The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae's Theology with a Referential Point at the Mysterienlehre of Odo Casel

The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology with a Referential Point at the Mysterienlehre of Odo Casel

Florentin AdriAn Crăciun*

In the last century both Orthodox and Catholic theologians have improved their reflection on the Eucharistic sacrifice in a critical manner in regard to the Latin medieval or scholastic theology. They have also developed their thinking in a theological dialogue involving the Eastern and Western mentalities, which could show different approaches but also lots of similarities. The relation between the Eucharistic sacrifice and Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the connection with the Church’s sacrifice, the mystic sacrifice, the boundary existing in the liturgical cult between sacrifice and sacrament are equally treated in the Orthodox and the Catholic theologies. Odo Casel and Dumitru Stăniloae are among the most creative theologians in their conceptions of the sacrifice. The mystery of Christian worship in Casel’s doctrine and Stăniloae’s teaching on the permanent state of sacrifice of Christ are original reflections in modern theology.

Keywords: Sacrifice, Eucharistic sacrifice, mystery, sacrament, memorial, mystic, Church

Introduction Father Dumitru Stăniloae was a tireless seeker of new meanings in all the theological subjects he approached. He succeeded thus to renew and to enrich theological reflections in different areas of the Orthodox theology. Surely this also applies to the research in the Eucharistic theology and the teaching on the Eucharistic sacrifice. As in most of his theological quests Father Stăniloae developed his work continuously with reference to the patristic thinking and in a critical and creative dialogue with the modern theology and especially with the contemporary Catholic theology. Regarding the sacramentary theology a constant reference was represented by the doctrine of the German theologian Odo Casel. Stăniloae had a special appreciation of the Caselian theory of the mystery of cult. Therefore, Stăniloae has defined several theological positions on the Eucharistic issue in reference to Odo Casel’s mystery theology. Dumitru Stăniloae and Odo Casel have developed their doctrine on the sacrifice independently. There is no way to talk about a reciprocal influence because Dom Casel did not have the possibility of knowing the

* Florentin Adrian Crăciun, PhD student at the University of Fribourg, research assistent at the Institute of Liturgics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

RES 6 (1/2014), p. 49-72 DOI: 10.2478/ress-2014-0104 Florentin Adrian Crăciun

works of Father Stăniloae. The latter reported his theology to the reflection of the German theologian but a real filiation in his theological thinking could not be established. Certainly Father Stăniloae made a lot of references in his works to the theology of the Benedictine monk, several essential points in the discussion on the Eucharistic theology having characteristics common to both thinkers. They reacted critically to the immolationist and oblationist1 sacrificial theories, characteristic to the Latin scholastic theology, both men having a great receptivity for the theology of the Fathers. Both Casel and Stăniloae greatly developed the first half of the last century’s theology, giving common explications to the occidental and oriental Eucharistic theology. They brought progress towards a clearer explanation of the existing relationship between sacrifice and sacrament, between Christ’s sacrifice and the one of the Church, between the sacrificial aspects of the Eucharist and his anamnestic dimension. Stăniloae and Casel share a common theological perspective in what regards the mystical sacrifice but also show visible differences, especially in what concerns the comprehension of the permanent state of sacrifice in which the Resurrected Christ incessantly finds himself. In the first part of this study we will present the doctrine of Dom Casel on the mystery of worship which had a great influence on the Catholic theology of the past century. We will show afterwards the points of meeting of the two teachings. Lastly we will present the creative, innovative part of Father Stăniloae, meaning his argumentation on the connection between the sacrifice of the Cross, the Last Supper’s sacrifice, the Eucharistic sacrifice and the incessant state of sacrifice of the Saviour in heaven. The Caselian Mysterienlehre In the opinion of Odo Casel, salvation can be acquired by an intimate living of Man with Christ, by the residence of Christ in Man and by the transformation that the Lord’s presence causes in him.2 According to Casel the possibility of this elevation is done by the Lord himself through the institution of the mystery of the cult.

1 Marius Lepin, L’idée du sacrifice de la Messe: d’après les théologiens depuis l’origine jusqu’à nos jours, Beauchesne 1926; idem, “Jésus Souverain Prêtre”, in: Vie Spirituelle, vol. 60, no. 3, 1939. 2 “This way of salvation was to be ours, too, but in Christ. (…) Christ’s salvation must be made real in us. This does not come about through a mere application, with our behaviour purely passive, through a «justification» purely from «faith», or by an application of the grace of Christ, (…). Rather, what is necessary is a living, active sharing in the redeeming deed of Christ; (…) To the action of God upon us (opus operatum) responds our co-operation (opus operantis), carried out through grace from him” in: Odo Casel, The Mystery of the Christian Worship, Burkhard Neunheuser (ed), New York 1999, p. 14.

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His great contribution to the development of the Eucharistic theology is the idea of “the theology of mystery”. For Casel, the Mystery is not something that is fundamentally inaccessible to humanity, but instead something that can only be accessed by participating in the sacred actions that take place within the community of faith. The Mysterienlehre of Dom Casel focuses on three main ideas: (1) God as “the Infinite and Inaccessible” (2) Jesus Christ who comes to us following grace, as the invisible divinity transformed into flesh (3) the sacred actions, especially the Eucharist, that make present the redemptive acts of Christ.3 Casel shows how the Mystery is “first of all God considered in Himself, as the infinitely distant, holy, unapproachable, to whom no man draw near and live”.4 But God unveils his mystery and comes down to his creatures and reveals himself to them. Man expresses his desire to come closer and to unite himself with the Divine in different ways. And to this hope God answers, exceeding all expectations, with his advent in the flesh. The mystery receives an all-new and deeper sense in the mystery in person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnated as the revelation of God.5 With His saving acts, Jesus Christ realizes the plans of his Father. In this sense, each and every action of the Christ is a Mystery in itself.6 Hence the possibility to speak of the Nativity mystery, the Passion mystery or of the Resurrection mystery of our Lord. From here results the third sense of the word Mystery. It is the profound reason for which the Church cannot lead Humanity to its salvation using only the Word, but with the Word accompanied by the sacred actions. In this sense, every salvation act is a single Mystery, the one that decomposes in mysteries, for example the mystery of the Epiphany. These actions, at the same time, human and divine, express the

3 Kimberly Anne Willis, “Reclaiming the Mystery in Liturgy”, in: Dwight W. Vogel (ed.), Primary sources of liturgical theology: a reader, Collegeville 2000, p. 27. 4 O. Casel, The Mystery, p. 5. 5 “In the Son of God made man and crucified we look upon the mystery of God which was hidden before the ages, but through Christ is made known and revealed to the ecclesia, the body of those whom he has called. Christ is the mystery in person, because he shows the invisible godhead in the flesh” in: O. Casel, The Mystery, p. 6. 6 “The deeds of his lowliness, above all his sacrificial death on the cross, are mysteries because God shows himself through them in a fashion which surpasses any human measurement. Above all else, his resurrection and exaltation are mysteries because God’s glory is shown through them in the human person of Jesus, although in a manner hidden to the world and open only to the knowledge of the faithful. This mystery of Christ is what the apostles proclaimed to the Church, and what the Church passes on to all generations” in: O. Casel, The Mystery, pp. 6-7.

