{"id":12996,"date":"2012-01-11T13:36:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T19:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=12996"},"modified":"2012-01-11T15:48:16","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T21:48:16","slug":"the-moment-of-consecration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/11\/the-moment-of-consecration\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;moment&#8221; of consecration"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>In the comments on <a href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/10\/12979\/\">yesterday&#8217;s post<\/a>, an interesting discussion emerged regarding what to call the eucharist before and after consecration. Several commenters mentioned that some Christian churches don&#8217;t hold, in the same way the Roman Catholic Church does, that there is\u00a0a &#8220;moment&#8221; at which consecration occurs. In the Roman Catholic tradition, we believe that before the words of consecration (&#8220;This is my body&#8230; This is my blood&#8230; Do this in memory&#8230;&#8221;) it is inappropriate to venerate the bread and wine. After the words of consecration, on the other hand, it is obligatory to adore the body and blood of Christ under the species of bread and wine. The scholastic theologians were concerned to identify the exact time of consecration so that adoration would not begin too early (idolatry) or too late (irreverence).<\/p>\n<p>As several commenters mentioned, in the Eastern Churches consecration isn&#8217;t so tightly confined.\u00a0That reminded me of a great video I used to show my undergraduates how differently we treat the unconsecrated bread and wine in East and West. This is a Ukrainian Catholic Church, with clergy and assistants preparing for the Great Entrance, before the anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) begins. The title of the video comes from the fact that it&#8217;s filmed behind the iconostasis, where laypersons are very rarely able to see. You can see the eucharistic elements here are venerated (bowed to).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=F8HM4u0PAbA\">httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=F8HM4u0PAbA<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=F8HM4u0PAbA\"> <\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is reflected in Eucharistic theology as well as in practice: in the East language about the Eucharist as symbol, icon, or image of Christ in heaven has been retained (alongside &#8220;realistic&#8221; language that affirms the Eucharist the assembly eats is the body and blood of Christ) since the patristic era. Both kinds of language can be used before or after the eucharistic prayer. (It&#8217;s worth mentioning that symbolic language is much more robust in the East, due to its association with Christology, than it seems to most Western Christians.) Symbolic language was less accepted in the West after the medieval controversies on Eucharistic presence. The West took for its inspiration the work of Ambrose of Milan:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[The Roman Canon] says: &#8220;On the day before He suffered, He took bread in his holy hands.&#8221; Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when Christ&#8217;s words have been added, it is the body of Christ . . . . And before the words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have been added, then blood is effected, which redeemed the people (Ambrose, <em>The Sacraments,<\/em> 4.23; trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church vol. 44, p 305).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Eastern Christian Churches, the &#8220;moment&#8221; at which the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ is not so tightly defined as it is in the Roman Catholic Church, and this ambiguity is reflected in practice and in theology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,19],"tags":[481,575,1787],"class_list":["post-12996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eastern-liturgy","category-mass","tag-consecration","tag-ambrose","tag-ukrainian-catholic-church"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The &quot;moment&quot; 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