What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Eucharist: There Is No Worship without a Sacrifice: Part 2

The Eucharist: There Is No Worship without a Sacrifice: Part 2

We have seen how God decreed his people should worship him in the Old Testament, but we were left with the question of how do we do that today?  To understand how we are to worship God properly today, we need to look at the New Testament because God has made a way for us as well.

That way was foretold by St. John the Baptist when he declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1: 29 NABRE)  Jesus himself declared it when he said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever east my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” (John 6: 53-54)

Jesus further defined this when he instituted the Eucharist on the night he was betrayed when he “took bread and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.’...This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  (I Corinthians 11: 24-25 NABRE)

Jesus knew that the next day, he, the spotless Lamb of God, would shed his blood “once for all”.  No longer would they need the blood of a lamb every year to obtain forgiveness or to worship God in spirit and in truth.  He showed them what to do.  He re-emphasized the teaching when he broke bread with his disciples after the resurrection.  “And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.  With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.” (Luke 24: 30-31 NABRE)  From that point on, every time the Scripture refers to the breaking of the bread, it is referring to the Most Holy Eucharist.

Today it seems many have lost sight of what it means to truly worship God.  Certainly in almost all Protestant churches that is true.  A lot of churches equate worshipping God with having great music and great preaching and great power point presentations and great coffee and great moves of the Spirit in their midst.  Some of those things are nice, even helpful, some are inappropriate for worship of the Almighty Triune God (coffee and power point presentations come to mind).  To worship God, even today, a Sacrifice must be offered.  Or worship isn’t worship.  It’s music and teaching.  It’s not worship.

What is the Sacrifice that is offered?  It is the same Sacrifice Jesus offered once for all.  In the Catholic Church, at every Mass, we re-present the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.  We re-present the shed blood of the One Spotless Lamb.  And because God is eternal, because there is no past or future in him, our re-presentation takes us mystically (meaning we can’t understand how this happens, we just know that it happens) back to the Paschal Mystery.  Back to the night he was betrayed.  Back to when his body was broken.  Back to when his blood was shed.  We mystically stand beside our Blessed Mother, Mary, and St. John the Evangelist. Even though we live now, we mystically step out of time and space and go back to the empty tomb on Easter morning. 

Our Jewish brothers and sisters understand this, even though our Protestant brothers and sisters do not.  “In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for me.  In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real.  This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time the Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.

“In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning.  When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ’s Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.  ‘As often as the sacrifice of the Cross, by which “Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed” is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out.’” (CCC 1363 – 1364)

This is something most Protestant churches don’t understand.  Holy Communion, to them is a representation.  It’s something they do to remember what Christ did.  To a Catholic, it is the making present of the one sacrifice of Christ.  That’s why we have the Holy Eucharist at every Mass.  In fact, you can’t have a Mass without it.  For the Mass is the worship of the Church.  And you can’t worship without a sacrifice.  For worship to be worship, the Blood of the Lamb must be shed.  In the Mass, in the Eucharist, that one Sacrifice of Christ is ever present, just as God decreed it should be.