to accompany both the bishop and the community of his or her own diocese through liturgical action.
“While humbly teaching the liturgical art, he must guide all those who celebrate, keeping the ritual rhythm and accompanying the faithful in the sacramental event,” he said.
“Thus assisted, the pastor can gently lead the entire diocesan community in the offering of self to the Father, in imitation of Christ the Lord,” he continued.
The pope also invited Anselmianum students to follow the humble example of St. Benedict by discreetly carrying out their duties “without boasting” about results or successes.
“I encourage you to transmit these attitudes to the ministers, lectors, and cantors, according to the words of Psalm 115 quoted in the prologue of the Benedictine Rule: ‘Not to us, Lord, not to us give the glory, but to your name alone’ (cf. Nos. 29-30),” he said.
Pointing to the holy life of St. Teresa of Ávila, a doctor of the Church, the pope said liturgists must not neglect their life of prayer when carrying out their diocesan ministries.
“Care for the liturgy is first and foremost care for prayer,” he said. “May this great master of spiritual life be an example to you.”
At the conclusion of his message, the pope shared: “I hope that every one of you will always have at heart the people of God, whom you accompany in worship with wisdom and love. And do not forget to pray for me.”
Surge in Adults Entering Church in England This Easter
By Heather Tomlinson
CNA—This Easter Vigil, the Catholic Church in England [saw] a decade-high surge of new entrants to the faith. There is anecdotal evidence of a particular increase in young men, who say their interest was sparked initially by Catholic apologists on social media and also by the traditional heritage of Catholicism.
Almost all English dioceses contacted by CNA reported a significant increase in both catechumens and candidates at the Rite of Election at the start of Lent compared with last year. Many had not seen comparable numbers for a decade.
The Diocese of Westminster, which includes much of the capital city London, said this year it has 252 catechumens and over 250 candidates, making a total of over 500 to be received into the Catholic Church at Easter—the most seen since 2018.
The adjacent Archdiocese of Southwark, which has a significant evangelization program, saw over 450 adults complete the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) this year, more than the year before. Such levels have not been seen since Pope Benedict XVI allowed groups of Anglican communities to enter into communion in 2011 through the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus
“I don’t think it can just be put down to COVID recovery; there seems to be something fresh afoot,” said Mark Nash, Southwark’s director of the Agency for Evangelization and Catechesis. “The Holy Spirit is moving in a very particular way.”
Although the candidates have a broad variety of backgrounds, some trends he has noticed include young men initially inspired by online U.S.-based evangelists and apologists such as Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire; Father Mike Schmitz, a popular speaker, podcaster, and campus minister; Edward Sri, a theologian, author, and speaker; and Trent Horn, a Catholic apologist and podcaster.
Nash has also noticed more from atheistic countries.
“As part of my work, anecdotally, going to a number of parishes, groups I’ve been in, there has been a large number of younger people—particularly men,” he said. “Increasing numbers of Chinese…in Southwark we are blessed with a panoply of ethnicities. It really is the Church universal; it is massively edifying.”
Across England and Wales similar trends are noticeable:
The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, on the south coast, said it had an increase from 60 catechumens and just under 90 candidates in 2024 to 105 catechumens and 105 candidates this year.
NEWS & VIEWS
In the Diocese of Northampton, just north of London, there were 38 adult candidates for baptism and 62 for reception. Yearly statistics show that this is a level not seen since 2014, and apart from a surge in the mid-2000s, these levels are historically high.
The Archdiocese of Birmingham, in the midlands, said there were 201 catechumens and candidates at the Rite of Election compared with nearly 130 in 2024. In northern England, the Archdiocese of Liverpool had 140 candidates and catechumens this year. Last year it had 110. One attendee at Liverpool Cathedral is Sarah Yates, 21, who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil. Although her parents were not religious, time spent with her grandparents going to Mass laid a foundation for her more recent interest. She credits young people’s increased interest in Catholicism to the internet.
“I think the rise in social media has led to the increase,” she said. “People can just express any views. If one person in America says something, I can look and then conduct my own research.”
“Personally I don’t like to use social media that much,” she continued, “but with YouTube and Spotify, you can sit in the comfort of your own home, you can learn the entire history of Catholicism—it’s all out there.”
John Withers, the director of WeBelieve, a new festival in England that aims to reach “seekers” as well as Catholics, said he has observed young men drawn to his parish after watching videos on YouTube that progressively interested them in the faith. They began with psychologist Jordan Peterson, then Bishop Barron, then more spiritual speakers such as Father Schmitz.
“They literally followed that algorithmic journey into the Church,” Withers said. “Society has been ‘spiritual, not religious’ for some time. Now, Christianity— particularly in its ancient forms—is becoming a socially acceptable spiritual option. There is something in the air.”
The increase in those entering the Church appears to have taken place in many different kinds of parishes up and down England. But there has been particular interest in more traditional expressions of spirituality, often at urban-centered Oratories run by a distinct network of priests and founded by St. Philip Neri.
One priest of the Oratory told CNA: “There is a remarkable resurgence of interest in the faith, especially among young people, and in particular young men. We have a continual stream of interest, such that I would say that there is a new person asking about becoming a Catholic nearly every week.”
“I would say that most of those coming to the Church have no religious background, or almost none,” he said. “It is precisely the lack of purpose and truth in contemporary society that leads them to seek meaning. For that reason then, watered-down versions of Christianity have no attraction.”
One personal story that illustrates this trend is that of Paul Sapper, 27, who works as a communications officer at faith-based legal advocacy organization ADF International, which has defended many of the Christians prosecuted for pro-life work or for conservative values in the U.K.
Sapper first engaged with Christians at Oxford University and spent time in evangelical churches. He was drawn to the Catholic Church due to its upholding of traditional sexual ethics including opposition to contraception. He now attends the Traditional Latin Mass.
He said he believes his generation is increasingly drawn to Christianity in its historic form and that the “hugely encouraging” increase in people at the Rite
Adoremus Bulletin
of Election is a “promising sign that we may be at a turning point and entering a new era.”
“There is a general consensus between people of various worldviews that things are getting worse and that we are in an age of decline in this country and across the West,” he said. “The solution to the crisis we face today is not political or cultural—it’s spiritual, as we are facing a spiritual crisis. As things get darker, more and more people—especially young people—are coming to realize that the light of Christ and his truth shine all the more brightly in the dark.”
“Decline is not inevitable, but our civilization can only be healed by returning to its founding principles, which are based and wholly dependent on the Christian faith and worldview,” he said.
The interest in Christianity is not confined to Catholicism. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a Protestant book publisher, said there has been an 87% increase in purchases of the Bible between 2019 and 2024, and there have been anecdotal reports of conversions in some evangelical churches.
Vatican Updates Rules for Mass Intentions
By AC Wimmer
CNA—The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy issued a decree updating the Church’s norms governing Mass intentions and stipends, emphasizing both proper spiritual understanding and practical solutions for modern pastoral challenges.
