In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the sacrifice of the Mass and its propitiatory nature. Joe explains how the Eucharist is a participation in Christ’s sacrifice and contrasts this with the views held by the Reformers. Tune in to understand the deeper sacrificial theology behind the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.
Transcript:
Caller: Eucharist is a thanksgiving, so it’s more like a meal after a wedding. Right. Rather than sacrificing and performing the ritual to sacrifice.
Joe Heschmeyer: A lot of Christians today will say, oh, you’re re sacrificing Christ, and no, we’re not. But the issue is, quite understandably, a lot of people don’t know how sacrifice works. We imagine the killing of the animal, but that’s only a small part of the sacrifice. Tristan in Escondido. Welcome. Go ahead with your question.
Caller: Hey, Tristan, this is Tristan. Yeah, we had talked not too long ago.
Caller: Yeah, we. We talk like a week or two ago in real life or, you know, offline.
Caller: Right. Hey, I wondered if I could ask you another question kind of related to the Eucharist.
Caller: Please.
Caller: I was wondering if you could give me an explanation about the sacrifice of the Mass. What exactly you mean by it being a propitiatory sacrifice, and if you could kind of put it, you know, in light of the way that the Reformers kind of thought about it. Right. As sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Yeah. Appreciate you, Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer: Wonderful. Yeah. Tristan, great question for those who are listening who don’t know what the word propitiatory means. It means that it satisfies the righteous demands of God. Now, this is an important distinction because what we are saying there is that when you participate in the Eucharist, you are participating in the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ Catholics and Protestants both agree with is propitiatory. This is different than the sacrificial theology of the Reformers. Now, the Reformers don’t agree with each other. For example, John Calvin and Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book four says that Satan, not only obscured and perverted, but altogether obliterated and abolished, vanished away and disappeared from the memory of man. The true Lord’s Supper. When with most pestilential error, he blinded almost the whole world into the belief that the Mass was a sacrifice, an oblation of. For obtaining the remission of sins. So he is very much against this kind of sacrificial language of the Mass. But he acknowledges that the Mass itself, this is not like some random group of Catholic theologians he’s disagreeing with. He’s disagreeing with the way Christians had worshiped for 1500 years. And so he says, it is not merely the common opinion of the vulgar, but the very act has been so arranged as to be a kind of propitiation by which satisfaction is made to God for the living and the dead. And if you read the writings of the Church fathers, they very clearly believe in propitiation. There’s a beautiful passage where St. Monica, when she’s dying, just asks Augustine to remember her at the Mass. Or you can find church fathers talking explicitly using the language of propitiation to describe what happens at the Last Supper. So, big picture, I would say the first thing to watch out for is if you think this is just a sacrifice of praise, where it’s simply our memorial where we’re offering praise, but it’s not the true sacrifice of Christ. You have to say that Christians, theologians and laity alike, everybody we know of, was offering false worship to God for seemingly the entire time, from the time of the Apostles to the time of the Reformation. And at that point, it just looks like you’re a different religion than Christianity. Like you’re just coming along and doing a new thing, like Mormonism. You’re not doing the Christian thing.
Caller: You’re.
Joe Heschmeyer: You’re doing something new. You’re rejecting the way we worship God in favor of some new and unknown, like, strange form of worship. That’s a big red flag. So how do we defend propitiatory sacrifice? Biblically, this can be done in several ways from both the Old and the New Testament. First, in the Old Testament, there were several passages that the early church fathers pointed to to talk about the Mass being a sacrifice. So you find this in the Didache. You find this in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. They regularly point to Malachi Chapter one, where God talks about how he is not pleased with the sacrifices that were offered by the Jewish priests of old. But instead, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the Gentiles will offer a pure sacrifice to his name. That this is the sacrifice of Christ. That makes sense. Tristan. I mean, are you with me so far? Yeah.
Caller: Can I dispute that? Is that okay?
Caller: Yeah, please, by all means.
Caller: So this is kind of, I would say, the heart of it is something more like this. It seems that what the Reformers were doing when they take Malachi 111, like you said, or the Didache, or these different texts that seem to talk about a sacrifice being offered to the Lord, in those contexts, it’s always a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It’s a Eucharistia. Right? The Eucharist is a thanksgiving. And so in those contexts, it’s this kind of mutual giving between the Father and us, the body of Christ with the Son as the head. And so the way we would see it is something like this. The Father has given us so bountifully in His Son, has paid for all of our Sins, Right. Propitiatory, he has paid for all of our sins and now we get invited to the wedding feast where we just show up and thank our generous host. Right. And in that coming to the feast, we are being united with Christ and that’s what we’re offering to the Father is this Thanksgiving in Christ with him as our head. So it’s more like a meal after a wedding. Right. Something that you do to celebrate the wedding, if you will, something that is a beautiful part and parcel of it, rather than something that is now actually marrying you to God once again. Right. Propitiating your sins once again. Hopefully that’s.
