I began to read John Stott's book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, this morning. He opens with a brief historical sketch examining the place of preaching in the thought and practice of some of the notable church leaders down through history. I was a little surprised to read this about some of the great Catholic figures in the Middle Ages:

'The Age of Preaching', wrote Charles Smyth, 'dates from the coming of the Friars... The history of the pulpit as we know it begins with the Preaching Friars. They met, and stimulated, a growing popular demand for sermons. They revolutionzed the technique. They magnified the office.' Although Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was a man more of compassionate service than of learning, and insisted that 'our acting and teaching must go together', he was nevertheless 'as committed to preaching as to poverty: "Unless you preach everywhere you go", said Francis, "there is no use to go anywhere to preach." From the very beginning of his ministry, that had been his motto.' His contemporary Dominic (1170-1221) laid even greater emphasis on preaching. Combining personal austerity with evangelistic zeal, he traveled widely in the cause of the gospel, especially in Italy, France and Spain, and organized his 'black friars' into an Order of Preachers. A century later Humbert de Romans (died 1277), one of the finest of Dominican Ministers General, said: 'Christ only once heard Mass...but he laid great stress on preaching.' And a century later still, the great Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena* (1380-1444) made this unexpected statement: 'If of these two things you can do only one – either hear the mass or hear the sermon – you should let the mass go, rather than the sermon... There is less peril for your soul in not hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon' (21-22).

Recognizing, of course, that it is a much more recently composed document, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to exalt the Mass over preaching, in contrast to what the Medieval leaders taught: "The Eucharist is 'the source and summit of the Christian life.' The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it" (par. 1324).

However, despite the declaration on the primacy of the Mass, when you turn to the section of the Catechism that speaks about Scripture, it appears that it is to be viewed on the same level: "For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body" (par. 103), and, "'The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord': both nourish and govern the whole Christian life" (par. 141).

Does this mean, then, that Scripture in and of itself, or perhaps as interpreted and contained in the tradition of the Church is on equal footing with the Mass? Does the nourishment that comes from Scripture come through the preaching of Scripture, or in some other way? Or is the Catechism simply saying that the two are equally important?

Given my limited knowledge of Catholicism I may be missing something simple and obvious on this matter. Therefore, please discuss below.

*On a side note: the story of Bernardino's missionary work on the ever-authoritative Wikipedia page is quite interesting. He seemed to have been something of a medieval Whitefield.

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John P. Burgess, in his book, After Baptism: Shaping the Christian Life, writes the following:

Hunger and thirst...teach us that humans ultimately live in a state of dependence. If we understand them rightly, we have to confess that we receive life as God's gift. Even the energies that we expend in taking care of ourselves and our basic needs are finally sustained by powers and forces beyond ourselves. Every day of our lives, we are dependent on food and drink to keep us alive. We never eat and drink once and for all; we have to eat and drink again and again, and so we continually pray, 'Give us this day, our daily bread.'
 
So too we are dependent on God's grace for our basic identity. We can never simply choose to be whoever we want. Nor will we ever know ourselves well enough to say, 'I finally have it all together. I have no need of God or others.' Dependence on daily bread symbolizes our dependence on God for our life's meaning and purpose. Our baptismal identity, like our physical energies, must be renewed every day. We need daily sustenance in the life to which Christ has called us. For that reason, 'one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God' (Matt. 4:4).
 
This daily sustenance comes to Christians in Word, sacrament, and patterns and rhythyms of life together. God feeds us again and again. God continually renews our capacity to receive Christ's self-giving love and, then, to offer our very selves to God and others. 'Give us this day, our daily bread' is never just a call for physical nourishment, but is also a plea for the bread of heaven that is life in the risen Lord.
 
In the end, Jesus himself must feed us and quench our thirst. He declares, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty' (John 6:35), for 'the water that I will give them will become in them like a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life' (John 4:14). Christians have found this spiritual food and drink whenever they have celebrated the Eucharist. Baptism first marks us in our new identity in Christ, while the Eucharist gives us strength to persist in our baptismal identity, even in the midst of trial and temptation. Baptism sends us into the world, and the Eucharist offers us food and drink for the journey. Baptism tells us who we really are, and the Eucharist deepens and confirms our identity. Font leads to table. The helpless baby we place in God's hands will surely receive the basic nutrition that she needs to live out her baptism (122).

The Eucharist is not just a memorial. Through it Christ sustains us and gives us life. Let us stop starving ourselves of the nourishment he gives.

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I love John Calvin.

What we have so far said of the Sacrament abundantly shows that it was not ordained to be received only once a year—and that, too, perfunctorily, as now is the usual custom. Rather it was ordained to be frequently used among all Christians in order that they might frequently return in memory to Christ's Passion, by such remembrance to sustain and strengthen their faith, and urge themselves to sing thanksgiving to God and to proclaim his goodness; finally, by it to nourish mutual love, and among themselves give witness to this love, and discern its bond in the unity of Christ's body...

