The Biblical Foundations of The Catholic Mass
(Part 2)
Paul Newcombe
THE NATURE & FORM OF SACRIFICE
Sacrifice Has Always Been The Primary Form of Worship Offered To God
Before addressing the objections outlined above, it is necessary to set the stage by doing some background theology. In this way we can outline the development of sacrificial worship and better appreciate the completed form which we experience today.
Throughout salvation history we see sacrifice being the central expression of worship received by God. Abel sacrifices the “first-born of his flock” to God (Gn 4:4); after disembarking from the ark Noah “builds an altar for Yahweh” and offers clean animal sacrifices (Gn 8:20); God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac “as a burnt offering” to test his readiness to receive another covenant oath (Gn 22:1-18); at the foot of Mt. Sinai Moses builds an altar and offers animal sacrifice to inaugurate the Mosaic covenant (Ex 24:4-8); Yahweh commands the making of the Jewish temple and establishes the Levitical priesthood for the primary purpose of offering sacrifice to God (Ex 25-Lv 27); David also builds an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite and offers holocausts and communion sacrifices to Yahweh (1 Chron 21:26-30); Solomon is commanded by God to rebuild the temple and re-institute the entire sacrificial system (1 Kings 5:20), he does so and inaugurates the new temple on the feast of dedication by offering “twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep as communion sacrifices to Yahweh” (1 Kings 9:62-63); at the time of Christ the Levitical priesthood is still hard at work performing the morning and evening sacrifices in the temple. There is no doubt regarding the importance of sacrifice in the worship of God throughout the Old Testament—the most adequate expression of absolute submission to almighty God is the offering of sacrifice performed by a divinely established priesthood.
The Various Types of Sacrifice
In the Bible, there are many different kinds of sacrifice. For example, the holocaust and communion sacrifices were bloody animal sacrifices in which the victim was slain (Lev 1:1-17; 3:1-17). However, the oblation sacrifice was an unbloody sacrifice in which bread and wine and incense were burned upon the altar by the priests (Lev 2:1-16). There are numerous unbloody sacrifices perhaps best typified by Paul’s command to us to offer ourselves as “living sacrifices” to God (Rom 12:1). This is important to note because when the Catholic Church claims that the Mass is an “unbloody” sacrifice she is not producing a novel concept—but one that comes in direct continuity with Jewish Old Testament practice.
The Two Parts of Sacrifice
In the Bible, there are two parts to sacrifice. The first part is defined by the slaughter and ceremonial burning of the victim upon the altar. But is that the end of the sacrifice? Does God just want slain animals and smoke rising from their bodies as they lay on the altar? No. God desires communion with His people, and in the ancient Jewish world this was achieved by eating the victim in a sacrificial family meal. Each Old Testament Covenant is designed to facilitate communion between Yahweh and His earthly family; therefore, it is this communion meal that becomes the most important part of the sacrifice. Eating the victim brings completion to the sacrifice and re-enforces and strengthens the desired family-bond between God and His faithful people.
We see this pattern of offering the victim followed by a sacrificial communion meal in the patriarchal period, we see it specifically commanded to be an essential feature of the ancient Jewish Passover liturgy (Ex 12:1-14) and again in the laws for both the Levitical priesthood (Lev 6:14-18, 25-30; 7:6; 8:31; 10:12-14; 21:22; 22:7; 24:9) and the people (Deut 27:7). Scripture records occasions where this communion meal is lived out as a standard practice (Ex 18:12; 29:32; 1 Sam 9:13) and finally the prophet Ezekiel re-enforces that animals will be sacrificed and then eaten by the priests in a sacred meal as part of the temple worship (Ezek 42:13; 44:27-31).
