ARTICLES
June 2004 ARTICLES
Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
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Out to Lunch
Cardinal Mahony on the Eucharist
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
It's been nearly seven years since Cardinal Roger Mahony published his pastoral letter on the liturgy, Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass. Much has happened since the issuance of that pastoral -- the molestation scandal, the raising of the cathedral edifice, the archdiocesan synod. Seven years, and little good; still, the cardinal's zeal for liturgical renewal has not abated. At least, he's still talking about it.
This past March, the cardinal addressed "Eucharistic Congress 2004" in El Paso, Texas, in a talk titled, "Communion for Mission," in which he developed somewhat his views on the purpose of the Eucharist. Like Gather Faithfully Together, the cardinal's speech was disjointed and vague; but after multiple readings, I think I got the sense of it. From what I could gather, the speech seems -- at best -- to present a view of the Eucharist that somewhat eccentric to another recently published "letter" on the Holy Mass: Pope John Paul II's 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia.
The theme for Eucharistic Congress 2004 ("Eucharist: Communion and Mission") inspired Cardinal Mahony's reflections. "In thinking and praying about communion and mission in relation to the Eucharist," the cardinal said he had realized "that rather than juxtaposing communion and mission it may be more helpful to consider that communion is for mission. Whether it be the communion of faith, hope, and love in the Church, or the Eucharistic Communion we share in the Mass, communion is for mission." Later, he said, "it is not so much that the Church has a mission; it is rather more that the Mission has a Church."
According to Cardinal Mahony, this "mission" is that of Jesus, which is "to announce the time of God's favor, the coming of the Reign of God ... the fulfillment of God's hope, desire, and intention for the world now and to come. In God's Reign, truth, holiness, justice, love and peace will hold sway forever." Jesus, said Mahony, passed this mission on to his Church. And, if indeed, as "the Second Vatican Council affirmed and emphasized," the idea of mission "defines the Church in every dimension of its life," mission must also define the Eucharist. "The Eucharist, too," says Mahony, "exists for mission, and it is through the effective realization of its mission that the Church best glorifies God."
"Mission" is precisely the boat the Church is missing in all the discussions about the revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Ratio Translationis of the Order of the Mass, according to Mahony. While he said he does not "mean to minimize the importance of recent events regarding translation, interpretation and application," these things "must always be seen in view, not simply of Liturgy and Eucharist, but of a wider sense of purpose: Mission."
We can regain an understanding of the Eucharist as Communion for Mission, said Mahony, by understanding Sacrosanctum Consilium (Vatican II's document on the liturgy) "through the lens" of the council's document on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes. Gaudium et Spes, Mahony affirmed, is the council's "final testament" in which it turned its "energy outward in an embrace of all that is worthy and noble in the human enterprise, in a clear recognition and affirmation of the common vocation of all humanity" and recognized "all ... as partners in the Paschal Mystery." In light of Gaudium et Spes, we may, said Mahony, come to understand that "the Church does not exist for itself. Nor does it exist for sacramental celebration. The Church exists for mission, and this mission is evangelization."
But, "what is more," said Mahony, "the Church does not celebrate the Liturgy for itself, but for the world. God is not best glorified by good Liturgy, but by a world redeemed and transformed by the grandeur of self-giving love." This conclusion the cardinal drew as well from a verse in Hosea, on which he began his talk: "it is mercy I desire and not sacrifice." If the Eucharist exists for mission, then it finds its fullest realization in that mission.
Such a view, the cardinal asserted, does not "in any way compromise belief in the Real Presence." No, the loftiness of the Eucharist lends luster to mission. "As I see it," the cardinal said, "the higher the view of sacramental presence, the higher must be our view of the poor, the weak, and the wounded, and the deeper our commitment to justice. Why? Because God does not want to be present in the world as self-absorbed and turned inward." Neither does understanding the Eucharist as directed to mission "decenter" it "as the source and summit" of the life of the Church. The Eucharist, said Mahony, remains "central, the centerpiece, the source and summit of Catholic faith and practice," because it embodies "what the Church intends to be and become" -- not "a community of like-minded believers," but, like God, a communion "turned outward in self-giving, out pouring, outgoing love in the world." From the "perspective of Communion for Mission," Mahony said, "the Eucharist enacts the Church as mission."
