My paper will focus on the Catholic Tradition's view of the liturgy as the continuation of Christ's redemptive work in, with, and through His Church; in order to do this I will touch upon the Church's ecclesial theology.  After looking at that topic I will next briefly explain the theology of memory, which has its roots in ancient Judaism.  After this preliminary investigation I will then show how the one sacrifice of Christ is believed to subsist in three different modes; thus possessing an historical, an eternal, and a sacramental existence.  I will also show how the liturgical worship of the Church is understood to be a sacramental representation of Christ's historical oblation on the cross, and at the same time a sacramental participation in Christ's eternal oblation in heaven.

          In order to understand the nature of Catholic worship it is required that one grasp two important concepts, the first concerns the unity that exists between Christ and His Body the Church, and the second concerns the concept of liturgical remembrance and its role in Catholic theology.  Once one understands these two vital areas of theology, it then becomes possible to see Catholic worship as more than a mere system of ritual observances; instead, with the deeper insight provided by a theological foundation one is able to see it is a living reality which deifies man by grace.

          The first concept I will investigate concerns the union between Christ and the Church, this is a union so intimate that these two are only one flesh, Christ the Head and the Church His Body are one mystical person [cf. Summa Theologica, Part III, Q. 49, Art. 1].  This teaching originated in the New Testament and is further developed by the Fathers of the Church during the first millennium of the Christian era.  One of the earliest records of this teaching is found in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul while traveling on the road to Damascus experienced a vision of Christ which converted him to the Christian faith.  When the Lord appeared to him, he said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" [Acts, 9:4], and in this one statement the whole meaning of the Christian Mystery was revealed to St. Paul and he became an ardent follower of Christ.  In that moment St. Paul realized the depth of the connection between Christ and the Church.  The words of the Lord made this union quite clear, for He did not say, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting My disciples?" or "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting My servants?"; instead, He said "why are you persecuting Me?" [Acts 9:4].  Approximately 1,100 years after these events St. Thomas Aquinas said that, ". . . the whole Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is one person with its Head, who is Christ" [Mersch, 470].  This truth explains the whole purpose of the redemption accomplished by Christ, and shows how He intends through His Church to assimilate all mankind to His offering and thus restore fallen man to communion with God.

          St. Paul explained the meaning of this Mystery in greater detail in his epistle to the Ephesians.  In the first chapter of that letter he explained how Christ is the recapitulation of all things both in the heavens and on earth.  Christ breaks down the barrier which divides the Jews and the Gentiles, so that ". . . in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace" [Eph. 2:15b], and in this way He reconciles "them both in one body to God through the cross" [Eph. 2.16a].  St. Augustine would say much the same thing in a sermon in which he told the members of the church in Hippo that, ". . . the Head, with all the members, is but one man" [NPNF, 1st Series, V. 6, p. 399].

          It is important to note that this idea is not just found within the Pauline writings, but is also found in the Johannine texts.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, "I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" [John 15:5].  In saying this Jesus shows that the union between Himself and His members goes beyond a mere moral union, and is instead an ontological union of life and action.  Fr. Louis Bouyer points out that this text ". . . expresses with final precision what St. Paul had taught with the images of the Body and Head, [and] of the Bridegroom and the Bride" [Bouyer, 116].  From this it is clear that the Vine and the branches form one living organism, a single Mystical Being.

          In this particular biblical pericope Jesus ". . . speaks not only of [our] being united to Him but of being one with Him," and this "shade of difference must not be overlooked" [Bouyer, 116].  Fr. Bouyer says that the meaning of this text is often weakened and tends to be explained in a way that Christ did not intend, it is "as if Christ had said, ‘I am the root, you are the branches'; whereas He uses the peculiar expression, ‘I am the Vine-stock . . .' – that is to say, not a part, were it even the principal part, but the whole" [Bouyer, 117].  From this it becomes clear that, "The Church is Christ revealing little by little the plentitude of His being" [Bouyer, 117].  The whole life of the members of the Body, is nothing other than the life of the Head of the Body, the source of all its powers and its blessings.  But this is not to be conceived of as a passive oneness, for if the branches fail to abide in the Vine and bear fruit they shall be pruned away.  As Christ said, "If a man does not abide in Me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned" [John 15:6].  So the members of the Vine must be active and must cooperate with the grace they receive, and yet in their actions it is actually Christ who is the primary source of what they do.  St. Augustine expressed this by saying, ". . . what else but His own gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits" [FC, V. 30, p. 313].

