The Eucharist As Hylomorphic Holocaust

One of the popular misconceptions of the dogma of transubstantiation is that the accidents of the bread and wine after consecration are mirages, illusions, or figments of the human imagination. No. You really saw the visible accidents of bread and wine before the substantial change, and you really see the visible accidents of bread and wine after the substantial change. There is no element of mirage, illusion, or deception. The difference is that, before consecration, the accidents of bread and wine inhered in their proper substances (bread and wine) and signified to your senses the presence of that substance. After consecration, those accidents are miraculously sustained despite the underlying substantial change. Now, the accidents (which are just as “real” in the common English-language meaning of that term as the changed substance is) signify the Body and Blood of Christ present sacramentally. Without the retention of the accidents as signs, transubstantiation alone would not constitute a sacrament. The bread and wine persist only as accidental signs of a higher supervening* substance, not as substances in their own right/rite.

Contrast this with the other sacraments, where the water, oil, etc., become signs accidentally, but still remain substantially water, oil, etc. They retain their own natural identities. The water, etc., are accidentally instruments of grace while substantially remaining unchanged. In a far more august change, the bread and wine substantially become instruments of grace (i.e. the very Instrument of Grace, the Humanity of the Word Incarnate) while remaining bread and wine only accidentally, i.e. sacramentally. Considered from the perspective of both accident and substance, the bread and wine are totally consumed (i.e. they wholly terminate) in the sacrament. Regarding their substance, the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ the Head. Regarding their accidents, the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church. It is a hylomorphic holocaust.

*”Supervening”: by conversion of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, not by mere substitution. What was bread is now Flesh, what was wine is now Blood.

Palm Sunday and Purim

The primary Old Testament source of the Easter festival is Passover, obviously. Christ was crucified at Passover. In most languages, Easter is just Passover—there’s no separate term for the Christian feast. To a lesser extent, Yom Kippur colors Christian interpretations of Easter, or at least Good Friday and later the Ascension; see the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Revisions (2)

Less well-known is the relationship between Easter and Purim, the Jewish festival celebrating the defeat of Haman in the Book of Esther. This year, Palm Sunday coincides with Purim. Haman was a figure in the Persian Empire who plotted a genocide of the Jews. He prepared a gallows for Mordechai, a Jew, but instead Haman was hanged on the gallows.

Many old translations of the Bible refer to the hanging as a crucifixion. In the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo painted Haman crucified. This is an antitype of Christ. The Christian interpretation is that Christ is Mordechai and the devil is Haman. The devil prepared the Cross to put Christ to death, but in reality the Cross marks the defeat of the devil. The devil was defeated by the very Cross he prepared for Christ, just as Haman died on the cross he prepared for Mordechai.

During the early centuries AD, Jews celebrated Purim by burning a crucified effigy of Haman (shades of Guy Fawkes). Christians saw this and said, “They may *say* that’s Haman, but we have a difficult time watching this and not interpreting this as a taunt against Christ.” Scholars have found an old Jewish poem in which Haman and Christ talk about who suffered a worse punishment for opposing the Jews, so the Jewish identification of Haman with Christ seems to have been more than a Christian slander.

For more information, please refer to this article.

A Eucharistic Miscellany

Miscellaneous thoughts about the Mass and the Eucharist:

1.) When people try to compare the “objective” merits of the TLM and Novus Ordo, a.) they’re almost always a TLM champion, b.) they never provide any genuinely authoritative source for the criteria they apply, and c.) they treat the TLM as the gold standard and then fault the NO for not living up to it, which begs the question.

2.) The lack of a Procession of Gifts, or at least a Presentation of the Gifts, is an objective defect in the TLM. The addition of it was a positive improvement, as was the adoption of an explicit Epiclesis.

3.) There is a twofold communion in the Mass. First, Christ supernaturally assimilates the bread and wine into His Body and Blood. By way of transubstantiation, He once again breaks bread with sinners. He communes with us, consuming our food and drink, as once He did in Galilee. Secondly, the faithful receive the Body and Blood of Christ under the species of bread and wine.

