Autor: Haaland, Janne Matlary

Buch: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Titel: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Stichwort: Einführung: Eucharistie; grobe Linie: Exodus, Pascha, Abendmahl, Tod am Kreuz, Auferstehung, Feier d. Eucharistie

Kurzinhalt: The action that God performed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus had been preceded by the actions he accomplished in the history of the Jewish people, especially in their liberation from slavery in Egypt ...

Textausschnitt: INTRODUCTION

1a I wish to do two things in this book. One is to discuss a type of theological thinking that draws on philosophical resources provided by phenomenology. The other is to carry out some theological reflections on the mystery of the Eucharist. The thoughts about the Eucharist will be offered both as ends in themselves and as illustrations of the theological style I wish to describe. (Fs)

1b Before addressing these two issues, let us review the articles of Christian faith that will be especially significant for our study. As Christians we believe that God has acted within the world and within human affairs. We believe that the central action God has performed occurred in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who was not simply man but the incarnate Son of God. The culminating action in the life of Christ was his death on the cross, which redeemed mankind from sin and made it possible for man to participate in God's own life. The death and burial of Jesus were followed by his Resurrection from the dead, in which he entered, body and spirit, into a new, glorified form of being; his Resurrection revealed, confirmed, and completed what his sacrificial death had achieved. (Fs)

1c The action that God performed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus had been preceded by the actions he accomplished in the history of the Jewish people, especially in their liberation from slavery in Egypt; the Exodus not only freed the Jews from oppression but also established them as a special community within which God's glory, love, and justice were to be revealed: "In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel" (Psalm 75:1). The ritual of the Jewish Passover, celebrated once a year, commemorated this liberation and establishment. Other Jewish meals, with their prayers and blessings, also proclaimed God's saving actions, especially his deliverance of his people. (Fs)

2a The death and Resurrection of Jesus were a completion of the deliverance of the Jews. It was a new Exodus, leading not only a single nation but members of the whole human race from the bondage of sin into the life of adopted children of God. Christ in his death was compared to the lamb slain at the Passover: "For our Paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). And just as the Passover reenacted the first Exodus, so the Christian Eucharist reenacts the death and Resurrection of Christ. (Fs)

2b Jesus established the Eucharist during the meal he had with his disciples on the night before he suffered. The Last Supper took place during the time of Passover and is presented as a Passover meal by the synoptic Gospels. It may in fact not have been a Passover meal, but it did take on the significance of the feast.1 At that supper, Jesus transformed the bread and wine that were part of the ritual of the meal into an expression of himself in his death and Resurrection. In doing this, he indicated that what he was about to undergo would fulfill the action that God accomplished in the Exodus. It would be the completed form of the Old Testament action, which was now to be seen as an anticipation of what occurred in Christ. (Fs)

3a Jesus instructed his disciples to repeat what he did at the Last Supper. The Eucharist, in its countless celebrations, was to allow the divine action of Christ's death and Resurrection to be reenacted throughout the world. The Eucharist was to allow the act of our Redemption to exercise its effect sacramentally, but still visibly and audibly and palpably, throughout the human race, to bring together before God the lives and the suffering of all who believe: "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" (Romans 8:16-17). Through the Eucharist, the one action of God in Christ can be reenacted in all places and times. The one action is made able to spread sacramentally throughout the human race and we are enabled to participate in it. (Fs)

3b The Eucharist looks backward in time to the Last Supper and the death and Resurrection of the Lord, and, more remotely, to the Passover and the Exodus. It also looks forward to the eternal life that was won for us by Christ on the cross: "et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur; the promise of future glory is given to us." The Eucharist images the eternal banquet that is the fruit of our Redemption. (Fs)

These elements of Christian belief will be the subject of our theological reflection. Before beginning our study, let us discuss what kind of thinking our reflection will be. (Fs)

Autor: Haaland, Janne Matlary

Buch: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Titel: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Stichwort: Theologie: 1 positive, 2 spekulative, 3 Theologie der Enthüllung (theology of disclosure, theology of manifestation); Phänomenologie; Lehre d. Kirche - Th.; Rationalismus, Historismus, Psychologismus; Erscheinung (Phänomen)

Kurzinhalt: the theology of disclosure differs from speculative theology because it examines the manifestation of Christian things and not, primarily, their nature, definition, and causes; and it differs from positive theology because it is concerned with ...

