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III. Christ's Sacrifice and the Mass

A. Covenant Love

When Jesus turned to go to Jerusalem for the last time, He knew He was going there to die (see Matthew 20:17-19). His disciples knew it, too (John 11:16).

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem in time for the Passover, and he made plans to celebrate the Passover meal with his twelve disciples (see Mark 14:12-16).

Three of the four Gospel writers preserve Jesus' words and actions from that meal. Those words and deeds are still remembered in every Eucharistic celebration. This practice began early, as we can tell from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. There he recalls Jesus taking bread and wine, saying that they were His body and blood and adding: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." (see 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

In the accounts of Matthew and Mark, in giving His disciples the cup Jesus also says, "this is my blood of the covenant" (Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24).

These words are a deliberate echo of a crucial sacrifice in Old Testament history – the sacrifice Moses offered to celebrate God's covenant with Israel following the Exodus from Egypt.

After Moses reads "the book of the covenant" and the people profess their faith in it, Moses takes the blood of sacrificial bulls and sprinkles it on the people. As he does so, he uses the words that Jesus quotes in the Last Supper: "This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of His" (see Exodus 24:5-8).

Jesus and his disciples had been celebrating a traditional Passover meal. But Jesus introduced something new, something that recalled the bloody sacrifices of the Old Testament, but in form resembled the unbloody sacrifice of the todah.

B. The Order of Melchizedek

The sacrifice offered at the Last Supper recalled that made by the priest-king Melchizedek – who likewise offered bread and wine (see Genesis 14:18).

The Book of Hebrews interprets Melchizedek as a sign that foreshadowed Christ.

The whole of Hebrews 7 is a meditation on what it means for Christ to be a priest "according to the order of Melchizedek" (see also Hebrews 5:8-10).

Like Melchizedek, Christ offers bread and wine; but His sacrifice is infinitely greater, because the bread and wine are His own body and blood.

More than that, He has given His followers a way of participating in that sacrifice. At that Passover meal, Jesus offered the first Mass.

And because of that, Christ's priesthood is infinitely greater than the old priesthood of Israel.

Those priests died, and their sacrifices could never save us from sin, but Christ lives forever, and His one sacrifice defeated sin and death for all time.

"The main point of what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up" (Hebrews 8:1-2).

C. One Eternal Sacrifice

The death of the Lord: this is what the Eucharist celebrates. We hear it at every Mass, but the first Christians could hardly have missed the irony.

Christ, our Lord, has been brutally tortured and slaughtered, and we celebrate that event in a ceremony called the Eucharist - that is, the "Thanksgiving."

Why are we thankful? Because Christ's death was not meaningless. It was a sacrifice offered for all of us. Our Eucharist, like the ancient todah, is a sacrifice of thanksgiving for God's delivering us from death.

That the death of Christ on the cross was, strictly speaking, a sacrifice - that is, an offering of the same nature as the Old Testament sacrifices, though surpassing and fulfilling them all - was never doubted by the early Christians.

The entire letter to the Hebrews, for example, is filled with the image of Christ as at once High Priest and sacrifice.

Hebrews 9:13-14 compares the sacrifices of animals to the sacrifice of Christ, who "offered himself without blemish" as a pure sacrifice.

St. Paul also describes Christ's death as a sacrifice in many of his letters (see, forr example, Ephesians 5:2; 2 Corinthians 5:21).

We've seen how the Gospel writers, especially John, carefully point out the parallels between the Passover sacrifice and the death of Christ on the cross.

Finally, the image of the "Lamb who was slain" from Revelation makes no sense unless the Lamb was slain as a sacrifice.

This sacrifice of Christ on the cross is the final sacrifice, once and for all.

It happened at a definite time in history, and it will not happen again. All the Old Testament sacrifices looked forward to this one.

Again, we find this belief expressed in Hebrews.

The author explains that the Israelites offered the same sacrifices year after year, but those sacrifices could "never make [them] perfect" or righteous before God.

That's why they had to keep offering them. If the sacrifices could have wiped away their sins, there would have been no need to continue offering them.

"But in those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins, for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins" (Hebrews 10:1-4).

None of the sacrifices Israel's priests offered could take away the sins of the people.

But Jesus offered himself as "one sacrifice for sins" and by this "one offering He has made perfect forever" not only the Israelites but all men and (Hebrews 10:11-14).

Only the one sacrifice of Christ could truly make us God's holy people, and His one sacrifice was made "once for all" (see Hebrews 10:10).

D. Representing the Cross

Then how can we call the Mass a sacrifice?

We can say that the Mass is a sacrifice because Christ instituted the Eucharist to make that final sacrifice available to us for all time.

Christ is not sacrificed again in the Mass. But because Christ is really present in the Eucharist, the Mass is a participation in His one great sacrifice.

The Mass re-presents that sacrifice, making it present to us and making us part of it. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross cannot happen again because it is still happening today in the Eucharist. The sacrifice is eternal, and every Mass is part of it.

Notice the difference between "re-presenting" and "representing."

In modern English, to say that one thing "represents" another usually means that the first thing stands for the second. A word represents the thing it names, and an elected official represents the people who elect him. But the word is not the thing, and the elected official is not the people.

When we say that the Mass "re-presents" the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, however, we go back to the root meaning of the word.

The Mass presents that sacrifice again, making it present to us right now. All over the world, wherever the Eucharist is being celebrated, God's people are present at the one eternal sacrifice of the Lamb.

E. Priests Offering Sacrifice

Each member of God's people has been made a member of the "holy priesthood" of the Church (see 1 Peter 2:4-5,9; Revelation 1:6) as Israel was once called "a kingdom of priests" (see Exodus 19:6)

Each of us is called to "offer spiritual sacrifices" (see 1 Peter 2:4-5).

As Christ offered himself on the cross, we are called to offer our own bodies, our own lives in the Mass. United to Christ in baptism, we share in his priesthood. With him, we also offer ourselves as a sacrifice.

"I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship" (see Romans 12:1).

And in this spiritual worship we are united with all Christians everywhere who celebrate the same sacrament. We are also united with all the saints in heaven - all Christians, across time, sharing in one perfect sacrifice.

In fact, the Mass is heaven on earth, not figuratively but literally. That will be the subject of the next lesson: the surprising, even astonishing fact that, wherever Mass is being celebrated, heaven is there right now.

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