I’m currently being home schooled, and for this year my mother got me a book about New Testament church history. She got it from a website that sold “Christian” home schooling material. At first glance I thought it would be like what the title said it would be. But once you open the book, its a very anti Catholic text book that stomps on Catholic doctrine and makes the Popes and Saints look like evil heretics. It barely talks about New Testament Church history. But aside all this, I notice that one thing really bothers me, and that is, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They claim that it is not in the Bible and that Jesus’s Holy Sacrifice at Calvary was a “once and for all” sacrifice. And that even if it were a real sacrifice it would have no value in the sight of God. They point to the verse, "There is no remission (of sins) without the shedding of blood because of the “un-bloody sacrifice”.
I don’t know how to answer this. I asked my mother if she could return it, but she told me since she had already bought it she doesn’t want to go through the hassle of getting 100 dollar worth of textbooks back She told me to " Just try to look at other people’s view points" (And besides my mom is zealous pentecostal protestant:( that’s why she won’t let me go to a Catholic Church)
I know that that the Sacrifice of Mass isn’t actually “Jesus being condemned, scourged, and crucified all over again” if it were so Our Lady of Sorrows would become Our Lady of Perpetual Depression:p
for an authentically Catholic high school text on scripture you cannot do better than the 4th vol. of the Didache series from Midwest Theological Forum, i think it is just called Sacred Scripture or something similar. You can order these, among other places from the Catholics united for the Faith website cuf.org
I think you will find your answers in the Catechism of the Catholic Church#1362–1372. If you don’t have the book, you can find that section here: vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm . Scroll down to #1362.
Jesus is not sacrificed “again” at the Mass. We are mystically present at the one eternal sacrifice, which takes place outside the boundaries of time.
It must be terribly difficult to hang on to your Catholic faith when your mother is not supportive, and when you do not have regular access to the sacraments which nourish and strengthen our faith. Pray daily to the Holy Spirit to give you all the grace you need to persevere, and for an increase of His sevenfold Gifts within you. As soon as you reach the age where you are able to make these decisions for yourself, approach a Catholic priest about receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation if you have not already done so.
Have courage! Pray for your mother’s conversion, but always treat her with respect despite your disagreement on religious matters. God bless you, and I will say a prayer for you and your mother.
There are two ways of looking at this, and they are both correct:
In the Eucharistic Liturgy, we enter in time and on earth, under veils of bread and wine, the One Sacrifice eternally (that is, outside of time) pleaded without veils in Heaven.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice is PRECISELY the change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Immaculate Lamb sacrificed once for all before the foundation of the world.
Could we really re-sacrifice Jesus if he didn’t want to be re-sacrificed? Are Catholic priests more powerful than God?
Jesus is fully man and fully God. God is unchanging and outside of time. If “all of Jesus” offered his sacrifice to the Father, then there must not only be a “human” component (suffering and death, at one point in time) but also a divine component (no suffering and death, outside of time, eternal).
Jesus is still, now and until the end of time, our High Priest in heaven. And scripture says a High Priest must have something to offer. If Jesus no longer has something to offer, he can no longer be our High Priest.
God loves us and wants to share all that is good with us. What is the greatest good he could share, if not his own saving sacrifice? Thus God shares that saving sacrifice with anybody who desires to be present. He shares it thousands and thousands of times throughout the world, each and every day. Being God, could he do any less?
To better understand the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, we need to look at the original Greek. When Jesus broke the bread and declared it to be his body, and when he declared the wine to be the blood of the new covenant, he said to do this in “remembrance” of me. The Greek word for remembrance is “anamnesis” which has a much deeper meaning than our western definition of remembrance.
To paraphrase, it means to take a previous event/person and bring that one and same event/person into the present - thereby perpetuating this event. The sacrifice of the Mass is the one and same sacrifice that occurred at Calvary - this is what the Scripture means when it states that it is “once and for all.” Christ’s work transcends all time - his sacrifice is not constrained by the limitations of time. It is just as real today as it was 2,000 years ago.
All of the early church fathers believed this and wrote about it. St. Ignatius wrote the following in his letter to the Smyrnaeans:
*They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they 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. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. *
You can check out many other writings of the early Church Fathers the following link: newadvent.org/fathers/
I think the sacrificial nature of the Lord’s Supper is best seen in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22, where the Eucharist, the cup Christians bless and the bread Christians break, is placed in opposition to Pagan sacrifices, where ‘the table of the Lord’ and ‘the cup of the Lord’ are placed in opposition to ‘the table of demons’ and ‘the cup of demons.’ From the context, ‘the table of demons’ and ‘the cup of demons’ refer to the food and drink that pagans offered in sacrifice on altars to their gods and then shared in as a way of showing their solidarity with their gods. Thus, ‘the table of the Lord’ and ‘the cup of the Lord’ mentioned in those verses certainly refer to the food and drink, the blessed bread and wine that are participations in the body and blood of Christ, that Christians offer in sacrifice on altars to God (Hebrews 13:10) and then share in as a way of showing their solidarity with God.
If her mom is trying to discourage her from learning about/entering the Church, she’s not going to buy her anything like that. But you’re right, the Didache series is awesome.
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