What is Christ’s role with regards to His unique heavenly priesthood?

First : Christ offered His unique sacrifice once. Its effectiveness extends from Adam to the end of the ages, without having to be repeated. As for animal sacrifices, they had to be repeated because of their deficiency until Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice on the cross and therefore invalidated it. In the Eucharist, Christ does not offer Himself again but instead we celebrate the same sacrifice that was offered on the cross.

St. John Chrysostom says, “What then? Do we not offer every day? We offer indeed, but making a remembrance of His death, and this [remembrance] is one and not many. How is it one, and not many? Inasmuch as that [Sacrifice] was once for all offered, [and] carried into the Holy of Holies. This is a figure of that [sacrifice] and this remembrance of that. For we always offer the same, not one sheep now and tomorrow another, but always the same thing: so that the sacrifice is one. And yet by this reasoning, since the offering is made in many places, are there many Christs? But Christ is one everywhere, being complete here and complete there also, one Body. As then while offered in many places, He is one body and not many bodies; so also [He is] one sacrifice. He is our High Priest, who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us. That we offer now also, which was then offered, which cannot be exhausted. This is done in remembrance of what was then done. For (says He) do this in remembrance of Me. It is not another sacrifice, as the High Priest, but we offer always the same, or rather we perform a remembrance of a Sacrifice.”⁹⁶⁸

Second: St. Athanasius the Apostolic says, “He took an earthly flesh, having Mary for the Mother of His Body as if virgin earth, that, as a High Priest, having He as others an offering, He might offer Himself to the Father, and cleanse us all from sins in His own blood, and might rise from the dead.”⁹⁶⁹

Third: Christ is the mediator and guarantee that the sacrifice will be accepted, since He is one with the Father (John 10:30). The Priest is the Son of God Himself who is of one essence with the Father. He is the advocate for the Church and the judge as St. Paul says,

968 Monastery of the Syrians, St. The Life of Christ According to the Teaching of St. Athanasius the Apostolic and St. Cyril the Great (Arabic) (St. Mary’s Monastery (Deir al-Sourian)): p. 137. See also St. John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews 17.6 (NPNF I/14:449) and Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty, Christ in the Eucharist . 2nd ed. (Sporting, Alexandria: St. George’s Coptic Orthodox Church, 1973).

969 St. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians 2.14 (NPNF II/4:352).

“Who is he who condemns? It is Christ; who is even at the right hand of God; who also makes intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34)

Origen says, “Forget earthly things for a little while; move beyond the clouds and beyond heaven itself … Seek there the tabernacle of God where ‘Jesus our forerunner entered for us’ (Heb. 6:20) and ‘is now present before the face of God interceding for us’ (Heb. 7:25).”⁹⁷⁰

St. Cyril the Great says, “When the Logos became like us and suffered for us in the flesh, He was called a High Priest, not as one who offers a sacrifice that is alien to Himself, but being Himself the lamb (John 1:29), the rational sacrifice, the pure dove, the Bread of Life and the golden altar.”⁹⁷¹ The saint repeats the same statement, “He is the Priest, the Sacrifice, and the Altar.”⁹⁷²