Pope Francis approved the document on Palm Sunday, April 13. It took effect on Easter Sunday, April 20.
The decree, which replaces the 1991 instruction Mos Iugiter, maintains Canon 945 of the Code of Canon Law, affirming that priests may receive offerings for celebrating Mass according to specific intentions, while introducing significant provisions for “collective intentions.”
According to the updated norms, bishops’ conferences or provincial councils may now permit priests to accept multiple offerings from different donors for a single Mass with a “collective intention” but only when all donors have been explicitly informed and freely consented.
“Such consent of the donors can never be presumed,” the document states firmly.
“In the absence of explicit consent, it is always presumed that consent has not been given.”
The decree also reaffirms that offerings for Mass intentions must never be treated as commercial transactions, noting that such practices would constitute simony—the forbidden buying or selling of spiritual things.
Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik, prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, explained that the new regulations came after “profound consideration” and extensive consultation with bishops, clergy, and faithful worldwide.
The document addresses the growing challenge of clergy shortages in many regions, making it difficult to fulfill all requested Mass intentions while preserving their spiritual significance.
Bishops are instructed to properly educate clergy and faithful about these regulations and maintain accurate records of Masses, intentions, and offerings. The decree emphasizes that priests should celebrate Mass for the intentions of the faithful, “especially the poorest, even without receiving any offering.”
The norms also prohibit substituting promised Masses with simple mentions during liturgies, categorizing such practices as “gravely illicit.”
A notable pastoral provision allows diocesan bishops to redirect surplus Mass intentions to parishes or mission territories in need, promoting solidarity within the universal Church.
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Eat and Drink Your Fill of Martyrdom
By Christopher Carstens, Editor
Many mysteries of faith dwell within the consecrated host and chalice. Each single drop or particle, for example, contains the whole of Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity. Further, since Christ can die no more (Romans 6:9), his body can no longer be separated from his blood—which means that his Precious Blood is consumed under the species of bread, and his Body received from the chalice. We might even speculate whether, in addition to Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit aren’t also really present in the host and eaten during communion: “He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit... Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit” (Pope John Paul II, citing St. Ephrem the Syrian, in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 17).
But there’s another most remarkable mystery that is worthy of our attention—the relationship between the Eucharist and martyrdom.
Ours is a sacramental nature. That is, human beings, composed of body and soul, communicate intellectual, emotional, and spiritual truths via sensible media, through things our bodies can see, smell, taste, touch, or hear. The trick—naturally or supernaturally—is to convey accurately and perceive correctly just what that otherwise insensible reality is being conveyed through actions, words, and objects.
Take the “strangeness” in that Mona Lisa smile. Does her mystic smile reveal loneliness, temptation, coldness or warmth, or a broken heart? But even if we have never seen da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or heard Nat King Cole’s crooning over her, we are familiar with the daily struggle to communicate clearly and perceive precisely the truth of the matter.
God knows our nature (he authored it, after all) and has always chosen to manifest, present, and communicate his life to us through material things. Such is the principle of the incarnation: Jesus is the visible “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). Thus, he says to Philip’s request that Jesus show them the Father, “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Even after the ascension of Christ into heaven, God continues to communicate and we to perceive through sacred signs, or sacraments. Pope St. Leo the Great (d. 461) lays down, in the simplest yet profoundest terms, today’s sacramental principle: “What was visible in our Savior has passed into his sacraments.” That is, what Jesus did and said 2,000 years ago in the flesh—taught, healed, fed, comforted—he continues to do through the “sacrament of the Church,” his Body, and through the seven sacraments. This is especially true of his saving Paschal Mystery: his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Christ’s passion and resurrection are at the heart of his saving work, and, for this reason, they stand at the heart of Christian learning, liturgy, and life. Behind every truth, beneath every sacramental sign, within every moral action is the person and work of Christ. A Christian’s every thought, prayer, and deed ought to be an “active participation” in the passion of Jesus.
Truly, the goal of every life is conformity to Christ and his Paschal Mystery. Those who do this exceptionally well are called saints. And the saints who outwardly, sensibly, visibly conform themselves to Christ’s death are called martyrs. In other words: for those who are truly serious about sanctity and “active participation,” martyrdom is the best path.
But for the rest of us who are not quite ready for this level of identity with the Paschal Christ—“She thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quickly,” as a Flannery O’Connor character put it—there is a close, second-best option: the worthy reception of the Eucharist.
The reason why both the Eucharist and martyrdom are so closely related is that both make manifest through sensible expressions the one Paschal death of Christ. “Martyrdom,” writes Louis Bouyer, “is a kind of carrying out in actual experience of what is grasped in the Eucharist by faith” (Liturgical Piety, Providence: Cluny Media, 2021, p. 252). In a remarkable chapter on the Christian mystery and the saints from Liturgical Piety, Bouyer observes some extraordinary connections between the Eucharist and martyrdom, particularly in the early Church.
Consider the account of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. “When the Bishop of
Smyrna comes to the place where he is to be burned to death, as soon as everything is ready for the execution, he offers a prayer in the exact pattern of the Eucharistic prayer…asking it to bless the sacrifice which is now to be accomplished as a continuation of the Cross…. And the saint ends his prayer with a solemn doxology just as the flame is put to the pyre…. [A]s the fire comes close to the saintly old man, all the bystanders are struck by the impression that he does not seem to suffer; his face appears as shining in a divine light, and, to borrow a most characteristic image from the narrative itself, he looks like a heavenly loaf being baked in the furnace of divine love…” (253). As the account shows, what the Eucharist presents under the form of bread and wine, martyrdom manifests in the flesh of St. Polycarp.
Bouyer offers other examples connecting martyrdom to the Eucharist. St. Polycarp’s friend, St. Ignatius of Antioch, writes of his imminent martyrdom as an
DEEPEN
offering, and his body as wheat, “ground into flour between the teeth of beasts” of the Colosseum (252). Similarly, the account of St. Felicity’s martyrdom finds her screaming in pain at the birth of her child in prison prior to her death. When asked by a mocking guard how she hopes to withstand death for her faith when the pangs of birth cause her to cry out, she responds that in the circus “another will suffer in me” (254). By way of summary, Bouyer says: “[T]he martyrs experience what we should call a real presence of Christ at the climax of their martyrdom” (253, emphasis added).
The infamous Pew Study which inspired the United States’ Eucharistic Revival discovered that only 30% of Catholics recognized the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. One hates to speculate how few would see in that same Eucharist a true active participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, a participation nearly identical with that of martyrdom.
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St. Ignatius of Antioch’s martyrdom—his body “ground into flour between the teeth of beasts”—manifests Christ’s Paschal Mystery in the flesh as really, truly, and substantially as that same mystery is present under the sign of bread in the Eucharist.
Nature of the Son: Arius and Nicaea
the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also.”9 Thus, there is a reverence for each particular Church, her authority, and her practices, which eventually allowed for the continued development of distinct liturgical families. Nicaea governed universally in response to certain greater disputes such as orthodox belief in Jesus’ divinity, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, it allowed for local hierarchical authorities to govern accordingly.
