Father Joseph Jungmann, S.J.

Our meeting with Christ is most intense in the Eucharist. Until not many years ago it was quite common to find presentations of the doctrine of the Eucharist which spoke first of all about the sacrament, then about Communion, and finally about the sacrifice of the Mass. The cathechisms often completely separated the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass from the rest of the doctrine of the Eucharist, and placed it, say, under the heading of the third commandment of God or the precepts of the Church. Christian piety was in line with this: Communion, Mass, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, were three separate spheres of devotional practice.

It is important, therefore, that now the Eucharist, for all its complexity, should once again be seen chiefly in its primary and true function, from which all else is derived. It is not primarily an object for our adoration, nor yet for the nourishment of the soul, but is, as its name indicates, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, of sacrifice within the assembled congregation. It is only this basic view that gathers all of the aspects into a unity.

Our Lord himself presented the sacrament to his apostles with a prayer of thanksgiving
(ευχαριστησας), and the entire tradition in every rite of East and West knows the Eucharist primarily and only as the celebration of public worship of God, for which the faithful assemble, particularly on Sunday. In the first century the Didache stresses this meeting on the Lord’s Day: κατα κυριακην δε κυριου; half a century later Justin stresses the same thing - on the day named after the sun. Sunday is called the Lord’s Day - χυριαχη, dominica - because on this day the Lord as χυριος crowned the work of our redemption with his resurrection, and revealed the new life in which we are to have a share. Hence it is on this day that the commemoration of the redemption must be celebrated, as our Lord had ordained when he said: ‘Do this for a memorial of me.’

This leads us to take note of another important feature of the Eucharistic mystery: the celebration of the Eucharist is a sacrifice, it is true- the sacrifice of the New Covenant, but first of all it is a memorial. It is the memorial celebration of the redeeming Passion in the same way as Sunday is the memorial day of the perfected work of redemption. From the start Eucharist and Sunday have belonged together. Thinking of the Mass almost exclusively as a sacrifice is a one-sided attitude resulting from the doctrinal controversies of the sixteenth century. The sacrificial aspect of the {Mass was contested, the threatened point defended and to some extent built up into an impregnable fortress. Account was now taken of the memorial aspect only in so far as the correlative sacrifice was mentioned, the relationship which pointed back to the sacrifice upon the cross. The period leading up to our own has been accustomed to speak with equal emphasis of the memoria passionis - the Canon of the Mass has always expressed this thought: Unde et memores . . . offerimus. Thus although the Middle Ages spoke much of the sacrifice and the fruits of the sacrifice, the memorial character of the Mass was still much to the fore, even in the popular imagination. This is shown by the allegorical interpretation which regarded the Mass as a play in which - admittedly in a thoroughly external fashion¹-salvation-history, and the Passion of our Lord in particular, were portrayed. In the Corpus Chrlsti procession at the start of the moden period the Passion of Christ, illustrated by its prototypes, still forms the central motif of the glorification of the Blessed Sacrament.²

The memorial certainly is not meant to be restricted to the passion of Christ. What does the Canon say? - memores . . . tam beatae passionis, necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in coelos gloriosae ascensionis. Only thus do we achieve consonance with the memorial character of Sunday - a consonance that was there from the very start. Sunday and the Mass must both, in equal measure, be colored by the basic tone of Easter. This means too that it is necessary once again to bring out more clearly the true meaning of Sunday.

To restore its religious importance to our all too secular Sunday it is not enough merely to tighten up the precept of the Church in every way possible; it can be achieved only by making the religious content of Sunday come fully alive once more. Sunday is more than simply the day upon which we honor God. It is the day upon which Christ, the first of the new creation, rose up from the darkness of death. Hence it is the day upon which the Christian ought to be deeply conscious of the treasure which has come to him in Christ and the Church, the day upon which, along with the whole congregation, he gives thanks to God, with holy joy. For this reason the Christian mind has for centuries counted Sunday not as the seventh day of the Old Testament, but as the eighth day, the day upon which the Creator continued the work of the seven days and completed it in Christ: it was regarded as the Christian conclusion and climax of the week.³ Thus the number eight has come to be the symbol of the perfection of the new life
so much so that baptismal chapels, in which this new life is transmitted, I were almost always built upon an octagonal plan.

