Briefly to echo earlier posts on this subject:
All Catholic Christians, Anglican Catholics, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Polish National Catholics, Assyrians, orthodox Swedish Lutherans, and Nordic Catholics, adore Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Body and Blood, under the form of bread and wine in the Blessed Sacrament, for Our Lord is present under the sacramental signs of the Eucharist really, truly and objectively. He is indeed the Object of our worship when we adore the Mysteries. The Real Presence abides permanently under the Elements of the Eucharist upon consecration, and remains present so long as the sacred species exist. Therefore, Eucharistic adoration is an essential and indisputable aspect of belief in the Real Presence.
This fact is different from the phenomenon of extra-liturgical devotion to the Most Holy, whose legitimacy and permissibility is an entirely separate question altogether. The Eastern Rites of the Church have never known extra-liturgical devotions, such as Exposition and Benediction, but they have always offered divine worship to the Eucharistic Lord in the context of the celebration of the Liturgy. In the first millennium, all Rites of the Church, Eastern and Western, offered worship to Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament contextually in the Liturgy, long before our familiar devotional expressions, such as the Elevations and genuflections to the Sacrament, took shape in the Western Rite. We need always to distinguish the fact of Eucharistic adoration itself, in the Mass, from the later developments of devotion which evolved in the medieval period. That all Apostolic Christians have always adored Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is simply an incontestable fact of Christian history. The later developments of praxis may certainly be debated or even brought into scrutiny, but the fundamental fact remains - and proceeds directly from the Church's unfailing and uninterrupted belief in the Real Presence.
We should be careful to remember that Saint John of Damascus, when referring to the veneration of matter in his classic description, illustrates the orthodox practice of the veneration of icons and other sacred images. Saint Damascene and the Second Council of Nicea go to great lengths to emphasise that the Holy Eucharist is not an image or icon of the Body and Blood of Christ, to be venerated in like fashion as an icon - for this was the apologetic argumentation of the iconoclasts - but rather the Blessed Sacrament is the True Body and True Blood of the Saviour, to be adored with the divine worship of latria. And thus the Church Catholic has always offered adoration to Our Divine Lord present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Mysteries. To say we worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament but do not worship the Blessed Sacrament is a distinction without a difference, for the Lord Jesus is ontologically and objectively, always and abidingly, present in the consecrated Elements of the Eucharist. The Lord's Presence in the Eucharistic Elements is unique and adorable.
3 comments:
Dear Phil:
re "To say we worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament but do not worship the Blessed Sacrament is a distinction without a difference, for the Lord Jesus is ontologically and objectively, always and abidingly, present in the consecrated Elements of the Eucharist."
With the helpful qualifier that you recited earlier, namely, that Christ Himself is the actual Sacrament, I think you've solved my problem. The problem is that in theory, Catholic Christians say "Christ is the Sacrament", but in practice they talk about the Sacrament as an inanimate thing, using the impersonal pronouns it, them, as opposed to Him. Hence the difficulty.
I knew there was an important distinction to be made between icons and the Sacrament, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. Thanks for that as well.
I suppose there is always the distinction between the phenomenal manifestation of the Real Presence as opposed to the Real Presence itself, but you and I are phenomenal creatures, and thus maybe incapable of meaningful divine worship apart from these manifestations. Which I think you will probably say is the short version of Incarnational worship.
Thanks for your ministry.
welshmann
Bingo.
One of the laudable goals of Vatican II was to ensure that Sacramental Adoration no longer becomes a substitute for the actual partaking of Holy Communion according to Christ's command. The fact that the high point of Medieval Latin "deaf and dumb" masses was noncommunicating Sacramental Adoration explains the historically strong opposition to para-liturgical devotions to the reserved sacrament. The East has been fortunate to have side stepped this contentious matter entirely!
" The East has been fortunate to have side stepped this contentious matter entirely!"
Dare I suggest that "the East™" (or parts thereof, "the East™" is a big place!) sidestepped this matter while stepping into others that the "Westerners™" were sidestepping?
The veneration of icons comes to mind as somewhat analagous... in the face of iconoclastic heresies, more solemn and sometimes elaborate and codified veneration of icons became a norm in the Byzantine East (if somewhat unknown, it would seem, further east still in the Church of the East.)
Ecclesia supplet! Sometimes reaction allows for clarification... I used to make effort to defend this position more in fora where the constant bickering of polemicists from either camp was often boiled down to "You don't do what we do!" or "We don't do what you do!"... In fact, if we look inward, more than half the differences can be thought of in terms of "you didn't need what we needed, we didn't need what you needed."
In the face of eucharistic heresies, "the West™" found adoration. In the face of iconoclasts, "the East™" found icon veneration.
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