Thus wrote Mr. Belloc in masterly epigram. Odd or not, it is perfectly true! Among all those sacrificing races and peoples and tribes we considered in the last chapter, the Jews alone knew and worshipped the One True God. Zeus, Jupiter, Aphrodite, Mars, Wotan, Shiva, Ammon-Ra and all the rest of the gods - even Uitzilopochtli the tongue-twister - were all imaginary. Not one of them ever existed. Only God, our God, the True God, has been existing from all eternity. And only one nation knew Him - the Jews. Not that they deserve much credit on the whole. They were always rushing off to worship Golden Calves or Moloch or Baal or others of the strange gods of their pagan neighbours.

But God would not let them alone. He had chosen them. When they went astray He brought them to their senses by afflicting them with a war or a plague, or with some fierce prophet whom they found at times to be a worse scourge than either! And so they were harried and chastised and dragooned into leaving the worship of idols and returning to the worship of Yahweh, the One True God.

And how were they to worship God? In the same way as they had been worshipping the idols, of course: in the way natural to man, which is by sacrifice. God Himself told them to worship Him by sacrifices. Of course these differed in detail from the pagan sacrifices, but they were fundamentally the same thing, namely, the offering of gifts to God for the purpose of adoring Him and seeking friendship and union with Him.

In the Bible we find many stories of sacrifices offered by good and holy men - Noah, Abraham, Melchisedech and other patriarchs. And God made it clear that He was pleased with such worship. Later, when the Jews went astray and had to be brought back to Him, He positively prescribed sacrifices and laid down the minutest rules and regulations about them. Read the Book of Leviticus; read the Book of Numbers; you will find chapter after chapter filled with the instructions which God gave through Moses about sacrifices - what things should be offered, how many of them, by whom, what for, when, and how.

God was determined that His chosen people should worship Him, and that they should do it by sacrifice, because that is the only genuine, complete, natural and satisfactory manner of worship. That is why He demanded sacrifices of the Jews. And that is why He wants sacrifice from us. And so that is why we must thoroughly understand sacrifice in order that we may do it properly and intelligently. In this chapter, therefore, we will think about it a bit more. We have already discussed the nature of it; now let us study the need for it.

When men offer sacrifice to whatever god they believe in, they are wanting to forge a bond of friend ship, to attain to union, between themselves and their God. And in point of fact the human race as a whole was, for thousands of years, in dire need of such a bond of friendship with the True God. The first members of the human race had been God's friends and had enjoyed wondrous privileges, especially the gift of grace - that share in God's own kind of life which we studied in a previous chapter.

But alas! They disobeyed God; they threw away His friendship; they committed sin - the first, or original, sin which made them God's enemies. Hence God ceased to honour them with the great privilege of sharing His own type of life; He withdrew grace from them - they were in disgrace, as we say. And this had dire consequences, not merely for themselves but for all their descendants. For they had now lost the power of transmitting to their descendants any share in divine grace. Their children were born possessing merely human life, with no share in the divine life. And so with their grandchildren and all later generations. All they had was human life - nothing more.

And mere human life is not equipped with the powers needed for enjoying God's kind of happiness, which we call heaven.

Since Adam's sin all mankind (with the sole exception of Our Blessed Lady) came into being like that. Even now everybody starts that way; every babe that comes into this world is "born in original sin". Which does not mean (as so many muddle minded folk seem to think) that the baby itself has committed any sin; nor does it mean that the baby's conception was the result of an action which was sinful. It means that the baby is only a natural baby, having only that type of life which is natural to human beings; it has no share in supernatural life which it should have - and would have had but for the first, or "original", sin of Adam.

Now if the whole human race had been left in this condition it would follow that the whole human race would be permanently incapable of enjoying heaven. All men permanently in disgrace - all men forever barred from heaven. What a tragedy! And what great need, therefore, that mankind should somehow regain God's friendship in order to regain grace, the essential equipment for heaven. How vitally necessary it was that the bond of friendship should be restored between God and man!

Somehow, in some obscure way - perhaps as a vague memory or tradition of primitive human bliss - men seem to have realised this. They felt, somehow, that something was wrong, and they tried their best to establish the needed bond of friendship between them-selves and God by doing that which is the natural expression of such a desire - namely, by sacrificing. But they had got hopelessly muddled through ignorance and sin; they did not even know who God was; they thought God was a stick or a stone or a statue or the sun or a volcano or a being which was in fact a mere creature of their own imagination.

And so we find throughout human history all sorts of men - white and yellow and brown and black, offering all sorts of things - prisoners and bulls and goats and food, to all sorts of gods - idols and images and myths and fetishes. No doubt there was at times much evil in this idolatry; but might we not also see in the myriad forms of paganism much that was good? - the well-meant, though completely misdirected, efforts of poor ignorant men to do their best to make friends with God again?

