Episode Transcript  

One

God Calls Abraham

God’s original plan was to infuse His divine life in our soul so that we would become children of God and temples of God. But the devil spread a lie that sowed doubt in the human heart. Our first parents allowed their trust in God to die, and by abusing their freedom, they turned away from Him in sin. After the Fall, God began a long and patient process of bringing the whole world into His family, sharing in his divine life forever. 

So, twenty generations after Adam, God called Abraham. In Genesis 12, God gave him three promises: He would give Abraham and his descendants a special land, he would make his descendants into a Kingdom, and through one of Abraham’s descendants, all the families of the world would have the chance to come into God’s covenant family the Catholic Church. 

Two

The Binding of Isaac

When John the Baptist sees Jesus for the first time, he cries out, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The full meaning of this can really only be understood in light of Genesis 22. 

In Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac, whom he loved, to Mt. Moriah and offer him there in sacrifice. According to the Targum, an explanation of the Old Testament by the Jewish Rabbis around the time of Jesus, when Abraham took Isaac to Mt. Moriah, Isaac was an adult, in his 30s, and Abraham was a very old man. As they traveled, Satan tempted Isaac, saying, “Your father is going to kill you, but you can resist because you are young and strong.” When they reached Mt. Moriah, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, loaded it on Isaac, and carried in his own hands the flint for the fire and the knife. Isaac carried the wood of the sacrifice like a condemned man carrying the cross for a crucifixion. 

On the way, Isaac asked a haunting question, “Father, I see the knife, the wood, and the fire; but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham gave a prophetic answer, “God himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice, my son.” The Targum adds, “And if God does not, then you are the lamb my son.” 

Isaac consents and even asks to be bound more tightly to ensure the sacrifice. Yet when the moment came, God stayed the hand of Abraham. Then God provided not a lamb, but a ram, caught in the thicket. Abraham called the place “The Lord Will Provide,” saying, “On the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided.” 

God revealed that He Himself would one day provide the Lamb. When was this lamb provided by God? 

Three

God’s Lamb Is the Messiah

When and how would God Himself provide the Lamb? Maybe you could point to the Exodus, when Israel sacrificed the Passover lamb, or to the daily lambs offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, but those lambs were provided by the people. God Himself had yet to provide the Lamb.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God revealed that the Messiah would be the Lamb who takes away our sin. Isaiah 53 tells us, “He was pierced for our transgressions…like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house…By his sufferings shall my servant justify many” (Isaiah 53:5-7, 11). Isaiah’s prophecy describes only one person, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

Now the pieces come together. Abraham had foretold that God would provide the lamb on Mt. Moriah. John the Baptist sees Jesus and declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

Jesus offers His sacrifice on Calvary, the very summit of Mt. Moriah. The place where Abraham said, “On the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Jesus is the Lamb of God. He is the sacrifice that takes away sin. He is the High Priest of the Sacrifice. And Jesus is the Temple of God. 

Four

The End of the Temple, the Beginning of the New Worship

The Jewish Temple was the only place the Jews were allowed to worship God through sacrifice. Synagogues are places of prayer, teaching, and community, but not places of worship through sacrifice. When Jesus the Lamb of God died on the Cross, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51), signifying that the Temple sacrifices and the Temple itself had come to an end. Both were fulfilled and completed in Jesus.  

Jesus came to replace the sacrifice of the Lamb with His own sacrifice, and He came to replace the Temple in Jerusalem with the Temple of His Body. Ultimately, Jesus came to replace the worship of God in the Temple with the worship of God in the Catholic Mass. Jesus foretold this when He cleansed the Temple and declared, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He was speaking of the Temple of His Body (John 2:19–21).

The worship of the old Temple is therefore fulfilled in the Body of Christ. And where is the Body of Christ made present? In the Eucharist at every Mass. That is why the priest holds up the Host and proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

Five

The Mass: Worship for All Nations

When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well, she raised the ancient question of worship: whether God should be worshiped on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem. Jesus answered her by revealing something entirely new, “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21). True worship would no longer be tied to a single place.

The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD and has never been rebuilt.

As Pope Benedict XVI explains, ancient Jewish tradition already sensed where true worship was heading. There was a saying that when the Messiah comes, all sacrifices would cease except the Todah, the thanksgiving sacrifice. Todah is the Hebrew word for thanksgiving, and the Greek word for thanksgiving is Eucharistia.

In Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, Temple worship is fulfilled and transformed into Eucharistic worship. God is no longer worshiped in one place by one people, but everywhere by all nations through the one sacrifice of Christ made present in the Mass.

We receive the Body of Christ in the Eucharist so that we ourselves may become the temple of God, fulfilling what God desired from the beginning.

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