Forgiveness of sins requires application of his one great sacrifice. His blood cleanses us. All of our sin are removed at Baptism when we are joined to Christ;and sins committed after Baptism are forgiven when we confess our sins, repenting. Mortal sin in which one looses sanctifying grace needs to be taken care of through reconciliation---Thus God uses the sacraments He has ordained to apply the benefits of His sacrifice.
from comment 83
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/reformed-imputation-and-the-lords-prayer/ :
I didn’t say that this chapter is only about the procurement of redemption, and not about its application. The focus in this chapter is on the procurement. Step back to the broader context. In chapters three and four [hebrews] the author explains that Jesus is our high priest in the New Covenant. Because He is our high priest in heaven, we may draw near with confidence to receive grace to help in the time of need. (Heb 4:16) The receiving of grace is the application of Christ’s priesthood to us. To all those who obey Him, He becomes the source of eternal salvation. (Heb 5:9) Then, at that point, the author says that he wants to explain more about Christ’s high priesthood, but the persons to whom he is writing are still immature. He shouldn’t need to lay again the foundation about the elementary teaching about Christ, namely, repentance, faith, washings (i.e. Baptism), the laying on of hands (i.e. Confirmation), and tasting the heavenly gift (i.e. Eucharist). Those are the ways in which Christ’s work are applied to the believer.
In continuing to explain Christ’s high priesthood, in Heb 7:23-25 we are told that because Christ holds His priesthood permanently [lit. into the age], He is forever [lit. to the perfection/completion/entirety] able to save those drawing near to God through Him, because He is always living to make intercession for them. Christ, in heaven, now has “obtained a more excellent ministry.” (Heb 8:6) That ministry in the New Covenant is His intercession for us, through His once-and-for-all perfect sacrifice. He entered into the more perfect tabernacle (Heb 9:11), through His own blood. (Heb 9:12) There is a clear relation between Heb 10:14,18 on the one hand, and Heb 6:6 and 7:22-25 on the other hand. In Hebrews 10:14, when the writer refers to the “one offering” he is referring primarily to the procurement of redemption. In the second half of the verse, the “being sanctified” refers to the on-going application of that redemption to the believer. Objectively, Christ takes away sins once and for all by His once-and-for-all sacrifice. But, that objective work has to be applied to the individual person, or it does not benefit them. The one-time nature of Christ’s sacrifice is reflected in the one-time nature of the application of it (to us), in baptism, as I explained in comment #67 of the Baptismal Regeneration thread. Christians are to remain in the grace that they receive in their baptism. This is what is meant by keeping unstained the white robes we receive at our baptism. Baptism in this way is the application Christ’s sacrifice, by which the baptized are “the perfected forever [lit. into the continuity, i.e perpetually].” Through our baptism into Christ’s one sacrifice, we are in this way once-and-for-all perfected with respect to being translated from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light, having put off the old man and putting on the new man, having received the Spirit and walking thereon in the newness of the Spirit. And yet through the means of grace we continue to grow in the life of Christ and partaking of the grace He merited through His sacrifice; hence the continuous, progressive nature of “being sanctified.” (Heb 10:14)
see this link on forgiveness- for more details on this forgiveness http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/05/forgiveness-of-sins.html
also http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/REALLYSC.HTM this deals with the subject of the mass as sacrificehere is a bit from it:
Please note that in no way do we as Catholics believe that Christ continues to be crucified physically or die a physical death in heaven over and over again. However, we do believe that the Mass does participate in the everlasting sacrifice of Christ.
First, one must not separate the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross from the events which surround it. The sacrifice of our Lord is inseparably linked to the Last Supper. Here Jesus took bread and wine. Looking to St. Matthew's text (26:26ff), He said over the bread, "Take this and eat it. This is My body"; and over the cup of wine, "This is My blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured out on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins."
The next day, on Good Friday, our Lord's body hung on the altar of the cross and His precious blood was spilt to wash away our sins and seal the everlasting, perfect covenant. The divine life our Lord offered and shared for our salvation in the sacrifice of Good Friday is the same offered and shared at the Last Supper. The Last Supper, the sacrifice of Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter form one saving event.
