I was wondering. Why did Jesus make the Eucharist a continuation of the Sacrifice of the cross? Thanks and God bless.
It is God needs to have a proper relationship with us.
In order for us to be able to worship God we need to be able to do something for Him. Yet as created beings we really cannot do anything for God, so He came and gave us the Sacrifice of His Son to give us something to offer Him that is worthy of Him.
The Mass is just giving God the only true worthy Sacrifice for God and to make it proper we need a person who stands in the person of Christ to offer it. The Priest who isn’t just a man at Mass but through the power of Jesus offers up the Eucharist to God.
Now if it wasn’t a Sacrifice it wouldn’t be worship worthy of God and if it was just a Sacrifice of something we make or do then it would just be man centered. So it needs to be centered on the one Holy Sacrifice of Jesus which we can’t repeat or do over but we can unite ourselves in that Sacrifice.
God Bless
Scylla
Because he was substituting himself for the ritual sacrifice in the Temple that was no longer easily accessible to the common Jew.
Laudatur Iesus Christus.
Eternal life is the love that flows from each person of the Holy Trinity to the others. This total self-donation is the being of the Trinity and the ground and source of all being. In order for us to be saved, after Adam and Eve separated us from the flow of Divine Love, we had to be made able to participate in the love flowing, not from us, but from the Son to the Father. Hence, only by giving us the privilege of changing our offerings into His perfect self-donation to the Father and then offering His sacrifice on His behalf, by the hands of our priests, could Jesus allow us to take direct part in the life of God.
The Holy Mass is a therefore a sacrifice both, as Scylla said, because it is the only fitting worship of God, and also because it is the only means by which we can be brought into eternal life.
“. . . the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.” (John 6:52.)
Spiritus Sapientiae nobiscum.
John Hiner
An offering of Bread and Wine is found in many places of the Hebrew Texts.
For example from Genisis
Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High, he blessed Abram with these words:
Then from the New Testament letter to the Hebrews:
For it is testified: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” … but he with an oath, through the one who said to him: “The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent: ‘You are a priest forever’”-- …
Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them. 26 It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens.27 He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself. 28 For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests, but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law, appoints a son, who has been made perfect forever.
It is not a continuation. That would imply that Jesus is stilldying for our sins. It MAKES PRESENT the sacrifice on Calvary, a “time machine” if you will which takes us back to the foot of the cross.
The Book of Hebrews makes mistake when it calls Jesus the Eternal High Priest. By definition, a priest is one who offers sacrifice. An Eternal High Priest would have to offer an eternal sacrifice… God Bless:)
Why was the ritual sacrifice no longer accessible to the common Jew?
Laudatur Iesus Christus.
Dear Flyersfan:
I urge everyone not to use this image if a “time machine” to describe the Sacrifice of the Mass; it is too nebulous. It is more accurate to say that the Most Holy Mass is a *continuation *or *perpetuation *of the Sacrifice of Calvary (see, Trent 22:1); and one should understand this in human, temporal terms. Though it is true that time is not the same in eternity (Cf., 2 Peter 3:8), this is a misleading focus, when trying to understand what Christ has done to aid us, who live in time.
Whatever its merit this indistinct way of describing what happens at the Mass is not convincing and it loses many people, especially young people who are just trying to make sense of things, whose good sense leads them to reject the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass because the explanations being offered for these miracles are unintelligible.
To understand the Mass temporally, one must consider the Temple Sacrifice as practiced at Jerusalem (or the Sacrifice in desert in the Tent of Meeting). (See, Judaism 101, “Qorbanot.”) One has to imagine the procedure, the actions, the gestures – even to the flapping and swinging of the offerings. When one does this, and considers the miracles of the loaves and fishes, the nature of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the miracles at its heart become accessible. (Cf., John 6.)
The form of the Mystery of Faith, taken from St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:26, holds an important clue: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.”
Pax Christi nobiscum.
