While Catholics in the modern day probably don’t consider this very often, our worship in what we call the Mass is the fulfillment of what was practiced by the Israelites in the Temple. We often regard the Mass as simply a communal meal that the Christian community comes together to celebrate and participate in in remembrance of Christ at the Last Supper, but this is nowhere close to the whole picture.
The Mass is a true and proper sacrifice and is the re-presentation of Our Lord’s death on the Cross. This is seen in the basic fact that we call our Church leaders ‘Priests’ and not, as most Protestant denominations would refer to them, as ‘Minister’ or ‘Pastor.’ The reason for this is simple and true of every religion: priests offer sacrifices.
While the pagan priests of old offered sacrifices to appease the hunger of their gods (who are really now known to be the demonic), Catholic priests offer the one true sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to the Father (the true God of the living and the dead) in reparation for our sins. This offering which was imperfect in the Old Covenant, as it was done using animals, is now fulfilled by the once and eternal sacrifice of the true lamb of God.
This being true, it is no wonder that all of the different rites of the Christian church have mirrored themselves off of the worship of the sacred temple in Jerusalem. This can be seen in every element of the liturgy: the use of incense offerings and sacred chant to proclaim the word of God and to make supplication to him, which in the temple took the form of the Psalms.
Sacred vestments which separate the Priest and orient him toward the sacred action and sacred images by which we enter closer into true worship correspond to the many depictions of the Cherubim in the temple.
The primary language of the worship in the temple was Hebrew, a language that was no longer the spoken tongue of the Jewish people but had become an elevated and sacred language. The same is true of every part of the Christian world, from Latin in the west to Koine Greek by most of the Byzantines and Church Slavonic by the Russians and other churches of Cyrillic origin. Aramaic, once the common language of Our Lord, now the liturgical language for many Syriac Christians, and Ge’ez which opposes itself from the modern tongue spoken by Ethiopian Christians, that being Amharic.
It is also present in the posture that the priest takes, facing either with the people or with the other priests, to lead the people of God in prayer back to him.
There are even minuscule details of the liturgy which mirror the temple worship. One example of this is found during the Eucharistic Prayer at the specific prayer known as the Hanc Igitur. At this point of the Mass the priest elevates his hands over the offering as he makes reference to the sacrifice he is about to consecrate. This was the same action that the Levites would make in the Temple over the animal before it was to be slain.
One other example is found, at least in the Roman Rite, after the priest offers bread and wine, he makes the sign of the cross with each one before placing them down. We know from the Jewish oral traditions that the Levites in the temple would do the same thing, of course without the understanding of the symbol of the cross. The understanding is that after the victim is offered, the priest would move it in the direction of the four points of the compass to symbolize that the God it was being offered to is the Lord over all the earth.
Because the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass given to us by Our Lord is truly his death on the cross, we ought to act in every way as if our sanctuaries are the court of heaven and the temple of God. Just as the Levites offered sacrifices in the temple, our churches which are also sanctuaries of the living God are temples in which priests offer sacrifices for the remission of sins. We must keep our minds fixed on this fact as every time we enter a Catholic Church, we enter the Holy of Holies which, before veiled in the temple, has now been opened through Christ’s death on the cross. Let us orient all of our resources and energy towards the great reverence that ought to accompany this ceremony as it did with our spiritual ancestors in the Temple.
Born and Raised to Jewish parents in New York City, Kai Breskin is a recent convert to the Catholic Faith. A member of the Boston College class of 2026, he is studying Political Science, Philosophy, and History. His intellectual passions include Christian theology, history, and liturgical study. His hobbies include sailing, playing the piano, and singing, with a specific focus in Gregorian Chant.
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