ONE SACRIFICE FOR SINS FOREVER

33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, B.  Hebrews 10:11-14, 18.

AIM: To explain the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice and its implications for us today. 

Mother Teresa, whom happily we can now call ABlessed,@ used to say: AThe worst disease in the world today is loneliness.@ The longing to give ourselves in love, and to know that we are loved in return, is universal. We seek the fulfillment of this longing in friendship and marriage. And beyond these human relationships, people from the beginning of time have sought a remedy for the deepest longings of their hearts, and their inner emptiness, through fellowship with God.

From time immemorial the search for fellowship with God has led people to offer God sacrifice. Some sacrifices sought to atone for sin, others were offered in thanksgiving for blessings received, or to reinforce prayer for future blessings.  Sacrifice may also take the form of a religious meal, through which the worshipers seek to enter into communion with God. Jesus= religion permitted the offering of sacrifice only in the temple at Jerusalem, which Jews considered the dwelling place of God on earth.

Israel=s prophets pointed out, however, that there was a fundamental flaw in the sacrifices offered to God. Since God was the creator of everything, and thus their true owner, he did not need the material things offered to him in sacrifice.  God did not want the gifts which were offered to him. He wanted the givers. Yet this was the one thing people could not offer. And to the extent that people did try to offer themselves to God in a spiritual manner, they were offering something tainted by sin, and hence unworthy of God. God, being all-holy, deserved an untainted and perfect offering.

The realization that the sacrifices offered in the Jerusalem temple never really made up for sin lies behind the opening sentence in our second reading: Aevery priest [and the author is referring to Jewish priests in the Jerusalem temple] stands daily at his ministry, offering frequently those same sacrifices that can never take away sins.@

It is part of the good news that Jesus came to proclaim that this failure at the heart of his people=s religion has been ended. A perfect sacrifice has been offered to God once: one truly worthy of him, one that does make up for and take away the guilt of all sins for all time. This perfect sacrifice has actually achieved what all previous sacrificial offerings tried to achieve, without success. It has put an end to human isolation and loneliness by bringing us into loving fellowship with the One who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts: God himself.

This perfect sacrifice was offered by Jesus Christ. From childhood he lived always without sin, Atempted in every way that we are,@ as this same letter to the Hebrews says (4:15), yet always remaining perfectly obedient to his Father=s will.  Jesus consummated this offering on his sinless life to his Father on Calvary, uttering as he died there the well known words: ANow it is finished@ (Jn. 19:30). 

Our second reading is referring to Jesus= self-offering when it contrasts the repeated offering of material sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple, Awhich can never take away sins,@ with the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. ABut this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God  ... For by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer offering for sin.@ 

That last phrase presents us with a difficulty. It seems to contradict the Church=s teaching that there is a daily offering for sin: the sacrifice of the Mass.  This confronts us with a dilemma. Either Jesus= self-offering, consummated on Calvary, was truly all-sufficient, unique, and unrepeatable B in which case it is difficult to see how we can say that the Mass is a sacrifice. Or the Mass is a sacrifice B in which case Jesus= sacrifice on Calvary was not all-sufficient. To resolve this dilemma we must ask: what is the relationship between the Mass and Calvary?

To answer that question we need to go behind Calvary to the Last Supper.  There Jesus used the familiar symbolism of the Jewish Passover meal to interpret for his friends what he would do the next day. Giving thanks to God over bread and wine, which is the Jewish way of blessing them, Jesus said: AThis is my body ... This is my blood.@ But he said more. He called the bread Amy body given for you.@  The wine he called Amy blood poured out for you.@ That is Jewish sacrificial language. Jesus was referring to the sacrifice of his body and blood on Calvary, where his body would be broken and his blood poured out. 

Finally, Jesus gave his friends a command: ADo this in my memory.@ When, in obedience to that command, we Ado this@ with the bread and wine, both Jesus himself, and his sacrificial self-offering to the Father, are truly present with us.  Jesus= sacrifice is not repeated. Rather it is Amade present.@ As the Catechism says; AThe Eucharist is ...  a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit.@ (No. 1366)

The Mass, however, is not merely a mental recalling of what Jesus did at the Last Supper and Calvary. Here our crucified and risen Lord is truly present. Spiritually, which means invisibly but truly, the unique and unrepeatable past event of the Last Supper and Calvary is made present as we celebrate that event in sacred signs. Those signs, bread and wine, make present through their consecration both him whom they signify and his action for us. Here time and space fall away.Here we are able to stand with Mary and the Beloved Disciple at the cross, with but one exception: we cannot see Jesus with our bodily eyes, only with the eyes of faith. 

Is it any wonder that, down through the ages, the Mass has been so precious to Catholics? One of them, Mother Teresa, said: AI couldn=t survive one day with Jesus in the Eucharist.@ Let me tell you about another, the Vietnamese Bishop Francis Xavier Van Thuan. When the Communists took over South Vietnam in 1975, he was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen years. He died in Rome as a cardinal in 2002. He writes:

AWhen I was arrested, I had to leave immediately with empty hands. The next day I was permitted to write to my people asking for the most necessary things: clothes, toothpaste. I wrote, >Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomach ache.= The faithful understood right away. They sent me a small bottle of wine for Mass with a label that read, >Medicine for stomach aches.= They also sent me some hosts, hidden in a flashlight. 

AThe police asked me: >You have stomach aches?= >Yes,= I told them. >Here=s some medicine for you,= they said.

AI will never be able to express my great joy! Every day, with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of my hand, I would celebrate Mass. This was my altar, and this was my cathedral! It was true medicine for soul and body.

AEach time I celebrated Mass, I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with him the bitter chalice. Each day in reciting the words of consecration, I confirmed with all my heart and soul a new pact, an eternal pact between Jesus and me through his blood mixed with mine. Those were the most beautiful Masses of my life!@

Those words challenge us. Does the Mass mean, for us, even a fraction of what it meant to that imprisoned bishop?

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The bishop=s story is taken from Francis Xavier Van Than, Testimony of Hope (Boston: Pauline Books, 2000) p. 131.