At the last supper why did Christ choose to change the bread into His Body (and Blood)? Why not the meat since he is the lamb of God?

Yours,

Charles Arnold Vore

(but every one calls me “C. Arny”)

It has taken me a very long time to research your question. It is much more complicated and far reaching than you would think. Some heretical, blasphemous wag suggested that it was because the refrigerated tabernacle had not yet been invented. Oh! Where are the thumbscrews and grand inquisitors when you need them?

I assure you that the centrality of bread in the Mass is not a matter of convenience. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is a Hebrew word meaning the house of bread. The Holy of Holies, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant was located on the eben shetiyah, the foundation stone which had been the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite before King David bought it one thousand years before Christ.  Because of his sin, Adam is told that he will earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. Melchizedek the priest king of Salem, a priesthood that precedes the priesthood of Aaron and Levi, as the letter to the Hebrews points out, offers bread and wine. I could go on and on about bread in the Bible. Clearly bread is the whole enchilada, figuratively speaking. 

Still.... what about the lamb?

Dr. Brandt Pitre, a very sharp cookie and up and coming scholar, theorizes that there was no lamb on the last supper table!?!  Jesus was crucified during the time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. John makes that clear. (Jn 19:14) Perhaps Jesus was celebrating according to a variant calendar, like that of the Essenes, or perhaps He just anticipated the feast knowing that on Friday night when the Passover would have celebrated, He would be preaching the gospel to those in prison (1Peter 3:19), or as the Apostle’s Creed has it, he would be descending into hell.  All that said, lamb is not the central player in feast.

Most Jews today never, never have lamb at Passover. They can’t. There is no temple. There is no sacrifice. They usually eat chicken. The eating of Passover lamb ceased with the destruction of the temple, but the Passover is still eaten and the absolutely essential part of it is bread and wine. You can have a Passover without lamb, but not without bread and wine. Indeed, the feast is called the feast of unleavened bread. Jesus took the central elements of the Passover feast, and not lamb because He Himself  was to be Lamb of sacrifice. If he failed to have lamb at his Passover, perhaps he was anticipating the end of one temple and the beginning of the new temple, namely the one in which you and I are living stones.

Perhaps you remember that there was another sacrifice at which the lamb was missing. When Abraham was going up the mountain to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22),  Isaac asked, “Father, where is the lamb of sacrifice?” Abraham said, “Don’t worry, son. God will provide the lamb.” As Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son, the angel restrained him and said that God had seen his faith. They saw a ram caught in the bushes and they sacrificed it. A ram, however, is not a lamb. When John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” as we do at Mass, he was saying that God had fulfilled His promise by sending Jesus as a lamb for the slaughter. So let us ask the question; if you and I are the new temple, are we washed in the blood of the Lamb, as the old song has it?  I am endlessly intrigued that the Holy of Holies seems to have been built on a threshing floor, a place where wheat is crushed. To take holy communion, to eat His flesh and drink His blood means to be crushed along with Him.

Catholicism is a tough religion, if it’s done right. To come up for communion is to volunteer to be crushed with Him and to become what we eat, the Passover lamb sacrificed for the world. We, too, are lambs provided for the sacrifice. That is why there is no lamb on our altars. He is the Lamb and, in Him, we become the Lamb.

It makes me crazy when someone gets all hinky that we Catholics don't allow everyone to come up for communion, or as many now put it, “to get the bread.”  Why would I hoodwink someone into volunteering to be crushed if they aren't willing to be crushed? Even more crazy making is the way we prepare children for communion. St Louis’ mother said to her son on the morning of his First Communion day, that she would rather see him dead than to see him commit a mortal sin.  That about sums it up. Communion isn’t about “getting the bread.” It is about being the Lamb. 

Communion is the call to a life of sacrificial love. It is more dreadful and more wonderful than the rivers of blood that flowed from the temple as the Passover lambs were slaughtered. If we only understood the magnitude of God’s love sacrificed on the altar and the almost irresistible call to mingle our life’s blood with His, we would be mute with holy fear and wonder. That would take care of the problem of people chattering in church, now wouldn't it?

Sincerely,

Rev. Know-It-All