). A greater generosity in the sharing of the broken bread could revitalise, rather than distract from, the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, which would become more clearly the marks of full membership, the first sacraments of the church’s internal holy order: sacraments of commitment, and of the universal call to Christlike ministry.

At the conclusion of the mass, the community is sent out from the gathering to live the life: to live in the world as individuals and as community with the example and teaching of Christ as guide. The catholic dismissal is ever brief: ‘Go in the peace of Christ’, or ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’. This longer free church prayer is based on Romans chapter twelve, and manages to capture the spirit of the positive, practical, humanistic ethic of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, the book of James and the rest of the New Testament, and Jesus himself.

Love with all sincerity. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. And the blessing of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – be with you all.

290 There are four New Testament accounts of this sequence (taking, giving thanks, breaking, giving): in Matthew 26:26-29, in Mark 14:22-25, in Luke 22:17-23, and from Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. For the giving thanks, Matthew and Mark have eulogesas, which is often translated ‘blessed’, but which literally means ‘speaking good words’; Luke and Paul use eucharistesas which is more literally giving thanks for a gift. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ appears only in Paul and some versions of Luke; similarly ‘eat’ is only in Matthew, ‘take’ is only in Matthew and Mark, ‘gave’ is only in Matthew, Mark and Luke, ‘given/broken for you’ is only is Paul (‘for you’ in some texts, ‘broken for you’ in others) and some versions of Luke (‘given for you’), but ‘This is my body’ is universal, and the choice, on the part of the church, to do this in remembrance, is entirely valid: eating as an equal with all who would come, including the outcast, was a central characteristic of Jesus’s ministry.

291 Matthew and Mark have ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’; Matthew adds ‘for the forgiveness of sins’. Paul has ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’; some versions of Luke have ‘This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood’. Only Paul specifies ‘after supper’. Luke has the ceremony with the cup before the ceremony with the bread, and with no words except the mournful ‘I shall not drink it again’, which also occur in Matthew and Mark; some versions of Luke add the fuller ceremony of wine after the bread as well. Paul repeats ‘Do this in remembrance of me’.

292 In many places individual communion wafers – symbolic ‘pre-broken’ pieces – are used, rather than anything resembling actual broken bread. Most places use at least one large wafer, which is symbolically broken, although it is often then (by an unnecessary and rather divisive tradition) consumed exclusively by the priest or priests present. It is entirely legitimate to use these larger wafers for everyone, so that everyone receives a broken piece. They are also available in wholemeal, making them more like bread and less like card or paper: convenient and dignified like the wafer system, while restoring the symbolism of broken bread.

293 These words of the priest at mass are based on the words of John the Baptist recorded in John 1:29: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’. The image of the lamb relates to the pattern of Old Testament sacrificial offerings. It identifies Jesus as the one who is pure, and whose life will be characterised by making the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of others. ‘Happy are those who are called to his supper’ is based on Revelation 19:9, where the Lamb, who was slain and is now risen, is host for a great celebration at the end of time.

294 The people’s response here is based on the story of the centurion’s servant. Jesus travels towards the centurion’s house, where the servant is sick, but the centurion sends word to Jesus: ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed’ (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10).

295 The human community is not made up exclusively of adults speaking independently for themselves: some come as households, including children. Those children are affirmed as full members of the community in baptism: later confirmation gives them the opportunity to affirm their membership and their commitment for themselves as they come of age. The practice of infant baptism affirms the community aspect of faith, in contrast to contemporary society’s unremitting individualism. Of course the baptism of an infant can still be a mockery of the sacrament if there is no commitment to the community on the part of the adults presenting the child.

296 In the Roman Catholic church, the orders of priests and bishops are currently drawn exclusively from the ranks of celibate men (and, slightly bizarrely, married former anglican priests); the order of deacons includes both married and celibate men, but no women. The concept of infallibility can be spun on the basis that every voluntary-membership organisation claims an internal infallibility: if its authoritative body makes an authoritative declaration within the terms of its remit and according to due process, that declaration stands as authoritative and true, within its context, for those who choose to continue as members; in practice most organisations, including the Roman Catholic church, tolerate a certain amount of internal dissent. Regarding ‘other gatherings of the faithful outside its own structures’, the Roman Catholic church is actually rather gracious: Catechism items 836 to 847 extend the concept of authentic faith and practice by stages from those baptised outside the Roman Catholic church to those of any faith or none. By recognising as valid the baptism of those baptised elsewhere, the Roman Catholic church is effectively defining other churches (on its own terms) as rebellious lay communities, outside its own chosen order and organisation, but nevertheless validly part of the church and of the body of Christ; while this may initially sound arrogant, it also has a certain humility about it, as the church admits that its own structures have failed to embrace the whole of God’s work in the world, which continues outside its boundaries regardless.