Readings: Jer 31:7-9; Heb 5:1-6; Mk 10:46-52
In the first reading today, the Prophet Jeremiah instructs the people to shout with joy, to exult, and to proclaim that the Lord delivered His people, Israel. In this context, the Prophet was talking about the Lord bringing the exiled Israelites back to their own land. They were led into exile because of their sinfulness and their lack of fidelity to the Lord. Now they are being brought back and they are rejoicing because God had freed them, redeemed them, and purified them so they were prepared to come back to the Promised Land.
While this was truly a cause for rejoicing for the people of the time, it is also a mere foreshadowing of a far greater redemption that God was going to work, not only for the people of Israel, but for the whole world. Just as He has freed the Chosen People from slavery in a land of exile, so He was going to free those who would choose Him from slavery to sin and Satan. What is most important in this is to recognize it is God Who is doing this work for us. We can only take credit for allowing ourselves to be duped by the devil and giving ourselves over to slavery to the vile creature. The freedom we enjoy as the children of the Lord is not anything we have done or for which we can take any credit.
In the second reading, St. Paul tells us that Jesus is our High Priest. In the Jewish Temple worship, only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies, and that only once each year. He had to bring some of the blood from the lamb and from the bull that were offered in atonement for the sins of the people and priest, respectively. The sprinkling of the lamb’s blood was done in imitation of what Moses was shown regarding the worship of God in Heaven.
The bull was offered for the sins of the High Priest because the first High Priest, Aaron, had made a golden calf, a bull, to worship. Therefore, God required him to sacrifice the bull to God, thus showing that the bull is not a god. In Heaven, there was no sacrifice of a bull because the High Priest had not sinned and, therefore, had no need to offer sacrifice for His own sins. So, in Heaven the only sacrifice is that of a lamb; this is what the Jews offered in atonement for the sins of the people.
We understand what Moses could not: Jesus is the Lamb Who is at the very heart of the worship of Heaven. This fulfills what God required of the Israelites who were imitating on earth what Moses saw in Heaven. The animal sacrifices were central to the priesthood of Aaron and the Jewish people. However, this priesthood was established because the people’s disobedience at Mount Sinai caused them to lose the priesthood with which they were born.
Jesus, being our High Priest, exercises the original priesthood, as foretold in Psalm 110 where we read of the Messiah: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” This is the passage St. Paul quotes in the second reading which tells us that Jesus not only acts according this this priesthood, but He fulfills it in a manner beyond which anyone could have grasped.
Melchizedek offered bread and wine, therefore, Jesus did as well. But He turned the bread and wine into Himself, the Lamb of God, thus fulfilling both types of priesthood simultaneously and revealing the depth of the Heavenly worship. He is God to Whom the Lamb is offered, but also the Lamb (the victim) Who is offered and the Priest Who offers the Lamb and brings the Blood of the Lamb into the Holy of Holies.
For the Jewish people, the lamb was offered to atone for their sins, but the blood of the animals could not take the sins away; it could only cover them up. Jesus, the true Lamb, is the atonement for our sins because His human blood does not simply cover up our sins, but removes them from our souls.
Thus, Catholic worship is not an imitation of the worship of Heaven, but a participation in it. These truths are deep and profound. To understand them we must be like Bartimaeus in the Gospel: humble yet determined. Bartimaeus requested of Jesus: “Master, I want to see.” If we have this same disposition, God will open our minds to “see” the unfathomable depths of His love and the great privilege that is ours not only to have our sins removed, but to participate in the celestial worship. This is our redemption, our freedom, and our cause for joy and exultation because God has delivered His people!
Fr. Altier’s column appears regularly in The Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, Minn. For information about subscribing to The Wanderer, please visit www.thewandererpress.com.
