Christ Said the First Mass on Holy Thursday

In How Christ Said the First Mass, Father James Meagher presents a profound explanation of how the Last Supper was the first Mass. This helps correct common errors of Protestants. Father Meagher explains that the traditional Jewish prayers, blessings, and rituals surrounding the blessing of bread and wine were given new meaning by Christ, Who transformed them into His Body and Blood. By doing so, Christ transformed the ritual Passover meal of the Old Law into the foundation of the Eucharist.

Father Meagher emphasizes Christ’s role as both High Priest and Victim. He offered Himself in sacrifice during the Last Supper. When Christ broke the bread and shared the wine, He established the essential elements of the Mass and laid the foundation for the New Covenant. Father Meagher emphasizes that the Last Supper was not just the institution of the Eucharist, but also the institution of the priesthood. Christ commanded His Apostles to “do this in memory of Me,” ordaining them as the first priests of the New Covenant. This laid the foundation for the sacrificial and liturgical nature of Christian worship, with the Apostles continuing the Mass after Christ’s death and resurrection.

In a similar fashion, Father Michael Müller, the author of The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, also asserts the Last Supper was the inauguration of the Mass and the New Testament. After beautifully describing the Last Supper as the First Mass, Father Müller profoundly adds:

“To complete the sacrifice by a kind of mystic death – the loss of His sacramental life – He partook of it Himself, and then commanded the Apostles to partake of it also, accompanying the precious treasure with an imperative injunction which, at the same time that it commanded them to do as He had done, conferred upon them the sacerdotal dignity required for the due discharge of such an ordinance. They began to exercise this sacerdotal dignity at the moment they communicated each other at the command of Our Lord. At the closing of this stupendous ceremony, they chanted their thanksgiving in a holy canticle. And thus was Mass, the sacrifice of the New Law, that is, its essential parts – Consecration and Communion – instituted by our holy Redeemer.”[1]

We should not be surprised that the Lord instituted the Sacrifice of the Mass on the night before His actual Sacrifice on Calvary since Good Friday was a continuation of the same Passion and Death of the Son of God begun on Holy Thursday. When Our Lord consumed the vinegar on the reed while on the Cross, that was the fourth cup [2] and the completion of the sacrifice which had begun at the Last Supper. Thus, both sacrifices of old (i.e., the unbloody sacrifice of first fruits and the bloody sacrifice of animals) were united in the one Sacrifice of Christ.

The Sacrifice of the Mass Began Immediately with the Apostles

After our Blessed Lord instituted the New Sacrifice, the Apostles immediately began to heed Our Lord’s command and offer up the Sacrifice – in addition to preaching, baptizing, and administering all of the other Sacraments. Father Müller teaches that the Apostles offered up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in obedience to Our Lord’s prerogative: ‘Do this in commemoration of Me’:

“This we can see clearly from the Acts of the Apostles, where St. Luke informs us that as the Apostles were ministering, that is to say, as they were sacrificing to the Lord, the Holy Ghost said to them: ‘Separate me Saul and Barnabas.’ The same sacrifice which the Evangelist distinguishes by the term ‘ministration,’ we Catholics, at the present day, call the ‘Mass.’ St. Matthew, the Apostle, as history informs us, was pierced by a lance, whilst celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

This is further attested in the life of St. Andrew the Apostle who, in reply to the tyrant Aegeas when he threatened St. Andrew’s life for refusing pagan sacrifice, boldly declared:

“To the Almighty God I offer up a living sacrifice, not incense-smoke, not flesh of bellowing bulls, not blood of goats; but I offer daily to God on the altar of the cross, a spotless Lamb, Whose Flesh after the believer has eaten and drunk its blood, the Lamb that was sacrificed remains entire and living.”

