Homily for January 19th, 2017: Hebrews 7:25-8:6.
We have a high
priest, we heard in our first reading, who is “holy, innocent, undefiled,
separated from sinners, higher than the heavens.” The words refer, of course,
to Jesus Christ. The author of that first reading contrasts Jesus with the
Jewish priests of his day, who offered sacrifices “day after day” in the Temple at Jerusalem Temple sacrifices needed to be repeated
daily because, as Israel
Since God was the creator of
everything, the prophets said, and thus their true owner, he did not need the
material things offered to him in sacrifice. God wanted the givers. Yet
this was the one thing people could not offer. And to the extent that people
did try to offer themselves to God in a spiritual manner, they were offering
something tainted by sin, and hence unworthy of God. God, being all-holy,
deserved an untainted and perfect offering.
The perfect, undefiled sacrifice
which God desires has been offered,
the Letter to the Hebrews says, by Jesus, God’s divine Son, at the Last Supper
and on Calvary . He did that, our first reading
says, “once for all.” But this raises a question. How can we call the Mass a
sacrifice? We do so because the Mass makes Jesus’ perfect and unrepeatable sacrifice spiritually present – just as, for
observant Jews today, the celebration of Passover makes God’s rescue of his
people from bondage (an event even more distant in time than the Last Supper
and Calvary ) 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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