Transcript

Let me say a word in defense of reason and dialogue with faith.

Because faith is that proof.

Faith unites us to that substance.

But reason, in order to realize its full potential, meets the horizons revealed by and truth contained in the faith.

And not just any faith, but the Catholic faith.

I was running late for the gate where my plane was taking off and I, and I got stopped by a guy.

He said, "Are, are you Scott Hahn?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Do you remember me?" And I'm like, "Uh, no." I hate that question 'cause I've got a professor's memory.

I mean, it's the size of a pea.

And I'm looking at him like, "Okay, help me here." Yeah, I'm like...

"I'm Chris.

We went to high school.

We graduated in '79 together." And I'm like, "Oh, my goodness." I recognized him and he hadn't changed nearly as much as I had, especially when it comes to weight.

I'm like, "It's great to see you, but I don't have time to talk.

I'm late for my plane." He's like, "I just gotta tell you one thing.

You remember back then, I was a Catholic?

Well, I've got good news because I'm now an evangelical Bible Christian." And I'm like, "Well, that's wonderful, Chris.

But let me share with you one thing before I take off because I am now an evangelical Bible Catholic Christian." And his jaw dropped to the floor.

"What?" And he was like, "I can't believe it.

You were the one who would always come into the cafeteria, sit at our table, and after all the small talk, you, you would, you would target us, especially the Catholics with all kinds of questions.

You'd pepper us." And I'm like, "I, I, I honestly don't remember that, Chris.

But I, I'm gonna have to catch my flight here." "Can we, can we exchange business cards?" And we did.

And he's like, "But don't you remember that one time you...

Well, it wasn't just one time, you'd come back again and again and you'd ask me, especially me, that question, 'Where in the New Testament do you find the sacrifice of the Mass?' Remember that?" And I'm like, "Honestly, I don't." "But it sure sounds like me." You know?

And I'm like, "Can I give you a call next week?" "Sure." So, I took off and I left him wondering whether I really meant it.

And so, I called him.

And we basically picked up where we left off in the airport.

Of like, okay, realizing I had to kind of make up for lost time and do a little bit of evangelical restitution.

I said to Chris, "Okay, so what was it you recalled from our cafeteria conversations?

You used to say to us at the table, you know, 'Where in the New Testament do you find the sacrifice of the Mass?' And then quickly, you'd go on to point out that the Mass, as we called it, or the Lord's Supper as you referred to it, was not a sacrifice, it was only a meal.

That the sacrifice was precisely what Jesus had offered on Calvary." "And years later, Scott, honestly, I came to realize you were right.

Calvary's the sacrifice." I'm like, "Okay.

I, I still agree with that, Chris.

But I, I think we need to take a step or two back in order to see things in perspective, at least the way I've come to see them." So, that particular conversation lasted well over an hour because in that talk, I shared with him what the early church fathers had sort of shared with me.

That if you had been there on Good Friday, standing at Calvary as a devout Jew, and you had watched Jesus suffer and die, you would not have gone home and recounted your experience to your family members and friends as though you had just witnessed a sacrifice.

Because for the Jews in the first century, a sacrifice had to take, take place inside the City of Jerusalem, within the temple upon an altar where there would be a priest standing by offering a sacrifice.

Whereas Jesus died outside the walls, far from the temple, where there were no altars or priests offering sacri- So, what they would have gone home and related to their family members and friends was not a sacrifice, but what?

A Roman execution.

And a rather bloody one at that.

I said, "Chris, you know, from a Jewish persp- perspective, following the Old Testament, Jesus' death on Calvary was an execution, a Roman execution, a bloody and unjust act of violence." And he's like, "O- okay." So, I asked the question to Chris just as the fathers had kind of posed it to me, "How in the world does a Roman execution get suddenly changed into a holy sacrifice?

And not just any sacrifice, but the supreme sacrifice of all times?

How does that happen?" And he's like, "Uh, help me here." You know?

I'm like, "Well, I'll help you the way the fathers helped me.

The only way to illuminate the mystery of what happened to Jesus on Good Friday is by rewinding the tape and looking at it in the light of what he had previously done in the upper room with his disciples on Holy Thursday." "Because He wasn't just celebrating a meal.

