Leviticus — Chapter 2

The mincha, or oblation of fine flour, is the second form of sacrifice. Lapide notes it figures the Mass, where bread and wine are offered — inanimate things, as here — and consecrated. St. Cyril (lib. 15, de Adoratione) teaches that these flour-offerings signified the purity of Christ, the Bread of Life, and tropologically signify the purity of intention required in those who offer sacrifice.

The priest takes a handful of the fine flour with its oil and all its frankincense and burns it as a memorial upon the altar. Lapide: the frankincense signifies prayer ascending to God; the oil signifies the unction of the Holy Ghost; the fine flour (simila), the pure humanity of Christ. The mincha thus figures the Mass in which the humanity of Christ, anointed by the Spirit and accompanied by prayer, is offered to the Father as a perpetual memorial.

Leaven and honey are excluded from all offerings made by fire to the Lord (Lev. 2:11). Lapide follows the patristic tradition: leaven figures the corruption of malice and sin (1 Cor. 5:6-8); honey figures the sweetness of worldly pleasure. Both corrupt the purity of sacrifice. The Church's use of unleavened bread in the Western Rite for the Eucharist is grounded in this Mosaic principle: the bread of sacrifice must be pure and uncorrupted. Honey, conversely, was offered as first-fruits (Lev. 2:12) — a distinction Lapide preserves carefully.

All oblations must be salted with salt, and leaven and honey are excluded. Lapide explains that salt signifies the perpetuity and incorruption of the covenant with God; leaven signifies the corruption of sin; honey the soft sweetness of self-indulgence. Hence the Church uses salt in baptism and in the blessing of holy water, as a figure of the preserving wisdom and grace of God which defends souls from the corruption of sin.