The only difference consists in the manner of the oblation. Christ was offered up on the cross in a bloody manner, and in the Mass He is offered up in an unbloody manner. On the cross He purchased our ransom, and in the Eucharistic Sacrifice the price of that ransom is applied to our [pg 312] souls. Hence, all the efficacy of the Mass is derived from the sacrifice of Calvary.
It was on the night before He suffered that our Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Sacrifice of the New Law. “Jesus,” says St. Paul, “the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and, giving thanks, broke and said: Take ye and eat; this is My body which shall be delivered for you. This do for the commemoration of Me. In like manner also the chalice, after He had supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in My blood. This do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of Me; for as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, ye shall show the death of the Lord until He come.”[397]
From these words we learn that the principal motive which our Savior had in view in instituting the Sacrifice of the Altar was to keep us in perpetual remembrance of His sufferings and death. He wished that the scene of Calvary should ever appear in panoramic view before our eyes, and that our heart, memory and intellect should be filled with the thoughts of His Passion. He knew well that this would be the best means of winning our love and exciting sorrow for sin in our soul; therefore, He designed that in every church throughout the world an altar should be erected, to serve as a monument of His mercies to His people, as the children of Israel erected a monument, on crossing the Jordan, to commemorate His mercies to His chosen people. The Mass is truly the memorial service of Christ's Passion.
In compliance with the command of our Lord the adorable Sacrifice of the Altar has been daily renewed in the Church, from the death of our [pg 313] Savior till the present time, and will be perpetuated till time shall be no more.
In the Acts it is said that while Saul and others were ministering (or, as the Greek text expresses it, sacrificing) to the Lord, and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them: “Set apart for Me Saul and Barnabas.” St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, frequently alludes to the Sacrifice of the Mass. “We have an altar,” he says, “"whereof they cannot eat who serve the tabernacle.”[398] The Apostle here plainly declares that the Christian church has its altars as well as the Jewish synagogue. An altar necessarily supposes a sacrifice, without which it has no meaning. The Apostle also observes that the priesthood of the New Law was substituted for that of the Old Law.[399] Now, the principal office of Priests has always been to offer sacrifice. Priest and sacrifice are as closely identified as judge and court.
St. Paul, after David, calls Jesus “a Priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedech.”[400] He is named a Priest because He offers sacrifice; a Priest forever because His sacrifice is perpetual; according to the order of Melchisedech because He offers up consecrated bread and wine, which were prefigured by the bread and wine offered by “Melchisedech, the Priest of the Most High God.”[401]
Tradition, with its hundred tongues, proclaims the perpetual oblation of the Sacrifice of the Mass, from the time of the Apostles to our own days. If we consult the Fathers of the Church, who have stood like faithful sentinels on the watch-towers of Israel, guarding with a jealous eye the deposit of faith, and who have been the faithful witnesses of [pg 314] their own times and the recorders of the past; if we consult the General Councils, at which were assembled the venerable hierarchy of Christendom, they will all tell us, with one voice, that the Sacrifice of the Mass is the centre of their religion and the acknowledged institution of Jesus Christ.
Another remarkable evidence in favor of the Divine institution of the Mass is furnished by the Nestorians and Eutychians, who separated from the Catholic Church in the fifth century, and who still exist in Persia and in other parts of the East, as well as by the Greek schismatics, who severed their connection with the Church in the ninth century. All these sects, as well as the numerous others scattered over the East, retain to this day the oblation of the Mass in their daily service. As these Christian communities have had no communication with the Catholic Church since the period of their separation from her, they could not, of course, have borrowed from her the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; consequently they must have received it from the same source from which the Church derived it, viz., from the Apostles themselves.
But of all proofs in favor of the Apostolic origin of the Sacrifice of the Mass, the most striking and the most convincing is found in the Liturgies of the Church. The Liturgy is the established Ritual of the Church. It is the collection of the authorized prayers of divine worship. These prayers are fixed and immovable. Among others we have the Liturgy of Jerusalem, ascribed to the Apostle St. James; the Liturgy of Alexandria, attributed to St. Mark the Evangelist, and the Liturgy of Rome, referred to St. Peter. There are various other Liturgies accredited to the Apostles or to their immediate successors. Now I wish to call [pg 315] your attention to this remarkable fact, that all these Liturgies, though compiled by different persons, at different times, in various places, and in divers languages, contain, without exception, in clear and precise language, the prayers to be said at the celebration of Mass; prayers in substance the same as those found in our prayer books at the Canon of the Mass.
We cannot account for this wonderful uniformity except by supposing that the doctrine respecting the Mass was received by the Apostles from the common fountain of Christianity—Jesus Christ Himself.