Raymond Moloney, "The notion of sacrifice in the Institution Narrative" in The Eucharist [Problems in Theology] (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995). 

The key to any treatment of the question is the aspect of development. Sacrifice is such a profound and complex notion for a first-century Jew that it is understandable if it is slow to find an entry into the early accounts of the Eucharist. Nevertheless, as we will see, the evidence for its eventual presence is unmistakable. What we must try to do, therefore, is to consider what was going on in the early community as the awareness of this notion was crystallizing in their minds.

Almost as difficult as the notion of Eucharistic sacrifice was the application of the concept of sacrifice to the events on the cross. This development is the underlying assumption of the Institution Narrative as we now have it. It is a theologoumenon, or theological conclusion, which we often take for granted, so familiar is it from the Epistle to the Hebrews. But it is a surprising notion for a Jew, and can only be seen as coming about through a process of gradual development. It cannot be taken for granted in the earlier texts of the New Testament tradition. Indeed part of the hypothesis which this chapter will advance is the view of a number of scholars that the appreciation of Calvary as sacrificial and that of the Eucharist as sacrificial were two intertwined notions which were only clarified for the early community through a mutual influence between the two.

The very notion of a Christian sense of sacrifice raises a prior issue concerning the attitude of the New Testament to organized external cult generally. It is easy to marshal a whole set of texts in the gospels which attribute to Our Lord a very critical attitude to the Temple and to ritual.~ On this basis some scholars went so far as to say that Our Lord was against external cult as such and that Christianity is a purely internal religion. This argument, however, is generally abandoned today. It is clear that in this aspect of his mission Our Lord was acting in the line of the prophets. He was no more against cult as such than they were. What he was condemning was the formalism which is the cardinal temptation of all external worship. The purification of cult rather than its abolition seems to have been his real aim, and a contrary set of texts promoting forms of external worship can be gathered from the gospels as well as from the prophets.2

Our Lord's attitude to the Temple was a special issue. It was one of the key points raised in his trial, and it is hard to avoid the impression that Our Lord was pointing beyond the Temple to its fulfilment in the new worship of the End Times. A key text here is John 4:24.3 Some have interpreted it as speaking of a purely spiritual, internal religion. More likely is the view that 'spirit' here refers to the Holy Spirit. The worship the New Testament favours is not spiritual in that purely internal sense, but eschatological.4 It gives the Holy Spirit, God's gift for the End Times, and it can do this through some external rituals, of which Baptism is the clearest example (John 3:5). Our Lord's attitude then to the Temple, while critical, is not one of direct opposition, but it is one which does permit of the Temple's being eventually superseded.

 

AN HYPOTHESIS OF DEVELOPMENT

In order, then, to grapple with the manifold data which the New Testament offers us on the Eucharist, I would now like to propose an hypothesis as to how the understanding of the Eucharist developed in the early community. In this way I would hope to provide a framework of reflection within which many of the divergent data of the texts can be brought into a unity. The success of the hypothesis depends on the degree to which it can make sense of so bewildering a field. My hypothesis considers the development of Eucharistic understanding in the New Testament in three stages.

The first stage is that reflected in the early texts of the Acts of the Apostles. At that time the Christians were still living as Jews, and there is every reason to believe that they still took part even in the Temple's sacrificial worship? Like the Essenes and other groups, they were conscious of being a sect within Judaism, and it is understandable that, as well as the forms of worship which they held in common with all Jews, they would have developed forms of worship specific of their new-found Christian identity.

This is the context for that breaking of bread in Acts 2:42 and 46, based on the Jewish grace before and after meals, which we saw in a previous chapter. In its external form such a ritual was not sacrificial for a Jew. For them sacrifice was what went on in the Temple. Indeed, so deep was this particular conviction, that the Jews of that time had difficulty in regarding the Passover as a sacrifice in the strict sense of the term, given that it was eaten as a family meal.6 As a result, it would probably never occur to them to regard their breaking of bread as sacrificial. It did, however, embody the memory of their Lord. It would have reminded them, not only of eating and drinking with him after the resurrection (Acts 10:41), but of their last supper with him in the Upper Room, where many of the subsequent celebrations were held.7 This relationship alone would be enough to give meaning to the celebration as a way of entering more deeply into the fruits of Christ's death, namely into the new covenant, the forgiveness of sins and union with God through his Son. It would also be seen as an anticipation of the Lord's return and of that meal with the Messiah which Late Judaism had taught them to expect.8