Second, one must have a nuanced understanding of time. One must distinguish chronological time from kairotic time, as found in sacred Scripture. In the Bible, <chronos> refers to chronological time—past, present and future—specific deeds which have an end point. <Kairos>, or kairotic time, refers to God's eternal time, time of the present moment which recapitulates the entire past as well as contains the entire future. Therefore, while our Lord's saving event occurred chronologically around the year AD 30-33, in the kairotic sense of time it is an ever-present reality which touches our lives here and now. In the same sense, this is why through baptism we share now in the mystery of Christ's passion, death and resurrection, a chronological event that happened almost 1,965 years ago, but is still efficacious for us today.
With this in mind, we also remember that our Lord commanded, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke (22:14ff) and St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (11:23ff), "Do this in remembrance of Me." Clearly our Lord wanted the faithful to repeat, to participate in and to share in this sacramental mystery. The Last Supper, which is inseparably linked to Good Friday (and the Resurrection), is perpetuated in the holy Mass for time eternal.
The Mass therefore is a memorial. In each of the Eucharistic prayers, the <anamnesis>, or memorial, follows the consecration, whereby we call to mind the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord. However, this memorial is not simply a recollection of past history in chronological time, but rather a liturgical proclamation of living history, of an event that continues to live and touch our lives now in that sense of kairotic time.
...................................The sacrifice which Christ made for our salvation remains an ever-present reality: "As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which 'Christ our Pasch is sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out" ("Lumen Gentium," No. 3). Therefore, the <Catechism asserts>, "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is a memorial and because it applies its fruit" (No. 1366).
Therefore, the actual sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the sacrifice of the Mass are inseparably united as one single sacrifice. The Council of Trent in response to Protestant objections decreed, "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 "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 is offered in an unbloody manner." For this reason, just as Christ washed away our sins with his blood on the altar of the cross, the sacrifice of the Mass is also truly propitiatory. The Lord grants grace and the gift of repentance. He pardons wrong-doings and sins. (cf. Council of Trent, "Doctrine on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass")
Moreover, the Mass involves the sacrifice of the whole Church. Together we offer our prayers, praise, thanksgiving, work, sufferings to our Lord and thereby join ourselves to His offering. The whole Church is united with the offering of Christ. This is why in the Eucharistic Prayers we remember the pope, the vicar of Christ; the bishop, shepherd of the local diocese; the clergy who minister <in persona Christi> to the faithful; the faithful living now, the deceased and the saints.
The "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy" of the Second Vatican Council summed it up well: "At the Last Supper, on the night He was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. This He did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice on the cross through the ages until He should come again, and so to entrust to His beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of His death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us" (No. 47).
I gave a comment to Wilson's statement about worship being an offering of ourselves to God. This is correct in so far as it goes. But it must go further--
When we come to church we are not coming to a “meeting” or to sing or to hear a sermon, and Wilson has it right when he says we are coming to present ourselves to God. But it is more than this—we have “come , in a mystery, to the frontier that lies between the seen and the unseen, or between heaven and earth–as we all do when we pray, for example.” With liturgical churches this is very evident when celebrating the Eucharist. “It would seem, then, that there is a source other than ourselves from which proceed the form and content of worship. The question for the believer from any religion is not, first of all, ‘How do I feel about this?’ but, rather, ‘What am I to do when I come to the Holy of Holies?’” “Christian worship did not simply proliferate randomly. There was a shape given to it in the beginning. Actually, it took this shape………..The particular act that was understood by the apostolic and patristic Church to constitute worship…..had been received from the hands of Jesus Christ himself. And it was a particular act. What he had done on the night before his betrayal in the Upper Room was received by the apostles as his ordering of the act of Christian worship. He took, blessed, broke, and gave bread to them, and he blessed the cup of wine; and by his word he inaugurated this strange quasi meal as the act that would ‘make present’ (his word—anamnesis) for them, until history ended, the entire mystery of his redeeming self-oblation to the Father, that is to say, the entirety of revelation. The whole of the Law and the Prophets and of the history of Israel, and of his own coming into the world, passing through it (it is pasch–passing), and returning to the Father is opened up in this rite. It can never be exhausted or wholly comprehended. It will never run dry, for as long as Christian people gather for worship.”
We offer ourselves in the celebration of the Eucharist…I think Wilson somehow has missed all of this.