Friday of the Passion (and Wednesday of the betrayal), as preparation, then became related to the Sunday of the Resurrection. It seemed obvious to people that Friday ought to be observed as a fast day in preparation for the joy of Sunday. The weekly cycle then was - and should again become - a constantly recurring pointer to the basic facts of our Christian life, and should lead us towards the corporate, solemn celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday, just as, on the larger scale, the Christian Year is a leading up to Easter. This harmony between Sunday and the celebration of the Eucharist ought to be fostered also by the shape of the Sunday Mass. The prayer of thanksgiving should be a real expression of the things for which we do give holy thanks - as we find in many ancient Sunday Prefaces of the Carolingian sacramentaries. As soon as thoughts are turned into the language of prayer they must appear primarily as thanksgiving.⁴ It is obvious that in God’s eyes thanksgiving is at the same time adoration and obeisance.⁵ It is not by chance that the Eucharistic prayer always runs into the Sanctus, which joins the congregation upon earth in a unity of adoration with the celestial choirs.

Sacrifice thus signifies but a further step in the same ascent: it is the sacrifice of Christ, but at the same time the sacrifice of the Church, offered in union with Christ; in distinction to the sacrifice upon the cross, it is primarily the sacrifice of the Church. Since the Council of Trent the understanding of the sacrifice of the Mass has often been obstructed by the apologetic tendency to overstrain its identity with the sacrifice of the cross, and to see in it nothing except the one re-presented sacrifice upon the cross, the sacrifice which Christ renews here and now, but in an unbloody manner. This way of thinking provides scarcely any bridge to the actual shape of the liturgy of the Mass. In reality, from its very beginning the structure of the Mass portrays it as our sacrifice; it is our entering into the sacrifice of Christ; it is our affiliation with his oblation to the heavenly Father — so much so, that the symbols of his oblation, the offerings of his body and blood, are allowed to represent our offering also. The Mass is thus the great mountain top which our poor efforts are for ever being challenged to ascend; it is, at the same time, grace made tangible, raising us up to the stature of our Lord and Master.

Today we are very properly recommended day by day to lay our every action in the hands of God. We are all familiar with set forms of Morning Offering.⁶ Most of the texts for this offering are addressed to the Sacred Heart, but it is still perfectly clear that such an offering is intended to bear some relation to the sacrifice of the Mass. Ought we not to acknowledge that the holy Mass itself is much more powerful than any other formula, is indeed the specific and true expression of this self-oblation? In fact, this recurrent total self-oblation is the true meaning and purpose of participation in the holy sacrifice. By this participation we are merely fulfilling the law which St Peter prescribed for Christians (I Peter. 2:4 f.): they are to join themselves to Christ, the living corner stone, and build themselves up into a holy priesthood “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” This clearly refers to two things: our exterior actions, and also the summing up of all these actions in the Eucharist.

Sermons and edifying literature of the declining Middle Ages followed the wrong track of regarding the Mass chiefly from the point of view of the benefits which it conferred upon those who took part in it. In this way the calculation of the fructus Missae became one of the most important topics of Eucharistic theology, a topic which, having degenerated further, led ultimately in the popular mind to that rank overgrowth against which the Reformers inveighed with such passion.⁷ It is perfectly true that the celebration of the Eucharist brings down blessings upon us, for this reason we call it missa, i.e. the dismissal blessing; it is true that it sanctifies our souls ex opere operato; but consideration of these benefits ought not to dominate education concermng the Mass. The primary function of the celebration of the Eucharist is not, as it is with the other sacraments, to produce benefits for us, but to glorify God. Even spiritual advantage is not the prime objective of the Mass. At all events this is the view we find
in the primitive Church A recent monograph on the eucharistic doctrine of St John Chrysostom-the doctor Eucharistiae - proves most instructively that Chrysostom “does not educate through the Eucharist, but for the Eucharist.”⁸ This is undoubtedly the noblest and most all-embracing function of Christian education: to educate people for the Mass; for this means education that leads to resonance with the beat of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to union of life with Christ in whom God is glorified. When our lives have thus found sure anchorage in God, and Sunday by Sunday or even daily we find God anew. In the Mass, despite all the world’s distractions, spiritual fruit comes all unsought.

