By Sr. Linda Straub, CSJ
Most Christians believe that on the night before His death Jesus gathered with his disciples to eat the Passover meal. But there is debate whether Jesus was eating a Passover meal or another Jewish ritual meal on the night before he died. Three gospels say it was the Passover but John's gospel states that Passover was on the day he died. No matter if it was the actual day of Passover it was the Paschal season and what is clear is that the early Christians saw a direct connection between the Last Supper and Passover.
Two important ritual elements that begin and conclude the meal, bread and wine, are found in all the Jewish religious meals; at Passover the bread is unleavened. It is particularly in the Passover seder that we discover the importance of remembrance (anamnesis). The purpose of anamnesis is not simply to recall the past events where in God acted on our behalf but through the act of remembering, in the context of blessing, to insert the assembly once more into the "power stream" of Adonai's continuous call to the people Israel. There will be nothing surprising then, in Jesus command to his disciples to "do this" in anamnesis of him. This is not just a recalling what he did but actually to make the event present again. Each time we celebrate Eucharist the last supper is made present to us again.
Look at the sheet on the comparison of the Passover meal and the last supper. Notice in both ritual an initial cup is blessed. Then there is a blessing of the bread, the meal and then thanksgiving over the second cup. When Jesus blessed the bread he said: "This is my body. Do this in memory of me." After the meal he blessed the cup and said, "this cup is the new covenant in my blood".
I would like to share with you the meaning of what Jesus did that night for those who believe in him. Jesus transformed the bread and wine into his body and blood. When we gather at Eucharist and the priest blesses the bread and the wine it becomes the real presence of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. The technical name given to this action is transubstantiation. This explanation of the real presence of Jesus in the form of bread and wine was first used in medieval times, by St. Thomas Aquinas. Using Aristotelian terms, how he described transubstantiation was the accidents, the physical properties are the same, the essence has changed. It still looks like bread and wine, taste like bread and wine but it is substantially different.
Let me give you an example. If you have a loaf of bread and let it sit out on the counter for a few weeks it gets really hard. After a month it is solid. Let's say you use it as a doorstop to keep the door open. Is it still bread? Can you eat it? It still looks like bread and under a microscope it would have the properties of bread but it is no longer edible. In fact it has been changed essentially. The being-ness of the thing is different. This is a rough comparison to what happens to the bread and wine at mass. The community remembers what happened on the night before Jesus died, they give thanks, they call upon the Holy Spirit to bless the bread and the priests prays the words Jesus said, "This is my body, this is my blood." Through this action the bread and wine is transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. This is a matter of faith. There is no explanation outside of faith and the word of Jesus. For Catholics this is most significant, for although the bread and wine retain their physical forms, they have truly become Jesus' body and blood, nourishing us to live as his disciples. And having received Jesus' very body and blood into ourselves we are to be Jesus for the world, we are to go forth and live his message of unifying love.
How does the last supper relate to Passover? For Jews the Passover is a celebration of the Exodus. It is a feast of liberation, rejoicing in God's wondrous acts on their behalf that set them free from slavery. Christians celebrate Jesus' passing through death to the new life every year in the great three days we call Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. This is the closest Christian parallel to Passover. The meaning of the Passover meal and meaning of the Eucharistic meal are related. Our God is a God of freedom and life. Both Christians and Jews celebrate God’s saving love and thus commit themselves to imitating that love. That's the deepest meaning of both Passover and Eucharist.
Actually, the term "transubstantiation" was used by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, twelve years before Thomas Aquinas was born. According to Wikipedia the earliest known use of the term was by Hildebert de Lavardin, the Archbishop of Tours, circa 1079.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Aristotelian Theory of Substance, the subtance of something is independent of its physical properties, which are the accidents. Therefore, bread that goes stales merely changes its accidents but does not lose its substance. In other words, stale bread is still bread.
ReplyDeleteWhat is important to note here is that the Church's adoption of "transubtantiation" as an explanation of what happens at Mass is in no way meant as an endorsement of Aristotle's Theory of Substance. Many people over the centuries have thought that it was, most prominently Martin Luther. Many still think it is. As a philosophical theory Aristotle's notion of substance is hardly distinguishable from Platonic Idealism, which creates at least as many problems as it solves. So, Sister Linda Straub is right to write that the Church in adopting "transubstantiation" borrowed Aristotle's terminology as opposed to borrowing his philosophical theories. Now, the only reason why the Church did so is no other philosophical terminology allows one to isolate an object's essence from its physical properties. In other words, the Aristotelian language of substance was perfectly suited to explaining how a radical change could take place in bread and wine that does not change their physical appearance at all. It should be noted here that Aristotle himself would never have endorsed transubtantiation for his philosophy did not allow for miracles, and it is important to stress, as Sister Linda Straub has done, that transubstantiation is a miracle that defies philosophical explanation. So, if "transubstantiation" is itself a mystery, what good is it as an explanation? Well, perhaps, explanation is not the right word. "Transubstantiation" is better understood as a safeguard against misunderstandings of this mystery. In Aristotelian terminology, the substance is what gives any object its identity or definition. The Doctrine of the Real Presence holds that bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ. The question, then, is what sort of change? Is it merely a symbolic change that is effected by the congregation's devotion to the bread and wine? In other words, is the change only one of how we think about the bread and wine just like a little kid may change his stuffed tiger into, say, a sophisticated and urbane Hobbes? By adopting the concept of "transubtantiation, the Church has said that this is a misunderstanding of the Real Presence. "Transubstantiation", whatever else it may mean, means a change in the object's very identity and NOT a change in how we view it.
ReplyDeleteOne small cavil: if substance is indeed what gives an object its identity, then it is not helpful to suggest that bread, for example, changes its identity by merely growing old. If that were so, then perhaps we ourselves become wholly different creature just by going from age 10 to age 15 (some parents, of course, would say just that, but this is a jest--I hope). But this contradicts the very purpose of Aristotle's theory of substance which was to attempt to find an object's stable identity. This is precisely why Aristotle did not locate the substance of a thing in its matter; matter is changeable and, thus, cannot yield a stable identity. Accordingly Aristotle thought that an object changed its identity only by its total, complete, and utter annihilation.
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