Toda - The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
One
The Mass is the greatest way to thank God, to express our gratitude to him.
There were all kinds of sacrifices in the Old Testament: Peace offerings, guilt offerings, sin offerings… But the most important Old Testament sacrifice was the toda sacrifice and meal (cf. Lev 7:12; 22:29).
“Toda” in Hebrew means “thank you.” The Toda was a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) in his book The Feast of Faith says, “It is critical to understand the toda sacrifice to understand the Mass.”
The toda or thanksgiving sacrifice presupposes a specific situation. If a person is saved from death, from fatal illness or from those who seek his life, he celebrates being saved by God by offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving which marks a new start, a new existence to his life.
So, you would gather your family and friends for a special meal. A lamb would be sacrificed in the Temple and at the same time bread would be consecrated for the meal. Then the person whose life was saved would take a cup of wine and give thanks, explaining how the Lord saved him and they would eat the meal.
The key elements of a toda sacrifice were a lamb that was sacrificed, Psalms of thanksgiving were read or sung, wine and the consecrated bread of toda, the bread of thanksgiving.
Two
God began to save the Israelites from slavery and death through the Exodus, their liberation from Egypt.
However, the Exodus is not technically complete until God gives them rest from all their enemies. This happens when David captures Jerusalem. Once he does, he brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and celebrates a toda sacrifice.
1 Chronicles 16: 1-7, And they brought the ark of God, and set it inside the tent which David had pitched for it; and they offered sacrifices before God. And when David had finished offering the sacrifices, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD, and distributed to all Israel a loaf of bread, a portion of lamb and flagons of wine. Moreover, he appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the LORD, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel.
All the key elements of the toda are here: Bread, Wine, a lamb that was sacrificed and Psalms of thanksgiving. But then David does something new. He commands the Levites to offer the toda sacrifice 24 hours a day. Thanksgiving becomes the heart of Jewish Worship.
An Ancient saying of the Rabbis recorded in the Mishnah says, “When the Messiah comes, all sacrifice will cease except for the Toda sacrifice. All hymns will cease except for the hymns of thanksgiving.”
When the Messiah comes – all sacrifices will cease but one. Only one sacrifice will remain – that of the toda. And when the Rabbis translated the Hebrew word toda to Greek the word chosen was eucharist. Eucharist means a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
Three
At the Last Supper, Jesus transformed the Jewish sacrifice of toda into the Mass.
The main elements of a Toda Sacrifice were consecrated bread, wine, psalms of thanksgiving and a lamb that is sacrificed.
Jesus is the Priest that offers the sacrifice and He is the Lamb that is sacrificed. He consecrates the bread and wine, turning them into His own body and blood, and they sing the toda psalms 114-118.
Scripture tells us at the Last Supper, “just before the time he was betrayed and entered willingly into his Passion, Jesus took bread and, giving thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, For this is my body, which will be given up for you.
“In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice and, once more giving thanks, he gave it to his disciples saying, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”
With the command, “Do this in memory of me,” Jesus commands the Apostles whom he has made priests to offer this new toda or eucharistic sacrifice as the heart of the Christian worship in the Mass.
Four
Jesus gives thanks by offering himself totally and unconditionally to the Father.
Jesus makes his toda sacrifice, his sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father present in every Mass so that we can join in. Jesus is giving us a way to offer an infinite and perfect act of thanksgiving to God by joining ours to his.
As we learned in the Rosary on the Mass, the Altar in a Catholic Church represents the Cross, because the sacrifice of Jesus is made present there.
Before the Consecration, the bread and wine represent us.
When the bread and wine are placed on the altar it signifies that we are mounting the Cross with Christ to offer ourselves to the Father through Him, through his sacrifice on Calvary which is made present in the Mass.
When the bread and wine are placed on the altar our attitude ought to be one of:
Father I give myself totally and unconditionally to you:
My prayer, work, joy and suffering – my whole life.
I unite it to your Son’s sacrifice of thanksgiving made present here.
Now your sacrifice of thanksgiving, your sacrifice of toda is joined to Jesus and takes on a new value – Infinite Value
That is why the Mass is the greatest way to thank God for all he has and is and will do for you!
Five
The Mass is the greatest way to thank God
The toda or eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus that begins at the Last Supper and is completed in his Resurrection is the infinite and perfect act of Thanksgiving and Praise of God the Father. Jesus makes this act of thanksgiving present in the Mass so that we can unite ours to His. For this reason, there is no greater way to give thanks to God than by going to Mass.
The Catechism (1360) says: The Mass is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption, and sanctification. Eucharist means first of all "thanksgiving."