Week 1: The Mass Is Both Sacred Meal and Sacrifice
Explaining the Mass, a homily series from September 2025
“Love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
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When we love someone, we make sure they get all that is due to them
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Worship is due to God. If we desire to love him, we must strive to worship him
How do we worship? Our Mass finds many of its roots in the temple worship services started by King David, which themselves are rooted in earlier temple practice. To help us all more fully understand what’s going on and where it comes from, I’ll be spending September to go through the Mass to help us better understand what we are doing.
First, the big picture: what is Mass? In his 2008 book “Eucharist”, Bishop Barron follows the ancient tradition of the Church in pointing out that the Mass is both a Sacred Meal and a Sacrifice. It is both, and the two cannot be separated. We see this in scripture:
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David, when he brought the Ark of the Covenant to the tabernacle in Jerusalem held a massive banquet for all the people. The whole kingdom was invited to worship God at this Sacred Meal that they shared. This was a major change in Jewish worship: the people were invited and expected to participate in the worship of God.
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But even earlier, at the Passover, we see that God is worshiped with sacrifice. Humans take something from this earth and offer it back to God as best we can, either by burning it in fire or by consuming/eating it if we want to demonstrate our own participation in the sacrifice.
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The Day of Atonement sacrifice, a solemn day of worship, featured the people being sprinkled with the blood of the sacrificial lamb to remind them of their participation in the covenant with God.
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The Todah sacrifice, probably the most common of them all, was an offering of unleavened bread and wine brought to God in thanksgiving for some gift he had given them. In Greek, this was called a “eucharistia” sacrifice.
If we put this all together, we can see that the Mass is all of these things.
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We are all called to participate in Mass as one community.
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We are all called to offer the best we have to God. We bring forward bread and wine as a symbol of our thanksgiving to God, and God changes these gifts into his Son: a worthy offering to him. Then, we mystically join Christ in his Death and Resurrection, joining him on Calvary.
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Those of us who are initiated into the new covenant receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, both participating in the sacred meal and being reminded of our life in the new covenant.
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Even the sprinkling hasn’t gone away though–remember that we are sprinkled on Easter (and have the option at the “Conventual Mass” on every Sunday) with Holy Water–a reminder of our baptism, where we entered the new covenant.
As we prepare our hearts for the Eucharist today, and hopefully when we come to Mass from now on, may we remember that here, we approach Heaven in order to offer to God a Thanksgiving Sacrifice, sharing this meal in Communion with the baptized across all places and times.