What is the Sacrifice?

Since the times of the ancient Israelites, as shown in the Book of Exodus, a lamb was offered for sacrifice to God. The people ate the flesh of the lamb, and the blood was poured out and used to mark the entrance of their homes. Each year for Passover this was repeated, when each family brought a lamb to the temple in Jerusalem, and then the lamb was sacrificed on the altar by the priest on behalf of the people.

Why? Because to worship God as He has commanded since the beginning of time, the people must offer to Him a sacrifice. The heart of religion is worship and the heart of worship is sacrifice. Jesus, as John the Baptist proclaimed, is the sacrificial Lamb of God. He becomes the eternal sacrifice on behalf of the people to fulfill their obligation of worship through the last 3 days He was living on Earth. During the Last Supper, when He says to His apostles that He is giving them His flesh and His Blood, and then commands them to continue to offer that sacrifice, he creates a new covenant with His people and becomes the perfect sacrifice: God the Father’s own Son sacrificed to Him.

Spanning the now almost two thousand years since Christ instituted the Priesthood and Sacrament of the Eucharist, there is an unbroken lineage of priests continuing to renew that sacrifice of Christ of Calvary. At the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, bread and wine are brought by the people to the priest and placed on the altar, just like the lamb brought before the priest at the temple. Then, through the prayer of the priest, the bread and wine are transubstantiated, meaning a change of substance, into the Precious Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, after Jesus becomes physically present on the altar, the priest lifts up the Body and Blood and offers them in sacrifice to God the Father saying, “Through him, and with him, and in him, o God, almighty Father, in the unity of the holy spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever.” Just as with the ancient Israelites, the sacrifice is completed not by the offering to God, but by the consumption of the flesh and anointing with the blood of the lamb, the Lamb of God.