Textausschnitt: 1 THREE FORMS OF THEOLOGY

5a Christian theology has traditionally been distinguished into the positive and the speculative. It would be helpful to introduce a type of theological thinking that comes between these two. I would like to call this intermediate form of reflective thought the "theology of disclosure" or "theology of manifestation." We can describe the theology of disclosure by contrasting it with both positive and speculative theology. (Fs; tblStw: Theologie)

5b Positive and speculative theology exemplify two ways in which faith seeks understanding. In pursuing their understanding, both forms of theology make use of human reason, but each does so in a different way: positive theology draws especially on the art and science of history, while speculative theology draws primarily on philosophy and the philosophical aspects of other sciences. Both forms of theology are critical sciences conscious of their methods; positive theology began in the Renaissance and speculative theology was most fully developed in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. (Fs)

5c Positive theology attempts to show how the articles of faith are found and developed in Scripture and Tradition; it also attempts to formulate the truths of revelation in contemporary terms.1 Biblical studies are the primary part of positive theology, but other parts examine the Fathers of the Church, the Papacy, the Councils, the liturgy, and the general history of the Church as it is related to the articles of faith. Positive theology discusses the historical settings in which the truths of faith have been revealed, confirmed, and transmitted; it tries to shed light on these truths by discussing the historical contexts in which they have been presented to us, and it also tries to formulate them again in terms appropriate to our own context. (Fs)

6a Speculative theology attempts to do more than restate the truths of faith in a contemporary manner; it attempts to provide an ordered and comprehensive understanding of these truths, using distinctions, definitions, causal explanations, and analogies. Speculative theology is concerned with what we might call Christian realities or Christian "things," the things that have been presented to us in biblical and Christian revelation. Its primary task is to reflect on God, his divine nature and attributes, and his actions in the world. It also studies things such as human being, human responsibility, language, society, even things like time, matter, and life, but it studies them specifically in their relation to the God who has revealed himself to us. Speculative theology attempts to bring out more clearly the meaning of what has been revealed; it tries to explain some truths by showing how they can be derived from, clarified, or supported by others; and it draws analogies between various things that are known or believed. Its explanations work, of course, within the domain of faith; the reasons and causes it appeals to come from revelation. It is not the case that speculative theological arguments would "explain away" an article of faith by making it rest simply on natural truths.2 (Fs)

7a Both positive and speculative theology must be distinguished from the teaching of the Church, which receives and hands on the elements of faith, the things that are believed. The Church conveys these things both in its ordinary life and instruction and in the particularly solemn pronouncements that it must formulate from time to time. Both positive and speculative theology are reflective; those who pursue these sciences presuppose the treasury of faith and go on to think about it according to the ways of thinking proper to their disciplines. The work of positive and speculative theologians is important for the preservation of faith, because by their questioning and investigation they help deepen the Church's possession of what it believes, and they are often able to help the Church draw distinctions between what is essential and what is coincidental in its practice and its revealed beliefs. (Fs) (notabene)

7b Normally the relationship between both forms of theology and the teaching Church is cooperative, but on occasion tensions may arise. It may sometimes appear that speculative theology puts its own reasoning in the place of the articles of faith, and it may at times seem that positive theology reduces the articles of faith to opinions prevailing in certain historical circumstances. The first error is called "rationalism" and the second "historicism"; they are the pitfalls that the two forms of theology must avoid. Theology may be tempted to fall into either rationalism or historicism because the truths of faith so greatly transcend human reason; the truths of faith are highly intelligible in themselves but only slightly intelligible to us, and so we may be inclined to allow the instruments used in theology (philosophy and history, with their more accessible intelligibility) to overshadow what has been revealed to us and what is believed. (Fs)

