The Eucharistic Sacrifice

Are Catholics re-sacrificing Christ? The Bible tells us that He died once and for all.

The Catholic Church teaches (and always has taught) that Christ DID, indeed, die once and for all for the atonement of sins, as it says in Hebrews 10:11-12. Catholics are not “re-sacrificing” Jesus Christ. When we say it is “the Eucharistic sacrifice” what we are doing is a “re-presentation”. In the mind and heart of God, Who is beyond space and without time (because He is just THAT big), each and every time we come around the altar table in our local parishes…it’s like we are at the Last Supper. Re-presenting the original sacrifice in no way necessitates a “re-crucifixion”.

The Mass is not just some ritual that Popes and Bishops made up thousands of years ago. It is the response, the obedient response, to Christ’s command (Luke 22:19). In fact, Scripture affirms that the early Christians from the very beginning, gathered for the Eucharist when the gathered to worship:

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.” - Acts 2:42

Further, the Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up what Catholics believe quite nicely (as it always does) in sections 1366-67:

The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:

“[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.” - The Council of Trent

The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different." "And since 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...this sacrifice is truly propitiatory."

Source : LIFE TEEN