Do Catholics recrucify Christ in the “Sacrifice of the Mass”?

But as it is, [Jesus] has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. - - Hebrews 9:26

When Catholics begin talking about the “Sacrifice of the Mass,” it tends to make protestants a little jumpy. Without a doubt they immediately point to Hebrews, which unequivocally explains that Jesus Christ died once and for all to take care of our sins and does not need to be “re-sacrificed” repeatedly on Catholic altars. But is this what is taking place?

The Catholic Mass
Actually, the Catholic Church has never taught that Jesus is repeatedly sacrificed in the Catholic mass. The Church teaches that the Eucharistic sacrifice in the mass is a participation in the once and for all sacrifice of Christ at Calvary:

CCC 1367. The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: “The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross; only the manner of being is different.” “In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered Himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner.” (Quoted text from the Council of Trent DS 1740)

The laws of science do not restrict the God which created those laws. Which means that God has the ability to transcend time and space and allow each Eucharistic sacrifice to be a participation in the actual sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross two thousand years ago.
As Alan Schrek puts it in Catholic and Christian:

What Jesus did in the past - his death on the cross – is present to God. God can make this sacrifice present to us when Christians gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist in his memory.

The Sacrifice at Calvary
What Jesus did at Calvary was sufficient for us as a single occurrence. There is no need for a resacrifice of Christ now or at any point in the future, since He took the weight of our sins and paid for them in a perfect manner. However, Jesus did instruct us to eat His body and blood (John 6:53) and in the very first Mass, which we call the Last Supper, Jesus showed the apostles exactly how we are to consume God. Since then the Mass has been celebrated with the Eucharistic sacrifice as the pinnacle and central function of the liturgy. And during that liturgy, we follow Jesus’ lead and re-present the sacrifice at Calvary as we as participate in that sacrifice in a completely unique way.

Bread becomes God
As part of the process, the ordained priest actually turns bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in a real way. Jesus is present body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharistic feast as we participate in the Mass. Thus we are consuming exactly what the apostles consumed 2,000 years ago at the Last Supper. Ultimately this intimate relationship with God – more personal than any other relationship could be – is what called me into the Catholic Church and into a deeper relationship with my savior. I won’t go into the details of the Eucharist here, but you can read this article on the Eucharist for more details.

Conclusion
In the end I’ll quote an excellent passage:

Futhermore, in the Mass, Jesus Christ ultimately offers the sacrifice of himself (just as at the Last Supper), with the priest merely acting in his stead, as a purely secondary, instrumental agent. In no sense, then, is the Mass some sort of magic or “hocus pocus” (this phrase itself is a caricature of the Latin words of consecration: Hoc est enim corpus meum). The priest and congregation are willing participants in what is God’s supernatural work from beginning to end. This is the furthest thing from sorcery, which is the utilization of either demonic supernatural powers, or those thought to be natural, apart from the originating agency of a personal God (see Acts 8:17-23).

That is from Dave Armstrong’s A Biblical Defense of Catholicism.

God bless,
Jay