Faithful to the Covenant

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to family or friends, we probably have some sort of red line that, if crossed, would mean a break in that relationship.  For me, loyalty and honesty are two virtues that I insist on in order to maintain a friendship.  If I find out a person has lied to me, or has been disloyal, I find it very difficult to continue that friendship.  It may seem fine at the surface for a little while, but I tend to disengage that friendship until the friendship dies from lack of contact.
    Thanks be to God that our God does not operate in the same way!  God remains faithful to the covenant He entered upon, even when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain.  And, in fact, God outdoes Himself by not only upholding a covenant that we break time and time again, but even giving us a better covenant than we had at the beginning.
    St. Paul mentions in our epistle how God made a covenant with Abraham and to his seed.  What was that covenant?  In Genesis, chapter 15, God promised to be Abraham’s God and to give Abraham the land of Canaan, and to multiply Abraham’s descendants so that they would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  God’s People were then to simply follow God and His will.  To enact this covenant, God asked Abraham to cut a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram in two, and then to sacrifice a turtledove and a young pigeons as well.  This action, sociologists tell us, was to signify the penalty if either party broke their side of the bargain: what happened to the animals (death) would happen to the one who broke the covenant.  As another sign, God commanded Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise all the male descendants as a sign that they belonged to God.
    The first few generations did ok: Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons (though the twelve sons did try to kill their brother, but instead sold him into slavery into Egypt, which ended up saving the day).  But then the people, now enslaved in Egypt themselves, forgot the Lord.

    So God gives a new covenant, the Law, to instruct the people on how to be God’s Chosen People.  The blood of animals is sprinkled on them to join them all to the covenant and to again reaffirm that whoever breaks the covenant deserves death, and the people agree because God has saved them from slavery and from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea..  Before Moses has time to communicate this new law, they build a false god, a golden calf, and begin to worship it.  Fail.
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and leads them to the Promised Land, even though they complain regularly that the food isn’t good, or that Moses has too much power, or that they’re going to die of thirst.  Time and time again, the people do not live up to their side of the covenant.  Even at the door of the Promised Land, the people lose faith that God can grant them entry and push out foreign armies, even though they had just destroyed a couple armies of pagan kingdoms, and so they have to wander in the desert for 40 more years.  
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and gives them the Promised Land, displacing kingdoms and entire peoples.  But even then, the Chosen People follow false gods, then get into trouble, then are oppressed, then cry out to God.  And God saves them time and time again.
    God sends prophets to remind them to follow the law, to care for the poor and the orphans, to live justly and walk humbly with God.  But they always end up rejecting God and not living according to the covenant.  And while God does allow the consequences of their disobedience and idolatry to fall on them (like the exile and dispersion of the ten northern tribes and the destruction of the temple and the exile into Babylon of the two southern tribes), He remains faithful to His covenant, and sends a Messiah.  While the people expect an earthly Messiah to free them from Roman oppression, God provides a true Messiah who frees them from slavery to sin and death and opens up heaven.  God even takes upon Himself the punishment for infidelity to the covenant, though He was the only one who had remained faithful to the covenant, and did not deserve death.
    All of this is to say that God remains faithful in the midst of our infidelity.  God fulfills His promise even when we don’t.  And He does so to draw us back to Himself.  He lets the rain fall on the good and the bad, and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust in order to woo us back to Him, our Lover, so that we can enjoy the close relationship that He desires for us.
    As we look at the Gospel: only one leper returns to give thanks, and He’s outside this covenant.  But God doesn’t give the other nine leprosy again.  They are healed, even though they do not give thanks to God for the miracle they received.

    In our lives, are we like the nine or are we like the one?  God has given us so much, and we don’t deserve any of it.  We cannot claim any merit on our own, because we could not do anything good without God.  Every time we sin we walk away from the covenant, not just that to Abraham or Moses, but to the covenant sealed by the Precious Blood of the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who offered His life, taking upon Himself the punishment that should have been ours for our infidelity.  God gives us so many good things, but do we give thanks to God for His fidelity?  Do we worship God wholeheartedly for forgiving us every time we ask in the Sacrament of Penance?  Do we do our best to avoid sin and breaking the covenant?  Yes, sometimes God does allow the consequences of our actions to fall upon us, but more often than not He is patient with us and does not give us what we deserve so that we can return to Him.  
    At one point, though, our ability to turn back to God will end.  When we die, we no longer have a chance to return to the covenant that Christ made with us in Holy Baptism.  If we, in the end, reject that covenant, then we will face the punishment of breaking the covenant: eternal death in Hell.  But if we turn back to God, if after the disease of sin has affected us and we ask God to heal us and we return to Him to thank Him for that healing, then we will receive the rewards of the covenant that we did not deserve, strictly speaking, but that God will grant to us as a merciful and loving Father: residence not simply in an earthly Promised Land, but eternal life in the true Promised Land of heaven.  May God’s patience with us allow us time to convert and do our best to be faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit are God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Two Approaches

Fourth Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Sometimes we have Scripture passages that we really like, that “hit us in the feels” or that motivate us to follow Christ more deeply.  Other times there are Scripture passages with which we struggle, which seem harder to digest.  And perhaps St. Paul’s epistle today is one of the latter.  

