word and Word
Recently the eparchy (Eastern Catholic equivalent of 'diocese') of the local Byzantine Catholic Church decided to change the word "testament" to "covenant" in the words of consecration. I've been reading a lot recently about the difference between covenant and testament, which I won't go into in this post, but suffice it to say that despite covenant being more accurate I'll miss the words "this is the blood of the new testament" because the first time I heard it it unified the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist anew for me. It was a way of saying that Christ not only gave his word concerning the promises of the New Testament but signed them in Blood.
St. Augustine writes of the gift of Scripture: "God is faithful, for he has put himself under a debt to us, not as if he had received anything from us, but by promising us so much. The word of promise was too little for him: he wanted to bind himself in writing, by giving us, as it were, a handwritten version of his promises."
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