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revelation of God to humanity. After having presented the Mystery as God himself, then the personalized Mystery of Christ, and ultimately the mysteries, meaning the salvation work, the fourth and last sense of the word Mystery for Dom Casel is the mystery of worship. By this meaning one needs to understand the renewing and fulfilment of the Mystery of Christ, as symbol; the one which is constituted through centuries in the Church in order to sanctify it or simply, “the presence of the divine salvation act under the veil of symbols”.7 The worship signs have not only a pedagogical value; they are “bearers of salvation”. The worship Mystery is nothing else but the Human God that is pursuing his action through time and space.8 And it is through the rites that what was done in Palestine reaches all of Humanity. Dom Casel shows also that the worship Mystery is the Mystery of Christ, but in another fashion. The difference between the two lies in their ways of being, not in their essence. By this we reach the definition of the Liturgy given byDom Casel, who says that the latter is the Mystery of Christ in the worship of the Church, or otherwise, “the Mystery of Christ and the Church”.9 There is only a distinction of reason between these first three meanings, and they all come to mean that which Dom Casel calls the primary Mystery. To clarify the subject, the German theologian accepts and answers to this question: “You ask: what is the difference between the Mystery of Christ and the Mystery of worship? According to St. Paul’s Epistles, the Mystery of Christ is Christ himself, meaning the revelation of God in his incarnated Son, revelation that has as its highest peak the sacrificial death and the glorification of the Lord. The Mystery of Worship is the presentation and the ritual reproduction of the Mystery of Christ by which it is made possible for us to enter the Mystery of Christ himself. The Mystery of worship represents for the Christian, the way of living

7 O. Casel, “Mysteriengegenwart”, in: Jarbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, 8, 1928, p. 145. 8 “Christ’s mystery in God’s revelation in the saving action of his incarnate Son and the redemption and healing of the church. It continues after the glorified God-man has returned to his Father, until the full number of the church’s members is complete; the mystery of Christ is carried on and made actual in the mystery of worship. Here Christ performs his saving work, invisible, but present in Spirit and acting upon all men of good-will (Luke, 2:14). It is the Lord himself who acts this mystery; not as he did the primeval mystery of the Cross, alone, but with his bride, which he won there, his church”, O. Casel, The Mystery, p. 38. 9 O. Casel, The Mystery, p. 38.

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in the Mystery of Christ himself.”10 A new theological perspective on the Eucharistic sacrifice Casel elaborated the concept of the Eucharistic sacrifice from the same perspective as the Mystery of the worship. Through the celebration of the liturgy, the sacrifice that Christ offers on the Cross is situated in the centre of the Christian life. In conformity with the system developed in the Mysterienlehre, Casel weaves his explanation around the central reality of the Mystery. By this he wants to show that the Mass is not a new, independent sacrifice from the one on the Cross.11 The unique sacrifice from the Cross does not include a repetition in the Mass. Dom Casel, and in his turn also Father Stăniloae, strive to spotlight the relation between the sacrifice of the Church and the unique sacrifice on the Cross. The sacrifice of the Mass, has as a “plus”, compared to the sacrifice from the cross, the active participation of the Church united with Christ. The sacrifice of the cross is sacramentally represented to generate the active entry, the participation of the Church. The sacrifice of Golgotha acquires a sacramental presence in the sacrificial action of the Christians. On this point the Romanian and German theologians agree. Axiomatic for Casel’s conception is also the fact that during the Mass it is not only Christ who is present, but also the entire work of redemption is present with him. Just as the sacrificial act on the cross, made as an offering for Humanity to the Father, the sacrificial sacramental act of the Eucharist is also part of the redemption economy of the Lord. Situated as different points during the history of salvation, located on a continuous and irreversible line, the Cross and the Mass are keeping essentially the same direction having the same root and the same target. Casel had already stated that the mystery is always a whole, that the redemptive work is indivisible, the individual historical events representing only partial exteriorization. His liturgical vision is a view of the whole. The liturgical celebration is the concrete reality in which Christ’s saving action in death and resurrection becomes present to us. What is also particular for the Caselian theology is the exceeding of the

10 A letter from the 20th of April 1943, in: André Gozier, La porte du ciel: réactualiser le mystère avec Odon Casel, O.E.I.L., Paris 1987, p. 91. 11 “But since the passion was the sacrifice of Christ, the sacramental representation of the passion is also the sacrifice of Christ because the mystery contains the reality of the signified thing. Mass is therefore not an independent sacrifice, a new sacrifice, a «natural» sacrifice, but the mystery of the sacrifice from the cross, and for all that a true and real sacrifice. Sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the Mass are the same in regard to the victim, the priest and the sacrificial act; it is only in the second case (the Mass) that the sacrifice is in a sacramental mode of being”, O. Casel, Faites ceci en mémoire de moi, Paris 1962, pp. 165-166.

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theory of the Christus passus, according to which, what is made present in the Mass is the suffering of Christ. Casel is developing rather a theology ofPassio Christi. His theological perspective does not exclude the presence of Christus passus, but offers an intense value, in the Mass, to the re-presentation of the Passio Christi flourishing in the glory of the Resurrection12. In the cult, the Passio Christi is made present in a sacramental manner. There is no repetition of this act in here, but the very act of Christ dying and rising is made present to communicate the salvation. Dom Casel’s theory is clearly delimited from the one “of the effect” that sustains that in the cult only the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are made present and who leads to a simple appropriation by the believers of the graces earned by His single act that belongs to the past. In the Divine Liturgy not only the presence of “Christ who suffered” is manifested but also the salutary Act of Christ. It is not in a historical manner that this happens, but in mysterio, in his perennity that makes it transcendent to time. The passio is understood in the paschal sense, of death and resurrection, in his meaning of glorification that Christ acquired by his death. What the German theologian wants to highlight is not the appearance of “cruel passion” but the Lord’s victory on the cross that is thereby the redemptive act, at the same time sacrifice and consecration.13 Christ and the Church bring the Eucharistic sacrifice The Eucharist represents in the same time the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Church. The sacrifice of the Human-God and that of the Church come together into a single sacrifice, since, in the interpretation of Casel, the Husband and the Wife work together side by side. The Church has its own part in the action of Christ. She receives this action, but she does it in an active way, since by participation to Christ’s actions, the Church becomes a living body, a loving Wife. The commitment of the Church, with her sacrifice, to the sacrifice of Christ is so deep that “both of these sacrifices flow together; they are fundamentally one”.14 And it is in the Eucharist that the Church accomplished the maximum of the worship Mystery because it is then that the sacrifice of Christ becomes the sacrifice of the Church. Christ, the living and loving God did not give himself out of love, once

12 The passage from the Passion to the Glorification represents an ontological changing, is constituted in an act that is not placed back in his historical modality but made present as a “pneumatic event”. The expression belongs to Viktor Warnach, “Zum Problem der Mysteriengegenwart”, in: Liturgisches Leben 5/1938, p. 37. 13 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 173. The underlining belongs to the author. 14 O. Casel, The Mystery, p. 13.

