The Consecration
In this article we examine the moment of the Consecration in the Mass, presenting the work of Msgr. Nicholas Gihr in his fundamental liturgical commentary The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained. Msgr. Gihr was a priest of Freiburg in Breisgau whose work of liturgical research took place during the time frame spanning the pontificates of Popes Pius IX to Pius XI, including that of Pope Saint Pius X. The early years of his work were contemporaneous with the last years in the work of Dom Prosper Guéranger. (The English translation of his study appeared in 1902; the original is: Gihr, Nikolaus. Messopfer dogmatisch, liturgisch und aszetisch erklärt. Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau, 1877.)
Pinnacle of the Holy Mass
The moment of Consecration is the moment which is the most important and solemn, the most sublime and touching, the most holy and fruitful of the whole sacrificial celebration; for it includes that glorious and unfathomably profound work, namely, the accomplishment of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which all the marvels of God’s love are concentrated. The change of the bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood can proceed from Him only who “alone effects what is wonderful”: it is an act of creative omnipotence. But to this act of divine almighty power there is required a human act, human cooperation and that on the part of an ordained priest.
At his ordination the priest received the supernatural power so to pronounce the words: “This is My Body,” “This is My Blood,” such that they change the elements of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. At the Last Supper, Christ was the sole priest offering sacrifice; at the altar He is the principal Sacrificer. Whilst in the Cenacle He offered Himself without the assistance of others, He now offers Himself on the altar by the hands and mouth of the visible priest. The priest is His organ and minister. This truth clearly manifests the way and manner in which the priest performs the act of Consecration; all he does indicates plainly that he speaks and acts in the person of Christ in accomplishing the Eucharistic Sacrifice. That this may be manifest, he is directed by the Church to imitate as faithfully as possible by word and deed Christ’s model act of Consecration.
The Church’s liturgical act of Consecration is nothing else than the repetition and copy of the first celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the Cenaculum at Jerusalem. The priest narrates the first offering and institution of the unbloody Sacrifice by Jesus Christ, and while relating this, he performs the corresponding actions, that is, he imitates, as far as possible, the Lord and does the same as Christ did. He pronounces the effective words of Consecration in the person of Christ (quasi ex persona ipsius Christi loquentis, St. Thomas Aquinas). He pronounces them over the bread and wine with the intention of changing the gifts at present lying on the altar and thereby to offer up in sacrifice the Body and Blood of Christ. Plain and simple are the words of the liturgical text, as is best suited for a thing that is both ineffably sublime and divine.
The Consecration of the Host
Who, the day before He suffered, took bread into His holy and venerable hands, and with eyes lifted up toward heaven, unto Thee, O God, His Almighty Father, giving thanks to Thee, did bless, break and give unto His disciples, saying: Take and eat ye all of this: For this is My Body.
Qui pridie quam pateretur (the day before He suffered). The Lord chose the eve of His bitter passion and death, the night on which He was betrayed, to give us by the institution of the Eucharist the most wonderful proof of His love. With desire He had longed for this hour. Before shedding His blood in torrents on the painful way of the Cross, He would pour out for us creatures the abundance of His grace, all the treasures of His love in the Sacrament of the Altar, that we might never forget what He has done and suffered for us.
Accepit panem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas (He took bread into His holy and venerable hands). Saying these words, the priest also takes the Host into his hands. Holy and sanctifying, venerable and adorable beyond all expression are the hands of Christ. How often has He raised them in prayer to His Father, and extended them over men to bless them! How these hands were transpierced on the Cross with the most intolerable heat of pain! How are the hands of a priest of the Lord constituted? With holy oil were those hands anointed and consecrated to the service of God and the salvation of souls; day and night should they be elevated to Heaven, to praise the Lord, to call down upon men His mercies and blessings.
Et elevatis oculis in coelum ad te Deum Patrem suum omnipotentem, tibi gratias agens benedixit (and with His eyes lifted up toward heaven, unto Thee, O God, His Almighty Father, giving thanks to Thee, He did bless). While the priest pronounces these words, he performs the corresponding ceremonies, so as to imitate and do, as far as possible, what the Savior did at the institution of the Eucharist: for a moment the priest looks up at the Crucifix on the altar, and then bows His head, thereby to signify and to express Christ’s thanksgiving, and he makes over the Host the sign of the Cross, thus appropriately to represent the blessing of the Savior.
Christ’s looking up to His Almighty Father, as also the giving of thanks and the blessing of the bread connected therewith, indicates not only the greatness and sublimity of the mystery which He was about to accomplish, but served at the same time as a preparation for the Consecration, and as the making ready of the matter to be consecrated.
Fregit deditque discipulis suis, dicens: Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes (He broke and gave to His disciples, saying: Take and eat ye all of this). The Church in the celebration of the Sacrifice follows her divine Lord and Master step by step: the breaking of the sacramental species (fregit) and the distribution of the Eucharistic bread (dedit) cannot take place until after the Consecration, while the majestic thanksgiving prayer of the Preface (gratias agens), and the manifold blessing of the sacrificial matter (benedixit) have already an appropriate place before the Consecration. The priest, in the midst of a solemn silence that shuts out from him all the noise of the world, humbly bowing down at the altar, pronounces “in the person of Christ,” with the deepest attention, devotion and reverence the mighty words:
Hoc est enim Corpus meum.
