Excerpt from:
How Christ Said the First Mass
by
Fr. James Meagher
HOW THE MASS WAS FORETOLD IN THE TEMPLE.
The Catholic Church, its divisions of porch, nave, and sanctuary, its ornaments, vestments, and ceremonial, came from the Jewish Temple and the synagogue of the time of Christ.
The Passover service was modeled on the Temple worship. Thus the Last Supper combined in one ceremonial the patriarchal worship, the tabernacle, the
Temple, the synagogue, all united in one feast the Hebrews called the Passover, which Christ fulfilled and changed into the Mass. Let us therefore see first the
Temple, its divisions, its rites, its ceremonies, and its sacramentals, that we may better understand the ceremonies Christ followed when he said the first Mass.
To teach truth by visible objects is an instinct of our nature. Words, spoken or printed, represent ideas. But we love to show our thoughts by actions. Even animals
make-believe a fight in play ; with her doll the girl images her motherly instinct ; boys amuse themselves with toys; men speak in figure, type, parable; tone of voice, shade word meanings, show hate, anger, fear or sorrow, and smile, tear, and sob tell our feelings.
We love to see the actor in the play represent, not himself but a celebrated personage. Therefore, before the dawn of history, the theater was found in civilized lands, where on its stage tragedy, comedy, and history were imaged before delighted audiences.
God made use of these representative instincts through which to foretell the future Tragedy of Calvary, to prophesy the Last Supper and the Mass. This was the best
way to teach mankind, in that age when Adam's children were ignorant, when words were few, when language was hardly formed, when ideas were crude, when books were unknown, when few could read or write.
From the gates of Eden the Redeemer was revealed, the woman's Seed who was to come and conquer the serpent-demon who had enslaved mankind. But how was the
revelation to be handed down in that age of the childhood of our race ? God made use of this representative instinct of our nature, and told the life of the foretold Christ in the ceremonial of sacrifice, in the rites of the tabernacle, and in the ceremonies of the Temple. We will, therefore, first see the Temple, its ceremonies, for these we will later find in the Last Supper.
To Jew and unbeliever the Temple has ever been a riddle, and they have written countless books to explain its mysteries. The Catholic Church alone has the key
which unlocks the mysteries of that maze of vast bewildering building, with its Holy of Holies, Holies, Priests' Court, Court of Israel, Women's Court, Chel, Choi,
Cloisters, some roofed, others open to the sky, with various chambers, each at the time of Christ having its own proper use.
The wonderful building, with its rites and ceremonies, was a divine poem written by God to reveal present, past and future. In the past, the Jew saw God his Creator,
mankind in original innocence, the Temptation and the Fall, the condemnation on our race, woman's deeper wound, the promise of the woman's Seed, sinners
drowned when the world was baptized by the flood, the call of Abraham, the blessing on his race, the revelation given the Hebrews, their delivery from Egyptian slavery, the manna their food for forty years, their miraculous preservation and struggles, the whole world plunged into darkest idolatry, the glory of their judges, and the splendors of David and Solomon.
The Temple was the very heart and soul of the Jewish Church, in which alone Jehovah was then adored in days of deepest paganism. But beyond, deep into the future, the Temple story and worship carried their minds, down to the days of Christ, to his Last Supper, to his atrocious death, to the New Testament, to the Catholic Church * with her Pontiff, her bishops, her priests, her sacraments and her millions of redeemed souls.*
The Temple and its vast ceremonial formed a book within and without written by God's eternal hand, not in dead lifeless letters as man writes, but in warm, living
signs, symbols, types and figures. Amid the multitudes of Temple emblems, let us take those relating to our subject, and read the lessons of this Divine Poem, this
heavenly poetry, this drama of Calvary, transcendent above all others — God its author here taught the future death of the only Begotten Son.^
The Holy of Holies closed by a veil represented heaven closed to mankind because of the sin of our first parents. The Holies with its glittering golden altar and walls foretold the church building — especially our sanctuary with its altar on which now the Mass is offered. The Courts with the ministering priests, the sacrificed victims, pre- figured the Jewish priests who later were to kill the Saviour.
The words then of God's wonderful book had two meanings : — one, what the objects showed in themselves; this now alone the Jew can see ; and the other meant the God-Man, the Church, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and this the Christian with his faith can see. Patriarch, prophet, the holy ones of Israel, filled with faith of the foretold Messiah saw this sacred drama of the future, and read between the lines and behind the objects the story of the redemption of mankind ; thus they walked in the faith, hope and love of Him who was to be born of their race. Thus the holy ones of old saved their souls.
Cenacle and church building were modeled after the Temple. We will therefore give a rapid glance over this great building, famed in all the earth, visited so often by
the Lord, itself being copied from the tabernacle.
> S. Augustine, De civit. Dei, L. xviii. c. 48.
» S. Augustine, In Epist. Joan, ad Parthos, Tracts 11, n. 111.
» S. Thomas, Sum. Theo. I. a, See 102 ; S. Augustine, The Fathers, etc.
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