“Genuine public worship is a benefit, a restorative for man, in his external needs and in the deepest spiritual needs of his heart; genuine worship is a sanatorium for all ills, error, and blindness, a rampart around the individual and the congregation.”⁹

Exclusive stress upon the sacrifice of Christ, and unrestricted identification of the Mass with the sacrifice of Calvary, along with the ignoring of what we, as the Church, have to seek to do on our part, leads us away from the true liturgy of the Mass in yet another respect. Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross was the sacrifice that redeemed the world. In its essence it was primarily a sacrifice of atonement, the self-immolation of the Lord as the ransom-price for man)’ (Matt. 20:18). The blood that then flowed for the forgiveness of sins becomes, in the Church, the purifying bath of baptism; in the sacrament of penance it sprinkles the soul of the sinner.

The Eucharist, however, is primarily designed for those who have already been purified in Christ’s blood and enjoy his new life. The sacrifice, of the Mass is not the sacrifice for the redemption of the world, but the sacrifice made by the redeemed. In it we do indeed find the same sacrificing priest, the same gifts offered; but the manner of offering is not the same.¹⁰ Now the High Priest no longer makes the sacrifice on his own, as on the cross. Making present his sacrifice upon the cross, he gathers his Church about him in order to offer the sacrificium laudis along with them. This is the pure offering made in every place, of which the prophet Malachy spoke. For this very reason the sacrifice of the Mass is ευχαριστια it takes this form in every Christian liturgy. Eυχαριστvμεν τv κυριω is the call addressed to the congregation. The Mass is also an atoning sacrifice, it is true; it can be offered for the living and for the dead, as Trent emphasizes.¹¹ Indeed the idea of atonement and of forgiveness of sins in virtue of the sacrifice is incorporated in every Mass;¹² but it does not sound the underlying note of the Mass and does not govern its structure. The sacrifice of praise and the sacrifice of atonement are not on the same plane.

The Mass is designed as the Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Ever since the fresh realization of the Church as the plebs sancta gathered round the priest as instrument of the High Priest, the liturgical movement has been at work bringing the active participation of the plebs sancta into its own. This movement is well advanced in many parts of Europe, although its forms of expression may be temporary and very much the product of their times. Church architecture and furnishing have been pro foundly affected. The view of the Mass as purely Christ’s sacrifice and the fountain of blessing derived therefrom, and the resultant notion of “assisting at” Mass or “hearing Mass devoutly,” had led not only to the construction of many side-altars in churches, but to the placing of as many of these as possible in view of the congregation, so that they could assist at several Masses simultaneously. Today in the church that is constructed logically for the corporate celebration of Mass by the whole congregation, the side altars disappear and the church is built as a unified space where all eyes are directed to the one altar upon which the sacrifice is corporately offered, the one meal prepared for all.

In German-speaking countries about 1930 a unique process took place with the gradual maturing of the liturgical movement. The Communion of the faithful which, even after Pius X’s time, continued in isolation, became recognized everywhere almost simultaneously as a sacrificial meal, and then whenever possible became integrated in the Mass, without any direction from above.¹³

Automatically a new attitude to the reception of the Blessed Sacrament gradually emerged. The dominant idea ceased to be that of the visit, which had characterized the Communion-prayers in many prayer-books, and became that of the sacred meal in which one shared at the mensa coelestis - an idea presupposed and upheld throughout the whole liturgy. Only along such lines of greater (perhaps too great) breadth could the frequent Communion movement of Pius X keep going. Holy Communion is the more or less obvious confirmation of, and seal upon, participation in the holy sacrifice. It is no longer the blink of light that marks off certain points in the year or the month from an everyday life that has been given over to the world;¹⁴ now it is the brightness of the whole of Christian life which has become more clearly aware of closeness to God. Nothing is lost by our realization that this nearness of God, which we call the life of grace, consists in Christ’s dwelling within our hearts,¹⁵ and that this indwelling, which medieval theology described as spiritual Communion,¹⁶ is in the end even more important than sacramental Communion.¹⁷ If we are to advance in the spiritual life we must see clearly that permanent union with Christ can and must be strengthened in many different ways, and that the opus operatum of Holy Communion must not in any event be allowed to stand in isolation, as though in itself providing an infalliable, more or less magically effective means of spiritual progress. For this reason one should maintain a certain detachment even towards daily Communion.¹⁸