54 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology and for all, but he is giving himself still, out of love, continuously, perpetually, having an ontological disposition for the self-denial in the divine cycle of love. The love and the selflessness of Christ occur also during the worship mystery: “in the «mystery», Christ continues to present us his sacrifice, so that the Church can germinate and blossom in him. The «mystery» becomes in the same time the sacrifice of the Church; because the Master is not anymore the only one to give himself, as once on Golgotha. By his side, resides the new Eve, his loyal wife, his minister, the holy Church. It is her that fulfils the «mystery», and by doing so, she appropriates the sacrifice of Christ and she sacrifices herself in him. O marvellous condescension of the Saviour! The same blood animates Christ and the Church; and this is why the Wife can offer the sacrifice in union with him, animated by a single and even voluntary offering. Her greatest honour is to be united to him in the supreme act of his sacerdotal dignity and – even more – to be able to give him love for love, in the celebration of the «mystery». There, the two of them, Christ and Church, merge into one offering of love to the Father”.15 Father Stăniloae, who defends a rather Christological position, has made an important contribution to this subject. In his critique, Stăniloae aimed at the tendency of certain Catholic theologians who made of the Eucharistic sacrifice a sacrifice of the Church, a distinct sacrifice from that of the Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross, to make Jesus the object of the sacrifice, or point out the initiative of the Church in this offering. Some have tried to reconcile the initiative of the Church with that of the Christ in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice in order to find a certain balance. But every leaning of the balance in favour of the Church is to blame, according to the Orthodox theologian.16 According to other theologians, Christ has only the initiative to offer himself as a victim of the initiative of the Church. However, for Stăniloae, in the Eucharist, God is rather the one who offers and Man the one who

15 O. Casel, “Le sacrifice mystique du christianisme”, in:Revue liturgique et monastique, 12 (1/1926), p. 10. 16 He takes as example Dom Anscar Vonier, “La part des chrétiens au sacrement de l’unité”, in: La Vie Spirituelle, vo. 52, no. 1-2 (7,8/1937), p. 13, who has the tendency, following the scholastic theology, to affirm the similarity between the priest and Christ, at the point of replacing him so that he becomes identical to the victim sacrificed on the altar. See: Dumitru Stăniloae, “Dumnezeiasca Euharistie în cele trei confesiuni”, in: Ortodoxia 1/1953, p. 77, footnote 70.

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receives.17 The donation of the Eucharist is an offering given to God by his Son and, because the Son that gives himself resides in the Church, this offering is also given to the Church. The Church cannot be only an assistant, or only passive, but its activity is given by the power of Jesus Christ. The Son, by offering himself eternally in the sky, descends by the power of the Holy Spirit, like the one that is offering him in the sky and on earth, listening to the calling of the Church, in conformity with its promise. By this offering from the invisible altar, he entails the Church as well as the believers to offer themselves with him. He is willing to give himself also from the altar of the Church for the salvation of men, so that they can rise with him in front of God. According to the Romanian theologian, because the Son that is offering himself is present in the Church, the offering belongs also to the Church.18 Christ that descends by the power of the Holy Spirit, like the one that is offering himself continuously in the sky, listening to the calling of the Church, and by giving himself on the visible altar, entrains also the Church and the believers, so that they can all go with him before the Father. The Orthodox Church does not put its initiative, or its activity over to the one of Jesus, and does not consider the priest as a replacer of Christ as a sacrificer. The Church does not distinguish precisely between its act and the acts of Christ, between its sacrifice and the sacrifice of the Christ. Stăniloae argues thus that: “Christ fulfils everything and does everything, even though the Church does not become passive because of it. Or its passivity is in the same time activity. Christ continues to offer himself in the Eucharist in order to offer his mystic body alongside himself, or in order to give the opportunity and the power for his mystic Body to take place in this act, by the offering and the self offering, with no reason that this constitutes a merit of the Church, but an opportunity to sanctify it.”19 The inherent binding between Sacrifice and Sacrament At the beginning of the 20th century the theology was not speaking about the relation between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrament. In

17 The report donation-donor was underlined in the Catholic theology by Hans-Urs von Balthasar, “Don du Christ et sacrifice eucharistique”, in: Communio, no. 10, 3 (5,6/1985), pp. 4-7; Louis-Marie Chauvet, “Le sacrifice comme échange symbolique”, in: Le sacrifice dans les religions, pp. 277-304 ; idem, “La dimension sacrificielle de l’Eucharistie”, in: La Maison- Dieu, 123 (1975), pp. 47-78. 18 “Instead of saying that the Church offers Him to the Father, it is more precise to say that it is Him that offers the Church to the Father”, D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 78. 19 D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 79.

56 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology the modern Catholic theology Odo Casel was among the first to work on this liaison. In the Romanian Orthodox theology Dumitru Stăniloae also contributed to the clarification of the subject. The two thinkers sought to show that the sacrifice of the historical Christ, on the cross, represents a unique sacrifice, which was offered once and for all, marking the completion of all previous sacrifices and their ends. Resurrected and glorified, Christ sits forever at the right hand of the Father. But the Church has not yet reached its final accomplishment. She is eternally attracted to the sacrifice of Christ, appropriating his sacrifice, being transfigured in the glory of Christ. The self-sacrifice of the Church is the sacramental mode of existence of Christ’s sacrifice. The Eucharist, in fact, is nothing else than the historical sacrificial death of Christ, in a sacramental mode of being. The Eucharistic sacrifice is understood then as “sacramental re-presentation” of the Passion and death on the Cross. Theologically speaking it is not possible to talk about the Eucharist without Golgotha, but no more of the Eucharist without the Church. This is because the sacramental sacrifice of the Eucharist would not make sense without the Church.20 The sacrifice of the Cross is sacramentally represented to stimulate the active entry or participation of the Church. It is here that the sense of the Mass is acknowledged, the sacrifice of the Cross acquiring a sacramental presence in the sacrificial action of the Church. In the Church, the Sacrament, in its ontological condition, is set to keep active and operative the saving act: “the purpose of the Sacrament is precisely to maintain the saving act in the Church, in a living way, as a reality that continues to be operative, and that historically belongs to the past.”21 It is not about a repetition of an event in an historical way but about a sacramental representation.22 For Father Stăniloae two movements are met during Eucharist: one from us to God and another from God to us. Through the sacrament, God communicates us his work, as grace and gift, while by the sacrifice we offer to God what we have and even what we are. The Eucharist as a Sacrifice is a

20 Charles Baumgartner, “Bulletin d’histoire et de théologie sacramentaires”, in : Recherches de Science religieuse, vol. L, no. 2, 1962, pp. 280-283. Baumgartner analyses the collective work Opfer Christi und Opfer der Kirche, Die Lehre vom Messopfer als Mysteriengedächtnis in der Theologie der Gegenwart, B. Neunheuser (ed), Düsseldorf 1960, work publishing the rapports of the annual session of l’Abt-Herwegen-Institut (4-7 august 1958). The subject is treated on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of O. Casel’s death in the session: “La doctrine du sacrifice de la messe comme mémorial de mystère, confrontée avec la théologie moderne”. 21 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 167. 22 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, pp. 165-166.

