270. We hear Christ’s words, not the priest’s
270. WE HEAR CHRIST’S WORDS, NOT THE PRIEST’S
In this life, outside of supernatural mystical experience, do we ever hear Christ speak to us in words, as distinct from hearing a fellow creature reading and repeating the words He spoke when He was on earth, by reading the Gospels?
Whether this is the form of this sacrament: “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood”?
Ambrose says: The consecration is accomplished by the words and expressions of the Lord Jesus. Because by all the other words spoken praise is rendered to God, prayer is put up for the people, for kings and others; but when the time comes for perfecting the sacrament, the priest uses no longer his own words but the words of Christ. Therefore it is Christ’s words that perfect this sacrament. . . .
In the other sacraments the consecration of the matter consists only in a blessing, from which the matter consecrated derives instrumentally a spiritual power, which through the priest who is an animated instrument can pass on to inanimate instruments. But in this sacrament the consecration of the matter consists in the miraculous change of the substance, which can only be done by God; hence the minister in performing this sacrament has no other act save the pronouncing of the words. . . .
The forms of the other sacraments are pronounced in the person of the minister . . . as when it is said, I baptize thee or I confirm thee. . . . But the form of this sacrament is pronounced as if Christ were speaking in person, so that it is given to be understood that the minister does nothing in perfecting this sacrament except to pronounce the words of Christ (III,78,1).
St. Thomas calls the words of Consecration the “form” of this sacrament. “Form” does not mean “external shape” or “appearance,” but almost the opposite: the essence, the essential nature.
The words are creative words, like the words God spoke to create the world in Genesis 1. They were spoken then by the Word of God, the pre-incarnate Christ. And the things in the creation came to be out of their words. These words were not labels given to pre-existing things, but the words that made the things. The same kind of creative word is spoken by Christ in the Eucharist. “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” perform a similar miracle as “Let there be light.” Every time you are present at Mass, you witness a miracle as great as or even greater than the Big Bang that created the universe.
When the priest utters these words, He is Christ’s mouth. When Father Smith says, “This is My Body”, he does not mean “This is Father Smith’s body.” Notice that Father Smith does not say “This is Christ’s Body” but “This is My Body.” It is Christ Who speaks. When we hear these words we literally hear the literal words that the literal Christ, Who is literally present, literally speaks. As St. Thomas says in his last paragraph, these words are pronounced in the person of Christ Himself, not in the person of the minister (priest). The words of Baptism are: “I baptize you”; and the “I” here is the priest. But the “My” in “This is My Body” is Christ Himself.
St. Thomas’ next to last paragraph shows how no other sacrament is like this one in the immediacy of God’s presence and action. In Baptism, for instance, the matter of the sacrament, the water, is used as an instrument, and so is the priest. God uses these two links in a chain—the priest and the water—to give sanctifying grace to the baptized. But in the Eucharist God Himself performs this miraculous act directly.
This makes altars and wombs the two most sacred places on earth, because there God repeatedly performs His two greatest miracles, transubstantiation and the creation of immortal souls. He enters our world whenever we open these two sacred doors. That is the deepest reason why contraception is a sacrilege: it locks the door against His presence and creative activity. It is like a priest celebrating Mass and only pretending to pronounce the words of consecration because he does not want Christ actually to come. But it is Christ Who invented both of those doors, for that very purpose.