Such then is the first stage in our hypothesis. It is a stage dominated by the Temple and its cult, and by the gulf which set this cult apart from the rest of Jewish life. The early Christians, therefore, would have distinguished their worship from that of the Temple, precisely because they were believing Jews. In their case, the distinction was all the more pronounced, because they realized that Christianity was born out of Our Lord's confrontation with the Temple. Any New Testament theology of worship has to start from this great divide between the categories proper to the Temple and those appropriate to the new Christian reality. In this context, notions like 'priest', 'altar' and 'sacrifice' are so many old skins for old wine, while what is specifically Christian must be contained in categories as different as they are new.⁹

The second stage in our hypothesis is defined by the way cultic categories begin to trickle back into Christian usage, albeit in a new and perhaps figurative sense. The most likely starting point of such a development would be the way the early Christians would have continued an old tradition of finding a certain counterpart to sacrifice m the way they rived their ordinary lives. When Paul tells the Romans to offer themselves as a spiritual sacrifice to God (Rom x2: x), he is following a familiar line of thought, such as we find in Sirach 35:1-10 or in Psalm 50(51):17.

For the early Christians their breaking of bread belonged to the sphere of 'ordinary life', distinct from the sacred sphere of the Temple. Consequently it belonged to that sphere to which sacrificial categories could be applied in at least a figurative sense. Furthermore, in so far as the table-ritual contained within itself elements of an offering,¹⁰ it is understandable that such an attitude of oblation should become attached to it in a special way, even if that had not already been suggested by the words attributed to Our Lord in the Eucharistic tradition.

A similar dynamic must have been at work in the understanding of the cross. For ordinary Jews, whether Christian or not, Calvary was not a sacrifice. For them sacrifice was essentially a ritual, and by the first century it was confined to the Temple. Calvary, on the other hand, was a secular event. For the first disciples its significance was even more negative, for it was for them a great scandal, the contradiction of all their hopes, at first totally devoid of meaning.

It was out of the experience of the resurrection rather than of the Passion that light first began to break through. The earliest christological formulae, such as those in Acts 2:23-24 and 3: 13-16, contain no statement of the salvific significance of Jesus' death. But the resurrection was God's Yes to what Jesus stood for as he went to the cross. It implied that his whole life, culminating in the cross, was the source of salvation for us all.11 For Jews the notion of sanctification flowing from a bloody death would easily call to mind the analogy of a sacrificial immolation, and so it is not surprising that, among the several images used in the New Testament for presenting Christ's death as meaningful, that of sacrifice soon became one of the dominant ones. Eventually Calvary came to be seen as the very paradigm of that offering of ordinary life to God which marks the life of the just. The term 'sacrifice' may still be applied only in a figurative sense to the cross, but this usage would have been a beginning all the same, and, what is more, it must inevitably have affected the understanding of the Eucharist.

Nor is it unreasonable to postulate an influence in the inverse sense, namely from the Eucharist to the understanding of the cross. Seeing Calvary through the lens of the Eucharist brings out the aspect of offering and reinforces the tendency to interpret it ritually. Consequently our hypothesis is that Calvary and Eucharist, being linked already by the Institution Narrative and by the meaning of ritual memorial to be explained in the next section, each affect the understanding of the other, so that the Eucharist provides the categories of ritual which were absent on the cross, and Calvary supplies the element of historical significance, which a table-rite on its own could not command.

The key insight, which transforms the whole situation and ushers in the third stage of our hypothesis, arises out of the unity of salvation history.13 It is an insight into God's plan for the world, and it is formulated most clearly in the Letter to the Hebrews. There we learn that Christ's death on the cross was what Old Testament sacrifice was all about. The ancient sacrificial system of Israel was but a shadow anticipating that reality which is Calvary (Heb 10:1-10).

So familiar is this teaching that it is difficult for us to realize how much had to happen in the early community before they came to appreciate the cross in this way. For one thing, the Christology of the early community had to develop to the point where they saw that Christ's death was not just something he had to put up with but something he had embraced in sovereign freedom. It was an offering he had made of himself to the Father.

But even more relevant was their perception of the-transcendence of Christ implicit in the resurrection appearances. It was only in virtue of the uniqueness of Christ which this implied that they could go on to see his central place in the whole plan of God and that he was really the meaning of the entire history of the Old Testament.

The implications of this Christology for one's attitude to Old Testament cult is what we see being worked out in the Letter to the Hebrews, and the key point for our purposes comes in the way Christ's death and resurrection are presented there as the fulfillment of the ancient sacrifices. Through the unity of God's plan, Calvary is now being presented as related intrinsically and properly to the whole sacrificial system of Israel. Consequently Christ's death on the cross is seen as a sacrifice in a proper but unique sense. It is really the prime analogate of all sacrifices, the substance of which they are only shadows. It is no longer simply a sacrifice in a figurative sense, such as might have been said of the death of the Servant (Isa 53: 10). Strange as it might seem to a Jew, Calvary has to be a sacrifice in this proper sense, since it belongs intrinsically to the whole context of ritual sacrifice by being the meaning of it all. However, in saying that, one has to bear in mind our insistence that this event, albeit sacrificial in a proper sense, is so in a unique sense. The meaning of sacrifice is changed by being fulfilled. Calvary's sacrifice is unique because Christ is unique.

