Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚
ARCIC notes that Ministry and Ordination plainly states that only a validly ordained priest may preside at the Eucharist, and that this Eucharist is the sacramental memorial of the unique self-offering of Christ to his Father. In celebrating the Eucharist and distributing these holy gifts to the assembly, the priest stands in a special sacramental relationship to what Christ did at the Last Supper, ‘pointing to his redemptive sacrifice on the cross’. Thus, it concludes, ‘together with the assembly, but exercising his own specific ecclesial function, the one who presides is thus the minister of the sacramental self-offering of Christ’.