Long before Communion had come to be separated from the celebration of the Eucharist,¹⁹ another separation had been effected: the Blessed Sacrament had been isolated as an object of veneration. It had always been accepted as self- evident that the Blessed Sacrament should be treated with great reverence and be reserved in a seemly fashion. But for a very long time no one thought of developing any special cult in its honor. To this day the Eastern rites know of no such cult. Some astonishment was aroused when it was shown that special veneration of the Eucharist played no part in the devotional life of either Gregory the Great or St Bernard.²⁰ Soon after St Bernard’s time, however, there appeared that surge of Eucharistic devotion, mentioned above,²¹ which required, to begin with, that the Blessed Sacrament be gazed upon in awe and then that it be revered in various ways. With the construction of the tabernacle, which since the sixteenth or seventeenth century has been part of the furniture of every major church, veneration of the Blessed Sacrament received powerful encouragement: the Blessed Sacrament moved to the central point in the house of God, and thus arose what we call tabernacle devotion, a type of piety which, from the standpoint of Catholic dogma, is legitimate and justified at all times, but which, in the circumstances of impeded Communion such as we have mentioned, was also called upon to fill a gap. There can be no doubt that in the course of centuries much fruit has been produced out of this devotion, and still is being produced; through it, indeed, the peak of religious life has sometimes been reached.

Nevertheless this style of devotion frequently assumes remarkable forms. A church would seem to become the house of God for a number of Christians only if the eternal light burns there before the tabernacle.²² Again, we hear talk of a special life which Jesus lives in the tabernacle, and questions about what senses he might require there.²³ We even hear people expressing pity for the silent recluse in his endless solitude. It is quite obvious that such meditations, which were still nourishing Eucharistic devotion at the beginning of this century,²⁴ are not so appropriate today when people have become more acutely aware of the fact that our Lord presents his body to us in his sacrament chiefly to be offered and received.

And yet no one doubts that it is most reasonable to grant a prominent place within the church to the Blessed Sacrament which the Church possesses and which must be reserved outside the celebration of Mass, at least for the benefit of the sick, and to venerate it in this place. If the Post- communion of the Mass for the consecration of a church sees in the material structure an allusion to the spiritual edifice of holy Church which has been built of “living and chosen stones” to the glory of God, we have only to hold fast to this same imagery to see that the tabernacle, even more than the altar, symbolizes the chief corner-stone upon which the whole building is raised (cf. Eph. 2:20 ff.). We enter the house of God and know ourselves to be once more welcomed into the holy congregation whose Head is Christ. Even without meaning primarily to visit the Blessed Sacrament, a visit to the church does join us once again more closely to the world of God.

All this makes it plain that to find the proper placing for the tabernacle: more precisely, to find its proper accommodation to the necessity of clearly giving the altar its central place as the site of the corporately celebrated sacrifice, is an almost insoluble problem for the modern architect. Strictly speaking, the problem has only existed since 1918, when, at the very moment the liturgical movement was leading a return to the original emphases in eucharistic devotion, the Codex Juris Canonici in can. 1268 summed up the consequences of the eucharistic devotion of a previous age by saying that the Blessed Sacrament should be reserved in praccellentissimo ac nobilissimo ecclesiae loco ac proinde regulariter in altqai maiore, in a tabernacle placed, indeed, at the center of the altar. The Roman Rituale of
1614 - not binding upon the whole Church - had prescribed a tabernacle but had not specified at which altar.²⁵

The provincial Council of Cologne in 1860 still allowed the “sacramenthouse” as an equally legitimate solution. As the Codex specified the high altar only as the standard case, since then architects have evolved solutions in which a special Blessed Sacrament altar or a tabernacle structure is provided in the main axis of the church, either in front of the high altar at the entrance to the choir, or behind it in the apse.²⁶ After Pius XII had remarked that we are concerned not so much with the physical presence of the tabernacle upon the altar as with the prevention of any disrespect to the eucharistic presence,²⁷ the Congregation of Rites issued the limiting regulation that in churches with only one altar, the tabernacle must always be erected upon this altar.²⁸

