How the Mass Relates to Christ’s Return

“But I say to you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father” (Matt. 26:29).

This word of Christ too has been strangely neglected. St. Luke places the passage after the offering of the last of the Passover cups and before the words that actually institute the Eucharist. Jesus seems to be gazing through and be­yond the hour of the Last Supper to the coming of the Kingdom. He is referring to the future eternal fulfillment that lies somewhere behind the inevitable death toward which, in obedience to His Father’s will, He now must stride. The passage tinges the whole memorial with a sin­gular radiance which seems largely to have faded from the Christian consciousness.

It might be objected that this word was perhaps im­portant to Jesus personally, but not for His eucharistic memorial; that before His death, the Lord’s vision, grave and knowing, reached across the future to the end of all things; that this thought was part of the subjective ex­perience of the hour, but it has nothing to do with the sacred act which henceforth is to stand at the core of Christian life.

But
what St. Paul writes of the establishment of the Eucharist overturns all such
theories:

For I myself have received from the Lord (what I also delivered to you), that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks broke, and said, “This is my body which shall be given up for you; do this in remem­brance of me.” In like manner also the cup, after He had supped, saying, “This cup is the new cov­enant in my blood; do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink this cup, you pro­claim the death of the Lord until He comes. (1 Cor. 11:23-26)

Can anyone still speak seriously of a mere expression of Jesus’ passing mood? Specifically St. Paul connects the last things with the celebration of the Lord’s memorial, and we must not forget that the Apostle’s letters are at least as early as, some of them earlier than, the Gospels, and that they voice the powerful religious consciousness of the first congregations.

From all this it is apparent that when the
Lord in­stituted the Eucharist things appeared before His inner vision more or
less as follows: He knew that on the next day He would die. He knew,
furthermore, that one day He would return; although “of that day and hour no
one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father only” (Matt. 24:36).
For the period between these two events He was establishing the memorial of His
redemp­tory death. This was to be the strength and comfort of the oppressed
(indeed, of all who looked forward to His com­ing), and a constant reminder of
His glorious promise. Compared with that fulfillment, passing time with all its
self-importance is really only marking time before the es­sential. Holy Mass,
then, is distinctly eschatological, and we should be much more concerned about
our forgetful­ness of the fact.

But what is this eschatology that we meet so fre­quently in the newer literature? It is that which pertains to the last things, and it exists in a natural form in our consciousness of the fundamental uncertainty of exis­tence. By this we do not mean any superficial uncertainty connected with our personal existence or with general existence, although this is of course part of it, but the underlying uncertainty of all existence.

There are some individuals who know nothing of this. In fact, it
has been ignored by all in certain periods. For them the world is an unshakable
reality — the reality, es­sential and self-understood. Everything in it is
regulated by a definite order of things; everything has its obvious causes and
sure results, its clear, universally recognized value. But at certain periods
all this changes. Usage seems to lose its validity. The whole structure of
human society is shaken.

Then accepted standards of work and propriety, the
canons of taste and the rules of behavior grow uncertain. It is no longer
possible to plan the future, for everything has become fluent. A feeling of
universal danger creeps into man’s consciousness and establishes itself there,
re­sulting in forms of experience peculiar to persons of a certain sensibility.
What seems self-understood to those firmly implanted in action and property
appears to these singularly perceptive natures as thoroughly questionable. For
them the existing order of things, indeed of life it­self, seems but loosely,
precariously balanced across the chaos of existence and its uncontrollable
forces. All rules seem temporary and threaten to give way at any moment. Things
themselves appear now shadowy, now ominous.

It is easy to reply that such feelings are
typical of the emotional crises that accompany historical turning points and
periods of personal turmoil; or that they are the reactions of an unsound, if
not abnormal nature. This is possible; but it is also possible that they
express some­thing completely normal: the truth. The sense of the uncertainty
of existence is just as well founded as that of its opposite — that of the
certainty of existence. Only the two forms of experience together contain the
whole truth. These vague sensations so difficult to express and still more
difficult to interpret receive their clear signifi­cance from revelation, which
warns us that all is certainly not well with the world; that on the contrary,
human na­ture is profoundly disordered; that its seeming health and stability
are questionable precisely because they conceal that disorder.

It revealed itself openly when the Creator
and Lord of the world “came unto His own; and His own received Him not” (John
1:11). Instead, they did everything possi­ble to destroy Him. True, His death
did redeem the world; within His love a new, real protection and an eternally
stable order did come into being; nevertheless, the stain of the world’s
turning on its God and crushing Him remains.

He whom the world attempted to destroy will come again, to end it and to judge it. No one knows when, but come He will. Although we cannot imagine such a thing, the world will perish, and not by its own folly or from any natural cause. Christ will put an end to it in the age and hour “which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:7).

Thus Christian existence must face the constant possibility of a sudden end, irrespective of life’s apparent security, order, and promise. Now we begin to see what those sensations of uncertainty really mean: threat from the periphery of time, from Christ, who will come “to judge the living and the dead,” as we say in the Credo. The memorial of His suffering and redemption, which He placed at the heart of our present existence, is oriented toward that Coming. It reminds us how things really stand with us.

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This article is adapted from a chapter in Fr. Guardini’s Meditations Before Mass. It is available as an ebook or paperback from Sophia Institute Press.

You can also find other works by Romano Guardini here on Catholic Exchange. To read more of his reflections on the Holy Mass, check out “The Stillness and Silence of Mass.”