Tuesday of Week 3 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 10:1-10
In a final reflection, Hebrews continues by pointing out the inadequacy of the Law to take away people’s sins. The old dispensation was only a shadow of, and a prefiguration for, what was to come. It could not, through sacrifices repeated year after year on the Day of Atonement, bring about the lasting reconciliation of God with his people.
Otherwise, if the people really had no consciousness of being any longer in sin, why would they have come year after year to make the sacrificial offering? On the contrary, the repetition of the same sacrifice was only a confirmation of an ongoing sense of guilt for their sinfulness. The simple fact of the matter is that the blood of bulls and goats is quite incapable of taking away sin, of bringing out about a lasting reconciliation with God.
The author then quotes words from Psalm 40 (vs 6-7) as a foretelling of what was really needed to bring about this reconciliation. He puts the words of the psalmist on the lips of Christ himself at his incarnation, when he “came into the world”. The author follows the Septuagint (Greek text of the Old Testament), which is somewhat different from the original Hebrew, but is more suited to his argument.
It is not sacrifices and other offerings that the Father wants. Instead he has provided his Son with a body, a body that will be offered in sacrifice for all of us. The Father takes no pleasure in “sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings”. These four things, mentioned in Psalm 40, are probably indicating the four principal types of Old Testament sacrifices: peace offerings; cereal offerings; burnt offerings or holocausts; and sin offerings (including guilt offerings mentioned in Lev 5:14-26).
Jesus acknowledged that the Old Testament sacrifices did not remit the sins of the people and so, perceiving the will of God, offered his own body for this purpose. Jesus then, through the Psalmist, says:
See, I have come to do your will.
The highest form of sacrifice is our total union with the will of God.
The former dispensation is now abolished, and the offering of Jesus takes its place in a new dispensation. So now, it is by God’s will, carried out by Jesus in his death, that we become:
…sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
It was the total surrender of the Son to the Father that effectively and forever interceded for the removal of our sin. Each one of us has to mirror that surrender in our own lives, making the will of God our own. Only then we will experience the total liberation that God wants for us as we become united as one with him.
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Monday of Week 3 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 9:15,24-28
We begin our third and last week with the Letter to the Hebrews. We continue showing the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice over that of the old covenant. The death of Christ alone is effective in wiping out sins which were committed under the old covenant.
Here we see how Jesus seals the new covenant with his blood. The passage shows that the death of Christ was essential for him to act effectively as mediator. It does this by a play on words: the Greek word diatheke can mean ‘pact’ (covenant) as it does in the opening sentence of today’s reading or ‘last will and testament’, as it does further down in the passage (not included in our reading; Heb 9:16-17). So the author can argue that a ‘pact’ or covenant also suggests the death of a ‘testator’.
All pacts at the time were sealed with the shedding of blood. In signing the covenant between Yahweh and the Israelites at Sinai, we read in Exodus:
Moses took half of the blood [from the sacrificial animals] and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar…Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “Here is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
(Ex 24:6,8)
The similarity with our words of consecration in the Eucharist is not accidental. Hence, it is argued that Christ needed to die in founding the New Covenant (or ‘Pact’) between God and the human family.
Jesus is, in fact, the mediator of a new covenant, a new solemn and mutual bonding between God and the world. This covenant brings the promise of an “eternal inheritance”, as was announced by Jesus during his public life. This has been brought about by the death of Jesus, saving us from the sins which the old covenant could not remove. It brings about deliverance from sins committed under the old covenant, which the Mosaic sacrifices were incapable of effacing. Until this happened, the “eternal inheritance” promised by God could not be obtained.
As High Priest, Jesus did not enter a sanctuary erected by human hands, like that of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was only a distant copy of the true sanctuary where God dwells. Jesus entered that sanctuary—Heaven itself—standing in the very presence of God on our behalf.
And in contrast to the Levitical high priest, Jesus did not need to offer himself again and again, as the high priest did each year when he entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple to make the same sacrifice and offered “blood that is not his own”, the blood of some slaughtered animal. If Jesus’ sacrifice had not been once for all, he too would have had to offer himself in sacrifice again and again.
As it is, he offered himself just once for all mankind “at the end of the ages”, and took away our sin by the sacrifice of himself. Jesus is both Priest and Victim in this unique sacrifice.
In using the term “the end of the ages” the author is reflecting Jewish Christian eschatology which speaks of the “present age” and the “age to come”. Saying that the sacrifice of Christ is unique, because it is being offered at “the end of the ages”, is to say that it, in a way, marks the end of human history and has no need to be repeated.
Jesus’ sacrifice wipes out sin, not with ‘other’ blood, but with Christ’s own blood; it is a once and for all act. Jesus’ coming has ushered in the great Messianic era, towards which all history has moved.
He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.
(1 Peter 1:20)
And just as it is our destiny to die once and then face our God in judgement, so Christ, having offered himself and given his life just once to bear the “sins of many”, will appear just once more to take with him to the Father all those who await him at his Second coming, the parousia.
Then Jesus will appear “a second time”, as the high priest reappeared on the Day of Atonement, emerging from the Holy of Holies, which he had entered “to bear the sins of many”. This scene is described dramatically and poetically in Sirach (50:5-11). It was a high point in the Jewish calendar.
The reference to the taking away of sin is to a passage in Isaiah about the Suffering Servant:
… he poured out himself to death
and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet he bore the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors. (Is 53:12)
Since the Greek verb anaphero can mean both “to take away” and “to bear”, the author no doubt intended to play upon both meanings: Jesus took away sin by bearing it himself. John the Baptist says:
Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)
The “sins of many” is used in the Semitic meaning of “all” in an inclusive sense, as, for instance, in Mark’s Gospel:
[Jesus] said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. (Mark 14:24)
In the Eucharistic Prayer the celebrant says:
…this is the chalice of my Blood…
which will be poured out for you and for many
for the forgiveness of sins.
The old Latin translation was pro multis, literally meaning “for many”.
Christ has died once and for all for our sins—every sin we have ever committed, and those we have yet to commit. But to experience his forgiveness and be fully reconciled with him, we need constantly to express our repentance and turn back to our Father, as the prodigal son did in the parable.
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