For me, rather than ‘unveil’ the meaning of sacrifice – as promised in the title – Fr Daly’s Sacrifice Unveiled joins the dots of things I knew, or half-knew.
It certainly challenges three myths that I have been taught:

Myth 1. The idea that the ‘Words of Institution’ are, if not the moment of transformation of bread and wine, are (as my teacher Dr Max Thomas at Trinity College in Melbourne, used to say) at least a ‘psychological high point’ in the Eucharist.

Myth 2. The idea that the priest should consume the elements before the people do because this somehow ‘completes the sacrifice’.
Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy shattered this myth for me when she was Rector of the Parish of Applecross, insisting that she would take the bread and wine after everyone else. She was modelling the idea that the priest is not more important than the congregation. Rather the celebrant is its servant. In the parish setting, Kay normally received communion last and usually from the hands of laypeople.

Myth 3. The odd idea that the whole Thanksgiving Prayer from the Sursum Corda until the celebrant has consumed the bread and wine must always be completed, even if the church was burning or falling down. The priest had a duty to remain at the altar while the congregation evacuated the building.

Having read Robert Daly’s exhaustive examination of the notion of Christian sacrifice, I can now proclaim with certainty that these three ideas are all poppycock, massive misunderstandings of what is happening when we, the Church, gather to celebrate the Eucharist.

I normally don’t use the language of ‘sacrifice’ or ‘the Mass’, but the same set of ideas has come down to me from the Church’s long tradition.

Father Daly’s years of research leads him first to a negative conclusion. The ‘sacrifice’ in the Eucharist is not ‘sacrifice’ in the History of Religions sense. The Eucharist is not a sacrifice where human worshippers destroy a victim to appease a wronged and angry deity.

Daly takes us through the Biblical references to sacrifice (yes, the New Testament has a different take on the idea of sacrifice than parts of the Old), the Patristic evidence, through Medieval ideas to the Reformation (and Roman Catholic reaction to it) and up to the ecumenical convergence of the present day.

He concludes that sacrifice in the Eucharist is not, and cannot be, the action of human beings. Sacrifice is the loving action of the Father. Atonement, the goal of sacrifice, is not achieved by the destruction of the Son on the Cross to ‘pay the price of our sin’. Far from it: The Father freely and lovingly gives the gift of His Son, a human being and yet His very self, so that all humanity may identify with Him, and the Holy Spirit transform us more and more into the Father’s likeness. St Athanasius picks up this theme of divinisation, writing, "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De incarnatione 54,3)

The purpose of the Eucharist, the ‘sacrifice’, is the transformation of the worshippers into greater and greater love. This sacrifice does not depend on the priest’s authority. The Eucharist is the prayer of the people, the whole body of the faithful. Priests don’t need to worry about getting the Words of Institution exactly right, or ‘completing’ the sacrifice while being immolated in burning buildings, because the priests are members of the whole body. They say words and complete actions simply as the facilitator for the congregation’s prayer.

Robert Daly’s book is written for informed laity as well as for priests. While it is a thorough theological survey of the meaning of the Eucharist, he has written for non-academics as well as theologians.

This book clears the mind. It clears the mind of commonly held myths about the Eucharist. He clears the mind so that our hearts may be more open to the transformation into greater love, ‘… so that we might become God.’

Fr Daly repeatedly quotes St Paul in Romans 5:5, seeing in this verse a summation of the whole truth of the Gospel and the whole meaning of the Eucharistic sacrifice. ‘For the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.’ ( )

Deals with the Concept of Sacrifice through the Ages