The eternal sacrifice

This death of Christ is an eternal act. We temporalize it; we spatialize it. Think of a great log that has been sawed in two.  We see a number of circles on either side of that cut log.  Those circles, we know, run all the way up through the log.  That's the sacrifice of Christ. It runs through history, from the very beginning, when God made an animal skin for the first parents to hide their shame; it runs through all of the symbolic sacrifices of the Jews; and it runs up to Calvary and from Calvary on into heaven itself.  In fact, it began with the Lamb: slain, as it were, from the beginning of the world.  Now we redo that sacrifice. Scripture says that Christ can never die again. If Christ can only die once, why do we say the Mass is a sacrifice and he dies again? Of course our Lord can never die again in the human nature which he took from Mary. But at the beginning of every Mass, he looks out and says: Peter, Paul, Mary, John, Ann, give me your human natures.  I will die again in you, and your death will be the pledge of your resurrection, as mine was the model.