At the narrower level, certain canons address very specific matters: for example, the moral behavior of clerics. In this regard, two canons seek to rein in the opposite extremes against chaste celibate living: Canon 1 forbids the practice of self-castration and Canon 3 prevents clerics from cohabitating with women to whom they are not related. Liturgical canons specify the proper preparation for initiation and orders (Canons 2 and 9), questions concerning the validity of the sacraments of heretics (Canons 8 and 19), the restoration of the lapsed through penance (Canons 10, 11, and 14), communion to the dying (Canon 12), proper hierarchy and postures during liturgical celebrations (Canons 18 and 20), and the date of Easter (the synodal letter). Such laws helped encourage the gradual standardization of liturgical life in the Church through subsequent centuries and councils.
Besides the above legislations, the composition of the Nicene Creed also bears evident liturgical influence, manifest today in the weekly recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Nonetheless, this creed wasn’t immediately a liturgical reality at all. Indeed, Eastern Churches brought the developed creed into the Divine Liturgy within a few centuries after the Council of Constantinople,10 but Latin Churches did not see its use during the Mass until later and not in Rome until the 11th century.11 These above consequences are influential at a broader level, but they prove to be more at the surface in comparison to the declaration which rests at the heart of the Council: Jesus’ divine nature.
The composition of the Nicene Creed and its accompanying anathema against the Arian heresy reveal the most significant, but easily overlooked, consequence of the Council of Nicaea for the liturgical life of the Church. In the end, there is one essential truth implicitly defended by the Council’s declarations: without a proper Christology, there can be no Christian liturgy. To deny the divinity of the Son of God is to deny the very nature of the liturgy. Pondering Arius’s theology, Nicaea’s response, and the theology of the Church Fathers, with St. Thomas Aquinas, demonstrates this actuality.
“Arius held Jesus to be a created being: ‘He who is without beginning made the Son a beginning of created things.’”
After his condemnation as a heretic and the destruction of his writings, St. Athanasius’s text Against the Arians is the only access we have to Arius’s thought, in which he reports some of Arius’s Thalia to combat his teaching. According to St. Athanasius, Arius sought to fight the tendency of viewing any multiplicity in God, claiming that he is only One, to the exclusion of the Son and Spirit: “He alone has no equal, no one similar, and no one of the same glory [homodoxon]. We call him unbegotten, in contrast to him who by nature is begotten. We praise [anumnoumen] him as without beginning in contrast to him who has a beginning. We worship [sebomen] him as timeless, in contrast to him who in time has come to exist.”12
Already here, one can foresee effects of such a theology on worship, i.e., Jesus is neither praised nor worshiped in the manner of the Father. Rather, Arius held Jesus to be a created being: “He who is without beginning made the Son a beginning of created things. He produced [technopoiesas] him as a son for himself by begetting him. He [the Son] has none
of the distinct characteristics of God’s own being for he is not equal to, nor is he of the same being [homoousios] as him.”13 Denying the sameness of being between the Father and the Son, Arius conflates Jesus’ nature as “begotten” (geneton) with being “created” (technopoiesas). This brings Arius to the point of saying, “There was [a time] when the Son was not,” and “The Son was not before he was begotten.”14
“ This union of true divinity and true humanity is the necessary foundation for Christian worship in the New Covenant.”
The Council of Nicaea replied with a precise correction, declaring Jesus to be “of the substance of the Father,” and “begotten, not made [ou poiethenta], being of one substance with the Father [homoousion to Patri].” It concluded with an unmistakably aimed condemnation: “Those who say: There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten; and that He was made out of nothing; or who maintain that He is of another hypostasis or another substance, or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, the Catholic Church anathematizes.”15 Against the Arians, the Church proclaims the ever-present truth of Jesus’ nature: The Son of God is begotten, though not created; he is coeternal, divine, and of the same being of the Father. As the Church Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas teach, this union of true divinity and true humanity is the necessary foundation for Christian worship in the New Covenant. Indeed, to cut the Son from the being of God is to undermine the possibility of salvific liturgy.
Liturgical Significance of the Son’s Divinity
At the end of the Eucharistic prayer in the Roman Rite, the priest elevates the Sacred Body and Blood and proclaims, “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever.”16 It is through, with, and in Jesus Christ that the each of the faithful in the Church can offer right worship to the Father. Yet, does this necessarily mean that Jesus needs to be divine? Could not the Father have promulgated his worship so that Jesus, a “created” mediator, could still be the bridge between man and God? Following Fathers of the Church and St. Thomas Aquinas, the answer is a clear and emphatic “No.” The Incarnation of the Son of God, precisely as true God and true man, is at the center of his salvific mediation and the liturgy.
St. Thomas identifies both the High Priesthood and the Mediatorship of Jesus in his human nature, and not his divine nature,17 for “Christ alone is the perfect Mediator of God and men, inasmuch as, by His death, He reconciled the human race to God.”18 However, this does not mean that someone who is man alone, such as Moses, could have been the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5). Due to the unique union of the divine nature and the human nature in Jesus, what is said of one nature can be said of the whole Person. Further, the union of the natures also work together towards the purpose of the Incarnation; thus, the will of his Godhead has his human nature, body and soul, subject to it.19 It is in the union of Jesus’ “priestly” and “mediating” humanity with his Divine Person in one hypostasis that forms the bedrock of the liturgy of the New Covenant. The perfect offering of Jesus the High Priest both blotted out sin by grace and removed the debt of punishment by satisfaction.
Already in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130-202 AD) described this truth in Adversus Haeresaeus, saying, “For unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again: unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God, while He revealed God to man.”20 St. Irenaeus describes the means
Continued from NICAEA, page 1
There is one essential truth implicitly defended by the Council’s declarations: without a proper Christology, there can be no Christian liturgy. To deny the divinity of the Son of God is to deny the very nature of the liturgy.
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and effects of what liturgical worship of God in the Church brings about. By means of participation in the God-man, we have access to the effects of salvation and incorruptibility, which could only be won by God himself and won for humanity by a human.
Origen (c. 185-253), commenting on the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, notes how Jesus, in his “flesh,” i.e., his human nature, undergoes suffering and death, while at the same time “the Word kept his impassability” which is proper to Jesus’ divine nature. He concludes, “Thus he is victim and pontiff according to the spirit because he who offers the victim to the Father according to the flesh, is he himself offered on the altar of the cross.”21 Jesus’ human and divine natures working in union bring about the one true and efficacious sacrifice to the glory of the Father.
Safeguarding the truth of Jesus’ divinity, the Council of Nicaea ensured the possibility of participating in the salvation, divinization, and liturgical glorification that Jesus opened up for his
Church. In recognition of this, when commemorating the Incarnation of the Son of God at Christmas, the Church prays with strength against Arianism and the heresies of the fourth century by emphasizing the true nature of Jesus Christ and his most “marvelous exchange”22 with mankind:
For through him the holy exchange that restores our life has shone forth today in splendor: when our frailty is assumed by your Word not only does human mortality receive unending honor but by this wondrous union we, too, are made eternal.23
Father Daniel Eusterman was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver, May 13, 2017. He received his STL and STD in Rome from the University of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce), through its Liturgical Institute. He is currently an instructor of theology and a formation advisor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver.
