CV NEWS FEED // On July 19, Dr. Scott Hahn shared at the National Eucharistic Congress how the undeniable Biblical evidence of the Eucharist was the “catastrophic, but glorious” truth that converted him to Catholicism.
Dr. Hahn is a bestselling author and founder and president of the St. Paul Center, an organization dedicated to helping Catholics understand Scripture through the lens of Church teachings. He also serves as the Scanlan Professor of Biblical Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
As the packed auditorium settled from the laughter evoked by his characteristic wit and insight during his narrative of the Road to Emmaus, Dr. Hahn began to reflect on the origins of his conversion to Catholicism.
He recounted how it all started with an unexpected reunion with an old high school friend, who, much like the apostles with the resurrected Lord, he didn’t initially recognize.
His friend, Chris, was excited to tell him that he was no longer the “silly Catholic” that Dr. Hahn had known in high school, but was now an “Evangelical, Bible-believing Christian,” just like Dr. Hahn.
“Okay well I’ve got news for you…” Dr. Hahn recounted himself saying to Chris. “Because I’m now an Evangelical, Bible-believing New Testament Catholic Christian, not that silly anti-Catholic you knew back then.”
After chatting for a while, the two exchanged cards, and on a phone call a week later Chris began to reminisce about high school cafeteria days, when Dr. Hahn would sit with Chris and all his Catholic friends and divert their conversation away from sports to the subject of religion and the Bible.
Chris wanted to ask Dr. Hahn the same question that Dr. Hahn asked him and his friends in high school.
“Where in the New Testament do you find the sacrifice of the Mass?”
In high school, Chris said, Dr. Hahn told them that the Mass is not a sacrifice, it’s a meal, and that the sacrifice is what occurs on Calvary on Good Friday.
In response, Dr. Hahn explained to Chris that while modern Christians universally view the Crucifixion on Good Friday as a sacrifice, this perspective would not have been recognized at the time. He noted that sacrifices in Jewish tradition occurred only at the Jerusalem Temple with a Levitical priest, whereas Jesus was crucified outside the city walls, far from the Temple and its altars. To those present at the Crucifixion, it would have appeared simply as a Roman execution.
Dr. Hahn asked Chris the question that had bothered him incessantly as a Protestant: how did a Roman execution come to be viewed as a divine sacrifice so sacred that it replaced the Old Testament animal sacrifices offered at the Jerusalem Temple?
Dr. Hahn recounted how the search for the answer to this question led him to the Church Fathers, which directed him back to St. Paul’s teachings in First Corinthians, where Paul reveals the mystery of the Eucharist by identifying Christ as the Passover Lamb.
This understanding, according to Dr. Hahn, reframes Good Friday in the context of Holy Thursday, illustrating that while the Last Supper was a meal secondarily, but a sacrifice first and foremost. Christ came to fulfill and transform the Passover rather than abolish it, transforming the Old into the New, and making the Eucharist a new and profound sacrifice.
“And so the Eucharist is instituted as the Passover, the New Covenant, where the Sacrifice is initiated,” Dr. Hahn said.
Dr. Hahn explained to Chris that while the apostles were intimately familiar with the Passover liturgy, they could not have grasped the full significance of Jesus’s words, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, this is My Body.”
However, as the events of the Passion unfolded, and they witnessed Jesus’s body given up and His blood poured out, it became clear to them that the Eucharist was not merely symbolic or ritualistic.
“If the Eucharist that He instituted at the Passover of the New Covenant was just a meal, then Calvary was just an execution,” Dr. Hahn told the audience.
Dr. Hahn posed the question: if the Eucharist represents the Passover of the New Covenant where the sacrifice begins, then where is this sacrifice consummated?
He answered that it is consummated on Good Friday. Holy Thursday transforms Good Friday from merely an execution into a profound sacrifice.
Similarly, Easter Sunday completes this sacrifice, revealing the Eucharist as the resurrected Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.
This revelation, he noted, left Chris astonished and asking, “What did you just say?”
Dr. Hahn laughed: “I said, ‘I know! It destroyed my career as a presbyterian Pastor.’ I’ve been working that through, and the implications were catastrophic and yet glorious.”
