The Reason

“Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year for you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are, each one, to take a lamb for themselves, according to the fathers’ households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; in proportion to what each one should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to slaughter it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall completely burn with fire. Now you shall eat it in this way: with your garment belted around your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in a hurry—it is the LORD’S Passover. For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and fatally strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the human firstborn to animals; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will come upon you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

Exodus 12: 1-13

The Passover is a holy Jewish holiday that remembers when God freed Israel from their slavery to Egypt. Understanding the Passover is essential to understanding the crucifixion of Jesus and the Catholic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that followed. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is what sets Catholics apart from the rest of Christianity. If Jesus’ crucifixion truly fulfills the Jewish Passover, then the Catholic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is essential to Christian salvation and redemption.

Christ’s crucifixion not only fulfills the Jewish Passover, but it also completes the Binding of Isaac. All four of these events, the Binding of Isaac, the Passover, the Crucifixion of Jesus, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, are all sacrifices prescribed by God for the salvation of his people. When Abraham was willing to sacrifice his first born to God, the son God promised to give him in his old age, he demonstrated the faith needed for God to carry out his plan of salvation for the world. Just as an angel held back Abraham’s hand from sacrificing Isaac, God held back the angel of death from taking the first born of anyone who observed the rubrics of the Passover. In the fullness of time, God sent his only begotten son to take the place of Isaac and those spared in the Passover, to complete the sacrifice necessary for salvation. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass makes Christ’s crucifixion present to us in real time so that we may participate in it. If we want to understand the requirements of salvation, we have to understand what a sacrifice is.

A sacrifice is a religious act, by which a visible gift is offered to God by an authorized person and then destroyed in some way, so that God may be worshipped and loved.

First, a visible gift is required. This is something material and tangible. The gift must be something of value. Offering a gift we hold no value in is not truly a gift. The greater the value, the greater the gift.

Second, the gift must be offered up to God. The sacrifice is not so much in the gift but the offering of it. The act is more important than the gift.

Third, the gift must be offered by an authorized person. God has said who is authorized to offer sacrifice on behalf of the people. In the days before Jesus the authorization to offer sacrifice was given to the sons of Aaron, the men from the tribe of Levi. Jesus is the great high priest from before time began. When he established his Church on earth, he gave the authority to offer sacrifice to those he ordained for the task. He did so through the laying on of hands and by breathing into them the Holy Spirit. Christ’s priesthood is not through a bloodline but in the line of Melchizedek, a superior priesthood to the one of the Levites. This authority has been handed down through apostolic succession and resides in the Catholic priesthood today. Jesus did not make us all priests authorized to sacrifice of the behalf of the people. The priesthood we receive at baptism is one that allows us to live a sacrificial life for Christ.

Fourth, the visible gift offered to God by an authorized person must be destroyed in some way. Under the old law animals were slain and burned. Isaac would have been slain and burned. In the Passover a lamb was slain, roasted, and eaten by the people. Anything left over was burnt completely before sunrise. Christ was crucified. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the hosts, a word meaning victim, are consumed as part of the Sacrifice. The reason why the offering is destroyed, either entirely or partially, is to acknowledge God’s supreme dominion and to worship and love him as the Lord of life and death.

Under the old law, God had prescribed how the sacrifice was to be done, who was authorized to do the sacrifice, and where the sacrifice must take place. When the temple was destroyed, the Jews lost the ability to offer sacrifice to God. In rising from the dead, Jesus rebuilt the temple in himself and authorized a new priesthood to authorize sacrifice on behalf of the entire world. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass makes present to us in our time and place the one and only sacrifice of Christ on the cross at Calvary. His crucifixion is made present to us so that we may participate in it. It is only by being crucified with Christ that we can rise with him in resurrection into salvation.

The angel of death did not pass over any house of any Jew who did not follow the rubrics as commanded by God regardless of how righteous they may have been. Likewise, Jesus was also very clear when he said what was required for salvation.

“Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, the one who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died; the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

John 6: 52-58

Jesus did not mean this metaphorically. He did not mean this symbolically. Just as the Jews had to consume the Passover lamb, so too must we consume the Pascal Lamb of God if we do not want the angel of death to have claim to us when we die.

Scripture tells us that many of those who were following Jesus found this statement to be very offensive and difficult to hear. They left Jesus that day. The Twelve did not understand what Jesus meant, but they believed in him and did not leave. Later, at the last supper, Jesus would establish the Sacrament of the Eucharist and institute the priesthood, giving his priests the authority to consecrate bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

The only place where we are given Jesus’ body to eat and his blood to drink is at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where a priest, authorized by Jesus through his ordination, consecrates simple bread and wine into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus our high priest in the order of Melchizedek. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Catholic faith. This was the teaching of the Catholic Church for 1500 years.

Then the devil played upon the pride of the fathers of the reformation. He convinced them that it was no longer necessary to eat the flesh of the son of man in order to have eternal life. The first thing Luther did was to remove the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and he changed the Mass from a sacrifice into a service for the instruction of the faithful. Wesley, Calvin, and Knox did similar things when they formed their new churches. Communion became nothing more than a symbolic remembrance of the last supper. The only thing required to enter heaven is a simple profession of faith in Jesus.

The Jews who did not follow the rubrics given to them by God for the Passover woke the following morning to find that the first born of every creature inside their houses had been taken by the angel of death in the darkness of night. Those who refuse to consume the body and blood of Jesus can only rely on his mercy not to pass them over when he returns to judge the living and the dead at the end of this age.

The Eucharist is the reason to become Catholic. The Eucharist is the reason to stay Catholic. The Eucharist is the reason to live as a Catholic.