1. The fifth-century historian Socrates of Constantinople recounts the unpleasant death of Arius in Constantinople where, while seeking a place for digestive relief, Arius’s internal organs suddenly became his external organs.
2. St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, #76 (translated by Blomfield Jackson, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds) (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895).
3. St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, #77.
4. Even “barbers offered opinions on the origins of the Son...” (Cf. David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 57-59).
5. “...while we have materials that can be used to demonstrate the interrelationship between pro-Nicene theologies and their liturgical practice..., we have little that can be dated with sufficient certitude to show developments over the course of the fourth century,” Lewis Ayres, “Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Introduction,” The Harvard Theological Review, 100/2 (2007), 141–44; cf. also Daniel Galadza, “The Liturgical Reception and Commemoration of the First Council of Nicaea,” Eastern Theological Journal 8/2 (2022) 181-217.
6. Cf. Cassian Folsom, The Liturgical Books of the Roman Rite. A guide to the study of their typology and history. Volume 1: Books for the Mass (Naples: EDI, 2023), “Chapter One. From structured improvisation to fixed formulas,” 25-32.
7. Consider St. Ambrose of Milan’s comparison of the Ambrosian liturgical tradition to that of Rome in which he quotes significant portions of the Roman Canon as it would have been known in the third and fourth centuries (cf. St. Ambrose, De Sacramentiis, V-VI).
8. “Thus, the only references to the Council of Nicaea in liturgical scholarship are to the aftereffects of the condemnation of Arianism... and the ‘general process of assimilation and liturgical standardization that is characteristic of orthodox Christianity after the Council of Nicaea in 325,’” Daniel Galadza, “The Liturgical Reception...,” 187.
9. The Council of Nicaea, Canon 6.
10. The Patriarch Timothy of Constantinople (from 511 to 518) is accredited with introducing the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed into the daily Divine Liturgy (cf. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “The Legacy of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox Tradition,” in Young Richard Kim (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 335-336).
11. “...we know that it entered first into the Papal Mass when Emperor Henry II, in 1014, came to Rome, marveled that the Creed was not recited, and thus put pressure on Pope Benedict VIII to introduce it, and he was satisfied,” Antonio Miralles, Teologia Liturgica dei Sacramenti. I. Eucaristica (Roma: EDUSC, 2022), 101 (my translation).
12. St. Athanasius, De Synodis, #15 (trans A. West and G. Thompson).
13. St. Athanasius, De Synodis, #15 (A. West and G. Thompson).
14. St. Athanaius, Against the Arians, Discourse 1, Chapter 4, #13 (trans A. West and G. Thompson).
15. Henry Leclercq, “The First Council of Nicaea,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1991).
16. Roman Missal 2011 (3rd Typical Edition - ICEL), Roman Canon, #98.
17. “Christ, as God, is in all things equal to the Father. But even in the human nature He is above all men. Therefore, as man, He can be Mediator, but not as God” (III.26.2, Reply ad obj. 2). “Although Christ was a priest, not as God, but as man, yet one and the same was both priest and God” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III.22.3, Reply to obj. 1).
18. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III.14.1 (emphasis added).
19. “...of the Man may be said what belongs to the Divine Nature, as of a hypostasis of the Divine Nature; and of God may be said what belongs to the human nature, as of a hypostasis of human nature,” yet, he adds the necessary caveat, “although we do not distinguish things predicated of Christ, yet we distinguish that by reason of which they are predicated” (Summa Theologica, III.16.4).
20. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.18.7, A. Roberts and W. Rambaut (trans), in A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A.C. Coxe (eds), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 (Buffalo, NY: CLPC, 1885).
21. Origene, Omelia 8 sulla Genesi, 6.8.9, PG 12, 206-209, UL martedì V settimana TO, LO III, 160-162.
22. “O marvelous exchange! Man's Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity,” Catechism of the Catholic Church 526 (The Liturgy of the Hours, Evening Prayer of 1 January, Antiphon I).
23. Roman Missal 2011 (3rd Typical Edition - ICEL), Preface III of the Nativity of the Lord (cf. also Giovanni Zaccaria, “Exchange between the divine and the human. Christmas Preface III,” Omnesmag.com (https://www.omnesmag.com/ en/resources-2/christmas-preface-iii/).
Safeguarding the truth of Jesus’ divinity, the Council of Nicaea ensured the possibility of participating in the salvation, divinization, and liturgical glorification that Jesus opened up for his Church.
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The Jewish Roots of the Catholic Altar: The Bronze Altar (Part I)
By Brant Pitre
Editor’s note: The altar is the heart of the church building. Indeed, the current ritual norms go so far as to say,“The altar is Christ.” But this liturgical and sacramental truth hasn’t come down to us by some papal or conciliar decree. Rather, the altar’s significance is rooted in the various altars of the Old Covenant, specifically those of the Temple. In this first of three entries on the Jewish Roots of the Catholic Altar, Dr. Brant Pitre gives an incisive look at the Bronze Altar that stood in the Temple’s courtyard.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC, 1324). Yet, when it comes to the words and actions that make up the liturgy of the Mass, most Catholics know what to do—what to say, when to sit, stand, or kneel—but not necessarily why. Likewise, many are familiar with the sacred furnishings of a church building—the altar, the ambo, the tabernacle—but not necessarily what these signs mean and where they come from.
What Is the Altar?
When it comes to the Church building, by far one of the most important signs is the altar. But what exactly is an altar? In Sacred Scripture, the word “altar” (Hebrew mizbeach; Greek thysiastērion; Latin altare) means a “place of sacrifice.”1 We find a much fuller definition in the Catechism: “ALTAR: The center and focal point of a church, where the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is made present under sacramental signs in the Mass Among the Israelites the altar was the place where sacrifices were offered to God. The Christian altar represents two aspects of the mystery of the Eucharist, as the altar of sacrifice where Christ as the sacrificial victim offers himself for our sins and as the table of the Lord where Christ gives himself to us as food from heaven” (CCC Glossary, ‘Altar’).2
This definition raises several important questions: Why is the altar the “center” and “focal point” of a church building? How is it related to the altar on which the ancient Israelites offered their sacrifices to God? How can the Christian altar be both an “altar of sacrifice” and “the table of the Lord”?
