Eucharistic Types in the Old Testament
Eucharistic Types in the Old Testament
Praise God for his mercy and love and omniscience. It seems that from the moment the first man disobeyed, God had a plan to deliver man and dwell with him in a new kingdom that would be Eucharistic.
Perhaps God knew that, without prophecy, His entering human history in the flesh might have escaped our notice. Just a few months ago, we celebrated Christmas, which recalls how God sent his only Son as an infant, born of a virgin, in the way God said He would, down to the town and the lineage of his parents: the beginning of the complete fulfilment of the promises revealed by God and His Law and His prophets. Today we are living out the beginning of his promises of a heavenly kingdom that we will live out more fully in Heaven and after Jesus’s second coming. Through the mouth of his prophets he reveals what his future kingdom would look like:
“And the Lord, their God, shall save them on that day,
his people like a flock.
For they are the jewels in a crown raised aloft over his land.
For what wealth is theirs, and what beauty!
grain that makes the youths flourish,
and new wine, the maidens!”
(Zec 9:16-17)
God has given us, his flock, the people he has saved, Himself in grain and wine that we might flourish! We need to understand what wealth is ours and what beauty! To thank God for this wealth and beauty, we respond in worship. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) described in The Spirit of the Liturgy, unless we worship God the way He wants to be worshipped, it can be “banal self-gratification”. In addition to the prophets, God also revealed His plan for our salvation and how he wants to be worshipped through typology—His works in history, particularly his dealings with the people of Israel, that foreshadow what was and is to come. The Holy Scriptures overflow with examples that help us to understand who God is and how to worship Him and thus have a true, loving relationship with Him and our neighbor. We particularly look at God’s work through Moses, the saving of the Israelites from slavery and their coming into the Promised Land, as the premier revelation of the salvific action of Jesus yet to come. Just as God foreshadowed how He would come in the flesh to save us, He likewise foreshadowed how He would come in the flesh under the appearance of bread in the Eucharist to save us.
Indeed, our liturgy traces previous instances where God was pleased with the sacrifice of man where we might better understand and appreciate the perfection of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The Roman Canon (the first Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass) after the consecration petitions God that He accept the sacrifice
as once you accepted the sacrifice of
Abel the Just,
Abraham our father in faith,
Melchizedek the high priest
a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim
From this petition, we see what sacrifices God has accepted in the past: Abel offered a spotless lamb, Abraham offered his only-begotten son, and Melchizedek offered bread and wine. These three offerings mentioned in the Roman Canon are found in the beginnings of salvation history in the book of Genesis, and continue to re-echo throughout God’s covenants with his people until they come together and find their fulfillment in the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist.
Abel the Just: The Offering of the Lamb
The first instance mentioned in the Roman Canon is Abel’s offering of a lamb, the best of the firstlings. We turn to the beginning of Genesis and see that man is formed in Chapter 2 and falls in Chapter 3. However, no sooner does man fall than God promises that He will “put enmity” between the serpent and the woman, whose offspring will “strike at his head” (Gen 3:15)—our first promise of a Redeemer from our fallen state. Already in Chapter 4, God begins to teach us what sort of a sacrifice will bring man back into relationship with Himself: Abel offered “one of the best firstlings of his flock” (Gen 4:4). Abel gives the best of what he has to offer, an act of justice that requires faith, faith to acknowledge that God deserves more than our best because the gift of life He has bestowed on us is so great we cannot repay it. The Letter to the Hebrews describes that “by faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice greater than Cain’s” (Heb 11:4). However, though God looks with favor on the offering, the sacrifice cannot restore man to his previous integrity.
The offering of a lamb appears again at the Passover, when God asks the Israelites to sacrifice a Paschal Lamb— a lamb which, like Abel’s offering, is to be without blemish, a year-old male taken from the best of the flock. Its blood which marks the wood of the doors will redeem and protect the firstborn sons of the Israelites from the angel of death. The people are to roast the lamb and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Interestingly, to keep the Passover one must eat the Passover: the sacrifice is not completed by the death of the lamb but by eating its flesh. As the new Passover Lamb, Jesus is sacrificed for and consumed by those who are to be saved.
The sacrifice of lambs continues in the Mosaic covenant. In addition to the ritual celebration of Passover each year when the Paschal lamb was sacrificed, the Law required the daily sacrifice of year-old lambs in the Temple: one in the morning, and one in the evening (Ex 29:38-39).