It is inevitable that so fundamental and far-reaching a perception should have its influence on the Christian Eucharist. This ritual, after all, was already understood to be the memorial of Christ's paschal mystery. As we will see in the following section, 'memorial' here has a pregnant meaning; at this point we will just say that this deeper sense of the Eucharistic memorial must have been a contributory factor in the development we are studying. Certainly, the new sense of the sacrificial nature of the cross inevitably redounded on that ritual which celebrated the cross in the way we see in the Institution Narrative. If the Eucharist is the actuality of the cross, something we will consider in the next section, then the sacrificial categories which belong to the cross can understandably be extended in a proper sense to the ritual which is its prolongation and memorial.

The main witness to this development is the Mark-Matthew Institution Narrative. Though many scholars find evidence for the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist in the Luke-Paul version, the references there remain inchoative and ambiguous when contrasted with Mark-Matthew. It is not clear that the notion of sacrifice underlying Luke-Paul has got definitively beyond the figurative sense of the second stage of our hypothesis.

Two items in particular in the Mark-Matthew version reveal that the Eucharist is here being treated in the explicit terms of ritual sacrifice. First and most clearly, we have the words of Moses from the covenant sacrifice of Sinai reproduced almost word for word over the Eucharistic cup: 'This is the blood of the covenant.'14

Secondly there is the way 'body' and 'blood' are set in symmetry, in contrast to the 'body-cup' parallel in Luke-Paul. For a Jew of those times, 'body' and 'blood' are the elements of a sacrifice.15 In that context a certain operational distinction between them is implied, such as the protocol of sacrifice required, but we must be on our guard against interpreting this distinction in the kind of ontological terms found in the Middle Ages, when they spoke of the 'substance' of the body and the 'substance' of the blood. The well-known text of Leviticus 17: 11 makes it clear that the blood is not distinguished from the flesh as a different reality but as the inmost and most crucial part of the flesh. At the same time, the separation of flesh and blood in sacrifice is sufficiently marked to ground the later separation of the sacramental species as a sign of death. It also means that the highlighting and distinction of body and blood in the Mark-Matthew Institution Narrative are best understood in relation to this sacrificial procedure.

Some additional phrases in the narrative fit in with this sacrificial view and help to confirm it, though hardly sufficient to establish it on their own. There is the word 'poured out'.16 It recalls immediately the gesture of Moses in Exodus 24, where cognate words are used in the Septuagint.17

Then there are the expressions in the narrative which present Christ's death as vicarious, 'for you', 'for many', 'for the remission of sins'. Such phrases draw their meaning, either from sin-sacrifices in the strict sense, or from the applied sense found in Late Judaism's notion of a martyr's death. Given that the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist is already clearly present in the text through the indications outlined above, these expressions of vicariousness can be taken as fitting in with this sacrificial sense and interpreting it in an expiatory and propitiatory way.18 Schurmann makes the point that the covenant sacrifice was not regarded as expiatory by the Jews, but others hold that by the beginning of the Christian era practically all sacrificial acts were considered to have an atoning effect.19 The presence then of the idea of vicariousness in this place can be seen as flowing from that sense of plenitude which Christians were beginning to find in Christ's death, regarding it as the fulfillment of the entire sacrificial system of Israel. Already the uniqueness of Christ and of Calvary is beginning to break the mould of the categories it fulfils.

Is it not extraordinary, given the initial gulf between the Temple cult and the emerging Christian rituals, that cultic categories should be accepted so early into Christian language, albeit in a transformed sense? Yet there they are, in the Mark-Matthew Institution Narrative, with a clarity which some Christian traditions have been very slow to accept. In such a context it is of interest to cite the words of a Protestant scholar:

The whole early Christian tradition, when speaking of the Supper, makes use of a sacrificial terminology... I find the New Testament terminology as well as the patristic unanimity too overwhelmingly in favour of the sacrificial theme in a balanced Eucharistic theology ... Since the Eucharist is a sacrament of the sacrifice of Christ and a channel of the Church's sacrifice, it must also be interpreted in sacrificial categories.20

The sacrificial theme also serves to illustrate the whole process of developing understanding going on in the early community. Indeed the relevant texts could be listed in a tentative order that reflects this movement of thought, not implying a view as to the relative age of the texts, but only to highlight the age of the tradition on sacrifice contained within them: Acts 2:42, 46; Luke 22:15-18; Luke 22:1i9--20; I Corinthians 11:23-25; I Corinthians 10:16-17; Hebrews 9:20; Mark 14:22-24; Matthew 26:26-28; John 6:51-58; Rev 5:6-14.21

Clearly there is an evolution of understanding going on in the early community, and one of the motor ideas in that movement seems to be the notion of ritual sacrifice. We might note in particular the following transition in language:

body-cup -- body-blood -- flesh-blood.