Joe Heschmeyer: So it sounds like we’re maybe not really disagreeing then, right? Because I mean, it seems like maybe I’m misunderstanding where you see the disagreement, but it sounds like the line is still drawn on are we participating in the sacrifice or are we recalling the sacrifice? And in the wedding feast where you’re celebrating it, if that’s all that’s happening, then it seems like you’re just recalling.
Caller: Yeah, I think it’s something like you get married one time, right? You say I do and you get a wedding ring. But we would say, right, you consume the, the host, right? In the Eucharist, we consume the bread and wine. And insofar as we do that, we would see that as a consummate act, Right. The act of a husband and wife coming together, Christ and his bride coming together. But we don’t see that act as being a reinstantiation of the I dos. Rather it’s this beautiful outpouring of something that’s already been done.
Joe Heschmeyer: Yes, but again, then the question is, are you participating in or simply celebrating the thing that, as you said, has already been done? That’s, that’s the line that I’m saying, I think is. Is helpful. Just so people understand in a non technical way, this is where the line actually is. Because the early Christians were very clear that it wasn’t simply a thanksgiving offering, it was an actual act of propitiation. So for example, St. Cyril of Jerusalem in Catechetical Lecture 23 says, then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we beseech the merciful Father to send forth his Holy Spirit upon the gifts living before him, that he may make the bread, the body of Christ and the wine, the blood of Christ, for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched is surely sanctified and changed. Then after the spiritual sacrifice, the bloodless service is completed. Over that sacrifice of propitiation, we entreat God for the common peace of the churches. And he goes on from there, but he’s very clear this is a sacrifice of propitiation in the Eucharistic sacrifice. And, and we are offering it for the good of the Church. Like, these are the exact points of dispute that the Reformers will later challenge. The early Christians are very clearly on the Catholic side of this question. Now, it’s true sometimes they talk about the sacrifice without explaining what kind of sacrifice it is, but they’re nevertheless true, like, nevertheless clear that this is the sacrifice of the Mass. So all I would say there is like, oh, yeah, go ahead.
Caller: Yeah, I think it’s worthwhile for people to read the 9th and 10th chapters of the Vidicay and just come to that conclusion to see what kind of sacrifice. To your point, what kind of sacrifice is being offered here? Right. And then even thinking about the typology from the Old Testament, is this a propitiatory, a sin offering, Right. The type of offering that only blood can atone for, or is this a thank offering? Right. Bread and wine?
Joe Heschmeyer: We would say that’s a false dichotomy because the Thanksgiving offerings are clearly pointing towards the Eucharist, but so are the blood sacrifices also pointing towards the cross. And the Eucharist and the cross are one sacrifice and not two.
Caller: Yeah, so.
Joe Heschmeyer: So it wouldn’t be like this. This is a false kind of either. Or let me, let me give a little more of the Biblical case for this. I said before the break, I would explain how First Corinthians 10 and other passages point towards this theology. And so again, what I want to say on the Church Fathers is you will find Church Fathers who, they talk about sacrifice and don’t say what kind of sacrifice and can be read either way. And then you’ll find Church Fathers who are really explicit that it is a propitiatory sacrifice. So unless you believe that there are these two different liturgical schools that are not in union with each other and are somehow not fighting about this, then I think the way to read the Church Fathers as a whole is that they clearly believe the Catholic thing on the Eucharist. Some of them are more explicit about it than others, but none of them deny the propitiatory nature of the Mass. And several of them affirm it in no uncertain terms. And when you look at something like the pure offering of Malachi 1, which, as we’re going to see in 1 Corinthians 10, is applied to the Eucharist, this is the sacrifice of Christ. And the sacrifice of Christ, as we, I think, agree, is a propitiatory sacrifice. So if this is the one sacrifice of Christ, if this is how we participate in Christ’s sacrifice, then the Catholic side is right and the Reformers are wrong. That’s what I would suggest here. So then to get to the heart of this, because a lot of people today, a lot of Christians today will say, oh, you’re re sacrificing Christ, and no we’re not. But the issue is, quite understandably, a lot of people don’t know how sacrifice works. Because when we hear a term like sacrifice today, we imagine, you know, the killing and blood sacrifice. We imagine like the killing of the animal, but that’s only a small part of the sacrifice. So take the Passover sacrifice, because this is the one that is most commonly used in the New Testament to describe what is happening in the Lord’s own sacrifice. Like he’s compared to the Lamb of God. He is, you know, described in 1 Corinthians 15 as our Passover lamb and so on. So the Passover is the Old Testament pre