Made present

What passes for sacramentology these days drives me insane sometimes. I get into the occasional friendly debate on the topic, being a believer in only two sacraments (baptism and holy communion) at a school populated mostly by Roman Catholics, and being an advocate of the propitatory aspect of the Eucharist. Why? Because the Eucharist is propitiatory!

Proceeding upon the grounds that one believes in the Real Presence, be that through transubstantiation, transignification, consubstantion, of simply through an acceptance of divine mystery, then when we receive holy communion, we are sharing in the bodily sacrifice of Christ on the cross, a sacrifice made for the satisfaction of the sins of all humanity. Yes, we are engaged in an act of thanksgiving and memorial, but in so far as we are sharing in the act of Christ’s sacrifice, we are engaged in a propitiatory act.

Now, I am not suggesting that consuming the consecrated gifts propitiates God. That statement would deny efficacy of Christ’s own sacrifice, by suggesting that further satisfaction must be made on the part of the believer. However, the act of Christ’s passion was itself propitiatory. Christ died on the cross to make satisfaction for the sinfulness of humanity (whether one views sin in a legalistic sense or one of spiritual health or of relationship to God is another issue), so that all who believe in Christ should have restitution made for their sins on their account, an act of which no human being, in our present sinful state, is capable without God’s help. This was sacrifice after the model of those making the sacrifice eating of the sacrificial animals to partake of the sacrifice’s real efficacy. When Christ offered His body and His blood at the last supper, He was giving us the ability to share in His sacrifice, to receive the real effect which His death has wrought in this world. The Temple sacrifices which were offered by the Israelites to God have been superseded by the final sacrifice which God Incarnate made for us on the cross, and all believers in that ultimate sacrifice can share in it through the consecrated bread and wine which are Christ body and His blood made present for us.

But people today totally lose sight of this all-important element of the Eucharistic celebration. Reformed memorialism formally did away with propitiation, making the Eucharist into nothing more than an act of memorial of the Christ who is not present. Today propitiation is socially inconvenient. Secular thinkers (Sam Harris spring immediately to mind) compare the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ on the cross with blood sacrifice of animals to appease pagan gods, an entirely fair statement, but one which they consider critical and so many Christians consider derogatory. So we conveniently lose sight of propitiation, in favour of thanksgiving and memorial, even when some of us enforce the doctrine of the Real Presence which is frankly little more than ritual cannibalism without the doctrine of Propitiation.

Aside from us forgetting our fundamental theology and over-emphasising what remains of the Eucharist, what does this mean for the community of believers? We’re now desperately seeking a meaning for the Real Presence. I always marvel at the enthusiasm with which my young Roman Catholic schoolmates regard the Cult of the Eucharist. The Real Presence is now only an object of adoration, as if Christ would ever want us to adore His physical body. The Lamb is not for beholding, He did not sacrifice Himself on the cross so we could venerate bread. The Real Presence was not shared with us for veneration, but for sharing in the ultimate act of love that was the passion.

Though it may like an unnecessary trapping of backward theology, the propitiatory nature of the Eucharist is fundamental to the meaning of holy communion. Without it, we have a whole not only in our sacramentology, but in our entire systematic theology.