In the Mark-Matthew Institution Narrative in particular, the demonstrative words over loaf and cup reveal a consciousness of standing before God with the offerings of a covenant sacrifice in one's hands. It is striking how, in order to interpret to themselves the meaning of their actions in worship, the people of those communities have reached back to the words of Moses and made them their own. That the offering is actual in their ritual is precisely the force of the demonstrative pronouns in the interpretative words. This actuality is then seen by some as confirmed by the tense of the participle in the words over the cup: '... the blood which is being poured out for many'.22

In the period after the New Testament, the use of cultic categories in Christian liturgy is going to develop further. Soon words like 'sacrifice', 'altar', and eventually 'priest' are going to shift from a figurative to a proper sense in Christian worship. Some may regard such a development as illegitimate, but when one sees it in continuity with a development already under way in the New Testament, then it is hard to stigmatize it as unscriptural or unchristian.

Surely one of the most significant and evocative statements of Our Lord in the gospels was his description of the Eucharist as his memorial. The phrase is proper to the Luke-Paul version of the Institution Narrative, coming once in Luke and twice in Paul. If we take the expression in its obvious sense, it already lights up the Eucharist for us as the sign across the centuries of the mystery of Our Lord's love in his dying and his rising. The expression, however, has a further and less obvious meaning, one that points to a mysterious presence in our ritual, giving to our celebration a new context and a startling immediacy.

This deeper meaning of the word 'memory' in the liturgy was a factor in that development of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist which we studied in the previous section. As we shall see, it is a word which opens up for the scholar an alternative avenue of approach to the whole question of Eucharistic sacrifice. Many would probably treat this present topic before raising the issues studied in the preceding section, since this subject seems more congenial and accessible than the other. While that is true, I preferred to discuss the question of development first, because it gives us a better view of the overall context within which the present point is to be treated. Furthermore, there is the fact that this question of memory is closely related to that of the Passover nature of the Eucharist, an aspect which is often given an exaggerated emphasis, not least by Catholic teachers and preachers, who find there what seems to me a short-cut to the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice.23 The result has been that several fundamental questions, discussed in the previous section, have sometimes been lost to view.

The story of the present section brings before us one of the most unexpected and far-reaching developments in contemporary theology. It concerns the meaning of the little word 'memory' when Our Lord is represented as saying at the Last Supper 'Do this in memory of me'. When Western Christianity broke in two in the sixteenth century, the word that seemed to divide it for ever in the understanding of the Eucharist was this word 'memory'. Now it is this same word which is drawing us into a new and growing unity.

The discovery which led to this change of direction goes back over fifty years to that wave of scholarship which first took up the study of the Jewish background of our gospel texts.24 One of the basic characteristics of all Jewish liturgy, both in the Bible and in the rabbinical writings, is the sense of salvation history as the framework of all prayer. We see this in the Psalms as well as in rabbinical texts such as those used in the table blessings. For the Jew, God is the Lord of history. This means that God intervenes in history, for instance in his great salvific acts on behalf of his people. It also means that all of history is present to him.25 Before God, all the Jews are one people, with one destiny, every generation equally present to his all-seeing eye. When God intervened in the past, for instance on behalf of Moses and his contemporaries, he was really doing it for all the succeeding generations as well. In a sense, through the power of God, each generation was involved in the Exodus. We find this belief expressed with particular clarity in the book of Deuteronomy, e.g. Deuteronomy 6:21; 16:12.

In a similar way, just as the present generation was involved in the past, so there is a sense in which the past can become actual today. This notion runs through all Jewish prayer, but it comes to a head, with a special immediacy, in the liturgy. Something of the divine transcendence over history passes into the people's worship, and the great salvific acts of the past become actual in the midst of the celebrating community.

This is the required background for the consideration of the terms 'memory', 'commemoration' and 'memorial' in the context of Jewish liturgy. When we Westerners read 'Do this in memory of me', we think we know what 'memory' means. In fact, in the context of Jewish liturgy, it is really a technical term. As worshippers recall the events of sacred history, they enter, not only into the thought of the past, but also, in some sense, into the actuality of what happened.

