We have examined the Old Testament sacrifices, and how they all pre-figure the Mass. But instead of offering lambs, in the New Testament we offer bread and wine. Instead of the priest and victim being separate beings, today, they are one. Why? Why did God wish to have a sacrifice done this way? Why did Christ institute the Mass at the Last Supper, before His Sacrifice? We will look at the Last Supper and the Passion from a theological, historical, and anthropological perspective. We will see that Jesus knew full well what any first-century Jew would have known: when it came to the Passover, you did not only have to kill the lamb; to fulfill God’s law, to be saved from death, you had to eat the lamb.

The Old Testament is foreign to modern people in many ways. And one of the most striking examples of a “weird” practice has to do with the very specific, and often very messy practices surrounding ritual sacrifice. Last episode, we saw how sacrifice is required by God. But we’ll continue with this conversation, and look at the specific sacrifices in the Old Testament in different occasions. There were sin-offerings, peace-offerings, and holocausts, which are burnt-offerings. They also made use of bread, wine, food – and very often, whole animals, blood, fat – why? And more interesting to us today, what does this all represent about the Mass celebrated at your chapel this morning?

When did mankind begin to make sacrifices to God? What did they look like? As we have seen already in this series, the concept of making a sacrifice, or of putting something aside for the worship of God, is nothing new and it is not exclusive to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Man understands that he has duties to his creator. So today we will look back at our ancestors, specifically the practices of the Chosen People and how they worshipped God. In part two of this subject, we’ll see how it all connects to the Mass. But this week, let’s see how we worshipped – millennia ago.

Welcome to our fifth episode in The Catholic Mass series. Here, our goal is to continue an overview which will touch on themes that will be more fully developed later in the series. Today we’ll answer the question, what do we mean by the traditional Latin Mass, or as Archbishop Lefebvre called it, the Mass of All Time. In this episode, we’ll also give a brief survey of the Mass in order to provide a 30,000 view of the history of the immemorial Roman Rite.

Today, we explore why it is so important that we have a liturgy at all. What do we mean when we say “Liturgy”? What is the reason for people gathering together to perform a religious ceremony? Is it something that we do are inclined to do naturally, or is it something that God has directed us to do?

Welcome to the second of our introductory episodes in The Catholic Mass series. Last time we saw what the Sacrifice of the Mass is – today we’ll look at the next logical question – why? Why is it that Catholics, especially today, still put such an emphasis on this ancient and… well, strange practice? And what’s the point of religion in today’s world? There’s a real lack of the practice of religion, and the belief of God among our contemporaries. So why is it that we would want to be dependent on a seemingly unknowable God? And what does the Mass have to do with this?