Thought for the Day

A point that Schmemann made (in that outstanding work *The Eucharist*) that helped me through an impasse...

I was always taught by my favorite teacher to beware of an understanding of salvation that gets the job done by way of incarnation and makes the sacrifice of the cross extraneous.

But a whole different light is shed upon this when one realizes that sacrifice, the giving and pouring out of one's life for another and into another, is simply the heart of the Blessed Trinity, for this is how the Divine Persons constantly relate to themselves, and in this sense, our Lord's incarnation is already sacrifice - the pouring out of His life to give us life, giving Himself to us.

The cross is in every sense the culmination of this giving of Himself to us, but we should not narrowly think of sacrifice as involving suffering and death. If sacrifice involves suffering and death in "this world" it is not because of the nature of sacrifice but because of the nature of "this world" - its essential falleness is revealed in its rejection of the sacrificial love of God.

This also sheds some light on the Eucharist as sacrifice. Of course, under the definition offered above it would be sacrifice precisely in the sense that here our Blessed Lord continues to pour His life, His forgiveness and His love into us AS our life. His life in us!