THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

January 21st, 2021: Hebrews 7:25-8:6.

Jesus, we heard in our first reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, “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.”

Jesus’ sacrificial self-offering began at the Last Supper and was consummated at Calvary. But if that sacrifice was unique and unrepeatable (which is what Hebrews means when it says that Jesus’s sacrifice was “once for all”), how can we call the Mass, which we celebrate daily, “the holy sacrifice”?

In the Mass Jesus’ sacrifice is not repeated, as Protestants falsely think. Rather, it is made spiritually present. There is a parallel in the Jewish feast of Passover, which commemorates God’s deliverance of his people, the Jews, from the pursuing Egyptian army at the Red Sea. The celebration of Passover does not repeat that deliverance (an event even more distant in time than the Last Supper and Calvary are for us). Rather it makes that miraculous deliverance by God spiritually present.

          Whenever, therefore, we gather to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this” with the bread and the wine, we are there! We are in the Upper Room with Jesus’ apostles. We are there with the Beloved Disciple and Mary, along with his other female followers – more faithful than the men – beneath the cross. We are there with but one difference: we cannot see the Lord with our physical eyes; but we do perceive him with the eyes of faith.

          Do we realize that when we come to Mass – and truly worship?