Pints With Aquinas - Why Sacrifice is SO Important | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Is sacrifice just offering up something to make someone else's life better? Theology makes it sound more complex. So, what is Sacrifice? How is the Mass a sacrifice? 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar in the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines for the Aquinas. In this episode I would like to talk about sacrifice. Why? Well, I think we have some intuition or some insight into what sacrifice is. Certainly we use the word often enough. It's like I need to give something up or I need to offer something up

in order to make someone else's life better. Okay, so it's like, listen, I like mint chocolate chip ice cream, he likes mint chocolate chip ice cream, there's only one portion left, I need to sacrifice my love of desire for an enjoyment of mint chocolate chip ice cream so that he can, you know, partake. So we have some kind of insight or intuition as to what it means, but we hear it described in theological conversations, and it seems like it's more complicated than that. So let's get into the details, so that way we can appreciate what sacrifice is,

how Christ offers sacrifice, and then how the mass can be described as a sacrifice. Here we go. All right, so as you might know, the question of sacrifice has been somewhat controversial in the last century because, you know, people in their approach to the Most Holy Eucharist will make out this dichotomy between, on the one hand, you know, like the Eucharist is like a celebration, a meal, a Thanksgiving, or on the other hand, the Eucharist is an oblation, an offering, a sacrifice, a penitential act.

Okay. And it's often that these two are pitted against each other and that those who insist upon sacrifice are somehow insufficiently appreciative of the way in which Christ has changed our lives and changed our worship, such is the caricature. Okay, so I think that's a caricature, but I want to give you the tools with which to understand sacrifice, Christ's sacrifice, the sacrifice of the mass. So we'll just be brief, or as brief as I can be, which is not that brief. Okay, so what is a sacrifice? A sacrifice is an offering in which the victim or the host is changed in some way, shape, or form.

It doesn't necessarily have to be what first comes to mind, like animal, blood, guts, God. But it will involve some change. That might be a blessing, that might be the partaking of a meal, it might be an immolation, which is the fancy word used to describe when the animal is killed, its blood drained, its fat burned, and maybe the rest of the host itself is burned, okay? But the purpose for which is to cultivate communion with God. All right? That is the idea of sacrifice. It is supposed to be in some way, shape, or form pleasing to God God and as a result of which it should introduce us into a more perfect communion. Okay? So sacrifice is in effect

a form of offering, a form of oblation, but it's that most demanding form of offering or that form of offering which most exactingly lays claim to our whole selves. Okay? So the prime example here in the Old Testament would be the whole burnt offering. Perhaps you've heard it said that there are various offerings in the Old Testament, and in some cases you give part to God, usually the blood and the fat, part to the priests for their maintenance, their upkeep, and then maybe the person who offers sacrifice himself can take some of it home with him, or he might share a meal with the priest at the moment. There is one sacrifice though or one offering in which the entirety of the host or the victim is given to God burnt up whole on the altar you see where this is going so that's the whole

burnt offering sometimes called the Holocaust offering okay so that's a helpful background as to what sacrifice is it's a form of offering it's a helpful background as to what sacrifice is. It's a form of offering. It's a form of oblation made to God, pleasing to God so as to cultivate communion. And I can say by way of some re-summation, some of something, that it's an act of religion. All right. When we hear religion, we think of a religion, like a faith construct or a faith practice. But here I just mean like the virtue, which is a kind of justice that we show towards God.

It's like, okay, God's our creator, He's our end, we owe Him our whole life, and so we render that whole life back to Him by a kind of submission, subjection, worship, etc. Okay? So a sacrifice is an act of religion. So then, seen in this setting, we can appreciate how Christ offers a sacrifice, right? He offers Himself to God as pleasing to God. And you think to yourself, why in the world is that pleasing? That Christ would permit himself to be killed by sinful men?

Well, it's pleasing not because God's wrath is there by sated and he needs to visit his anger on an innocent host or an innocent victim, but because God Himself wants to make the offering, God Himself wants to make the sacrifice as testimony to what? To His love, which is ultimately most pleasing. All right? So, it's important that a sacrifice have this kind of physical embodiment, this material embodiment, that it be bloody in the case of Christ because that shows, in most ostensive fashion, the purpose or what really like motivates and

animates this act, namely love and the showing of love, like the demonstrating of love. Okay. So God wants to make an offering of himself and perfect charity to show what is pleasing or to do what is pleasing for the fulfillment of all righteousness and to afford us an entry into or to afford us a share in his sacrifice. Okay So we've all been in a kind of position

I suppose where we've offended another being and it's another person being we've offended another person and we want to show our depth Of sorrow so it's like it's not sufficient just to hear from that individual you are forgiven done deal We like want to do something. We want to make it up. We want to make it better. And the only way in which to make it better is to show our love, but to show our love in a way that might hurt, right? That lays claim to us, that places demands on us. It's like, listen, I'm so sorry that I didn't fill up your gas tank and that you ran out of gas on the way to run errands because you had just assumed that the same amount of gas with which you left it was the amount of gas that was there and you didn't know that I stole your car for a period of four hours.

