In Every Place a Clean Oblation: The Table of the Lord from Malachias to the Mass
Old Testament: Malachias 1:7, 10-11
To you, O priests, that despise my name, and have said: Wherein have we despised thy name? You offer polluted bread upon my altar, and you say: Wherein have we polluted thee? In that you say: The table of the Lord is contemptible. ... Who is there among you, that will shut the doors, and will kindle the fire on my altar gratis? I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.
Old Testament, also: Deuteronomy 12:13-14
Beware lest thou offer thy holocausts in every place that thou shalt see: But in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes shalt thou offer sacrifices. and shalt do all that I command thee.
New Testament: Luke 22:19; John 4:21; 1 Corinthians 10:21
And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. ... Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father. ... You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord, and the chalice of devils: you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord, and of the table of devils.
The connection
The Law bound sacrifice to one place: "Beware lest thou offer thy holocausts in every place that thou shalt see: But in the place which the Lord shall choose" (Deuteronomy 12:13-14). In Malachias' day the priests at that one altar offered "polluted bread", the blind, the lame and the sick, and said, "The table of the Lord is contemptible" (Malachias 1:7-8). God answers them: "I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation" (1:10-11). What the Law forbade in every place, the prophet promises in every place. At the Last Supper Christ took bread: "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me" (Luke 22:19). He had already told the Samaritan woman that the hour was coming "when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father" (John 4:21). And St Paul calls the Eucharist by Malachias' own name for the altar: "you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord, and of the table of devils" (1 Corinthians 10:21). The Fathers read the prophecy of the Mass from the beginning. St Justin Martyr: the prophet "speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to Him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist." St Irenaeus: "in every place sacrifice shall be offered to Him, and that a pure one." St John Damascene: "This surely is that pure and bloodless sacrifice which the Lord through the prophet said is offered to Him from the rising to the setting of the sun." The Catechism names the Mass the pure and holy sacrifice that completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant (CCC 1330).
Moral sense
Malachias' charge is carelessness. The priests gave God what they would not dare give a governor: "offer it to thy prince, if he will be pleased with it" (Malachias 1:8), and called the table of the Lord contemptible because it cost them little. The clean oblation is Christ's own, and nothing we bring can stain it; but we can come to the table as Malachias' priests came to theirs, bored and unprepared. "Let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice" (1 Corinthians 11:28).
Anagogical sense
"From the rising of the sun even to the going down" is now true to the letter: as the earth turns, the Mass is being offered somewhere at every hour of the day. St Irenaeus hears Malachias' incense again in the Apocalypse, where the ancients hold "golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints" (Apocalypse 5:8). The oblation offered in every place on earth is one with the worship before the throne, and at the end the table of the Lord is the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The Fathers
St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 41: "He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to Him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist." St Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.17: "in every place sacrifice shall be offered to Him, and that a pure one; and His name is glorified among the Gentiles." St John Damascene, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.13: "This surely is that pure and bloodless sacrifice which the Lord through the prophet said is offered to Him from the rising to the setting of the sun." St Augustine, City of God XVIII.35: "we can already see this sacrifice offered to God in every place, from the rising of the sun to his going down, through Christ's priesthood after the order of Melchisedec."
Warrant
Patristic because St Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 41), St Irenaeus (Against Heresies IV.17) and St John Damascene (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.13) read Malachias 1:11 of the Eucharist in so many words, and the Council of Trent teaches that the Mass is the clean oblation foretold by Malachias (Session XXII, chapter 1). The New Testament does not cite Malachias 1:11. Checked in the Greek: en panti topo, in every place, is the phrase of Deuteronomy 12:13 in the Septuagint, which forbids it, and of Malachias 1:11, which promises it; and trapeza kyriou, the table of the Lord, stands at Malachias 1:7 and 1:12 in the Septuagint and at 1 Corinthians 10:21. Malachias rebukes the priests of his own day for careless offerings; the entry reads his promise as fulfilled among the nations, and makes no judgement on the Temple worship itself, which God had commanded. St Irenaeus' reading of the incense as the prayers of the saints is from a fragment of his lost writings (XXXVII). The bread and wine of Melchisedech belong to the entry on his priesthood and are only named here.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1330.
The verses
Malachias 1:7 · Malachias 1:10 · Malachias 1:11 · Deuteronomy 12:13 · Deuteronomy 12:14 · Luke 22:19 · John 4:21 · 1 Corinthians 10:21
