The Sacrifice of Reparation

While I was talking with a fellow blogger the other day, he told me of a colleague of his, a committed Catholic, but who had nonetheless been surprised and caught unawares when mention was made of a Mass being offered in reparation for the sin of abortion – that colleague knew of course that abortion is a tragic evil and a vile sin, but was unaware that the Sacrifice of the Mass could be offered up in reparation therefor: indeed, he seemed unaware of either the concept of reparation for sin, or that the Mass was a Sacrifice – the making present in our midst of the Sacrifice of Christ Himself, the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world – let alone one that could rightly be offered in atonement for sin.

Given that the concept of sin itself is not believed in by many (yet our age has been and still is afflicted by every form of sinful violence and even warfare, as every man knows), and that too many even confession-going Catholics would regard the three Hail Mary's or the like that they receive in penance as quite sufficient a quantity of reparation, I can perceive why the idea of making reparation for sins could seem strange.

Yet how odd it is, really, that, if Christ willingly suffered for our sake, on our behalf, and if we as Christians are called to follow Christ and take up our cross in union with him, then the obvious conclusion – that we ought make vicarious atonement for sin, in union with Christ, "filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" as St Paul dared to say – is not drawn.

A generation or two ago, what was then widespread devotion to the Sacred Heart would have made all Catholics familiar with the idea of reparation; indeed, both a collect and a prayer over the offerings to that effect still occur in the Missal on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart:

O God, who in the Heart of your Son, wounded by our sins, bestow on us in mercy the boundless treasures of your love, grant, we pray, that in paying him the homage of our devotion, we may also offer worthy reparation. Through... 

Look, O Lord, we pray, on the surpassing charity in the Heart of your beloved Son, that what we offer may be a gift acceptable to you and an expiation of our offences. Through Christ our Lord.

Alas, the Sacred Heart is not known nor loved as once it was.

But as to not knowing the Mass to be offered up as a Sacrifice in reparation for sin, I hazard a guess that the man in question has heard the Eucharistic Prayers again and again, at all the Masses he attends; but perhaps has not perceived their significance, especially if (as is usually the case) Eucharistic Prayer II (the short one) has been the main one he has heard used. 

For, to begin with, E.P. II contains only one mention of oblation: "we offer you, Lord, the Bread of life and the Chalice of salvation" – without any further explanation as to what this offering of the Bread which has become Christ's live-giving Body, and the Chalice which now contains His saving Blood, might effect. Certainly none of the very brief intercessions contained in E.P. II refer to reparation or atonement for sin.

I have heard from a correspondent that, while Catholics have a good idea of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament (as, say, compared to Anglicans, given their manifold views on that subject, even if their Eucharistic services were valid), sad to say ordinary Catholics of the modern Roman Rite have to a large extent lost the idea of Sacrifice. The same writer made the reasonable claim that E.P. II is quite deficient as regards the sacrificial merit of the Mass, which, given its status as the most commonly used Eucharistic Prayer, has led to Catholics being insufficiently reminded of this point. 

Similarly, I would go on to add, the abandonment of due reverence and of Eastward celebration has served to make Mass seem more a happy little Communion service rather than something awesome, solemn and sacrificial, a truly religious and priestly act of cultic worship and sacrifice – which is what it truly is and thus should be worthily celebrated in piety, fear and love.

But the other Eucharistic Prayers do speak more of sacrifice. That is why I remain surprised that a man could be a Mass-goer and not know these things, assuming he actually attends to the words spoken, since not vainly (one presumes) does the priest pray aloud at Mass.

To begin with, the Roman Canon makes reference to the liturgical action as "this sacrifice of praise... this oblation of our service", and to the consecrated species as "this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim," that is, Jesus Christ present in His Body and Blood, which are named, under their sacramental veils, as "the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation... these offerings" which are offered up for the Church, for the Pope, for the local Bishop, for all passers-on of the Catholic Faith, for all present, for those dear to us, for the redemption of our souls, for deliverance from damnation and enumeration among the elect, for repose of the faithful departed.

Of course, these days in the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the Roman Canon or E.P. I is not so commonly used... but others are, above all, E.P. III, whose expressive language more than compensates for the minimalistic nature of E.P. II, that short, mean little prayer whose main advantage, if such is an advantage rather than a scandal, is its brevity. Even the very Missal itself, in its Introduction (GIRM, n. 365), states that E.P. II is for use on weekdays, not Sundays nor feasts.

