Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist

Dr. Brant Pitre: Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist

There's Something Biblical About Mary

In studying the Catholic Church for the last couple years or so, I've had many "a-ha" moments: many times when something strange and bizarre suddenly clicked and made sense, times when light dawned and I saw something I'd never seen before.

Many of those moments of shocking, jolting clarity occurred in regards to Mary. I've spent hours writing about them, chronicling them, making notes and trying to relay what I thought was exciting, interesting information to others.

And then I found this video. Which does everything I was trying to do in about 11 minutes. With music. You can't beat that.

”Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles.” (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

The Pelican of Mercy

I've been attending RCIA classes at St. Sebastian Parish in Byron Center, MI for the last few weeks. (RCIA, just to explain, stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). It's required (for the most part) training for anyone who is hoping to enter the Catholic Church.

At any rate, this past Tuesday, we toured the Historic St. Sebastian Church and I was introduced to the very Catholic world of statues and stained glass and altars and relics.

Amongst all the statues of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, was an image that seemed completely out of place: a pelican pictured in stained glass.

Now, a pelican in a church is weird enough, but it gets weirder. See, the pelican isn't just sitting there doing normal pelican-y things (whatever they might be). Instead, she is pictured striking her breast with her beak and drawing big drops of blood which then are gulped down by three or four young pelicans huddled beneath her wings. Perfectly normal, right? Sure! Of course! I mean really, what says "worship" and "Church" and "God" and "Love" more than a pelican being cannibalized by her young?

Naturally, my first reaction was surprise and, honestly, a little frustration. How in the world am I going to explain the bloody-pelican-window-thing to my less-than-enthusiastic-about-Catholicism wife?

I was wondering about the chances of her really staring at the window long enough to figure out it was a bloody pelican pictured there when I realized the leader of the RCIA class was talking. I tuned back in just in time to learn something.

Turns out, the pelican has been a cherished symbol in the Christian Church for hundreds of years. It was understood, all those years ago, that the pelican would, in times of hunger or extreme need, feed her young with her own body and blood, keeping them alive even at the sacrifice of her own life.

This tradition is evidenced in Christian Art as well as Christian literature. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Eucharistic Hymn Adore te Devote wrote:

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran---
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Because of this association with the sacrifice of Christ, the pelican is also displayed in many early depictions of the Crucifixion. Here she is seen at the top of the cross, feeding her young with her own blood:

Once the symbolism was explained--and once I'd listened with an open mind--the pelican (like so many other things Catholic) became understandable. And more than that: meaningful, profound.

Instead of shuddering at the weirdness of Catholic symbolism and iconography, I found myself drawn into it and appreciating it and letting it speak to me. The vividness of the image--the way it jumps out and shocks you with red blood and hungry young--makes you think. It's not clean. It's not safe. It's not sterile. But, then again, neither was the cross. The cross and the sacrifice of Christ caused Him real pain. The blood that poured from his hands, feet, side, back and head was real blood. The heart that was pierced was a real heart that had been beating just minutes before. The death he died was a real death.

Contained in that vivid, violent symbol of the Pelican of Mercy is the meat of the Christian story: Our Creator, in times of spiritual famine, gives himself to us and feeds us with His body and His blood. We were in danger of starving--still are as long as we are alive--and our Lord, not content to sit by and urge us on to goodness and life with mere words, jumped into the fray, struck his own breast and let the life-giving blood flow to us. It wasn't clean. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't easy. Redemption never is.

An hour or so later, I left that church that night with a new appreciation for the symbols and icons the Catholic Church has preserved and passed on through all the generations of Christians who've gone before me.

And if my wife notices the bird in the window and the blood, I'm not going to worry about what to say. It's the redemption story. In stained glass.

From the Rising of the Sun: Malachi's Prophecy of the Mass

Here's a remarkable verse from Malachi:

Because even among you the doors shall be shut, and one will not kindle the fire of mine altar for nothing, I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands.
For from the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof my name has been glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord Almighty.

--Mal 1:10-11

From the earliest times Christians saw this verse in Malachi as a prophecy regarding the Mass. St. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue With Trypho (AD 155) quotes the passage and then explains: "It is of the sacrifices offered to Him in every place by us, the gentiles, that is, of the Bread of the Eucharist and likewise of the cup of the Eucharist, that He speaks at that time."

And really, can it be anything else? What other Sacrifice is offered, not by the Jews, but by the Gentiles (us) with incense? What other pure offering is offered from the rising of the sun to its setting in every place? The only offering that fulfills this prophecy is the Mass: the pure offering of Jesus in the Eucharist, offered around the world, every hour of every day.

Now, that's interesting, but what's even more interesting is the actual word used for "offering" is the Hebrew word minchâh. According to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary, the word means "a sacrificial offering (usually bloodless and voluntary): - gift, oblation, (meat) offering, present, sacrifice."

This is interesting because non-Catholics who look at this passage tend to interpret "offering" or "sacrifice" as a "sacrifice of Praise." Or possibly prayers and praises--in short, worship. However, that explanation simply doesn't account for the word, minchâh, used in the text.