According to God, full participation in sacrifice specifically requires: (i) the slaying on the victim, and (ii) the consuming of the victim in a sacrificial communion meal. This is important because the majority of Christian churches whether they are Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian, or Roman Catholic, honour the idea that the Mass is not only the sacrifice of Christ but is also a sacrificial meal where the body and blood of Christ (as divine victim) is consumed by the people. This effectively completes both of these “sacrifice-requirements” and in doing so renews and deepens our communion with God, which, of course, is the whole goal of sacrifice.
THE NATURE & FORM OF THE CATHOLIC MASS
Don't Catholics Re Sacrifice Jesus Every Sunday?
Many Protestant people have been taught that Catholics believe they re-sacrifice Jesus during the Mass. A flood of literature has poured out of Christian publishing houses in recent years claiming that whenever Catholics go to Mass, they erroneously believe Jesus is re offered on the cross for their sins, whereas Protestants rightly believe that Christ died once for all time. When confronted by this misconception, it must become the duty of every Catholic to inform our non-Catholic family members and friends that this “re-sacrificing” theory is not what the Catholic Church has ever taught, believed or practiced. Dr. Ludwig Ott, in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma points out that the Sacrifice of the Mass does not re-sacrifice Jesus, but simply makes present the one crucifixion of Christ:
In the Sacrifice of the Mass, Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross is made present, its memory is celebrated, and its saving power is applied. …the Sacrifice of the Mass is a relative sacrifice, as it is essentially linked to the Sacrifice of the Cross. The Council of Trent teaches: Christ left a visible Sacrifice to His Church: “in which that bloody sacrifice which was once offered on the Cross should be made present, its memory preserved to the end of the world, and its salvation-bringing power applied…”[1]
The Catechism of the Council of Trent articulates the same:
"We therefore confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same Sacrifice as that of the cross, for the victim is one and the same, namely, Christ our Lord, who offered himself, once only, a bloody sacrifice on the altar of the cross." [2]
In 2003, Pope John Paul II again articulated the same:
"The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice; she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister. The Eucharist thus applies to men and women today the reconciliation won once for all by Christ for mankind in every age. The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. Saint John Chrysostom put it well: 'We always offer the same Lamb, not one today and another tomorrow, but always the same one. For this reason the sacrifice is always only one... Even now we offer that victim who was once offered and who will never be consumed' .
The Mass makes present the sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add to that sacrifice nor does it multiply it. What is repeated is its memorial celebration, its 'commemorative representation' (memorialis demonstratio), which makes Christ's one, definitive redemptive sacrifice always present in time. The sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic mystery cannot therefore be understood as something separate, independent of the Cross or only indirectly referring to the sacrifice of Calvary". [3]
The Catholic Church has produced many such statements that explain the Mass as a “making present” of the “once only sacrifice of the cross” in a manner that “does not add” or “multiply” Calvary but instead “makes Christ’s one, definitive redemptive sacrifice always present in time”. Along with the fact that Catholicism nowhere depicts the Mass as a repetitive re-sacrifice of Christ — this should be enough to inoculate the Catholic faith from being incorrectly labelled. As already stated, Catholicism does not claim to re-sacrifice Jesus. Instead, the Church claims something far more mystical and glorious — it claims, in fact, to open a doorway through time that enables her members to step out onto the very soil of Golgotha itself and literally participate in the event and the grace of the original sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. This claim is awesome and yet Catholicism continues to insist upon it. Whether there is historical and biblical evidence for this most central aspect of the Catholic Mass is yet to be discussed, however, when critics publish their books, fairness demands that their criticisms directed against the Catholic Mass must be accurate and not based upon a misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine. To suggest that Catholicism re-sacrifices Jesus “over and over again” does little more than lead people into an incorrect and inappropriate understanding of the Catholic faith.
Are We "In" or "Out" of Time?
For those who are not familiar with Catholic doctrine there is surely numerous questions that need to be answered. How does the whole issue of time and space relate to the crucifixion? If the crucifixion, the act of redemption, is over and completed, how can twenty-first century people possibly witness it and literally stand next to St. John as Christ dies for our sins? Isn’t the Catholic Church going overboard here? Doesn’t Christ just tell us to perform the Lords Supper as “a remembrance” of His death?