Eucharistic Prayer III is to my mind the prayer that, being in reasonably common use, best teaches the doctrine of the Mass as a sacrifice of reparation. It may be asserted that this E.P. is if anything even more explicit about the Sacrifice of the Mass and its atoning power than the Roman Canon! For it states that God has gathered a people to Himself "so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name", and in fulfilment thereof, at Mass "we offer [Him] in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice" and we address God, asking him to "Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and [recognize] the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself" – indeed, "May this Sacrifice of our reconciliation, we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of all the world".

Surely this teaches the doctrine of the Mass-Sacrifice as one of reparation? For in the Church's One Oblation, we recognize, and beg God to receive on our behalf, "the sacrificial Victim" – Jesus Christ crucified – "by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself". This is the doctrine of vicarious atonement expressed in prayer. And furthermore, this doctrine of reparation, of reconciliation, of atonement, is repeated again, when at Mass the priest prays on our behalf "May this Sacrifice of our reconciliation... advance the peace and salvation of all the world".

While perhaps the terms reconciliation and reparation are not entirely synonymous, it seems to me that the underlying message is one and the same. So it appears odd to me that, given E.P. III is used reasonably often, a person who goes to Mass could have never put two and two together and realized that the Mass is a Sacrifice, since it makes present Christ Himself, our High Priest and Sacrifice, crucified and risen, in His own true Flesh and Blood, rent and spilt for us; and that, just as Christ's oblation of himself on Calvary was a perfect atonement for the sins of the world, so too its making present in the Mass is itself the plenitude of reparation.

Too much teaching and catechesis, it must be acknowledged, however, has puerilely emphasised the gladsome presence of Christ in the Eucharist, while never alluding to His presence as precisely the same sacrificial Victim as died for us on Calvary's Tree. The way some Masses are conducted would not seem consonant with such a sobering truth... it remains a grave temptation to try to have Christ without His Cross; yet One was nailed to the other, and ever lifts up pierced Hands in intercession on our behalf; as is said to priests at their ordination, we should recognize that which we imitate, and live as befits those who bear in their bodies the Passion of Christ.

The fourth Eucharistic Prayer is more explicit still about the identity of our Offering with that of Christ, and its saving power: "we offer you his Body and Blood, the sacrifice acceptable to you which brings salvation to the whole world". It states that it is "the Sacrifice which you yourself have provided for your Church"; and in its intercession it bids God "remember now all for whom we offer this sacrifice". That said, it seems to me that E.P. III is the prayer most direct in its expression of the doctrine of the Eucharist as a reparative sacrifice.

The two Eucharistic Prayers for Reconciliation also teach this doctrine. E.P.R. I states "we offer you, who are our faithful and merciful God, this sacrificial Victim who reconciles to you the human race. Look kindly, most compassionate Father, on those you unite to yourself by the Sacrifice of your Son... who heals every division". E.P.R. II similarly reads "we offer you what you have bestowed on us, the Sacrifice of perfect reconciliation. Holy Father, we humbly beseech you to accept us also, together with your Son".

Finally, the Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs (in its first incarnation, the so-called Swiss Eucharistic Prayer, later rendered more orthodox by Roman redrafting), in each of its four variants (which are identical but for a different Preface and a different intercessory insert), also teaches this consoling doctrine. It prays "we offer you the Bread of life and the Chalice of blessing. Look with favour on the oblation of your Church, in which we show forth the Paschal Sacrifice of Christ that has been handed on to us". For Christ is in truth our Passover and our lasting peace, who has reconciled all in Himself; and to the Church has been handed on this Mystery, this saving Sacrament of the altar, which makes present, in the life-giving Bread and blessed Chalice, the true Body and Blood of Christ.

It never ceases to amaze me, given that "the law of prayer is the law of belief", how men can go to Mass, which is generally said in the vernacular, and has been for decades, and yet not know what the prayers themselves teach. Mass is not merely a Communion service (for which a well-stocked tabernacle would suffice) – it is the Sacrifice of Calvary made present. Why else do we sing "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us... grant us peace"?