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Sacrament, because by offering to God we rise and we are in communion with His Holiness and his blessing. The Sacrament is a sacrifice because the body of the Lord who gives himself to us is in a state of sacrificed and resurrected body. He is printing on us the state of sacrifice by which we move towards the Resurrection.23 One of the realities revealed by the Romanian theologian was the reciprocity between Christ and the community in providing the offering. Brought offerings also imply a certain consecration of the community by the descent of the Holy Spirit as an aspect of Sacrament.24 For Father Stăniloae the communion of the faithful is highlighting the sacramental aspect of the Eucharist, but not exclusively. In the Eucharist the persons get sanctified in the very act of the sacrifice because they are, in a certain sense, united with the offerings brought and with Christ in whom they become transformed. Already from this moment, people benefit from the Eucharist as from a sacrament. The people are thereby sanctified because they appropriate the state and disposition of Christ’s sacrifice. “The moment of the communion only intensifies the benefit derived from the Eucharist as sacrament and sacrifice”.25 In his theological approach Stăniloae insists on the fact that the Eucharist is realized completely, only by the transformation of the Eucharistic species in the Body and Blood of Christ and by the communion to them.26 In the act of fraction of the body immediately before communion and the pronunciation of the words by the priest: “The Lamb of God is broken and shared, broken but not divided; forever eaten yet never consumed, but sanctifying those who partake of Him”, Father Stăniloae sees the persistence of the aspect of sacrifice in the aspect of sacrament.27 He declares: “Even the sanctification of the believers who share in the Communion is an effect of their partaking in the sacrifice, because it signifies an even more complete transposition of the faithful into that sacrificial state

23 D. Stăniloae, The Experience of God. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 5, The Sanctifiying Mysteries, Brookline, Massachusetts 2012, p. 95; D. Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, vol. 3, Bucureşti 1997, p. 72. 24 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 107 ; “The Spirit transforms the community’s offering of bread and wine – the sacrifice of the community’s life – into Christ’s sacrifice, into His sacrificed body. And Christ brings this sacrificed body to the Father, but then He gives it to the community to be its food and drink, so that the community too may be filled with His sacrificed body to a greater and greater degree”; ibidem, pp. 99-100. 25 D. Stăniloae, “Théologie eucharistique”, in: Contacts, 1970, no. 71, p. 200. 26 Ibidem, p. 201. 27 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 104.

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that comes from the power of Christ’s sacrifice. Properly speaking, it is only through the act whereby the faithful partake in Holy Communion that the Eucharist reaches its conclusion as sacrifice and as mystery, for it is only at that moment that its purpose as a sacrifice offered to the Father is achieved, as is its purpose in sanctifying the faithful; it is only at that moment that the name of each of the faithful is pronounced, as it is in all the mysteries”.28 For Father Stăniloae the moment of transformation highlights especially the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist. The moment of communion points out especially his aspect of sacrament. The distinction between the two, identified by Stăniloae, finds its coherence at the personal level and at the community level. The moment of the sacrifice (the transformation) updates the sacrifice of Christ to the community. This corresponds to the fact that He was slain at Calvary for all mankind. The other moment, that of communion, is needed for Man to personally decide to take ownership of the sacrifice of Christ. Even if in the “lamb” that transforms is represented the spirit of the whole community, there is however the need for a distinct decisional act of each believer to be personally unified with Christ and to fully accomplish his sacrifice.29 The relation between the sacrifice and the Eucharistic memorial In the liturgical movement of the last century Odo Casel was the first Catholic theologian to rework the concept of Eucharistic memory. The memorial is not a simple remembrance, it is a liturgical act.30 First of all the word indicates a memory through a gesture. The liturgical celebration is always actio, so “it is precisely in the action and by the action that memory is realized. It is this memory, understood as a corporal and cultic action and not as a simple relation of conscience […] The essential idea is that, by the commemorative action, it is the saving act effectively and objectively re- actualized that is the subject of the celebration. The liturgy is consequently a real memory and not only subjective; in short, it is a memory full of reality. The anamnesis expresses in all liturgies, according toDom Casel, this notion of memory in relation to the Eucharist”.31

28 Ibidem, p. 104. The underline belongs to the author. 29 D. Stăniloae, Théologie eucharistique, pp. 201-202. 30 See also Max Thurian,L’Eucharistie, Mémorial du Seigneur, Sacrifice d’action de grâce et d’intercession, Neuchâtel 1959. 31 Théodore Filthaut, La théologie des Mystères, Exposé de la controverse, Tournai 1954, p. 67.

59 Florentin Adrian Crăciun The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology

Casel connects the concept of sacrifice to one of memory.32 For him commemoration. Because what has been celebrated previously only in the memorial presence of the sacrifice of Christ constitutes one of the central words and thoughts is actually happening on the altar, where by the points of his explication on the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. The change of species into the body and blood of Christ, the work of the liturgy is a means of “living in the memory and the commemoration of the Incarnation and salvation is mystically accomplished. […] Whenever Lord”.33 The objective nature of the memory is shown especially in the mystery the commemoration is celebrated by this sacrifice, the work of our of the Eucharist. It is a real and objective memory actually containing the redemption is carried out. The celebration is not just verbal, and the Lord’s death on the cross. In the case of a simple subjective and intentional commemoration is an actual implementation”.36 commemoration, death remains in the past, leaving men with the possibility Citing the Eucharistic Prayer of St. Basil the Great, Father Stăniloae of only remembering it. affirms that the Lord instituted the Eucharist in order to leave us the active But Casel claims that the sacrifice comes from the memory. By this memories of his Passions37. For Stăniloae the “memories” of His redemptive understanding that the memory has to be considered as real as the story of passion represent the promise according to which He also transforms this the institution and the sacrificial prayer. The prayer of the anamnesis is a real bread and wine, by which He gives us his body formerly sacrificed. This prayer which signifies and realizes something. It does not reflect a memory sacrificed body that is given to us is a “vivid memory, by extension”38, of his that is recalled subjectively but it is an objective memory through an action.34 Passions on Golgotha. Thus, according to the theology of Stăniloae: “The The objective memory gives to the passed event a real presence hidden under proclamation of the Lord’s death and resurrection becomes, through the the symbols: Eucharist, not a theoretical announcement of a few facts from the past history “But since the Church defines what is the memory of the Lord, by but the proclamation of the experience of certain realities that perpetuate specifying that it is the memory of his death, of his resurrection and themselves in us”.39 In the anamnesis of St. Basil the Great it is said that the of his ascension, it follows that it is not only the Lord – as clearly “memories” having to transform in the extended memory of His passion, are indicated by the words of institution – which is present in the liturgical “set before the Father”, as the sacrifice of Golgotha was brought before the symbols, but also his death, his resurrection and his ascension are Father, except that now it is us, the priest and the faithful who “placed” them accessing mysteriously to Presence”.35 before the Father, or it is Christ who placed them in a visible way through us, engaging us as well into this act.40 The narrative of the Last Supper when the Lord instituted the “mystery” The importance of the anamnesis is integrated into the evaluation of of his sacrifice was the centre and the crowning of the hymn of thanksgiving the effects that Christ’s sacrifice had on Man. The sacrifice of Christ continues and praise to God. In the Church this account is repeated word for word, to transform our humanity, by the awareness that rises in us about the love because at that time the “mystery” is performed again and transforms the that God has towards us, love that goes as far as sacrifice. In the vision of hymn of praise in an active memorial. The consecration is also added as a the Romanian theologian the anamnestic reality of the Eucharist can be new act, to the story of the life of Christ, but without being inserted in it. Consecration means: 36 O. Casel, Le mémorial du Seigneur, pp. 42-43. “A new manner of commemorating, a practical and effective 37 D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate şi comuniune în Liturghia ortodoxă, Bucuresti 2004, p. 444: “As memorials of His saving passion, He has left us these gifts which we have set forth according to His commands. For when He was about to go forth to His voluntary, and celebrated, and life-creating death, in the night in which He gave Himself up for the life of the world, He 32 Casel shows that the Church realizes: “the very fact that the Lord has done in the past and took bread in His holy and immaculate hands, and when He had shown it unto thee, the she does it so in his memory; and it is starting from this memory that she offers the sacrifice God and Father, and given thanks, and blessed it, and hallowed it, and broken it and He gave [...] memory is intimately connected with the sacrifice”, O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 8. it to His holy disciples and apostles, saying: Take, eat, this is my Body, which is broken for 33 O. Casel, Le mémorial du Seigneur dans la liturgie de l’Antiquité chrétienne, Paris 1954, p. you for the forgiveness of sins”. 64. 38 Ibidem, p. 445. 34 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 9. 39 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 86. 35 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 9. 40 D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate şi comuniune, p. 445.