          This idea that Christ is the Church and that together they live but one life is best expressed in the patristical synthesis by St. Augustine who wrote, "[Christ] prays for us, as our Priest; He prays in us, as our Head; He is prayed to by us, as our God.  Let us therefore recognize in Him our words, and His in us. . . . He is prayed to in the form of God, in the form of a servant He prays; there the Creator, here created; assuming unchanged the creature, that it might be changed, and making us with Himself One Man, Head and Body" [ NPNF, 1st Series, V. 8, p. 410].  This oneness is so perfect that it is possible to say, that the suffering of Christ is complete in the Head, but continues in the Body.  This idea is confirmed in the Gospel pericope where Christ sweats blood while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before His passion.  As St. Augustine said, "What is this blood streaming from His whole Body but the martyrdom of the whole Church?" [LOTH, 382].

          The second and final concept which it is necessary to understand in order to properly grasp what occurs in the liturgy concerns the concept of memory.  Anamnesis is the Greek word for memory, but unlike the modern view of memory which is subjectively based, this word means the objective actualisation of a past event which manifests itself to those involved in the liturgical re-enactment and allows them to become witnesses to and participants in the event recalled.  So when Christ transforms bread and wine into His Body and Blood at the last supper, and then tells the Apostles to, ". . . do this in remembrance (anamnesis) of Me" [Luke 22:19b], the remembrance or memory referred to is not that of the People of God, because they were not physically present when these events took place, and thus they cannot remember it; instead, the Eucharistic Sacrifice is, ". . . offered in God's eternal remembrance, and this remembrance is visibly depicted to us in the separation of the Blood from the Body in the Eucharist by the difference between the species" [Scheeben, 509].

          Subjectively the ritual actions produce an interior psychological state which allows the worshiper to experience the saving events on a personal and interpersonal level.  Objectively the events are exhibited in God's eternal remembrance, and thus are rendered present as a living reality.  The worshiper's subjective state is ultimately dependent upon and is cause by the objective element which has its source in the memory of God, because when God remembers an event of the past it can rightly be conceived of as eternally present.  In both Jewish and Catholic thought, "Remembrance equals participation"[ Childs, 56].  An example of this concept can be seen by looking at Psalm 111:4, which reads: "He has caused His wonderful works to be remembered" [Psalm 111:4].  As Artur Weiser points out, when God causes something to be remembered it cannot be seen as a "purely spiritual act of recollecting but, as is evident from Psalm 111 . . ., [it must be seen as] the actualization of an historical tradition in a ritual act" [Weiser, 36].

          One of the best illustrations of this idea of re-living the events of Sacred History still in use today can be seen in the Jewish celebration of the Passover.  This celebration is an excellent example because Catholic liturgical theology descends from Jewish liturgical belief and practice.  In the Seder meal all of the prayers and readings of the ritual are recited in the first person singular, and as the Jewish scholar Yosef Yerushalmi explains, this fact is important because, "Both the language and the gesture [of the service] are geared to spur, not so much a leap of memory as a fusion of past and present. Memory here is no longer recollection, which still preserves a sense of distance, but reactualization" [Yerushalmi, 44].

          Now that I have laid the necessary theological foundation I can move on to what the Church teaches about the Mass as both a sacramental representation of the Sacrifice of the Cross and as sacramental participation in the Eternal Liturgy in Heaven.  Regarding the first element of this teaching, the Church believes that the sacrifice of Christ is unique and unrepeatable.  As the new universal catechism says, "[Christ's] Paschal Mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past" [CCC, #1085a], but unlike other events, "The Paschal mystery of Christ . . . cannot remain only in the past, because by His death He destroyed death, and all that Christ is – all that He did and suffered for all men – participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all" [CCC, #1085b].

          The entire sacramental economy within the Church allows man to have contact with the mystery of redemption.  The Church believes that ". . . the sacrifice of Christ subsists under three different modes. It is the same priestly action which took place in a precise moment of history; which is eternally present in heaven; and which subsists under the sacramental appearances" [Danielou, 138].  It is important to note that the Church does not teach that Christ's sacrifice is repeated, as the new catechism says, "The Paschal Mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present" [CCC, 1104].  Dom Anscar Vonier said the same thing in a slightly different way when he wrote that, "It is the genius of the Christian sacrament and also its very nature that it is an act which may be repeated indefinitely, though the content, or, if you like, the object of the act, be immutable" [Vonier, 136].  So the sacramental action is repeatable, but the sacrifice rendered present in it is immutable and thus unrepeatable. This corresponds with what Jean Cardinal Danielou said when he wrote that, ". . . the sacrifice of Christ subsists under three different modes" [Danielou, 138]; it possesses an historical, an eternal, and a sacramental existence.  He went on to say that the Sacrifice of the Cross ". . . by a unique privilege, is taken from time in order to subsist eternally," the purpose of the sacrament being to render present this one unique oblation ". . . at all times and in all places" [Danielou, 138].