Now, as St. Paul tells us, “Christ, our Paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7). The lamb without blemish, the best of the flock of humanity, has been offered to the Father, and like the sacrifice of the Passover which saved the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt, now saves us from the bondage of sin and death. That one sacrifice is now daily offered “from the rising of the sun to its setting.”
Abraham: The Offering of the Only-begotten Son
The second instance given in this portion of the Eucharistic prayer is Abraham’s offering of his own beloved son. As Abram, he hears God’s call to go out from the land of Ur being promised that God will make of him a great nation and that all the communities of the earth will find blessing in him. God blesses him and his wife Sarah with a son, Isaac, in their old age. Then God asks Abraham to go up to the mountain and sacrifice his son, saying to him, “Take your son, your only-begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Gen 22:2). What incredible faith of Abraham to believe and act on God’s promise even when what he is asked to do would seem to contradict it! Isaac bears the wood for sacrifice on his shoulders up the mountain, prefiguring Christ carrying the cross. However, God intervenes, stays Abraham’s hand, and sends a ram to be offered instead.
On the night of the Passover in Egypt, God once again provides a sacrifice in place of the firstborn son. When the Israelites sacrificed the paschal lamb and marked its blood on their doors, the Lord spared the firstborn sons of the Israelites when the destroying angel passed by, killing the firstborn sons of the Egyptian people and livestock. The day following the night of their departure from Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses, telling him, “Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among the Israelites, both of man and beast, for it belongs to me.” (Exod 13:1). From then on in the Mosaic Law, the firstborn male of all the livestock was to be sacrificed to the Lord, while every firstborn son would be redeemed with an animal sacrifice, because this was the cost for the Lord to bring Israel out of slavery.
What God did not ultimately demand of Abraham or of the Israelite people, he freely gives in Jesus Christ. When it came to his own Son, God did not stay his hand so that all of us might be redeemed.
Melchizedek the High Priest: The Offering of Bread and Wine
The third instance is the sacrifice of Melchizedek, the high priest who offers bread and wine. Before being renamed Abraham, Abram joined forces with the kings of Sodom and fought a battle to save his nephew, Lot, who had been taken captive. Their victory secured, the kings shared the spoil and celebrated. Seemingly out of nowhere, a priestly king came forward to bless Abram:
“Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High, he blessed Abram with these words: ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth; And blessed be God most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.’ Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” (Gen 14:18).
Melchizedek is only mentioned one other time in the Old Testament—he is a priest without lineage shrouded in mystery. In Psalm 110:4, an oracle of the Lord declares, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 7 and 5:5-10) applies the psalm to Christ, describing that, like Melchizedek, Christ is a king of peace (salem) who is also a divinely appointed priest, not of priestly Levitical descent. Clement of Alexandria and Cyprian connect the offering of bread and wine by Melchizedek and the Eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus the high priest, which entered into the Roman Canon.
Regular sacrifices of bread and wine continued in the Mosaic Law. In addition to the Passover eaten with unleavened bread, God asked Moses to keep bread and wine on the table in His Dwelling (Exod 25:23-30). The holy bread was placed upon the table every Sabbath as an offering to God and later eaten by the priests (Lev 24:5-9). In his book Jesus and the Last Supper, Brant Pitre explores the Hebrew phrase which refers to this bread, lehem happãnîm (translated as “showbread” in the New American Bible and “bread of the presence” in the Revised Standard Version), noting that a literal translation would be “bread of the face” (Pitre 2015, p 124). The expression pãnîm is used elsewhere in Exodus when “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face (pãnîm ‘el pãnîm)” (Exod 33:11). This expression could have multiple meanings: the Lord was considered to dwell in a special way in the Temple, and this bread was set before his “face,” being placed in his presence. But in another way, the bread itself was a visible sign of the invisible face of God who dwelt there. Brant Pitre mentions how cakes of bread offered in pagan temples were often stamped with some symbol of the deity (similar to what we do with our hosts today), so that this literal translation of “bread of the face” can help us understand that this bread was a visible sign of the face of God.
In the Eucharist, God is made visible while hiding under the appearance of bread. While the “bread of the face” merely symbolized the presence of God, in the Eucharist, God Himself is truly present under the appearances of the bread and wine offered by the priest who is ordained into the priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the order of Melchizedek. What an amazing gift! In response, let us worship.