This idea -- that the Eucharist is fulfilled in the enacting of mission -- clarifies a passage in Mahony's speech I at first found difficult to understand. Near the beginning of his speech, the cardinal quotes St. Augustine that the "Eucharistic bread and wine" "transform us into the very thing we receive." Mahony quotes another passage from Augustine to the same effect: "it is your mystery that you are receiving.... When you hear 'the Body of Christ' ... you are saying Amen to what you are.... Be a member of Christ's Body, then, so that your Amen may ring true." According to the cardinal, "this is the heart of what it means to celebrate the Eucharist fruitfully, to worship God in Spirit and in Truth." Or, in other words, true Eucharistic worship of God consists in being a member of, presumably, the mystical Body of Christ (Mahony is not clear on the distinction), which means dedicating oneself to mission.
Though the cardinal said that the Eucharist is the "summit" of Christian life, by so emphasizing its purpose to transform the world into the reign of God, he seemed to reduce it to merely a "source" of Christian life. He did not clarify that the Eucharist has any other purpose than mission. Cardinal Mahony called the Eucharist an "ethical icon of Catholic life," because "in what is said and done in the Eucharist, we see and understand more clearly what we are called to be and become: The Body of Christ." But, as an ethical icon, the Eucharist points to something beyond itself -- "mission" -- which, perforce, becomes the summit of Christian life. The cardinal does say "the Eucharist is rightly thought of as an act of thanksgiving, as a sacrifice, as an act of praise and worship. "But," he continued, "it is important to remember that at a very basic level, the Eucharist is a meal, a Sacred Meal of communion and justice." As such a meal, the Eucharist nourishes us so we can carry on our mission of establishing the kingdom of God on earth. If this is the "basic" character of the Eucharist, then one might conclude the concepts of "sacrifice" and "worship" do not express its fundamental character. The Eucharist is then ordered to another good beyond itself.
But this understanding is belied by a passage from Ecclesia de Eucharistia, quoted in Mahony's letter -- which, oddly enough, he uses as support for his thesis. In this passage, Pope John Paul II states that "from the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the Cross and her communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church draws the spiritual power needed to carry out her mission." In this way, according to the pope, the Eucharist is the source "of all evangelization;" but, he says, the Eucharist is also the "summit" of evangelization, "since the goal is the communion of all people with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit."
But that communion, according to Ecclesia de Eucharistia, is experienced, in this life, in the Eucharist. This is apparent from the pope' s reassertion of the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation -- that the essence of bread and the essence of the wine are changed into Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity. Communion in the Eucharist is communion with Christ.
Cardinal Mahony, after issuing Gather Faithfully Together, was criticized by some for obfuscating the doctrine of transubstantiation. In that letter, the cardinal provided a footnote affirming his acceptance of transubstantiation as defined by Vatican II and the Council of Trent, though the doctrine was not clearly enunciated in the text of Mahony's letter, which seemed to confuse the Eucharistic presence with Christ's presence in His Church. In a 1998 talk on his letter given at Gannon University in Pennsylvania, Cardinal Mahony enunciated again his adherence to the doctrine of transubstantiation, noting that his pastoral letter "emphasized the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in light of the 'manifold presence of Christ' in the liturgy." Mahony said it was clear to him that "this rich Conciliar insight about the manifold presence of Christ -- in the gathered assembly, in the priest/presider leading and forming the assembly at worship, in the Word of God proclaimed and heard and in the Bread and Wine blessed broken/poured and shared -- enhances rather than diminishes the Real Presence of Christ communicated and authentically taught in the doctrine of Transubstantiation."
But for Pope John Paul (and for Church tradition, for that matter), the crux of the Eucharist is that it is the Body and Blood of Christ, substantially present, offered in sacrifice for the sins of the world. As such, it is clearly distinguished -- and exalted -- above all other forms of presence. Ecclesia de Eucharistia states that "Jesus did not simply state that what he was giving [the disciples] to eat and drink was his body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning and made sacrificially present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the salvation of all." [Emphasis in original.] And quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the pope states: "'The Mass is at the same time and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the Cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord's body and blood.'" The Eucharist is the one sacrifice of Christ "sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister."
