Another dismal pair of communion hymns battered my ears and soul this Sunday at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in the Diocese of Victoria, B.C. From, as usual, the post-Vatican II canon, they could serve at least as well for any mainline Protestant denomination as for Catholics, are replete with clanging phrases and devoid of exclusively Catholic Eucharistic doctrine, presumably to render them marketable to more customers.
Take Spirit and Grace, by “Ricky Manalo CSP”. Father Ricky, a Paulist, apparently,hasn’t met a metaphor he hasn’t mixed. His first verse has the wind of the Spirit blowing through the communion meal on its way to the wheat field where it sweeps up the grain and (with its other spiritual hands) “forms us in Christ” and finishes off with being “our source and breath of life.”
What’s entirely absent from this and all verses is what used to be called “the sacrifice” of the mass. And along with that, the True Presence of Christ in the wine and bread. You may remember the doctrine of Transubstantiation, but Father Ricky either does not do so or prefers to go blowing thru wheat fields on the way to the soul-forming shed.
Recent American polling indicates half of Catholics do not know the Catholic church teaches the Real Presence in communion, though two thirds believe in it (meaning 16 per cent believe in it without knowing it is dogma). So the hymns need to have Catholic content.
The second hymn, Bread for the World, is by Bernadette Farrell. As the name indicates, it’s focus is on God the NGO providing food handouts to the poor, and its style is again the mixed metaphor with Christ as, first, “bread of life,” then healer of the “wounds of human pain,” then switches ideas to “where we divide your people you (Jesus) are waiting there” not, it seems, to heal these divisions but “to wash our feet with endless care.”
More muddy thinking in verse two. Here Christ, “the wine of peace” is poured into “hearts once broken where dryness sleeps.” Huh? Are the hearts broken or dried out or what?
In verse three communion is a feast where the rich get put in their place and the poor (who we all know are inherently better people) get elevated. Then, wholly new idea: “where we (we rich I guess) survive on greed you walk among us begging for your every need.” This is another ill-formed concept—Christ begging for His every need?She probably meant, our every need ,or the needs of the poor.
But anyway: no sacrifice, no altar, no Real Presence, no Catholic doctrine.
Now go back to the old CBW. No masterpiece, surely, but it is interesting that the hymns put in there for the Eucharist, even and especially the contemporary ones, are so, well, Eucharistic. I remember singing “Sons of God, hear his holy word” at university. We brought the house down. And you can’t get more Catholic than these words from that hymn: “Eat his Body, Drink his blood, and we’ll sing a song of love.”
Next is “Canticle of the Gift.” It is one long statement of what the Eucharist is: “It is Christ the Lord, It is He.” The third hymn the CBW offers is old: “The Lamb’s High Banquet Called to Share”: gracefully combines Communion as meal with Communion as sacrifice: “Upon the altar of the cross, his body hath redeemed our loss.” And “The Lamb’s high banquet called to share, arrayed in garments white and fair.”
Christ as sacrifice brings to mind us as sinners. Christ as healer, feeder, soother, player of Musak, on the other hand, brings to mind our pain, our distress, our need of soothing, but not our sinfulness, or need of redemption. Oh, maybe those rich guys, they probably need some work. But not us. We need some holy Valium. Along the same lines, check out the new version of Amazing Grace, where we are no longer described as slaves of sin.
There are good hymns. We should sing them.
Vancouver Island Christian News 
Steve:
An interesting article on the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.
Lutherans, of course, still also hold the the real presence of the body and blood in the Sacrament. If I understand things correctly, these days Catholics speak of ‘holding up the ONE sacrifice of Christ eternally before the Father. They do not mean an unbloody ‘re-sacrificing’ of Christ.’ This latter way of speaking is what most Protestants have understood to be the Catholic
position. It looks like the Protestant understanding needs to change.
But if this is true, why use the term ‘sacrifice’ at all? I realize that the Church Fathers used it, but that makes it sound like we actually are doing something here, rather than living up before the Father what Christ did.
Where does the language of ‘holding up the one sacrifice before the Father’ directly come from?
Where in Scripture? Where in tradition?
Colin
Colin:
The “sacrifice” is Christ dying on the cross to wash us clean of our sins. I think that certainly is scriptural. That’s why the Catholic priest does his stuff at the altar, not the Lord’s table. It’s not just the Last Supper, it’s Calvary.
The Mass is our participation in that one event; it is an action that penetrates time to do it, or in some way renders it inoperable. Colin is quite right about the idea of repeating the Crucifixion or resacrificing Christ in the Mass not being current teaching. Was it ever Catholic teaching? I don’t know. Maybe it was a popular belief without ever being dogma.
Anyway, the Catholic church for most of its history have seen tradition as an equal source for dogma with Scripture, though lately thge emphasis has definitely leaned more Scripturewards.
However, my problem is that the hymns we sing at our Catholic cathedral are about Communion as the Lord’s Supper and not the Lord’s sacrificial act, and , they soft sell the whole Body and Blood with capital Bs thing.
I think the body and blood talk is just too, well, real, too physical. for songwriters who call themselves Ricky, and Dan and Marty. Maybe they are closet gnostics.