A Book Review . . . Malachi And The Mass As Sacrificial Worship
By JAMES BARESEL
The Eucharist Foretold by Mike Aquilina, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2019; available at amazon.com in Kindle and hardcover versions.
It seems that no matter how much time goes by and no matter how much evidence for the truth of the Catholic faith I encounter, I still consistently find myself pleasantly surprised by the additional supports for Catholic orthodoxy which seem to be constantly either rediscovered or discovered for the first times by faithful scholars.
Mike Aquilina’s The Eucharist Foretold: The Lost Prophecy of Malachi was, however, a double surprise. I do not recall having had any conscious expectations as to what the book’s contents would be, vaguely and not fully consciously having assumed it would explain how the Book of Malachi points to the dogma of transubstantiation. In fact, however, its central theme is the way in which that book of the Old Testament points to nature of the Mass as a form of sacrificial worship.
Though the dogmas of transubstantiation and sacrifice are obviously related, they ought not to be confused with each other. Some dissident Catholics believe in transubstantiation while denying the sacrificial nature of the Mass, holding that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ not as an aspect of sacrificial worship but merely to provide the food at the center of what they reduce to no more than a community meal. Certain variants of Anglican theology believe in a “Eucharistic liturgy” which is in some sense sacrificial while denying transubstantiation.
There are even poorly educated Catholics (often either younger ones or those who have only recently begun to take their faith seriously) who are of orthodox inclinations and committed to belief in transubstantiation but remain ignorant of the Mass’ sacrificial nature. That more than a few faithful apologists and catechists of recent decades might have (unintentionally and perhaps understandably) tended to place an emphasis on the dogma of transubstantiation which is somewhat one-sided when compared to a relative neglect of the dogma of the Mass as a sacrifice seems to me a very real possibility.
The Eucharist Foretold provides an excellent complement to those many catechetical and apologetical works whose approach to the Eucharist is focused on the subject of transubstantiation. It takes as its starting point the tenth through twelfth verses of the first chapter in the Book of Malachi, which read:
“Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire upon my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table is polluted, and the food for it may be despised.”
A brief enough passage, yet one of considerable significance for the history of theology, it having held an important role in the theological disputes between Christians and Jews in the first centuries after Christ’s Resurrection and even features prominently in St. Justin the Martyr’s defense and explication of Christian belief. The point of contention was this: Did Malachi prophecy that an end would one day be put to the sacrifices of the Mosaic law, offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, with a greater form of sacrifice taking their place? Or did his prophecy refer to a future purified offering of the Mosaic sacrifices?
Christian writers not only answered the former question in the affirmative but explicitly argued that the Mass was the “pure offering” which Malachi prophesied would be presented to God “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” The rapid spread of the Catholic faith, and the celebration of Mass throughout much of the Roman Empire, helped bolster their argument. Jewish writers who argued in favor of a positive answer to the latter question did not limit themselves to attempting to square the text of Malachi with the fact that the Mosaic sacrifices had been limited in their geographic spread and had, in any case, ceased with the destruction of the temple by Roman armies four decades after the public life of Christ.
They also attempted to specifically refute the Christians’ claim that the Mass was a new sacrifice of divine institution prophesied by Malachi — thereby demonstrating familiarity with Christian belief in the sacrificial nature of the Mass.
Aquilina does not, however, stop at explicating the foregoing points of dogmatic and historical theology, or even at linking them to other Old Testament prophecies and tracing their further development in the writings of later fathers of the Church such as St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine. He also relates them to numerous other topics.
Some, though useful for demonstrating the pervasiveness of early Christian belief in the sacrificial nature of the Mass, are perhaps predictable, such as the connection between the theology of the Mass and St. Ignatius of Antioch’s comparison of his offering of himself to God in martyrdom and Eucharistic belief.
Others are much more unexpected, including the parallel Aquilina draws between Malachi’s prophecy and the way in which the Acts of the Apostles begins and ends — the latter book’s starting with the apostles in the eastern city of Jerusalem and ending with Paul traveling to the western city of Rome symbolizing the spread of the Christian faith “from the rising of the sun to its setting.”
In short, The Eucharist Foretold is one of those books that is not only packed with information but with information which will be eye opening for everyone from moderately knowledgeable laymen to advanced theologians.