7c There is room for another form of reflective theological thinking. This third form, which I will call the theology of disclosure, would have the task of describing how the Christian things taught by the Church and studied by speculative theology come to light. It is to examine how they appear. If speculative theology, with its focus on Christian things or Christian realities, were to be considered an "ontological" investigation, the theology of disclosure could be called "phenomenological." (Fs)

8a At first glance it might seem that such a study of the appearance of Christian things resembles the work done by positive theology, which examines how the elements of faith have been made manifest in certain historical events, statements, and texts; but the approach followed by the two theologies is not the same. While historical theology examines facts, the theology of disclosure examines structures of disclosure; it describes the forms of manifestation proper to Christian things. It tries to describe how Christian things must display themselves, in keeping with what they are, and how they must distinguish themselves from things that resemble them and with which they may be confused. Thus, the theology of disclosure differs from speculative theology because it examines the manifestation of Christian things and not, primarily, their nature, definition, and causes; and it differs from positive theology because it is concerned with essential structures of disclosure, which would hold in all times and places, and not with matters of historical fact. Although it differs from these two theologies, it is obviously closely related to them and does not contradict anything they establish as true. (Fs)

8b When we say that the theology of disclosure is supposed to examine the way of appearing of Christian things, many readers will immediately conclude that this theology is a type of psychology. But the theology of disclosure is not a form of psychology. It is not meant to be a psychology of religious experience, nor a psychology of Christian religious experience. If it were to be done as a kind of psychology, it would almost certainly become reductionist. It would fall into an error analogous to the historicism that positive theology can fall into when it is not done properly. The error into which the theology of disclosure would fall is called "psychologism," the reduction of things and objects into human projections, mental acts, or mere appearances in the human mind and sensibility. To interpret the theology of disclosure psychologistically would imply that this form of theology had nothing to do with Christian things themselves but only with certain subjective, psychological states. But this would be a misconception of the theology of disclosure, and it would also betray a misunderstanding of the being of appearances: it would misconceive the display of being. Thus, just as speculative theology must be distinguished from rationalism and positive theology from historicism, so must the theology of disclosure be distinguished from psychologism. I hope to elaborate and illustrate this distinction in the course of this book. (Fs)

9a The hostile reaction we have described, which equates the theology of disclosure with psychology and which is highly suspicious of any study of appearances, is a response that one quite commonly encounters on the philosophical level when one tries to explain what phenomenology is. Phenomenology is often taken as a kind of psychology, and what it studies is often taken to be mere subjective experience. The reason why people frequently interpret phenomenology in this way is that in our cultural tradition, since the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, appearances have been badly misunderstood. Appearances have been turned into mere ideas, into subjective impacts that at best only hint at what things in themselves really are and at worst prevent us from ever reaching things at all; sometimes appearances are even said to be all that there is, with no "things" behind them whatsoever. Thus, when we begin to speak about a theology that investigates appearances, the average listener will immediately suppose that we intend to examine "merely" the way things appear, not the way they are. When one tries to describe and carry out the theology of disclosure, one is obliged to work against deeply ingrained prejudices that distort both our religious and our cultural understanding. A successful formulation of such a theology may be of benefit not only for religious thought but also for our general comprehension of how things come to light. (Fs)

9b It is my conviction that Edmund Husserl has accomplished in principle a more adequate understanding of the relationships among things, displays, and ourselves as datives of display, but his achievement still needs to be adapted to various intellectual disciplines and still needs to be made better known. Husserl (1859-1938) was the founder of phenomenology, the philosophical movement that set the tone for Continental European philosophy in the twentieth century. Although his influence has already been very great, it seems to me that there are aspects of his thought that deserve further development and application, particularly in overcoming the limitations of modernity. I will discuss these possibilities more extensively in Chapter 13. (Fs)

Autor: Haaland, Janne Matlary

Buch: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Titel: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Stichwort: Theologie der Enthüllung (theology of disclosure); patristische Theologie; Th. - Philosophie

Kurzinhalt: The Fathers, in their Neoplatonic style, accepted the display of Christian things as part of the subject of their theology. Emanation, splendor, presence ... It is this aspect of Christian reflection that the theology of manifestation is to recover ...