Often we tend to think of Christ's sacrifice in merely earthly terms, however this confuses the fact that Christ, through the incarnation, possesses both eternal and human realities. Mark P. Shea in his book, This is My Body, recommends the following explanation:
Christ Eternal: We who live inside time view the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a point on the line of history. Indeed, we split history into B.C. and A.D., thinking God, like us, has a past dribbling irretrievably away, a tiny present and an unposessed future.
That is, we think He is stuck to the "time line!" But is He? He certainly does not talk that way. He says He is I AM from “everlasting to everlasting" (Ps 90:2), that He "makes known the end from the beginning" (Is 46:10), that He is "the same, yesterday, today and forever" (Heb 13:8). He describes Himself as the "Alpha and Omega, the One Who is and Who was and Who is to come" (Apoc 1:8). Terms like "eternal," "omniscient," and "omnipresent," ...are applied to Him. In fact, when carefully considered, the biblical evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that God is not mired in time as we are, but that He surrounds time and enters it at His choosing.
God dwells everywhen as well as everywhere. All times are present to Him just as all places and things are. If Jesus were only a finite creature, trapped inside time like us, we could relegate His life to the lumbar room of the past along with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. ...But since He is the Incarnate Eternal Word, He stands with one foot in time and one foot out of it. The scripture expresses this in a fascinating way: it describes Him as the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Apoc 13:8). This means, in effect, that the life, death and resurrection Jesus experienced “once for all” are His from all eternity.[4]
The "Timing" of Calvary… (and the Exodus from Egypt)
To take a note from the pages of the Byzantine Catholics, we can correctly view the “timing” of Calvary in the following way:
(1). When Our Lord died on the cross, this was accomplished as a timeless act. If we want to examine this concept in the sense of the Old Testament world — we are immediately required to identify two kinds of time. We have time that is chronos that we can measure with a watch, and, we have time that is timeless. The timeless time is cosmic time, which, in the New Testament is the Greek word kairos.
(2). With the crucifixion of Our Lord, God steps into chronological time (chronos) and performs a timeless act. From that point onwards He allows His people to go back and to be in that timeless act through the liturgical rite by which they celebrate it. When they celebrate the rite, they leave chronos and enter kairos and partake of Christ’s death by actually being present at the foot of the cross.
It’s important to examine this in the Old Testament. In the book of Exodus, for example, God establishes the people of Israel through Moses. The whole of the "Israel experience" is linked with one event. That event is the exodus where the Jews are set free from Egyptian slavery. Here it is important to remember that in the ancient Jewish mind there was no such thing as freedom — they had been Egyptian slaves for over 400 years. You were always a slave to somebody. The only way you stopped being a slave to "A" was if "B" came in with military might and the power to liberate you, or, if "B"' came in and paid a price for you. However, if "B" paid the price for you, then from that time on you were not the slave of “A” — you were now the slave of "B". With this in mind, we continue to follow the Scriptural narrative, and we discover what happens to the Jews. The Israelites are slaves of Pharaoh, so God comes in to deliver His people with an act of power (the ten plagues). From that time on they belong to who? The Jews now belong to God. There were only two ways for God to bring the people to Himself. Either with an act of power which is what happened in the Exodus, or, with a price being paid. When does God choose the second option? The second option chosen by God is the New Testament Exodus where Christ pays the price by offering up His life upon the altar of the cross: “You are not your own you have been bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20). The price, of course, is the blood of Jesus — shed as the perfect Passover Lamb.
It is, of course, during the tenth plague that Yahweh institutes the Passover meal as the one avenue for the Jews to escape the destroyer who will pass through Egypt to take the life of every first-born son in the land (Ex 12:1-14). The Passover meal (where the unblemished lamb is sacrificed, and its blood serves to mark their houses with a cross) provides protection to the Jews and becomes the most sacred event in the Jewish liturgical calendar. It is to be an everlasting feast to honour Yahweh “for all generations” (Ex 12:14).
