In the seventh class, we are watching a YouTube video called the Source and Summit of Evangelization by Abbot Jeremy Driscoll. There is no in-person class. Please watch the following lecture and then submit the discussion questions in the Google Form.
Scripture Passages
Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you. – Luke 22:19-20
Catechism Quotes
The command of Jesus to repeat his actions and words “until he comes” does not only ask us to remember Jesus and what he did. It is directed at the liturgical celebration, by the apostles and their successors, of the memorial of Christ, of his life, of his death, of his Resurrection, and of his intercession in the presence of the Father. #1341
It was above all on “the first day of the week,” Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, that the Christians met “to break bread.” From that time on down to our own day the celebration of the Eucharist has been continued so that today we encounter it everywhere in the Church with the same fundamental structure. It remains the center of the Church’s life. #1343
All gather together. Christians come together in one place for the Eucharistic assembly. At its head is Christ himself, the principal agent of the Eucharist. He is high priest of the New Covenant; it is he himself who presides invisibly over every Eucharistic celebration. It is in representing him that the bishop or priest acting in the person of Christ the head (in persona Christi capitis) presides over the assembly, speaks after the readings, receives the offerings, and says the Eucharistic Prayer. All have their own active parts to play in the celebration, each in his own way: readers, those who bring up the offerings, those who give communion, and the whole people whose “Amen” manifests their participation. #1348
The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.” In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” “This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.” #1374
Lecture Quotes
Mystagogy is a term from the ancient church and it means explaining the mysteries. It was a particular type of preaching done in the church where the bishop or priest would explain the mysteries… not things we cannot understand. Actually the liturgy is called “the mysteries”. We still use that in the beginning of Mass… “these sacred mysteries”… Mysteries are what we area calling all the rituals that we are going to do.
Mystery is a concrete something that when you bump into it, you bump into God.
Human beings are sanctified [at Mass]. We’re made holy. We become at last, what God created us to be. God created us to be in communion with Him… God does not force himself onto us. He offers himself. So you can say “yes” or “no”… He’s waiting for you to say “yes”.
Humanity is at it’s best when it’s celebrating the mysteries. There’s nothing better we can be doing, ourselves with our lives, and nothing better that we could be doing for the whole world.
Holy communion. This is one of the names for the Eucharist, for the Mass, for the sacrifice, for the banquet… We are made for Holy communion with God and with one another in God.
At any given moment in the Mass there’s a twofold direction underway, one or the other of them predominating: It’s the direction of God coming to the world, or the world moving towards God. Both of those are achieved beyond what human beings can achieve. God really does come, and human beings really do go to God. You can find that in every part of the Mass… if we really want to be participating with understanding, we need to know, at any given moment, which direction is it moving… is it God coming our way or are we moving to God?
When the Word of God is proclaimed, in any given liturgy, that word is in fact, declaring what God is doing here and now… we are reading stories from the past, but this is God action, God’s word… God’s actions and words cannot grow old… the reading of what God once did… becomes the same event in the assembly that hears it. So that we are passing over out of Egypt into the promised land. We understand that the ultimate exodus is the exodus that Jesus made for us out of sin and death… thats what the Gospel stories tell… this is humanity set on a new course. All of that is already underway in the Liturgy of the Word.
Why do we bring bread and wine and who brings the bread and wine? Some of the baptized represent all of the baptized… the action itself carried an implicit request in it… to Christ and to the priest who represents him… “do something with this”… with this bread and wine… meant to represent your lives in the world. This is your priestly action… the baptized Christians bring the world to the hands of Christ and say “transform it”.
We prepare our food, we plan our food, we make it taste good and we eat it together across from people we love… we are implicitly always saying to those we share a meal with – I want you alive, I want you enjoying your life, I love you, I am here for you… this is my body, this is my blood. Every meal shared in love is saying that, is giving ourselves away.
[The disciples] understood very little of what was happening. Within an hour they have deserted him and he goes alone to the cross. But he knew, that by giving this command, which in effect was a sign, he knew that he had hidden an inexhaustible reality in the sign. That by repeating the sign, in memory of him, the community of disciples would come to realize and experience in their very bodies that the one who is crucified has been raised up by God the Father and is now glorified totally… opening a door, being a pioneer, out of death for the rest of humanity. So every time we do the sign, every time we eat this bread and drink this wine, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes in glory… proclaim is a word of joy… when we proclaim it, that whole reality becomes the reality of this Church assembled.
God cannot have given more. God has given everything… and we as Catholics need to know it’s as big as that.
The epiclesis is the invocation of the Holy Spirit. There are two purposes for invoking the Holy Spirit. This is when the priest places his hands over the gifts and says let your spirit comes upon these gifts so that they may become for us the body and blood of your beloved son our lord Jesus Christ at whose command we celebrate these holy mysteries (theres the word again!)… What this shows us, what this reveals is the that the Holy Spirit has to be active here in order to bring about this transformation. The bread and wine is not transformed into the body and blood of christ by squeezing our eyes real tight and imaging it’s Jesus. No, God does this, by sending the Spirit, at the Church’s request. God’s not going to do Eucharist if you don’t want it. He’s not going to bring bread and wine and consecrated it and put it in a tabernacle by himself. The Church is doing this, the Church is wanting this. You’re doing something. You’ve made it happen. But so does God. Thats two directions at once. The world toward God and God toward the world.
You cannot have communion with me that does not also affect your communion with each other.
SMA Confirmation 