We are now in position to address more fully the issue that we raised at the outset of this chapter—namely, how the Mass can be construed as a sacrifice. We have already shown how the sacrifice of Jesus’ cross sums up and gathers the sacrificial history that preceded it. The Mass, the Eucharistic liturgy, can be understood as an extension or re-presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus, bringing the power of the cross to bear in the present. Hence the Mass, in a very real sense, recapitulates and makes concrete everything we have been describing in the course of this chapter.

In order to appreciate these perhaps overly familiar words, we have to put ourselves in the thought world of Jesus’ first audience. As they heard these extraordinary statements, the Apostles were undoubtedly hearing overtones and resonances from the scriptural and liturgical tradition that we have reviewed. Jesus was using the Passover supper to give a definitive interpretation to the actions that he would take the next day, Good Friday.

Over his cross, Pontius Pilate had placed a sign, announcing in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek that Jesus was the King of the Jews. Though Pilate meant it as a mockery, it was in fact the fulfillment of a prophecy. An essential aspect of the hope of Israel was that one day a king in the tradition of David and Solomon would rise up, take his place in Jerusalem, and deal definitively with the enemies of the nation. This is precisely who Jesus was and precisely what Jesus did. But what an odd, unexpected sort of king he was, conquering Israel’s enemies through nonviolence. Disempowering them by refusing to respond to them in kind.

We see it in a number of Gospel scenes where Jesus is tired out after his contact with the sick, the lost, the sinful. At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, we find an account of a typical day in the ministry of Jesus. The people press on him from all sides, compelling him to find refuge in a boat lest he be crushed by the crowd, and at one point there are so many supplicants surrounding him that he couldn’t even eat. Mark tells us that Jesus went off to a secluded place to pray, but even there they sought him out, coming at him from all sides. In the magnificent narrative of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, we hear that Jesus sat down by Jacob’s well, “tired out by his journey.”