← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 186: The Sacrificial Memorial (2025)
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We continue our examination of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Fr. Mike emphasizes that every element of Christ’s passion, the whole thing, is one, single sacrifice, and when we celebrate the Mass, we are participating in that same sacrifice. He also reiterates that the Eucharist is both a noun and a verb. It “re-presents” the sacrifice of the Cross. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1362-1386.
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Foreign. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of pure goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 186. We read in paragraphs 3, 1362-1368. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can also click Also, also, Also Right. All these things you could, you could do. You don't have to, but you could click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Because here we are today, day 186. We're continuing to talk about the Eucharist and as we've mentioned for the last few days, about the sacrifice. How the sacrifice, that's the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Today we're talking about the sacrificial memorial of Christ and of his Body, the Church. We're talking about both of those, actually. Not just today, today and tomorrow, and who knows, maybe even the day after that. Because there is this truth. We have to understand that the heart of religion. I know you might be bored of this, tired of this, this might be old news for you. The heart of religion is worship, and the heart of worship is sacrifice. And so we recognize that at every Mass, the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Church is making present the offering of this unique sacrifice of Jesus Christ in the liturgy of the Church, which is also his body, right? The Church is also the body of Christ. And so there's this remarkable synthesis where not only is it Jesus, Jesus, action, right? Jesus action back in time 2000 years ago, that's made present because of the anamnesis. Remember that, that memorial, that anamnesis, but also here is the body of Christ, the Church that is offering, being offered to the Father for the praise and glory of God, the Father, for all eternity. And so there's this remarkable synthesis of the Body of Christ once for all, offered on the cross, the Body of Christ offered in the Mass, in the Eucharist, and the body of Christ, the church that is offered. And how beautiful is that, you guys? That's what we're going to talk about today. So to open our minds and our hearts to this truth, to this profound reality, to be part of the sacrifice, we'll just pray. So we pray. Father in heaven, we thank you and we praise you. We thank you for bringing us into your body. Thank you for giving us your body, and thank you so much for the sacrifice of your body, blood, soul and divinity for our salvation. Lord, without you. Without you we are lost. Without you we are nothing. Without you there is nothing. You are the foundation of all being. You are the foundation of all truth, of all love, of all goodness. Help us to participate in your goodness. Help us to cooperate with your goodness. Help us to live and walk in your truth and help us to be signs of your love in this world to the people around us. Oh, God, help us truly to be your body as we walk this earth, to lift up those who are among us who have fallen, to bring light to those who walk in darkness, and to bring hope to those who are discouraged. Father, be with us now and give us your Holy Spirit. We make this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today is day 186. We're reading paragraphs 1362 to 1368, the sacrificial memorial of Christ and of His Body, the Church. The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice in the liturgy of the Church, which is his Body. In all the Eucharistic prayers, we find, after the words of institution, a prayer called the anamnesis, or memorial. In the sense of Sacred Scripture, the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events, but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt. Every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them. In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover and it is made present. The sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present, as Lumen Gentium states, as often as the sacrifice of the cross by which Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed, is celebrated on the altar. The work of our redemption is carried out because it is the memorial of Christ's Passover. The Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution. This is my body which is given for you, and this cup which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood. In the Eucharist, Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it represents the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit. As the Council of Trent declared, Christ our Lord and God was once and for all to offer Himself to God the Father by His death on the altar of the Cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death at the Last Supper on the night when he was betrayed, he wanted to leave to his beloved Spouse the Church a visible sacrifice, as the nature of man demands, by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit. The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. As the Council of Trent further stated, the victim is one and the same. The same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross. Only the manner of