The “new Mass” is not teaching deficient. Since the Mass is presented in the vernacular, people actually understand what is being said. The “new Mass” is perfectly fine in terms of transubstantiation and **the Last Supper IS the Mass. **
We are doing what Jesus ordered us to do - to consume His Body.
And there’s the rub.
For the Mass is NOT a celebration of the Last Supper, it is an unbloody offering of Christ to His Father. This has been so since the beginning of Catholicism. The Didache refers to the Eucharist as a
thusia, the Greek term for sacrifice: "Assemble on the Lord’s day, and break bread and
offer the Eucharist; but first make confession of your faults, **so that your sacrifice may be a pure one. **. The Mass as a Sacrifice is also part of Scripture.
[Matt. 5:23–24]. For this is the offering of which the Lord has said,
‘Everywhere and always bring me a sacrifice that is undefiled, for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is the wonder of nations’ [Mal. 1:11, 14]" .
I think that people today are not able to grasp the idea of Sacrifice & in order to do so, the Old Testament must be read as precursor to the New Testament. The Jewish nation offered lambs, they offered grain, they had what were called “wave offerings”…where they would simply wave something as a Sacrifice to God.
The words, “offer this or sacrifice this” appear over seventy times in the Old Testament. So the same word that is used for the sacrifice under the Old Covenant is used for the sacrifice of the Mass in the New.
Why do we offer a Sacrifice?
To appease a JUST God. That is why Christ died, to appease God & beg His forgiveness & mercy. (It’s amazing to me…the JUST God demanded a Sacrifice, so this same MERICFUL God sent HIS OWN Son to be the Lamb on the Altar, thereby appeasing Himself, yet costing Him dearly. This fact alone is one that is mind-boggling).
Today’s Christian will not accept the fact that God is JUST, He is perfect thus He Cannot be otherwise. If He says that we are not to murder another & we do so without repentance & He
cannot accept that, He
cannot welcome us into His Kingdom. It isn’t that He will not; His perfect nature CANnot. He is also fully Merciful & many people cannot put those two ideas together. Today’s Catholic mainly sees God as a kindly old Grandfather who will pat us on the head…no matter what we do…& tells us that it doesn’t matter, He loves us.
RUBBISH!!! It DOES matter, which is why the Sacrifice of the Mass, must always remain a Sacrifice. The Mass is not a recelebration of the Last Supper, **the Mass is the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. **
From the preface of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s book, “Calvary & the Mass”:
Bishop Sheen says,
“Hence the Mass is to us the crowning act of Christian worship. A pulpit in which the words of our Lord are repeated does not unite us to Him; a choir in which sweet sentiments are sung brings us no closer to His Cross than to His garments. **A temple without an altar of sacrifice **is non-existent among primitive peoples, and is meaningless among Christians. And so in the Catholic Church the altar, and not the pulpit or the choir or the organ, is the center of worship, for there is re - enacted the memorial of His Passion.”
The Novus Ordo Mass blurs the Sacrifice of Christ & endeavors to celebrate the Last Supper. Thus the “communal meal” atmosphere. This is a sacrilege in my opinion.
I’ll try to post later on the fact that the Sacrificial nature of the Mass was throughly reputed by Cranmer, the author of the first Protestant “Mass”. Cranmer entitled his 1549 service: “The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion commonly called the Mass”.
catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/newmass/ordo.htm