Jesus and the Mystery of the Tamid Sacrifice

In God’s gift of divine Law and the Liturgy of worship to Israel at Mount Sinai, He ordained a single sacrifice as the center of the sacrificial system–the Tamid sacrifice. The Hebrew word tamid means standing as in perpetual or continual. The ritual of the Tamid was a daily communal sacrifice for the atonement and sanctification of the covenant people and was the focus of religious life for the Israelites in covenant union with the God of their forefathers. No other sacrifices were to take precedence over the Tamid sacrifice.The mystery of the single sacrifice of two Tamid lambs is revealed in the Passion of the Christ–He who is fully man and fully God. Jesus became the true Tamid Lamb that all past Tamid lambs prefigured. Just as the unblemished Tamid lamb was the standing sacrifice presented continually on the altar of sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus is the unblemished Lamb standing before the throne of God in the heavenly Temple, offering a sacrifice that is continually made present on the Eucharistic altar in the sacrifice of the Mass.The book has received the Church’s Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book is free of doctrinal or moral error.