Folia Theologica 20. (2009)
Barbour Hugh: The Cosmology of Catholic Worship: Pre-Socratic Sacraments? A Consideration by a disciple of St. Thomas Qauinas
THE COSMOLOGY OF CATHOLIC WORSHIP 25 voice of Christ commanding the dead to rise will operate qualis dicta est esse in formis sacramentorum,13 The form of Christ's command to rise could be the sacrament whereby they attain the life of grace and glory individually at the end of time. After all, they place no personal obstacle to his grace, the only obstacle being the violent corruption of their human nature, their bodily matter and their spiritual form, by death. In the meantime they are in a state analogous to the Fathers in the limbo of the just, bearing witness to the absolute gratuity of supernatural beatitude by their possession of a provisional natural one. Redeemed humanity itself will be able to join Christ their head at the end of time in an ecclesial descent among the dead who are free from personal sin, and release them in a victorious triumph, recapitulating the mystery of Great and Holy Saturday. Nothing of this resolution requires the relinquishing of any principle of the sacramental order as taught by St. Thomas and the greater tradition.14 In the case of the anaphora of Addai and Mari, is it not time to recognize the place of the epiclesis and the form of the sacrament in the Eastern rites? The question would have been better resolved by saying that whereas the words of the Lord are always and everywhere the sufficient form for the sacramental sacrifice, nonetheless the Church can add or accept as an equivalent form the epiclesis, as long as the rest of the anaphora expressed clearly the intention to do as Christ commanded at in the Upper Room? Then there could be avoided the absurdity of a form of a substantial change which operates progressively and gradually, rather than instantaneously, as reason and nature require. The text of the anaphora of Addai and Mari itself refers to the moment of Christ's descent, clearly indicating a moment at which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord. The case of concélébration as a daily practice in communities of priests is a more difficult one. It is clear that the concelebrated Mass of ten priests is only one Mass and that ten individual Masses are ten Masses. Does the unity of the priesthood, a value worthy of occasional emphasis, take precedence over the power of the multiplication of the sacrifice for the good of the Church each and every day? Might we not 13 Super Sent., lib. 4 d. 43 q. 1 a. 2 qc. 2 ad 3. 14 This proposed resolution of the problem is in part based on the insights of Cardinal Charles Journet in his La volonté salvificjue sur les petits enfants, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1958.
