Tuesday, 4/8/14
Today’s readings do not give us a
clear message, so if you don’t mind I’d like to say something about our
thoughts at Mass. I have benefited from following a line of thought developed
in a book I read fifteen years ago. That book insisted that the Mass is rooted
in the grace at meals offered by Jesus at the Last Supper.
At formal meals the Jewish host
had to lead the diners through a three-part table blessing. In the first part
he asked them to recall the favors they had received from God. In the second
part he begged God to come down to unite them. In the third part the host
begged the diners to join him in making all of them into one pleasing gift to
God. They prepared for this by confessing their sins so that their sacrifice
would be pure.
The three parts of the blessing
were known by their Greek names. The calling God’s favors to mind was the anamnesis. The second part, calling God
to come down was called the epiclesis. The Greek name for that third part of
the blessing, the pleasing gift, was the Eucharista.
The importance of that table
blessing has been thoroughly obscured by a misleading English translations of the New
Testament. In the original Greek both St. Paul and St. Luke wrote that Jesus
took up the bread eucharistesas, meaning
that Jesus took up the bread at the Eucharist, which is the third part of the
table blessing.
Strangely, Our English New
Testament translates that Greek word eucharisteasas
in two quite different ways. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper we translate
it as “said the blessing,” In Paul’s account we turn it into “after he gave
thanks.”
We make nothing of the fact that Jesus
gave the Apostles his body under the form of bread just then so that they might
be physically as well as spiritually united with him in the Eucharista, the Pleasing Gift.
To properly participate in the
Mass we must become part of what is sacrificed. We must become part of the
Pleasing Gift.
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