Each Mass does not purport to sacrifice Christ anew. Consider the following excerpt from an 1884 sermon given by an Episcopal priest, Daniel C. Roberts (1841-1907), on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the consecration of his church building, St. Paul’s, in Concord, New Hampshire:
"Christ hath offered and been offered once for all. But that one offering stands in the eternity of the being of God, free from the bond and measure of time, and He who made the offering stands in the royal Priesthood of Melchisedek, without beginning of days or end of life.
"We, in our feebleness, measure by days, by years, by anniversaries, generations, ages, centuries, cycles, but eternity with God is an everlasting now, and time is not. And so we plead, and the church ceases not to plead, the sacrifice of Christ. We do it day by day, year by year, and the narrow, scoffing unbeliever dares to say that we think to repeat the sacrifice many times. But it is not so. In the presence of that altar of the one sacrifice, in the presence of the cross of Calvary, we stand to-day; and we share to-day, by His own gift and benediction, the very Priesthood of Him who offers that sacrifice. We are made an holy Priesthood, offering unceasingly, as our constant and availing plea, but not renewing, that which is never old, never anything but new, the sacrifice of Christ."