Mary, the Eucharist, and the Church

 

Taken from speech by Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-34930?l=english

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Mary, the Eucharist, and the Church

The intimate relationship between the Eucharist and the Church, such as it appears in the First Letter to the Corinthians and in a strong liturgical tradition of the first millennium, invites us to reaffirm in sacramental practice the unity of the Body of Christ, who rises with his Eucharistic and his ecclesial Body. This strict but differentiated unity implies the participation of different actors at the level of the rite, but also at the level of the mystery, of which the sacrament is the memorial. Ecclesia de Eucharistia reaffirmed the apostolicity of the Eucharist, against the widespread tendency to relativize the role of the ordained minister in order to affirm the conscious and active participation of the assembly in Christ’s sacrificial offering.

This tension on the liturgical level invites us to ask, on the theological level, about the Church’s participation in the sacrifice of the Redeemer. “Is the Mass a sacrifice of the Church?” asked Hans Urs von Balthasar shortly after the Council. The Catholic conception of the Eucharist presupposes this participation but does not always make its foundation explicit. The ecclesiology of communion would benefit by listening here to the theologian from Basel, who takes up the question once again within the framework of his Theo-Drama: “So the question is, is the Church already the Body of Christ in offering her sacrifice, or is it only by her action that she becomes such?”[22]

Balthasar adds, “the community’s celebration of the Eucharist led to the more and more conscious insight that faith in his sacrifice, which already includes us, ‘passively,’ by way of anticipation, also demands our active collaboration.”[23] This apparently sibylline question is extremely important for ecumenism, since Protestants reproach Catholics for diminishing the work of Christ by claiming to add something to his redemptive sacrifice, from which flows all the grace of our salvation. Balthasar is very aware of this objection; he attempts to receive it and to respond to it fully.

In his account of the drama of the Eucharist, he shows the place and the archetypical role of Mary’s “yes,” which, in the grace of the Spirit, precedes and encompasses every other “yes” in the Church of sinners to the sacrifice of Christ: “Insofar as Mary’s Yes is one of the presuppositions of the Son’s Incarnation, it can be, beneath the Cross, a constituent part of his sacrifice.”[24]

Balthasar further deepens our understanding of this question in relation to the mediation of the ministers of the Eucharist. He affirms that “Christ is entrusted to the hands of Mary at birth and at his death: this is more central than his being given into the hands of the Church in her official, public aspect. The former is the precondition for the latter.”[25] This profound vision helps us correctly to integrate the essential role of the ordained minister in the sacramental offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice, but without isolating it from the community. His role remains essentially dependent on the Marian faith in which and from which he can exercise his liturgical function. There is a function that represents Christ in the Church because the Church is already constituted by Mary’s faith, which is communicated to us at baptism.

The Church is confirmed and strengthened in her identity as the Body and Bride of Christ through the Eucharist. She participates as the Bride of the Lamb in the offering entrusted to the hands of her ordained ministers; but this offering was first placed by the Spirit of the Redeemer in the heart and the hands of Mary at the foot of the cross.

Such a vision allows us to understand the primacy of the baptismal priesthood, which culminates in Mary’s act of faith, offering Jesus to the Father and offering herself with him. Consequently, we can say that, thanks to her, it is the entire community of the baptized that participates in offering the Eucharistic sacrifice, even if the community’s role is to receive, like Mary at the foot of the cross, the sacramental gift that the minister accomplishes in Christ’s name.

Lastly, Balthasar demonstrates the hidden presupposition that makes possible this participation of Mary in the redemptive sacrifice: her Immaculate Conception, which permits her to be in perfect solidarity with her Son in the sacrificial offering. She does not add a surplus, as a “work” that would be proper to her, but consents to let God’s will be accomplished in the unique redemptive sacrifice. This humble and painful consent remains the permanent foundation of the Church’s participation in Christ’s Eucharistic offering.

Balthasar notes the paradox: it is through the mediation of the mystery of Mary, in whom everything is grace, that we can overcome the Protestant objection, which reproaches Catholics for adding their own works and merits to the unique sacrifice of Christ.

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