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emotions surrounding death has never passed out of date.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.