          The sacramental Sacrifice of the Mass also allows man to participate in the Celestial liturgy, the eternal liturgy before God's throne in heaven.  In his definitive study of the patristical origins of Eucharistic doctrine Fr. Maurice de la Taille, explained that, "The sacrifice of Christ was made glorious by the Resurrection, heavenly by the Ascension; by the immortality of His eternal life it was made perpetual" [de la Taille, 201].  So by His Ascension into heaven Christ, Priest and Victim, perpetually pleads for sinful humanity in the presence of His almighty Father.  His sacrifice "therefore continues: not of course the active sacrifice, for that sacrificial action has passed, it is not repeated, nor is it in continual process of completion; the passive sacrifice however remains, for the Victim remains in its state of being as accepted Victim" [de la Taille, 202].  As Fr. de la Taille points out the celestial sacrifice of Christ is a passive one, but it must not be seen as a mere metaphorical oblation; instead, "it is a sacrifice in the strict sense, it connotes a distinct outward condition of the humanity of our Lord, namely the glory procured by the sacrifice once and for all offered by Christ at the Supper and in the Passion, and ratified and sanctioned forever by the Father:  in the same way the ancients called anything duly dedicated to God a sacrifice, as long as the full condition of such dedication persisted" [de la Taille, 202].

          The concept of the Celestial liturgy is of biblical origin, the Book of Revelation is an expression of this idea, in the fourth chapter the Trisagion (the thrice holy) is sung and then the Lamb of God is seen standing before the throne of the Almighty.  It depicts the worship of God in heaven and through this eternal act of worship the manifestation of the will of God on earth.  This is one of the reasons why the early Church sang the Trisagion in the Eucharistic liturgy.  During the liturgical preface the introductory verse and response discourse is recited, in it the priest says, "Lift up your hearts," and the people respond, "We have lifted them up to the Lord," in the theology of the Fathers this discourse expressed the objective connection between the earthly liturgy and the heavenly liturgy.  The Trisagion would be recited next and in this way the Body of Christ on earth would sing the hymn which is perpetually recited in heaven.  Thus earth and heaven become one and the Church empowered with the Spirit of God is lifted up into the Celestial realm and with the entire heavenly host adores the Almighty Father through the one holy offering of Christ.

          The ultimate purpose of the Christian Mystery is to restore communion between God and man through the one offering of Christ.  In Him all of humanity is once again restored to its original condition and in fact it is not only restored, but is actually elevated to a higher level of communion than Adam and Eve possessed in Paradise.  By participating in the Eucharistic liturgy and by receiving holy communion humanity is deified, as Pope St. Leo the Great said in the fifth century, ". . . it is not only the martyrs who share in His passion by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are born again in baptism.  That is why we are to celebrate the Lord's Paschal Sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  The leaven of our former malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord Himself.  For the effect of our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive.  As we have died with Him, and have been buried and raised to life with Him, so we bear Him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do" [LOTH, 528-529].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Loius Bouyer.  The Paschal Mystery.  (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1950).

Jean Cardinal Danielou.  The Bible and the Liturgy.  (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956).

Maurice de la Taille.  The Mystery of Faith.  (London: Sheed and Ward, 1941). 2 Volumes.

Emile Mersch.  The Whole Christ.  (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1938).

Matthias Joseph Scheeben.  The Mysteries of Christianity.  (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1964).

Dom Anscar Vonier.  Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist.  (Westminster: The Newman Bookshop, 1946).

Artur Weiser.  The Psalms.  (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962).

Yosef Yerushalmi.  Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory.  (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).

Catechism of the Catholic Church.  (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1994).

The Fathers of the Church.  (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955). Volume 30.

The Liturgy of the Hours.  The Office of Readings, According to the Roman Rite.  (Boston:  St. Paul Editions, 1983).

Philip Schaff (Editor).  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.  (Peabody:  Hendrickson Publishers, 1994). 1st Series, Volumes 6 and 8.

Abbreviations:

          CCC:  Catechism of the Catholic Church

          FC:  The Fathers of the Church

          NPNF:  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

          LOTH:  The Liturgy of the Hours

The Mystery of the Liturgy:  The Meaning of Catholic Worship

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

Philosophy 502-02:  World Religions

Dr. Ron Epstein

24 May 1999

Copyright © 1999-2025 Steven Todd Kaster