He wasn't just sharing a supper.

He was celebrating the Passover of the old covenant one last time.

But that's not all He was doing.

He was fulfilling it as the Lamb of God.

But He wasn't fulfilling it as the Lamb of God for the purpose of terminating it.

He was fulfilling it as the Lamb of God for the purpose of transforming the Passover of the old covenant into the Passover of the new." "And you recall how He does it because the synoptic gospels tell us.

In the context of celebrating the familiar ancient Jewish Passover, which all 12 of the disciples would have known like the back of their hands-"Near the beginning of the meal, near the beginning of the meal, He, He did something different.

He, He took the bread, which was unleavened, and He spoke the words, "This is My body, which will be given up for you." And I suspect that the disciples must have been sitting there wondering, "What is that?" You know, He's just deviated from the liturgical rubrics a little bit here, you know?

Nobody apparently said a thing, but they must have kind of wondered and, and, and recalled, you know, "Why did He say that, 'This is My body which will be given for you'"?

What was that rhetoric?

And then near the end of the meal, Chris, He takes the third cup of blessing, and what does He do?

He, He takes it and He speaks those words that we know so well, "This chalice is the blood of the covenant, the blood of the new covenant poured out for many for the remission of sins.

Do this in remembrance of Me." So this chalice, this cup is the Blood, the Blood of the new covenant poured out for many for the remission of sins.

"Do this in remembrance of Me." And there again, the disciples must have been scratching their heads wondering, "What is this new ritual addition that He's kind of appending here?" Nobody apparently asked Him, and a, a few moments later, they were out into the night over to the Garden of Gethsemane.

And I said, "Chris, I suspect that those disciples were wondering what Jesus was saying and doing.

What was this new rhetoric?

Was it just, you know, an additional ritual, or was there some reality?" But not until the next day, not until Good Friday, did they discover that He wasn't just adding new words, He wasn't just adding a new ritual gesture.

When He said, "This is My body, which will be given up for you," on Holy Thursday in the Upper Room, He proved that He said what He meant and He meant what He said on Good Friday because His body was given up for them.

And likewise, the cup after supper, when He speaks those sacred words and declares that, "This cup is the blood of the New Testament, the blood of the new covenant poured out for many for the remission of sins.

Do this in remembrance of Me," the very next day, He did what He said.

He poured out His blood for the forgiveness of sins as a sacrifice.

I said, "The Passover is the key because in the Old Covenant, the Passover was never merely a meal.

It always started off as a sacrifice." Just ask the lamb.

But the sacrifice of the unblemished male lamb was then culminating in the sacrificial communion, the meal known as the Passover.

And if that was true of the Old Covenant, it isn't less true but more of the new because Jesus comes as the Lamb, not just to feed us, but to die for us, but to do so in the context of the Old Covenant Passover, which He's celebrating one last time by fulfilling it, but He fulfills it by transforming the, the old into the new as the Lamb who must die as a sacrifice, and then as the one who makes provisions for the sacrificial communion.

I said, "If the Eucharist that Jesus instituted on Holy Thursday was just a meal, then His death on Holy, on Good Friday was just a Roman execution.

But if, on the other hand, and only if, Jesus' institution of the Holy Eucharist was nothing less than the sacrifice of the new covenant Passover, then what was instituted on Thursday is precisely what is consummated on Friday.

He didn't lose His life on Friday if He'd already freely given it to us by instituting the Eucharist as the Passover of the new covenant on Holy Thursday.

He wasn't the victim of Roman violence and injustice.

He was the victim of divine love.

He made His life a gift which He freely laid down before anybody laid their hands upon Him and try to take it." I said, "If the Eucharist is a meal, then Calvary's an execution, but if the Eucharist is the sacrifice of the new covenant, then and only then do we see that Calvary is more than an execution, that indeed it is the consummation of the sacrifice of the new covenant Passover lamb." There was this long pause.

And now, he said to me, "I, I never saw it that way." And I had to admit, neither did I until I read Melito of Sardis.

You know, his homily, Peri Pascha, in the Greek, I had it translated into English, and there I discovered what was a commonplace, what it seems like all the Christians believed in the first, second, third, and fourth centuries as Paul himself declares to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 5:7, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Therefore," what?

