Monday, February 8, 2010

Dr Darwell Stone on the boundaries of the Eucharist

Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was an Anglican theologian and Principal of Pusey House, Oxford from 1909 to 1934. His major work, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, published in two volumes in 1909, continues to be regarded as the best compendium in English of the Eucharistic teaching of both East and West. The following is taken from The Faith of an English Catholic, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1926.

In the great sacrifice the Church offers the body and blood of our Lord. The offering of His body and blood is the pleading of His whole human life. His conception by His virgin mother, His life as a child living but not yet born, His birth and infancy and childhood and youth and manhood, His ministry and passion and death, the stay of His body in the tomb and of His soul in the unseen world, His resurrection, His sojourning on earth in His risen life, His ascension and session at the right hand of the Father on high, - all these have their place in the prayers with which the pleading is made. And this majestic sacrifice is offered for the manifold needs of mankind. It is offered for saints and for sinners, for the faithful and the tempted and the backsliding and the apostate, for the work of the Church all over the world, for nations and statesmen and kings and subjects, for societies and individuals, for the needs of capital and of labour, for family and household and friends, for the living and the dead. In it joy and sorrow, toil and conflict and rest, health and sickness and death, are gathered up into the one offering of Christ.

2 comments:

Sandra McColl said...

Are you sure you and he are not related?

Anonymous said...

Hmmm! (But I wouldn't mind having inherited his brains!)

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