From the very start, therefore, the possibilities are severely limited. Considerations of convenience, which with more frequent communions after the Council of Trent led to the predominance of the altar-tabernacle, will probably govern most solutions today also. In large churches and cathedrals, and in churches where the Divine Office is sung, the law allows of exceptions - welcomes them, indeed. In these cases, besides the desire not to cause disturbance, the older tradition must also have played its part; for by itself the Divine Office could scarcely have required a separation of altar and tabernacle. Moreover, special indulgences were attached to the recitation of the Breviary before the Blessed Sacrament.²⁹ We must see the tabernacle as a hindrance more to the celebration of Mass than to the recitation of the Office, because the presence of the Blessed Eucharist from the very start of the Mass must prejudice the logic of the course of the celebration. The liturgy of the Mass, apart from the genuflection at the beginning and the end, pays no attention at all to the Blessed Sacrament locked within the tabernacle upon the altar. We may assume, therefore, that as the ideas behind the liturgical movement become increasingly respectable, ecclesiastical legislation, which in so many cases has measured forms of eucharistic devotion against the standard of preserved tradition,³⁰ will recognize the interest of modern church building in a free-standing, unencumbered altar, and will open the way, in this case too, to solutions in the spirit of tradition.

Just as no one would dream of abolishing the feast of Corpus Christi, neither will the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as a special cult, or as a blessing at the end of some other act of worship, ever lose its rightful place.

There is a problem that we might do well to reflect upon at this point. Is it appropriate, in a devotion that is held before the Blessed Sacrament exposed, to address prayer to the Saviour here present? It is significant that this does not happen, for example, in those prayers which we say as we bow over the sacred Host immediately before communion; and yet these are explicitly directed to Christ. The petition runs: Domine Jesu Christe . . . libera me per hoc sacrosanctum corpus ci sanguinem Thum. In this prayer from the ninth century the thought is still alive that the true and only mode of Christ’s existence is that which he lives in gloria Dei Patris. It is this presence that appears like a focus, and becomes sacramentally efficacious at a thousand places in the Blessed Sacrament. Conversely, however, the Blessed Sacrament is intended to remain in some degree transparent so that we look through it towards the one glorified life of our Lord as he “lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” It is the life of the Transfiguration which, in another mode, shines in thç hearts of Christians as the life of grace, as a pneumatic presence, enabling us to pray, live arid act, “in Christ.” An Italian theologian appropriately remarks: “The consciousness amongst his people of Christ”s presence as mediator, so living during the first centuries, may be the justification for the fact that for several centuries no explicit cult of the Blessed Sacrament appeared outside the framework of the liturgy.’³¹ This is not to deny that such a cult would be reconcilable with that newly aroused consciousness.

What has been said is intended merely to point to the principle: the specific purpose of the sacrament is not the cult, but the celebration of the Eucharist, primarily its Sunday celebration by the assembled congregation. In this sense the Eucharist is the climax, the summit, of all pastoral care. When one has succeeded in leading a congregation in its various classes, groups, and ages, to a point from which they can see the corporate and worthy celebration of the Sunday Mass as the true expression of their Christian life, pastoral care has achieved its purpose: it has performed what was once the vocation of the precursor : parare Domino plebem perfectam.

We are accustomed to list the Eucharist as the third of the sacraments. This corresponds to its role within the scheme of initiation sacraments at the beginning of the Christian life: baptism, confirmation, Eucharist. The addition thereafter of the other four sacraments somewhat obscures the unique position of the Eucharist in the scheme. But the other four are appended as a kind of supplement, a second
line of pious practices in which the generic concept of a sacrament is likewise realized. In reality, like baptism and confirmation, although in a different way, they form the foundation for the possibility of the Eucharist: they purify the people of God from sin; they extend the priestly powers; they bless the exit from Christian life; and sanctify the door through which new generations press into the Church to become the host who glorify God in the Eucharist. ³²