"Let us simply believe, that's all we need to be doing and then we're saved." And one said, "No." He said, "Therefore, let us keep the feast." And what feast is he talking about?

The new covenant feast of the Eucharist, the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, which he goes on in the subsequent chapters of 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 to explain more fully than he does in all of the other epistles put together.

And so it is that we agree with our non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters who describe Calvary as the sacrifice.

We would just hasten to clarify the fact that Calvary would only be an execution and less the Holy Eucharist is nothing less than the sacrifice of the new covenant Passover.

And so when we as Catholics go about the new evangelization...They've got good news to share, and we don't begrudge them because they share so generously.

They take on risks.

They take the good news as they understand it and they share it freely and fully, with excitement, and so we should too, only more fully and more excitedly because the good news they share just gets better when you discover the fullness of the faith in the Family of God that we call the Catholic Church.

Because it's not just a personal relationship, it's not just cohabiting with another person that you sincerely love, it's a covenant relationship that calls for interpersonal communion, but it has to pass from a personal relationship to a committed relationship to a covenantal bond.

And so for us, it takes a little bit longer.

And why?

Uh, because we're Catholics and we just kinda drag things out.

No, because that's what human nature calls for.

Falling in love is not over and done in a day.

Falling in love is over and done in a lifetime.

But it needs to go through stages of growth and development, whether we call it courtship, engagement, marriage, or whatever we call it in whatever culture we live in.

We recognize that the crisis in the Church today is very similar to the crisis in the culture.

We don't understand the inner logic of love when it comes to the interpersonal bond between a male and a female, when it comes to the deeper interpersonal bond between God and humanity.

It isn't just my decision.

It isn't just my experience.

Those are necessary steps, but they are baby steps.

They're like the first steps, as I said, the Prodigal Son took from a far country long before he ever got home to the merciful father who had been waiting for him.

And that feast that he celebrated for the Prodigal Son is the Eucharistic banquet, the marriage supper of the Lamb that the prodigal sons and daughters of God get to share when Catholics proclaim the Gospel in its integrity, with all of its truth, with all of its power, indeed, with all of its beauty.

And I would also go on to say that the Eucharist that Jesus instituted on Holy Thursday is not only what illuminates the mystery of His suffering on Good Friday, it's also what really clarifies the importance of His resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Because if the Eucharist is what transformed Jesus' suffering from being an execution into a true and holy sacrifice, then the resurrection is what transformed that sacrifice into a sacrament that we can now do in remembrance of Him, because the resurrection of the Lord's body is precisely what makes that body not only come back alive, the resurrection is more than the resuscitation of His corpse, it's more than the vindication of His innocence.

The resurrection is the glorification of His sacred humanity.

His sacred humanity, now resurrected, is both deified and deifying.

And the resurrection is what makes it communicable to us.

It's what makes that glorified body, dare I say, edible by us.

Which is why, when you study the synoptic traditions in John, you discover that each and every time you read about a resurrection appearance, just, it just so happens that, what day of the week does it always fall upon?

Sunday.

Why?

Well, you know, because that's the day He was resurrected, but that's also the day that these two disciples said, "You know, our hearts were burning within us when He opened up the Scriptures, but our eyes were only open..." When?

In the breaking of the bread.

The Eucharistic celebration.

And so week after week, back then in the first century, Sunday after Sunday in the 21st century, it is the resurrected Lord of Lords and King of Kings who comes to us.

It isn't the, the bleeding, battered body of Jesus hanging on the cross, though it is one and the same sacrifice that He offered on Calvary.

But the sacrifice that He offers, He now offers as the High Priest in Heaven, as Saint John describes it in the visions that we find in the Book of Revelation, that I tried my best to explain in The Lamb's Supper, as I experienced it in my very first Mass, where He is the Lamb of God, 28 times in 22 chapters, where He is the High Priest of the Heavenly Temple, where He is the one offering, and yet, He is also the Lamb who is offered.

And in the Mass then, God's will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven more perfectly than anything else we do.

The Eucharist is the resurrected Lord.

And if we are the ones who are alive at the end of time when He comes again and reveals His glory, we may be in for a surprise because we're gonna discover that He won't have any more glory at the end than He already has now, not only up in Heaven, but in His Eucharistic presence.