offering is different. And since in this divine sacrifice, which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the Cross, is contained and offered in an unbloody banner. This sacrifice is truly propitiatory. The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of the Church. The Church, which is the Body of Christ, participates in the offering of her head with Him. She herself is offered whole and entire. She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all men. In the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value. Christ's sacrifice present on the altar, makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering. In the catacombs, the Church is often represented as a woman in prayer, arms outstretched in the praying position, like Christ who stretched out his arms on the cross, through him, with him, and in him, she offers herself and intercedes for all men. All right, there we have it. Paragraphs 1362 to 1368. As I said, the highlight of what we just read is the sacrificial memorial of Christ and of his body, the church. And so let's go back to this. We recognize that in the sacrifice that is the memorial of Christ's Passover. But remember that word memorial, ananisis doesn't just mean like Memorial Day or Thanksgiving Day, no matter how good those days are. It is more like Passover, right? Which, whenever that was recalled in the Old covenant, whenever that's recalled by the Jewish people, they are present once again to the saving work of God in the Exodus. So whenever the Passover is celebrated, it's not just, this is what God did for our ancestors. It is, this is what God has done and is doing for us. This is what God is doing for us. So when they celebrate Passover, they're celebrating their deliverance from slavery and death in Egypt to a place of life and freedom. And so in the New Testament, as it says in 1364, the memorial takes on a whole new meaning, because we know this, we highlight this and hold onto this so clearly that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the same sacrifice that when Jesus on the Last Supper said, this is my body given for you, and of the cup, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood, that is the same sacrifice. That's the same offering, self offering, self gift as Jesus on the cross. And that's why we really believe that this one divine action, right from the beginning of the Last Supper all the way through the arrest, the trial, the passion, the scourging, the agony, the way of the cross, the crucifixion, the death of Jesus, his descent to the realm of the dead, and his resurrection, that's all one single action. That's all Christ's self offering to the Father. The whole thing. The whole thing is one single sacrifice. That because of that, when we celebrate the Mass, we are participating in that one single sacrifice, and it's truly present to us again. Yes, Christ's body is present to us. Yes. That same body that lived, that breathed that that walked the earth, that suffered, that died, that rose from the dead, that same body is in the Eucharist, but also the same action. And this is one of the things I just want to like, let's drill this into our Hearts is the Eucharist is a noun. Yes, that is the eucharistic species, Right. The body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. But the Eucharist is also a verb. And this is the action of the sacrifice of our Lord God, our God, Jesus Christ, to the Father and at the Mass. The Eucharist is a sacrifice because it represents. Makes present. Right? Doesn't represent. It represents the sacrifice of the cross because it is its memorial and it applies the fruit of that. And this is incredible. I think this is incredible on so many levels. Yes. The heart of religion is worship. The heart of worship is sacrifice. We get to participate in the very heart of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ himself, God himself gave to us. Every time we celebrate the Mass, we also get to participate in the fruit of that offering where God gets to be glorified and the world gets to be sanctified. I mean, just to realize this, at every Mass the Father is glorified. And at every Mass the world is sanctified, the Body of Christ is strengthened. This is why I said, I think it was yesterday that when I. When I absent myself from Mass, like when I choose, when I elect not to go, one of the things that happens, it seems to us like, oh, no big deal, whatever, I skipped Mass. But if we realize this and realize your importance and realize that in some mysterious, like, just crazy way, it matters to God whether we're there or not. When we don't show up, when we don't participate in the Mass, we don't utilize our kingdom priesthood. The Father is just that much less glorified and the world is just that much less sanctified. Not because Christ's offering was insufficient, it is completely sufficient, obviously, but because he invites us to participate in his work. And we get to do that. We get to do that. Now, in paragraph 1368, he highlighted this fact. Eucharist is also the sacrifice of the Church. Yes, we have Christ's presence in the species, right. In the bread and wine. In what looks like bread and wine. Those are accidental. We talked about that. We haven't talked about the term transubstantiation. It's kind of an old term, goes back a bunch of hundred years. