Does the Mass “banish the remembrance of Christ’s death”? Part 3 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

Note: This post belongs to an ongo­ing series on Calv­in’s Insti­tutes which begins here.

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alvin made wild claims; but he got peo­ple to believe them, even today, which is wilder. This one–the Mass ban­ish­es the remem­brance of Christ’s death!—is eas­i­ly dis­proven for any­one who both­ers to read the text of the litur­gy. (Or even: for any­one who walks into a Catholic church and both­ers to look at the cru­ci­fix or the Sta­tions of the Cross.) Per­haps peo­ple are lazy and just take deceivers like Calvin at their word; I don’t know. But there’s a fun­ny lit­tle part of the Mass called the Words of Insti­tu­tion. These were known as part of the Mass at least as ear­ly as Cyril of Jerusalem (4th cen­tu­ry A.D.), if we may judge by his Cat­e­chet­i­cal Lec­tures.

Take this, all of you, and eat of it: for this is my body which will be giv­en up for you. Take this, all of you, and drink from it: for this is the chal­ice of my blood, the blood of the new and eter­nal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the for­give­ness of sins. Do this in mem­o­ry of me.

Luther told us to sin bold­ly, and Calvin sure lies bold­ly when he says the Mass has ban­ished what it instructs the priest to say at every Mass: We’re doing this to remem­ber Christ’s death.

Now, if the Roman missal said some­thing like, “Don’t speak of that incon­ve­nient episode on Cal­vary; we should all for­get that. Make like this is a cock­tail par­ty. Do this in remem­brance of last night’s rev­els, and let us quaff anoth­er,” Calvin may have had a point. But sad­ly, the priest at every Mass quotes from 1 Cor. 11:23–25.

Calvin writes: “I now come to the third part of the mass, in regard to which, we are to explain how it oblit­er­ates the true and only death of Christ, and dri­ves it from the mem­o­ry of men.”

Was Calvin senile? Did he suf­fer schiz­o­phre­nia? I must ask. At Mass, the priest says, now, you know, we’re doing this in mem­o­ry of Christ’s death. And Calvin hears that and says, “Oh, this is oblit­er­a­tion! If you keep telling us to remem­ber Christ’s death, no one will ever remem­ber Christ’s death. It won’t occur to them. Catholics every­where say to me, ‘You mean Christ died?’ ”

Per­haps even Calvin thinks he needs to explain him­self lest he be thought a fool:

Now, what is the mass but a new and alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent tes­ta­ment?” [That is to say, “anoth­er gospel”.] “What? Does not each mass promise a new for­give­ness of sins, a new pur­chase of right­eous­ness, so that now there are as many tes­ta­ments as there are mass­es? There­fore, let Christ come again, and, by anoth­er death, make this new tes­ta­ment; or rather, by innu­mer­able deaths, rat­i­fy the innu­mer­able tes­ta­ments of the [M]ass.

So let me unpack this hys­te­ria for you. Calv­in’s try­ing some sleight-of-hand here. He has in mind the teach­ing that Christ’s death was a once-for-all sac­ri­fice for sin. And that’s true enough; it comes from Heb. 10:10: “We are sanc­ti­fied through the offer­ing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

So far so good. But Calvin vaults off and claims that each Mass is some­how a new for­give­ness for sins and there­fore not at all the same death of Christ that hap­pened on Cal­vary. The Mass ban­ish­es the mem­o­ry of that sac­ri­fice, and replaces it with this brand new bas­tard sac­ri­fice. The Mass sac­ri­fices Christ, not once for all, but once and once again. And I’ll con­cede this much to Calvin: If he were right, it would indeed be an “impi­ous and accursed dog­ma.”

But is he right?

•••

The first point to make is that this is not what Catholics confess—that the Mass is a re-sac­ri­fice of Christ, or that a re-sac­ri­fice is even nec­es­sary. Calvin pub­lished the Insti­tutes in Latin in 1536, French in 1540, and defin­i­tive edi­tions came out in 1559 and 1560. Con­cur­rent with this, the Church had con­vened the Coun­cil of Trent in order to answer the claims of the Reform­ers. And here you may read what Trent had to say about the sac­ri­fice of the Mass.

