Centered on sacrifice

Cincinnati vocations director Fr. Kyle Schnippel has another thoughtful, learned piece in the Telegraph this week. He reflects on the constant theme of sacrifice in worship under the Old and New Covenants:

Worship in the Old Covenant, however, was not just the ‘lifting of eyes to the Lord.’ It was very much centered on sacrifice. Daily in the Temple, at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm, the Tamid would be offered before the Lord. This offering of a lamb, bread and wine was a continual reminder that the people of Israel were to be offered to God. They are marked as God’s Chosen People, and the lamb is symbolic of an offering of self to the Lord God. In this way, all the people participated in Temple worship on a daily basis.

Yet, there was more than one type of sacrifice offered in the Temple, so that while the Tamid was the high point of the day, animals were being offered continually to the Lord through the ministry of the priests, of particular note for our discussion here is the Sin Offering discussed in Leviticus 4. Here, the layman brought an animal before the priest and laid his hands upon it, confessing his sins to the priest as he did so, symbolically placing them upon the head of the sacrifice. The layman then slits the throat and cleans and prepares the animal, which is then presented to the priest. The priest has caught the blood of the animal, and, with the rest of the carcass, burns the sacrifice on behalf of the layman on the Altar of God.

In looking at the Catholic Mass of today, strong parallels leap forward to bring us not just to Jesus’ offering of self on the cross, but back to the very foundations of sacrifice as instituted by God, through Moses, on Mt. Sinai. God truly has planned this out from the beginning. As we enter into the deep mysteries we celebrate at every Mass, all of history becomes present in an eternal, and now even greater, offering back to God the Father, for it is now the offering of Christ back to His eternal Father. Reality is never more “real” than in the Eucharist!

Hence, as Catholics, we see the great need for our priests. It is the priest alone who, unworthy though he is, presides at these great cosmic mysteries. Here, he offers not just the bread and wine to be turned to the body and blood of Christ, but also himself and his people, who are no longer just chosen, but adopted to be sons and daughters of God, in Christ.

For more on this topic, consult Dr. Brant Pitre's informative 22-CD course The Bible and the Mass, which a good friend recently loaned me ahead of a long drive.