Prex Eucharistica Brevior

To my astonishment, the official documents of the work of the liturgical reformers in the late sixties, all in Latin except for some rulings from Paul VI quoted in Italian (!), quite openly refer to their ongoing drafts for what is now Eucharistic Prayer II as Prex eucharistica brevis or Prex Eucharistica II Brevior – the brief or briefer Eucharistic Prayer!  How breathtaking, given that this brevity is what has turned it into the most commonly used Eucharistic Prayer of the modern Roman Rite, which raises the question of whether the Roman Mass is really quite as Roman as it was when the Roman Canon, and it alone, was used for sixteen hundred years at Mass.

What caught my attention was that, while the first half of their draft Prayer was all but identical to the version eventually approved, with only verbal differences of little note, the whole of the intercessions, from after the communion epiclesis down to the doxology at the end, was in reverse order.  Assuming that readers have easy access to the new translation of E.P. II, here is the second half of its 1967 draft, first in Latin, then in a translation I have prepared (based upon the new translation in order to make it sound familiar); the whole passage runs straight on from the prayer in the preceding line, that the Holy Spirit gather all who are sharers of the Body and Blood of Christ into one:

...et cum beata Dei genetrice Maria, beatis Apostolis, 

et omnibus Sanctis qui tibi a sæculo placuerunt 

partem habeamus.

Memento etiam Domine illorum qui dormierunt in spe resurrectionis 

et admitte eos in lucem vultus tui,

Nobis quoque famulis tuis, una cum Papa nostro et Antistite nostro,

et omnibus fidelibus in Ecclesia toto orbe diffusa,

concede ut perficiamur in caritate

et ad regnum tuum pervenire valeamus,

in quo te laudemus et conglorificemus per Filium tuum Jesum Christum

per quem tibi gloria et honor in Sancto Spiritu

nunc et in sæcula sæculorum.

Amen.

…and may have some share 

with Blessed Mary, the Mother of God, the blessed Apostles, 

and all the Saints who have pleased you throughout the ages.

Remember also, Lord, those who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection

and welcome them into the light of your face.

To us, also, your servants, together with N. our Pope and N. our Bishop,

and all the faithful in the Church spread throughout the world,

grant that we may be brought to the fulness of charity

and be worthy to enter into your kingdom,

where we may praise and glorify you

through your Son, Jesus Christ,

through whom to you be glory and honour in the Holy Spirit 

now and for ever.

Amen.

What is interesting is, as mentioned, the order: Saints (the Church triumphant) – the Dead (or the Church suffering in Purgatory) – the Church Militant.  This order was reversed in later drafts; while most of the text was retained, certain parts have been united: partem habeamus and ad regnum tuum pervenire valeamus have evidently been combined into the phrase æternæ vitæ mereamur esse consortes; other parts have been changed: gone are Nobis quoque famulis tuis (itself copied from the Roman Canon) and omnibus fidelibus; other parts have been added, such as universo clero, omniumque in tua miseratione defunctorum and Omnium nostrum, quæsumus, miserere.

It may be noted that the words universo clero were intended to substitute for Nobis quoque famulis tuis (since that phrase in the Roman Canon is thought to refer to the celebrating clergy), and similarly Omnium nostrum, quæsumus, miserere was intended to substitute for omnibus fidelibus.  Unfortunately, the impression is given, by separating it from the prayer for the Church, of an unpleasant clericalism, as if the Church consists of only Pope, Bishop and clergy.  That is why so many priests, foolishly and disobediently it is true, have unofficially amended those words of E.P. II for years; and frankly to at the least add "and all the faithful" in a future reform would seem quite reasonable.

An emended draft makes clear that, when this last section was reordered, at first the words et universo clero and omniumque in tua miseratione defunctorum were not yet included, and even the words et eos in lumen vultus tui admitte were omitted for a while, while the Hippolytan doxology was kept, and even reverted somewhat to its original text, cum Sancto Spiritu in Ecclesia.  Later still, E.P. II as we have it to-day was finalized, and sent up for Papal approval...

"The Alternative Has Become the Norm"

Responding to my earlier posting about how the Roman Mass is de facto the Hippolytan Mass, an "anonymous young priest" (we assume, a Catholic! perhaps a Coo-ees contributor? but probably not to that aCatholic Catholica...) has emailed me to remark that:

- At least in Australia, clergy exercising legitimate options have routinely opted for the simpler and shorter.  “2 is the new 1” as far as EPs go.  But I’m also thinking here of the option of substituting a suitable hymn for the proper chants of the Mass.  The exercised option over the long term has meant that the alternative has become the norm, and there would rarely be an “option” in parochio-political terms of returning to the more elaborate and longer.  The point to be made is that the options need to be of equal “weight” in order to be true options, otherwise we arrive at the imbalance presently encountered. 

