I løpet av min retrettuke i Tromsø for en uke siden leste jeg bl.a. en bok som heter: ALTAR AND SACRIFICE, The Preceedings of the Second International Colloquium of historical, canonical and theological studies on the Roman Catholic Liturgy, CIEL, England 1997.
Boka har trykt foredragene ved denne konferansen for over ti år siden, og det er spesielt ett foredrag jeg vil ta opp her på bloggen: Meal and sacrifice in the magisterium of the Church, F. Denis Le Pivain. Foredraget er trykket på side 147 til 163.
Hovedtemaet i kapittelet er at messen er et offer, noe som bl.a. kommer til uttrykk ved at presten gjerne må bære fram dette offeret i en privat messe, uten av menigheten (i særlig grad) er til stede. F. Pivain skriver om hvordan denne tradisjonelle praksisen ble sterkt angrepet på 40- og 50-tallet, men hvordan pave Pius XII forsvarte den:
The value of the private Mass
This doctrine, unanimously accepted by theologians, but sometimes clumsily understood by them, was vehemently attacked during the reign of Pius XII by certain liturgists who tended to conceive of the sacrifice of the Mass from a solely communitarian perspective, one which downplayed the notion of sacrifice. This emphasis upon the convivium (=the meal), at the expense of the sacrifice manifested itself in a rejection of private Masses, in which the communal aspect was no longer visible. This tendency gave to the Last Supper and thus to the Mass a distinct reality limited to that of a banquet alone. Although they reached opposite conclusions, the approach of these liturgists did not differ from that of the theologians from past centuries, who, in the Mass, looked for a sacrifice other than that of the cross. Both were seeking to give to the fractio panis’ its own separate and proper identity, either as sacrifice (M. Cano), or as a fraternal meal independent in itself (the modems).
Pius XII reacted against this, notably in the encyclical Mediator Dei. The Pope intervened when certain abuses in the theology of the Mystical Body were leading to an inability to recognize the value of any celebrations of the Mass without a communal character. Thus what was true in the wider liturgical sphere was also manifesting itself at its very heart, the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
The Pope takes up the doctrine of the Council of Trent on the truth of the sacrifice of the Mass. He insists upon the identity of this sacrifice with that of the cross: “The Holy Sacrifice of the altar is thus not a pure and simple commemoration of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, but a true sacrifice, properly speaking, in which, by an unbloody immolation, the Sovereign Priest accomplishes that which he accomplished on the cross, by offering himself as an agreeable sacrifice to the eternal Father.”
In this sacrifice, the priest is the same; it is Christ who offers himself through the priest, an alter Christus, another Christ. The victim is identical, and the ends are the same:
1. Glorification of the heavenly Father,
2. Thanksgiving and expiation,
3. Propitiation and reconciliation
4. Impetration
Using the Pauline theology of the redemption, Pius XII affirms that the Eucharistic sacrifice brings about the work of the redemption by a vital contact of the souls of every era with the sacrifice of the cross’. [Thus,] Christ, after having redeemed the world at the price of his own blood, does truly enter into possession of the souls of men.
It is the Church which continues Christ’s act of sacrifice and immolation. Pope Pius was forced more than once to renew this teaching and to re-affirm the bond between priesthood and sacrifice, LES RESTEN AV DETTE INNLEGGET »