Today, every Jew celebrates the Passover as a remembrance of their deliverance from Egypt. We must examine this ancient liturgy giving special attention to its “timing". If one were to attend a Jewish Sader we may notice that it is celebrated in the present tense. The youngest boy says: "Why do we celebrate this night this Passover?" And the father replies: "Because this night the Lord our God delivers us from Egypt." Why is it celebrated in the present tense? It must be present because the Jews believe that when they celebrate the Passover liturgy, they are no longer in the twenty-first century, they are now back in Egypt in that cosmic kairos being delivered by God. They actually participate in the Exodus event. Thus, God can say in the psalms: “Am I not the God who brought you out of Egypt!" and every Jew says "Yes". We Christians are inclined to say: “Wait a minute, my Jewish friend, you were born in Miami. You've never been to Egypt! How can you say 'yes’ when God says: ‘Am I not the God who brought you out of Egypt?’ When were you in Egypt?" The stunning reply comes back to us: “My friend, when I celebrate the Passover, I return to Egypt to be with my ancestors and their liberation from slavery becomes my own”.
If one were to suggest that Jews could not possibly believe such a thing, they would immediately conflict with the text of the Haggadah which strongly teaches otherwise. The Jewish Haggadah is the text which is used for the Seder, and which has been used for at least a thousand years, though its elements are clearly mentioned in the Talmud, and the Seder itself goes back to the first Passover meal, celebrated in Egypt. The section of Magid concludes with the much-celebrated directive:
"In every generation each individual Jew is obligated to view himself as though he personally had left Egypt, as it is written, 'And you shall tell your child on that day that this is on account of what the Lord did for ME when I came out of Egypt.' It was not only our fathers whom the Holy One liberated from slavery; we, too, were liberated with them, as it is written, 'He took US out from there so that He might take US to the Land which He had sworn to our fathers.' "
The Jewish Mishna also re-enforces this same concept. Mishnah (a Hebrew term meaning "repetition" or "study") is the name given to the oldest postbiblical codification of Jewish Oral Law. Together with the Gemara (later commentaries on the Mishnah itself), it forms the Talmud. The Mishnah is distinguished by its topical organization, dividing the traditions of Jewish religious law into six main areas, designated as "sedarim" (singular: "seder"; English: "Orders"), which are in turn divided into separate topical treatises, or tractates. “Pesahim” is an important Mishna tractate for Christians to examine because it highlights the Jewish emphasis regarding the literal participation in the actual Exodus event—experienced by Jews in every generation. A well-known example from this tractate is as follows:
Rabban Gamaliel did state, …In every generation a person is duty-bound to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said, "And you shall tell your son in that day saying, it is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt" (Ex. 13:8). Therefore, we are duty-bound to thank, praise, glorify, honour, exalt, extol, and bless him who did for our forefathers and for us all these miracles. He brought us forth from slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption, so we should say before him, Hallelujah. [The Mishnah, Pesahim 10:5, trans. Jacob Neusner]
These ancient testimonies to the Jewish faith have not been reversed — on the contrary, they are firmly adopted by contemporary Jewish scholars as well:
“Passover is a natural expression of gratitude to God for deliverance as every Jew in every generation must regard himself as having been personally freed from Egypt” [Philip Goodman, Passover Anthology, (1978), p.429, re-published by the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1993]
“The Passover is no mere exercise in historical recollection. Nor is it simply an imaginative leap across time. The ceremony of 'shirat ha-ayam' brings to a height the Passover experience of sacred time, the retrieval of the primordial — and thus eternal — moment of Israel's redemption. In its traditional mode, Jewish historical memory, as Franz Rosenzweig observed, is thus not a 'measure of time.' For Israel, 'the memory of its history does not form a point fixed in the past, a point which every year after year becomes increasingly past. It is a memory which is really not past at all, but eternally present.' What is recollected is not a serial, diachronic past but an enduring past — or rather an eternal reality that first became manifest in the historical past. Nurtured principally by Israel's liturgical calendar and its cycle of ritualized commemorations, this recalled past shapes the individual Jew's contemporary spiritual reality. As the Passover Haggadah declares, 'In each and every generation let each person regard himself as though he had come forth out of the land of Egypt.' (cf. M. Pes. 10.5)" [Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, Ed. by Arthur Cohen & Paul Mendes-Flohr, The Free Press, NY, 1987—From the section on History by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Pg 372].
