The Most Holy Sacrament
The Nicene Apostolic Church acknowledges and affirms the deep and abiding wonder of Christianity. Its teaching in regard to the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be summarized as follows:
By sacrifice man offers himself and his life to God, his sovereign Lord and Creator; by the Sacraments God gives Himself, He gives us a participation of his own divine life, to man. In sacrifice a stream of homage flows from man to the eternal source of all being; by the sacraments grace, sanctification, descends in copious flood upon the souls of men. This twofold stream from God to man and from man to God, flows swift and strong in the Eucharist, Sacrament and Sacrifice. As the culminating act in the life of Jesus Christ on earth was the sacrifice He offered on Calvary to His eternal Father, so the central act of Catholic worship in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Mass which He instituted to be a perpetual commemoration and renewal of it. Likewise, just as it was through the sacred humanity of Christ that God mercifully deigned to transmit to us the divine life of grace, so the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which truly contains that living and life-giving humanity, holds the principal place among the Sacraments instituted by Christ for our sanctification.
The Teaching of the Catholic Church, G. Smith (London, 1956).
The Most Holy Sacrament
The Nicene Apostolic Church acknowledges and affirms the deep and abiding wonder of Christianity. Its teaching in regard to the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be summarized as follows:
By sacrifice man offers himself and his life to God, his sovereign Lord and Creator; by the Sacraments God gives Himself, He gives us a participation of his own divine life, to man. In sacrifice a stream of homage flows from man to the eternal source of all being; by the sacraments grace, sanctification, descends in copious flood upon the souls of men. This twofold stream from God to man and from man to God, flows swift and strong in the Eucharist, Sacrament and Sacrifice. As the culminating act in the life of Jesus Christ on earth was the sacrifice He offered on Calvary to His eternal Father, so the central act of Catholic worship in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Mass which He instituted to be a perpetual commemoration and renewal of it. Likewise, just as it was through the sacred humanity of Christ that God mercifully deigned to transmit to us the divine life of grace, so the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which truly contains that living and life-giving humanity, holds the principal place among the Sacraments instituted by Christ for our sanctification.
The Teaching of the Catholic Church, G. Smith (London, 1956).