60 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology

commemoration. Because what has been celebrated previously only in words and thoughts is actually happening on the altar, where by the change of species into the body and blood of Christ, the work of the Incarnation and salvation is mystically accomplished. […] Whenever the commemoration is celebrated by this sacrifice, the work of our redemption is carried out. The celebration is not just verbal, and the commemoration is an actual implementation”.36 Citing the Eucharistic Prayer of St. Basil the Great, Father Stăniloae affirms that the Lord instituted the Eucharist in order to leave us the active memories of his Passions37. For Stăniloae the “memories” of His redemptive passion represent the promise according to which He also transforms this bread and wine, by which He gives us his body formerly sacrificed. This sacrificed body that is given to us is a “vivid memory, by extension”38, of his Passions on Golgotha. Thus, according to the theology of Stăniloae: “The proclamation of the Lord’s death and resurrection becomes, through the Eucharist, not a theoretical announcement of a few facts from the past history but the proclamation of the experience of certain realities that perpetuate themselves in us”.39 In the anamnesis of St. Basil the Great it is said that the “memories” having to transform in the extended memory of His passion, are “set before the Father”, as the sacrifice of Golgotha was brought before the Father, except that now it is us, the priest and the faithful who “placed” them before the Father, or it is Christ who placed them in a visible way through us, engaging us as well into this act.40 The importance of the anamnesis is integrated into the evaluation of the effects that Christ’s sacrifice had on Man. The sacrifice of Christ continues to transform our humanity, by the awareness that rises in us about the love that God has towards us, love that goes as far as sacrifice. In the vision of the Romanian theologian the anamnestic reality of the Eucharist can be

36 O. Casel, Le mémorial du Seigneur, pp. 42-43. 37 D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate şi comuniune în Liturghia ortodoxă, Bucuresti 2004, p. 444: “As memorials of His saving passion, He has left us these gifts which we have set forth according to His commands. For when He was about to go forth to His voluntary, and celebrated, and life-creating death, in the night in which He gave Himself up for the life of the world, He took bread in His holy and immaculate hands, and when He had shown it unto thee, the God and Father, and given thanks, and blessed it, and hallowed it, and broken it and He gave it to His holy disciples and apostles, saying: Take, eat, this is my Body, which is broken for you for the forgiveness of sins”. 38 Ibidem, p. 445. 39 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 86. 40 D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate şi comuniune, p. 445.

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completed by the active participation of Christians. The liturgy finds a mystical fulfilment through the liturgical memorial. For Stăniloae commemoration must be accompanied by the action of the faithful. “Christ asks us not only to commemorate what he did at the Last Supper and all his past works, but also to «make» now what he did then, to give the commemoration all the efficiency. He wants us to commemorate His act by our act. Only so, what happened then can also happen now. Only by showing my willingness to actualize His act printed in me, He also participates in the updating of this act ... «Do this in remembrance of me.» This means that Christ not only gives us the command to commemorate what he did at the Last Supper but also the strength to do it. But this strength we receive it by asking his Holy Spirit to accomplish this act”.41 In this same sense Stăniloae affirms: “By remembering Christ’s redeemer command to always do this in his remembrance, eating the bread and drinking the cup, we announce in our very being His death and resurrection, as a living memory. The Lord’s Supper is also accomplished for us. Commemorating the entire redemptive action of Christ, of that time and its continuation until the end of the world, it is in fact also accomplished in the present. Because He was not living only then, but He is living now too. He is more alive than any man on earth by the resurrected state in which He is”.42 According to Stăniloae the memorial in the Eucharist has its very realistic value being interpreted in its present dimension that involves us in our current condition oriented through the Kingdom of the Lord. At the Mystical Supper the Lord instituted the Eucharist on the basis of His death and resurrection, for it is by them that He is with us and He is always coming to us, as the sacrificed and resurrected Lord. Thus, it becomes clear that: “the Eucharist perpetuates the «remembrance» (anamnesis) of the fact that Christ became incarnate, offered Himself in sacrifice, and rose again. It also constitutes proof of this fact. But its «remembrance» is perpetuated as a fact that continues within us in a real way. This remembrance is a remembrance because Christ, who is incarnate, sacrificed, and risen, abides in union with us. This remembrance is linked to the remembrance of Christ’s promise that He will abide in union with us as incarnate, sacrificed, and risen. Through the Eucharist we proclaim the news of the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection

41 Ibidem, p. 458. 42 Ibidem, pp. 457-458.

62 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology

of the Son of God as man, not as if these were only past events, nor as a reality that is repeated over and over again, but precisely as a reality that has been extended in us too on an invisible level. (…) In the Eucharist Christ is really present with His body and blood, sacrificed and risen from the dead, and consequently only through the Eucharist can we ourselves die and rise again with Him; and only through this death and resurrection together with Christ do we become partakers of the eternal life”.43 The mystic sacrifice of the Christian faith The greatest contiguity between Casel and Stăniloae’s thinking came on the mystic aspect of the Eucharistic sacrifice. For Casel the mystic experience appears like the whole realization of the mystery in us. The mystic is the interiorized Mystery.44 According to the purpose and the nature of the liturgy, through mystery, the communities celebrate and every believer has access to the true way of participating to the sacrifice of Christ. The cult consists of the offering of material gifts, but also, even more during the Eucharist, in the praising hymns that are being brought to God and to the marvellous acts that he has done for the salvation of men.45 During the Liturgy Man can participate in the “mystic” sacrifice by uniting himself to the “mystery”, to Christ, exteriorly during the Liturgy and spiritually afterwards. The sacrifice is understood as the giving up of oneself in order to relate entirely to God. The act that is taking place during the Liturgy has to continue in us, this divine act in which operates the power of God Himself, drawing us into his sphere. Our answer, the offering of ourselves, with Christ and through Christ, is to the Father a pleasant sacrifice. The same as Casel, Father Stăniloae attacked any idea which did not recognize that in the Liturgy Christ sacrifices himself in order to communicate to the believers in a sacrificial and resurrected state and to attract the believers in this state, to unite himself with them.46 In this way, the approach of

43 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 86. 44 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, pp. 59-60. 45 Odo Casel, “Die «logikè thysia» der antiken Mystik in christlich-liturgischer Umdeutung”, in : Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 4, 1924, pp. 37-47. 46 They criticized the theories of merit, earned by man through a sacrifice, meaning the Eucharistic sacrifice made available to man by Christ, so that it can be brought into the Eucharist as its own sacrifice, thing that causes a rift between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrifice of Golgotha. Any juridical conception of salvation having its basis in the theory of satisfaction represents a detriment to the understanding of salvation as restoration of the human being through the Incarnation, the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ and the union

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Stăniloae meets the theological desiderata of Casel. For the Benedictine the salvation is acquired by Man’s intimate living with Christ, by the residency of Christ in Man and the transformation of Man by the presence of the Lord in him. According to Casel, the Lord Himself gives the realization of the possibility of this elevation by the establishment of the mystery of the cult, which was done for us.47 Regarded as being representative of modern theology, Stăniloae and Casel see the basis of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, in an ontological identity between the restoration of the divine image in every man and the glorification of God by the sacrifice. Man unites himself with Christ during the offering so that he can ontologically regenerate, glorifying God in the same time. The sanctification is an ontological transformation and not the result of some human merits or of a divine efficiency. The need of the Eucharist as sacrifice is also based on the human need to unite with Jesus Christ, the One that continues to offer Himself so that by the uninterrupted power of His sacrifice Man can offer himself too. Making so not to gain an extra merit but so he can travel alongside Christ on the road to renewing his nature and to his elevation from deterioration. The sacrifice by which Man receives communion in the Eucharist does not have a meritorious effect, but an ontologically restorative one. These are theological reflections that both Casel and Stăniloae share. The Eucharistic sacrifice fulfils the fact that Christ descends on the altar as sacrifice in order to communicate with the believers so that they assume this state. At the same time He is in a continuous state of glorifying the Father as a man, but in a disposition in which he wants to attract all men.48 The permanent state of sacrifice of Christ The doctrines of Dom Casel and Father Stăniloae join on the subject

with him, and causes a depreciation of the Eucharist as sacrifice, estranging the faithful from the liturgical action and weakening the contact between the faithful and Christ. 47 O. Casel, The Mystery of the Christian Worship, p. 14. Paraphrasing the Apostolic Constitutions V, 6, 8, Casel says that the baptism does not only involve an image of Christ’s death, but that His death becomes reality in the faithful, that it is accomplished in him in a mystical way, under the external image of the sacrament: the martyr who dies for Christ without baptism, “he dies by experience of Christ, the others in type (typos)”; Ibidem, p. 16. It is trough the mysteries that the Christian is not anymore as like he was when came to the world, but a transformed man, a divinized man, regenerated by God. The Christian becomes an adopted son of God and he carries the life of God within him. “As a member of the High- Priest, Christ, he is himself Christus, an anointed one; he is a priest who may sacrifice to God the Father, a sacrifice which through Christ becomes uniquely acceptable and accepted.”, Ibidem, p. 19. 48 D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 84.

64 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology of the permanent state of sacrifice of the resurrected Lord. There are a few differences between the two, but still significant ones. Casel talks about the sacrificial state of Christ in heaven, the state in which the resurrected Lord remains in order to be shared by the believers but, unlike Stăniloae, he does not make a connection between the sacrifice of Christ and His eternity. The Romanian theologian developed a lot on the mystical dimension of sacrifice, in the sense that the sacrifice does not bring some advantages and benefits but it has a transformative power. Our true sacrifice is always in connection to Christ’s sacrifice because, “drawing thus to the eternal sacrificial status of Christ as to a source, we also rise, in a state of «spiritual life», which is simultaneously the death of selfishness, the victory over the passions, communion by «compassion» with the Holy Trinity and our fellow”.49 Stăniloae mentions also in this question the words of Jesus at the Last Supper50: “I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom”. According to him, in the Eucharist of all future times, the body and the blood of the Risen Christ will be present, for his resurrection will make the wine new, namely the blood of the Lord, which he will offer to us in this Sacrament, in the Kingdom that starts at the same time as the Church. In addition, without the passion and resurrection, the Last Supper and the Eucharist would not have been possible. Dumitru Stăniloae affirms that: “At the Last Supper, Christ experiences mystically, by anticipation, His death on the cross, but He also experiences the mystical death that occurs subsequently. (…) The Eucharist of the Last or Mystical Supper is the mystical anticipation of the sacrifice on Golgotha and of the Resurrection. This is the proof that, at the Mystical Supper, Christ experienced His sacrifice and resurrection in a mystical way, just as He will experience them in the Eucharist of the Church, so as to imprint them on our body and blood as well.” 51 The Eucharist is the Lord’s presence in the reality of his death and glory. He also continually offers His death on the heavenly altar. Our Eucharist is the true representation of the real and continual sacrifice offered once for all

49 D. Stăniloae, “Liturgie, participation au sacrifice du Christ, spiritualité”, in: Achille M. Triacca, Alessandro Pistoia (ed), Liturgie, Spiritualité, Cultures, Conférences Saint-Serge, Paris, 29 juin-2 juillet 1982, Rome 1983, p. 282. 50 Luke, 22:18, Matthew 26:29 and Mark 14:25. 51 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 85. The underlining belongs to the author.

