Eucharist...christ Dying Again?

[Selah]

(Catholics only, please)

 

Was having a discussion with a mutual friend, who asked why the Eucharist is called a "Sacrifice" and why we use the term "Holy Sacrifice of the Mass" if Christ isn't actually dying or being sacrificed. Help?

[Luigi]

Read through some of the Eucharistic Prayers - it's all laid out there, more or less. 

 

Because we are offering Christ's sacrifice (on the cross) to the Father again, revivifying that sacrifice.  

 

 

 

 

As the man said, "Do this in memory of me." 

Edited May 17, 2014 by Luigi

[Fidei Defensor]

The Sacrifice of the Mass is not "re-sacrificing" but bringing the one and only sacrifice of Christ and making it present to us.  It is THE sacrifice of Christ, present for all eternity.

[John Ryan]

Sacrifice does not need to be thought of in terms of death. There is a "sacrifice of prayer." The Eucharistic involves remembrance that is the Greek word á¼€Î½Î¬Î¼Î½Î·ÏƒÎ¹Ï‚. This is a memory that has the power to draw on the original event. The Passover is a Jewish ἀνάμνησις that brings the event of Egypt to the present day. The Mass is Christ sacrificing Himself in the in persona Christi of the Priest and His Body as the Church. Christ is the prefect sacrifice of obedience through which we sacrifice ourselves to God. 

[Basilisa Marie]

Lots of good stuff already here. Maybe one way to phrase it is that it's our participation in the one sacrifice of Christ, and memory is how that happens. Judaism has a similar concept of memory to our anamnesis (ἀνάμνησις) at celebrations like Passover, so it's not like we made it up. It's such a powerful form of memory that it makes present the events of the past to us.  It's a bit like spiritual time travel, yet at the same time without any of the trappings of time travel.  Basically, by the power of the Holy Spirit our Church's memory as a people allows us to be present at and participate in the one sacrifice of Christ, the Paschal Mystery, and we do that through the Mass.  

 

It might also be helpful to note that Catholics have a lot of generalized short hand terms for our theological concepts, because we can assume that Catholics know the big picture. Like, we often say we "pray to the saints" when we mean that we ask the saints to pray to God for us, but to the uninitiated it sounds like we're worshipping the saints. In a similar way, we talk about the Sacrifice of the Mass, but we don't mean that each mass is its own unique sacrifice, re-killing Christ over and over again or something. We mean that we're participating in the one sacrifice of Christ.  Our language isn't always the most precise in everyday use. 

Edited May 18, 2014 by Basilisa Marie

[Credo in Deum]

This is taken from the book "Calvary and the Mass" by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen:

 

"What is important at this point is that we take the proper mental
attitude toward the Mass, and remember this important fact, that
the Sacrifice of the Cross is not something which happened
nineteen hundred years ago. It is still happening. It is not
something past like the signing of the Declaration of
Independence; it is an abiding drama on which the curtain has not
yet rung down. Let it not be believed that it happened a long time
ago, and therefore no more concerns us than anything else in the
past. <Calvary belongs to all times and to all places.> That is
why, when our Blessed Lord ascended the heights of Calvary, He was
fittingly stripped of His garments: He would save the world
without the trappings of a passing world. His garments belonged to
time, for they localized Him, and fixed Him as a dweller in
Galilee. Now that He was shorn of them and utterly dispossessed of
earthly things, He belonged not to Galilee, not to a Roman
province, but to the world. He became the universal poor man of
the world, belonging to no one people, but to all men."

 

The fact that the Mass is the re-presenting of the Eternal Sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a sobering and wonderful reality.  Christ's sacrifice is not subject to time, and so when you go to Mass you can turn to the Passion Narrative in the the Gospels and in all honesty say to yourself or the person next to you "I am truly present, here, right now".  This reality is further made known in the Gospel, when Christ the night before he died celebrated the first Mass.   But how could He do this if He hadn't died yet?  He couldn't have done it if His Sacrifice was subject to time.   Christ during the last supper re-presented His Eternal Sacrifice, thus showing that all who would do this  (with a valid priesthood since this was the other purpose of the Last Supper), would likewise be re-presenting His same Sacrifice. 

 

Edited May 18, 2014 by Credo in Deum

[Benedictus]

Christ died (making himself a sacrifice in love and example for us) and this act extends through all eternity. All our sins, and future sins, are redeemed through that 'one' Sacrifice when we seek solace with him. The Mass is therefore a tapping into that eternal reality, event and bringing into our own moment. It has a living and present impact - the outflowing of the sacrifice is a grace and we can partakers in it. Our sins crucify Christ (all our sin hung with Christ on the cross) but his love, through that action, wins out over our sin and redeems us. It's not simply a historical ordinance