Shadows of Holy Eucharist, by John Carberry

There are many passages in the Old Testament that point to the Eucharist. The act of
transforming bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord fulfills many sacrifices and
rituals of the Old Testament. Abel brings the best firstling of his flock that is acceptable to God
while his elder brother Cain’s grain or cereal offering is rejected by God (Gn 4:2-5). The
excellence of Christ’s priesthood over the Levitical priesthood is foreshadowed by Melchizedek,
who as king and priest, blesses Abram, and then being a priest of the God Most High, offers up
bread and wine (Gn 14:18, Ps 110:4).1 Abraham is willing to offer up his beloved Son, Isaac, at
God’s command (Gn 22:1-10),2 but God stops Abraham before he carries the order out (Gn
22:11-12). Isaac carries the wood up the heights of Moriah (Gn 22:2-6, Heb 11:17-19), in Salem,
later Jerusalem (Ps 76:2-3), the city the Lord chose to be honored (1 Kgs 14:21), just as Christ
would carry his own cross up Calvary for his crucifixion (Jn 19:17). Isaac asks Abraham: where
is the sheep for the h0Ɩ0cαųst? Abraham answers him that “God himself will provide the sheep
for the h0Ɩ0cαųst” (Gn 22:7-8). While asking Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son and then
stopping him from doing it, God later offers his only beloved Son in sacrifice on the cross (Rom
8:32).

Meat or flesh is clearly preferred over bread, or cereal, as is pointed out by the Israelites
in the desert (Nm 11:4-9), and wine is preferred to water as can be seen in the wedding feast at
Cana (Jn 2:3, Ps 104:14-15). The divine food of Christ’s flesh and blood is superior to the bread
and wine offered up in sacrifice. The blood is the seat of life that makes atonement (Lv 17:11,
Dt 12:23), sealing the New Covenant (Mt 26:28, Mk 14:24, Lk 22:20, Ex 24:8, Jer 32:40), and
purifying (Heb 9:22).3 Both bread (Ex 16:32-34, 25:30, 29:32, 40:23, Lv 2:1-13, 6:7-16, Nm 4:7,
15:4-9, Sir 35:2) and wine (Ex 25:29, 29:40, Nm 15:5-10, Sir 50:15) were integral parts of the
celebrations and sacrifices begun in the desert after the Israelites departed Egypt. The sacrifice
of Christ’s own body and blood exceeds any sacrifice offered in the Old Testament. Christ
begins his signs with the conversion of water into wine at Cana. The Lord not only requires each
family to sacrifice a lamb, but Israel is required to consume the lamb. The result of this sacrifice
is freedom and life for all of Israel. No longer slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, the Israelites will be
free to follow their God (Lv 22:32-33, 26:13). The angel of death will not take their lives, like
the first born of the Egyptians, but the firstborn of Israel will live. The slaughter of the
unblemished lamb (Ex 12:5), the marking of the doorposts with blood (Ex 12:7, Heb 11:28) and
the eating of the lamb (Ex 12:8) all point to both the crucifixion of Christ and to the Holy
Eucharist, two inseparable actions of Christ. The Passover of the Lord falls on the fourteenth of
the first month at the evening twilight (Lv 23:5, Ex 12:2-6, Nm 9:4-5, 28:16, Dt 16:1-2, Jos 5:10,
Ezr 6:19). This is why Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring
equinox.4 New life springs up as the result of Christ’s saving actions. The meal is eaten with
unleavened bread; the meat is roasted (Ex 12:8, 14, 34:18, Lv 23:6, Dt 16:3-4) because of the
urgency of their departure from Egypt (Ex 12:8-20).5 Christ likens leaven to sin, hypocrisy and
impurity (Mt 16:6, Lk 12:1). Saint Paul equates leaven to malice and wickedness, and
unleavened bread to sincerity and truth (1 Cor 5:6-8). Saint Thomas Aquinas discusses the
figurative reasons for the Passover banquet as including the blood of the lamb representing
Christ’s passion. The partaking of the flesh signified the eating of Christ’s body. The
unleavened bread represents the blameless life of the faithful who partake of Christ’s body. The
loins girt represents chastity, the staffs in their hands denotes pastoral authority, and eating in
one house represents the Catholic Church.6

The manna, the water and the quail that God provided in the desert also point to the Holy
Eucharist. One would not expect a group of over six hundred thousand men (Nm 11:21) along
with their wives and children to survive in the desert for very long, let alone for forty years. To
survive, a person needs nourishment, at least food and water. Bread is a basic form of
nourishment. Water to drink is necessary to sustain life. A person often favors meat over bread
and wine over water. To allow the Israelites to survive in the desert, God rained down bread
from heaven each morning, with a double portion on the sixth day of the week so that they would
not need to pick a portion on the Sabbath (Ex 16:4-5, 14, Neh 9:15, Wis 16:20). God sent this
bread from heaven or the bread of angels in abundance (Ps 78:23-25, 105:40). God provided
flesh in the evenings (Ex 16:8, 12-13, Ps 105:40) and water for the Israelites from the rock (Ex
17:6, Dt 8:15, Ps 105:41). Jesus turns the bread and wine into his own flesh and blood. First
Jesus turns water into wine at Cana (Jn 2:7-10). Later, he turns wine into his blood at the Last
Supper (Mt 26:27-29, Mk 14:23-25, Lk 22:20). The new manna, or bread from heaven, is the
body of our Lord (Jn 6:55). This flesh of Christ is infinitely better than the bread that came
down from heaven for the Israelites in the desert because this bread from Christ allows one to
live forever (Jn 6:50).