    St. Paul tells us today about the two covenants: that of Sinai (the law) and that of Christ (freedom in Him).  And St. Paul seems to suggest that we should get rid of the law because it connects us to slavery, where as the covenant in the Blood of Christ gives us the true freedom of the heavenly Jerusalem.  But how can we square this with the fact that we are still supposed to follow the Ten Commandments?  Certainly, we don’t have to follow all of the dietary and ritual laws of Judaism, and every time we eat bacon we can thank God for that.  But what does St. Paul mean?  Especially when we consider that Christ Himself said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.  I have come, not to abolish, but to fulfill.”  
    What the Apostle speaks of today is how God saves us.  And this was and is a rather big point in how we view salvation, which still challenges us today.  Both in the Epistle to the Galatians and in the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul outlines how the law doesn’t save, but existed as a tutor to help us grow in holiness.  It didn’t gain for us salvation.  And the Apostle to the Gentiles shares how no one, once God gave the law, ever lived up to all its 613 precepts perfectly.  
    Christ came and gave us a new law, one that built upon the old law, but surpassed it, as much as light surpasses shadow and reality surpasses sign.  Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, and even took upon Himself the punishment or curse due to those who did not follow the law, as the law says, “Cursed be he who hangs on a tree,” and Christ allowed Himself to be hung on the tree of the cross so that He could take away the curse from us and grant us everlasting life.  This new law is seen especially in Matthew, chapter five, as Christ, the New Moses, gives us the Beatitudes and reinterprets the law to go beyond simply “Thou shalt not,” and move into the positive area of blessings and fulness of life.  These are the teachings, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”.  The fulfillment of the law that Christ talks about is, from the point of action, much more difficult, as it’s easier to not murder someone than it is not to hold anger in the heart, or not to have sex with someone other than your spouse than it is to avoid even lustful glances at others.  
    But, going deeper, the dichotomy that St. Paul points out between the covenant of Sinai and the covenant of Calvary points to a more profound difference: do we save ourselves or is salvation a gift?  If the law saves, then salvation is something that I achieve for myself.  I may ask God for help; I may lean on others to support me in following each commandment, but I am the main actor in my salvation.  On the other hand, if Christ saves me, then I have a part to play in my salvation, but it is a supporting role, not the lead in the movie.  And if Christ saves me, then if I mess up, it doesn’t mean salvation is lost to me necessarily.  It simply means that I have temporarily interrupted salvation.  But if I save myself and I do not fulfill the requirements of the law, then there is no hope for me; I have spent my chance for redemption and have nothing but despair for my eternal future.
    This is the good news of salvation: salvation doesn’t depend on me!  And, at least as far as I, personally, am concerned, that’s great news!  Because I don’t always do the good I intend, and I sometimes do the bad I do not intend to do.  The freedom comes from knowing that I am not my own savior, so I don’t have to act as if everything depends on me.  Because it doesn’t.  If everything depends on me, then I am in slavery, striving with all of who I am to follow a law that I am bound to break at one time or another.  
    So, the Law does not save.  Christ saves.  And thanks be to God for that.  But does that mean that I can forget the Ten Commandments?  Does that mean that my choices don’t matter?  Of course not.  Again, the new law of freedom means we act in a certain way that goes even beyond the old law.  Christ has won for us salvation, so that we don’t have to earn it (because we can’t earn it).  But in order to receive that gift of salvation, we still have to follow Christ and conform ourselves to Him.  Because really, being in heaven is a matter of being united to Christ.  If we are united to Christ, then heaven is the logical destination for us because Christ is already there and we are joined to Christ.  But, if we sever ourselves from Christ by doing things that are contradictory to who Christ is, then we cannot hope to be in heaven because Christ is in heaven and we have separated ourselves from Him.
    So we still do our best to avoid: having other false gods; taking God’s name in vain; working on the sabbath (the Lord’s Day, now, rather than Saturday); disobeying our parents; murdering others; committing adultery; stealing; lying; and coveting our neighbor’s spouse or goods.  And we even go beyond that.  We ask God to help us avoid: even other swear words, wrath, lustful thoughts; to be content with what we have, mean what we say, and not give in to envy.  But we do so as our response to what God has done for us, not trying to earn His love or eternal salvation.  While we can still reject salvation, our salvation is not up to us, in the end; Christ has already accomplished it for us.  We merely need to show that we want it (which sometimes is a bit of challenge because of our fallen nature).  But God also gives us the Eucharist, the true Flesh and Blood of our Risen Lord, to help conform us to Christ and to strengthen us so that we can choose salvation and reject damnation.  May our worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Christ today and each time we go to Mass help us to choose the freedom that is ours in Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Offered and Offering