Textausschnitt: 10a The three scientific forms of theology that we have distinguished—the speculative, positive, and phenomenological— have arisen within the cultural developments of the past thousand years. The first millennium of Christian thought was dominated by "Patristic" theology, which is named after the writers who practiced it and not the methods that it used. Patristic theology was a more immediate reflection on faith. The historical and the speculative were not yet clearly distinguished, and appearances were not subject to the suspicion that would later be raised against them. The second millennium of Christian thought introduced specialization and a self-conscious use of methods, but so long as the speculative and the positive were the sole major forms of theology, the wholeness of Patristic thought could not be critically restored. The Fathers, in their Neoplatonic style, accepted the display of Christian things as part of the subject of their theology. Emanation, splendor, presence, concealment, and imaging were spontaneously accepted and vividly described. It is this aspect of Christian reflection that the theology of manifestation is to recover, but in a manner appropriate to our day and age and with recognition of the contributions of both speculative and positive theology. (Fs; tblStw: Theologie)

10b In recent years many theologians have discussed the issue of the appearance of Christian things; in this book we will draw especially on the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B.1 We will try to offer a philosophical instrumentality for the work of such theologians. The term "philosophical instrumentality" may at first seem to be an oxymoron, since it suggests that philosophy, which in the natural order is an end in itself, can become a means and an instrument for purposes beyond itself. But part of the sense of Christian belief is that everything natural is understood to have been created, so the theological context of Creation allows even what is ultimate in the human order to become subordinated to the theological. The manner of subordination, however, is distinctive: philosophy is ancilla theologiae in a way different from the manner in which things function as instruments for ends and purposes in the natural order. The service that philosophy provides in theology is not like the service it might be called upon to provide, say, for a particular political society, a task that would turn philosophy into an ideology.2 Philosophy does not become ideological in Christian theology; it continues to function as a contemplative activity. It is not meant to establish Christian belief but to be involved in its understanding. (Fs)

Fußnote 2: 4. The prepolitical communities described by Aristotle are not based on argument or logos; the relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, and master and slave do not need justification by speech. Political society is based on argument; those who rule over others in the political order have to give a justification for their claim to rule. If philosophy were to become involved in providing this justification (as it does in Hobbes), it would cease to be contemplative and would become instrumental and ideological. The distinction between political and prepolitical society as regards the need for justification was made for me by Francis Slade.

11a Philosophy can be elevated into this theological service without losing its integrity because of the unique new setting that is introduced through the Christian distinction between the world and God; this distinction is not like any of the distinctions that are drawn within the world. The Christian distinction opens up an entirely new understanding of the whole. It permits a transposition of senses in which some claims that might seem contradictory in the natural order can be understood as coherent and consistent in the theological; mysteries like those of the Incarnation and grace can be accepted as mysteries and not as contradictions when they are understood within the setting of the Christian distinction. Likewise, the subordination of philosophy to biblical revelation does not destroy the preeminence and ultimacy of philosophy in the natural order.1 Indeed, philosophy can flourish as a human activity in this new religious setting. (Fs)

12a I have discussed the Christian distinction in a book entitled The God of Faith and Reason. That book deals with the widest and ultimate context of Christian belief, the context of Creation and the dependence of the world on God's creative choice. It also treats more particular issues, such as the sacraments and the Christian moral life, but it treats them in a derivative way. In the present volume, I will try to develop the same themes but will approach them from the other extreme. Instead of beginning with what is first in itself, I begin with what is first for us: the eucharistic action and eucharistic devotion that are a tangible part of the ordinary Catholic life, part of the things we encounter daily. We will explore how the Eucharist appears, the presentational forms through which it is given. But we will also explore the deeper levels revealed in sacramental life: the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the mystery of the God who creates out of freedom, wisdom, and love, and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. These dimensions are refracted and disclosed to us in the Eucharist, and exploring them is not tangential but essential to the study of eucharistic presence. (Fs)

