There are many fascinating and wonderful people in the Old and New Testaments that we read and learn of in the Holy Bible. One of them is the intriguing Melchisedech. We first hear of him in the book of Genesis.

"But Melchisedech the king of Salem, bringing forth bread and wine, for he was the priest of the most high God, blessed him [Abraham], and said: ‘Blessed be Abram by the most high God, who created heaven and earth. And blessed be the most high God, by whose protection the enemies are in thy hands.’ And he [Abraham] gave him the tithes of all." (Genesis 14:18-20)

Nothing is mentioned of Melchisedech before this verse, and very little is said about him afterwards. "Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech" is the most reference to him in the rest of the Holy Bible. It was here, at the sacrifice of Melchisedech, that for the first and only time in the Old Testament, sacrifice is offered to God in the manner of bread and wine. All other sacrificial offerings were with a lamb, or a calf, etc. But his offering was made in the same way that Jesus established centuries later, when God came and fulfilled the Old Testament and began the New. And this offering of the bread and wine, consecrated and becoming Jesus Himself in the Holy Eucharist, is this same way that the Catholic Church continues to offer to God praise, reparation and worship in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Fathers of the Church have always agreed that Melchisedech is most certainly a "type" or "foreshadowing" of Christ. A ‘type of Christ’ is a name given to certain holy figures in the Sacred Scriptures that strongly resemble Jesus in some way. Isaac is a famous type of Christ - being offered to God as a sacrifice, carrying the wood on his back to his own sacrificial death - just as Jesus was sacrificed to God in reparation for the sins of the world, and carried His own Cross to His death. Melchisedech is a type by his name "King of Justice", by his offering of bread and wine, and by his being both a Priest and a King.

But who was Melchisedech? Father Meagher, in his book, The Tragedy of Calvary, presents the following historical, fascinating, and intrinsic details that link and explain numerous facts surrounding this great patriarch.

When on his death-bed, Adam said to his son Seth: ‘My son I am now about to die for my sin, as God told me. When I am dead bury me not, embalm my body and hand it down, for it will have a certain relation with the Seed of the Woman Who will crush the serpent’s head.’

Later in life, Seth entrusted Adam’s embalmed body to his own son. The patriarchs guarded it, Noe had it in the ark, and when he was about to die, three hundred and fifty years after the flood, he put it in the charge of his eldest son Sem, telling him not to bury it till the Lord would show him the place. When his father Abraham died, Sem became his heir, as priest and king of mankind.

Of the cursed race of Cham was born a strong, bold, wicked man, Nemrod (in Hebrew his name means "The Rebel") who rebelled against his grand-uncle Sem. Nemrod then seduced the great number of Noe’s descendants from Sem’s rightful authority and established the worship of the natural forces. This false worship replaced the true religion of Adam and the patriarchs’, and Nemrod taught that ancients had gone to Heaven and had become the planets of the sky. He said that the sky was a solid hollow crystal sphere, and that if they could build a high tower (which he called Bab-El, "The Gate of God,") they would go up to heaven without having to die.

Such was the origin of paganism, which started with pantheism, nature worship and the honor of the dead patriarchs as gods. Lest Nemrod might destroy and root out the whole of God’s revelation to Adam, God changed the language of men, each of the seventy-two families spoke a different tongue, and they were thereby forced to scatter and found different nations.

This Nemrod comes down in mythology as the strong man, Hercules, among the Greeks; Jupiter, among the Latins; Thor, etc. by the Northmen, and the patriarchs became ‘the gods’.

When the families separated because they could not understand each other, Sem in his old age was left alone. An angel appeared to him and told him to come and he would show him where to bury Adam’s body. To the west they went for many a day, till they came to a little hill, where in a cave he laid to rest our father’s body. He called the hill Golgotha, meaning: "The Place of the Skull," Sts. Matthew, Mark and John mention the name, but the four Gospels give its Greek name, Calvary.

Less than half a mile to the south of Golgotha rose a higher and a larger hill surrounded on three sides by deep valleys. There, Sem built a little city he named Salem, "Peace". Later the word Jeru, "City", was added to it, and thus it became Jerusalem - "The City of Peace", or "The Vision of Peace." In the middle of the little city, on the highest pinnacle of the rock, he erected a stronghold which he called Sion, "The Fortress".

Savage wild sons of Canaan, called Jebusites, Hittites, etc., lived then in that land. They did not know who Sem was, nor whence he came.

And so they called Sem - Melchisedech, "The Just King." And it was in Jerusalem, that he offered his sacrifice of bread and wine. Not only that, but it was on the very spot where, centuries later, Christ fulfilled this prefigurement when He celebrated the Last Supper.

Sem (or Melchisedech) lived until Isaac was fourteen years of age. He instructed Abraham in how to sacrifice the paschal lamb. He also taught him the religion of the patriarchs, the history of the world from before the Flood, the religion of Adam, and of the great fathers of our race. These precious truths were then preserved and passed down among the Hebrews until Moses himself wrote them down in the book of Genesis.