Surely there were millions of them who were sincere. They knew no better; they did what they could; they offered worship which was perfectly genuine in a manner which was perfectly in order according to the nature which was theirs.

But, of course, they never succeeded in attaining their purpose - friendship and union with God. Why not? Because all their sacrifices (apart from those of the Jews) were offered to the wrong god - to gods who didn't even exist. And the things they offered - mere goats and pigs and bulls and corn and wine - had so little value. And the men who offered them were but poor, ignorant, sinful, limited creatures not worthy, in themselves, to be heard by the great God, the almighty Creator and Master of the world!

If things had remained like this, if all the sacrifices offered by men had failed of their purpose, then for ever all men would have been shut out from heaven. But, fortunately for us, things did not remain like this. Ineffectual sacrifices were not to be endlessly man's lot. For, through the mercy and wisdom and power of God, there came at last a day when a certain Man succeeded in offering to God a perfect sacrifice; it was a sacrifice of infinite worth which gave to God perfect worship.

To those who saw it, it looked, indeed, a ghastly failure. But it was in fact a triumphant success. Because this perfect sacrifice succeeded in achieving that which is the real object of all sacrificing, it forged again the bond of friendship between God and the human race. The days of disgrace were ended, and the days of grace began!

Of course we all know who that Man was: it was Christ our Lord who though just as truly man as you or I, was also God. And the sacrifice which achieved its object was the offering of His own life on Calvary. What happened on Calvary was not just the death of a man; it was a sacrifice. To see this more clearly let us remind ourselves of what is involved in sacrifice.

In a sacrifice some gift is offered by man to God.

Some change is wrought in this gift to show that it no longer belongs to man. (This change is called "immolation"; the gift so changed is called a "victim", and the one through whose agency this change is brought about is called a "priest".)

The victim is thus offered to God. And that is sacrifice. But it is successful sacrifice only if God accepts the victim, uniting it with Himself. It is only in this acceptance by God that the sacrifice can achieve its purpose. But all these points are verified in Calvary.

For, on Calvary, a gift was offered to God. It was the most perfect of gifts, because it was that of a human life, the most precious thing man possesses. Normally man may not offer human life because he has not himself complete dominion over it. If he sacrifices another human being it is murder; if he sacrifices himself it is suicide. That is why for ordinary men human sacrifices are wrong.

But this case was different: here was the one and only Man who really had dominion over His life. That is because He was not only man, but also the Son of God. He could say, "This my Father loves in me, that I am laying down my life to take it up again afterwards. No man can rob me of it; I lay it down of my own accord. I am free to lay it down, and free to take it up again" (John x, 17, 18).

And so Christ Our Lord did offer His human life. He made His intention of offering quite clear at the Last Supper when He spoke of His body "given for you" and His blood "which shall be shed for you and for many". He again manifested His offering in His last words on the cross: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit". On Calvary, then, a Man offered a gift to God.

Moreover, this gift was immolated - that is, it was withdrawn from mankind by a change wrought in it through the agency of a priest. The change was a passage from physical life to physical death. And the priest who did this was Christ Himself. He laid down His life. It would not be accurate to think of His death as being effectively caused by His murderers. They had no power to kill Him unless He permitted it. Nothing they could do would have brought about His death if He had willed to remain alive. It was of His own will that He laid down His life.

The immolation, then, is to be attributed to Him, and it was an exercise of His priesthood. Through His own will He became the victim of the sacrifice of which He was, at the same time, the officiating priest.

And this victim was accepted by God the Father to whom it was offered. It was a gift infinitely pleasing to Him. Had He not said: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"? The sign of God's acceptance was the resurrection and ascension of Christ who now "sitteth at the right hand of God the Father almighty". The resurrection and ascension of Our Lord pertain to the sacrifice of Calvary as its acceptance and completion. They, in fact, constitute its success, namely, the union of man with God. The union was first achieved in the Person of the man who was also God - Christ Our Lord.

But, as we shall see later, it involved also the union with God of all those men of whom Christ is the head - all men who are incorporated into Him as members of His Mystical Body.

So it was that, through Christ, God had at last the perfect worship which is His due; through Christ, in the Person of Christ, man had at last offered the perfect sacrifice which effected the hitherto unachieved purpose of all sacrifices, namely, the re-establishment of friend-ship between God and man. It made God and man "at one" again, and hence is called the "at-one-ment".

It is also called "the redemption" because it was the "buying back" of the human race, enslaved by sin, at the great price of the blood shed by Our Redeemer on Calvary. Since the price was paid when Our Lord immolated Himself for our sakes, it is correct to say that it was the cross which saved us and that His death was the cause of our salvation.

