You'll enjoy the following which was written by my spiritual director to a Lutheran woman; he's responding to her comments between brackets:
Linda -
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You are correct in noting the difference in teaching, but have misunderstood it as a "repetition" of the Sacrifice. It is not. The reason why it at first looks like a repetition is because in seeing it Protestants and nonbelievers look at it as any human activity. They FORGET or do not realize that the Sacrifice on the Cross by Jesus is a DIVINE PERSON IN a human act (because in a human being). This changes everything. A human act is a one time thing; but a DIVINE-Human act breaks through the limitation of time and attains an ETERNAL reality and significance, because it is joined to the Eternal Offering of the Son to the Father within the Trinity (He is a Priest FOREVER). This permanent state of Self-giving is the heart of the Human act of Jesus, the Divine Person. The Sacrifice is therefore above time by reason of the Person acting, though the manner is unrepeatable (bloody). That one same Self-offering, once made in a bloody manner, is NOW made PRESENT in an UNbloody manner, so as to make It available to people who could not be present at the Bloody Sacrifice. WHY? So that THEY have the opportunity to join their own personal offering, as well as communal offering to Our Lord's Eternal Offering. That's why the text says "once FOR ALL! That is, for ALL TIMES, i.e., in each time made available.
The Eucharist was instituted by Our Lord to be the UNBLOODY medium of making available the ONE Divine-Human Act of Self-offering to the Father, in which as a Man representing the whole race the Divine Person of the Son gives worship and love to the Father without asking the least for Himself. The Father raises Him up in Resurrection completely transformed in Body by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that NOW the Risen Flesh of Christ is able to communicate the Holy Spirit to us, i.e., THROUGH the Flesh. This is done by the transformation of the reality of bread and wine into the reality of the Risen Flesh and Blood of the God-Man, thus making ACTUALLY PRESENT the very same Divine Person Incarnate; this Real Presence makes it POSSIBLE for US to offer the one SAME Offering that transcends time. WE are able to transcend time and the Father accepts from US His Son and His Son's Self-offering.
In the Mass we pray God for Him to accept from US what HE has accepted ALREADY from His Son, namely the Son's Self-offering (giving of Himself in the bloody circumstances of the crucifixion). Thus what is new in the Mass is not the Essential Offering which is the same Eternal Covenant in His Blood, but the UNBLOODY OCCASION of that ONE presentation in our time. This was made available to us by the Law of the Incarnation; that is, in a HUMAN mode of new historical occasions because we are historical beings (unlike Angels!) who could not be present in a human way in the once city of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Christ thus shares His sacrificial offering with us in different times and places, making it AVAILABLE to us, i.e., the ONE trans-spatial, trans-temporal offering of the SON made Man to the Father.
So you see, there us MUCH more than what merely meets the eye! It is because Protestantism has lacked this depth of understanding of the Faith and treated the experience and reality of Calvary merely as a one time thing like any other human act, that is, has GUTTED the Sacrifice on the Cross from its ETERNAL meaning ("This is the cup of my blood of the New and Eternal Covenant. . ."!!!), that it can understand the Eucharist as only a REMEMBRANCE and a SYMBOL of a previous human event (like the anniversary of a wedding) and an occasion to make an act of faith and praise. This stems from a merely human way of thinking, i.e., ordinary one level thinking with logic. THAT sort of rational thinking SEPARATES the Divine from the human in Jesus' Death on the Cross and sees only the result in Him as Resurrected, as the Cross is over, done with, and only Resurrection left.
But that is not why Our Lord became Incarnate. What He assumes (i.e., TAKES UP of Himself) He DIVINIZES and does not destroy. In taking up suffering and death (our actual condition of living) He makes HOLY with Divine Love as human realities which can be lived through with Divine Love by us joined to Him by Grace. What He does NOT take up, He destroys. He does not take up sin. (Sin then is destroyed in His sacrifice of Self-offering out of Divine Love for the Father as new Head of the Human Race, the New Adam, or rather the TRUE Adam of the human race. By giving us the Mass, He has given us the Divine power to do this. The Mass therefore is the reenactment in an unbloody manner of the One, Eternal Sacrifice of Calvary, so that WE can offer OURSELVES actively interiorly with Him in His Sacrifice, as Mary did at the foot of the Cross, in the company of St. John and the holy women. (Mary as TYPE of the Church offered her own suffering along with Christ by His grace, thus helping to establish the LINK of the Church offering herself with Christ in the Mass.)
The Mass therefore is an exchange of real gifts and not just prayer or praise. The main Gift (Jesus, and Jesus' supra-temporal activity of Loving) is made present by Jesus' ordained priest for the gathered Church to give Him to the Father including ourselves in the offering. And the Father gives His Son back to us in the Risen Flesh under the appearances (only) of bread and wine, to be the medium of communicating the Holy Spirit.
Finally, already for the Jews Passover was experienced as more than anniversary, but as somehow participating in the original salvation from the slavery of Egypt. This should make it easier to understand that the NT written by Jews who were transformed by the Holy Spirit would SEE the Eucharist, Last Supper, Calvary, in the Catholic sense explained above as more likely than in the MODERN, human reasoning sense of one time unrepeatable event only like any other human event.
Fr. Robert
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See, I told you you'd like it. ;-)
LindaJ@aol.com