"Then he takes the cup and saith." The language used in reference to the bread, "Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you," etc., is essentially the same as we have. But with the cup there is a remarkable expression that bears directly on the point especially under consideration. "Having taken the cup, He gave thanks, and blessed, and filled with the Holy Ghost and gave it to us,” etc. At this point the Roman Mass, and all the offices that follow it, pause and declare the consecration entirely completed, and that it is thus completed for each element by itself. According to this theory, at the moment that the priest uttered the words, “For this is my body," the substance of the bread becomes, by force of the words," the body of Christ, which is immediately adored. The words appropriate to the wine are then pronounced, and the wine, in like manner, becomes the blood of Christ, and is then separately adored. But in the Liturgy before us the service proceeds in a mode which renders such an interpretation of it impossible. There is no sign, there is no expression which indicates that the consecration has been effected here by these "words" of the priest, nor by the "force of the words" of the priest at any other point. But instead of regarding the consecration as completed here, this office goes directly on, after the narrative of the institution and its repetition of the actions and words of our Lord, to offer a prayer and oblation of considerable length; then comes that portion of the service which the Church of that period, as also the Greek Church still, asserts to be the actual consecration. This is preluded by a series of prayers beginning, "O God, according to Thy great goodness "send upon us, and upon these gifts lying before Thee, "Thy most Holy Spirit," etc., the various attributes and operations of the Spirit are afterwards described at length, and finally, as the consummation of this solemn act, His presence is besought to be the Consecrator of the Sacrament, and the Alone Power and Person from whom must come the blessing which the faithful partakers were gathered there to receive. Accordingly the priest now prays, "Send down the "same most Holy Spirit upon us, and on these gifts be"fore Thee, that coming upon them with His holy and good and glorious Presence, He may hallow and make "this bread the holy body of Thy Christ," "and this cup the precious blood of Thy Christ," "that they may be to those who partake of them for remission of sins," etc. The consecration is here referred not to the "force" of any words uttered by the priest, but to the power and operation of the Holy Ghost, and as a spiritual means to a spiritual result in those who shall " duly" receive the offered gifts; in accordance with this the Spirit is invoked as the sole agent by whom the Sacrament is hallowed to its sacred uses, and through whose inner working alone we "may," in the language of this same office, "become worthy partakers and communicants of the holy mysteries." This inner operation of the Spirit on our soul is, in fact, interwoven with every portion of the service. In its earlier parts the worshipers are described as those who "seek the spiritual gifts that are "from Thee,” and God is besought "to bless them with every spiritual blessing that cannot be taken away." The priest prays "for the illumination of the Most Holy Spirit, that he may not be a slave of sin," with many other petitions of like sense and words for both. the minister and the people. And in the parts following the consecration, they recur again and again, until the conclusion of the service. This necessarily condensed and imperfect analysis is wholly inadequate to convey a full representation of the frequency and fervor of the reference to the Holy Spirit in this ancient, and in its essentials, Scriptural and Apostolic service. But enough has been given fully to justify what has been previously stated upon that point, and of which Mr. Ffoulkes1 has truly said, "From first to last it is on the action of the Holy Ghost that the "whole rite depends; 'the whole character of the "primitive liturgies being based on the action of the Holy Ghost was spiritual exclusively throughout, allow"ing no carnal conception of any kind to intermingle "with it, except to be deprecated and cast forth,' and though they knew Christ well enough after the flesh "in professing their faith, they would only know Him "after the Spirit in receiving Him.” The other liturgies of this same period are all at one in the expression of these principles with St. James. The Alexandrian Office, known by the name of St. Mark, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost and the prayer that God would "enlighten our soul with the Divine rays of Thy Holy Spirit, that we being filled with the knowledge of Thee," etc., goes on, "The Holy Ghost commands and sanctifies," and the import of this is 1Ffoulkes, ut. sup., pp. 40-48. immediately declared by the response of the priest, "Behold they (the gifts) are sanctified and consecrated." The Liturgy, generally called the Clementine, corresponds very closely in this part of the office to St. James, while the Forms attributed to St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, which are those still in use by the Greeks, are even fuller in their expression of the nature of the operation of the Holy Spirit than many of the others. St. Chrysostom prays, after the consecration of the gifts by the Holy Ghost, "So that they may be to those that partake, for purification of soul and communion of the Holy Ghost," etc. And St. Basil returns to it in a great variety of forms in the latter part of the office, and sums up the blessings to be sought in the Sacrament, "that we receiving in a pure conscience a portion of the hallowed things may be united to the Holy Body and Blood of Thy Christ-may have Christ dwelling in our hearts and become the temple of Thy Holy Spirit." Similar references from other liturgies might be multiplied to an indefinite extent, but it would be only to weariness. So that we may say as regards this vital principle of the Eucharist, all the primitive and unmutilated liturgies repeat the same great truth, and with one voice proclaim that this was the accepted and Catholic doctrine of all parts of the Church in those early ages. But the liturgies are not alone in witnessing that the primitive Church regarded the Eucharist as dependent for its sacramental character on prayer for, or the invocation of, the Holy Spirit and His presence and operation in response to this. Ffoulkes has presented an elaborate chain of authorities extending over many centuries, and from every section of the Church, all which concur in this as the unquestioned teaching of themselves and the Church of their time. We can cite but a few from this long array, and give these merely as examples of what, in one form or another, all the rest will be found to affirm whenever they write of the Eucharist. Cyril, of Jerusalem (about A.D. 360), says,1 in describing the Eucharistic office, "After we have sanctified ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we invoke the God of mercy to send the Holy Ghost, that He may make the bread the body of Christ and the wine His blood," etc. And in reference to the character of the service, in one place he speaks of it as "a spiritual sacrifice," and in another that we "stablish our heart by partaking of Christ as spiritually present." In like terms St. Augustine, in Africa, declares (a little later), "We call the body of Christ that only which, taken from the fruits of the earth and consecrated by mystical prayer, we then receive to our spiritual health in memory of the passion of our Lord for us, and this, * * * * * * is not sanctified to become so great a Sacrament but by the unseen action of the Holy Spirit." And Ephrem, the Syrian3 from Mesopotamia, a widely distant part of the Church, about the same time as Cyril writes, speaking of the vision in the 10th chapter of Ezekiel : "These coals and the man that is clothed in fine linen, are a type of the priest by whose mediatorship the living coals of the life-produc 1 Ffoulkes, ut sup., p. 70. 2 Augustine De Trinitate, Bk. III, ch. 4. Ephrem Syrus (Oxford Translation), p. 146. 3 |