Our theological reflection will focus on the appearance of Christian things. Before speaking further about the theology of disclosure, let us develop some thoughts concerning the Eucharist. The issue of appearance is obviously essential to this Christian mystery. We will return intermittently to the theology of disclosure to explain more fully how it is to be understood, and we will discuss it again systematically in Chapter 13. (Fs)

Autor: Haaland, Janne Matlary

Buch: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Titel: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Stichwort: Eucharistie: als Opfern und Sakrament; eucharistisches Hochgebet: Wechsel: "wir" - "ich"; Priester in persona Christi;

Kurzinhalt: ... , the Eucharist is the same sacrifice as the one offered by Jesus on the cross, and yet the eucharistic celebration and the death of Christ on Calvary are two different historical events. How can the same redemptive action be achieved at different ...

Textausschnitt: 2 EUCHARISTIC PERSPECTIVES

13a Thomas Aquinas says that the Eucharist is both a sacrament and a sacrifice.1 It is a sacrament insofar as it spiritually nourishes us, a sacrifice insofar as it is offered by the Church to God. Let us dwell on the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and let us develop two lines of thought. (Fs)

First, the Eucharist is the same sacrifice as the one offered by Jesus on the cross, and yet the eucharistic celebration and the death of Christ on Calvary are two different historical events. How can the same redemptive action be achieved at different times and places? Clearly, a special sense of sameness and otherness is at issue in the Eucharist, one quite different from the identities and differences we encounter in our ordinary worldly experiences. The new sense of sameness and otherness needs to be clarified theologically. (Fs)

13b Some light may be shed on this question by our second line of thought, in which we examine the perspectives from which the eucharistic celebration presents the sacrifice of Christ. Most of the prayers said by the priest during the Mass are stated in the first person plural. The priest says that "we" come before God and pray, and he asks for blessings and forgiveness for "us." He prays in the name of the congregation and the whole Church. In particular, all the prayers in the eucharistic prayer are expressed in the first person plural. From the prayer of thanksgiving in the Preface, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit, through the memorial and offering that follow the institutional narrative, through the intercessions and final doxology, the priest addresses God the Father by expressing "our" thanks, praise, and petition.2 At the central point of the Canon, however, within the context set by the prayers spoken by "us," and within the narrative describing the Last Supper, which is also stated by "us," the celebrant begins to quote the words of Jesus at the Last Supper and, within this quotation, he speaks in the first person singular: "This is my body.... This is the cup of my blood." Correlated with this quotational use of the first person singular is a citational use of the second person plural, referring to those whom Christ addressed: "Take this, all of you, and eat it. ... Take this, all of you, and drink from it." The same form is used when the priest, speaking in the voice of Christ, says that his body "will be given up for you," and that his blood "will be shed for you and for all."

14a This change of person, even within a quotation, is dramatic and profound. It is not merely a grammatical change. The words express a change of perspective, a difference in intentionality and disclosure. We as a group of Christians at worship, we as addressing the Father, living in our own present time and place, scattered into countless celebrations of the Eucharist all over the earth, "we" are now all brought together to the single time, place, and perspective from which Jesus, at the Passover he celebrated with his disciples, anticipates his own sacrificial death. The one event on Calvary that we commemorate and reenact was first anticipated, before it occurred, by Jesus. It was anticipated and accepted by him as the will of the Father. In our eucharistic liturgy, through our quotation, we join in the perspective he had on the event that was to take place, that has taken place. (Fs)

