"This Is My Body" - Excerpt From an Excellent Article From Inside the Vatican

It is generally known, that, since Vatican II, much has changed in the Catholic Church with regard to this veneration of the Host (whic means "sacrificial gift" in Latin).

Most of the forms of reverence I have described [such as kneeling for Communion] have disappeared. The liturgical reformers succeeded in convincing the faithful that reverence for the Host, worship of the Host as the real physical appearance of Jesus Christ, has been unknown in the Church of the Apostles and their early successors. This veneration of the Host was medieval, they said. The word "medieval" has an even more pejorative sound in the modern Church than it has in modern philosophy and historiography, where people are at last to question the idea of the "darkness of the Middle Ages" - that favorite Enlightenment cliche. In fact, as this "medieval" darkness starts to lighten and dissipate, we begin to discern the profile of one of the most creative, most multifarious and richest periods of huma history - and one of the most adventurous in spiritual terms.

However, my concern today is not to correct our view of the Middle Ages. In my search for an uninterrupted tradition of authentic liturgy I discovered the services of the Eastern Church. Here I paid special attention to the veneration of the Host, for the Eastern Church's liturgy cannot in any way be associated with the Middle Ages; its unchanged tradition, coming from the early part of the first millennium, is dogmatically beyond question.

For the Byzantine Christian, liturgy is a revelation of God, given to man from above; God, worshipped and served by cherubim and seraphim, gives men the grace to participate in this angelic worship and approach Him. It is strictly forbidden to change or adapt this divine liturgy; it would also conflict with the way the participants understand their role in the liturgy....

The sacrificial character of [Byzantine] liturgy is actually much more emphatic than in the Latin, even if one compares it with the Latin liturgy prior to Vatican II. When the Hosts are prepared, ...the pieces of bread selected... are pierced with a tiny lance, just as Jesus' side was pierced by a lance on Golgotha. The procession with the as yet unconsecrated offertory gifts attracts the greatest possible reverence. The priest carries wine and bread, magnificiently veiled, through the church, preceded by a thurifer walking backwards and constantly incensing the gifts. Depending on the particular congregation, people either bow profoundly or kneel, foreheads touching the ground, as the unconsecrated gifts pass by.

Here, the Host is treated like an as yet uncrowned monarch, proceeding to his coronation, accompanied by all the appropriate gestures of reverence. The Copts even use a fan, wafting a breeze towards the consecrated Host, no doubt also to banish the flies, as one would in the presence of a physical monarch. Such ceremonial fans were still in use in the West in medieval times, but the Copts' practice goes back to the earliest days of Christianity.

The Christian religion owes two of its most important institutions to Egyptian Christians: the definition of Mary as Mother of God, and monasticisim. From the Copts, even today, one can find out how the early Christian behaved towards the Host: nothing can be more authentic than this....

When I think of the abolition of the worship and veneration of the Host after Vatican II - just as in the centuries following the Reformation - a military image always presents itself to me, perhaps because military ceremonial still retains its sign-language, to some extent. What I see is the degradation of Captin Dreyfus, so vividly described by a number of writers. After being convicted as a Germany spy, he had to appear in full uniform in front of his regiment, to hear his sentence. His punishment not only meant prison on the island of Cayenne; he also forfeited his military rank. The officer who pronounced the sentence next demanded that Dreyfus surrender his sword. The Captain's sword was broken over officer's thigh; the shards were thrown at the feet of the supposed traitor. Then Dreyfus's epaulettes were torn from his shoulders and his emblems of rank from his breast.

To me, it is exactly the same when I see people still on their feet in from of the elevated Host, when I see them entering a church without genuflecting, and receiving communion in their outstretched hands. I see it as a degradation, a pointed, symbolic refusal to give honor. Incidentally, communion in the hand is inappropriate, not because the hands are less worthy to receive the Host than the tongue, for instance, or because they might be dirty, but because it would be impossible to rinse every participant's hands after communion (i.e., to make sure no particles of the Host are lost).

It was through the signs of reverence I saw from early childgood that the Host became, for me, what the Church's tradition claims it to be: a Living Being. From that time on, the presence of this Living Being triumphed over every doubt (and of course my faith in Christ has not been free from doubt)....

Anyone who goes to church on Holy Thursday believes he knows the identity of the man who broke bread in the Upper Room at the Last Supper. And if God says that this bread is His Body, there is only one response man can offer: he must worship this bread.

(Copyright Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2005. This excerpt from an article in the October 2005 issue of Inside the Vatican, translated by Graham Harrison, is part of an upcoming book on the liturgy by Martin Mosebach soon to be published in English by Ignatius Press.)

Martin Mosebach, a leading German writer who lives in Frankfurt, has published numerous novels, stories, collections of poems, film scripts, opera libretti, and plays.

Well, as usual, you are very right in everything you write. But in the end, the only purpose of this certainly necessary, at least for most of us, knowledge is to experience, to live out something like this:

"O, how indispensable must and ought we in all ways to approach this heavenly communal feast, which grants us this lofty mystery of the Holy Table!

The angels are present invisibly; in great reverence the priests, who in this moment of mystery are honored above the angels, sacrifice the blameless Lamb.

The angels minister and faithful approach to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ: "receive the Body of Christ, taste the fountain of immortality," in order thus to live in Christ and not die through sin." Ephraim of Philotheou

Amen, brother.

I just returned from Mass at the Cathedral. As one of the Christians Redeemed by Christ, I am priviledged to, along with the Priest, offer the Perfect Sacrifice of the New Covenant to God.

The Priest, Jesus, offers Himself to God on our behalf as an act of propitiation.

What do I offer? Every single thing I do between the time one Mass ends and the next Mass begins. That is why the dual purpose of the Mass - Mass as Covenental Sacrifice and Covenental Banquet - is crucial to remember.

We are what we eat is the short way of expressing it.

Our Theosis is what we offfer God at Mass. The Eucharist is what transforms and elevates our concupiscent nature and makes more pleasing to God our lives and renders more acceptable to God our worship; we offer our very selves, which is added to the pluperfect Sacrifice of the God-Man, Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour.

That is our part at Mass, among other things. What are we bringing to Mass? Our Christian life. That is our offering and it had better be the best we can offer.

When I was young and in passionate love, I tried to give the best gifts to my Bride. I didn't give her something from the gutter. What do I as a Christian offer to He whom I love above all else? I offer my Christian life. It had BETTER not come from the gutter. And it is only lifted out of the gutter by His Salvific, Sanctifying Grace, communicated to me at Mass when I eat the Covenental heavenly Banquet.

Thanks be to God I was bornacatholic

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