While reading Hebrews today, I read chapter 10 of that great text. Again, it struck me how the explicit teaching of the New Testament seriously calls into question many perverse views of the nature of the Lord’s Supper which views it as an iterative re-presentation of the one sacrifice of Christ. One should compare and contrast the Council of Trent and other Catholic sources on the Mass with the following from Hebrews about the singularity of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ:
Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder [αναμνησις; note that refutes the common Catholic claim that αναμνησις, in and of itself, means "memorial sacrifice"] of sin year after year . . . And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all [εφαπαξ--this term denotes finality]. And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God," and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet." For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. (Heb 10:1-3, 10-14 NRSV)