Luke relates in The Acts that this was the practice of the apostolic church, when he says that believers '...continued in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers' [Acts 2:42]. Thus it became the unvarying rule that no meeting of the church should take place without the Word, prayers, partaking of the Supper, and almsgiving. That this was the established order among the Corinthians also, we can safely infer from Paul [cf. 1 Cor. 11:20]. And it remained in use for many centuries after...

Plainly this custom which enjoins us to take communion once a year is a veritable invention of the devil, whoever was instrumental in introducing it...The Lord's Table should [be] spread at least once a week for the assembly of Christians, and the promises declared in it should feed us spiritually. None is indeed to be forcibly compelled, but all are to be urged and aroused; also the inertia of indolent people is to be rebuked. All, like hungry men, should flock to such a bounteous repast. Not unjustly, then, did I complain at the outset that this custom was thrust in by the devil's artifice, which, in prescribing one day a year, renders men slothful all the rest of the year.

– Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xvii, 44-46.

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When talking about the assurance of salvation, we often look to Scripture for the promises of God's faithfulness, such as we find in Romans 10:9, or we point to the work of the Holy Spirit in assuring us of our faith (see Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 21). Yet, especially in Reformed circles, we seldom mention the assurance that comes to us in the Lord's Supper. Consider what Herman Bavinck has to say in the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics on the profound nature of the Supper:

Of primary importance in the Lord's Supper is what God does, not what we do. The Lord's Supper is above all a gift of God, a benefit of Christ, a means of communicating his grace. If the Lord's Supper were only a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the true sense. In that case, like prayer, it could only be obliquely and indirectly called a means of grace. The Lord's Supper, however, is on the same level as the Word and baptism and therefore must, like them, be regarded first of all as a message and assurance to us of divine grace.

...[Christ] makes of [the] elements a meal in which the disciples consume his body and blood and thus enter into the most intimate communion with him. This communion does not merely consist in their sitting at one table, but they eat one and the same bread and drink one and the same wine. Indeed, the host here, in granting the signs of bread and wine, offers his own body and blood as nourishment and refreshment for their souls. That is a communion that far surpasses the communion inherent in a memorial meal and an act of confession. It is not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.

...Calvin, accordingly, correctly remarked against Zwingli that the meaning of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood is not exhausted by believing. Believing is a means, a means that is even temporary and destined to become seeing, but the communion with Christ engendered by it goes much deeper and endures forever. It is a mystical union that can only be made somewhat clear to us by the images of the vine and the branch, the head and the body, a bridegroom and his bride, the cornerstone and the building that rests on it. It is this mystical union that is signified and sealed in the Lord's Supper.

Often there seems to be a hesitancy in Reformed circles to say too much about the Lord's Supper for fear of sounding like some of the Lutherans or the Roman Catholics. Yet perhaps the opposite then becomes a problem as well, and they end up saying too little about it. It is not uncommon to hear the charge that the Reformed understand of the Lord's Supper is much more Zwinglian than Calvinist, and while the accusation might not be entirely fair, you can see the warrant for it. When a church holds the Lord's Supper only four or five times a year and goes to great lengths to emphasize the symbolic and memorial nature of it, it severely diminishes the significance of it.

But the invitation to the table is an invitation to enter into intimate communion with Christ. It is an invitation to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8). It is an invitation to be united with Christ when physically partaking of the elements. It is an invitation to have a foretaste of the coming marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-10). It is an invitation to receive—not just to remember—His grace.

If you do not believe that the Supper actually does something in the first place, there is no impetus to frequently come to the table. But when you truly understand the Supper as a means of grace, how could you not run to the table at Christ's invitation to receive that grace as often as you can?

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In the discussion on the ecclesiology of the early church in J.N.D. Kelly's book, Early Christian Doctrines, the following observation is made:

The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. Malachi's prediction (Mal. 1:10ff.) that the Lord would reject the Jewish sacrifices and instead would have a 'pure offering' made to Him by the Gentiles in every place was early seized upon by Christians as a prophecy of the Eucharist (196).

I found this quite interesting for two reasons: first, I have never heard this line of thought before, and was surprised to see that many of the Church Fathers thought this way. Kelly here references the discussions of the Eucharist in the Didache and in the writings of Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin as all understanding the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Justin makes reference to the prophecy in Malachi several times in his writings, directly applying it to the Eucharist.

Second, my library does not contain a lot of commentaries, but in the two older ones I have the discussion of this passage in Malachi says absolutely nothing about the sacrament. I was not surprised, and do not consider this passage to apply to the Eucharist. But I am interested to know if there are any commentaries out there that make this point or allude to it. What do your commentaries say? Pull them off the shelf and let me know.

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