Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
23rd July 2017

The Most Perfect Worship - The Sacrifice of the Mass
by Rev. Fr. M.P. Hill S.J. 

Christianity without a sacrifice would be an anomaly in the history of religion; for never before the advent of Protestantism was there a religion without a sacrifice. Without a sacrifice the Christian religion would be strikingly defective, as it would lack the most perfect form of worship.

A sacrifice is an act of divine worship which consists in the destroying, wholly or partially, of a sensible substance, and thus offering it to God in acknowledgment of His sovereign dominion over all things. Of all acts of homage sacrifice is not only the most excellent but the only one offered exclusively to God. All others, such as bowing, kneeling, or incensing, may be offered to God's creatures, but sacrifice is offered to God alone; signifying, as it does by its very nature, the acknowledgment of God as the sovereign Lord of all things.

The Sacrifice of the Mass is really one and the same sacrifice as that of the Cross. The victim is the same; the Priest is the same, being no other than Christ Jesus Himself, though as victim He is offered ministerially by the hands of His creatures. In the Sacrifice of the Mass, however, instead of a real shedding of blood there is a mystical separation of the Precious Blood from the Sacred Body; and the Mass, instead of purchasing redemption for us, as did the Sacrifice of the Cross, rather applies to our souls the merits of the Sacrifice of the Cross. It is not Catholic teaching that once Christ died for us we were saved without any cooperation on our part. A free cooperation with the grace of redemption is indispensable. Now, in this cooperation we are aided by the Sacraments, and in one of the Sacraments Our Lord has found a means of remaining in the midst of His creation, offering Himself as a perpetual victim, and enabling us to cooperate with His redemption by our partaking of the victim from off the Altar of Sacrifice.

In the Sacrifice of the Mass are verified the memorable words of the Prophet Malachi. In the first chapter of his prophecy he reproaches the Jewish priesthood for the manner in which they offer sacrifice and announces the abolition of their sacrifices and of their priesthood in favour of a sacrifice and priesthood which shall no longer be confined to the Jewish nation but shall be offered by the Gentiles and throughout the world. "For", he says, "from the rising of the sun even to the going down My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice and there is offered to My name a clean oblation: for My name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord of hosts" (Mal. 1:11). The Prophet here predicts a sacrifice that shall be offered after the coming of the Messias, for he is evidently speaking of a time when God shall be known and His name be magnified by the Gentiles. But what sacrifice can be meant if not the Sacrifice of the Mass? It is the only religious rite in Messianic times that has ever been associated with the idea of sacrifice; and certainly today from the rising of the sun to the going down, i.e., from East to West, or in every place, or throughout the world, is offered the Sacrifice of the Mass.