 Fourth Sunday in Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves in Tabgha in the Holy Land, which was itself founded around AD 350, there is an ancient mosaic dating from around the year 480 in front of the altar where there are two fish and four loaves.  Now, if you were listening carefully to the Gospel, you would know that the multiplication of the loaves and fish involved “five barley loaves.”  So what’s with this ancient mosaic?  Did they simply run out of space?  Was the ancient artist ignorant of the account?  
    In reality, the ancient artist not only knew his Bible, but also knew his theology.  There are four loaves in the mosaic because the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, being consecrated into the Body of Christ.  St. John the Evangelist had this connection between the multiplication of the loaves and the Eucharist as the rest of John chapter 6 goes on to contain the preaching of our Lord about how He is the Bread of Life, and that we need to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life.  
    The Eucharist is the new covenant that our Lord established between Him and us so that we could have salvation and be in right relationship with God.  This is made clear in the words of institution over the chalice: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it.  For this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the New and Eternal Covenant: the mystery of faith: which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  God promises to be our God, and we promise to be His People, in this Sacrament of Sacraments, which itself points to Good Friday, as Christ shed His Blood on the Cross.
    St. Paul takes up this idea of covenants in the epistle as he sees an allegorical interpretation of Genesis and the stories of Isaac and Ishmael.  Ishmael, as the son of the slave Hagar, represents the old covenant, the Law, while Isaac, the son of the free-woman, Sarah, is the new covenant of the Lord.  
    Does St. Paul mean that God has abandoned the Jews and the covenant He made with them?  No.  The Apostle, after spending chapters explaining how the law does not save, writes in his Epistle to the Romans: “I ask then, has God rejected his people?  Of course not!  […] For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”  Even though the law does not save, God does not reject His People, His Chosen Ones.  
    But God has fulfilled what the Old Covenant was meant to prepare for: salvation through Christ.   And that salvation is made present for us in the Eucharist each time we come to Mass.  Christ offered Himself once for all on the cross, but wanted us to have access to the power of the sacrifice, just as the Jews had opportunity to connect themselves to their sacrificial offerings that were made in the Temple.  When a Jew would offer sacrifice, certain parts of the animal offerings were for God, to be burned up on the altar, while others were reserved for the priest, and still others were given back to the people.  So when Christ offered Himself in sacrifice to the Father, the priest (that is I) receives a portion from the bread and wine you have offered, and you also receive a portion of your sacrifice that God gives back to you.  But unlike the old covenant where the sacrifice remains the same, the bread and wine that we offer to God through my hands is transformed by God into the Body and Blood of Christ so that you and I receive better than what we offered.  
    But it is not simply bread and wine that we offer to God.  The boy gave five loaves and two fish to Christ in the Gospel, which was all that he had.  We, too, are called to offer all that we have to God in this Mass, and unite it to the bread on the corporal and the wine in the chalice.  Sacrosanctum concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council teaches, “But in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain.”  Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council expands on this idea of the laity’s participation in Mass when it states:
 

[Christ] also gives them a sharing in His priestly function of offering spiritual worship for the glory of God and the salvation of men.  […] For all their works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne–all these become “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Christ”.  Together with the offering of the Lord’s body, they are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Even in this pre-conciliar form for the celebration of the Mass, you are called to bring to the Apostles, and their assistants, the presbyters (i.e., me) what you have so that it maybe offered to God for the salvation of you and of all.  Any reading of the best minds of the Liturgical Movement before the Council also bears witness to this.  
    So what are you bringing to this Mass?  What are you offering with me, in addition to the bread and the wine?  As I am saying the Canon silently, are you offering to God what has happened since the last time you came to Mass?  Are you giving God the joys your family brings you, and/or the frustrations you experience when they push your buttons?  Are you offering the “atta-boy” or “atta-girl” that your boss gave you for accomplishing a task excellently, and/or the lack of drive and fulfillment in the job which pays the bills but does not utilize your gifts and talents?  Are you praying silently to God thanking Him for the game that you won, and/or giving him your broken heart that was torn when your young love dumped you?  
    These parts of life, and many more that I did not mention, are all part of the sacrifice that God desires.  These ups and downs are meant to be spiritually united to the oblation that I offer, which is itself united to the one, acceptable, perfect offering of Christ on the Cross, re-presented for us in an unbloody way on this altar.  As we continue our pilgrimage this Lent, as we walk with our Lord toward Good Friday, may the joys and sorrows of our life be fitting gifts to God, so that may not only share in the Death, but also the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.