A Jewish ritual commemoration, therefore, is not just a matter of thoughts and feelings and nostalgia for the past. That is what I will call an empty memorial. A Jewish ritual memorial is one filled with the reality of that which it commemorates. To express it we might call it 'a living memorial'.26 Often when people commemorate important events in secular history, they can speak with a sense of actuality which can be very like that used in Jewish sources, but there is a key difference. In secular things it is a question of human beings in one generation recalling those of another. In liturgy God is part of it all, and that makes all the difference.

To substantiate the notion we have just outlined, one might appeal first to the rich associations of the word 'memory' throughout the Old Testament. Indeed for the Jews 'memory' is one of the basic ideas in their religious vocabulary, running right through worship from simple blessings to the psalms of sacrifice. The term does not refer merely to one cognitive faculty. It is a word that sounds like a bell through many of their most sacred texts, ultimately embracing the whole relationship between God and his people in the covenant.27

The key point comes with the fact that, not only is it a case of people remembering God; it is also a question of God remembering the people. Again and again God is asked to remember Israel, his covenant and his promises.28 By the same token he is asked not to remember their sins.29 Indeed, as the occasion demands, God remembering can be God rewarding and punishing.30

Stirred by God's being mindful of them, the people are charged to remember the Lord, and always to bear in mind his law and his promises. Their sins are the occasions when they fail to remember. 31 The two aspects come together in the striking verse of Isaiah: 'Even these may forget, but I will not forget you, says the Lord' (Isa 49:15). 'Memory' is really a way of designating the whole relationship between God and his people as personal and existential.

Nor does memory remain as something purely internal. As the texts just cited suggest, memory and action go together. The people's remembering means the people's doing God's will. God's remembering includes God's acting and hopefully God's forgiving. 'Memory' here is really a word for the whole covenant come alive.

MEMORY AND SACRIFICE

A high-point in the relationship of remembering comes with sacrifice. For Israel, 'memory' is a sacrificial word. Already in the book of Leviticus the portion of the victim burnt on the altar is called a 'reminder' or a 'memorial', and it is clear that it is a question of God's remembering the sacrifice.32 De Vaux considers that it was designated in this way possibly because it was thought to 'remind' God of the whole offering.33 The usage persists, and it can be found at the other end of the Old Testament in Ecclesiasticus 35:6. Not least of its occurrences was its use in the context of the Passover. We read in the Book of Jubilees, 'It [the Passover] shall come for a memorial before the Lord'.34

The expression is particularly significant for our purposes because it puts into simple language an aspect of worship often lost to view. All worship has both a descending and ascending aspect, such as we already saw in the case of Jewish blessings. The grace and efficacy of God descend on the worshippers, but as well as that the adoration and love of the worshippers ascend to God and are pleasing to him. Such attitudes are expressed ultimately in the four great ends of sacrifice (praise, thanksgiving, propitiation and petition), but we should notice that this 'ascending' aspect of worship cannot be reduced to intercession, central as that is. In sacrifice the attitudes of the worshippers are not just expressed in words. They are embodied in the act of offering and in the symbols offered. The attitudes, actions and gifts of the worshippers are all values in the sight of God. They are things he 'remembers', and to them he wills to give a place in his plan as the prior condition of the divine action which will flow from his remembering.

God's remembering, therefore, is an intrinsic part of all worship in the Bible.35 On this basis alone Jeremias was quite right to appeal to it as part of the meaning of memorial in the Eucharist. 36 Jeremias, however, went on to claim that this divine remembering was part of the meaning intended by the phrase in the Institution Narrative, 'Do this in memory of me'. The more obvious reference in this phrase is to our remembering Christ rather than to God's remembering him. That the phrase contains the perspective of divine remembering remains controversial, and so it would be a weak basis for establishing the objective nature of the Eucharistic memorial. This is why it is necessary to fill out all we have said about the divine remembering with a consideration of the role of memory in Jewish liturgy based on salvation history. As the Passover is the clearest instance of such a memorial, we will now take up the question of the relationship of the Eucharist to that feast.

EUCHARIST AND PASSOVER

It is a commonplace of Eucharistic catechesis today to present the Eucharist as a Christian Passover. This approach has a lot to do with the memorial aspect of the sacrament, since, as we have said, the Passover is one of our clearest examples of what a Jewish ritual memorial is like. Now this fact alone is sufficient justification for introducing the Passover at this point of our study, but it also gives us an opportunity to take up a further historical question as to whether the Last Supper itself was actually a celebration of this Jewish feast. There are therefore these two reasons for looking more closely at the Jewish Passover. We will take up the second consideration first.

