Excerpted from Bishop Fulton Sheen's Calvary and the
Mass
THERE are certain things in life which are too beautiful to be
forgotten, such as the love of a mother. Hence we treasure her picture.
The love of soldiers who sacrificed themselves for their country
is likewise too beautiful to be forgotten, hence we revere their
memory on Memorial Day. But the greatest blessing which ever came
to this earth was the visitation of the Son of God in the form and
habit of man. His life, above all lives, is too beautiful to be
forgotten, hence we treasure the divinity of His Words in Sacred
Scripture, and the charity of His Deeds in our daily actions. Unfortunately
this is all some souls remember, namely His Words and His Deeds;
important as these are, they are not the greatest characteristic
of the Divine Saviour.
The most sublime act in the history of Christ was His Death. Death
is always important for it seals a destiny. Any dying man is a scene.
Any dying scene is a sacred place. That is why the great literature
of the past which has touched on the emotions surrounding death
has never passed out of date. But of all deaths in the record of
man, none was more important than the Death of Christ. Everyone
else who was ever born into the world, came into it to live; our
Lord came into it to die. Death was a stumbling block to the life
of Socrates, but it was the crown to the life of Christ. He Himself
told us that He came "to give his life a redemption for many";
that no one could take away His Life; but He would lay it down of
Himself.
If then Death was the supreme moment for which Christ lived, it
was therefore the one thing He wished to have remembered. He did
not ask that men should write down His Words into a Scripture; He
did not ask that His kindness to the poor should be recorded in
history; but He did ask that men remember His Death. And in order
that its memory might not be any haphazard narrative on the part
of men, He Himself instituted the precise way it should be recalled.
The memorial was instituted the night before He died, at what has
since been called "The Last Supper." Taking bread into
His Hands, He said: "This is my body, which shall be delivered
for you," i.e., delivered unto death. Then over the chalice
of wine, He said, "This is my blood of the new testament, which
shall be shed for many unto remission of sins." Thus in an
unbloody symbol of the parting of the Blood from the Body, by the
separate consecration of Bread and Wine, did Christ pledge Himself
to death in the sight of God and men, and represent His death which
was to come the next afternoon at three.[1] He was offering Himself
as a Victim to be immolated, and that men might never forget that
"greater love than this no man hash, that a man lay down his
life for his friends," He gave the divine command to the Church:
"Do this for a commemoration of me."
The following day that which He had prefigured and foreshadowed,
He realized in its completeness, as He was crucified between two
thieves and His Blood drained from His Body for the redemption of
the world.
The Church which Christ founded has not only preserved the Word
He spoke, and the wonders He wrought; it has also taken Him seriously
when He said: "Do this for a commemoration of me." And
that action whereby we re-enact His Death on the Cross is the Sacrifice
of the Mass, in which we do as a memorial what He did at the Last
Supper as the prefiguration of His Passion.
Hence the Mass is to us the crowning act of Christian worship.
A pulpit in which the words of our Lord are repeated does not unite
us to Him; a choir in which sweet sentiments are sung brings us
no closer to His Cross than to His garments. A temple without an
altar of sacrifice is non-existent among primitive peoples, and
is meaningless among Christians. And so in the Catholic Church the
altar, and not the pulpit or the choir or the organ, is the center
of worship, for there is re-enacted the memorial of His Passion.
Its value does not depend on him who says it, or on him who hears
it; it depends on Him who is the One High Priest and Victim, Jesus
Christ our Lord. With Him we are united, in spite of our nothingness;
in a certain sense, we lose our individuality for the time being;
we unite our intellect and our will, our heart and our soul, our
body and our blood, so intimately with Christ, that the Heavenly
Father sees not so much us with our imperfection, but rather sees
us in Him, the Beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. The Mass
is for that reason the greatest event in the history of mankind;
the only Holy Act which keeps the wrath of God from a sinful world,
because it holds the Cross between heaven and earth, thus renewing
that decisive moment when our sad and tragic humanity journeyed
suddenly forth to the fullness of supernatural life.
What is important at this point is that we take the proper mental
attitude toward the Mass, and remember this important fact, that
the Sacrifice of the Cross is not something which happened nineteen
hundred years ago. It is still happening. It is not something past
like the signing of the Declaration of Independence; it is an abiding
drama on which the curtain has not yet rung down. Let it not be
believed that it happened a long time ago, and therefore no more
concerns us than anything else in the past. Calvary belongs to all
times and to all places. That is why, when our Blessed Lord ascended
the heights of Calvary, He was fittingly stripped of His garments:
He would save the world without the trappings of a passing world.
His garments belonged to time, for they localized Him, and fixed
Him as a dweller in Galilee. Now that He was shorn of them and utterly
dispossessed of earthly things, He belonged not to Galilee, not
to a Roman province, but to the world. He became the universal poor
man of the world, belonging to no one people, but to all men.
But how is it made visible? Where shall we find Calvary perpetuated?
We shall find Calvary renewed, re-enacted, re-presented, as we have
seen, in the Mass. Calvary is one with the Mass, and the Mass is
one with Calvary, for in both there is the same Priest and Victim.
