Lost in Translation #144
After the prayers of consecration, the priest prays:
Unde et mémores, Dómine, nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta, ejusdem Christi Filii tui, Dómini nostri, tam beátae passiónis, nec non et ab ínferis resurrectiónis, sed et in caelos gloriósae ascensiónis: offérimus praeclárae majestáti tuae de tuis donis ac datis hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculátam, Panem sanctum vitae aetérnae, et Cálicem salútis perpetuae.
Which I translate as:
On account of which, O Lord, we Your servants but also Your holy people, also being mindful of the so very blessed Passion of the same Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, and certainly His Resurrection from Hell but also His glorious Ascension into Heaven, do offer to Your most splendid Majesty out of Your own presents and gifts a pure Victim, a holy Victim, an unspotted Victim, the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of perpetual salvation.
There is a universal logic operative in this prayer. As Adrian Fortescue explains, “Most liturgies end the words of institution by quoting our Lord’s command to do this in memory of him and all continue with a prayer in the form of an assurance that we do indeed remember him always.” [1] The various rites of the Church therefore follow up the command “Do this in memory (anamnesin) of me” with an Anamnesis or remembrance of the Paschal mystery. Eastern liturgies recall the Passion, Resurrection, and Second Coming of Our Lord, while the West recalls His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. To my mind, it makes more sense to commemorate the Ascension at this point, for it is the final stage of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the Cross, the moment when He as High Priest brought His own slain Blood into the inner sanctum of Heaven, presented it to the Father, and secured our eternal redemption. (see Heb. 9, 11-12).
The prayer has the same blend of poetic beauty and legal precision as the rest of the Canon. The “[one and the] same Christ” is called to mind, as opposed to all the other Christs we might have been thinking of. And in referring to the prayers of the Church, the priest mentions her two different classes or groups: “we Your servants” (the clergy) and “Your holy people” (the laity). This ancient distinction, which goes back to St. Clement of Rome (d. 100), was changed by the Second Vatican Council when it instead referred to the entire Church, clergy included, as the people of God. In any event, it is again noteworthy that the laity are identified as
co-offerers (albeit not equal offerers) of the Holy Sacrifice.
The language of the Unde et memores is arresting. The opening word unde, which means “from which place” or “whence,” is an excellent adverb to form a bridge between the line, “As often as ye shall do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me,” and an elaboration of what is being remembered. The prayer also has two instances of the curious construction sed et (“but also”) which, as we have seen before, can almost mean “and let us not forget” – a fitting connotation in a prayer on memory.
The second time that sed et is used is as the final conjunction connecting the three events of the Paschal Mystery: the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. The verbal heralds of the Passion and Resurrection are also distinctive. Tam, the Latin word for “so” or “so much,” introduces the blessed Passion, as if to say, “the Passion of Your Son, which was so very blessed.” It is rarely, if ever, translated. And instead of proceeding to the Resurrection with a simple et or ac or atque, the prayer uses nec non or “neither not,” a litotes used for emphatic affirmation. Together these words add emotional resonance to what could otherwise be a lifeless laundry list of historical events, and they also seem to imitate the workings of memory itself, as if the events were coming to the priest’s mind the way that connected memories return to one’s consciousness. “Your Passion was so very blessed… and now that I think about it, Your Resurrection certainly was as well. But I should not forget your glorious Ascension.”
The articulation of these mysteries also involves a contrast of locations. Although it is common to translate ab inferis resurrectio as “Resurrection from the dead,” inferi refers to the netherworld; it is the same word used in the Apostles’ Creed to denote Christ’s descent into Hell or the Limbo of the Fathers. In this prayer, Christ in Limbo is juxtaposed with His ascent into Heaven, as if to highlight the enormous cosmic distance that He journeyed between Easter Sunday and Ascension Thursday, from the bottom to the summit of the mountain.