So I'm going to fill up your tank, right, and I'm also going to bring it to get detailed. I'm so sorry. All right, so like it's got a cost, it's got to give, you know? Okay, so sacrifice is informed by the Spirit, and Christ gives everything, right? To show how much God loves us, alright? So how much God wants us to be with Him in communion. So then, you're like, fine, that's biblical. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ,

and precisely those terms, in terms of sacrifice. But what I'm concerned about is when you all, that is Catholics, start using the word sacrifice to describe the mass. Okay, what gives? Because like, all right, in the Old Testament sacrifices had to be repeated because they were insufficient to deal with sin and insufficient to deal with punishment. But like, Christ offers a sacrifice that is super abundant, that is super excelling, that is more than enough. Like when we read, you know, like in the letter of the Hebrews it says it five times over, but he has no need like other high priests to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people.

He did this once for all when he offered up himself. So there's a kind of Protestant worry about the Mass that if we call it a sacrifice or if we celebrate it as if it were a sacrifice that we're somehow diminishing the one saving sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're somehow derogating from it or we're somehow doubting in its efficacy. You see how this works? Well, rather than thinking about the sacrifice of the Mass as somehow detracting from the sacrifice of Christ, we can think about it as extending the sacrifice of Christ.

So the purpose of the Mass is to represent or commemorate and to apply or dispense the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Well, because we want to be in saving contact with Christ and with His mysteries, because He took human flesh so as to meet us in that flesh. And so God, in His loving kindness, institutes the sacraments precisely so as to meet us in that flesh. And so God, in His loving kindness, institutes the sacraments precisely so as to meet us in that flesh. So by faith, the efficacy of His mysteries is applied to us spiritually, and by sacrament, the efficacy of His mysteries is applied to us bodily. So in the sacraments, we can touch the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We can touch the mysteries through which He passed, because those past things, or those things no longer available to us in the same way, are made present, alright? They are re-presented, they are commemorated. And then, our Lord Jesus Christ merits our salvation, you know, in His passion, death, and resurrection, in His saving sacrifice. But, He applies the merits of his salvation, he dispenses the merits of his salvation one by one. So he has lived his sacred history, but he wants to live his sacred history in each of us such that our lives become in turn a sacred history.

And so the sacraments facilitate this by applying or dispensing the merits of his mysteries. So when we celebrate the mass as a sacrifice, what we are effectively doing is commemorating and representing, as it were, on the one hand, and then applying or dispensing, as it were, on the other hand. Okay, so what we have there is not a new sacrifice, but it's a new presence of the same sacrifice. It's an extension of the logic of the incarnation

of the mysteries of the life of Christ. What transpired in the first century in bloody manner is represented slash commemorated, and then applied dispensed in unbloody manner here in the 21st century. Okay? So what we're talking about is, in effect, the same sacrifice. And it's not by reason of doubt that we, like, look back to his sacrifice, grant it's cool but insufficient, and then celebrate the Mass with a kind of nervous anxiety. Rather, the Mass is his gift so as to accommodate our humanity, which is on the way, and which will remain on the way until such time as we pass from this life.

And so God, cognizant of the fact that we are temporal beings, discursive beings, progressive beings, gives us His sacrifice in such a way that we can continue to unpack it or unfold it or use it throughout the course of our lives. So you see various arguments in the tradition as to why it's the same sacrifice. One of the ones that's quoted most often is that of St. Augustine. He says, listen, let's just look at the priest, the victim, the person to whom, and the persons for whom the first sacrifice is offered, the sacrifice of Christ. He says, Christ the priest offers himself, Christ the victim, to God on behalf of the people. He says, now let's look at the mass. What's going on there? Christ the priest recalled that priests, when ordained, are capacitated to act in persona Christi capetis, in the person of Christ the head. So Christ the priest offers Christ the victim.