And so, for several decades now, the correct manner of celebrating the Eucharist, or more precisely, to achieve the correct manner of the participation of the faithful in the Eucharist, has very properly been accounted the most pressing task in pastoral work. Since the appearance in Germany in 1942 of the Guiding Principles of the Liturgical Form of Parish Worship many countries and many separate dioceses have published their own directories concerning the corporate celebration of holy Mass. Finally, on September 3, 1958, Rome itself published the celebrated Instruction. The chief problem was to reach a living corporate celebration of the Mass despite the unfamiliarity of its language. This instruction lays down the rule that there should be a commentator who reproduces briefly the main content of the prayers said aloud, at the altar by the celebrant. This follows the French and Italian model. In Germany a different system had been developed and had received approval by Rome.³³ The German method was to have, not a reader, but a precentor or leader of prayer who said aloud simultaneously with the celebrant, but in the vernacular, those official prayers which, preceded by a greeting and invitation, are said silently by the celebrant. Of necessity this method was based upon the Low Mass, which in the ‘Prayer-Song- Mass’³⁴ became clothed with some solemnity and elevated to the status of the Sunday Mass of the congregation. In addition the “German High Mass”, the Mass with hymns in German, offered a possibility, at least in the missa cantata, for the congregation to join in the movement of the Mass. This style of participation has frequently been requested and allowed in missionary countries.³⁵ These represent much needed solutions for an interim period. It is hoped that the momentum of Vatican II will lead the way to a revision of traditional forms of the celebration of the Eucharist and to a solution that will harmonize the heritage of the past with the insights and requirements of our new age. The working commission entrusted with this work faces an enormous task. There is no lack of concrete promptings and suggestions. The decisive thing will be the effort made, not to reinstate an ideal form of the Eucharist such as may be celebrated by some cathedral chapter or monastery of highly trained monks, but to devise a form in which Christian people can glorify God and rejoice in their faith.³⁶

[From Announcing The Word of God , pp. 110-126]

1 Cf. A. Kolping, ‘Amalar von Metz und Florus von Lyon’ in Zeitschrfifur katbolische Theologie LXXIII, I9 1, pp. 424-64.

2 A. Dörrer, Tiroler Umgangsspiele, Innsbruck, I957, pp. 239 ff.

3 Jungmann, Gewordene Liturgie, Innsbruck, 1941, pp. 2 17-21. The races that were not converted until the Middle Ages (Slavs, Hungarians, Baltic peoples) used names for the days of the week, beginning the count with Monday.

4 We should note the etymological connection between ‘think’ and ‘thank’, just as ευχαριστειν
means nothing other than to admit that one has been highly gifted - ευχαριστος.

5 The appropriate basic biblical language alternates, as we know, between the thought of thanking and praising. This applies to the Hebrew barach and to some extent also to the Greek ευχαριστειν.

6 The Apostolic Penitentiary allows for this to be said quavis formula and endows it with a plenary indulgence: A.A.S., LIII, 1961, p. 827.

7 A. Franz, Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter, Freiburg, 1902, pp. 36-72; cf. E. Iserloh,Der Wert der Messe in der Diskussion der Theologen vom Mittelalter bis zum 16. Jahrhundert in Zeitschrift für katboliscbe Tbeologie, LXXXIII, 1961, pp. 44-79.

8 G. Fittkau, Der Begriff des Mjsteriurns bei Joh. Chrysostornus, Bonn, 1953, p. 129.

9 H. Volk, Theologische Besinnung über die Feier der Sonntagsmesse in Eucbaristiefeier am Sonniag, ed. J. Wagner and D. Zahringer, Trier, 1951, p. 52.

10 Council of Trent, Session XXII, c. 2 Denzinger, n. 940): sola offerendi ratione
diversa. The difference in ratio clearly means more than that the exterior rite is different, that it is unbloody. A new purpose now lies behind the offering.

11 Ibid .

12 In the Hanc igitur: ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi; in the Memento of the dead; and in the Nobis quoque peccatoribus.

13 For a more detailed description of this process with reference to catechesis see Henry Fischer, Eucharistie-katechese und liturgische Erneuerung, Düsseldorf, 1959.

