Christ is also true God, and so able to make infinite satisfaction to the divine justice. The Sacrifice of Christ was a true holocaust, because He shed all His Blood, and was consumed by the fire of infinite love in honour of His heavenly Father. It was a sin-offering, in the highest sense of the word, because it took away the sins of the world, and cancelled the debt of man. It was the greatest of peace-offerings, because it reconciled heaven to earth , and brought peace to the world. Since our Lord offered Himself as a Sacrifice, the typical sacrifices of the Old Law have lost all efficacy and all legitimate existence.
The confession of sins required for sin-offerings is typical of the
holy Sacrament of Penance, without recourse to which no sinner dare
partake of the “meat-offering” of Holy Communion.
Two significant facts. The entrance of the High Priest into the Holy of Holies, and his blood-offering there on the Day of Atonement, signified that reconciliation with God can only proceed from His throne; and that one day the Redeemer would rend asunder the veil of separation and open the way into the Holy of Holies. Secondly, it was foreshown that even as the goat which was the sin-offering of the people had to be burnt outside the camp, so Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, laden with the sins of the whole world, would be crucified outside the city. He is the great, the true atoning Sacrifice to whom all the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement pointed.
The immediate meaning of the Jewish feasts. The religious feasts of the Jewish people had a double meaning, a retrospective and a prospective or prophetical. The feasts served immediately to remind the people of the wonderful graces and benefits which they had received from God. The Christian feasts are also intended to remind us of, and make us grateful for the grace of sanctification and redemption.
The typical meaning of the Jewish feasts. Their significance lies in this, that they were types of the Christian feasts, and pointed towards that manifestation of grace which is the foundation of these last. You learnt in chapters XXXIII and XXXVI the connexion between the Jewish feasts of the Pasch and Pentecost and our Easter and Pentecost. The Feast of Tabernacles corresponds with our Corpus Christi, which is solemnized in the open air, and is a Feast of thanksgiving to God, that Jesus Christ, God made Man, has given Himself to be our Leader through the wilderness of this life, feeding our souls with the true