15a St. Thomas observes that the use of the first person singular in the eucharistic consecration is different from its usage in the other sacraments. In the cases of baptism and penance, for example, when the minister of the sacrament says, "I baptize you," or "I absolve you from your sins," he speaks in his own voice. Aquinas says that the "form" or verbal expression of such sacraments is stated "by the minister speaking in his own person."3 The minister, speaking as a minister of the Church, expresses himself as the one doing the baptizing and the one forgiving sins. In the Eucharist, however, the "my" stated in the words of consecration is the first person singular uttered by Christ and only quoted by the priest. St. Thomas says that the words expressed in this sacrament are now spoken as though spoken by Christ himself: "The minister who accomplishes this sacrament does nothing except to state the words of Christ."4 In the words used by the encyclical Mediator Dei and taken from St. John Chrysostom, the priest "lends his tongue and gives his hand" to Christ: his tongue allows Christ's words to be stated again, and his hand allows Christ's gesture of taking the bread and the wine to be carried out again.5 The priest's gesture is an analogue to the verbal citation; it is a kind of quotation of the bodily movement. The citation of the words and the quotation of the gesture allow the things taken up and spoken about—the bread and the wine—to become the same in substance as those that were taken up by the Lord. (Fs) (notabene)

16a It is true, of course, that Christ is the ultimate agent in all the sacraments, but the presentational form in which his agency is carried out is distinctive in the Eucharist; the words used in baptism and in absolution, for example, are not the quoted words of Christ. When Christ told his apostles to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19), he was not at that moment performing what his words described; he was not baptizing. When he said to his disciples, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (John 20:22-23), he was not at that moment forgiving sins. Baptism and absolution are not the reenactment of any particular action of either baptizing or absolving carried out by Christ. But when Jesus told the apostles to "do this in memory of me" (Luke 22:19), he referred not just to something they should do but to what he himself was doing.6 Whenever they would do it, they would reenact the same thing he accomplished when he spoke the words. (Fs) (notabene)

16b The interplay of the first-person plural ("we") and the first-person singular ("I") occurs within the wider context of the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist, which develops in a beautiful progression of stages. First, there are the introductory greetings, prayers, and rituals, in which the local community is assembled: the Church is actualized into this time and place, into this particular church, this particular manifestation of the Body of Christ. Second, once assembled, the community listens and responds to the word of God in the scriptural readings and responsorial psalm, as well as in the application made to the present in the homily and the prayer of the faithful. Third, having assembled and heard God's word, the community, now acting even more explicitly through the priest, carries out its eucharistic action, which ends in the "application" that occurs in communion, as the altar becomes the table of the eucharistic meal. The eucharistic action can be carried out only by the baptized; although catechumens can share in the initial assembly and in hearing the word of God, they cannot, in principle, participate in the offering of the eucharistic sacrifice and the reception of the eucharistic meal; only those who are formally members of the Body of Christ can do so. Eucharistically the catechumens can listen but they cannot yet act. (Fs)

17a The three stages of the Mass involve many presences of Christ in his Church: the community itself establishes a particular presence of the Body of Christ, Christ is present in the minister who celebrates the Eucharist, he is present in the Scriptures read during the liturgy of the Word, and he becomes sacramentally present as he is both offered in sacrifice and received in communion during the liturgy of the Eucharist.7 These presences are graded in intensity, leading up to the real presence of Christ that occurs when the bread and wine are changed in their substance into the Body and Blood of the Lord: "The Word assembles the Church for his incarnation in her."8 Moreover, there is a graded order among those who participate in the Eucharist, particularly between the priest and the congregation. This order emerges not because of any personal qualities of the individual celebrant, but because the ordained celebrant represents Christ the Lord. The liturgy culminates in the assumption of the voice of the celebrant by the quoted words and voice of Christ. In a sacramentally and grammatically perceptible way, Christ becomes the speaker of the words of institution and the doer of the gestures associated with them. The appearances of the words and gestures of institution become, through quotation, those of Christ, as the "we" of the community, the Body of Christ, becomes the "I" of Christ the Head of his Body the Church (Ephesians 1:22-23). (Fs) (notabene)