And now there is no longer bread on the altar, but under the appearances that remain of bread, Christ’s Body is truly present. In a moment the power of God has wrought a series of miracles, more magnificent and glorious than all the wonders of creation. The tiny Host now contains in itself infinitely more treasures, riches and glory than are to be found on the vast expanse of the globe. By virtue of the words of Consecration, Christ’s Body becomes present, veiled under the appearance of bread, and, indeed, His glorified Body, which shines in the glory of heaven; but this Body is immortal, impassible, with the Precious Blood flowing through it, vivified by the most holy soul, united to the Eternal Godhead. Therefore, in the Host Christ is present, whole and entire, the hidden Savior, with His divinity and humanity. The same God-Man who lives and reigns in heaven in inconceivable majesty and beauty, is now mysteriously and under sacramental appearances present in our very midst. The gates of heaven open and in the company of invisible choirs of angels the King of Heaven descends upon the altar, and this spot of the earth becomes a paradise; the priest holds his Creator, Redeemer and Judge in his hands. It is only fitting and just that we should fall down on our knees before Him.
The Consecration of the Chalice
In like manner, after supper, taking also this excellent chalice into His holy and venerable hands: and giving thanks to Thee, He blessed, and gave to His disciples, saying: Take, and drink ye all of it: For this is the Chalice of My Blood, of the new and eternal testament: the mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you, and for many, unto the remission of sins. As often as you do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me.
Simili modo postquam coenatum est, accipiens et hunc praeclarum Calicem in... manus suas (In like manner, after supper, taking also this excellent chalice into His... hands). At these words the priest takes up the chalice in his hands and slightly elevates it. After the Old Testament Paschal Supper was over, the Lord consecrated the bread, and immediately afterward followed the Consecration of the chalice.
The Savior took “this excellent chalice” (hunc praeclarum Calicem): the identity of this chalice and that of the Last Supper is perfect, that is, numerically so, only after the Consecration; then there is here as there altogether the same Blood in both chalices: “This is the chalice of My Blood.” The Savior blessed the chalice likewise with thanksgiving, as He had previously done with the bread. He then pronounced over the blessed wine those holy words which the priest now in His stead pronounces over the chalice, to change the material element into the divine Blood of Christ: Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis mei, “For this is the chalice of My Blood,” that is, this is My Blood which is contained in the chalice. According to the common opinion these words constitute the essential formula for the Consecration of the chalice; for they signify and effect the presence of the Blood of Christ under the appearances of wine.
In the chalice is the Blood of the “new and eternal testament.” At the foot of Sinai the old covenant, whose promises were only earthly, and which was to continue but for a time, was concluded with the blood of animals. But by Christ’s sacrificial Blood which is in the chalice, the “new” covenant of grace was established and sealed and is called under a twofold aspect “the eternal” covenant: first, because the gifts and blessings appertaining to it are heavenly and imperishable; again, because the new covenant will ever remain in force and its validity endure to the end of days.
The exclamatory phrase in the middle: mysterium fidei, “the mystery of faith,” indicates the unsearchable depth and obscurity of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. That the God-Man shed His Blood for us on the Cross, and that He again sheds it for us in a mystical manner on the altar is an adorable divine achievement which includes in itself the sum of the most unheard-of wonders, all of which can be acknowledged and believed as true only in the light and the power of faith. Christ’s sacrificial Blood in the chalice is a mystery of faith in the fullest sense of the term.
After the priest has pronounced the words of Consecration, he again genuflects, to venerate the infinitely precious and adorable Blood of Christ in the chalice. At the same time, he pronounces the words: “As often as ye do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me,” with which the Savior instituted the Christian priesthood and the perpetual Sacrifice of the New Law as a commemorative celebration of His redeeming passion and death.
By the separate Consecration of the Host and of the chalice, Christ’s Body and Blood are rendered present under the twofold appearances of bread and wine, that is, as sacrificed. The twofold Consecration is a mystical shedding of blood, and places before our eyes in a most lively manner the bloody death of Christ sacrificed on the Cross. The Sacrifice on the altar is, indeed, painless; for the Savior is no longer passible and can no longer suffer death. But His divinely human Heart is here inflamed with the same love of sacrifice, and is moved by the same obedience of His Father to sacrifice Himself as when He was on the Cross. This love and this obedience urged Him to sacrifice Himself mystically on the altar also under the twofold sacramental appearances. It is at the moment of Consecration that the Sacrifice is accomplished.
The Elevation
Immediately after pronouncing the words of Consecration, the priest in all reverence elevates first the Host and afterward the chalice in like manner, lifting up the Divine Sacrificial Victim for adoration, whilst he himself keeps his eyes riveted on the Holy of Holies. The principal object of the elevation is adoration; as the celebrant genuflects before and after the Elevation, adoring with faith and humility, thus also all who assist at the Mass should be moved and impelled at the sight of the Blessed Sacrament, to render to the God and Savior therein concealed due adoration through their humble and reverent deportment, as well as by the interior oblation of themselves to Him. After the birth of Christ, heaven and earth sent adorers to the crib at Bethlehem: the same happens at the appearance of the Eucharistic Savior on the altar. Then, as St. Gregory says (Dial. IV, 58), “Heaven opens at the words of the priest, and the choirs of angels surround the altar,” to admire and to adore the Divine Mysteries.