Dr. Hahn argued that if the Eucharist is truly the Passover of the New Covenant, instituted by Christ, then it must be more than just a meal. Otherwise, it would fall short of even having the significance of the Old Testament Passover.
“Calvary is where that same sacrifice is consummated. He didn’t die as a victim of Roman violence, He died as a victim of divine love.”
Dr. Hahn explained that Jesus did not merely lose His life on Calvary on Good Friday; rather, He chose to lay it down when He instituted the Eucharist as the sacrament of charity. This act, he explained, encapsulates the Paschal Mystery, serving as the memorial of His death, glorious resurrection, and Ascension into heaven.
“This is what is at the heart of the Catholic faith,” he told Chris.
Here their conversation ended, and Dr. Hahn said that he expected that he wouldn’t be hearing from Chris again.
A week later however, Chris called Dr. Hahn for a further explanation. He admitted that he couldn’t let go of Dr. Hahn’s interpretation of the New Testament, noting that he had never read it in that way before.
Dr. Hahn explained that it was only possible to understand it in this way when “you read the New Testament in light of the Old, and see the Old fulfilled in the New, and see the unity of God’s sacred Mysteries fulfilled in Christ’s death and Resurrection.”
Dr. Hahn pointed out that a deeper examination of the New Testament reveals a surprising fact: Jesus only uses the phrase “New Covenant” once, and that was not during His public ministry, but during the Last Supper in the Upper Room, specifically in the context of the Passover when He took the Chalice.
Dr. Hahn emphasized that Jesus instructed His followers to “do this,” not “write this.” While we refer to it as the Eucharist, Jesus never used that term. Instead, He called it the “New Testament,” marking the only time He used that phrase. He identified the New Testament not as a document but as a sacrament.
He also noted that Jesus never commanded His disciples to write anything down. Most did not contribute to what we now call the New Testament. This was not due to laziness or disobedience, Dr. Hahn said, but because Jesus had instructed them to “do this,” and the apostles followed by preaching the gospel, baptizing believers, and celebrating the Eucharist. They referred to this practice as the “New Testament.”
“Chris, the New Testament was a Sacrament long before it became a document, according to the document!” Dr. Hahn said emphatically.
Dr. Hahn explained that the New Testament was not the book St. Paul was finishing up, but the event St. Paul was writing about: the Last Supper.
“And so I decided,” he said “if I have to be a New Testament Christian, Chris, that’s going to require me to become a Eucharistic Catholic.”
The New Testament was written to prepare to celebrate the sacrament, the sacrifice, Dr. Hahn explained. Dr. Hahn compared non Catholics taking the Bible out of its Eucharistic context to a botanist who, if he were to uproot plants and place them under bright lights in a lab, would be puzzled as they wilt and die.
“When you take scripture out of its supernatural Eucharistic habitat, within about 500 years, you have 40,000 Protestant denominations all founded by people who are sincerely convinced that they’re interpreting the New Testament better than everybody who came before.”
Six months after this conversation, Chris called Dr. Hahn and told him that he and his wife had just returned from their local Catholic parish. They had gone to confession for the first time in over 30 years, and were going to receive Communion the next day.
“He said, ‘Tomorrow we are going to receive the crucified resurrected ascended Body, Blood, Soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, and we can’t wait.’”
Dr. Hahn mentioned that Chris is now on the Board of Trustees for the Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology, where Dr. Hahn serves as president. According to Dr. Hahn, Chris joined the board to ensure that there remains motivation to reach out to non-practicing Catholics, especially those who have not been well catechized in the Word of God.
Dr. Hahn concluded by reflecting that, as Catholics, we are so accustomed to the truths, doctrines, and mysteries of our faith that we sometimes fail to appreciate their profound significance. We can become so familiar with these elements that we take them for granted, forgetting just how extraordinary they truly are.
“The fact is,” he stated, “the Eucharist is far more unbelievable that we allow ourselves to believe.”
If it’s true, Dr. Hahn said, “Then it is nothing but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and so help us God, live out to the max and share it with every brother and sister for whom Jesus bled and died!”
“He didn’t just die for us Catholics, He died for all of us to enter into God’s Catholic Family,” Dr. Hahn emphasized. “This is who we are. This is why we’re here.”