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on the earth – on Golgotha – and perpetually presented for us in eternity.52 Christ continues His sacrifice on the altars to attract men mystically in his death, so that they can communicate. By the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Lord it is maintained continuously in the Church, in his Mystical Body, the event of the mystical death with Christ. And since the sacrifice of the Lord in heaven is inseparable from his resurrected state, the event of the Resurrection also persists in the Church and by that the action of deification53; because in the Mystical Body of Christ all the faithful participate to the fruits of the liturgical sacrifice. Christ sacrifices himself constantly inside of the Mystical Body of the Church and nourishes the Church with his sacrificed body to maintain and always increase the divine life in it. The Eucharistic body, the deified body of the Lord, maintains his Mystical Body as food. For Odo Casel, during the Mass, the redemptive action of Christ becomes present, every day, before us. After his bloody sacrifice on the Cross, the risen Lord is glorious and returned to the Father, the world is saved, and death defeated, the Kingdom prepared. Dom Casel also accentuates that: “Now, the glorified Christ continues his sacrifice in heaven and for eternity. Eternally, in ineffable bliss, he stands before the Father, presenting his glorious wounds; «ever liveth», he constantly intercedes for us: truly «high priest forever» – sacerdos in aeternum”.54 Odo Casel is stating an idea that places him in the question of the continual sacrifice of the Lord, in a position, other than the one of Father Stăniloae: “Mass cannot therefore be the sacrifice of heaven adapted to the condition of the Church, nor can it be referred to a heavenly sacrifice in the strict sense, since the sacrificial act of Christ was accomplished on the cross. However, from the sacrifice the acceptance, the glorification and the achieving of the goal persist eternally”.55 What is very important to Stăniloae is the connection between the Eucharistic sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Lord’s Supper and the everlasting sacrifice he brings for us in heaven. And what is strongly needed according to Stăniloae, is the necessity to develop the idea of the state of sacrifice in which

52 D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 102. 53 Ibidem, p. 106. 54 O. Casel, Le mystère de l’Eglise, textes tirés des écrits et conférences de Dom Odo Casel choisis, groupés et présentés par madame Théophora Schneider moniale de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Herstelle, collection: In lumine fidei, Tours 1965, p. 229. 55 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 174.

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Christ is in heaven: “The Eucharistic sacrifice is a real sacrifice, even if there is no destruction or no momentary offering (because He is already in heaven in a state of sacrifice, and continually offers himself to the Father in heaven). In the Eucharist the Saviour does not again offer His sacrifice on the cross to God, because by bringing it once visibly, thereafter he brings it continuously in heaven, so that he is the unchecked sacrifice for our sins. The Eucharistic sacrifice is the same that the Lord brought at the Holy Supper and the same he brings permanently in heaven, so all these sacrifices are one and the same. Being present on the altar, Christ descends from heaven onto earth, and by our communion he raises us to heaven”.56 In general lines, Stăniloae agrees with Casel’s thinking, the only complaint being that the German theologian does not talk about the state of Christ’s sacrifice in heaven. This also has consequences for the theological understanding of Christ always continuing his state of sacrifice, regardless of the Eucharist celebration and the communion of the faithful. The serious investigation of the Romanian theologian over the doctrine of Casel is acknowledgeable also in a footnote displaying the considerations of Stăniloae on the Benedictine father’s theology of sacrifice. Stăniloae said in an almost Caselian key that at the base of our mystical union with God lies the mystical death and resurrection of Christ to which we have communion in the sacraments. Stăniloae confirms that Casel calls the death in continuity of the Lord a mystical death, but reminds us that he is not taking his explanation to the end. He cites Casel’s idea, and gives him due, on the Christ becoming Pneuma by the action of the Holy Spirit that we should also cross in a mystical way.57 According to Stăniloae, Casel talks about a sacramental death, determining by this the Passion of the Lord in heaven as passage to the glorifying resurrection and the stay in Father’s right as an eternal priest. Stăniloae agrees further with Casel on the fact that the sacrament is to be understood as a union with God by suffering and rising. A unity with the transfigured Lord would be insufficient, because the Christian has to die

56 D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 95. It is not by the divine mode of existence that Christ was in the state of sacrifice at the Supper. It is not with the divinity that Christ sacrificed himself, but with the humanity, at the Supper as now in heaven. 57 “By his passion the Lord became pneuma; accordingly, we too have been filled with pneuma through the mystical passion in baptism and the spiritual resurrection which flowed from it: we have become spiritual men, pneumatikoi”, O. Casel, Das christliche Kultmysterium, Regensburg 1935, p. 34, in: D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 99, footnote 107.

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first to the sin and the world in imitation and in the strength of the crucified Lord. Stăniloae agrees with Casel when he wants to show that Man can reach perfection only in stages; with Christ by his side, starting from his death, reliving His own death and giving him first and foremost the energy of His state. And Stăniloae concludes: “But when he wants to explain what this death of Christ together with Man consists of, Odo Casel does not cross so clearly and surely. He only says that in general it is a mystical death, adding that it is a sacramental death. But identifying the mystical death with the sacramental death leaves the impression that Christ would not sacrifice in heaven when there is no communion with him in the sacraments”.58 To Stăniloae the Eucharist is called mystic sacrifice because it represents this fathomless mystery of the continuous death of the Christ, who is inseparable of his resurrecting state. It is an ontic death that “is not beneath the death that happened on Golgotha whose uninterrupted continuation it stands to represent”.59 According to Casel’s doctrine the only sacrifice of the eternal salvation is the sacrifice on the cross with its acceptance and consecration by the Resurrection, the Ascension and Seating on the right of the Father.60 Nevertheless, the same as in the observation made by Father Stăniloae, Dom Casel prefers not to advance in an explication regarding the state of Christ’s sacrifice in heaven. He speaks of the immolation of Christ who can be found in heaven on the right of the Father, mystical immolation that favours the mystical immolation and resurrection of the Church in its own mystic and symbolic celebration. Dom Casel gives an eternal value to the reality of the sacrifice, but he appears reluctant, however, to turn to a doctrine as that of Stăniloae, who states this sacrifice takes place continuously in heaven. On the words of Casel the everlasting and eternal sacrifice of Christ stays in connection to the sacrifice on the Cross being protected for eternity but should not be associated with the eternity of the Lord; the permanent reality of the eternal sacrifice having sense especially in correlation to the Liturgy’s celebration. Stăniloae maintains that Christ is the one who by his own will and in a constant manner stays in a continuous sacrificial condition so that we can always have Him at our reach in order to participate in this state, to put us in

58 D. Stăniloae, Dumnezeiasca Euharistie, p. 99, footnote 107. 59 Ibidem, p. 97. 60 O. Casel, Faites ceci en, p. 170.

68 The Eucharistic Sacrifice in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Theology a sacrificial state. Actually Christ constantly wants to attract us in this state of sacrifice and praise of the Father and to unite with Him in love. Man receives Christ’s permanent condition of sacrifice in the sacraments of the Church and in an ultimate manner during the Eucharist. For the Romanian theologian this state is the heavenly source of all the sacraments and most of all of the Eucharistic Liturgy and it is as a result of this state that we can advance to an always-growing state of perfection.61 The paradoxical union between the continuous state of sacrifice of Christ and his immortal condition is understood by Stăniloae as a single state that unites two others, that of the death compared to life, which is in conformity with the world, life that falls into death and that of the eternal life of God. Those who unite themselves to God, in Christ, share this unique lifestyle. 62 Stăniloae insists on the relation between the quality of the Great Priest and his eternal reality of sacrifice, as argument for the permanence of this state of Christ: “If he constantly remains the Great Priest, He also needs to remain in his permanent condition of sacrifice. At the same time He is also the supreme altar per se. Being the highest altar, nearest to God, the closer spiritual place to God and his holiness, who or what can be closer to God than his own Son who became a man for the purpose of giving himself in supreme sacrifice to the Father in the name of all his brothers in humanity? He is the higher Great Priest; the altar, perfect sacrifice who can drive his brothers in humanity to perfection, to the highest proximity to God, as adopted sons of God and brothers of His monogenic Son. If their perfection can be achieved and last forever, it is because of the eternal participation in sacrifice of the Son of God turned into man.”63

61 D. Stăniloae, Liturgie, participation, p. 282. 62 Ibidem, pp. 291-292: “Offering thus himself to the Father and dying thus to the life that is consistent with the world, but in the same time filled with the Father’s life, Christ entice with him and presents to the Father also those who are dead with him to the life consistent with the world, so that they could be filled in their turn with Father’s life. In fact, assembled in the Son, they appropriate his Son’s love for the Father defeating their selfishness, restraining their passion and attachment to the world, fulfilling with the divine life in communion with the Son and the Father, and feeling themselves united through compassion to their fellow beings through the power of compassion received from the Son”. 63 D. Stăniloae, Liturgie, participation, p. 285.