So under the appearance of bread and wine is made present the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, so it can be offered in sacrifice. You think about it's more clear in certain liturgical gestures and less clear in other liturgical gestures, but when the priest, you know, like, raises the consecrated host, when he raises the consecrated chalice, he raises them to God. He's not, like, showing them to the people. He's offering them. He's offering the prayers and sacrifices of the people to God in this perfect sacrifice

of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then God dispenses those divine gifts to his people because the priesthood is an office of mediatorship and the priest offers prayers and sacrifices and dispenses divine gifts and the mass facilitates that encounter. So Christ is the priest, Christ is the victim, it is the same God to whom the sacrifice is offered and is the same people for whom the sacrifice is offered. So St. Augustine said, we're talking about the same sacrifice here. Alright, and we'll have arguments throughout the tradition as to why that holds or as to why that's the case, but there you have, in effect, the heart of the argument. Okay? So then one last point, a kind of throwaway point, but a cool point nonetheless. I think this helps us to appreciate

some of the Protestant nervousness with the cult of the saints. I don't say this by way of like accusation but I say this by way of shedding the light. And a lot of this is taken from Orestes Brownson's book, Saint Worship, or a series of essays that has since been published as a book which I found super helpful. So Orestes Brownson says traditionally, you know, you can look here at the Greek language or at the Latin language, we identified two main kinds of worship, which are different, not just in degree, but in kind. There are certain kinds of worship which are due to God alone and can be assigned to God alone.

These we refer to typically as Lotria, alright? And this would be the thing like adoration or sacrifice, for instance, the type of worship that is rendered to God alone. The other we refer to as dualia. This encompasses things like veneration and intercession. In the Catholic practice, this can be ascribed to human beings like the saints, or you can even ask your friends to pray for you. You recognize this difference in the way we pray. So for instance, when you're offering up a litany, you'll ask God the Father to have mercy on you,

God the Son to have mercy on you, God the Holy Spirit to have mercy on you, Holy Trinity One God have mercy on us, and then when you switch to Holy Mary, Mother of God, we say pray for us. All right, so we ask God to have mercy on us, typically in litany prayers, and we ask the saints to pray for us, which just indicates a kind of different shape of worship.

Now, when it comes to Lotria, the most concrete expression that we as Catholics have is the offering of the Mass, the sacrifice of the Mass, okay? And that roots us and kind of grounds us in the highest of worship. And as a result of which it helps to differentiate our worship. Because we recognize that you wouldn't offer the Mass to like a saint. You offer the Mass to God the Father. Who is it that offers? It's God the Son. In whom is it offered? It's God the Holy Spirit. So a Trinitarian prayer, but clearly, Latria. And you know, it ought to be recognized socially, culturally, that there's a real difference between the offering of the Mass and then like the praying of a novena to a favorite

saint. But, with the Protestant Reformation, right, you have a change to the sacramental theology and effectively an abolition of the Mass as we know it, and you lose that most concrete expression of Latria. And so you kind of lose something of your hold on the distinctiveness of Lotria and then there's a kind of threat that all of worship would become a kind of undifferentiated expression of love, affection, fidelity, and it becomes necessary to really push back on the type of worship which we call dualia, right, veneration and intercession and so

there's a real discomfort there with the cult of the saints because it's seen as necessary to safeguard the distinctiveness of God as worshipable. So traditionally we'd say that worship is just declaring something worthy, declaring something excellent and that you have two main expressions, lotria and dualia, lotria to God alone, dualia to others and that the mass is the most concrete expression of Lotria as a sacrifice, right, as an act of adoration. And so it roots us in that distinctive worship and helps us to differentiate between it and other kinds of worship.

But when we lose this, there's a kind of destabilization which we see work its way through the tradition, and as a result of which, there's a kind of risk that if we were to continue with the cults of the Saints then it would cause serious problems in marking out God as distinct. So you can see like I don't say that by way of angry polemic but just like by way of explanation or shedding the light and a lot of that again is taken from Orestes Bronson. So then when we return to the Mass, the Mass is a sacrifice right because we need to continually offer Christ's sacrifice. Not because it's insufficient, but precisely because it's super abundant.

And in being super abundant, it is accommodated to our condition as human beings on the way to God. And in order to be well on the way or to be on the way well, we mean to make use of the means that he supplies for our attaining to the end. And the best means is the Mass as a sacrifice. Boom. That's what I wanted to share. All right.

This is Pons of the Quinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, get sweet email updates when other things come out. Also, I contribute to a podcast called God's Plaining with Four of the Dominican Friars. And it's sweet. I don't know if we've talked about the sacrifice of the Mass recently, but we have certainly talked about the Mass quite a bit. And we had like a five or six part series on it, so you might look that up and profit from it.

And then I'm writing a book about the Eucharist, which is going to contain a chapter on sacrifice. If you would pray for that, I'd be super appreciative because I'm almost done and I'd love to be done done. Oh, one more thought. The Thomistic Institute is hiring for a couple of positions. So check out the Thomistic Institute website if you want to potentially be involved in the Campus Chapters program or in social media outreach. Party on my friends. Oh, do I have one more announcement? I think I do.

We have a men's retreat coming up for God's planning. It's going to be in Brevard, North Carolina the second weekend of August for men up to the age of 40. It's going to be Father Bonaventure and Father Patrick. Okay, I'm done making announcements. Thanks guys for your patience. Know my prayers for you. Please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pius of the Quinas.