In searching the Old Testament for other uses of minchâh, we find that most of those instances are translated as a "meat offering" (and none refer to a mere symbolic "sacrifice of praise").

What's more interesting is that a "meat offering" isn't what we might typically think. In fact, instead of including flesh of any kind, a meat offering was an unbloody offering of fine flour, unleavened and baked in an oven. Leviticus 2:4 explains this clearly and is really quite startling: "But when thou offerest a sacrifice baked in the oven of flour, to wit, loaves without leaven, tempered with oil, and unleavened wafers, anointed with oil". (see also Lev. 2:11).

But that's not all. According to Smith's Bible Dictionary a meat offering was just as we described above, but was also "generally accompanied by a drink offering of wine."

So, let's go back to the passage from Malachi (and the prophecy given to him by God) and ask ourselves: What pure, unbloody sacrifice of flour, unleavened and baked, in the form of wafers is offered to God by the Gentiles from the rising of the sun to its setting, in every place in this world and is accompanied by a drink offering of wine?

It can't be a "sacrifice of praise" or some other anachronistic concoction because the prophecy specifically refers to a "meat offering". The only sacrifice that completely fulfills this Holy Spirit-inspired prophecy is the sacrifice of the Mass.

We Are Catholic--Great Video

The Meaning of the Mass--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Archbishop Fulton Sheen explains the Mass....

Infinitely Greater than Sports Cars and Sports: Pondering Heaven

"Oh, Bob's up there right now, putting for Birdie on the 18th on that flawless last hole in the skies."

You've heard drivel like that, too, at funerals all the time: "Aunt Madge loved to swim, you know. Can't you just see here up there, soaking in that crystal sea?"

But it's not just lay people who talk this way. I remember pastors talking about heaven. One particular case I remember involved cars. This pastor loved cars and he pointed out (in all seriousness) that "his" heaven is going to be filled with fast cars. In fact, he went on to say that heaven without cars wouldn't be heaven.

Another pastor I remember gave a sermon once pointing out that he loves to work, loves to be busy. "His" heaven, he said, "would be a place where he'd have a job to do."

We all think this way to some extent: we all have notions of what heaven will be like, of what heaven will contain.

But we also have ideas about what we hope heaven will not be like. Not too long ago, I was talking with a friend about Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. In the course of the conversation, my friend pointed out that he agreed with Bell that it's a scary thought to imagine (as some do) that heaven is an eternity of us sitting around on clouds, stroking harps. "I mean, really" my friend explained, "who'd want to spend an eternity doing that? Wouldn't it get monotonous after just a couple songs?"

I've had the same thoughts. In fact, I've always imagined heaven to be composed of big (but easy to climb) hills. Hills that overlook valleys of flowers and tall grass, valleys filled with butterflies and absolutely NO mosquitoes or biting flies. A place of constant fallish weather (oh, about 70 degrees with a mild breeze) and, of course, no rain. I imagine spending my time sitting on one of those hills, watching the world below and relaxing. Like one big, long vacation.

When I'd read about the elders in Revelation, how they'd throw their crowns around the throne of God and fall down and worship on a regular basis, I'd get scared. I'd worry that all of heaven was going to be like that: all praise and no fun.

But it hits me now what a sad, misunderstanding of God all of these ideas represent.

Once we enter eternity, we're not going to be thinking about sitting on a happy little hill or our short game or taking a dip and catching some rays. Once we're in eternity Porsches and BMW's aren't going to matter.

We'll find ourselves in the presence of God. Not some boring, benign, grandfatherly figure who spends his day strolling through the rolling hills with bluebirds perched on his outstretched fingers. No. We will be in the presence of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.

We will be in the presence of the most Ancient of all Beings--a pure Spirit--less an old, wrinkled man and more a burning, consuming fire.

We will see a Being that our brains cannot even begin to fathom here on earth. And at the same time, we will see ourselves.

We will see ourselves as God sees us. We will know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the depth of our sins. We will know the pain we have caused our Father. We will initially mourn the hours we wasted on earth worrying about cars and golf and all that stuff. And we will know that we are only there by the Grace of that God and the Sacrifice of His Son.

And when we realize that: that we owe everything to this God who pulled us up from the depths because He loved us, we will kneel and we will worship with a depth and reverence greater than anything we've ever felt on earth.

It's ridiculous to think that when confronted with the presence and reality of God Himself we would choose to give even a single thought to a driving a fancy red car around swerving "professional driver on a closed course" hills or a golf ball over heavenly fairways. It's silly. It's sad.

God Himself is there--the point of and reason for our very existence--and we think we'll be interested in looking at or thinking about something else? Something less? And then we take it a step farther and tell ourselves that an eternity of praising God while we're in His presence is somehow "not heavenly enough?" That it's too boring? That we couldn't possibly spend an eternity doing that?

Instead, we will see the 24 elders around the throne and we will long to join in with them. Finally seeing our Creator and being able to bow and adore Him will be infinitely greater than sports cars and sports. To suggest anything less is to fail to grasp even the vaguest conception of God.