Among the suggestions for “mutual enrichment” of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms \u00a0is the suggestion that the Offertory prayers of the 1962 Missal either replace or be allowed as an alternative to the prayers at the Preparation of the Gifts in the Ordinary Form.<\/p>\n
Of course the discrepancy between the terms “Offertory” and “Preparation of the Gifts” immediately points up a difficulty. In the post-conciliar revision of the Mass a very deliberate decision was made to move away from a sacrificial understanding of what takes place with the bread and wine prior to the Eucharistic Prayer. This was in part a result of several centuries of intense reflection on the nature of the Mass as a sacrifice that came in the wake of 16th-century Protestant criticisms of that teaching.<\/p>\n
One of the result of that reflection was a consensus position within the Catholic Church that the primary<\/em>\u00a0sense in which the Eucharist is a sacrifice is that it is the anamnesis<\/em>\u00a0or ritual re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ, in which Christ himself is the principle agent. Moreover, this ritual re-presentation was understood as taking place in the Canon itself, not in the prayers prior to the Canon (i.e. the “Offertory” prayers). Appearances sometimes to the contrary (e.g. the request in the\u00a0Suscipe sancta Trinitas <\/em>that God “accept. . . this offering which we make make to you in memory of the passion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ,” which certainly sounds<\/em> like an anamnesis<\/em>), these prayers were explained as proleptic of the actual offering, which took place in the Canon. I would stress that this clarification of the nature Eucharistic sacrifice was not some bit of “progressive” theology, but can be found in such impeccably orthodox works as Anscar Vonier’s\u00a0A\u00a0Key\u00a0to the Doctrine of the Eucharist<\/em>.<\/p>\n Thus the decision was made that, rather than trying to revise these prayers to reflect the theological clarifications that had taken place since the 16th century, new prayers would be composed, based on the Jewish berekah<\/em>\u00a0form, that would make clear that what was taking place was a preparation<\/em>\u00a0for the sacrifice, not an anticipation<\/em>\u00a0of it.<\/p>\n So, in light of all this, here are some questions that arise for me, both with regard to the post-conciliar revision and with regard to the suggestion that the Extraordinary Form <\/em>\u00a0prayers be used with the Ordinary Form:<\/p>\n Among the suggestions for “mutual enrichment” of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms is the suggestion that the Offertory prayers of the 1962 Missal either replace or be allowed as an alternative to the prayers at the Preparation of the Gifts in the Ordinary Form. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,30,31],"tags":[566,207,1585,2109],"class_list":["post-15580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mass","category-reform-of-the-reform","category-sacramental-theology","tag-consilium","tag-extraordinary-form","tag-offertory","tag-preparation-of-the-gifts"],"yoast_head":"\n\n