Day 12

A reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. 

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves. (1 Corinthians 11:23-29)

RESPONSORY

From “A Discourse on the Sacrifice of the Mass” by Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle (+1629)

How can you say that the presence of an ordinary lamb, or of bread and a cake of pure flour, set on God's table which is His altar, is a true sacrifice; yet that the presence of the living bread come down from heaven, the only Son and unique Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world, a presence effected by the High Priest according to the order of Melchisedech, at the moment when He begins to dedicate and offer Himself up to the cross, is not a true sacrifice? .... If we observe the movements of Him who weighs each action, performing each in due time and measure, we shall see that this mysterious action was reserved by Him to the last hour of His life, when the real Passion in Blood was already on its course (if we look for it in its beginning, namely in the heart of Judas and the plotting of the Jews), in order that this religious and sacred action should find itself brought within the bounds of His Passion, and should be initiative and dedicative of the Mystery of the Cross, and that the mysterious offering which He makes of Himself to God His Father in the Eucharist, should be followed on and carried out visibly and in Blood in His Humanity, without the interruption of any other action or mystery .... Thus it is that here He takes the first step on the way to death, whether interiorly in the intention of His heart, or liturgically in the ceremony which He institutes, or exteriorly in leaving the Cenacle to go to the garden, where His Blood was to trickle from every part of His Body, and where the enemy waited His coming to capture Him and lead Him to Calvary. For He rises from this last holy table whereon He has offered the Eucharist, to meet the agonies of death which lay hold upon Him in the garden, and He arises from the table too with these beautiful words on His lips: that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment so do I (John 14:21). And assuredly seeing and considering that the Son of God did not delay the offering of Himself to death till the actual moment of torment, that His love forestalled and outmatched the malice and rage of the Jews, and seeing that in this Last Supper He had no other topic of discourse but His death and Passion, and that He saw it there present in the heart and plot of Judas who was with Him at the same table, and that He was even then making a perpetual memorial of His suffering, and that in this new and Christian Pasch He was delivering up the same Lamb that was to die for our Redemption on the Cross: this being so, is it then so unbecoming the dignity of Christ when instituting the marvels of the Eucharist, or the mystery of the Cross so intimately bound up with it, or the connection between the two mysteries (as if it were another Saviour and not the same whom we see celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist in the Supper room on Sion and enduring death and the Passion on Mount Calvary), that you would have to torture your minds to believe, that it has pleased our Lord in the act of His Testament to remember His Death, and to present to God the offering and the voluntary acceptance thereof, while He is instituting the sacrament and perpetual memorial of it? If you are willing to be led by the light of His words, they clearly tell you: This is my body which is given for you, this is my blood which is shed for you (Luke 22:19), plainly words of oblation and sacrifice. For to be given for us and to be offered for us, are one and the same thing.