4.) The Eucharistic economy is analogous to the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, Christ partook of our humanity so we might partake of His divinity. In the Eucharist, Christ incorporates the substance of the bread and wine into His Body and Blood without damage to the accidents of the bread and wine. The faithful incorporate the Eucharistic species into their body and blood without damage to the underlying substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. There’s a mutual exchange between Christ and His Church, between the Bridegroom and the Bride.

5.) The sacramental sign signifies not only the saving Passion of Christ on the Cross. It also signifies *our union* with Christ’s unique Sacrifice. As shown in the Procession of Gifts, the faithful bring to the Mass the offering of their thanksgiving, merits, suffrages, penances, good works, prayers, etc., represented by the bread and the wine. “Sursum corda. Habemus ad Dominum.” This offering is radically insufficient until the moment Christ, acting through the priest, deigns to unite it to His own Sacrifice. The Church’s self-offering, signified by the tokens of bread and wine, becomes Christ’s own self-offering to the Father. Thus the Church offers the saving Passion of Christ *under the signs* of the ongoing adoration/thanksgiving/impetration/propitiation of the Church today, here and now.

6.) Think of it as the Church being reunited with Her Head. The bread and the wine represent the Church’s self-offering. This self-offering is unratified and incomplete until the Consecration, when Christ presents the merits of His saving Passion to the Father under the outward signs of the Church’s offering. The Head thus bestows His life upon the Body and directs that life to the Father.

7.) The consecration is like the virginal conception and birth of Christ. The substance is changed without damage to the accidents. In nature, substantial change requires violence to the accidents, just as maternity requires violence to virginity. Not so in the Holy Sacrifice.

8.) The Church offers the merits of Christ’s saving Paschal Mystery under the signs of the Church’s own self-offering (the bread and wine presented by the laity). This signifies the intended effect of the Holy Sacrifice for those who offer it and receive Holy Communion—they live out the saving mystery of Christ in their daily lives. They are transformed into and united to Christ interiorly while preserving the proper accidents of their own time and place and personalities.

9.) The altar is twofold. It is the Church’s table at which Christ is the Guest, receiving the choicest first-fruits of hospitality from the Church (cf. the Eucharistic typology of Abraham hosting the three angels). Then it becomes God’s table at which Christ as Host invites us to the heavenly banquet (cf. the sacrifice of Melchizedek).

10.) Fr. de la Taille says that there were two types of sacrifices in the Old Testament. Holocausts had the most perfect sacrifice as such but didn’t signify the bestowal of God’s blessing in response to the sacrifice. Sacrifices that were consumed had a less perfect sacrifice but better represented the bestowal of God’s blessing (i.e. the partaking of the victims by the priests and people). The Eucharist contains both perfections—the substance of the bread and wine are totally consumed (the perfection of a holocaust), but the retention of their accidents means that the faithful can consume the entire Victim (the perfection of communion).

The Eucharist and the Burning Bush

It’s traditional in Christian art to portray the Burning Bush with an inset image of the Madonna and Child. The bush that burns without being consumed is a sign of the Virgin Birth. I would add that it is a sign of the Eucharist. At the Consecration, the divine fire of the Holy Spirit comes down and completely consumes the substance of the bread, converting it into the Body of Christ. It completely consumes the substance of the wine, converting it into the Blood of Christ. Thus there is an aspect in which the Eucharist is a holocaust. Yet though the substance is consumed, the accidents remain intact, as with the Burning Bush.

Cyrus the Great

The first reading at Mass on Sunday (2 Chron. 36:14-16, 19-23) dealt with Cyrus the Great, who restored the Jews to their homeland. Some meditations:

1.) Cyrus has some of the best press of any political leader in world history. Despite being a pagan, Cyrus appears in the Bible as the “Anointed” of God and hence a type of Christ. Cyrus was admired even by Greeks, who were the adamant enemies of the Persian Empire he created.