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of years. And basically what that refers to is that the substance of what we're talking about is changed. And substance being kind of a more of a technical, philosophical word of the essence or the what it is ness of a thing. So you have bread and wine. The substance of that is bread and wine. And then in the Mass, that bread and wine is transformed is now a new substance, it's now a new essence. It still has the accidents or the appearance of bread and wine. If you were to examine it under a microscope, it would still look like bread and wine. If you were to drink enough of this, even after consecration, one could get drunk in that. It would have the same effects. But the substance, the what, it isness, is now something different. It is now not a what, it is now a who. It is now the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. So that's Christ is present in the Eucharist. We affirm this. But also Christ is present in the sacrifice of the Church. So this is something that I remember reading years ago in a book called the Priest Is Not His Own by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. And I like to share this whenever I get the chance. He said, among other things, he says that, he says young priests, when they get ordained, they're so excited to offer the sacrifice, which is great. Of course, they're excited to offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist. But we remember that Jesus wasn't just the priest who offered the sacrifice. He's also the victim who was offered. He also is the sacrifice that's being offered. And Fulton Sheen goes on to point out, he says, so if you're going to be a priest, that means, yes, you're going to offer, you're going to do that action of offering the sacrifice. But if you're going to be a priest of Jesus Christ, you also have to be the sacrifice. You also have to be willing to lay down your life on the altar. And this is, this is true about ministerial priests, right? Priests who are ordained like myself. But also that's true with regards to kingdom priests. It's true with regard to baptismal priests. You get to, with the ministerial priest, united with Jesus, our great high priest, you get to offer up the sacrifice. But we also have to be willing to unite our sufferings, our lives with Jesus Christ. We have to be willing to be a sacrifice with him. And that's why something is so, so incredible. I love this. It says this with Jesus, she herself, meaning the whole church, she herself is offered whole and entire. She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all men, that you get to be part of the salvation and redemption of the world. In the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his body. Remember, the body of Christ is offered. And if you're a member of his body, that means we're offered. It goes on to say specifically the lives of the faithful, their praise, their sufferings, their prayer, their work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering. And so they require they acquire a new value. So in the Mass, yes, we're called to participate fully in the sense of. Like, we're joining our hearts with the heart of that ministerial priest whose heart is hopefully conformed to Jesus, the great high priest. So we're offering actively that sacrifice, but we're also allowing our lives, our praise, our sufferings, our prayer, our work, to unite with those of Christ and with his total offering, and to give all those things, our praise, our sufferings, our prayer and our work a new value. And Christ's sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering. And just that is remarkable. So that. What's. What's that mean? Among many other things, what it means is right now, where you are, wherever, wherever you are, if you're driving, if you're out for a run, if you're walking, just sitting there in your room listening to these words, whatever you're doing, whatever you're experiencing, you can offer that, you can unite that to Christ's self offering on the altar. It all can be used, right? It all can be given. Because why? Because you have been crucified with Christ, you have died with Christ in baptism, so now it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. So as often as you do anything, all of those things can be united to Christ's sacrifice in the Mass. And all of them can be transformed for what? The two ends, right? For the glory of the Father, for the salvation of the world. You get to have your whole life conformed to that. Even if you find yourself stuck, even if you find yourself sick, if you find yourself unable. I can't get out. I'd love to be able to evangelize. I'd love to be able to tell more people about Jesus. But I'm stuck at home. I'm trapped here. Well, God can use even that. God can use even that because you have died with Christ and now you live with him. And your whole life, your life, whole, Your whole life, every moment of your life can be an offering united to Jesus in the sacrifice of the Mass, which is the sacrifice of Calvary for the glory of the Father and the salvation of the world. So right now, my brothers and sisters, let's do that. Let's take whatever it is we're going through, and if it's joys, awesome, Lord, take the joy. And let that be an offering as well. If it is success, if it's like you're doing great, you're riding high or flying high, I don't know. Whatever you're doing, you're up there. Give it to the Lord. Because all of it, the highs and the lows, the peaks and the valleys, can be used for the Father's glory and for the salvation of the world. Because you, you are part of the body of Christ that is offered to the Father in every single Mass with Jesus, our great high Priest and Eucharistic sacrifice. What a gift. Holy smokes, you guys. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Fr. Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.