“Who sacrifices what to whom?”
What is meant by ‘Sacrifice’ in the Divine Liturgy? (condensed transcript of Orientale Lumine Lecture (June 2000, Washington DC - viewable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYuTmEdbpZ4).
Three phrases from the Divine Liturgy clarify the question of who is sacrificing to whom in the Eucharist:
1. Deacon to Priest: “It is time to begin the service to the Lord” (OCA version) or better “It is time for the Lord to act.” (Ware’s translation from the Greek liturgy) a quote from Ps. 118 (119):126.
The divine liturgy is not primarily our action but Christ’s. The true celebrant is the unique high priest, Jesus Christ, invisible but in complete actuality and immediacy. Christ is the true celebrant. The clergy say, “Christ is in our midst."
“The priest merely lends his hand and provides his voice.” (St. Chrysostom)
2. In the cherubic hymn: the Celebrant addresses Christ: “Thou art the One who offers and is offered, who receives and is distributed.”
History: the first phrase of this sentence comes from a sermon of Theopholis the Patriarch in 400 AD and first appears in the liturgy in 800 AD. It is always a private prayer of the Celebrant.
Christ is envisaged as the true priest. The offerer and offering.
Who offers what? Christ offers himself.
3. The celebrant says: “Offering thee thine own from thine own in all things and for all things.”
This line is even more ancient. Goes back at least to Irenaeus in 2nd century. “We offer unto him what is his own.” And echoes 1 Chron. 29:14: “But who am I, and what is my people, that we have been able to be thus forward in offering to thee? For all things are thine, and of thine own have we given thee…”
This phrase of the liturgy is hard to translate. The correct reading is ‘Offering,’ not ‘we offer.’ In its participle form, it shows that the words lead directly to our response, ‘We sing thee, we praise thee,’ as a single unity.
The second phrase says that the sacrifice is not just for all persons but for all things. It is a cosmic offering for all creation, stressing our responsibility for the environment.
In light of these three key phrases: who offers what to whom?
First, WE (priest and people together) OFFER (Offering thee).
In it’s external sense, the Eucharist is our offering.
What do we offer?
1. We offer bread and wine, expressing our own human creativity. Not just sheaves of wheat and bunches of grapes, but bread and wine. The gifts of the earth, refashioned by human hands. Consciously offering back what the Creator gave us, with thanksgiving. We act as priests of creation that give creation a voice, rendering it articulate in praise of God, offering creation back to God.
2. We offer the total creation. In all things and for all things. The bread and wine signify the whole created order offered back to God in the liturgy. This is the New Covenant equivalent of the firstfruits, calling down the blessing and offering God the total harvest (cf. St. Irenaeus).
3. We offer ourselves. Not only what we have, but also what we are. We are part of the Eucharistic offering. Already in Ps. 40, cited in Heb. 10, we read – “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See God, I have come to do your will.’”
We offer ourselves, soul and body, as a living sacrifice to him.
St. Augustine said: “In the very thing the church offers, she herself is offered. It is the mystery of yourselves that is laid on the Lord’s table; it is the mystery of yourselves that you receive. There you are on the table. There you are in the chalice.” When the crumbs representing the living and departed are put in the chalice, the celebrant says, “Wash away the sins of those here remembered with thy most precious blood.” There you are in the chalice.
4. We offer Christ. St. Cyril of Jerusalem: “We offer Christ, sacrificed spiritually for our sins.” Our self-offering becomes Christ’s self-offering.
And yet, this is not yet even the half of the truth.
Second, we also need to say: CHRIST OFFERS.
- Christ offers himself. Our offering only has value because it is taken up into his, as seen in the three liturgical phrases above. The Eucharist is his offering, rather than ours. He is both priest and victim. St. Augustine: He is the priest, himself the one that offers, himself also the offering.
- Every celebration of the Eucharist is the last supper. You and I are present, as the disciples were, at the last supper. “Believe therefore even now that it is the same supper at which he sat down ... When you see the priest giving the sacrifice, do not think it is the priest doing this, but that it is Christ’s hand stretched out.” (St. Chrysostom).
To whom is the offering made?
- In the Divine Liturgy, Christ offers himself to the Father. John 17:13 – “Now I come to thee.”
- “Thou art the one who offers and is offered; thou art the one who receives.” He offers himself to himself.
- But God the Trinity is indivisible. So the Eucharist is also made to the Holy Trinity. At the Council of Constantinople (1157 AD), the Church emphasized that the Godhead is indivisible so Christ could not offer sacrifice to Father without offering to himself and to the Holy Spirit. “Receive, Holy Trinity,” it says in the Roman Mass.
- And the Eucharistic offering is made to us: Christ offers himself to us in Holy Communion, as implied in the prayer, “Thou art he who … receives and is distributed.”
What is the relationship between the Eucharist and the Cross?
Basic answer: Again, in Constantinople in 1157, which confronted the errors of Soterichus Pantengenus (Patriarch-elect of Antioch, ultimately not enthroned). He quoted the New Testament phrase, “Christ died once for all” (Rom 6:10, Heb. 7:27), and said, “Therefore, since Christ died once for all, therefore the Eucharist is not a real sacrifice but a memorial of the Cross, in an imaginary or iconic fashion.” This view was condemned and anathematized by the council.
The council said that the Eucharistic anamnesis [remembrance], not in a weak sense, but a strong sense. They claimed it was not a memorial or mere imaginary representation. On the contrary, it is the making present of the past, a re-presentation, making present once more. This is what anamnesis meant to them. Remembrance becomes reality—making effective in the present an event in the past. The once-for-all event for salvation becomes effective in the present through the Holy Spirit.
This understanding of anamnesis excludes:
- That it is a bare mental recollection of the sacrifice of the Cross.
- That it is a repetition of the sacrifice of the Cross, for the sacrifice of the Cross is unique and unrepeatable.
- That it is a new sacrifice, for the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross was complete.
Then what is it?
The council simply said, the Eucharistic sacrifice is identical with the sacrifice on the Cross—not bare recollection, repetition or addition. But rather, identical, unchanged, one and the same.
How?
Suggested by the theologian behind the council, Nicolas Methoni, who in turn drew from John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Hebrews. The concept revolves around the concept of the heavenly altar in the book of Hebrews:
- 7:27 Christ offered sacrifice once for all.
- 4:14 After his self-offering, Christ the High Priest has passed into the heavens.
- 9:24 There in heaven he is continually made manifest in God’s presence on our behalf.
- 7:25 There he ever lives to make intercession for us.
Thus, Nicolas puts these texts together and offers the following theory of the Eucharistic sacrifice: “Christ’s unique and unrepeatable act of self-offering on the Cross is continued, not repeated, by his heavenly intercession.” We brings together three factors:
- 1. Christ’s self-offering on the Cross
- 2. Christ’s self-offering at the earthly altar in the liturgy.
And the connection between those two things is established by a third factor:
- 3. Christ’s self-offering at the heavenly altar.
We are not to try to relate the earthly liturgy as an event in time directly with the Cross as an event in time, because in historical time, these two events are separated. We can’t just make a straight line, horizontal connection.
Christ’s self-offering at the Cross is continued at the heavenly altar in eternity, and then we should see the earthly altar (divine liturgy) is a manifestation in time of the heavenly ministry of Christ.
Exactly what is made present in the divine liturgy is the heavenly liturgy: heaven on earth. The Church is an earthly heaven. Nicolas: “The mystery of the sacred rite celebrated daily is a showing forth of that eternal offering in heaven, which is the extension in eternity of Christ’s once for all self-offering on the Cross.”
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