Jewish Roots of the Catholic Altar
Once again, the Church gives us helpful guidance on how to answer these questions and deepen our understanding of the mystery of the altar. In order to understand what is happening in the Catholic Mass, one needs to go back not only to Sacred Scripture (CCC, 1100), but to the Jewish roots
of Christian worship. As the Catechism states about Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy: “A better knowledge of the Jewish people’s faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy” (CCC, 1096). In this series of articles, I will follow the Catechism’s advice and take a closer look at three kinds of altars that played an important role in ancient Jewish liturgy:
1. The Bronze Altar (Exodus 27:1-8)
2. The Golden Table (Exodus 25:23-30)
3. The Altar of Incense (Exodus 30:1-10)
As we will see, in the light of Sacred Scripture and the living tradition of the Church, each of these altars is a kind of prefiguration or “type” (Greek typos) of the one altar that will become “the center and focal point” of every Catholic Church, where “the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is made present.”3
The Bronze Altar
In this first article in the series we will examine the altar from the Old Testament known as the “bronze altar” of sacrifice (1 Kings 8:64). For most of Israel’s history, this was the primary place where bulls, goats, and lambs would be sacrificed.4 Eventually, the bronze altar would become the central place of bloody sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple at the time of Jesus—for example, during the sacrifice of the lambs at the annual feast of Passover (cf. Luke 22:7; Hebrews 7:13).
The first mention of the bronze altar in Jewish
“How can the Christian altar be both an ‘altar of sacrifice’ and ‘the table of the Lord’?”
Scripture takes place after the Twelve Tribes of Israel are freed from slavery to the Egyptians and set free to travel to Mount Sinai (Exodus 1-19). After God seals the covenant with Israel (Exodus 24), one of the first things he does is give them instructions for how to build a portable sanctuary—known as the “tent” of meeting or “tabernacle” (Hebrew mishkan; Greek skēnē; Latin tabernaculum)—where he will dwell and where they can worship him (Exodus 25:9).
Immediately inside the entryway to the Tabernacle is an “altar” where the various kinds of sacrifices will be offered to God: “You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits wide; the altar shall be square, and it shall be three cubits high. You shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and firepans; you shall make all its utensils of bronze…. You shall make it hollow, with boards. They shall be made just as you were shown on the mountain” (Exodus 27:1-3, 8).5
Notice here that though the altar is covered in bronze, it is actually made of “acacia” (Hebrew shittim) wood.6 Acacia wood was considered
The original Tabernacle (or Tent) in the wilderness was constructed by Moses according to God’s design.
At the time of Jesus, the bronze altar in the Jerusalem Temple was much bigger than it had been in the Tabernacle of Moses. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus—who served as a priest in the Temple—the first-century bronze altar was over 20 feet high and had to be approached by the priests by a means of ramp going up to its summit.
sacred, was known for its durability, and was basically incorruptible. Notice also that the altar is a freestanding square with “four corners” in the shape of “horns,” around which the priests can walk (cf. Psalm 26:6-7). Finally, notice that the altar is the place where all of the sacrificial animals—the bulls, goats, sheep, and pigeons—
“After God seals the covenant with Israel, one of the first things he does is give them instructions for how to build a portable sanctuary—known as the ‘tent’ of meeting or ‘tabernacle’—where he will dwell and where they can worship him.”
will be offered to God by having their blood poured out and their bodies burned (hence the need for “firepans” and shovels for “ashes”). As the book of Leviticus states: “The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense that is in the tent of meeting before the Lord; and the rest of the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the entrance of the tent of meeting” (Leviticus 4:7).
In other words, the bronze altar was the place where priests would offer sacrifice to God by pouring out blood at the foot of the altar and offering animals on the wood of the altar. Because Scripture teaches that “the life” was “in the blood,” the pouring out of the blood symbolizes the offering of one’s life to God (cf. Leviticus 17:11). Again, it was this altar that would be the central place of sacrifice, not only in the Tabernacle of
Moses (Exodus 27:1-8), but also in the Temple of Solomon (see 1 Kings 8:22-63).
The Bronze Altar at the Time of Jesus If we fast-forward from Old Testament times to the time of Jesus (first century AD), the bronze altar of sacrifice was the primary place of sacrifice in the Temple, but it had changed in three key ways.
First, at the time of Jesus, the bronze altar in the Jerusalem Temple was much bigger than it had been in the Tabernacle of Moses. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus—who served as a priest in the Temple—the first-century bronze altar was over 20 feet high and had to be approached by the priests by a means of ramp going up to its summit. It was also separated from the place of the Israelite laity by a low stone wall remarkably similar to a modern-day “altar rail”: “In front of [the Sanctuary] stood the altar, fifteen cubits [about 22 feet] high, and with a breadth and a length extending alike to fifty cubits [about 75 feet], in shape a square with horn-like projections at the corners, and approached from the south by a gently sloping ramp.... Surrounding both the Sanctuary and the altar was a low stone parapet, fair and graceful, about a cubit [about 1.5 feet], which separated the laity outside from the priests” (Josephus, Jewish War 5.225-26).7 As this fascinating description shows, at the time of Jesus, the bronze altar was almost like a small hill or mountain which the priests walked up, carrying the wood and sacrifices to the very top, where they would be offered to God. Its base was also where the blood would be poured out in sacrifice. Second, at the time of Jesus, there were many more sacrifices offered on the altar than at the time of Moses or Solomon. For example, Josephus tells us that in the first-century AD, many thousands of lambs were offered on a single altar at the feast of the Passover: “On the occasion of the feast called Passover, at which they sacrifice from the ninth to the eleventh hour [3-5pm]… the [lambs] were counted and amounted to two hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred” (Josephus, War 6:423-24).8 Most modern people have never seen a single lamb sacrificed, much
less tens of thousands in one day! One reason this background is important for understanding what happens to Jesus on the cross is because of the way in which the blood of the lambs was disposed of. If thousands of lambs were sacrificed in a single day, where did all the blood go?
According to ancient Jewish tradition, by the first century AD, there were so many sacrifices being offered that a drain had to be installed under the altar so that the blood could drain out into the spring that ran out of the side of the Temple: “At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured…used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron” (Mishnah, Middoth 3:2).9 In other words, at the time of Jesus, if you were approaching the Jerusalem Temple around 3 o’clock in the afternoon on the feast of Passover, what would you have seen? A stream of blood and water flowing from the altar, coming out the side of the Temple mountain.
The New Sacrifice and the New Altar
With this fuller background of the ancient Jewish altar in mind, we can see more clearly how it is that in the New Testament, the death of Jesus on Calvary is revealed as much more than just an ancient Roman execution. Even more, it is Jesus’ offering of the new sacrifice of himself on the new altar of the Cross.
For one thing, from the very beginning of his ministry, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the true sacrificial “lamb” of God: “The next day he [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29). Now, if Jesus is the true lamb of God, then that means that wherever his blood is poured out is the place of the true sacrifice. Sure enough, as the Gospel of John tells us, it was at the foot of the altar that the blood of Christ was poured out in sacrifice: “When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit…. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he
Just as the blood of the bulls and goats would have been poured out at the foot of the bronze altar—which was made of acacia wood—so too the blood of Christ was poured out at the foot of the new altar of the wooden Cross.
“I just didn’t get much out of Mass.”
Most Catholics have, from time to time, questioned the fruitfulness of their participation in the liturgy. How often do we “get” something out of Mass? How many times have we tried to pay attention at Mass, to sing the hymns and say the responses, to offer up the joys and sorrows of our own lives in union with Jesus on the altar, only to have Mass end with apparently nothing to show for it in our spiritual lives? Why isn’t our participation in Mass more fruitful for us?
Liturgy, Pelagianism, and Attentiveness to
By Andrew C. Chronister
One morning about a decade ago, the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my front door. For whatever reason (and despite their reputation), when the Witnesses stop by my house, they often do not seem particularly interested in conversation—they drop off their literature and continue on their way. This time was a bit different, however. The man and woman who were standing on my doorstep struck up a fairly lengthy conversation with me and my wife. During our exchange, it came out that the man had been raised Catholic but had subsequently fallen away from the practice of his Catholic faith and had later joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Somewhat by way of explanation, the man informed me that, in contrast with the Catholic Masses of his youth, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ church meetings were very engaging. Reflecting on his time as a Catholic, he told me, “I just didn’t get much out of Mass.” We chatted about some other theological topics but eventually wrapped up our conversation— and the pair then headed out to the next house. In a number of ways, the conversation my wife and I had with the Jehovah’s Witnesses was pretty unremarkable: they failed to convince us to become Jehovah’s Witnesses and we failed to convince them to join (or return to) the Catholic Church. But even a decade later, that man’s comment about the Mass has stuck with me—in large part because it is so relatable. I suspect that most Catholics have, from time to time, questioned the fruitfulness of their participation in the liturgy. How often do we “get” something out of Mass? How many times have we tried to pay attention at Mass, to sing the hymns and say the responses, to offer up the joys and sorrows of our own lives in union with Jesus on the altar, only to have Mass end with apparently nothing to show for it in our spiritual lives? Why isn’t our participation in Mass more fruitful for us? Sometimes we pin this lack of fruitfulness on what we might term the “externals” of the liturgy: the hymn selection, the church architecture, the presiding style of the priest, etc. These “externals” are not unimportant: it is certainly true that bad hymns, bad architecture, and the grating personality of the presider can disrupt our prayer. But, if my personal experience is any guide, while a beautiful liturgy can help us to pray better, it isn’t sufficient in and of itself to guarantee that a particular liturgy will be fruitful for me. Why is that the case?
Feelings vs. Facts
Of course, as I’ve reminded myself in the past, it is important to recognize that our own subjective assessment of the fruitfulness of our participation in Mass is not always a reliable barometer of the objective value of that participation. Even if each Mass and reception of the Eucharist does not bring with it an influx of spiritual consolation or a measurable increase of our love for God and neighbor, it is good for us to be there, to unite ourselves with Jesus’ sacrifice on the altar, and then to receive the fruit of that sacrifice in the Eucharist. Even if we don’t feel like we’re getting anything out of Mass, we are in fact receiving our Lord and the graces that come with that reception. Being convinced of this fact intellectually can help us to persevere in the midst of spiritually dry patches. However, sometimes when we are in a period of dryness, we begin to doubt ourselves and question whether that dryness is due to something we are doing wrong: “What if the reason why I’m not ‘getting’ anything out of Mass is because I’m not trying hard enough to prepare myself for Mass? Maybe I just need to do a better job paying attention or adopt a more robust prayer routine. Maybe if I just pushed myself a bit more, I’d experience the fruits of the Sacrament more easily.” I suspect that
“Most Catholics have, from time to time, questioned the fruitfulness of their participation in the liturgy.”
this thought process is common to many who are striving to grow in holiness. In a number of ways, it’s a helpful starting point. When we first begin to take our faith seriously, when we first feel drawn to devote ourselves to God more deeply, we tend to realize that certain aspects of our life must change and certain priorities must be adjusted. We recognize that we need to receive the sacraments more frequently, participate in Mass more attentively, and, in general, pray more intentionally. And so, we set to work, putting forth some additional effort to live in a way more consistent with the Gospel. Those initial weeks and months of living our faith more seriously are often a period in which the fruits of our “labors” are quite obvious. There is joy in experiencing the liturgy in a new, and deeper, way. There is consolation in receiving the Eucharist and attending Adoration.
God’s Grace
However, for many of us, this spiritual “honeymoon” eventually passes as we settle into our new routine. What was novel and exciting might in time become rather rote and boring. At some point, we might wonder, “Why am I keeping up with this routine of prayer? What am I getting out of it?” Here, our first inclination might be to try to “reignite” the fires of our devotion by following a plan of action similar to that which we pursued in the midst of our initial conversion. Indeed, back then, after we “ramped up” our practice of the faith, consolations followed. Perhaps a similar approach would work here: if we were to try a bit harder, if we were to devote ourselves to our spiritual routine a bit more, maybe that would make our participation in Mass more fruitful. While such a plan might be called for in certain instances (for example, when we recognize that we have fallen out of the habit of our prayer routine in one way or another), it can at times lead to a rather unhealthy approach to the spiritual life, characterized more by Pelagianism than by authentic piety and love of God.
DIY Spirituality?
Pelagianism draws its name from the British monk, Pelagius, who came to prominence as a spiritual guru in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century. Pelagius was enthusiastic about the faith and about encouraging others to take seriously the demands of the Gospel, pointing his audience to the great gifts they had received in the Scriptures and in the life and example of Christ. While Pelagius is often accused of denying the need for God’s grace, this isn’t quite right. Pelagius did acknowledge the need for grace and even stated that we need it at every moment and for every action. The problem wasn’t so much that Pelagius denied the need for grace entirely, but rather that he had a rather restricted understanding of what counted as “grace.” Indeed, for Pelagius, grace is largely an intellectual reality. He argued that once we know what the right thing to do is (thanks to Scripture and the example of Christ), we simply need to decide to put that knowledge into practice and do that right thing. Of course, Pelagius acknowledged that we have cultivated sinful habits that impede our ability to live virtuously as readily as we might like. However, the solution is simply to put in more effort: to try harder and devote ourselves more intensely to the task at hand. Eventually, with enough gumption, even the most hardened sinner can arrive at a state where sin can be avoided entirely.
As Pelagius grew in popularity, word of his views
eventually found its way to St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius on the coast of what is modern day Algeria. Augustine was disturbed by what he heard. Augustine had a firm conviction, based in large part on his reading of St. Paul (and probably his own life experience), that growth in holiness is not simply a matter of willpower and that knowledge of the truth and of right and wrong is not sufficient for living righteously. In fact, that insufficiency became painfully obvious to Augustine in his own process of conversion, as he was intellectually convinced of the truth of Christianity a good bit before he was able to leave behind the sinful habits he had cultivated in his youth. Indeed, a key theme of Augustine’s reflections in Book 8 of his Confessions is the fact of his powerlessness to abandon a life of sin and to embrace the Gospel. It was only when he received what would seem to have been a divine invitation to “take and read” the Scriptures (and more particularly, a passage of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans) that the sluicegates opened and Augustine was able to leave behind his sinful attachments and request baptism.
sufficient for living a holy life. Instead, we need a sort of grace that directly impacts our will and attracts us towards holiness, setting us on fire for a life of virtue, prompting us to desire friendship with God. This attraction to the life of holiness that grace bestows on us makes conversion possible—without it, we would have no desire to be holy and would have no inclination to leave our sins behind.
