Sacrifice: From the Old Law to the New

“For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation.” (Mal. 1:11)

This article continues the meditations begun in The Mass as God’s Wonderful Promise and Gift and deepens the foundation of Eucharistic faith by focusing on a truth modern Catholics often forget: Christianity is not merely a religion of moral instruction or interior sentiment. It is, essentially and irreducibly, a religion of sacrifice.

For this reason, I am again drawing from and inspired by the nineteenth-century Redemptorist priest Father Michael Mueller (1825–1899)—not to reproduce his text at length, but to recover the Catholic instinct he insists upon: where there is true religion, there is true sacrifice; and where there is true sacrifice, there is an altar. 

I. Sacrifice Stretches Back to Our First Parents

If we want to understand why the Mass stands at the heart of Catholic worship, we must begin where Father Mueller begins: not in the Middle Ages, not in the catacombs, not even at the Last Supper—but in the very dawn of human history.

Man was created to worship God. And worship, even by the light of reason alone, is not merely internal. It expresses itself outwardly: through adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, and—most profoundly—sacrifice. Mueller observes that it is natural for man to give gifts to those he loves; how much more natural, then, to offer something to God, the Creator and Sovereign Lord. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

After the Fall, this instinct becomes even more urgent. Sin introduces guilt, fear, and the knowledge that man has offended the Divine Majesty. Our first parents understood they deserved punishment. They understood that God was worthy even of their lives. Yet they also learned that no merely human offering—no matter how severe—could fully repair what sin had destroyed. God therefore consoled them with a promise: a Redeemer would come, One whose obedience would honor God more than man could ever dishonor Him.

Here we see the first great lesson: sacrifice is not merely “what religious people do.” It is the language of the fallen soul returning to God. It is the confession—made with actions—that God is Lord of life and death, and that man depends entirely upon Him.

II. Sacrifice Was Both Natural and Commanded

Even if reason alone suggests sacrifice, God also willed that sacrifice become a command—precisely because man is weak and forgetful. Our wills are easily distracted. Our resolutions are easily broken. And therefore, God provided man with a concrete, repeated act of divine worship that would strengthen him, humble him, and keep alive the hope of the Redeemer to come.

In the earliest ages, sacrifice took various forms: offerings of first fruits, holocausts, and other gifts given to God for different intentions—adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and atonement. Sacred Scripture speaks of Cain and Abel, of Noah, of Job, of Abraham, and of other patriarchs offering sacrifice. Even across pagan nations, sacrifice remained as a kind of remnant of original revelation—though tragically corrupted in countless ways.

This universality matters. It demonstrates that sacrifice is not an accidental feature of religion. It is its essential expression. A “religion without sacrifice” is not merely incomplete; it is incoherent. It lacks the very act by which man confesses God’s supreme dominion and his own dependence.

III. Why Animal Sacrifice?

One of the most illuminating points Mueller makes is that animal sacrifice, considered purely on human reasoning, would appear strange—perhaps even absurd. Why should the life of an innocent creature be offered in place of guilty man?

The answer is that animal sacrifice was not chosen as a “reasonable exchange.” It was chosen as a sign and foreshadowing. In a world haunted by the sense of sin and death, the shedding of blood spoke a language that grain and wine alone could not speak: it declared that sin deserves death; it declared that guilt demands expiation; it declared that man’s life belongs to God. And it pointed forward to a greater truth: that only a spotless Victim could truly take away sin.

Thus, domestic animals—gentle and innocent—became living images of the Lamb of God. And every time Israel saw blood poured out, Israel was being prepared (often without fully realizing it) for the day when the true Blood would be poured out: not the blood of goats and bulls, but the Precious Blood of the Son of God.

IV. The Old Law Was Temporary by Design

It is crucial to understand that the sacrifices of the Old Law were never meant to endure forever. They were real acts of worship commanded by God and pleasing to Him when offered with right dispositions. But they were also shadows—figures and preparations—destined to give way when the Reality arrived.

Mueller explains this with a helpful analogy: the stars and moon give light, but they vanish when the sun rises. In the same way, the sacrifices of the Old Law had meaning and purpose, but their purpose was not to remain forever. They existed to prepare mankind for the one perfect sacrifice that alone could reconcile God and man. 

Here St. Paul’s teaching becomes essential: it is impossible, in itself, that the blood of oxen and goats should take away sin. Their value was not intrinsic power; it was divine institution and typology—God ordained them as signs of the Redeemer.

V. Christ Came Not to Destroy, But to Fulfill

Our Lord explicitly teaches that He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). This includes the law of sacrifice.

What was essential in the Old Law remains essential in the New: worship, priesthood, sacrifice, and the offering of a victim to God. What changes is not the need for sacrifice, but the perfection of sacrifice. Instead of countless victims, there is one. Instead of mere figures, there is the Reality. Instead of blood that points forward, there is the Blood that redeems.