In the phrase
offerimus praeclarae majestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis (“we offer to Your most splendid Majesty out of Your own presents and gifts”), it may seem redundant to use two words where one would suffice, which may explain why the 2011 ICEL translation renders it “from the gifts that you have given us.” [2] But the double
dona et data anticipates and parallels the double Host and Chalice that concludes the sentence. As for the sentiment itself, that when we give to God we are simply returning what He has given to us, it is also expressed beautifully in the Byzantine Rite’s prayer: “We offer you, your own, from your own, always and everywhere.” Finally,
praeclarus or “splendid,” used here to modify God’s majesty, is the word used in the consecration of the wine to describe the chalice. Peter Kwasniewski interprets this repetition to mean that
what is about to be within this chalice is at one with, and worthy of, the One to whom it is raised up. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass collapses the distance between Creator and creation while emphatically affirming the infinite abyss bridged by Christ alone, in His very Person. [3]

The Unde et memores concludes by progressing from the metaphysically precise to the biblically poetic. What was once bread and wine are now the holy Victim that is Jesus Christ. But after the triple affirmation of the Host and Precious Blood as living Victim, the priest calls the former the Bread of eternal life (see Ps. 77, 25 and Wisdom 16, 20) and the latter the Chalice of perpetual salvation. (see Ps. 115, 4) There is also a pleasing variation in the diction: “life” and “salvation,” “eternal” and “perpetual.” And the pairing of the Host with bread and the Chalice with salvation is fitting, for as we have already noted, the Host connotes spiritual nourishment (which the Bible sometimes signifies with the word “bread”) while the Precious Blood connotes our absolution and redemption (“salvation”). Moreover, the phrase “Chalice of perpetual salvation” subtly affirms that the prayers of the Offertory have been answered as well as anticipates the priest’s reception of the Precious Blood.
Signs of the Cross
That both the Host and the Chalice constitute the Holy Victim is reinforced by the priest’s actions. Each of the three times that he mentions the Victim, he makes the sign of the cross over both species; but when he mentions the Bread of life, he signs only the Host, and when he mentions the Chalice of salvation, he signs only the Precious Blood. These signs of the cross, incidentally, “have ever been regarded,” in Nicholas Gihr’s words, as difficult to explain. [4]. Indeed, when the Fathers at Vatican II debated the meaning of “useless repetitions” in the Mass in the document Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first thing that came to their mind were the signs of the cross in the Canon. [5]

St. Thomas Aquinas and others have little difficulty in offering an allegorical interpretation of these signs of the cross, correlating them with things that happened during the Passion. The five signs of the cross that are made during the Unde et memores, for example, signify the five Holy Wounds. [6] As valid as these interpretations are, the literal meaning of these signs still remains obscure. Gihr rightly notes that the sign of the cross has a wide variety of meanings, and he has no difficulty identifying the meaning of the signs of the cross made over the gifts before the Consecration as that of a blessing. But, he continues,
Evidently this object cannot be ascribed to the sign of the Cross after the Elevation: there are no longer present on the altar material elements susceptible of or in need of blessing, but Christ's Body and Blood under the appearances of bread and wine. Jesus Christ, the source of all blessings and the Holy of Holies, can and may not be blessed by the priest. Therefore, all admit that the signs of the Cross made over the oblation after the Consecration can in nowise have the signification and power of effective signs of blessing for Christ who is present, for His Body and Blood. [7]
Gihr is, of course, correct if one holds to a narrow definition of blessing as a conferral of divine favor. But Holy Church also ends several of her ceremonies with the admonition Benedicamus Domino, “Let us bless the Lord,” and it is foolhardy to think that we can confer divine favor upon the Divine. The solution to this apparent contradiction is to meditate on the etymology of a blessing in Greek and Latin, for both the Greek eulogeo and the Latin benedico literally mean to “speak well.” Now when God speaks well of one of His creatures, as He did when He made heaven and earth, the creature is objectively improved, for God’s word is all-powerful. [see Gen 1] And when one of his ordained priests speaks well of something, he does so, according to the classical distinction, in an invocative way or a constitutive way. An invocative blessing expresses a wish that God may or may not grant, e.g. long life, good health, protection from evil, etc.; a constitutive blessing, like the dedication of a church, successfully consecrates or imparts a sacred character on the thing or person blessed. Finally, when a layman speaks well of his food or his family, as he has a right to do, his blessing is generally invocative—even though I do believe that there is an objective difference between blessed and unblessed food.
But when, on the other hand, a human being “blesses” or speaks well of God, God is not improved or enlarged in the slightest. If anyone is changed, it is the speaker, for the very act of sincerely blessing God improves the heart of the one blessing—hence the frequent commands in the Sacred Scriptures and sacred liturgy to bless or praise the Lord.
I therefore contend that while the signs of the cross before the Consecration are a constitutive blessing that consecrate the objects blessed, the signs of the cross after the Consecration are the “saying well only” blessing that bless the subject (the priest), deepening his devotion and increasing his love of the Living and Holy Victim that he has just helped bring about onto the altar.
Notes
[1] Fortescue, 345.
[2] 2011 Roman Missal, p. 641.
[3] The Once and Future Roman Rite, 240-41.
[4] Gihr, 653.
[5] Cardo, 145-49.
[6] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.83.5.ad 3.
[7] Gihr, 654.