Catholic Commentary
The Autumn Feast: Parallel Observance in the Seventh Month
25“‘“In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, during the feast, he shall do like that for seven days. He shall make the same provision for sin offering, the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the oil.”
Ezekiel 45:25 prescribes that during the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month, the prince shall observe a seven-day festival with identical sacrificial provisions as the Passover: sin offerings, burnt offerings, meal offerings, and oil. This liturgical parallelism demonstrates that Israel's two greatest feasts share the same sacrificial grammar, creating a unified theological vision of covenant renewal throughout the sacred year.
God orders the entire liturgical year around identical sacrifice and self-offering—autumn feast mirrors spring feast, because worship's substance never changes, only its memory.
Typological Sense
Read through the lens of the New Testament, this verse participates in a grand typology. The two great feasts — Passover and Tabernacles — find their fulfillment in Christ. Passover points to the crucifixion (1 Cor 5:7); Tabernacles, with its themes of God dwelling among his people (the booths recalling the divine Shekinah in the desert), points to the Incarnation itself — "the Word became flesh and dwelt [ἐσκήνωσεν, eskenosen, 'pitched his tent'] among us" (John 1:14). The liturgical symmetry Ezekiel envisions anticipates the Church's own liturgical year, which is likewise structured around two great poles: Christmas/Epiphany (Incarnation/Tabernacles typology) and Easter (Passover typology), with the entire Ordinary Time as the sustained dwelling of the risen Lord with his people.
Catholic tradition reads Ezekiel's Temple vision not as a blueprint for a literal future edifice but as a prophetic prefiguration of the Church and her liturgy. The Catechism teaches that the liturgy of the Church is "the participation of the People of God in 'the work of God'" (CCC 1069) and that the entire liturgical year "unfolds the whole mystery of Christ" (CCC 1194). Ezekiel's insistence on the symmetrical, complete, and sacrificially rich observance of both great feasts offers a prophetic warrant for this understanding.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on Ezekiel's Temple vision, saw the entire sacrificial system as fulfilled and transformed in Christ, the one High Priest and perfect Victim. The fourfold offering — sin, burnt, meal, and oil — finds its Christological unity in the Eucharist, which the Catechism, following the Council of Trent, teaches is a "true and proper sacrifice" (CCC 1367) that makes present the one sacrifice of Calvary across every season and celebration of the Church.
The parallel structure of the two feasts resonates with the Church's own liturgical theology. Pope Pius XII, in Mediator Dei (1947), taught that the liturgical year is not a "cold and lifeless representation of past events" but a living encounter with the mystery of Christ distributed through time (MD 165). Ezekiel's vision of identical sacrificial provisions for the two great feasts anticipates this insight: the substance of worship — self-offering to God through the one Mediator — is unchanging, even as the Church moves through different seasons and commemorations.
The oil, uniquely singled out at the close of verse 25, carries sacramental resonance in Catholic theology. Anointing oil is the matter of Confirmation and the Anointing of the Sick, and chrism consecrates the baptized as priest, prophet, and king. Its recurrence in both feasts suggests that every encounter with God in the liturgy is an anointing — a fresh imparting of the Holy Spirit.
For contemporary Catholics, Ezekiel 45:25 offers a quiet but powerful challenge: do we bring the same depth of engagement to every liturgical season, or do we treat some feasts as more "important" than others and allow the rest to pass unremarked? The verse's ruling principle — "he shall do like that for seven days" — resists minimalism. The prince does not observe merely the opening day of the feast or fulfill the letter of the law perfunctorily; he sustains full, complete participation.
Practically, this calls Catholics to enter the Church's entire liturgical year with intentionality — not only the "high" feasts of Christmas and Easter, but also Ordinary Time, the feasts of lesser-known saints, ember days, and the full octaves of major solemnities. The Liturgy of the Hours, the Church's own extension of liturgical prayer across all hours of the day, is one concrete way to practice this sustained engagement. Families might observe the full eight days of an octave with special prayers, meals, or readings. The parallel structure of Ezekiel's vision reminds us that God desires our whole year — not just our highlight reel.
Commentary
Literal Sense and Narrative Context
Ezekiel 45:25 stands as the closing verse of a tightly structured liturgical unit (vv. 18–25) in which the prophet, during his visionary tour of the restored Temple, receives divine instructions for the sacred calendar of the eschatological community. Verse 25 is deliberately terse, its economy of language itself a theological statement: "he shall do like that for seven days." The word "like that" (כַּאֵלֶּה, ka'elleh in Hebrew) functions as a formal liturgical rubric, consciously echoing and mirroring the Passover regulations of verses 21–24. This creates a deliberate parallelism — two great feasts, two poles of Israel's sacred year, governed by identical sacrificial logic.
The Feast of the Seventh Month
The "feast" of the seventh month on the fifteenth day is unmistakably the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth), the third of Israel's three great pilgrimage feasts (cf. Lev 23:34; Num 29:12). The seventh month (Tishri) was the most liturgically dense in the Jewish calendar: it began with the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah, day 1), was punctuated by the awesome solemnity of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, day 10), and culminated in the week-long joy of Tabernacles (days 15–21). By situating this feast on the fifteenth, Ezekiel anchors his vision squarely in Sukkoth, the feast associated with Israel's wilderness wandering, God's providential shelter, the harvest, and eschatological hope.
The Sevenfold Structure
The repetition of "seven days" is significant. Both the Passover season (with Unleavened Bread) and Tabernacles last seven days, forming a kind of bookend around the liturgical year. The number seven in Hebrew theology signifies completeness and covenantal fullness (cf. Gen 2:1–3). Ezekiel's insistence that the prince observe the full seven days — not merely the opening day — speaks to the totalizing character of true worship. Liturgy, in this vision, is never perfunctory.
The Fourfold Offering
The repetition of the identical fourfold provision — sin offering (chatat), burnt offering (olah), meal offering (minchah), and oil — is theologically loaded. The chatat addresses guilt before God; the olah, total self-offering in adoration; the minchah, the fruit of human labor consecrated to the divine; and the oil, consecration and the presence of the Spirit. Together, these four elements form a complete grammar of sacrifice: contrition, oblation, thanksgiving, and anointing. That this grammar is identical for both feasts signals that the deep structure of Israel's approach to God does not change across the liturgical year — only the historical memory commemorated (Exodus in spring, wilderness sojourn in autumn) differs.