The Better Promises
The Letter to the Hebrews teaches that Jesus’s Ascension was necessary to complete God’s saving plan, which included our Lord’s perfecting the Day of Atonement sacrifices by entering a sanctuary not made with human hands, a heavenly sanctuary, to atone for the world’s sins (Heb 9:24, 10:12).
The Letter to the Hebrews elaborates on the inadequacy of the Old Covenant offerings, referring to both the daily Tamid offerings and the annual Day of Atonement sacrifices. Paul teaches that Israel’s need to slaughter and offer new animals every day (cf. Heb 7:27) and every year (cf. Heb 9:25) illustrates the sacrificial ineffectiveness of these sin offerings and points toward their heavenly perfection by Christ in the New Covenant:
[The priests of the Temple] serve [in] a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary; for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain” [Ex 25:40]. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant He mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second. (Heb 8:5-7; cf. 10:1-5, 11)
The Day of Atonement
Jesus completes His Sacrifice and perfects the Day of Atonement offerings when He, the high priest of the New Covenant, ascends to the ultimate holy of holies, “into heaven itself” (Heb 9:24), to offer Himself to the Father on our behalf: “[H]e entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves, but His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:11-12). Only in ascending can Jesus take His throne and fully inaugurate His kingdom (Catechism, no. 664; cf. no. 1076). Citing our Lord’s words recorded in John’s Gospel, the Catechism provides,
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” [12:32]. The lifting up of Jesus on the Cross signifies and announces His lifting up by His Ascension into heaven, and indeed begins it. (no. 662)
Jesus thus conveys that the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension are distinct but inseparable aspects of His one, triumphant Sacrifice of Calvary, His Paschal Mystery.
In ascending to the heavenly sanctuary and presenting His perfected self-sacrifice to the Father, Jesus completes Calvary; yet, because it culminates in the timeless, never-ending realm of heaven, His offering necessarily has a perpetual character. Through His Ascension, “Christ has entered…into heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf” (Heb 9:24). Now, because Jesus “always lives to make intercession for [us]” (Heb 7:25). Now, because Jesus “holds His priesthood permanently” (Heb 7:24; cf. 8:3). Now, because, if Jesus only offered a “once-for-all” Sacrifice as high priest, His Sacrifice must have a perpetual character, for how else could He always make priestly intercession for us in the heavenly sanctuary? (Heb 7:27; 9:11; 9:28; 10:10).
Scripture settles the matter: While Jesus offers only “a single Sacrifice” (Heb 10:12), “He holds His priesthood permanently” (Heb 7:24), for as St. Paul affirms elsewhere, Jesus’s ministry continues now in the heavenly sanctuary, for He “indeed intercedes for us…at the right hand of God” (Rom 8:34; cf. Catechism, no. 1090).
Making Heaven a Place on Earth
Through the New Covenant Passover ordinance of the Mass, Jesus enables the Church to make present the never-ending Sacrifice of Calvary completed. As He was designated a priest forever according to Melchizedek, so Jesus designates men, beginning with His Apostles, to act in persona Christi (in the Person of Christ), as New Covenant priests (cf. Catechism, no. 1548). The Church’s priests celebrate the Mass as the Passover ordinance transformed and fulfilled, making present, offering up and consuming the timeless sacrifice of the Lamb of God under the Melchizedekian signs of bread and wine, just as Christ did and designated at the Last Supper.
As the Catechism, no. 662 provides, “As ‘high priest of the good things to come’ he is the center and principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven” [Heb 9:11; cf. Rv 4:6-11]. Jesus not only fulfills His Father’s will in heaven, but, living up to the Lord’s Prayer, “on earth as in heaven” through His priests, beginning with the Apostles.
(Ultimately, though, earth is fulfilled by being drawn up to heaven. That is, while Scripture describes Jesus as a “priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” “forever” only means until the end of time in one sense, for in heaven the sacramental veils of bread and wine will give way to face-to-face communion with our beloved Lord (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). Yet, in a more important sense, Jesus perfects the priesthood of Melchizedek in heaven, because in the heavenly sanctuary “he continues a priest for ever” (Heb. 7:3), i.e., for all eternity.)
The general Protestant rejoinder to these various Catholic arguments is that Christ’s sacrifice and associated salvific work were completed with His death and Resurrection. Thus, the Mass cannot be a sacrifice in any sense. For those Christians who do not believe in the Mass, Catholics should charitably ask some questions.
The Church teaches that bread and wine are the signature, sacrificial matter of a Melchizedekian priesthood, citing, among other evidence, Genesis 14:18 and Christ’s use of bread and wine at the Last Supper. If bread and wine are not such matter, what are the distinguishing features of a Melchizedekian sacrifice, particularly regarding Christ’s once-for-all Sacrifice of Calvary? That is, given what the Letter to the Hebrews provides in 5:8-10, how is Christ’s Melchizedekian priesthood associated with His being the source of eternal salvation?
In addition, because Jesus holds His priesthood permanently, in what way does He continue to make intercession for us in a distinctively Melchizedekian manner if not through the sacramental re-presentation of His one Sacrifice at Mass? Remember, a priest is primarily appointed to “offer gifts and sacrifices; hence it is necessary for this priest to have something to offer” (Heb 8:3, emphasis added), and He must do so in a Melchizedekian manner.
Further, if the Mass has no biblical basis, how has the Melchizedekian priesthood fulfilled the levitical priesthood? (cf. Heb 7:11-12).
And, if there are no New Covenant priests serving the Father in and with Christ on earth, how did God fulfill Malachi 3:3 and “purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present[ed] right offerings to the Lord” (cf. Jer 33:17-18)?
Finally, if not the Mass, what is the “pure offering” that is offered among the nations on an apparently daily basis, “from the rising of the sun to its setting”? (Mal 1:11).
In contrast, the Catholic celebration of the Mass makes biblical and historical sense of the interdependent themes of 1) the transformed Passover ordinance, in which Jesus both pre-presented and anticipated His Communion Sacrifice at the Last Supper; 2) His completed Sacrifice of Calvary, i.e., completed in everlasting glory at the Ascension, thereby enabling His work of redemption/atonement to continue both in heaven and on earth; and 3) Christ’s service as a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, which Scripture reveals is enacted in light of His becoming the source of eternal salvation through the same Sacrifice of Calvary, and which the Church re-presents under the Melchizedekian appearances of bread and wine at every Mass, just as Jesus commanded.
Thomas J. Nash is Director of Special Projects at Catholics United for the Faith. He is the author of Worthy Is the Lamb: The Biblical Roots of the Mass (Ignatius Press) from which this column is excerpted and condensed with permission of Ignatius Press. He is also a co-author of Catholic for a Reason III: Scripture and the Mystery of the Mass (Emmaus Road Publishing).