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The reference to saint Eutychius64, patriarch of Constantinople, who speaks clearly of a permanent offering or of a permanent oblation of the Lord after the Resurrection, as basis for the Eucharist, is articulated by Stăniloae with Saint Luke’s Gospel65 that leads us to understand that the Lord, after the Resurrection on earth, also celebrated the Eucharist as a visible presentation of his oblation state from the invisible level.66 The visible reality of the Lord’s oblation moves to an invisible offering once the resurrected Christ gives himself in communion to the disciples. The eschatological aspect is obviously taken in consideration by Stăniloae who confirms a communion to the sacrificed and resurrected Christ in the future life, a communion that is anticipated by the actual communion to the same Christ. In this everlasting communion the economy of salvation is finalized, as an eternal union of men with God and Christ. In the eternal life the Eucharist as coronation of the divine economy, will be this accomplished union between the creation and Christ, in whom “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) .67 Dom Casel, in his turn, had shown that the Mystery has the power to present us a heavenly reality. In the cult, obviously, we need to represent this reality by using symbols that ease the access to it. By accomplishing the rite, the believers possess the reality of heaven, the Liturgy being the symbol of the heavenly reality. And the reality Casel speaks of is the sacrifice of Christ: “The saving act of Christ, his sacrifice, is in fact a heavenly act, which means that his reality cannot be accomplished on earth, but in the divine sphere. As by his death and resurrection, the Lord left the earth and rose toward the Father, also the Mystery whose exterior celebration is accomplished in the present time, he raises us over time into the Kingdom of God and Christ, into the eternal divinity. The sacrifice of

64 Saint Eutychius, On Pascha and the Holy Eucharist, PG 86, 2, col. 1395-1397. “Saint Eutychius made distinctions between the mystical sacrifice of the Lord at the Last Supper, the real death of Christ that occurred afterward, and the completion and perfection of His mystical death that began on the day of the Resurrection. We realize the first mystical death of Christ in baptism, and the second death occurs, with or without martyrdom, in our own actual death. But the completed and perfected Paschal mystery, which St. Eutychius gives us to understand as connected to the Eucharist, is effected in us on the day of the Resurrection”, in: D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 77. 65 “Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight”, Luke 24;30-31. 66 D. Stăniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, p. 88. 67 Ibidem, p. 105.

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the Lord began on earth with the passion and death on the cross, but it ends in heaven. It is only by his elevation towards the Father that Christ became the fully devoted offering. By his death, he enters the Temple of heaven where he presents himself to the Father as a victim. If we, in our turn, want to attain life in God, we need to follow the same road as the Lord, during the Liturgy. To pass by death, from the mortal existence to the immortal one near the Father; it is there where we can find our true sacrifice. It is not accomplished on earth, but in heaven, in the Kingdom of God.”68 Conclusions In the space of the Orthodox theology as well as in the Catholic, the sacrificial character of the Eucharist was never doubted, even if during different periods of the theological history the Eucharistic sacrifice has known various explications. In determining the nature of sacrifice of the Eucharist, the Orthodox and the Catholic theologians crossed several stages of understanding, talking about the “sacrifice of the body of Christ” in the Liturgy of the Church. The Liturgy was considered also “an expiatory sacrifice for the living and dead”. But the theories of the offering of Christ’s body in the Liturgy have been overcome in the modern theology, the Eucharist being considered essentially as a thanksgiving sacrifice. According to the liturgical texts, both in the oriental and occidental liturgies, the Eucharistic sacrifice is experienced as “a bloodless sacrifice”, as “a sacrifice of praise” and as “a reasonable sacrifice”. As did Dom Casel, Father Stăniloae developed his thinking on the sacrifice with constant reference to the treasure of the liturgical Tradition, to the Scriptures and to the Fathers. The dialogue with Dom Casel and the Catholic theology also represented a significant contribution to the clarification of the aspects concerning the Eucharistic sacrifice. Both theologians, Dumitru Stăniloae and Odo Casel, used for their liturgical interpretations the Divine Liturgy or the Mass. The one and permanent sacrifice of Christ with its ever-present “matriculation” in the life of the Church is made present in the offering of the Eucharistic prayer. By the Eucharistic celebration the sacrifice that Jesus Christ offered on the cross is situated in the centre of Christian life. Through his theological doctrine, the Mysterienlehre, Odo Casel defined as sacrifice the liturgical celebration, in the form of memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection. When the Church

68 O. Casel, Le mystère de l’Eglise, p. 245.

71 Florentin Adrian Crăciun

celebrates the memorial action, the gift that She presents transforms in the sacrificial body of Christ. The only sacrifice offered by the Lord on the cross is actualized hic et nunc. Both Casel and Stăniloae worked on emphasizing the participation of the Church in the sacrifice of Christ. They underlined the “sacramental” character of the sacrifice, the inseparable bonding between the sacrifice and the sacrament in the Eucharist. Dumitru Stăniloae and Odo Casel worked also on the mystical dimension of the Eucharistic sacrifice as a transformative reality given by the mystical state of death and resurrection of the Lord. The real mystical death is a death that includes a union of Man to God with a view to the Resurrection. Dumitru Stăniloae emphasized in the modern theology the permanent state of sacrifice of Christ in heaven, a state of constant self-sacrifice to the Father and compassionate sensitivity to others. In the Eucharist we are attracted in the act of his death and mystical resurrection, which is the continuation of his historical death and resurrection. After the death on the cross, He extends this state of sacrifice by surrendering His humanity in total and also in a spiritual way to the Father so that it may be entirely filled with the Godhead and so that with Him, we could advance in divinization by receiving in the Eucharist his body in this state. Inter alia the Orthodox and the Catholic theologians underlined the sacrificial-sacramental aspect of the Eucharistic by showing the dimensions of the sacrificial meal. A considerable mark was also left by Father Stăniloae by showing the implications in the sacrificial reality of the relationship between the resurrected Son of God and the Holy sanctifying Spirit and by specifying the life making relation, through the sacrifice, with the Holy Trinity and the eschatological dimension of the sacrifice by the communion to the sacrificed and resurrected Christ in the future life, communion that is anticipated by the actual communion to the same Christ.