Given the widespread use of the notion that the Eucharist is a Christian Passover, it is surprising to find how uncertain is its basis in the New Testament. Scholars still remain divided on whether or not the Last Supper was a Passover. The doubt goes back to the New Testament itself, where the Synoptics seem to assume that it was, and the Fourth Gospel implies that it was not.37 A compromise solution is that of Raymond Brown in his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, where he concludes that the Last Supper was not a Passover in the strict sense but a meal that had 'Passover characteristics'. 38

Strange as it may seem, this is a question which the systematic theologian does not have to decide, once one accepts the hypothesis of this book that the Eucharist was established, not on the elements proper to a Passover, but on the grace before and after meals common to any Jewish festive celebration. 39 If the Eucharist was seen from the beginning as a Christian version of the Passover, then one would expect it to be a yearly celebration rather than the more frequent event it seems to be already in the New Testament.40 It is also striking how little use is made of the Passover in interpreting the Eucharist in the gospels and epistles. Indeed this can be seen as further evidence of the initial gulf between the categories of Old Testament cult and those proper to the new way of faith. Perhaps only in John can some lines be established between Passover and Eucharist, as for instance in the paschal context of John 6.

Nevertheless the Passover remains an important subject for a theology of the Eucharist. For one thing, it is part of that entire tradition of sacrificial worship which the cross is to fulfill and the Eucharist to continue in a new way. Furthermore, it is, as we have remarked already, one of the clearest examples of what a Jewish ritual memorial is like. It helps to illustrate the mentality with which the apostles would have heard the words 'Do this in memory of me'. Finally, even if in the Last Supper Our Lord did not follow the Passover ritual, a Passover atmosphere would have been unavoidable by any group of people in Jerusalem in that particular week, surrounded as they were by the bustle of festive preparations.

The Passover was one of the greatest feasts of the Jews. It evoked some of their most sacred memories, as they looked back to those events in the thirteenth century before our era when God first made them a people. The Exodus could claim to be the foundational event of the Jewish nation, containing within itself the sign and promise of redemption. Liberation is central to its spirit, and liberation remains one of the central themes of the Passover. A Jewish writer describes the festival as 'the festival of all times, in which the past deliverance blends with the future redemption in an eternal today, in order to make present in this way the life-giving love of God as a timeless, eternal event of salvation'.41

One of the key words in the Passover liturgy is 'memory'. This appears, not only in the original texts of the Bible concerning the feast, but also in the rabbinical texts with which the feast is celebrated today.42 It is a memory embodied not only in thoughts but in rituals, as when the person presiding offers unleavened bread to the gathering, saying 'This is the bread of affliction, which your fathers ate in the land of Egypt'.43 It is a memory not only of the past but of the future, as when the grace after the meal speaks of 'the memory of the Messiah, the Son of David' rising up and coming into the presence of the Lord.44

The key point concerning 'memory' in the Passover is the fact that it is understood in the pregnant sense which we have outlined above. Indeed the Passover texts are the best place for substantiating this view of memory which we are putting forward. Very clear is the belief that each generation of Jews was involved in the original events. The father of the family in the Jewish home in our day speaks in the first person plural with the contemporaries of Moses: 'Once we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt by his mighty hand' (Dent 6:21). The point is unequivocal in the rabbinical Passover text:

In every generation each one is bound to consider himself

as though he himself had come out of Egypt...

God the Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed not only our

fathers,

but He also redeemed us with them.45

Just as the present was involved in the past, so does the past become involved in the present. Wherever a Jew experiences something of God's liberating grace, it is the working out of that blessing first given to the people through Moses. But this actuality of the past becomes true in a special way in liturgy, as the people of the present generation relive those ancient events through their worship. When the father of the family holds up before them the unleavened bread, they are living again that hasty meal of long ago, for he says to them,

This is the bread of affliction, which your fathers ate in the land of Egypt.

Or again,

On that day you will explain to your son: 'This [i.e. the unleavened bread of today] is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.' (Exod 13:8)

In a number of places in the Passover liturgy we notice the use of the demonstrative 'this', as in the sentences just quoted. The word indicates the intersection of the times. This day, the day of our time, is the time of liberation, says the text. In other words, the Exodus is now!