(some quotes from thomas Howard--On Being Catholic
also here from encyclical--
“Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how agape also became a term for the Eucharist: there God’s own agape comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us. Only by keeping in mind this Christological and sacramental basis can we correctly understand Jesus’ teaching on love. The transition which he makes from the Law and the Prophets to the twofold commandment of love of God and of neighbour, and his grounding the whole life of faith on this central precept, is not simply a matter of morality—something that could exist apart from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental re-actualization. Faith, worship and ethos are interwoven as a single reality which takes shape in our encounter with God’s agape. Here the usual contraposition between worship and ethics simply falls apart. “Worship” itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented. Conversely, as we shall have to consider in greater detail below, the “commandment” of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be “commanded” because it has first been given.”
| — | Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est
“The ancient world had dimly perceived that man’s real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes food for us—as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving. The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental “mysticism”, grounded in God’s condescension towards us, operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish.”
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Those “stumbling blocks” that you mentioned are all huge, important issues, and there are various ways to approach them. Of course I will not try to go into detail here, but I do think that there is a simple way to understand many of these things, namely, the cultus of Mary, the saints, images and icons, and the Eucharist, which is at once both paradigmatic and concrete; namely, the Church’s liturgy.
So far as I can tell, the biblical perspective on Christian liturgical worship is that it is a family gathering centered upon the Lamb of God. Perhaps it will help to start with an earthly analogy: When I gather with my biological family, we exchange greetings and hugs and kisses, and some (namely, the oldest among us) receive special deference and attention. We celebrate any special achievement by a family member and ask one another to offer up prayers on behalf of each other. None of this conflicts at all with prayers we collectively offer to God before the meal–in fact, such things are very much joined to our prayer to God.
In a similar way, when I go to liturgy later this morning, I will greet those physically present, showing special deference and honor to the clergy, and kiss the images of my heavenly family members who are not physically present except by way of their icons, showing special deference and honor to the Mother of Our Lord. We (the visible and invisible congregation) will then join with one another in commemorating the virtues of the saints (after the manner of Hebrews 11), Mary in particular (cf. Luke 1:41-43), and offering up praise, entreaty, and thanksgiving to God, culminating in the Eucharist.
The chain of Bible verses that paints this picture and points to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist–the Lamb of God who is to be worshiped and adored–is comprised of the passages cited below; for convenience I will give the quotes in full, please pardon the length. Of course I don’t intend this to be an argument, in the strict sense, for the Catholic view on these matters, but I hope that it will at least be of help towards seeing “the big picture” as many Catholics (as well as many Orthodox) see it:
For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 1:11)
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22)
… you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.” Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped. (Revelation 5:6-14)
Hope that helps a little. I will remember you in my prayers at church this morning.
and from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/08/to-enter-the-sanctuary-by-the-blood-of-jesus-a-literal-account-of-becoming-catholic/ --
When the Eucharistic bread and wine are changed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the prayer of the priest so that they become the Body and Blood of Christ, we are mystically present with the Lord in Heaven, with the angels and saints gathered in adoration of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Thus, there is even here and now sacred space, holy ground, where Heaven and Earth meet and the faithful gather.
see also CCC
1436 Eucharist and Penance. Daily conversion and penance find their source and nourishment in the Eucharist, for in it is made present the sacrifice of Christ which has reconciled us with God. Through the Eucharist those who live from the life of Christ are fed and strengthened. "It is a remedy to free us from our daily faults and to preserve us from mortal sins."35
and
1393 Holy Communion separates us from sin. The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is "given up for us," and the blood we drink "shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins." For this reason the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins:
For as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord. If we proclaim the Lord's death, we proclaim the forgiveness of sins. If, as often as his blood is poured out, it is poured for the forgiveness of sins, I should always receive it, so that it may always forgive my sins. Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy. 230
1394 As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life; and this living charity wipes away venial sins. 231 By giving himself to us Christ revives our love and enables us to break our disordered attachments to creatures and root ourselves in him:
Since Christ died for us out of love, when we celebrate the memorial of his death at the moment of sacrifice we ask that love may be granted to us by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We humbly pray that in the strength of this love by which Christ willed to die for us, we, by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, may be able to consider the world as crucified for us, and to be ourselves as crucified to the world.... Having received the gift of love, let us die to sin and live for God. 232
1395 By the same charity that it enkindles in us, the Eucharist preserves us from future mortal sins. The more we share the life of Christ and progress in his friendship, the more difficult it is to break away from him by mortal sin. The Eucharist is not ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins - that is proper to the sacrament of Reconciliation. The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church.
see also http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-relationship-of-sacrament-of.html which explains the relationship between the 2 sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation
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