What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Liturgy: The Son in the Liturgy

The Son in the Liturgy

            In the Catholic Church, the liturgy is accomplished through the Sacraments.  For those of you especially from Protestant traditions, you may be wondering just what a sacrament is.  Or why they are important.  “Christ now acts through the sacraments he instituted to communicate his grace.  The sacraments are perceptible signs (words and actions) accessible to our human nature.  By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit they make present efficaciously the grace that they signify.”  (CCC 1084)  In the liturgy, in the Mass, we find two sacraments present.  The first is the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the second is the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  I know it’s possible that those terms are totally unfamiliar to some reading this, so I will explain.  I’ll start with Holy Orders, briefly, because it will be covered in more detail later.

            After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his apostles.  “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’” (John 20:21-23)   In doing this, Jesus “entrusted to them the power of sanctifying; they became sacramental signs of Christ.” (CCC 1087)  But eventually, sooner or later, (in most cases sooner) they were going to die.  Therefore they also passed on that same authority to other men.  And so on down through the ages.  The Catholic Church calls this Apostolic Succession.  Any priest serving in any parish anywhere in the world has that same authority.  Because of this, Jesus sacramentally present in the Sacrifice of the Mass “in the person of his minister, ‘the same now offering through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross.”” (CCC 1088)

            In the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Paschal mystery of Christ is once again re-presented to the Father.  It’s not represented.  It’s re-presented.  And Jesus isn’t crucified again.  Something unique in all of human history happened with the Paschal mystery.  The suffering, death and resurrection didn’t just happen once in history.  In order for the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to impact all people of all times, it also had to happen outside of time.  This isn’t something our minds will ever be able to comprehend, because we can’t comprehend eternity.  We are people of time and space.  Anything beyond that becomes impossible for us to fathom.  Our hearts, however do understand it.  Because our souls are eternal, they comprehend how the sacrifice of Christ on the cross nearly two thousand years ago is effective and efficacious in our lives today.  When the priest prays that the Holy Spirit would come upon the bread and wine “that they would become for us the body and blood of Christ”, our minds don’t comprehend how that can be possible.  Our hearts know it not only is possible, but that it really does happen, because our hearts also understand that if a heart of stone can be changed into a heart of flesh, if sinful man can become redeemed and forgiven man, then really, changing bread and wine into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ is actually pretty easy for God to do.  We’re a lot more stubborn than bread is.

            This is the work of Christ in the liturgy.  In the Sacrifice of the Mass, we once again enter into that time and place when Jesus spoke through the word proclaimed.  We enter once again into that time and place when Jesus gave all so we could have everything.  And even though we are living in 2012, we enter once again into the Garden to witness his agony, we are present at