When we come to the Eucharist, we have at hand the category of a Jewish ritual memorial to interpret what Our Lord was saying and doing at the Last Supper. The point does not depend on whether he actually used the phrase about memory attributed to him in the Luke-Paul version. The notion would have been sufficiently present in the general Passover atmosphere of the scene and in the traditional understanding of the place of history in prayer. When we spell the thought out in the way suggested by Luke's account of the Last Supper, with its strong Paschal colouring, then we can say that, just as the events of the Exodus were made present in the Jewish celebration of Passover, so the salvific events of the New Testament, Our Lord's death and resurrection, referred to in Luke's gospel as his 'exodus' (Luke 9:31 in Greek), are to be made present wherever Christians gather for the celebration of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not to be simply a nostalgic evocation of 'a green hill far away', but the actuality of his death and resurrection which constituted the great Passover sacrifice for the salvation of the world.46

Looking back over the path we have come in the understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice in the New Testament, we have discovered two main avenues of approach to the issue. The first one was found in the covenant sacrifice of Moses. While references to this can be detected in the Luke-Paul version of the Institution Narrative, it is clearest in the Mark-Matthew tradition. There we discovered categories of cultic sacrifice being accepted explicitly of the Eucharist.

The second line of approach lay through the notion of Jewish ritual memorial, which seems to be evoked explicitly by the command to repeat in the Luke-Paul tradition. This sense of the actuality of the past in the present was more than likely a factor in the development of the parallel with covenant sacrifice to which we

have just referred. In itself, particularly when one sees a parallel with the Jewish Passover, it brings out that the Eucharist is more than an empty calling to mind of the past. If in some sense Christ's death and resurrection are actual in our celebration, and if these events constitute the Lord's sacrifice, then it follows that the Eucharist itself has to be seen as in some way sacrificial through being the actuality of the one sacrifice of the New Law.

NOTES

1 E.g. Matt 9:13, citing Hos 6:6; Matt 15:7-9; 21:12-17.

2 Mark I1:47; Luke 22:19; Matt 5:24; 28:19; John 3:5. For the Old Testament see I Sam 16:2; Isa 43:22-28; Mai I:II; Sirach 7:31; 35:6-9; 38:11.

3 Also relevant is John 1:51. On this see O. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship (London: SCM, 1953), PP. 73-4.

4 Thus H. Schurmann, 'Neutestamentliche Marginalien zur Frage der "Entsakraiisierung" ', Der Seelsorger (Vienna) 38 (1968), pp. 38-48, 89-104, notably at p. 46.

5 Acts 21:24-26; Matt 5:24 probably refers to Temple sacrifice.

6 See the remark of R. Brown, The Gospel According to John, I-XII (New York: Doubleday/London: Geoffrey Chapman, I966), p. 62.

7. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship, p. 30.

8 These ideas could have built on the prophecies of the Servant also, but it is problematic how soon these prophecies began to be invoked by Christians. R. H. Fuller, for one, thinks it was not from the beginning: 'Jesus Christ as Saviour in the New Testament', Interpretation 35 (I981), pp. I45-56, at p. 148.

9 In the situation postulated here there would be no room at this early stage for the kind of borrowing from the Temple sacrifices of thanksgiving suggested by H. Cazelles, 'L'Anaphore et l'Ancien Testament', Eucharisties d'Orient et d'Occident (Lex Orandi no. 46; Semaine Liturgique de l'Institut Saint-Serge I; Pads: Cerf, 197o), pp. 11-21.

10 Jungmann saw this especially in the ritual of raising the cup and pronouncing the blessing over it: Missarum sollemnia (Vienna-Freiburg-Basel: Herder, 1962), vol. I, p. 27, n. 63.

11 Fuller, art. cit., p. x 47.

12 In this context 1 Cor 5:7 is sometimes cited, but the term of comparison between Calvary and Passover in this text is not sacrifice but the introduction of a new era of salvation, as P. Nenenzeit points out: Das Herrenmahl; (Munich: Kosel, 196o), p. 166. Hence the text cannot do more than illustrate a loose use of sacrificial language. From their dogmatic interests Catholic theologians have often given too much weight to texts like I Cor 5:7 and 10:18-22.

13 Some envisage this coming about by deducing the sacrificial nature of Calvary from the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, e.g. M. Schmaus, Dogma 5: The Church as Sacrament (London: Sheed & Ward, 1975), P. 69. I prefer to think rather in terms of each truth helping to clarify the other in a mutual relationship. It is not then a question of a deduction but more of an insight, as Lonergan understands that word, namely a 'leap' to a higher synthesis: B. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, 1967).

15 A good example of this in the New Testament is Heb 13: 11-12. For 'body' and 'blood', or more usually in Greek 'flesh' and 'blood', as the traditional sacrificial correlatives in the Old Testament, see for example Lev I7:11, 14; Dent 12:27; F-2ek 44:7; Ps 49(5o):13.