Get Out of God’s Way
ers to take seriously the demands of the Gospel, pointing his audience to the great gifts they had received in the Scriptures and in the life and example of Christ. But his notion of grace and its workings met with much criticism, especially by St. Augustine.
participation in the liturgy, resigning ourselves to the apparent fact that we’re just not meant to experience the joys of consolation in the liturgy. The problem with these approaches is that they both are almost entirely egocentric. We, like Pelagius, tend to think that growing in holiness and love of God is ultimately a project we need to undertake ourselves, with God as a remote observer watching our often half-hearted efforts from afar. This is where we need St. Augustine to step in and correct our misunderstanding of the situation. Human effort is indeed a key part of growth in holiness—but, as Augustine reminds us, God is the one who draws us to himself.
“Sometimes we can approach the liturgy in a Pelagian way, viewing the fruitfulness of our participation in the Mass as essentially a product of willpower, grit, and determination.”
Something changed that day for Augustine—and it wasn’t simply his reading of a particular passage in Scripture. Rather, it was the work of God’s grace in his heart, moving and drawing him to conversion, attracting him to the Christian life that he already knew to be good but that he was too weak to embrace on his own. In his writings against Pelagius, Augustine emphasized time and time again that “knowledge” of how we ought to live is not actually
How does this all connect with our participation in Mass (and our spiritual lives more broadly)? The point is this: sometimes (or maybe often!) we can approach the liturgy in a Pelagian way, viewing the fruitfulness of our participation in the Mass as essentially a product of willpower, grit, and determination, as we make sure to check all the “boxes” required for a good life of devotion. As a result, when we’re not experiencing the results we expect to flow from our participation in the Mass, we might be tempted to assume that God wants us to try harder and to do more. God has given us the liturgy, he has given us (especially in the Church today) countless resources to enrich our prayer lives and to grow in our faith—if we’re not seeing the growth we’d like to see, it must be due to lack of effort on our part, right?
At this point we would seem to have two options: either we might push ourselves harder, taking on new spiritual practices in the hopes of making the liturgy more fruitful for ourselves, or we might begin to despair of ever enjoying a fruitful
As Augustine frequently points out, Jesus told us: “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him” (John 6:44). This does not mean that we just sit by passively and wait for God to do all the work. Augustine argues—at least in his best moments—for a balanced approach to grace and free will: God is the one who gets the ball rolling and helps us along the way, drawing us to himself, but nevertheless we have a real contribution to make in response to that divine attraction. The key to this balance is to become increasingly attentive to the movement of God’s grace within our hearts. Whether it be in the liturgy or in the course of our daily lives, how attentive are we to moments when we feel— even subtly—drawn to praise God, to offer up our sufferings and joys, to pray for those around us, to do some concrete act of love for God or neighbor? In contrast, how often do we pass through our day without really considering the presence of God in our lives? These aren’t new ideas, of course: they’re found, perhaps most famously, in Ignatian spirituality’s rules for discernment and the examen prayer. Nevertheless, they are powerful tools for remedying Pelagian tendencies in our spiritual lives and, indeed, for drawing more fruit from the liturgy—because all too often, God is indeed trying to draw us to himself in the liturgy, but we are simply missing his cues.
God’s initiatives in our lives are often subtle— recall that Elijah recognized the Lord’s presence not in strong wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19). The more we leave behind our tendency to focus on ourselves and what we’re doing (or not doing), the better we can attend to what God is doing, and how he is trying to attract us towards a deeper union with himself in the liturgy.
Andrew Chronister is Associate Professor of Patristics and Ancient Languages at KenrickGlennon Seminary, the Catholic seminary serving the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He recently published Augustine in the Pelagian Controversy: Defending Church Unity (Catholic University of America Press, 2024) and lives in St. Louis with his wife and three daughters.
Pelagianism draws its name from the British monk, Pelagius, who came to prominence as a spiritual guru in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century. Pelagius was enthusiastic about the faith and about encouraging oth-
In his writings against Pelagius, Augustine emphasized time and time again that knowledge of how we ought to live is not actually sufficient for living a holy life. Instead, we need a sort of grace that directly impacts our will and attracts us towards holiness, setting us on fire for a life of virtue, prompting us to desire friendship with God.
AB/WIKIART.
BY PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE
A: What is the law concerning the Eucharistic fast?
: As I approached my 40th birthday, I became aware of a spirit-filled pilgrimage, so to speak, called the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. While I had enjoyed America’s “Native Spirit” before my journey, I would not say that I had any draw towards bourbon.
Still, as I do with most of my travels, I did some research beforehand, decided which distilleries to visit, and made sure that I had proper time for water and meals between the visits so that I could drive soberly. Because I had prepared for my journey, the 40th Birthday Trip was a blast, and led to many other visits to the Commonwealth of Kentucky and completing the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Craft Bourbon Trail, a total of 46 distilleries!
As with travels (whether they include bourbon or not), so with the Mass: preparation is key. Spiritually we might peruse the readings before Mass or maybe even the orations if we have a Daily Missal. Physically we get cleaned up, put on our Sunday clothes for that day of the week, maybe wrestle with kids to get them in the car. But do our preparations for Mass include the Eucharistic Fast?
Canon 919 §1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law states: “Whoever is to receive the blessed Eucharist is to abstain for at least one hour before holy communion from all food and drink, with the sole exception of water and medicine.” The further parts of that canon, §§2-3, establish general exceptions to the rule, including priests who say more than one Mass in a day, and the elderly and sick. As with any canon, the exact words are important. The Church specifies the time of fast as “one hour before holy communion [emphasis mine].” While many find it easier to say one hour before Mass, that is not the law. The law only requires one hour before holy communion. So, depending on how much singing happens, or how long the priest or deacon preaches, or which Eucharistic Prayer the priest uses, there is some variance. But, as a good rule of thumb, I suggest 15-20 minutes before Mass begins. And, even if Mass is longer than an hour, one should not eat other food during Mass and receive Holy Communion.
RITE QUESTIONS
and souls for the Bridegroom to come to us. Make sure while you’re getting ready for Mass ahead of time— while you read the readings, get cleaned up and dressed, get the kids ready, and take time for silent prayer before Mass—you don’t exclude the Eucharistic fast, until the happy day for which we hope: seeing the Bridegroom face to face in heaven, where we no longer fast but feast with the Lover of our souls!
—Answered by Father Anthony Strouse Diocese of Lansing, MI
Some Frequently-asked Questions on Sacramental Records
: Why does the Church keep sacramental records?