- Putting together recently a Funeral Mass I discovered the huge variety in Scriptural readings (45 readings), which bewilders rather than frees one.  The options for readings for Mass for the Dead also seem to be chosen on the basis of their ability to console mourners, rather than the mystery of Christ’s death and ours.  The example I give for the consolation vs communion selection: St Matthew’s Beatitudes (but not St Luke’s) may be read at a Mass for the Dead.  Why?  Probably because there is an escape clause: “Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  The options provided for choice need to be in harmony and consistency with the rest of the liturgy as the work of the whole Church, of which the Funeral Mass is but one occasion.

"Parochio-political" – marvellous phrase, terrible reality!

Liturgical minimalism, and all other forms thereof (e.g. terrible preaching, worthless catechesis, etc.), constitute the worst enemy of Catholicism in Australia: it is a terrible plague of mediocrity, the counterpart of that lukewarmness of which Our Lord in the Apocalypse so frighteningly said, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth." (iii, 15-16)  Such lukewarmness, such mediocrity, is but the prelude to spiritual death – as can be seen in the deadness of our churches Australia-wide, which are little Laodiceas, nearly every one: "thou sayest: I am rich and made wealthy and have need of nothing: and knoweth not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." (iii, 17)

Your comments, young Fr X, about hymns totally replacing the sung Propers are too true; at least some work is now being done in the States and even here to try and remedy the truly awful condition of so-called sacred music in parishes.

As for funeral Masses, does not the Supreme Pontiff formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger wish for the two Forms of the one Roman Rite to cross-fertilize?  I believe that the Missale Romanum (1962 and earlier editions) suggests the following four pairs of Epistles and Gospels, and none other (well, I could cock a glance at the 1738 Missale Parisiense for more if asked...):

• I Thessalonians 4, 13-18 & St John 11, 21-27 [for funerals, month's minds, &c.];
• I Corinthians 15, 51-57 & St John 5, 25-29 [1st Mass of All Souls];
• II Machabees 12, 43-46 & St John 6, 37-40 [2nd Mass of All Souls, and for anniversaries];
• Apocalypse 14, 13 & St John 6, 51-55 [3rd Mass of All Souls, and the daily Mass for the dead].

In my experience, it is much easier choosing from a restricted compass rather than from a bewildering number of possibilities – when I had a part-time job as a salesman at Myer as a schoolboy, I was told to give customers no more than three choices.  Not having a modern Lectionary handy I cannot be sure all of these are options in the Ordinary Form, but I suspect they would be.  Something for you, Fr X, to check!

Addendum re Eucharistic Prayer II

Opening up Hänggi & Paul's Prex Eucharistica (Fribourg, 1968), to find the versio latina antiquissima of the Eucharistic Prayer in the little work called The Apostolic Tradition attributed to St Hippolytus, and then to compare it with the Latin of Eucharistic Prayer II, I find that, of the 244 words of the ancient Latin version, I must underline 78 as not being found in the modern E.P. II, even in loose paraphrase, from Dominus vobiscum before the modern Preface to the Amen after the final doxology.  Hence, 166 words, that is, 68% or about two-thirds of the Prayer of pseudo-Hippolytus (for recent scholarship regards it as proven that it is not really his) have been used to construct E.P. II.

Meanwhile, the modern E.P. II, from Dominus vobiscum to Amen (including the Sanctus, entirely missing from the ancient text, and a Memorial Acclamation), consists of about 383 words, of which, as mentioned, at best 166 words are derived, however loosely, from ps.-Hippolytus.  In other words, only 43% of the whole of E.P. II consists of Hippolytan material; and of that, 51 words comprise the Preface (which is 68% Hippolytan – and almost wholly such, disregarding its opening and closing phrases), which may be replaced by another – in which case, E.P. II from Vere sanctus to the final Amen is only 37% Hippolytan (97 words out of 263), and still less if the whole doxology Per ipsum is regarded as it ought be, as a straight borrowing from the Roman Canon and not at all taken from The Apostolic Tradition.  The body of the Prayer is thus really only a third from that primitive source.