John Hiner
No not a time machine. Salvation and the act of dying for our sins is outside of time. So we are not transported back into time.even figuratively…Calvary is outside of time hence the holy sacrifice of the Mass is outside of time…thus going to mass we are brought present to that “eternal” outside of time happening. I don’t like the time machine explaination becuase the sacrifice is outside of time.
Jesus Himself is THE sacrifice. He is the new lamb. His blood signed the sealing of the new and final covenant.
I think that when Jesus said “Do this in memory of me” his listeners knew what He meant. Remembering through the ritual was not just a mental exercise. For the Jews, the Passover meal was/is a memorial meal. The passover meal before the tenth plague and the Exodus from Egypt was the sacrifice of a lamb. They painted their doorposts and lintels making the shape of a cross, and ate the lamb with the unleavened bread. It was known as the “lamb of God.” The Passover celebrates not only the Israelites’ escape from slavery, but commemorates God’s loving kindness past, present and future. It is a thanksgiving meal. The Jews don’t “re-escape” from Egypt every time they celebrate Passover – but they take seriously the command to celebrate from generation to generation – they re-live the Passover every time they celebrate it but there was only one Passover.
The Eucharistic feast is a a meal of thanksgiving and of sacrifice. Jesus offered His body and His blood at His last supper – and said “as often as you shall do these things, in memory of Me shall you do them.” He was killed on the cross – He is the new sacrifice which is to be consumed.
So, Jesus is a Time Lord and the Cross is his TARDIS?
Dr. WHo?
Exactly.
It is very interesting to reread Moses’ final speech to the Israelites before he died. Though the Israelites, except for Joshua and Caleb, are all the offspring of those who actually lived through Passover, Moses talks of the Passover in the present tense–because the Jewish memorial of Passover takes place in God’s time–kairos time. As such, they all experienced it just as Moses, Joshua, and Caleb did.
Jesus, fully human and fully divine, died in time, but He, and His Sacrifice, are ever present in kairos. At each Mass, we are lifted up spiritually, just as St. John was on the isle of Patmos–we lift up our hearts…
There Jesus fulfills the Day of Atonement, the eternal High Priest offering the eternal Sacrifice, Himself, on our behalf, to which we add our sufferings and joys, our lives, perfected by Christ and offered through Him, with Him, and in Him. Through grace we are united to Him in the Body of Christ–to Him who is One in Being with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
He left for us the Eucharist, that those who have eyes might see and those who have ears might hear. See and hear what? Jesus in the Liturgy of the Word, and Jesus in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. On the road to Emmaus, He disappeared from the disciples view when they recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread, and as He promised, He is with us always.
The Mass is a veiled Sacrifice under the accidents of bread and wine, like the offering of Melchisadek, like the showbread in the Tabernacle and the Temple that was so holy only the priests could eat it on the Sabbath. The Mass is also a foreshadowing of the Supper of the Lamb that we will partake of in heaven, face-to-face with our Lord, God willing.
Sacrifice–YES! Hence the importance of the Lamb of God–the Lamb that Abraham said that God Himself will provide after sacrificing the ram substituted for his only son, Isaac. The Lamb represented in an eternal sacrifice with the memorial of the Passover.
A meal-YES! Like the meal eaten by the 70 elders after Moses ratified the Sinai covenant, splashing blood upon the people and the altar. The first todah meal, eaten in the presence of God on the mount. The todah meal, predicted by rabbis to be the only sacrifice left in the age to come. The todah meal of thanksgiving, of eucharistia.
The Mass. I love the Latin, feeling that I am standing and kneeling along with the saints of old, as I am indeed. I especially love the Greek Kyrie, and the Hebrew Alleluia and Amen. We Catholics worship as God taught us to worship Him in the Old Testament, in the Mass–the fulfilled synagogue and Temple sacrifices. It is sublime…
In Christ’s peace and joy,
Robin