[Ordinary of the Mass]
[Mass Text - Latin]
[Mass Text - English]
[Lenten Observance]
Please note
that Friday is the Commemoration of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. The Church
has us recall her sorrows just before Holy Week, so that we can recall her role
as Co-redemptrix with our Lord, Mediatrix
of all grace. Please make the effort to attend the Stations of the
Cross and the Mass of our Lady
The scripture readings at today's Mass
were chosen by the Church to demonstrate that Her practices here in time and
on Earth—the practices appointed by Her Founder, Jesus Christ—are grounded
in the realities of Heaven and eternity.
The first reading is taken from Saint
Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews—a letter well worth reading for anyone who
would like to understand the theology of the priesthood. The letter
describes many of the sacrificial practices of the Old Testament, and thus
serves as a quick refresher for those who would know recall the sacrifices
made under the Law of Moses—it compares and contrasts those practices with
the actions of Christ and the sacrificial practices carried out under His New
Law.
In today's reading, Saint Paul writes
of the “Tabernacle,” the “Holy of Holies,” that veiled
area within another veil where the Jewish High Priest entered but once a year
to offer the blood of sacrifice. This was a tabernacle made by human
hands.[1] In the early years, while
wandering in the desert, Holy of Holies was set up within a tent, erected in a
sort of stockade fence that could be disassembled and carried wherever Moses
and the people went for those forty years. God was truly there as He
guided them through the desert, but the arrangements were purely temporary—yards of homespun linen cloth, and wooden poles and pegs and slats.[2]
The sacrificial victims were equally mundane—chiefly goats and cattle, and a
few pigeons or doves for the sacrifices of the poor; wheat flour and cakes.[3]
Eventually, many years later, at Jerusalem, the stockade would be replaced
with a building made with cedar wood and cut stones, still very much the work
of human hands.[4] The animal slaughter
would continue, a virtual river of blood, yet wholly inadequate to take away
the sins of Adam and his descendents.
In contrast with this ministry of the
Temple, Paul tells us that Christ entered as High Priest—not into a finite
structure of wood and stone and linen—but into the very Tabernacle of Heaven
itself, the worship space before the very throne of God the Father
Himself. And He entered in “not with the blood of goats and bulls
and with the sprinkled ashes of a heifer,” but with His own blood—the
blood which He shed for the redemption of mankind on the Cross. The
blood He offered was His own—the blood of God and man, for He is truly both,
from the time of the overshadowing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost, until forever in
eternity.
Of similar importance was an
adaptation of another practice of the Old Testament. During the Passover
time, all those who could do so would gather in Jerusalem. Each group of
pilgrims would bring a spotless lamb to the Temple to be sacrificed.
They would take the lamb to wherever they were staying and roast it on a fire,
and eat it with unleavened bread, and parsley, and bitter herbs, and a few
cups of wine. The narrative read at dinner suggested that:
This night is
different from all other nights [because] once we were slaves to Pharaoh
in Egypt, and the Lord, in His goodness and mercy, brought us forth from
that land with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. [This story]
is not ancient, but eternal.... It proclaims man's burning desire to
preserve liberty and justice for all.[5]
On the night before He suffered, our
Lord and His Apostles met in the Upper Room where they had prepared the
Passover. They renewed the ancient rite, but before they went out to
sing the traditional Hallel Psalms [112 (113)-117 118)],
our Lord took the unleavened bread and a cup of the wine, and gave them to His
disciples, making them by His words His true flesh and blood, which He had promised to them just the
year before—“the living bread which came down from heaven”—without
which they “would not have life in [them].”[6]
On the night before He suffered, the true Lamb of God gave them not only His
body and blood, “which would be poured out for you and for many in
forgiveness of sins,” but also the power to do likewise: “do this in
memory of Me.”[7]
Again, something
that had been the work of human hands and grounded in an historical event our
Lord made heavenly and eternal—“what has been given to us in time shall
be our healing in eternity.”[8] Man,
who is normally bound to time and place, can now stand not only at the foot of
the Cross, but also before the very throne of God.