17b The distinctive role of the priest in the Eucharist has been explained in various ways. He is a representative of the bishop and hence a link between the particular community and the universal Church. He does not only come from and represent the local community, but has been sent to it: first by the bishop, more remotely by the apostles, and ultimately by Christ; in this sense his presence is apostolic, the presence of someone who has been sent. But the deepest reason for the distinctive role of the priest in the Eucharist lies in the fact that only God can offer worthy sacrifice to God: the Christian God is so transcendent to the world, so holy, that no act of human religion is adequate in his presence. Only the incarnate Son of God can make the suitable offering and exchange.9 The priest must speak and act in persona Christi, because only Christ can act in the appropriate way in the presence of the Father; in what other name could the Church speak and act? This offering of the Son of God is not just mentioned or remembered in the Eucharist but expressed and actualized in the Son's own words. The community, in adoration and thanks, joins in this offering, but the offering is first there through the action of Christ, who uses the words and actions of the priest to reenact his perfect offering sacramentally. In speaking of the role of the priest in the Mass, Pope John Paul II says, "The sacrifice is offered 'in the person of Christ' because the celebrant is, in a special sacramental way, identified with the 'eternal high priest' who is the author and primary agent of his own sacrifice. ... His sacrifice—and it alone—could and can have expiatory value in the eyes of God, of the Trinity, of the all-transcendent holiness."10 The priest represents the community before the Father as he says the prayers in the first-person plural, but he represents Christ to the Father and to the community as he speaks in the first-person singular. As Josef Jungmann says, "The rite makes it clear that the priest, when he begins the words of consecration, is no longer merely the representative of the assembled congregation, but that he represents now the person of Christ, because he does what Christ did."11 (Fs)

19a The Christian eucharistic prayer was developed from Jewish prayers of proclamation, thanksgiving, and blessing for the great works of God, prayers that were part of the ritual of Jewish meals.12 However, the eucharistic prayer was not a simple transposition of Jewish prayers; folded into the prayer of praise and thanksgiving was the institutional narrative, together with the words of institution included in the narrative. This blending of old and new is appropriate. What "work of God" could, for the Christian, be more deserving of proclamation, thanks, and praise than the Redemption achieved in the death and Resurrection of Christ?13 And what more intense way could there be of proclaiming this action than to quote the words used by the priest and victim when he anticipated the sacrifice? The eucharistic prayer fulfills the Jewish prayer of thanks and praise in the way that the New Testament fulfills the Old, and also in the way the Christian tabernacle differs from the Jewish: in the Jewish synagogue the tabernacle contains the Torah, but in the tabernacles of Christian churches the Word of God dwells not as the Law, not as the inspired written word, but as the incarnate Son of God in his eucharistic presence. (Fs) (notabene)

20a In the sacred liturgy the Christian community is brought into the offering of the Son to the Father, an action that was once achieved in the past but endures as an eternal offering in heaven (Hebrews 8:1-3, 9:23-26). The Eucharist is our participation, even now, in the celestial liturgy. Alexander Schmemann describes the divine liturgy as "the continual ascent, the lifting up of the Church to heaven, to the throne of glory, to the unfading light and joy of the kingdom of God."14 In accomplishing the center of its liturgy, the Church forgoes any verbal initiative of its own and simply quotes the words and gestures of Christ, using the ordained priest as the instrument for this quotation. The Church thus expresses itself through the interaction of the pronouns "we" and "I," and the use of these pronouns expresses a shift of perspective between two points of view, that of the Christian community at worship and that of Christ at the Last Supper. The two perspectives, as well as the transition between them, deserve fuller theological exploration. The two points of view manifest one and the same event, the sacrificial death of Jesus, and the way in which the "two" bring the "one" to light calls for further discussion. Before pursuing this theological issue, let us make some philosophical remarks about identity and recognition, and about the appearances through which they are achieved. (Fs)