Rationabile Obsequium

Our Holy Father gave an extraordinary catechesis yesterday on Romans 12:1. A certain Irish priest friend of mine should be very pleased! The titles are my own. Here is the text of His Holiness:
Your Bodies: A Living Sacrifice
2. The second passage about which I would like to speak today is found in the first verse of Chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans. We have heard it and I repeat it once again: “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.”
The Oblation of Our Selves
In these words, an apparent paradox is verified: While sacrifice demands as a norm the death of the victim, Paul makes reference to the life of the Christian. The expression “offer your bodies,” united to the successive concept of sacrifice, takes on the worship nuance of “give in oblation, offer.” The exhortation to “offer your bodies” refers to the whole person; in fact, in Romans 6:13, [Paul] makes the invitation to “present yourselves to God.” For the rest, the explicit reference to the physical dimension of the Christian coincides with the invitation to “glorify God in your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:20): It’s a matter of honoring God in the most concrete daily existence, made of relational and perceptible visibility.
Living, Holy, Pleasing to God
Conduct of this type is classified by Paul as “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” It is here where we find precisely the term “sacrifice.” In prevalent use, this term forms part of a sacred context and serves to designate the throat-splitting of an animal, of which one part can be burned in honor of the gods and another part consumed by the offerers in a banquet. Paul instead applied it to the life of the Christian. In fact he classifies such a sacrifice by using three adjectives. The first — “living” — expresses a vitality. The second — “holy” — recalls the Pauline concept of a sanctity that is not linked to places or objects, but to the very person of the Christian. The third — “pleasing to God” — perhaps recalls the common biblical expression of a sweet-smelling sacrifice (cf. Leviticus 1:13, 17; 23:18; 26:31, etc.).
Man Adores and Glorifies the Living God
Immediately afterward, Paul thus defines this new way of living: this is “your spiritual worship.” Commentators of the text know well that the Greek expression (tçn logikçn latreían) is not easy to translate. The Latin Bible renders it: “rationabile obsequium.” The same word “rationabile” appears in the first Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon: In it, we pray so that God accepts this offering as “rationabile.” The traditional Italian translation, “spiritual worship,” [an offering in spirit], does not reflect all the details of the Greek text, nor even of the Latin. In any case, it is not a matter of a less real worship or even a merely metaphorical one, but of a more concrete and realistic worship, a worship in which man himself in his totality, as a being gifted with reason, transforms into adoration and glorification of the living God.
In the Roman Canon
This Pauline formula, which appears again in the Roman Eucharistic prayer, is fruit of a long development of the religious experience in the centuries preceding Christ. In this experience are found theological developments of the Old Testament and currents of Greek thought. I would like to show at least certain elements of this development. The prophets and many psalms strongly criticize the bloody sacrifices of the temple. For example, Psalm 50 (49), in which it is God who speaks, says, “Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God” (verses 12-14).
And in the Miserere
In the same sense, the following Psalm 51 (50), says, ” for you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept. My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart” (verse 18 and following).
With Contrite Heart and Humble Spirit
In the Book of Daniel, in the times of the new destruction of the temple at the hands of the Hellenistic regime (2nd century B.C.), we find a new step in the same direction. In midst of the fire — that is, persecution and suffering — Azariah prays thus: “We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you. But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received; As though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks So let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly” (Daniel 3:38ff).
The Acceptable Holocaust
In the destruction of the sanctuary and of worship, in this situation of being deprived of every sign of the presence of God, the believer offers as a true holocaust a contrite heart, his desire of God.
Disincarnate Worship: A Danger
We see an important development, beautiful, but with a danger. There exists a spiritualization, a moralization of worship: Worship becomes only something of the heart, of the spirit. But the body is lacking; the community is lacking. Thus is understood that Psalm 51, for example, and also the Book of Daniel, despite criticizing worship, desire the return of the time of sacrifices. But it is a matter of a renewed time, in a synthesis that still was unforeseeable, that could not yet be thought of.
The Offering of the Body
Let us return to St. Paul. He is heir to these developments, of the desire for true worship, in which man himself becomes glory of God, living adoration with all his being. In this sense, he says to the Romans: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
Paul thus repeats what he had already indicated in Chapter 3: The time of the sacrifice of animals, sacrifices of substitution, has ended. The time of true worship has arrived. But here too arises the danger of a misunderstanding: This new worship can easily be interpreted in a moralist sense — offering our lives we make true worship. In this way, worship with animals would be substituted by moralism: Man would do everything for himself with his moral strength. And this certainly was not the intention of St. Paul.
True Worship in Christ
But the question persists: Then how should we interpret this “reasonable spiritual worship”? Paul always supposes that we have come to be “one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28), that we have died in baptism (Romans 1) and we live now with Christ, through Christ and in Christ. In this union — and only in this way — we can be in him and with him a “living sacrifice,” to offer the “true worship.” The sacrificed animals should have substituted man, the gift of self of man, and they could not. Jesus Christ, in his surrender to the Father and to us, is not a substitution, but rather really entails in himself the human being, our faults and our desire; he truly represents us, he assumes us in himself. In communion with Christ, accomplished in the faith and in the sacraments, we transform, despite our deficiencies, into living sacrifice: “True worship” is fulfilled.
Christ’s True Sacrifice Made Present
This synthesis is the backdrop of the Roman Canon in which we pray that this offering be “rationabile,” so that spiritual worship is accomplished. The Church knows that in the holy Eucharist, the self-gift of Christ, his true sacrifice, is made present. But the Church prays so that the celebrating community is really united to Christ, is transformed; it prays so that we ourselves come to be that which we cannot be with our efforts: offering “rationabile” that is pleasing to God. In this way the Eucharistic prayer interprets in an adequate way the words of St. Paul.
Christ: the High Priest Who Has Given Himself Up
St. Augustine clarified all of this in a marvelous way in the 10th book of his City of God. I cite only two phrase: “This is the sacrifice of the Christians: though being many we are only one body in Christ” “All of the redeemed community (civitas), that is, the congregation and the society of the saints, is offered to God through the High Priest who has given himself up” (10,6: CCL 47,27ff).
The Priestly Service of the Gospel
3. Finally, I want to leave a brief reflection on the third passage of the Letter to the Romans referring to the new worship. St. Paul says thus in Chapter 15: “the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in performing the priestly service (hierourgein) of the gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the holy Spirit” (15:15ff).
At the Center of the Priesthood
I would like to emphasize only two aspects of this marvelous text and one aspect of the unique terminology of the Pauline letters. Before all else, St. Paul interprets his missionary action among the peoples of the world to construct the universal Church as a priestly action. To announce the Gospel to unify the peoples in communion with the Risen Christ is a “priestly” action. The apostle of the Gospel is a true priest; he does what is at the center of the priesthood: prepares the true sacrifice.
Christ, Priest and Victim, Draws All Things to Himself
And then the second aspect: the goal of missionary action is — we could say in this way — the cosmic liturgy: that the peoples united in Christ, the world, becomes as such the glory of God “pleasing oblation, sanctified in the Holy Spirit.” Here appears a dynamic aspect, the aspect of hope in the Pauline concept of worship: the self-gift of Christ implies the tendency to attract everyone to communion in his body, to unite the world. Only in communion with Christ, the model man, one with God, the world comes to be just as we all want it to be: a mirror of divine love. This dynamism is always present in Scripture; this dynamism should inspire and form our life.