Our goal is going to be to consider some texts of St. Thomas that help us solve the problem

or look at where the mystery is more precisely. And then tomorrow we're going to look at some

Thomistic school positions. Maybe we'll even outline them a little bit in this lecture if we have time.

Now, what was the problem that we discovered, or the mystery we located?

Part of the problem is the mystery is to locate it.

You often do that negatively.

So what do we not want to say about the sacrifice of the mass?

Well, we don't want to say that we're saved by any other

sacrifice than the atoning sacrifice of Christ crucified that happened once and for all

at Gull Gauthut 2,000 years ago. We also don't want to say that the Eucharist is a merely

symbolic representation of a past event

that has no real efficacy or effect on our lives today.

Rather, on the contrary, we need to say that the Eucharist is a real cause of grace that connects us to, or by which we're connected

to, the fruits of the cross, or the effects of the cross. And we don't want to say that the

mass is not a real, not truly a sacrifice. It must in some true sense be a sacrifice. And there's a lot,

you know, there's, you could, you could do easily 20 hours of classes just on thinking about

the mass as a sacrifice. And there's lots of, you know, but I'm just trying, there's lots of

subcategories, sub considerations. But what I want to try to do is focus in on how we say positively then,

that there is one sacrifice that saves,

and that the mass gives us the possibility of participating in that one saving sacrifice.

And then likewise, we don't want to say that Christ ceases, that his passion continues forever.

It took place already.

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