14 The spiritual rule of life prescribed by St Catherine of Siena for a rich citizen
of Siena has exerted a profound effect right down to the present day. She prescribed:
daily Mass (and Little Office of our Lady), monthly confession, communion on great feast days or at least once a year. Cited without source by C. Butler, Wege thristlithen Lebens, Einsiedeln, 1944, p.127.

15 Eph. 3. 17. Cf. G. Sohngen, ‘Christi Gegenwart in uns durch Glauben’ in Die Messe in der Glaubensverkiindigung, 2nd ed., Freiburg, 1953, pp. 24-8.

16 H. R. Schlette, Kommunikalion und Sakrament (.Quaestiones disputatae VIII), Freiburg,
1960; id., Die Lebre von der geistlichen Kommunion bei Bonaventura, Albert d. Gr., und Thomas von Aquin, Munich, 1958. This spiritual Communion is not, however, the same as the mental communion which consists in a longing for sacramental Communion, a pious practice that has real significance only in exceptional cases in the normal circumstances of worship in an age of daily communion.

17 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations II, pp. 109-33: ‘Personal and Sacramental Piety’.

18 It is in harmony with this attitude if a priest, when travelling, prefers to forgo celebrating Mass (and if necessary forgo receiving Communion) rather than upset the routine of a whole convent in the late forenoon.

19 This happened first of all in modern times, and became a fixed arrangement only after the turn of the eighteenth-nineteenth century. Cf. P. Browe, “Wann fing man an, die Kommunion ausserhalb der Messe auszuteilen?” in Theologie und Glaube, XXIII, 1931, pp. 755-62.

20 C. Butler, Wege der christlichen Lebens, 1944, pp. 79 f.

21 Cf. p. 43.

22 Even in the reformed rite for the consecration of a church of 1962 the exposition of the sacramental presence forms no element of the sanctification of the building.

23 Cf. the speculations of Cardinal A. de Cienfuegos (d. 1739). See H. Dutouquet, “Cienfuegos” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, II, pp. 2511 f.; A. Michel, “La Messe”, ibid., x, pp. 1189 f.

24 The simple poems of the convert Cordula Peregrina: Was das ewige Licht erzählt, first published in 1885 , a year later than the Missal of Anselm Schott, had run to twenty-two editions by 1922 - the same number as Schott’s Missal.

25 Ritua/e Romanum, V, I, 6. The relevant text remains unaltered in the new edition of 1952.

26 H. V. Meurers, “Altar und Tabernakel” in Liturgisches Jahrbuch, III, 1953, pp. 10-28.

27 Address to members of the Pastoral Liturgical Congress of Assisi on 22 Sept.
1956. Cf. J. Wagner, Erneuerung der Liturgie aus dem Geiste der Seelsorge, Trier, 1957,. 358 f.

28 I June 1957. Cf. Liiurgisches Jahrbuch, VII, 1957, p. 251.

29 Several decrees since 1930: Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, Rome, 1950, n. 371, 736, 758.

30 Cf. Rome’s attitude towards exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. In contrast to the practice in northern countries, Rome provides for few cases.-Codex Juris Can., can. 1274

31 P. Dacquino, “La formula paolina “in Cristo Gesu” in Scuola Cattolica, LXXXVII
1959, p. 284, note 26.

32 Cf. 0. Semmelroth, Vom Sinn der Sakramente, Frankfurt, 1960, pp. 70 ff. For this reason I intended the sections on the Eucharist in my book Public Worship (1957) to be the conclusion and crown of the chapters entitled ‘The Sacramental Rites.’

33 This method also was accepted as regular in terms of the Instructio by the Roman arrangement
of 23 December 1958.

34 Cf. articles ‘Prayer-Song-Mass’ and ‘German High Mass’ in Podhradsky,
A Dictionary of the Liturgy, London, 1967.

35 J. Hofinger, J. Kellner, Liturgische Erneurerung in der Weltmission, Innsbruck, 1957, p. 199;
B. Fischer, ‘Deutsches Hochamt, II’ in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, III, 1959, pp. 278 f.

36 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Whitegate Publications, 1963).

 

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