The saint understood the Eucharist and the ‘rich and luminous message’ it contains
By Father Randy Stice
“The Eucharist,” wrote St. John Paul II, “unfolds in a dynamic context of signs containing a rich and luminous message.”1 However, we do not always understand the luminous message contained in the words and actions of the Mass. Rather, wrote the saint, “we are constantly tempted to reduce the Eucharist to our own dimension, while in reality it is we who must open ourselves up to the dimensions of the Mystery.”2 St. John Chrysostom (died in 407), the doctor of the Eucharist, was a saint who opened himself to all the dimensions of the Mass and who possessed a profound ability to see beyond the liturgical signs “to the mystery which they contain.”3 In this column, I want us to see the Mass through the eyes of this saint.
In the Mass, we “unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy,”4 and Chrysostom’s insight into this aspect of the Mass is striking. He was especially influenced by Isaiah’s vision in which he saw the Lord seated on a throne, his garment filling the temple, and six-winged seraphim crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!” (Isaiah 6:1-4). Consider John’s appeal to his congregation. “Think now of what kind of choir you are going to enter. Although vested with a body, you have been judged worthy to join the powers of heaven in singing the praises of Him who is Lord of all.”5
As the priest begins the preface and exhorts, “Lift up your hearts,” John writes: “Let no one have any thought of earthly things (Lift up your hearts), but let him free himself from every earthly thing and transport himself whole and entire into heaven.”6 When his congregation sings the Holy, holy, holy, he tells them, “You have joined the chorus of the seraphim, you are ranked as a citizen of the commonwealth above, you have been enrolled in the choir of angels, you have conversed with the Lord, you have been in the company of Christ.”7
Chrysostom’s experience of the Mass was enriched by typology, which sees in Old Testament figures and actions prefigurations of what was fulfilled in Christ. Chrysostom saw the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine, prefigured when Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal in
1 Kings 18. Each prepares an offering of a young bull, then calls upon their god to send fire from heaven to consume the offering. The prophets of Baal pray first but nothing happens. Then it is Elijah’s turn. Chrysostom sets the scene: “Imagine in your mind’s eye, if you will, Elijah and the vast crowd standing around him and the sacrifice lying upon the stone altar. All the rest are still, hushed in deep silence. The prophet alone is praying. Suddenly fire falls from the skies on to the offering. It is marvelous; it is charged with bewilderment.”
This, says Chrysostom, is a figure of epiclesis. “Turn, then, from that scene to our present rites, and you will see not only marvelous things but things that transcend all terror. The priest stands bringing down, not fire, but the Holy Spirit. And he offers prayer at length, not that some flame lit from above may consume the offerings, but that grace may fall on the sacrifice through that prayer, set alight the souls of all, and make them appear brighter than silver refined in the fire.” Chrysostom is stunned. “Can anyone, not quite mad and deranged, despise this most awe-inspiring rite? Do you not know that no human soul could ever have stood that sacrificial fire, but all would have been utterly annihilated, except for the powerful help of God’s grace?”8
For Chrysostom, the most powerful union of heaven and earth occurs when Christ is really and personally present on the altar after the consecration. Chrysostom wrote: “The angels surround the priest. The whole sanctuary and the space around the altar are filled with the heavenly powers to honor Him Who is present on the altar.”9 To his friend St. Basil the Great, he wrote, “When you see the Lord sacrificed and lying before you, and the High Priest standing over the sacrifice and praying, and all who partake being tinctured with that precious blood, can you think that you are still among men and still standing on earth? Are you not at once transported to heaven, and, having driven out of your soul every carnal thought, do you not with soul naked and mind pure look round upon heavenly things? Oh, the wonder of it! Oh, the loving-kindness of God to men! He who sits above with the Father is at that moment held in our hands, and gives Himself to those who wish to clasp and embrace Him—which they do, all of them, with their eyes.”10
Chrysostom also understood the response of angels—and demons!—to the power of the precious blood. “This blood, if rightly taken, drives away devils, and keeps them afar off from us, while it calls to us angels and the Lord of angels. For wherever they see the Lord’s blood, devils flee, and angels run together.”11 Similarly, “If you show the evil one your tongue moistened with the precious blood, he will not be able to resist it; if you show him your mouth tinged with red, he will shun you like a frightened beast. Do you want to know the power of this blood? Then just see where it came from and where its source was—the cross and the Lord’s side.”12 For this reason he urged his flock, “Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil; thinking on our Head, and on the love which He has shown for us.”13
The signs of the liturgy contain “a rich and luminous message. Through these signs, the mystery in some way opens up before the eyes of the believer.”14 St. John Chrysostom’s eyes were opened to the rich dimensions of the Eucharist, and he can help us pass from the liturgical signs “to the mystery which they contain, and enter into the mystery in every aspect of [our] lives.”15
1 St. John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine (MND), 14
2 MND, 14
3 MND, 17
4 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1326
5 Jean Daniélou, The Angels and Their Mission, translated by David Heimann (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1956), 64
6 Daniélou, 64
7 www.newadvent.org/fathers/1912.htm
8 John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, translated with an introduction by Graham Neville (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977), p. 71
9 Daniélou, 62
10 Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, 70-71
11 www.newadvent.org/fathers/ 240146.htm
12 Raniero Cantalamessa, The Eucharist: Our Sanctification, revised edition (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1995), p. 40
13 Joel C. Elowsky, editor, John 11-21, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2007), p. 235
14 MND, 14
15 MND, 17
Father Randy Stice is director of the diocesan Office of Worship and Liturgy. He can be reached at frrandy@dioknox.org.