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Saint Leo writes:
"Christ our Passover," as saith the Apostle, "Is sacrificed for us," offering Himself to the Father as a new and true sacrifice of reconciliation, that so, the mystery of the old victims ceasing, a new Sacrifice might be laid on a new Altar, and the Cross of Christ be the Altar, not of the temple, but of the world.
Christ Himself it is whose likeness Melchisidek set forth, offering to God, not Hebrew sacrifices, but the Sacrifice of that Sacrament which our Redeemer consecrated in His Body and Blood.
That the shadows might then give place to the Body, and images cease under the presence of the Truth, the old observance is taken away by the new Covenant, blood is taken away by Blood, and the legal festivity is at once changed and completed.
What sacrifice was ever more sacred than that which the true High Priest, by the immolation of His own flesh, laid upon the Altar of the Cross?
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