...and yet so far. The good Deacon Muehlenbruch forwarded to me this link after reading my paper on revisiting the sacrifice of the mass:
click here
One, two and four are fine and peachy. But that #3 has it backwards. The Mass is not for the propitiation to be offered to God, but for the propitiation that WAS offered to God to be received by us. How on earth could one speak of the "ends" of the Mass and NOT get its most basic end of all: so that we receive the Body and Blood of Christ that have atoned for the sin of the world and by receiving them become one Body in Him? Amazing. Simply amazing.
click here
One, two and four are fine and peachy. But that #3 has it backwards. The Mass is not for the propitiation to be offered to God, but for the propitiation that WAS offered to God to be received by us. How on earth could one speak of the "ends" of the Mass and NOT get its most basic end of all: so that we receive the Body and Blood of Christ that have atoned for the sin of the world and by receiving them become one Body in Him? Amazing. Simply amazing.
Granted, it was a "quick liturgical catechesis" but I am still staggered at what has happened to our Lord's own words that TELL us the chief action. How has: "Take and eat; take and drink" been transmuted to "take and offer?" with NO mention of receiving???
This Lutheran is left scratching his head in puzzlement...
That's what hit me so hard when I read Babylonian Captivity.
ReplyDeleteRome has always been clear that the mass is not a new sacrifice, another sacrifice, or a re-sacrifice, but the sacrifice of Calvary, and always mentions that to it critics. Fair enough.
But when I got to the "who could not but faint for joy at the thought of such a Saviour" part, I about jumped up and shouted "That's IT!"
That's what had been missing, or more exactly, in there somewhere but not front and centre -- HIM giving his testament to US and ME. All about what he is doing, his bequest to his heirs. Yes, it's in there somewhere, but here was stated clearly what they had hemmed and hawed to say -- as a result of which hemming and hawing, much else was in there too but lost among the hemming and hawing, like justification.
To quote one of their favourites, Chesterton, error is never so wrong as when it is very nearly right.
I knew I was Lutheran from that moment on, which is to say, not "Lutheran" at all, but in the same one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as ever, in a place where the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered.
If we really got what happens at the mass, we'd need more catchers than the charismatics!