MARY, OUR MOTHER

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SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY #482

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." In like manner, the chalice also, after he had supped, saying: "This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you." (Luke 22:19-20)

INSTITUTION OF THE NEW COVENANT: Moses confirmed and consecrated the Old Covenant by the blood of victims. Our Lord refers to this when He said: "This is My Blood of the New Testament." I institute a new and eternal Covenant, and in confirmation of it I give my own Blood as a sacrifice, to be drunk by you. The blood of victims with which Moses sprinkled the people of Israel could not, of itself, deliver men from sin, and make them pleasing to God, for its whole efficacy lay in its being the type of the Precious Blood of Jesus, which taketh away the sins of the world. That which Moses did, as a visible type, our Lord did in reality. By giving His Precious, Sin-cleansing Blood, He instituted the New Covenant of grace which redeemed man, and by the Sacrament and Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, He gave him a lasting memorial of His love, and an inexhaustible source of grace.

[From 'A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture' by Bishop Knecht, D.D.]
(1899 Douay-Rheims Bible)