In Chap­ter 1, Trent says that the “mem­o­ry” of Christ’s sacrifice—you know, the one on Calvary—must “remain even unto the end of the world.”

There is no “ban­ish­ing” the “mem­o­ry” of any­thing, accord­ing to Trent. And indeed, if this were a new death, a new sac­ri­fice, one could hard­ly speak of it in terms of “remem­brance” at all.

Canon 4 says that Christ’s sac­ri­fice was “con­sum­mat­ed” on the Cross. If it was “con­sum­mat­ed” there, the Church can hard­ly teach that it hap­pens all over again at every Mass.

The Eucharist begins with the priest recall­ing the night that Jesus was betrayed. This is to draw our minds to that night, that death, that sac­ri­fice, and no oth­er. Oth­er­wise why speak of it at all? Why use the word “remem­brance,” if you’re doing some­thing new?

Thus the very words the Church uses in the Mass (and at the Coun­cil of Trent) belie the claims Calvin makes.

•••

The sec­ond point to make is that Calvin mix­es up time with eter­ni­ty. Lots of peo­ple do this, so Calvin should­n’t feel too bad about it, wher­ev­er he might be.

When Hebrews 10:10 describes the cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ as a “once for all” sac­ri­fice, it is speak­ing from the point of view of eter­ni­ty. In one act, Christ died for all sins that would ever be com­mit­ted by every­one who would ever live (and every­one who had ever lived, hith­er­to). He did it one time and need not do it again.

But Christ is eter­nal with the Father. He is out­side time. Past, present, and future are all “now” to him. That is not so for you, not so for me, and not so for any­one else. Between last Mass and next Mass, I have sinned again. You have too.

Trent speaks to this when it says that the “salu­tary virtue” of Christ’s death must “be applied to the remis­sion of those sins which we dai­ly com­mit.”

If it were not so—if I did not require con­tin­u­al for­give­ness for the sins which I con­tin­u­al­ly com­mit; if I get for­giv­en in advance, then there’s real­ly no need for me to try to reform my life, is there? Every­thing I will do is already cov­ered; I can go out and wreak bloody vengeance in the street; once saved, always saved.

But no.

Christ’s death is one; and Trent says it. The bloody sac­ri­fice was “once to be accom­plished on the cross.” But it still needs to be applied to this moment, and to that moment. Because we live out redemp­tion in time. From God’s per­spec­tive it is once-for-all; from my per­spec­tive, it is a process. That is why St. Paul says to work out your sal­va­tion.

•••

Calvin has an even wilder claim, if you can believe it; which is this: “If Christ is sac­ri­ficed at each mass, he must be cru­el­ly slain every moment in a thou­sand places.”

I real­ly must ask whether Calvin under­stood the omnipres­ence of God. Christ is, at this very moment, in Gene­va, Switzer­land; and he is also, at this very moment, in Alber­ta, Cana­da; and in Cairo. He is even, hard as it may be to fath­om, in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But I’m not speak­ing of four dif­fer­ent Christs. And like­wise, if the sac­ri­fice of Christ occurs at Mass in St. Patrick­’s Cathe­dral in New York, and at the same time in St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, these are not two Christs or two sac­ri­fices but one Christ and the same once for all sac­ri­fice. If you can accept the for­mer, the lat­ter should­n’t need to cause you dif­fi­cul­ties.

What hap­pened on Cal­vary in 33 A.D. is made present in 2019 at Mass. That is, in fact, pre­cise­ly what the word “remem­ber” means: to call up again. If I remem­ber the days of my youth, I am not cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent child­hood. I am mak­ing my one child­hood present for me today.

Far from the Mass “ban­ish­ing the remem­brance of Christ’s death,” the remem­brance of Christ’s death is what the Mass is.

Read Part 4 here.