Is the Mass a sacrifice, and how can it be the same sacrifice as the Cross?

The Mass is a true and propitiatory sacrifice, and it is the same sacrifice as Calvary because the victim is the same and the priest is the same, Jesus Christ, with only the manner of offering different: bloody on the cross, unbloody on the altar. The one reason we consume the Eucharist at all is that something far more serious has already happened. Under the mystery of his sacramental presence, Christ has been offered to the Father as a sacrifice. Many Catholics have forgotten this, and some have deliberately buried it. It is the heart of the whole thing. The Council of Trent, Session 22, is where the Church says it most precisely. Christ was once and for all to offer himself to the Father by his death on the altar of the cross. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper he left his Church a visible sacrifice, as human nature demands, by which the bloody sacrifice he was about to accomplish on the cross would be represented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its saving power applied for the forgiveness of the sins we commit daily. Then Chapter 2: in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner. The victim is one and the same. The same one now offers through the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross. Only the manner of offering is different. That last sentence is the answer to the objection everyone raises from Hebrews. Christ, they say, offered himself once for all, ephapax, sat down at the right hand of God, and his work is finished, so what on earth are you doing repeating it every morning? We are not repeating it. Nothing is added to Calvary and nothing is subtracted. The Mass is the sacramental re-presentation of the one completed sacrifice, and all its efficacy is derived from Calvary, as Cardinal Gibbons put it: on the cross he purchased our ransom, and in the Eucharistic sacrifice the price of that ransom is applied to our souls. But I would go further, because Hebrews does not say what the critics think it says. Read Hebrews 9:23-24 carefully. The writer says the heavenly things themselves are purified with better sacrifices, plural, and the plural is not a textual variant, it stands in the Greek and matches the plurals used of Old Covenant sacrifices in Hebrews 5:1, 8:3, 9:9, 10:1 and 10:11. The phrasing makes the shedding of blood cover both covenants, so that Christ's work in heaven itself involves blood. And verse 24 says he now appears for us in God's presence. He entered the Holy of Holies once, never to leave, but while he is there he continues the office of high priest, always living to make intercession for us, as Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 both say. If his work were finished in the sense the critics mean, there would be nothing left for him to intercede about. Since Christ's priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek, who offered bread and wine, the repeated presentation of that one sacrifice has to point to the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It is the only sacrifice of Christ that fits. Here I have to correct myself in public, because I used to argue this differently. For years I cited Malachi 1:11, the pure offering from the rising of the sun to its setting, offered in every place among the Gentiles, as an Old Testament prophecy of the Mass. The Didache, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus all read it that way, and I followed them. I no longer think that argument works. The more I looked at the Hebrew, the more I realized I was spiritualizing the text in the direction I wanted it to go simply because the word sacrifice appeared in it. Read it in context and it is talking about that historical moment and what the Jews were doing with their blemished offerings, and it fits that context perfectly. There is a large gap between what the Hebrew actually says and what we make it say in Catholic theology, and I do not want anyone accusing me of reading my theology into the text. The Mass does not need Malachi. It has Hebrews, the institution narratives and the Fathers. On the Fathers, Chrysostom put the relationship better than most: as Christ is one body and not many bodies, so he is one sacrifice, and what we offer now is what was then offered, which cannot be exhausted. It is not another sacrifice. We offer always the same. Two practical consequences. First, this is why the bread and wine are consecrated separately. The separate consecration places before your eyes the real separation of Christ's body and blood on the cross, an unbloody immolation, a mystical separation. Second, this is why deliberately skipping Mass is a mortal sin. Hebrews 10 warns that for those who sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left. If you are not at the assembly where the sacrifice is offered, you are not partaking of the sacrifice, and you are spurning enormous graces. And this is why no one in mortal sin may receive the Eucharist. Since the Eucharist is the visible re-presentation of the cross, a man who cannot receive it cannot participate in the merits of the cross.