figurement par excellence. And in the Old Testament, the rules for Passover, you didn’t have to actually own the lamb, you could share the lamb with your neighbor and you didn’t have to actually raise the lamb. It didn’t have to be your lamb. You weren’t the one who killed the lamb. The priest was the one who killed the lamb and the father would smear the blood on the doorpost. But if you’re not the father of the family, the question is, well, how do you participate in the sacrifice? And the way you participate in the sacrifice is by eating the Passover lamb. And so that whole thing, the designation of the lamb as sacrifice, the killing of the lamb, the smearing of the blood on the doorposts, and the eating of the lamb are all collectively described in Exodus as the Passover sacrifice. And so when you, if you were to see someone on preparation to kill the lamb and then you see them on what is on the Jewish calendar, the next day, we would say that evening you see them at the meal eating the lamb. And they said, this is the Passover sacrifice. And you said, oh, you’re re sacrificing the lamb. They would look at you like you’re out of your mind. Like, no, no, this is still the same sacrifice. This is just a different step of the sacrifice that you become a partner in the sacrificial offering by consuming the sacrifice. This is basic Jewish sacrificial theology. And this was taken for granted by Jews and by pagans in the first century, but a lot of Christians today, because we never see animal sacrifice or anything. It’s all kind of a foreign language to us. So understandably, we often misunderstand what’s happening in these passages. But Paul talks about this in First Corinthians 10. He says in verse 16, 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? So the question becomes, okay, well, how is it that we are participating in the Eucharist in the body and blood of Christ? That’s the question he poses in verse 16, and then he answers in verse 18. Consider the practice of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? And then he takes an even more extreme example and looks at demonic sacrifices. And he says in verse 20 that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. And then he says, I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. So here are the things to take away from this Number one, when you share in the sacrifice, that is a communion with. So to share in a demonic sacrifice is to become a partner with demons. And he says, don’t do that. But to share in the Eucharistic sacrifice is to become a partner with Jesus Christ. Which only makes sense, given a certain kind of sacrificial theology, that what is happening at the Eucharist is Christ. That we share in the body and blood of Christ by eating this sacrifice. If the sacrifice is simply our own work, then we’re not sharing in the body and blood of Christ. But if the sacrifice is Christ’s own sacrifice, then this makes complete sense. So what would you say to all that, Tristan? I know that was kind of a mouthful there.
Caller: No, Joe, I love it. I love it. That was really helpful. Yeah. So I love that you went to Scripture. Now we’re in our field a little bit. No, but I think that’s great. In First Corinthians, we see to your point. It’s this kind of consummatory act, right? It’s this thing that finalizes or completes what’s happened before. So you talked about with the lamb, the sacrifice isn’t finished until you actually partake. Right. And it’s interesting, though, I do want to note in terms of First Corinthians. Right? In First Corinthians, chapter 8, we also have this language of look, this goes along with Paul talking about the law of liberty, right? All things are free to me. He says it’s okay to eat that meat. Right? It’s okay insofar as you’re not right. It’s just kind of wild thing. And so I think that alone, just this idea that, hey, you actually can, as a Christian, consume that without being in the one sacrifice that was offered to that demon, I think that shows that there’s at least some kind of disconnect between the two.
Caller: The question is what between First Corinthians 8 and 10.
Caller: No, no, no disconnect between actually sacrificing and performing the ritual to sacrifice to the demon versus actually consuming the meat which was sacrificed.
Joe Heschmeyer: Oh, yeah, no, no, no. We would agree with that. We would agree with that. Like if a person just was walking down the street and, or, you know, let’s say a soldier invaded the temple on Passover and stole some of the sacrificial offering and then ate it, they would not buy that fact there, thereby share in the sacrificial offering. They’re not part of the ritual there. They’re. They’re violating the ritual. And so in the reverse case, in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul talks about a non religious consumption of food that might have been designated to a demon. So we don’t want to take a kind of a magical view of what was happening with the demonic sacrifices. In 1 Corinthians 10, he tells you to shun the worship of idols. Like he’s talking about, don’t engage in these sacrificial rituals involving the consumption of, you know, food offered to demons, not the non ritual, non sacrificial consumption of the food. I’ve got to take the break. Thank you so much, Tristan, for the call. We’ll be right back. You can ask him anything. Joe Heschmeyer, our guest on Catholic Answers Live.