A:The Church’s concern about the canonical status of persons and sacramental records (certificates, registers, etc.) is the way that the Church not only keeps that information but proves it when necessary. For example, canon law, for the most part, applies only to baptized Catholics or those received into the Catholic Church (c. 11). The normal way to prove baptism is through sacramental records.
: How is the system of sacramental records organized in the Church?
A:The sacramental record system in the Church is modeled after a European, and mostly Italian, system. This system is quite different from what most Americans are used to. There is no “original” baptismal certificate held in a filing cabinet somewhere. Rather, all certificates are extracts from the sacramental register. Very often at times of marriage, couples are worried that their parents may not have kept the baptismal certificate given at the time of baptism. They are relieved to hear that there is no original certificate and that a new one must be recently issued from the parish of baptism.
: How are sacramental records governed in the Church?
A: The Code of Canon Law governs sacramental records and registers. Dioceses may have laws or customs that also govern sacramental records and registers. Some dioceses have lengthy handbooks on sacramental records to assist parishes. Dioceses within an episcopal conference usually follow the same customs, even if not required by canon law.
sacramental registers, which are to be inspected by the diocesan bishop or his delegate at the time of visitation or at some other opportune time, do not come into the hands of outsiders. This archive could be an actual room or a locked and protected filing cabinet. Older parochial registers are also to be carefully protected according to the prescripts of diocesan law (c. 535 §5). Many dioceses will appropriate registers over 75–100 years old for safekeeping at the diocesan archive and possibly for archival microfilming.
A: What information is recorded in a baptismal record?
The history of fasting goes back to the earliest times, according to Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution, Christus Dominus, promulgated in 1953. Pope Pius XII notes that St. Paul seems to advise some kind of fasting in 1 Corinthians 11:20-22. The Supreme Pontiff especially notes the fourth-century synodal laws on fasting for those who celebrated the Eucharist, and a letter of St. Augustine stating that everyone in the world fasts before receiving the Eucharist. The same Doctor of Grace, cited in the fourth paragraph of the same Apostolic Constitution, writes, “‘It has pleased the Holy Ghost that, to honor so great a Sacrament, the Lord’s Body should enter the mouth of the Christian before other food.’” And so, the general rule through the centuries prescribed that Catholics fast from midnight until they received Holy Communion. It does not take a philologist to note that, in English, the first meal of the day, breakfast, comes from the words “break” and “fast,” and would have been the meal after Mass to break the fast (hence the popularity of early morning Masses). But, Pope Pius XII did allow, when one attended an evening Mass, a shorter fast of only three hours.
The same pontiff, only four years later, extended the three-hour fast to morning Masses in his 1957 motu proprio, Sacram Communionem. By 1964 Pope St. Paul VI lowered the fast even more to only one hour, which became even more strongly codified in the current Code of Canon Law. Again, the current laws allow those who are elderly, as well as those who are ill and those who care for them, to receive the Eucharist even if they have consumed food or drink within the hour, though those who can still observe the entire fast are encouraged to do so if possible. Water and medicine are always allowed.
But why fast? Christ notes that fasting helps strengthen the yearning for the Bridegroom (cf. Matthew. 9:15), so our fast helps us prepare for Christ the Bridegroom to come to the altar and into our bodies, after which we rejoice and feast. Pope Pius XII also notes that fasting shows reverence for the supernatural food of the Eucharist, pays honor to the Redeemer, and lifts our minds up to the things of God and spiritual realities. Certainly, after a good meal, my mind is not the most active, and all I want to do is take a good nap. Even a simple meal can lead to the “food coma,” and any student who has a class scheduled immediately after lunch can say that when it comes to staying awake, the struggle is real. So, while the Eucharist fast has varied in length throughout the centuries, fasting as a physical and spiritual way of preparing to receive the Lord in the Eucharist has its roots in Apostolic Times, and has continued through the millennia as a way to prepare our bodies
A: What records are to be kept?
: Canon law requires parishes to have a baptismal register (cc. 535, 877), a marriage register (c. 535), a death register (cc. 535, 955), and any others that are prescribed by the episcopal conference or the diocesan bishop. While not a sacramental register per se, canon law does also require a register of Mass intentions (canon 955 §3). The diocesan curia is to have a register of ordinations (c. 1053 §1), a special marriage register for marriage dispensations (c. 1121 §3), and a special register for marriages celebrated secretly, to be kept in the secret archive of the curia (c. 1133).
In the United States, the conference of bishops requires a register of those who have entered the catechumenate (National Statutes for the Christian Initiation of Adults [NSCIA], 14) and a register of those received into the full communion of the Catholic Church (NSCIA, 16). In the absence of these registers, notations should be made in the parish’s baptismal register. The Book of the Elect, in which the catechumens enroll their names in anticipation of the Sacraments of Initiation, is also required (c. 788 §1, OCIA, 119; NSCIA, 15).
Most dioceses in the United States also require a first communion register and a confirmation register (in lieu of one held in the diocesan curia). Note that there is no register of first reconciliation: to protect the seal of confession, no notation should ever be made of a person’s reception of the sacrament of penance and certificates should never be issued. Other registers that could be mandated by diocesan law, though rare, could be a parish history register or a parish census register.
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A: Where are the sacramental registers to be kept in a parish?
: Canon 535 §4 requires parishes to have a storage area, or archive, in which the parochial registers are protected. The pastor is to take care that the
: In the baptismal record, each person registered receives a number in the register. Registers are usually organized by volume, page, and entry number. The following information is recorded: the individual’s full name, birthdate, baptism date, name of the church/ oratory where the baptism took place and its location, parents’ names (always using the mother’s maiden name), the names of godparents, the name of the minister who administered the baptism, and the individual’s ascription to a Church sui iuris (i.e., the Latin Catholic Church or one of the Eastern Catholic Churches). There are special instructions for registering baptisms of adopted children. Later, the date and place of confirmation will be recorded. Any subsequent marriages will be recorded with date and place. If a declaration of nullity is given for a marriage, that information will be recorded as well. Finally, reception of sacred orders, of perpetual profession made in a religious institute, and of change of ascription to a different Church sui iuris will be made in the baptismal register.
: Why is the baptismal certificate so important?
A
:The baptismal register in a parish is the “home” of the records of all sacraments received. In it are noted confirmation and those things which pertain to the canonical status of the Christian faithful by reason of marriage, of adoption, of the reception of sacred orders, of perpetual profession made in a religious institute, and of change of ascription (c. 535 §). These notations are always to be noted on a baptismal certificate. This is why a recently issued baptismal certificate is requested at the time of marriage, or entrance into religious life or seminary. Notifications of sacraments that are administered outside of the home parish are sent to the parish of baptism for recording in the baptismal record.
—Answered by Father Alan Guanella Diocese of La Crosse, WI Q Q Q
Fr. James Kobina Arthur from Pat and Rich Krause
Fr. Richard Beligotti from Fr. Robert Beligotti - twin brother Pierre Massoud from Raymond Massoud
Ben, June, and Paul Peterson from Mr. and Mrs. Alan Peterson
