The Eucharist from Scripture

“And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne;” (Rev 8:3). When the Catholic Church pulls out all of her traditions, this passage comes to life in the liturgy. The priest takes a thurible filled with incense. Walking around the altar, he incenses it and man can see his prayers ascending to God. However, what I find most amazing, is that there is an altar in Heaven.

Why would there be an altar? This is Heaven we’re talking about! There doesn’t need to be any more sacrifice for sins. Why would we need to sacrifice? Won’t everything be perfect? Yes, it will, and perfect love demands sacrifice. Jesus revealed this when He told his disciples, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her living put in all that she had” (Lk 22: 4). This was true love for God. In Heaven, we see the 24 elders falling down before the Lord while “they cast their crowns before the throne” (Rev 4:10). These were the crowns that God gave to them, but they recognized that He gives us gifts so that we can glorify Him.

Yet, any sacrifice offered by us, including those Heavenly crowns, would be, in a sense, insufficient. Certainly not worthy using Heaven’s golden altar! Our lives are worthless. There is only one Lamb pure and holy enough to be an eternal sacrifice: Jesus. As St. John continues his revelation the Lamb appears “as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). Whoa! Jesus is appearing… dead in Heaven? Well not quite, the Lamb is very much alive. St. John is expressing the nature of the life of Christ. He perpetually offers His entire self for the glory of Father and those He loves. We couldn’t expect anything less from the perfect King. He is the good Shepherd who always lays down His life for His flock, eternally pouring His life, His blood, into our souls. Think, if He loves us shameful humans, He couldn’t possibly, even for a moment, withhold the tiniest sliver of love from His Father. Jesus offers His perfect life always to the One who begot Him, Him whom He loves so sweetly. The altar in Heaven is for Christ.

It is the glorious mystery of Christianity that we should follow Christ wherever He might go. Therefore, we offer ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rm 12: 1). God calls us to offer up our lives to praise Him, our perfect Good. Yet, should our worship stop there; I couldn’t help but fall on my knees and weep. Even if I should live a perfect life, I would have nothing worthy to offer God (cf. Rm 11: 35). So holy is our Father that nothing but the sacrifice of an infinite life equal to His own could satisfy Him. Blessed be the Lord that He has made this possible! Or are you unaware that by being sons of God, we share the inheritance and priesthood of Christ (cf. Rev 1:6)?

The core of the Old Testament and priestly life is sacrifice. At the institution of the Passover, Moses tells the Hebrews to buy a male, unblemished lamb. He instructs them to follow the two components of a sacrifice by first, slaughtering the lamb, and second, eating the lamb. Then, Moses has his people smear blood over the doorway to mark them as safe from the Lord’s wrath (Ex 12: 1-13). In Leviticus, a similar sacrifice is institutionalized and codified into law for the celebration of the harvest. Interestingly, there’s an addition. It is written, “you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the LORD. And the cereal offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, to be offered by fire to the LORD, a pleasing odor; and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin” (23: 12-13). Here, the sacrifice of lamb and the offering of bread and wine are placed together, side by side.

Another Old Testament practice was the “bread of the Presence” which was placed on a golden table (1 Kings). This was housed in the temple of the Lord, signifying God’s presence. This bread was always present physically as an offering to God. The Law declared the bread holy, not merely normal. Jesus discusses this in Mt 12: 4. “Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?”

I ask you brothers and sisters, if God loved Israel so as to give them signs of His presence and means to offer sacrifices to Him and somehow, we as priests will participate in the sacrifice of Christ in Heaven, what are we sacrificing now?

The eve of the Passover. The one True, perfectly unblemished, paschal Lamb lifts up a loaf of bread saying, “this is my body which will be given up for you.” Jesus completes the link between the bread and wine and the sacrificial lamb. In less than 24 hours, the Perfect Lamb would hang limp on the Cross, sacrificed. Jesus reveals at the Last Supper that His death on the Cross is the offering of bread and wine, not separate from the crucified Lamb. The bread and wine are fulfilled in Christ. Now if the sacrifice of Jesus was real. If He actually died, and it wasn’t just a symbolic death, we need to finish the sacrifice and actually eat the Lamb (cf. Ex: 12:8). Oh that is cannibalism! How can Jesus give us His flesh to eat? “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and you drink his blood, you do not have life within you… for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks by blood remains in me and I in him” (Jn 6: 52-56).

The Apostle Paul says this explicitly, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10 16-17.) If we “participate” in something, we are part of that reality. Participation definitely does not mean symbolic, but to share a nature. The species of Bread share the reality of being Christ’s body and the wine, His blood. Paul continues that through this marvelous reality that something miraculous occurs: we who are many become one body. How can a merely symbolic presence do this? “I speak as to sensible men; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Cor 10:15).

I am astonished that people believe Christ came to earth and gave us more symbols and powerless rituals to observe. He came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. Christ is present; Christ is King now. He was not here to mess around with human symbols and holy bread, but to give to us the reality of Heaven. Of course, we’re not ready to see this face to face, so like Moses who came down from the mount, His face shining, Jesus also veils Heaven for us. He gives us our Eternal Happiness in a reality we can cope with (Cf. Ex 34:29-33).

As “a high priest after the order of Malchizedek” (Heb 5:10), Christ too offers bread and wine (cf. Gen 14:18), but because Christ is infinitely greater than this mere mortal, His offerings and sacrifices cannot be merely symbolic lest we dishonor Him by saying that His gifts to us are equivalent to those of Moses. Nay, while the holy bread on the golden altar signified the presence of the Lord in the temple, the Eucharistic Bread is greater. It is the presence of the Christ’s eternal sacrifice on the altar of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven is here (Alleluia, Alleluia!); Christ has ascended His throne and rules the world. He is Emanuel, God with us. Heaven is in our midst like a fig tree about to blossom. Its beauty is here, its fullness concealed beneath the sepals, safeguarded from the elements of the world. Because Heaven is here and truly now, we offer the same sacrifice of Heaven: the Eucharist, Jesus the Christ.