January 24th, 2019: Hebrews 7:25-8:6.
Jesus, we heard in our first reading,
from the letter to the Hebrews, “has no need, as did
the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins
and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered
himself.”
Jesus’ sacrificial self-offering began at the Last Supper and
was consummated at Calvary . But if that
sacrifice was unique and unrepeatable (which is what Hebrews means when it says
that Jesus’s sacrifice was “once for all”), how can we call the Mass, which we
celebrate daily, “the holy sacrifice”?
In the Mass Jesus’ sacrifice is not
repeated. Rather, it is made spiritually
present. There is a parallel in the Jewish feast of Passover, which
commemorates God’s deliverance of his people, the Jews, from the pursuing
Egyptian army at the Red Sea . The celebration
of Passover does not repeat that deliverance (an event even more distant in
time than the Last Supper and Calvary are for
us). Rather it makes that miraculous deliverance by God spiritually present.
Whenever,
therefore, we gather to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this”
with the bread and the wine, we are there!
We are in the Upper Room with Jesus’ apostles. We are there with the Beloved
Disciple and Mary, along with his other female followers – more faithful than
the men – beneath the cross. We are there with but one difference: we cannot
see the Lord with our physical eyes; but we do perceive him with the eyes of
faith.
Do we realize
that when we come to Mass – and truly worship?
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