Question: I am a former RC, saved by Jesus Christ in l99l. I have heard all the arguements, and I still know that what I was taught in the RC church is completely opposed to orthodoxed biblical doctrine. I do not care what Luther or Calvin (or any Pope) has to say----the scriptures alone are clear that faith saves man, and that Jesus Christ's ONE TIME sacrifice was perfect for my sins, and never to be repeated (Hebrews chapters 7-10). God Bless you and take care.
Answer:
Catholic teaching acknowledges that the sacrifice of Calvary occurred once only and that it is efficacious for all time. There is no disagreement between caths and prots on this matter. The prot who opposes the sacrifice of the Mass because it is "recrucifying Christ" is totally ignorant of the Biblical meaning of Sacrifice and has opposed himself to the very words and intentions of Jesus.
I want to make one suggestion. I haven't seen anyone really deal with the attitude of the Rabbis towards the Passover and its significance to the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus at a Passover meal. The Rabbis taught that no one could be considered a true Jew unless he underwent the Passover with Moses and the children of Israel in Egypt. This was accomplished in the generations after Moses by the Passover rituals. The Passover meal was not seen as a mere memorial, nor even as a re-enactment. It was an actual participation in the Exodus experience. If a person went through the Passover ritual, he was considered to have actually participated in the events of the Exodus. As such, the Passover meal was seen as a "sacrament of initiation" for the Jews in which the "real presence" of the Exodus was made accessible to the Jewish people as an perpetual reminder (anamnesis) of what was accomplished in Egypt. The parallel to the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is obvious.
It should also be noted that the original Passover sacrifice and meal were done in anticipation of the "passing over" of the Angel of Death shortly thereafter. It was directed towards a future event. The events of the Last Supper were similarly directed towards the future. In fact, only time that Jesus acts as a priest and offers his body and blood as a sacrifice for sin is at the Last Supper. There is NO sacrificial language at all on Calvary itself. Without the Last Supper, we would not have Jesus acting in anyway like a priest (ie., actively offering himself as a sacrifice for sin) anywhere in the Gospels. As such the narrative structure of the Passion stories in all of the Gospels clearly begins with the Last Supper without which we cannot fully understand the meaning of what is to follow.
Jesus actively offers himself as a sacrifice for sin only at the Last Supper. When he asked us to do that "in memory" of him, he was asking the Apostles to repeat that priestly ritual that he himself performed by which he offered himself as a sacrifice. He did not ask them to ritually kill him again. Unfortunately, Protestants seem to forget that the killing of the victim is not in itself sacrificial. It is the OFFERING of the victim to God by a priest which constitutes the true sacrifice. It is that which Jesus wanted repeated at the Mass, not the crucifixion per se.
These are some references to back up the above assertions.
Exodus 12:24“You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants. 25And when you enter the land that the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite. 26And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’ 27you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses.’”
42That was for the Lord a night of vigil (anticipation) to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is the Lord‘s, one of vigil (anticipation) for all the children of Israel throughout the ages.
43The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This is the law of the passover offering: No foreigner shall eat of it. 44But any slave a man has bought may eat of it once he has been circumcised. 45No bound or hired laborer shall eat of it. 46It shall be eaten in one house: you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house; nor shall you break a bone of it. 47The whole community of Israel shall offer it. 48If a stranger who dwells with you would offer the passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised; then he shall be admitted to offer it; he shall then be as a citizen of the country. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. 49There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.
The Mishnah (trans. Jacob Neusner) Pesahim 10:5 A. Rabban Gamaliel did state, . . . E. 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, honor, 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. Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (Ed. by Arthur Cohen & Paul Mendes- Flohr, The Free Press, NY, NY 1987) >From the section on History by Paul Mendes-Flohr (Pg 372)- "... For Reb Areleh and his Hasidim - and other congregations that have similar rites - 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.'
Harper's Bible Dictionary "The Passover
...The ultimate significance of the Passover, though, is not in its sociology or history, but in its unique role in the life of the Jewish people. It was and is the festival of freedom and redemption par excellence. Representative of God’s love and saving acts, it always gave the people hope in the face of physical and spiritual oppression. As a family celebration, it served as a unifying bond from generation to generation. Its strength is seen in its emergence as the most important of Jewish festivals, in its three-thousand- year continuity, and in its continuing relevance to the needs of the people, whether it be freedom from social discrimination or the acquisition of religious liberty.
"The traditions of God’s love and of his saving acts prompted the nascent Christian community, according to the Gospels at the command of Jesus, to celebrate a thanksgiving (Gk. eucharistia) festival commemorating the Passover he celebrated with his disciples the night before his crucifixion (1 Cor. 11:23-26) and the saving effects of that death and subsequent resurrection (Matt. 26:17, 26-28). The centrality of that observance for the Christian faith, drawing on the Passover as the central observance of the Jewish faith, clearly shows how deeply rooted Christianity is in the historic life and faith of the people of Israel."
"Worship ... The most important part of any animal sacrifice was the disposal of the blood at the altar. Whether dashed against its sides, or smeared on its horns, this ritual act made the sacrifice valid; in fact, it distinguished sacrifice from mere slaughter. Leviticus 17 requires all animals eligible as offerings to be sacrificed, rather than simply slaughtered (see vv. 3-4)."
