Sixth Sunday of Year C
February 2007
4) The Mass is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
A sacrifice is a material offering made to God by means of a consecration and consumption of the thing offered.
The offering of sacrifice was an everyday occurrence in Jewish religious practice. This consisted of the consecration and slaughter of a sheep, goat, cow or pigeon. On special feasts there would be many of these sacrifices.
These sacrifices were essential and central to Old Testament religious practice. A religious Jew would have earmarked some of his animals as possible candidates for sacrifice. He would pick them because they were the healthiest, strongest and best. These sacrifices were offered as a gift of man to God, to offer homage to God, for the forgiveness of sin and to bring about communion with God.
As we saw last weekend the life of Jesus of Nazareth was dedicated completely to bearing witness to the truth. His whole life was sacrificed to upholding truth. His arrest and execution on the cross, was the final consummation and symbol of a life dedicated to upholding truth.
We are told in the New Testament that from the beginning Christians regarded the crucifixion not only as the final symbolic act of a life dedicated totally to bearing witness to the truth but also as the ultimate sacrifice to God which superseded and supplanted all Old Testament sacrifices. As St. John tells us: 'Jesus Christ . . . is the sacrifice to expiate our sins, and not only ours, but also those of the whole world.'
And St. Paul: 'He, Jesus Christ ... has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken his seat for ever, at the right hand of God. . . . By virtue of that one single offering, he has achieved the eternal perfection of all who are sanctified.'
That is why we call Jesus 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world'.
As Isaiah prophesied about him:'He was despised, the lowest of men, a man of - sorrows, familiar with suffering, . . . Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God; whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises. We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and God brought the acts of rebellion of all of us to bear on him. Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers he never opened his mouth.'
This is the image that I keep in mind as I contemplate the Mass as the sacrifice that takes away my sin and the sin of the world.