By Clement Harrold
June 4, 2026
Many Protestants and even some Catholics struggle with the idea that the Holy Mass is a memorial sacrifice that re-presents the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. What could such a teaching possibly mean, and where is it to be found in Scripture? We’ll tackle this twofold question by reflecting on the mystery in three distinct stages.
Stage One: The Last Supper and the Cross Are Connected
This first step is one that all Christians should be able to agree on. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus expresses how much He is looking forward to His last meal with His disciples: “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). Why was this final Passover meal so important in Jesus’s eyes? Evidently it is because of what He intended to do at that meal:
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (Luke 22:19–20)
At the Last Supper Jesus takes bread and wine and points forward to the Cross with explicitly sacrificial language that speaks of how His Body will be given up, and His Blood poured out, on behalf of His disciples.
In John’s Gospel, we also see a connection between the Last Supper and the Cross. The Passover celebration begins with Jesus washing His disciples’ feet—a strongly Eucharistic action—and the announcement that Christ loved His followers “to the end” (John 13:1). The Greek phrase John uses here is eis telos, and the next time we’ll hear that language is when Jesus is hanging from the Cross: “It is finished [tetelestai]” (John 19:30). In this way John draws a subtle but pointed literary connection between the events of the upper room and the mystery of the Cross.
Finally, we have the witness of St. Paul, who announces in his letter to the Corinthians: “For our paschal [i.e. Passover] lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast” (1 Cor 5:7–8 NABRE). It’s clear that for Paul there is a profound link between the Eucharistic feast and Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. We’ll return to this theme below.
Stage 2: Jesus Becomes Truly Present in the Eucharist
Not only Catholics but also Eastern Orthodox Christians and even many Protestants agree that Jesus is truly and substantially present in the Eucharist. This perspective is unanimously shared by the earliest Fathers of the Church, who affirm that when Jesus said “This is my Body,” He actually meant it.
Similarly, when Jesus delivers His extended bread of life discourse in John 6, we see Him emphatically declaring that His followers must consume His flesh and drink His blood if they wish to share in His life:
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:53–56)
The upshot of this is that when Jesus takes the bread and wine at the Last Supper, these humble human artefacts truly become His Body and Blood. And since Jesus commanded His disciples to do the same thing in remembrance of Him, the Church’s teaching since time immemorial has been that the same mystery is effected at each and every Mass: through the words of the priest, who acts in the person of Christ, the bread and wine that are placed on the altar become the Body and Blood of our Savior.
St. Paul alludes to this reality in an important passage: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16). Likewise, as early as 110 A.D. we have St. Ignatius of Antioch writing to the Smyrnaeans and condemning those heretics who “confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again” (ch 7).
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Stage 3: The Mass is a Memorial Sacrifice
This brings us to the third and most complex part of our reflection. We now need to build on our first two moves to show why and how the Mass is a memorial sacrifice. First let’s consider what the Catechism has to say on the subject:
1365 Because it is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: “This is my body which is given for you” and “This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.” [Luke 22:19–20] In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” [Matt 26:28]
1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit.
Here the Catechism attributes great significance to the fact that Jesus deliberately institutes the Eucharist in the context of a Passover meal, and the New Testament explicitly frames Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross as the new and greater Passover sacrifice. All of this is important because if the Jewish celebration of Passover was a memorial sacrifice, then we would expect the Christian celebration to be the same.
Consider God’s command to the Israelites at the very first Passover: “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever” (Ex 12:14). If the Passover simply ceased with the death of Christ, then God’s instruction to keep the memorial forever would be an impossible command. But we know it’s not impossible, because God has given us the Mass which is the continuation and perfection of that original Passover.
Here we should remember that the Jewish Passover consisted of far more than the mere remembrance of an event that remained stuck in the past. As the Jewish people realized over the centuries, the original Passover had an enduring quality such that it became a present reality for all subsequent generations. This is why the Jews didn’t just read from the book of Exodus every year when Passover rolled around. Instead, they sacrificed a new lamb or goat each year so that they could in some sense re-present and re-live the events of that original Passover. In every time and place, a Jewish father could say to his son that he celebrates the Passover “because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt” (Ex 13:8). Or in the words of the Mishnah, “In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally came out of Egypt.”
While the Jewish Passover was a memorial sacrifice in one sense, the Christian Passover (aka the Mass) is a memorial sacrifice in a far richer sense. This is because, as we have seen, in the Mass the Body and Blood of Jesus become truly present on the altar. So whereas the Passover meal that Christ celebrated at the Last Supper anticipated and pointed forward to His sacrifice on the Cross, now the Eucharistic celebration memorializes and makes present the reality of Christ who is the new and perfect Passover Lamb. It’s this Passover Lamb who becomes present on the altar, where His Body and Blood are separated sacramentally under the appearances of bread and wine, just as they were separated physically at the time of His saving death. This is why St. Paul can say, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
The Catechism offers a helpful perspective on the timeless significance of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross:
1085 In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present. . . . His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is—all that he did and suffered for all men—participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all. The event of the Cross and Resurrection abides and draws everything toward life.
From a Catholic perspective, the sacrifice of the Cross and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one and the same sacrifice. Why? In both cases, it is Christ who is the victim and the priest (in the Mass, Jesus acts through His priestly minister). The Eucharist is thus the memorial sacrifice that makes present in a sacramental and unbloody way the sacrifice of the Cross, thereby applying its fruits throughout history.
Now for many Protestants this claim can feel baffling, particularly given the Epistle to the Hebrews with its repeated emphasis on the “once for all” nature of Christ’s sacrifice (see Heb 9:12, 26; 10:10, 12, 14). But of course, the Catholic position doesn’t deny the once for all nature of Christ’s sacrifice, any more than the Jewish celebration of the Passover denied the once for all nature of the original events of the Exodus. To understand the Catholic position, we can think of a helpful analogy with the sun: the sunrise doesn’t make a new sun, it simply makes the one sun present at a new time and place. Similarly, the Mass does not create a new sacrifice—Jesus doesn’t die again at every Mass, for He has conquered death and can die no more—rather it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ in the here and now.
This understanding helps us make sense of what’s going on in the New Testament. Why does the book of Revelation portray Jesus in heaven as a slain lamb (see Rev 5:6, 11–14), if not to underscore the truth that His sacrifice on the Cross is an ongoing reality? Similarly, the Epistle to the Hebrews makes it very clear that Jesus’s priesthood is one that continues forever in the order of Melchizedek (see Heb 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:17, 21; cf Ps 110:4). Not only that, but He continues to intercede on behalf of His people:
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Heb 7:23–25; cf. 9:24)
Catholic theology takes this passage from Hebrews extremely seriously. Even now Jesus, the slain and victorious lamb, is in heaven interceding to the Father on our behalf. Even now He is acting as the perfect and eternal High Priest. And that is why the Mass makes so much sense. In every Mass, Jesus works through the priest to make Himself present on the altar so that His Church can make the greatest conceivable offering—the offering of His own Body and Blood, given up for the world—back to the Father. Thus the Mass becomes the perfect sacrifice of praise that perpetually glorifies God and washes away sin by continually making present the saving work of the One who has loved us to the end.
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Further Reading
Lawrence Feingold, The Eucharist: Mystery of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion (Emmaus Academic, 2018)
Scott Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (Doubleday, 1999)
About Clement Harrold
Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s degree in theology, philosophy, and classics from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. He is a columnist for The Catholic Herald, and his writings have appeared in First Things, Word on Fire, Catholic Answers Magazine, Church Life Journal, Our Sunday Visitor Magazine, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.