For the pope, the Mass is "a sacrifice in the strict sense, and not only in a general way, as it were simply a matter of Christ's offering himself to the faithful as their spiritual food." [Emphasis in original.] While it is offered for the faithful and the world, "it is first and foremost a gift to the Father: 'a sacrifice that the Father accepted, giving, in return for this total self-giving by his Son, who "became obedient unto death" (Phil 2:8), his own paternal gift, that is to say the grant of new immortal life in the resurrection.'" [Emphasis in original.] Sacrifice, thus, is not merely one aspect of a reality that is basically a meal, as Cardinal Mahony suggests; rather, if the Eucharist is a meal, it is a sacrificial meal. Just as those who in the Old Testament ate of the sacrifice they offered in order to participate in its benefits, so the faithful eat of the Eucharist to participate in the graces flowing from the one sacrifice of Christ.
These graces, according to the pope, are the forgiveness of sins, resurrection, an increase of the "gift of [Christ's] Spirit, already poured out in Baptism and bestowed as a 'seal' in the sacrament of Confirmation," and the union of the mystical Body of Christ, the Church. This union is effected through the union with Christ Himself, the head of the mystical Body. "The saving efficacy of the sacrifice," says Pope John Paul, "is fully realized when the Lord's body and blood are received in communion. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is intrinsically directed to the inward union of the faithful with Christ through communion." Further, "the Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf: Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the 'pledge of future glory'.... Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life; they already possess it in on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality." [Emphasis in original.] For the pope, "the Eucharist is truly a glimpse of heaven appearing on earth. It is a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey."
Such reflections suggest that the Eucharist has the character more of an end than of a means. In other words, the Eucharist is the summit of the Christian life because it is a foretaste of the goal to which, in all our endeavors, we strive -- union with the Holy Trinity, theosis, eternal life. It is, in a real sense, that goal experienced by the faithful on earth.
Cardinal Mahony's efforts at explaining the Eucharist are an attempt to counteract a tendency to separate the Eucharist from the mission of the Church in the world. The tradition of the Church explicated by Ecclesia de Eucharistia, truly, insists that the Eucharist is not just the summit of Christian life, but the source of Christian evangelization. The Eucharist does nourish us for service to our brothers in the Church and in the world. The Eucharist, says the pope, "spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work set before us," which is "the task of contributing with the light of the Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan." The Eucharist "creates human community" by "building up the Church." This is the meaning, says the pope, of the passage from St. Augustine, quoted by Cardinal Mahony: in the Eucharist, the faithful are "to reflect on the true reality of the Eucharist in order to return to the spirit of fraternal communion."
But, where Cardinal Mahony seems to see mission as the highest purpose for the Eucharist, the pope sees the Eucharist as the goal of mission. For Mahony, it seems, the Eucharist is the summit of Christian life in that it is the most effective means by which the Church meets herself and thus knows herself as missionary. The pope agrees that the Church is equipped for mission in the Eucharist; however, he says, "every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of personal planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination." Transforming the world into the kingdom of God is not an end itself; its purpose is to draw all men into the intimate communion with God, which is found in the Eucharist. Quoting "a distinguished writer of the Byzantine tradition," Nicolas Cabisilas, the pope writes, "unlike any other sacrament, the mystery [of communion] is so perfect that it brings us to the heights of every good thing: here is the ultimate goal of every human desire, because here we attain God and God joins himself to us in the most perfect union."
The Eucharist is more than a banquet; to so reduce it, says the pope, "naturally suggest familiarity," and "the Church has never yielded to the temptation to trivialize this 'intimacy' with her Spouse by forgetting that he is also her Lord and that the 'banquet' always remains a sacrificial banquet marked by the blood shed on Golgotha." That shed blood is the supreme act of worship, offered by the Church through her divine head -- a worship that is the very purpose for which man was made. It is, to take a phrase from Cardinal Mahony, the service by which "the Church best glorifies God."
To make of the Eucharist any thing else is to diminish it. "No one," says the supreme pontiff, "is permitted to undervalue the mystery entrusted to our hands: it is too great for anyone to feel free to treat it lightly and with disregard for its sacredness and universality."
One may read Cardinal Mahony's talk, Communion for Mission at www.the-tidings.com/2004/0326/cmelpaso.htm. Pope John Paul II's Ecclesia de Eucharistia may be found at www.vatican.va/holy_father/special_features/encyclicals/documents/hf jp-ii_enc_20030417_ecclesia_eucharistia_en.html