Certain Jewish quarters (especially in the United States) have attempted to update Jewish theology into a more palatable religion in the hope of accelerating conversions to Judaism. Some of these modern theologians are now providing a purely symbolic interpretation of the Sader meal. However conservative Orthodox Jews view these as divergent groups who have diluted the ancient faith.
Following Jewish Continuity
The Jewish Passover is an incredibly important concept to understand if we are to fully grasp the nature of the Catholic Mass as the sacrifice of Christ. Just as Judaism fuses the Passover liturgy and the Exodus, so Catholicism fuses the Mass (the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper) and the Crucifixion. The Exodus provides freedom from Egyptian slavery. The Crucifixion provides freedom from satanic slavery. In both Old and New Testament ages these “liberation events” are experienced by God’s people through the liturgical rite by which they celebrate them. As I stated in my essay, The Faith Once Given:
Catholicism sees the celebration of the Lords' Supper as going back and being at Calvary — it is the timeless act of God being brought into the twentieth century by virtue of the Mass. When Catholics go to the Mass, they find themselves standing at the foot of the cross. It is the Kairos of God — they leave the twenty-first century and are back there at the cross of Christ where this timeless act of redemption is performed and the benefits of it, they are made to receive.
Unfortunately, this most powerful of Christian doctrines has been distorted by ignorance and twisted like a pretzel until it no longer resembles the Catholic faith. Many non-Catholic Christians have taught or indeed published that the Catholic Mass is comparable to offering sheep as they did in the Old Testament Law. Many have charged the Catholic Church of developing a method where each Mass re-sacrifices Christ in some way and over the course of life it becomes many Masses that earn our way to heaven. This is simply not an accurate portrayal. Rather, each Mass is a participation in the original event wherein the real cross comes through to the people. The Mass, in continuity with the Jewish Passover heritage, allows us to be one with the timeless act of redemption upon the cross.
In short, the sacrifice of the Catholic Mass is not a re sacrifice of Jesus, it is actually a stepping into the original sacrifice that Jesus offered to the Father — the sacrifice of Himself as a holy and immaculate Victim for the sins of man.
Acknowledgment or Application?
The implications of this are literally staggering. After meditating on these divine mysteries, we begin to notice deeper parallels that exist between the Passover and the Catholic Mass. For instance, simply acknowledging the Exodus event was not enough for the Old Testament people of God — it had to be applied throughout all ages by way of the divinely orchestrated Old Covenant Passover liturgy. Likewise, simply acknowledging Jesus' crucifixion is not enough for the New Testament people of God — it also must be applied throughout all ages by way of the divinely orchestrated New Covenant Passover liturgy.
Many may ask, “When did this happen?” When was the Passover (the most important form of worship in the Old Covenant) superseded by its parallel action in the New Covenant? The Catholic answer remains the same — Jesus, the night before He dies, transforms the Jewish Passover liturgy into the Mass by instituting His own body and blood as the eternal sacrifice in the upper room.
Footnotes:
[1] Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Rockford, TAN Books and Publishers, 1974, p.407.
[2] The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Rockford, TAN Books and Publishers, 1982, p.258.
[3] Pope John Paul 2, Papal Encyclical Letter, Ecclesia De Eucharistia, 2003, paragraph 12.
[4] Mark P. Shea, This is My Body, Front Royal, Christendom Press, 1993, p.18-20.