271. The greatest sentence ever spoken
271. THE GREATEST SENTENCE EVER SPOKEN
What is the greatest sentence ever spoken?
Owing to Christ’s infinite power, just as through contact with His flesh the regenerative power (of Baptism) entered not only into the waters which came into contact with Christ but into all waters throughout the whole world and during all future ages, so likewise from Christ’s uttering these words (“This is My Body”) they derived their consecrating power, by whatever priest they be uttered, as if Christ present were saying them. . . .
This sentence (“This is My Body”) possesses the power of effecting the conversion of the bread into the Body of Christ. And therefore it is compared to other sentences, which have power only of signifying and not of producing, as the concept of the practical intellect, which is productive of the thing, is compared to the concept of our speculative intellect, which is drawn from things . . . as the concept of the practical intellect does not presuppose the thing understood but makes it, so the truth of this expression does not presuppose the thing signified but makes it (III,78,5).
The terms St. Thomas uses are technical but the point is simple and commonsensical. The “practical intellect” makes something new to be (like a story); the “theoretical intellect” only knows what is already there (like a theory in physics). It is the difference between art and science. Art creates truth, science discovers truth. We discover giraffes but we create hobbits. Our concept of a giraffe is true if it conforms to real pre-existing giraffes; but this is not true of hobbits. Tolkien says, “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit”—and lo and behold, Hobbits come into being. God says “Let there be light”—and there is light. That is the work of the practical (making, doing) intellect: to make a thing, to know it into existence. The theoretical intellect only copies, transmits, signifies, informs, labels, or communicates what is already there. The difference between our practical intellect and God’s is that God actually creates the objective reality of what He knows, while we only create ideas, stories, fictions, forms of subjective thought rather than forms of objective reality.
When the priest pronounces the words of Christ, “This is My Body,” over the bread on the altar, something happens that is greater than the creation of the universe. When God said “Let there be light”, it was only light that was created, though it was created out of nothing; but when He says “This is My Body”, using the priest as His instrument, the Second Person of the eternal Triune God is made present out of bread. The change from nothing to something is very great, but the change from something to God is greater. The gap between God and something is even more infinite than the gap between something and nothing. Therefore, every day, millions of times, all over the world, on every Catholic altar, something is said that is greater than the word that created the universe out of nothing. The Mass is a greater event than the Big Bang.
Why did He do it? He does it in the Mass for the same reason He did it on Calvary. It is the same deed and the same Christ; only the manner is different: bloody vs. unbloody. My candidate for the greatest line ever spoken in a movie is Christ’s answer, in The Passion of the Christ, to His Mother’s agonized question, “Why do you have to do all this?” on the horrible, bloody way to Calvary: “See, Mother, I make all things new.” He had made all things by giving the universe His mind at the Creation, and now He made all things new by giving us His Body in the Redemption. The Creation cost Him nothing. The Redemption cost Him everything.