2.) When the priest was giving his homily he said that Cyrus was “wise and . . .” at which point he paused. Mentally, I tried supplying the next word. “Prudent? No, that’s too close to wise. What word adequately captures the nature of Cyrus’ rule? Benevolent!” The priest continued his sentence with, “beneficent.”

3.) When Cyrus issued his decree restoring the Jews to their homeland, he promulgated it, “both by word of mouth and in writing.” This is an Old Testament type of the Gospel, which is communicated by both word of mouth (Sacred Tradition) and in writing (Sacred Scripture). Cyrus:decree restoring the Jews::Christ:the Gospel proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Thus Sola Scriptura is refuted, by the Bible.

4.) In the Old Testament, Cyrus was the first Persian emperor. He issued a decree restored the Jews to their homeland, Judah, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah. In the New Testament, Augustus is the first Roman emperor. “A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” And so Augustus restores St. Joseph and the Holy Family to the City of David (Bethlehem), where Christ was born in his ancestral village in fulfillment of prophecy of Micah.

February 22: Feast of the Presidential Chair

I am a few days late in writing this, but February 22 is both a religious and secular holiday:

1.) It’s the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. St. Peter was the first Pope and Bishop of Rome. As successor of St. Peter, the Pope presides over the Universal Church. The Chair of St. Peter represents this authority. We still have a relic of this chair, preserved within the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica.

2.) It’s George Washington’s birthday (according to the New Style, that is). Washington was the first U.S. president. The president presides over the American federal republic and is its chief executive officer. As it happens, we still have the chair Washington sat in when he presided over the Constitutional Convention.

The American federal capital is named Washington, with a neighborhood called Georgetown. As it happens, the site of Washington was earlier the location of a plantation owned by a man named Francis Pope. He named his plantation Rome and the local creek he renamed Tiber. He thus styled himself “Pope of Rome on the Tiber.”

The interior dome of the U.S. Capitol features a fresco entitled the Apotheosis of Washington. It was painted by Constantino Brumidi, who had previously painted in Rome under Pope Gregory XVI.

The U.S. President is elected by the electoral college, which represents the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The Pope is also elected by an electoral college, i.e. College of Cardinals. Each cardinal holds the title of a surburbicarian diocese, parish, or deaconry within the Roman Church. On the symbolic level, the cardinals represent the constituent churches of the Roman local church. In fact, they represent the major posts of the Roman Curia and the major sees of the Universal Church.

For what that’s worth.

The Analogy of Creation, Incarnation, and Eucharistic Consecration

I like to think that the special creation of man is analogous on some level to the Incarnation of the Son of God and to the consecration of the Eucharist.

Throughout cosmic history, God worked through secondary causes to bring material creation (the physical universe, the planet Earth, the biosphere, the evolution of complex life, etc.) to the point where it was ready to receive the stamp of God’s image and likeness in Adam and Eve. So, historical evolution through secondary causes, then God’s direct, supernatural intervention to provide what was lacking and could never evolve materially (an immortal, rational soul).

Likewise, God worked through the Patriarchs, the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, etc., until Christ came in Person. Likewise, in the liturgy, there is a passing-over (transitus) from the readings, prayers, and invocations of the Church to the words of consecration spoken “in persona Christi Capitis” (in the Person of the Christ the Head) that supernaturally transmute bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

To use another analogy, Solomon (the type of all demiurgic secondary causes) could only build the Temple; he could not compel God to consecrate it by His abiding Presence. Or again, Elijah immolated the bullocks on the altar, but God sent the fire from Heaven that consumed them.

The Prophetess Anna, Pompey, and the Desecration of the Temple

From today’s Mass reading (St. Luke 2:36-38) for the Feast of the Holy Family:

“There was also a prophetess, Anna,

the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.

She was advanced in years,

having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,

and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.

She never left the temple,

but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.

And coming forward at that very time,

she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child

to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

I have a speculation about Anna’s history. She is 84 years old in 1 AD. That means she was born ca. 84 BC. She was married to her husband for seven years. Let’s say she married at 14, which I think was normal. Then she would have been widowed at about the age of 21, or ca. 63 BC. What happened in the Temple of Jerusalem in 63 BC? The Roman general Pompey captured the Temple, killing 12,000 Jewish defenders in the process. He personally entered the Holy of Holies and found it empty. I speculate that Anna’s husband was one of the Jewish defenders killed by Pompey. The dates line up.

Hannukah and the Immaculate Conception

I am writing this a few days late, but I find it significant that the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception fell on the first day of Hanukkah this year. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem after its profanation by the pagan Greeks. Our Lady was brought up in the rededicated Temple.

As I have suggested elsewhere, there’s a connection between the Immaculate Conception, Christ’s cleansing of the Temple, and the reconstruction of the Temple under Herod. Perhaps Our Lady’s conception occurred at or around the feast day of Hannukah. In her, the temple of the human race, once profaned by Original Sin, was rededicated to God.

The Idiotic Expression “From Jesus to Christ”

People love the expression “from Jesus to Christ.” How many books, theology classes, seminars, etc., have been named this? This is all because “Jesus” is a personal name while “Christ” is a title. People claim that Jesus was a healer or social reformer or preacher or political revolutionary (or whatnot). Then, later, preferably several generations later, His (er, his) followers turned him into Christ, with the full divine claims.

In terms of BS, this comes close to being distilled BS. It is the “Heisenberg blue crystal meth” of theological BS. How so?

1.) As far as I know, the ancient world had no sects of followers of Jesus of Nazareth who rejected His identity as the Messiah (=the Christ). There are no alternative gospels where Jesus of Nazareth says, “No, I am not the Christ.” Every layer of the history and literature of the “Jesus movement” (lest I tip my hand by calling it Christianity) testifies that Jesus of Nazareth was identified by His own followers as the Messiah during His earthly ministry. His identity as Christ was not certain at the beginning of the ministry, but had been revealed by the end. No “follower of Jesus” denies or doubts whether He was and is the Christ. By every account, we get “from Jesus to Christ” before the Crucifixion.

2.) The identity of Jesus as Christ demarcates the respective “movements” of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. One of the big questions the four Evangelists try to answer in their Gospels is how exactly John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth related to one another. The answer is that John the Baptist wasn’t the Christ but identified Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. What would be the point of going from John the Baptist (not the Messiah) to Jesus of Nazareth (also not the Messiah)? What progress would this represent?

3.) It’s hard to imagine what a follower of Jesus of Nazareth would think of the Messiah if they didn’t think Jesus was it. John’s followers wondered if he was the Messiah. If Jesus’ followers didn’t think He was Messiah, I don’t see how they could have that much regard for Jesus or that much regard for the figure of the Messiah. The entire point of Jesus is that you’re no longer waiting for anyone else—the Messiah by any other name.

4.) The problem Jesus faces in the Gospel isn’t so much that He claims to be Messiah (a point He is discreet about). The problem is that He in so many ways frustrates the expectations for the Messiah. If Jesus was made into Christ by His followers, then the Gospels present this happening within His own ministry, not later.

5.) The earliest heresies (Docetism and Gnosticism) doubted Jesus’ humanity, not His divinity. In other words, when early Christians erred, they erred on the side of accentuating Jesus’ divinity. Hard to see how you get this without a “high christology” early on. John’s prologue isn’t striking for, “In the beginning was the Word.” It’s striking for, “And the Word was made flesh.”

6.) Given the sheer ignominy of the Crucifixion, it’s hard to see how the memory of a mere preacher or healer or revolutionary (etc.) would persist as a movement. The survival of the movement requires the Resurrection event, and that gets you from Jesus to Christ if nothing else does.

7.) “From Jesus to Christ” seems to take “Christ” to mean Jesus’ divinity, per the Nicene Creed. But that reads the theology of the Incarnation into the title of Christ. The mere title doesn’t necessitate that interpretation.

8.) There are Roman historical accounts of Jews rioting in Rome during the reign of Claudius, i.e. within 20-25 years of the Crucifixion. The supposed instigator? One “Chrestus.” Sure sounds like early Christians using that expression, within a single generation of Jesus of Nazareth.