Day 30
Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it. (Rev 2: 17)
Lauda Sion salvatorem (Sequence for the Mass of Corpus Christi) by St. Thomas Aquinas (+ 1274)
Sion, lift thy voice and sing: Praise thy Savior and thy King; Praise with hymns thy Shepherd true: Dare thy most to praise Him well; For He doth all praise excel; None can ever reach His due. Special theme of praise is thine, That true living Bread divine, That life-giving flesh adored, Which the brethren twelve received, As most faithfully believed, At the Supper of the Lord.
Let the chant be loud and high; Sweet and tranquil be the joy Felt today in every breast; On this festival divine Which recounts the origin Of the glorious Eucharist.
At this table of the King, Our new Paschal offering Brings to end the olden rite; Here, for empty shadows fled, Is reality instead; Here, instead of darkness, light.
His own act, at supper seated, Christ ordained to be repeated, In His memory divine; Wherefore now, with adoration, We the Host of our salvation Consecrate from bread and wine.
Hear what holy Church maintaineth, That the bread its substance changeth Into Flesh, the wine to Blood. Doth it pass thy comprehending? Faith, the law of sight transcending, Leaps to things not understood.
Here in outward signs are hidden Priceless things, to sense forbidden; Signs, not things, are all we see:- Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine; Yet is Christ, in either sign, All entire confessed to be.
They too who of Him partake Sever not, nor rend, nor break, But entire their Lord receive. Whether one or thousands eat, All receive the selfsame meat, Nor the less for others leave.
Both the wicked and the good Eat of this celestial Food; But with ends how opposite! Here 'tis life; and there 'tis death; The same, yet issuing to each In a difference infinite.
Nor a single doubt retain, When they break the Host in twain, But that in each part remains What was in the whole before; Since the simple sign alone Suffers change in state or form, The Signified remaining One And the Same forevermore
Lo! upon the Altar lies, Hidden deep from human eyes, Angels' Bread from Paradise Made the food of mortal man: Children's meat to dogs denied; In old types foresignified; In the manna from the skies, In Isaac, and the Paschal Lamb.
Jesu! Shepherd of the sheep! Thy true flock in safety keep. Living Bread! Thy life supply; Strengthen us, or else we die; Fill us with celestial grace: Thou, who feedest us below! Source of all we have or know! Grant that with Thy Saints above, Sitting at the Feast of Love, We may see Thee face to face. Amen.
RESPONSORY
You fed your people with the food of angels, bread from heaven, ready to hand,
— source of all delight and satisfying to every taste.
It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven. It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
— Source of all delight and satisfying to every taste..
PRAYER
We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever. Amen. (Church of England)
Day 31
Then I [John] saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule* them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords’. (Rev 19:11-16)
From Mysterium salutis by Hans Urs von Balthasar (+1988)
The eucharistic gesture of Jesus' distribution of himself to his own and through them to the world is a definitive, eschatological, and thus irreversible gesture. The Word of the Father become flesh is definitively given by him, passed around, and will never again be taken back. Neither the resurrection from the dead nor the ascension as "return to the Father" (Jn 16:18) are a counter-movement to becoming man, passion, Eucharist; the farewell discourses speak clearly enough here: "I am going away and am coming to you" (Jn 14:28); "you see me because I live, and you will live also" (Jn 14:19). Or when Jesus says he gives up his life in order to take it back again, that he gives it voluntarily, he has the power to give it, and the power to take it back again (Jn 10:18), then the addition "and I give them eternal life" (Jn 10:28) shows that here there can be no talk of a taking back of what has been given or of the gesture and its state of self-donation. The setting into flow of earthly substance into the eucharistic substance is irreversible; it also lasts not only (as a "means") until the "end of the world"; it is rather the radiant core about which (according to the vision of Teilhard de Chardin in his youth) the cosmos crystallizes, or better, from which it becomes radiant.
One must realize what theological depth of meaning gets expressed with the showing of the wounds on the risen One: that the state of being sacrificed during the passion has positively entered into and is taken up into the henceforth eternal state of Jesus Christ; and that between his “heavenly" state and his “eucharistic" state no difference can be added which would affect its inner constitution. The total self-surrender of Jesus — after his sharing at the Last Supper where he leaves his fate and the meaning and shape of his saving work to the discretion of the Father, the interpretation of the Holy Spirit, and for the promotion and fructification of the church — is so conclusive that it can in no way ever go back to a disposal over himself. And this is true even though through his obedience he has been “exalted" (Phil 2:11) and “made to be Lord" (Acts 2:36). He is “Lion" (Rev 5:5) only insofar as he is for ever “Lamb as though slain" (Rev 5:6) in the middle of the throne of God. This says much more than that he, on the basis of the earned merits, stands before the Father as intercessor, even more than that he merely makes his “self-giving" brought to completion in a bloody manner on earth to continue in an unbloody manner in heaven. It means ultimately that the Father's act of self-giving, with which he pours out his Son through all space and time of creation, is the definitive opening of the very trinitarian act in which the “persons" of God, “relations," forms of absolute self-donation and loving flow.
In the Eucharist, the creator has succeeded in making the finite, creaturely structure — without breaking it or doing it violence (“no one takes my life from me": Jn 10:18) — so fluid that it is capable of becoming the bearer of triune life. The “language" of human existence — in its spontaneity as in its condition of being disposed of by the superior strength of suffering and death as a whole — has become the language of God and his self-expression. Of course we stand here in the midst of the most impenetrable mystery, for we cannot conceive of a human being in any other way than as a being who brings itself together within itself in order then to bestow this self (this being-present-to- oneself) on another as well. And in fact the resurrection accounts show us just such a self-possessing one who lets himself be known in the utmost freedom and sovereignty, when it pleases him, and with¬ draws himself in the same way, and disposes of himself in highest fullness of power. And yet this human being is at the same time the Word and the Son of the Father who, in giving up his “divine form" with his kenotic self-giving, has gone to the ultimate, and he does not do away with but rather lets his self-donation, sacrifice and kenosis be demonstrated as the authentic power and glory of God. The crucified One, and he alone, is the risen One. For being allowed to give himself in such a way, he gives eternal thanks to the Father as the substantial Eucharist of the Father which, as such, never becomes past or mere remembrance.
RESPONSORY
He is clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood,
-- and his name is called the Word of God.
On his garment and on his thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords
-- and his name is called the Word of God.
PRAYER
Father in heaven,
whose Church on earth is a sign of your heavenly peace,
an image of the new and eternal Jerusalem:
grant to us in the days of our pilgrimage
that, fed with the living bread of heaven,
and united in the body of your Son,
we may be the temple of your presence,
the place of your glory on earth,
and a sign of your peace in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Church of England)