He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.

He comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine, but He comes to us as the resurrected, ascended, enthroned, glorified, deified, and deifying Jesus.

And that is why God the Father is not content with leaving His prodigal son in a far country, simply making an act of contrition.

That is just the beginning of a long journey.And when we come back home, and that's what fallen away Catholics are doing now by the thousands and the tens of thousands, they discover the mercy of a Father who loves them more than they ever imagined.

But they also discover that the banquet that the Father is throwing is more than they ever expected.

It is not a reward for our righteousness, it is a remedy for our sin and weakness and our failures.

We are not worthy, but we sure are needy.

And so, we're not only going out to re-evangelize the de-Christianized, we are going out being re-evangelized ourselves.

We are coming here and being re-evangelized ourselves week after week after week.

I was talking to Chris, and he would keep bringing up, "Okay, so get me back to that question and its answer, 'Where in the New Testament do you find the sacrifice of the mass?'" On another occasion, in a different conversation, I pointed out to him what Jesus said and did there in the upper room when He instituted the Eucharist.

He takes this chalice and He says what?

"This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the New Testament, the blood of the New Covenant, poured out for many for the remission of sins.

Do this in remembrance of Me," or words to that effect.

I said, "Notice, Chris, what He said.

'This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the koinē diathēkē." We can translate that New Covenant.

We can just as easily translate that New Testament.

"This is the blood of the New Testament, poured out for many for the remission of sins.

Drink this.

Do this in remembrance of Me." "Notice," I said, "Chris, He said, He didn't say, 'This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the New Testament.

Write this in remembrance of Me.' He didn't say, 'Read this in remembrance of Me.' He said, 'Do this.'" Do what?

The New Testament.

And what's the New Testament?

The New Testament is the Eucharist, according to the New Testament.

Luke 22:20, First Corinthians Chapter 11 as well.

He didn't say, "Write this in remembrance of Me," and in fact, over half of the 12 in the upper room never ended up contributing a single book to the collection of 27 that we now call the New Testament.

But not because they were lazy or disobedient, but because He didn't say, "Write this in remembrance." He said, "Do this." And guess what?

They all went out doing this.

They were proclaiming the Gospel, they were instructing the repentant, they were then baptizing, and they were celebrating the breaking of the bread from the very beginning, as we read in Acts 2:42, and again in Acts 20 and elsewhere.

So Jesus says, "This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the New Testament." He says, "Do this in remembrance of Me," not write this.

So I said, "Chris, the plain and simple fact that I had to learn the hard way was this, that the New Testament was a sacrament long before it ever started to become a document, according to the document." It was like a zinger for him, but much earlier for me.

It was really a rat zinger because that was the guy who taught me.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I should have resisted that temptation, but in fact, it was then Professor Joseph, you know, cardinal before he was Pope Benedict, who taught me, just like the fathers, all that I was trying to share with Chris.

The New Testament is a sacrament long before it starts to become a document, according to the document.

And he asked me to clarify that.

And I said, "Well, the early Church and the apostles went out preaching, baptizing, and celebrating the New Covenant, the New Testament in the Holy Eucharist for years in all directions.

But in actual fact, the New Testament books weren't begun for at least 10 or 15, maybe 20 years after Jesus' death and resurrection.

And they weren't really completed until the end of the first century.

But as a matter of historical fact, it's interesting to notice that these documents that were being read in the Church, especially in her Sunday liturgy, were never referred to as the New Testament until the second half of the second century.

Those are the earliest references we find documented to these books being called the New Testament.

And why were they suddenly being called the New Testament at the end of the second century?

Because of their liturgical proximity to what had been called the New Testament since the first half of the first century.

And what was that?

The Eucharist.

That Jesus Himself called the New Testament.

Jesus never uses that word diathēkē, covenant or testament, any other time except when He instituted the Eucharist.

And when He did, He said, "This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the New Testament.

Do this in remembrance of Me." I said, "Not only is the New Testament a sacrament long before it starts to become a document, but it also gives us an answer to that question I used to ask you all the time, Chris, 'Where in the New Testament do you find the sacrifice of the mass?' The sacrifice of the mass is the New Testament, according to the New Testament."