If the Passover of the Jewish people
celebrated freedom from bondage in Egypt, and proclaimed liberty and justice,
the Cross and Its correlate, the Mass, actually bring freedom from sin—sin,
which is the root of all bondage, captivity and injustice. For worse
than any bondage or injustice—worse even than death itself—is the death of
the soul to sin—a death that has been conquered by the blood of Christ and
His Resurrection.
Finally, in the Gospel we again see
the fulfillment of earthly things in eternity. At the time of Christ,
Abraham would have been roughly two-thousand years old. To speak of
Abraham was to speak of almost absolute antiquity. To speak of Abraham
and the prophets, who were long dead, was an appeal to absolute
authority. Yet in the Gospel, our Lord spoke of Abraham as though he was
a “new kid on the block”! The response was immediate: “You are not yet fifty years old, yet you have seen Abraham???”
They were probably shocked at our Lord's response, “before Abraham came
to be, I Am” [9]
Now understand that our Lord saying “before Abraham came to be, I Am”
was not a case of bad grammar—it was not a mixture of past and present tense—it was a claim to divinity! The Jews fully understood that one of
the fundamental aspects of God was His “necessary being”—God
was not created, He always existed—for if He had not necessarily and always
existed, the creation that depends totally upon Him could never have been
created. “I Am”
named the one necessary being who, for those of us who think in terms of
created time, always was and always will be.
The Jews took up stones to cast at
Jesus, precisely because He had appropriated the name of God for
Himself. “I Am Who Am”
was not simply an attribute, but the actual name by which God had revealed
Himself to Moses in the Old Testament. In the Book of Exodus, when God
sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses asked how he would
identify God to them. And God's answer was “I Am Who Am”—tell
them “He Who Is has sent me
to you.”[10] In words unmistakable to the Jews, Jesus was
proclaiming Himself to be the Son of God. It was now up to them to
accept or reject Him. The picking up of stones to cast at Him was a bad
start. We will learn much more as we see the events of the Gospels play
out during the next two weeks.
It has been my custom not to preach on
Palm Sunday; which will fall next week. We will read about our Lord’s
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, His Last Supper, His Crucifixion and His
death. What I ask is that you pay particular attention to the connection
between the Supper and the Cross. “Take and eat, this is My
body which shall be given up for you,” He said, and within a few hours His
body was given up to those who sought His life. “This is My blood of
the new covenant which shall be shed for many in remission of sins,” He
said, and in a few more hours His blood was shed as He was nailed to the Cross and as
His side was pierced with a lance.
We are dealing here with reality—the
reality of Jesus Christ’s Sacrifice and the Bread that we must eat if we are
to have eternal life. I ask you to spend as much time as you can in
re-living these events with us during the coming weeks.
NOTES:
[1] Epistle: Hebrews ix: 11-15, http://drbo.org/chapter/65009.htm.
[2] Leviticus i - viii, http://drbo.org/chapter/03001.htm
thru http://drbo.org/chapter/03008.htm.
[3] Exodus xxvi, http://drbo.org/chapter/02026.htm
[4] 3 Kings 5 & 6, http://drbo.org/chapter/11005.htm
http://drbo.org/chapter/11006.htm.
[5] Haggadah, the four questions.
(A modern text, not necessarily identical with that used at the time of
Christ.)
[6] John vi toward the end, http://drbo.org/chapter/50006.htm.
[7] Mathew 26, http://drbo.org/chapter/47026.htm;
Mark xiv, http://drbo.org/chapter/48014.htm,
Luke xxii, http://drbo.org/chapter/49022.htm.
[8] Purification prayer after Holy Communion, Quod
ore súmpsimus.
[9] Gospel: John viii: 46-59,
http://www.drbo.org/chapter/50008.htm.
[10] Exodus iii: 14, http://www.drbo.org/chapter/02003.htm.