But we must not allow our gaze to stop there; to do so would picture Our Lord's work for us only as a price-paying, only as a liberation from sin. It would leave out, or at least obscure, that which is far more important than this negative aspect; namely, the positive result of our being raised up to the supernatural plane by the bestowal of grace.

Not only are we freed from sin, but we are also sanctified - made holy - brought into union with God. This vital union with God is through Christ who, from Calvary, passed on by His resurrection and ascension to His place beside the Father. To think of Calvary apart from the resurrection and ascension is to think of the immolation of a victim without regard to its acceptance. The death, resurrection and ascension of Our Lord all belong together as successive phases in but one great action - His return to the Father. This return was done in a manner such that it not only liberated us from the death of sin, but also bestowed on us new life, and at the same time it rendered perfect and all-sufficient worship to God.

With this great sacrifice everything was achieved. Nothing whatever was lacking from its perfection. Once this sacrifice had been brought to its completion nothing could be added to it. The ultimate purpose of all sacrifice being now fulfilled, any further sacrifice would seem superfluous. That is how it would look from God's point of view.

But there still remains man's point of view; and Our Lord, Himself a man, knew that man has a kind of need to sacrifice, since this is the natural way of expressing human worship. If there were to be no sacrifices after His, then His followers would experience a sense of frustration in their worship of God. There would remain open to them only lesser ways of worship, such as prayer.

Yet the whole of human history has shown that these lesser ways are not enough; they do not give full and complete expression to man's worship - only sacrifice can do that. If, therefore, Christ had left to His followers a religion in which there was no room for sacrifice, there would be one aspect in which it would suit human nature less well than the old, yet false religions of paganism. Whereas the pagans could express their worship of false gods in a manner completely satisfactory to themselves, Christians, being left without sacrifice, would have desires and yearnings which their religion could not fulfil.

Now it is unthinkable that Christ would found a religion in any way inferior to other religions. Of course Christians, being men, would want to sacrifice. Yet what sacrifice could they offer? Were they to offer bulls and goats and corn and wine like the pagans of old; even when they knew such things were futile?

That would not be satisfactory at all! Christians would want to offer a perfect sacrifice, for nothing else would be worthy of God. Yet how could they offer a perfect sacrifice, seeing that there was only one perfect sacrifice - that of Calvary?

No mere man could solve a problem like this. But then Christ is not a mere man. He is God. He has infinite wisdom and infinite power to draw on. And He solved this, our problem, by use of the "sacramental principle" which we studied previously.

He offered the unique perfect sacrifice in a certain place, Calvary; on a certain date some two thousand years ago. It was then His sacrifice, and His alone. But by means of the sacramental principle He has over-come all restrictions of time and place, and contrived that it may now be our sacrifice by giving it to us to offer. He caused it to exist in sacramental form precisely in order that we may offer it.

We are not left with any second-best or obviously inadequate way of expressing our worship of God; we are not left with any mere substitute - we have the thing itself - Our Lord's own perfect sacrifice, handed over to us in a form such that we ourselves can offer it.

For, on the night before He suffered, He took bread and blessed it and broke it and said: "This is my body which is given for you". And likewise the chalice after He had supped, saying: "This is the chalice of my blood which shall be shed for you . . . Do this in commemoration of me!"

He caused His body given for us, and His blood shed for us, to begin existing in a new way - in a sacramental sign; and this sign was such that it could be available to His followers after He Himself had died, risen and ascended to heaven. It was His own sacrifice of Calvary, existing just as really as on Calvary, but not limited to that time or place. Now it has no time or place except those of the signs which signify it. His whole sacrifice was there made present sacramentally at the Last Supper. He offered it in the historical order of existence next day, leaving behind Him the command that His Church should go on offering it in the sacramental order of existence subsequently.

And that is what His Church, His Mystical Body of which we are members, has been doing ever since, on all the altars of Christendom throughout all ages and in every country to which His Church has since spread.

Therefore now His sacrifice is our sacrifice; what He offered alone on Calvary we offer daily on our altars. In the Mass we do not repeat Calvary; it is not that His death and resurrection and ascension happen all over again. The only thing which is repeated is the sign of His sacrifice. We do that repeating, and that is why it is our sacrifice now. But it is not a new sacrifice - it is the very same sacrifice which He offered, newly made present.

Thus it is that all that our human instincts concerning the worship of God can find complete realisation. The natural expression of human worship finds utterly satisfactory realisation in a sacrifice left to us by our good and understanding Master and Lord. For He knew that we would want to worship God worthily, and He left us the means for doing it.

Thus, too, it is that even from us poor and imperfect men there ascends to God human worship which is not itself poor and imperfect; for "through Him and with Him and in Him there is to God the Father Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory!"