The New Geneva Study Bible
Theological Note on the Sacraments (Matt 28:19) - Christ instituted two rites for His followers to observe: baptism, a once-for- all rite of initiation (Matt. 28:19; Gal. 3:27), and the Lord’s Supper, a regular rite of remembrance (1 Cor. 11:23–26). These are called “sacraments” in the Western church, “mysteries” in the Eastern Orthodox church, or “ordinances.” Scripture has no technical term for the two rites or the corresponding Old Testament observances, that is, circumcision of males as a rite of initiation (Gen. 17:9–14, 23–27) and the annual passover as a rite of remembrance (Ex. 12:1–27). Biblical teaching, however, warrants classifying them all together as signs and seals of a covenant relationship with God...
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary "Religious Institutions of Israel "Section 105 ...The essence of the sacrifice did not consist in the destruction of the victim. In fact, in the case of animal sacrifices, the slaughter of the victim was only a preparatory rite and was performed by the offerer, not by the priest. One reason for the destruction of the offering, whether animal or vegetable, was that it made the gift irrevocably definitive and withdrew it completely from ordinary use. Also, it rendered the victim invisible and thereby symbolically sent it into the invisible sphere of the divine. The Hebr words for making an offering (hiphil of qrb and of 'lh) mean “to bring near” and “to make to rise”; the word for holocaust, 'ola, means basically “that which goes up.” The ritual served to symbolize this idea of “giving,” of “sending up” to God. The altar was the symbol of God’s presence; and the victim’s blood, the most sacred element, was brought into direct contact with this symbol. In every sacrifice, the blood was poured out at the base of the altar; in expiatory sacrifices it was rubbed on the horns of the altar; in sin offerings for the high priest or the entire community it was sprinkled on the veil that concealed God’s special presence in the Holy of Holies. On the Day of Atonement it was taken inside the Holy of Holies and sprinkled on the propitiatory, God’s throne. The combustible parts of the victim were burned and, in a sense, spiritualized as they rose heavenward in the form of smoke. Section 106 The sacrifice, then, served as a gift, expressing the Israelite’s sense of dependence on God, but it also indicated his desire for union with God. The Israelites never entertained a crassly physical notion of this union (sec. 102 above); theirs was a more subtle attitude, in harmony with the sublime spiritual transcendence of Yahweh. When God had received his share of the victim, the ones who had presented it ate the remainder in a sacrificial meal. The fact that the one victim had both been offered to God and eaten by the worshipers brought the two parties together in a spiritual communion, establishing and consolidating the covenant bond between the two. This was a joyful occasion and in the early days the communion sacrifice was the most popular in the ritual."
We should also remember what St Paul said: 1 Cor 10:14 Therefore, my beloved, shun the worship of idols. 1 Cor 10:15 I speak as to sensible men; judge for yourselves what I say. 1 Cor 10:16 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 10:17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 1 Cor 10:18 Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? 1 Cor 10:19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 1 Cor 10:20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. 1 Cor 10:21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 1 Cor 10:22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?
Clearly, St Paul parallels the Eucharist to pagan sacrifices. This is not because there is a "re-crucifixion" of Christ but because the Eucharist is a participation or communion (in Greek the word used here is "koinonia") in the Body and Blood of Christ who is our sacrificial victim in the same way that the eating of the animal sacrifices of the pagans are a communion with false gods. It is this communion in the one sacrifice of Calvary that is at the heart of the sacrificial meaning of the Eucharist, NOT the killing of the victim. The killing of the victim is merely a means to facilitate sacrifice, it is not the sacrifice itself.
It should be further noted that Jesus instituted the Eucharist at a particular point in the Passover ritual: the eating of afikomen and the drinking of the 3rd cup of wine. The afikomen (Hebrew for 'dessert') is the last thing eaten at the Passover meal. It consisted in Jesus day as either a sandwich of unleavened bread with the last pieces of the Passover lamb or as a piece of the bread. (There is some debate about this.) In current Jewish practice, it is the bread only which REPRESENTS the Passover lamb. The 3rd cup of wine is the "Cup of Blessing (Kiddush)" also known as the cup of redemption because it ends the meal per se (though not the ritual itself) and represents the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage. The 4th cup is called the Cup of Elijah and looks forward to the consummation of all things when Messiah comes. It was this that Jesus accomplishes when he drank the sour wine on the cross just before he dies. We shall not share that cup with him until we are in heaven.
It is clear that in the JEWISH Passover imagery used by Jesus to institute the Eucharist, the imagery is TOTALLY sacrificial and communal. It represents an active participation in the very act of the passion from its beginning (the Last Supper) to its climax (Jesus' death on the cross) and its ultimate ending (Jesus' Ascension to eternally intercede for us before the Father as high priest).
The prot objection to the Mass as sacrifice is crude, unbiblical, and is a deliberate attempt to foist a secular view of time and history on God's people while ignoring the BIBLICAL view. As always, the Catholic Church's witness is vindicated by true scholarship and prot minimalism is shown to be a demonic deception.
Art Sippo
The Catholic Legate