The Church Fathers Affirm the New Sacrifice Is the Mass

With the inauguration of the new Sacrifice, so too did the holy day change from the Jewish sabbath of Saturday to Sunday. The Church Fathers affirm that with the New Law, the Sacrifice of the Mass was offered up principally on Sundays by virtue of our Redeemer’s Resurrection on Sunday:

“[T]hose who were brought up in the ancient order of things [i.e., Jews] have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death.”[3]

Even St. Barnabas, a companion of St. Paul, writes that Our Lord “make[s] a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.” And the principal activity of Sunday was and still is the Sacrifice of the Mass as affirmed by St. Justin, who lived in the second century. According to Father Müller, St. Justin testifies to the following:

• After certain prayers and embracing one another with the kiss of peace, the bread and wine (tempered with water) are presented to the one who is ministering.
• The minister then gives glory to the Father of all things in the name of the Son and the Holy Ghost and returns thanks that he has been deemed worthy of offering these gifts, to which the whole assembly, in acclamation, answers ‘Amen’.
• When the ministers, referred to as deacons, distribute to each one present a portion of the blessed bread and wine – together called the Eucharist – some is also taken to the absent.
• But only the baptized who believe the taught doctrines and live as Christ ordained are allowed to partake of the Eucharist.
• The Eucharist is not taken as common bread and wine but as the Flesh and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ Incarnate.

What powerful testimony from the 2^nd century of the accuracy of Catholic doctrine!

 

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ENDNOTES:

[1] Before the Consecration and Communion, there is the offertory which is too often glossed over. But the offertory is an important part of the Mass. Father Peter Scott teaches the following:

“The Council of Trent defined that the sacrifice of the Mass is a true and real sacrifice (Sess. xxii, Can. 1) and that it is a propitiatory sacrifice (Can. 3), namely that it makes up for our sins and obtains their forgiveness, “for appeased by this oblation, the Lord, granting the grace and gift of penitence, pardons crimes and even great sins” (Ibid., Can. 2).

“However, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, three things are necessary for a sacrifice: the offering of the sacrifice, the consecration by which it is accomplished, and thirdly the reception of the sacrament ([Summa Theologicae,] IIIa, q. 83, a. 4). This is how it was in the sacrifices of the Old Testament. These are consequently the three parts of the sacrifice of the Mass, that is of the Mass of the faithful: Offertory, Consecration, and Communion. Although Offertory and Communion are not necessary for validity, they are strictly necessary for the integrity, that is for the completeness of the sacrifice.

“Why is there an Offertory, since it is not necessary for the validity of the Mass? The reason is very simple. As men, we cannot do everything at the same time, and so we have to perform a sacred action in stages. The Offertory indicates the intention or the purpose, for which the sacrifice is to be offered up, namely to obtain the graces to live a Christian life through the offering up of the Passion and Death of Christ on the Cross, and most importantly the remission of sins. Or as St Thomas puts it, “it is the prayer of the priest who begs that the offering of the people might be acceptable to God” (Ibid.,). Consequently, it is not primarily a preparation of the gifts of bread and wine, and certainly not an offering of bread and wine, but an offering of the Body and Blood of Christ which is about to be consecrated on the altar.”

[2] The Passover Our Lord participated in with His Apostles involved the ritual drinking of four cups. A careful reading of the scriptural accounts of the Last Supper show He only drank three with them. The fourth cup, the Cup of Consummation, was drunk after the singing of the Hallel psalms. However, this is the hymn which Our Lord and the Apostles sing upon leaving the Upper Room (cf. Mt 26:30). Just before that He had  cryptically  said He would not drink again of the fruit of the vine until in the Kingdom of His Father. Nevertheless, it surely shocked the Apostles that Our Lord did not complete the ritual.   (This would be similar to us if a priest consecrated the bread at Holy Mass and then simply left the sanctuary and did not consecrate the wine or communicate. We would be shocked and scandalized, knowing something very different was afoot). After drinking vinegar on the Cross, Our Lord cried out “It is consummated.” Although this prophetic utterance has many meanings, it seems to imply that Our Lord was now bringing the ritual to an end with the Fourth Cup and His death was ushering in the New Covenant and the Kingdom of God. Such an understanding shows that Our Lord was consciously uniting the Last Supper and the Crucifixion into one single divine act, which we continue in the Mass In Commemoration of Him.

[3] Letter to the Magnesians, Chap. 9, by St. Ignatius of Antioch, c. 110 A.D.

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