Christ fulfills the Passover Feast. He is the spotless lamb, without blemish, offered up to
ransom the lives of all of the people (1 Pt 1:18-20, 1 Cor 6:20, 7:23, Acts 20:28, Lk 1:68, Dt 13:6,
17:1, Ps 69:19).7 He becomes the Paschal Lamb led to slaughter who bears the sins of the
multitude and offers his life as a ransom for many (Jn 1:29, Jer 31:11).8 On the night before he
suffered, he offers his body and blood to his apostles in the form of bread and wine in order that
they might proclaim his death until he comes in glory (1 Cor 11:23-27, Mt 26:26-29, Mk 14:22-
25, Lk 22:14-20).9 Christ offers up his body and blood in the form of bread and wine at the Last
Supper in anticipation of the gift of the Resurrection.10 No one could partake of the blood of the
Old Testament sacrifices because the life of the living body is in its blood and because it is the
seat of life (Lv 3:17, 6:23, 7:26-27, 17:11-12, 14, 19:26, Dt 12:16, 23-25, 15:23, Gn 9:4). Now
Christ shares his life with us through partaking of his blood (Rom 5:9). When the priest mixes
the water with the wine at the offering (Prv 9:5), he says, By the mystery of this water and wine,
may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.
Christ’s death is both the Paschal sacrifice that redeems us and the sacrifice of the New Covenant
(Jer 31:31, Heb 8:8-13, 10:9), which restores us to communion with God.11 The victory and
triumph of his death show forth.12 This sacrifice completes and surpasses all other sacrifices.13
Like the Israelites, each person is required to consume the flesh of the sacrifice along with
unleavened bread, or the bread of affliction (Dt 16:3, Ex 12:17-20). It is a memorial feast, a
perpetual institution (Ex 12:24-25, 2 Kgs 23:21-23). Christ is both priest (one who offers
sacrifice) and victim (the sacrifice himself) (Heb 9:12, Eph 5:2, Jn 10:17-18). This new
covenant of peace (Ez 37:26) will place the law in the hearts of the people because they will see
the love of God through the actions of Christ, and God will forgive their sins (Jer 31:31-34). The
People of God or the Church, nourished by the Holy Eucharist, become the Body of Christ.14
We are saved and purified (Ez 43:20) by the blood of the lamb. Just as the hyssop branch was
used to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and lintel in order to save the first-born
of Israel (Ex 12:22, Heb 9:19), a sponge of common wine is lifted up to Christ on the cross on
some hyssop (Jn 19:29), saving us by his own blood. Christ instituted the Eucharist as a
memorial of his death and resurrection.15

The Holy Eucharist fulfills many events of the Old Testament. We call it the Holy
Sacrifice because it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.16 The
unacceptable cereal offering of Cain becomes Abel’s sincere offering of the best of his flock, the
Lamb of God. The bread and wine offered by the priest Melchizedek becomes more like
Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his beloved son, but in this case it is the Son of God, the
Lamb that God will provide (Gn 22:8, Heb 7:1-22, 8:6, 9:13-15, Ps 110:4).17 The Paschal lamb
offered by the Israelites at Passover that saves them from the angel of death becomes the body,
blood, soul and divinity of Christ who redeems us from our sins.18 The New Covenant continues
the everlasting memorial feast of Passover (Ex 12:14, 24:8, Nm 28:16, Heb 10:9), but at a much
more profound level. The physical life-saving actions by God for the Israelites by the blood of a
lamb becomes a live-giving everlasting spiritual covenant (Lk 22:20, Mt 26:8, Mk 14:24, Is 55:3)
to all who partake of the Eucharist. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world (Jn 1:29).19

The rites of the Mass often refer back to the Old Testament sacrifices. Eucharistic Prayer
I refers to the pleasing sacrifices offered by Abel, Abraham and Melchizedek.20 At the Mass of
the Lord’s Supper, the first reading comes from Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14. This goes through the
slaughter and consumption of the lamb in the ritual meal, which was to be held on Passover and
annually every year afterward to celebrate how the angel saved all of the firstborn of Israel while
destroying the firstborn of all the Egyptians.

John Carberry is the author of Parables: Catholic Apologetics Through Sacred Scripture
(2003) and Sacraments: Signs, Symbols and Significance (2023).

1 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, III, Q22, A6. CCC, 1350.
2 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, p. 344.
3 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, Holy Week, pp. 126-127.
4 CCC, 1170.
5 CCC, 1334.
6 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, II, I, Q102, A5, Reply Obj. 2.
7 CCC, 602. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, p. 21. CCC, 1340.
8 CCC, 607.
9 CCC, 610.
10 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, Holy Week, p. 140. CCC, 1403.
11 CCC, 613. John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (Church of the Eucharist), 22. Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis (Order of Priests), 5-6.
12 Trent Council, The Council of Trent, “Decree Concerning the Eucharist,” Chapter V, p. 76.
13 CCC, 614.
14 CCC, 777.
15 CCC, 610, 1337, 1357-1358 & 1409.
16 CCC, 1330.
17 CCC, 1333.
18 Trent Council, The Council of Trent, “Decree Concerning the Eucharist,” Chapter I, pp. 74-75. “Canons on the Most Holy Sacrament of the
Eucharist,” Canons 1, 3, 8, pp. 79-80. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, Holy Week, p. 130. CCC, 1374.
19 CCC, 536, 608 & 1362-1364.
20 Catholic Church, The Roman Missal, p. 493.