Mass offering
The mass offering (also holy mass offering ) is a common name in the Roman Catholic Church for the holy mass . The name arose from the teaching of the Catholic Church on the sacrament of the Eucharist , according to which it is "the memory of the Passover of Christ, the sacramental making present and offering the only sacrifice in the liturgy of his body, the Church".
Testimonies
Patristic
Early Christian writings, most of which come from the Church Fathers, clearly testify to an understanding of sacrifice in the Eucharist:
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Didache (written around 100):
“On the day of the Lord gather, break the bread and give thanks, after first having confessed your sins, so that your sacrifice may be clean. But everyone who has a quarrel with his friend should not come to you until they are reconciled, so that your sacrifice is not desecrated. For this is the saying of the Lord: 'In every place and at every time I shall be offered a pure sacrifice , because I am a great King,' says the Lord, 'and my name is wonderful with the peoples.' " -
Ignatius of Antioch († approx. 107–110):
- “Nobody can be misled: whoever is not within the sacrificial site will lose the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two (people) has such power, how much more the prayer of the bishop and the whole congregation? ”(Letter to Ephesians 5: 2)
- “Whoever is inside the sacrificial site is pure; but whoever stands outside is not pure. That means: Anyone who does something without a bishop, without presbytery and deacon, is not pure in his conscience. "(Letter to the Trallians 7, 2)
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Justin Martyr (c. 100-165):
- “The offering of the wheat flour, which according to tradition was offered for those cleansed from leprosy, was a model of the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which Jesus Christ, our Lord, ordered to commemorate the suffering he endured for those who had themselves have cleansed from every sin. "(Dialogue with the Jew Trypho 41, 1)
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Irenaeus of Lyon (approx. 135–202):
- “But how can they again say that the flesh is rotten and has no part in life when it is nourished with the body and blood of the Lord? So may they change this teaching or no longer offer the mentioned gifts! But our teaching is consistent with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our teaching. For we sacrifice to him from his own, appropriately proclaiming the indissoluble union of flesh and spirit. For just as the bread that comes from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, which consists of two elements, an earthly and a heavenly one, so our bodies also belong when they receive the Eucharist, no longer perish, but have the hope of resurrection. "(Against Heresies, 4th Book, Chapter 18, 4)
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Tertullian (around 150–230)
- "If you receive the body of the Lord and still keep it, then both co-exist unimpaired, the participation in the sacrifice and the exercise of the service" (On Prayer, Chapter 19)
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Cyprian of Carthage (approx. 200-258):
- "The old sacrifice is laid and a new one is celebrated." (To Quirinus: Three books of scriptural evidence, 1st book, 16)
- “Even when we come together with our brothers and celebrate the divine sacrifice with the priest of God, we must remember reverence and discipline and not so easily give up our requests in careless words or our concerns that we humbly have to leave to God gushing out in noisy chatter. "(On the Lord's Prayer, Main Part 1, Chapter 4)
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Cyril of Alexandria (around 375 / 80–444)
- “However, we cannot avoid adding the following. When we proclaim the death of the only begotten Son of God, that is, Jesus Christ, according to the flesh and confess the resurrection from the dead and acceptance into heaven, we make the bloodless sacrifice in the churches, and then we come to the mysterious Add offerings and are sanctified by partaking of the holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ, the Savior of us all. ”(Three Ecumenical Letters, II. The Third Letter to Nestorius)
Council of Trent
According to the teaching of the Council of Trent , the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrifice on the cross are identical with regard to the offering and the sacrificial priest, but the manner of offering is different. The offering is one and the same; the same one who sacrificed himself on the cross is now sacrificing through the service of the priests ; only the manner of sacrifice is different. ( DH 1743) The exact relationship between the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrifice on the cross is determined more precisely by the Council of Trento with the words: repraesentatio ("visualizing"), memoria ("memory") and applicatio ("giving"). The Roman catechism (II, 4, 70) adds the instauratio ("renewal"). The mass is the living, objective visualization of the sacrifice on the cross, a sacramental representation of it. At the same time, an objective memory is connected with this, based on the words of Jesus Christ: "Do this in memory of me." Through the Mass, the graces that Christ deserved on the cross are then turned towards people. If the Council of Trent calls mass a memory of the sacrifice on the cross, this does not mean that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice on the cross: “Whoever says that in the mass God is not offered a real and proper sacrifice, or that the act of sacrifice consists in nothing else than that Christ should be given us for food, he who was excluded (from the church). "(DH 1751)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
The catechism continues the previous teaching on the holy sacrifice of the Mass and emphasizes that memory should not be understood as mere memory, but as proclamation and making present.
“In the sense of the Holy Scriptures, memory is not just a recollection of events in the past, but the proclamation of the great deeds that God has done for people. In the liturgical celebration of these events they become present and come to life again. This is how the people of Israel understand their liberation from Egypt: every time the Passover is celebrated, the events of the Exodus are brought back to the minds of the believers so that they can shape their lives accordingly. "
According to the definition of the catechism, the one-time sacrifice of Christ remains effective in the memory of the sacrifice of the Eucharist (cf. Heb 7 : 25-27 EU ) [cf. 1364].
Old Catholic Church
In the Utrecht Declaration of the Old Catholic Churches it says under No. 6:
“The Eucharistic celebration in the Church is not a perpetual repetition or renewal of the Atonement which Christ offered once and for all on the cross; but its sacrificial character consists in the fact that it is the permanent memory of the same and a real visualization that takes place on earth of that one offering of Christ for the salvation of redeemed humanity [...] Since this is the character of the Eucharist with regard to the sacrifice of Christ, it is at the same time a sanctified one Sacrificial meal in which the believers who receive the body and blood of the Lord have fellowship with one another. "
According to the Old Catholic view, the sacrifice of the Mass is therefore a visualization of the one-time sacrifice of Jesus Christ ( Heb. 9.11f EU , 9.24 EU ) without repeating or renewing it. At the same time, communion is then participation in a sacrificial meal ( 1 Cor 10.17 EU ), which establishes a universal community of participants that transcends time and space.
literature
- Arnold Angenendt : Offertory. The medieval sacrifice. Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2013 (liturgical scientific sources and research, vol. 101).
Individual evidence
- ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church , 1362
- ↑ KKK 1363
- ^ Utrecht Declaration on the website www.alt-katholisch.de, accessed on June 29, 2011.
- ↑ cf. Joachim Vobbe : Bread from the stone part. Episcopal letters. Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-934610-63-3 , p. 141.
- ↑ See Joachim Vobbe: Bread from the stone part. P. 143, p. 147f.