In sum, two-thirds of an early Eucharistic Prayer of uncertain provenance was adapted to comprise two-thirds of a modern Eucharistic Prayer.  As all men know, 2/3 multiplied by 2/3 is 4/9, or about 44%, so my above calculation seems roughly right.

How did the experts set to work in the late sixties to concoct this (alas! shorter and thus most successful) rival to the venerable and holy Roman Canon, until then the sole Eucharistic Prayer of Western Catholicism (including the Ambrosian Rite, whose Canon has only a few minor differences, and excluding only the few Masses said in the Mozarabic Rite – since 1500, usually only one each day), having been said daily by countless priests for at least sixteen centuries?

Basically, the first, Christological part of the ancient prayer was separated off and turned into a Preface, given a proper Roman-style protocol beginning Vere dignum and an eschatocol Et ideo [which also echoes a phrase in the Missale Gothicum about both angels and saints praising the Lord], leading into the Sanctus.

After that, using the common Gallican and Mozarabic opening phrase Vere sanctus (found also in the Ambrosian Rite on one day of the year), a preconsecratory epiclesis was composed and inserted (I should remember where the phrasing about "the dew of thy Spirit" comes from, but don't; it is of course ultimately a Scriptural allusion to Gideon's fleece, itself an image of the virginal conception).  [UPDATE: apparently fons omnis sanctitatis is a phrase pinched from the Liber mozarabicus sacramentorum, while Spiritus tui rore sanctificas comes from the Missale Gothicum.]

Next, the Hippolytan text of the consecration was slightly amplified and harmonized with the Roman words of consecration, and the modern Memorial Acclamation introduced by Mysterium fidei inserted.  

The whole anamnesis and oblation is, it must be said, taken almost verbatim from ps.-Hippolytus, but an entirely new postconsecratory communion epiclesis (retaining the one reference to being "gathered into one") was added thereafter, omitting most of what the ancient prayer had (at which point, in any case, the text has a number of convenient variants in various ancient versions – the original Greek has been lost, which is why I refer to the most ancient Latin of it that has survived, since presumably the revisers worked mainly from it).

Finally, a long intercession (whose opening lines, about remembering the Church spread throughout the world and perfecting her in love, seem to me to derive from the Didache 10:5 and 9:4) was added, since a Eucharistic Prayer was felt to be incomplete without such offering up of the Sacrifice of the Mass for all the living and the dead, in union with the Pope and bishop, and commemorating Our Lady and the Saints, but concluding with a last line pinched from the old prayer: "that Thee we may laud and glorify through Thy Child Jesus Christ" – which was made to lead (a bit ungrammatically) into the Roman Canon's Per ipsum.

(I have, since writing this, also noted all the words taken more or less verbatim from the Roman Canon and used in the composition of E.P. II – some in the epiclesis, most in the consecration and the intercessory paragraphs – amounting to about 80 in total, plus all the 26 words of the Per ipsum (not to mention the Preface, whose protocol and eschatocol contain 24 more taken from the Roman tradition, nor its dialogue, nor the Sanctus): so that, excluding the Preface &c., 106 out of 263 or 40% of the text of the Eucharistic Prayer from Vere sanctus to the final Amen is in fact from the Roman Canon; there is some overlap with the 37% of the same I count as Hippolytan, since I included all words of the ancient Hippolytan doxology that seemed more or less equivalent to those of the Per ipsum.)

What a dog's breakfast!

I recall Michael Davies saying that a Swiss Reformed church (or was it a Lutheran one in Germany? – hence its cruel nickname of the Lutheran Canon, which is actually not a very Lutheran concept at all; "the quickie Canon" is more apt) adopted this Eucharistic Prayer II (leaving out the Pope of course, as I heard a Jesuit do when saying a funeral Mass for a Protestant in Melbourne) as sufficiently ambiguous to be acceptable to their theology of the Eucharist; and I just found it, almost word-for-word (again omitting the Pope), amusingly enough in the now-obsolete nasty old ICEL paraphrase, in the Holy Liturgy of the Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa!

A cynic might say that E.P. II was the answer to the prayers of Irishmen, priests and laity, down the ages: Lord, make Mass go even faster.