by A. W. Tozer
In a friendly conversation with a Catholic priest I learned from the lips of this appointed spokesman of the Roman Church the philosophy of the Mass.
He started with the blood offering of Abel and traced the practice of propitiatory sacrifice down through the Scriptures to the cross. "There must always be a sacrifice," he said, "and in the Mass the sacrifice is repeated each time the bread and wine are consecrated on the altar. At each celebration of the Mass the sacrifice of Christ is repeated."
If the Mass rests upon the notion of the perpetual sacrifice then its foundation is only sand, for the New Testament is very clear that Christ's sacrifice is a once-for-all act and can never be repeated. Whatever tradition and dogma may say, thus saith the Lord.
And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 10:10-12)
And if that is not plain enough the inspired writer further says, "Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy" (verse 14); and, "where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin" (verse 18).
The teaching of the New Testament is not that there is a perpetual sacrifice, but that there is one sacrifice of perpetual efficacy. The thought that Christ's sacrifice needs to be repeated is obnoxious to the spirit of biblical theology and an affront to the tears and sweat and blood and death of the Lamb of God.
Obviously our Catholic friends are in serious error here, and the kind thing is not that we in the name of tolerance smile away their error, but that we point it out and try to correct it.
( The Size of the Soul, Chapter 15 )
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