The prophets themselves foretold this transformation. Malachias speaks of a clean oblation offered from sunrise to sunset among the Gentiles. Isaias foretells priests drawn from the nations. In other words, the Old Law would end, and a universal sacrifice would arise—offered not merely in Jerusalem, but “in every place.”

And it is precisely this prophecy the Church has always applied to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

VI. Christ United the Bloody and Unbloody Sacrifices in Himself

Before the coming of Christ, there existed two broad forms of sacrifice: bloody sacrifice (animals) and unbloody offerings (bread, wine, and other gifts). Mueller makes a particularly powerful observation here: the Old Law also contained two priestly “figures”—the Aaronic priesthood (associated with bloody sacrifice) and the priesthood of Melchizedek (associated with bread and wine).

Christ unites and fulfills both in His own divine person.

At the Last Supper, He offers bread and wine according to the figure of Melchizedek—yet He does not merely offer them as bread and wine. He changes them into His own Body and Blood and commands His Apostles to “do this” in His memory. Then, on the following day, He offers Himself in a bloody manner on Calvary—the Victim of the New Covenant. In this way, the “two sacrifices” of old are gathered into one perfect sacrifice: the Sacrifice of Christ, made present sacramentally in the Mass.

VII. The Last Supper Was the First Mass

Here modern errors must be confronted plainly. The Last Supper was not merely a symbolic farewell meal. It was not a bare “institution narrative.” It was sacrificial. It was priestly. It was liturgical. It was, in truth, the first Mass.

Christ did not merely speak about His Body and Blood; He offered them. He did not merely tell the Apostles to remember Him fondly; He commanded a sacrificial action: “Do this.” In doing so, He instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood together.

Mueller’s own description of this moment is striking, and worth preserving briefly: “And thus was Mass, the sacrifice of the New Law… instituted by our holy Redeemer.”

Notice the logic: the Mass is not a later invention of medieval piety. It stands at the foundation of Christianity itself, because Christianity is the religion of the New Covenant—and the New Covenant is inaugurated in the Blood of Christ, sacramentally offered and sacrificially continued.

VIII. The Apostles and the Early Church Lived from the Altar

Once Christ instituted the sacrifice, the Apostles immediately exercised it. The Acts of the Apostles speaks of Christians assembling to “break bread,” and early Christian writers attest that this act was understood as sacrificial worship. Even in persecution, Christians risked death to offer and assist at the Holy Mysteries.

This brings us to one of the simplest and strongest arguments for the sacrificial nature of Christianity: the altar.

An altar exists for sacrifice. It has no other religious purpose. If the early Church had no sacrifice, it would have had no altars. Yet the testimony of Christian antiquity is saturated with altars—stone altars, tomb-altars of martyrs, altars in catacombs, consecrated altars dedicated solely for the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. 

Mueller collects patristic testimony emphasizing the unity of the Eucharist and the unity of the altar: one Eucharist, one sacrifice, one altar, one bishop. He also draws from St. Justin Martyr’s famous second-century description of Sunday worship—so recognizably “Catholic” that it becomes difficult to see how any honest reader could deny that the early Church believed the Eucharist was truly Christ and that Christian worship was sacrificial.

IX. A Brief Word on Modern Judaism

In your earlier meditation you raised an important historical point: Old Testament Judaism was a sacrificial religion centered on the Temple. After the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, that sacrificial system ceased, and what later developed (in Rabbinic Judaism) is not the same sacrificial religion practiced in the time of our Lord. 

For our purposes here, the central lesson is this: the Old Law sacrifices were never meant to continue indefinitely, and once the true Lamb had been offered, the shadow necessarily passes. Christianity is not “one option among many” in continuity with Temple sacrifice; it is the fulfillment and replacement of the old figures, because the Redeemer has come and His sacrifice is perpetually applied through the Mass.

Conclusion

To believe in the Mass is to believe that sacrifice did not end with Christ—it was perfected by Christ, instituted by Christ, and entrusted to His Church as the continual worship of the New Covenant.

When we attend Mass, we are not at a lecture. We are not at a community gathering. We are at the altar of sacrifice. We are present at the clean oblation foretold by the prophets. We are present where the Lamb of God is offered sacramentally, unbloody, yet truly. And we are invited to unite ourselves to that offering—placing our sins, our gratitude, our sufferings, and our entire life upon the altar with Christ.

Let us conclude with the same prayer used throughout these meditations:

Eternal Father, we humbly offer You our poor presence and that of the whole of humanity from the beginning to the end of the world at all the Masses that ever have or ever will be prayed. We offer You all the pains, sufferings, prayers, sacrifices, joys and relaxations of our lives, in union with those of our dear Lord Jesus here on earth. May the Most Precious Blood of Christ, all His blood and wounds and agony save us, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Amen!