Throughout salvation history, the People of God have always had priests to mediate between God and man. The priests offered sacrifices to atone for the people’s sins and officiated over the liturgy. The priests of the Old Covenant offered sheep, goats, and bulls. In the New Covenant, Jesus, who is simultaneously the high priest and the sacrifice, offers Himself on the Cross to the Father in heaven. By our Baptism, each Christian shares, to a certain degree, in Christ’s priesthood. This priesthood of all believers is known as the common priesthood of the faithful. We offer the sacrifices of our lives to the Father in union with the sacrifice of Christ, which the priest presents to Our Heavenly Father at the Mass. Out of this common priesthood of all believers, certain men are called to the ministerial priesthood, which was instituted by Christ and has been passed down from the apostles. These New Covenant priests, ordained by the laying on of hands, participate in the priesthood of Christ by offering to the Father in the Mass the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. “Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” The Messiah is said to be a priest, not after the order of Aaron and the Levites, but according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is the priest-king of Salem who blesses Abraham and offers up bread and wine to God. Jewish tradition and the early Church Fathers believed that Melchizedek (“king of righteousness”) was the throne name of the first-born son of Noah: Shem. According to Shem’s genealogy, he outlives Abraham, which would explain the passing of the blessing from Noah to Shem to Abraham. As God’s eternal first-born son, Jesus is the eternal high priest of God. The role of the priest is to offer sacrifices for the atonement of sin. Jesus does not offer up the blood of bulls and goats, but rather, He offers His own body and blood on the Cross. In the sacrifice of the Mass, the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is re-presented to the Father for the sanctification of the Church. Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.”