16 Greek ekchnnnomenon, agreeing with 'cup' in Luke, and with 'blood' in Mark-Matthew: Luke 22:20; Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28.

17 See enecheen and promchex in Exod 24:6, but kateskedase in verse 8. Leon-Dufour has argued that ekchnnnoraenon is more appropriate for designating a violent death than a ritualistic action: Sharing the Eucharistic Bread (New York: Panlist, 1987), p. 143. It does not seem, however, that the arguments in this sense can be pressed too far, since in the less ritualistic Lucan version, unlike in Mark, this participle agrees with 'cup' and so is clearly taken in a ritualistic sense.

18 I say not just expiatory but propitiatory in so far as the sacrificial remission of sins comes about through an offering pleasing to God. These notions, referred to already in the preceding chapter, will be discussed in greater detail in the explanatory treatment of sacrifice in Chapter 13 below.

19 H. Schfirmann, Der Eimetzungsbericht Lk 22:19-20 (Muenster: Aschen-dorff, 1955), p. 6. For the other view referred to see R. Daly, Christian Sacrifice(Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), p. 2o1.

2o J. von Allmen, The Lord's Supper (London: Lutterworth Press, 1966), pp. 86 and 96.

21 As regards the Luke-Paul tradition, in this list I follow the controversial opinion of Schurmann, regarding Luke as generally prior to Paul, and distinguishing the full text, Luke 22:15-20, into two juxtaposed accounts of the one event: Schurmann, op. cit., note 19 above, pp. i33-5o. As regards the long text in Luke, I translate the view of Ligier: 'After the studies of J. Jeremias and H. Schunnann, the long text of Luke (Lk 22:19b-2o) has regained, despite certain nuances, the confidence of the exegetes': La Maison-Dieu no. 87 (I966), p. 9.

22 Similarly the participles in Luke-Paul: Leon-Dufour, Sharing the Eucharistic Bread, pp. 188,234.

24 An early influential study of our subject-matter was N. A. Dahl, 'Anamnesis: memory and commemoration in early Christianity', an inaugural lecture in the University of Oslo in z946, later published in English in Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church: Essays by Nils Alstrup Dahl (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, I976), pp. 11-29.

25 Pss 139(14O); 32(33); Jer 32:19; Heb 4:13; Jas 1:17.

26 The phrase 'living memorial' has been applied by others to the Eucharist, but in a static sense, referring to the Real Presence, e.g. Bonaventure, Sent. IV, d. 12, P. 2, a. 1, q. 1 (Quaracchi edn, IV, 280). In this book the phrase is applied to the Eucharist as action and is best understood in opposition to 'empty memorial'.

27 The text of grace after meals in the Passover is a striking example of this, as we will see below.

28 E.g. Jer 14:21; Exod 32:z3; Deut 9:27; 4:31; Lev 26:42; Ezek 16:60 etc.

29 Isa 43:25; 64:9; Pss 78(79):8; 24(25):7 etc.

30 1 Sam 25:31; Job 14:13; Jer 15:15; Neh 6:14.

3z Deut 4:23; 6:11; 8:11, 14, 19; Prov 3:1; Ps 9:6 etc.

32 Greek: mnemosunon, Lev 2:2.

33 R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, Its Life and Institutions (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), p. 422.

34 Jubilees 49:15.

35 For an example of this meaning of 'remembering' in the New Testament see Acts 10:4.

36 J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 1966), pp. 244-55.

37 For the Fourth Gospel the Passover occurred on the evening of Our Lord's death: John 18:29; 19:31.

38 Brown, The Gospel According to John, I-XII, p. 556. For a recent defence of the Passover nature of the Last Supper, see C. Girando, Eucaristia per la chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana/Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1989), pp. 162-86. A. Janbert's ingenious theory that it was a question of different calendars has not met with the support of such exegetes as P. Benoit, J. Binzler, R. Brown, J. Gaechter, J. Jeremias.

39 The repetition of the command to repeat, in association with each of the table blessings in Paul's version, has been understood by exegetes to point to the independence of the Eucharist from the meal, e.g. Neuenzeit, Das Herrenmahl, p. 135.

40 If the breaking of bread in Acts 2 be Eucharistic, then the Eucharist is already a daily occurrence: Acts 2:46.

41 P. Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983), p. 79.

42 Original biblical texts would be Exod 12: 14; 13:9, 16. In citing the present day liturgy of the feast I follow the text given in A. Hanggi and I. Pahl (eds), Prex eucharistica (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1968), pp. 13-34. My quotations will be my own translations from the Latin.

43 Ibid., p. 15.

44 Ibid., p. 27.

45 Ibid., p. 24.

46 This last point will be treated when we come to the Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel.