Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jdd@db.toronto.edu (John DiMarco) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Importance of sacrifice Message-ID: Date: 26 Jul 90 06:38:37 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Lines: 46 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu johnw@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Warren) writes: >How do you reconcile the >once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary with the Mass repeated again and again? Well, the Mass is not a new sacrifice. It's the one sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. You see, nothing new is being sacrificed. No animal's body is being consumed. But the bread and wine is transformed into the same Christ who was sacrificed at Calvary. The same body. The same blood. The same sacrifice. >When Paul (or whoever it was who wrote Hebrews) said that one sacrifice was >enough, he was not assuming his readers would think along the lines of "with >God there is no time; therefore, all the Masses performed in time are >a-temporally connected with the One Calvary Sacrifice, and so we do have >only one sacrifice after all." Paul was talking about temporal stuff, and >was referring to the fact that Christ's sacrifice was the end of all the >Jewish sacrifices, which happened in time. Right. Christ's sacrifice happened at a point in time, ending the need for any new sacrifices thereafter. If the Mass is not a new sacrifice (and it isn't), it does not contradict this in the least. The author of Hebrews isn't talking about the Mass at all, so I don't see how your point about "talking about temporal stuff" has anything to do with the biblical validity of the Mass. The author of Hebrews is making the point that Christ's sacrifice obviated all need for all new sacrifices for sin, a point that no Catholic would contest. I think this problem may be one of language, not content. Catholics call the Mass a "sacrifice" because in it we enter into the one sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. But in a strict sense, it is not "a sacrifice", because it is not a *new* sacrifice in and of itself. But Catholics like to be able to use sacrificial language when talking about the Mass, because the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the eucharist is the same body and blood sacrificed at Calvary for the redemption of sin, and through the eucharist, we enter in a concrete way the same one sacrifice of Christ and the redemption it offers. God bless, John -- John DiMarco jdd@db.toronto.edu or jdd@db.utoronto.ca University of Toronto, CSRI BITNET: jdd%db.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net (416) 978-8609 UUCP: {uunet!utai,decvax!utcsri}!db!jdd