The Old Rejoicing in the New

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to the Bible, I think sometimes we have this sense that the New Testament is all we need to read.  And certainly, it is often a bit easier.  The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are pretty straight forward.  The writings of St. Paul, while including some long sentences with very complex structure, are instructive, as are the other epistles from St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John.  Yeah, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John can be a bit confusing and/or scary, and easily misunderstood and misinterpreted, but generally, the New Testament seems like the place to focus.  To use an analogy, the New Testament seems like nice, sunny pastures with rolling hills, while the Old Testament, even with some of the familiar stories that we enjoy, seems much more like a forest with thick growth, and a narrow trail through it.
    But we cannot truly understand Christ without understanding what He Himself revealed before the Incarnation.  We cannot be like the gnostic heretics who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than Jesus Christ.  When read properly, the Old Testament points to and is fulfilled in Christ.  That is one of the points of the Gospel today.  Our Lord says, “‘Abraham rejoiced to see my day.’”  Abraham rejoiced because in Christ, God’s covenant would be opened up to all nations, a covenant made with a true son of Abraham through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
    The evangelists and apostles were great at seeing how Christ was revealed throughout the Old Testament.  The Letter to the Hebrews, our epistle today, in another place talks about Melchizedek as a type of Christ, since he was king of Jerusalem and a priest of God Most High, and because he had no lineage given (unlike almost everyone else in Genesis), and because He blessed Abram, noting that only a greater blesses a lesser.  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews also quotes Psalm 2 when he asks, “to which of the angels did God ever say: ‘You are my son; this day I have begotten you’?”  And he also quotes other verses to shows Christ’s superiority to the angels.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist loves to quote earlier Scriptures as he saw them fulfilled by the Savior.  When the soldiers cast lots for the robe at the crucifixion, he quotes Psalm 21:18; when the soldier pierces the dead body of Christ with a lance rather than breaking the legs, he quotes Psalm 33:21 and Zechariah 12:10. 
    The Church Fathers also saw Christ prefigured in Old Testament figures who had their proper importance in their own right.  Christ is the New Adam, the new head of humanity, who, rather than disobeying God and dooming all of humanity, is obedient to God, even to the point of death, and so graces all humanity and opens for all the children of Adam and Eve the possibility of eternal life in heaven. 
    Christ is prefigured in Abraham.  Abraham left his home at the direction of God, and was promised descendants numerous as the stars in the heaven.  Christ “journeys” to earth to fulfill the will of the Father, and joins both Jew and Gentile to God, so that the number of the elect comes from every corner of the earth.

    Isaac, too, represents Christ.  Isaac is the beloved son of Abraham and Sarah.  Abraham, his father, asks Isaac to carry wood for the sacrifice up Mount Moriah, the mountain, according to tradition, on which the City of Zion and Temple were later built.  Isaac is a young man, and yet allows Abraham to bind him to the wood for the sacrifice of his own free will.  So Christ carries the wood of the cross up Calvary, and willingly lays down His life, trusting in His eternal Father.  Abraham’s hand was stayed by the angel, stopping the sacrifice, but no angel stopped the sacrifice of Christ.
    Christ is prefigured in Jeremiah the Prophet.  Jeremiah preached tough messages to the people of Judah.  He condemned trusting in a building, even the Temple of the Lord, and called the people to be faithful to God.  For preaching God’s message, Jeremiah was opposed and oppressed by the king and leaders of Judah, even though his words came true.  Christ preached the Word of God, and foretold the destruction of the new temple built by Herod, built after the temple that Jeremiah saw had been destroyed by the Babylonians.  He was opposed and oppressed by the leaders and many of the chief priests, Pharisees, and scribes of His own day.  Christ called all to fidelity to God and a return to Him.
    This could go on and on (maybe you feel like it has already!).  But the point is that the entire Old Testament points to Christ and is fulfilled in Him.  Beyond the people, all the sacrifices of the Old Testament are fulfilled and perfected in the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which we will celebrate in a particular way on Good Friday.  So if we wish to truly appreciate who Christ is and what He did for us, we need to be well-versed in the what came before Him.  Yes, it can sometimes seem strange, and needs to be unpacked, and should be done with the assistance of the Magisterium, the official teaching office of the Church.  But rather than avoiding it because it can be confusing, let’s take the safe path of how the Church has read the Old Testament, so that we can arrive at the one fountain of life that forms the hinge between the Old and the New Testaments, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Too Good To Be True...But It Is

Easter Vigil

There are more movies than I can count where the ending seems too good to be true: the awkward guy gets the gorgeous girl; the bomb is defused in the last second before it explodes; the lies of the villain are exposed and the persecuted hero is vindicated.  We’ve all seen it in movies, we’ve all read it in books.  But when it comes to real life, very rarely do those things happen.  Life, it seems is more tragic than fiction could ever create.

But tonight is not an example of tragedy.  Tonight, in fact, is when we celebrate something that is too good to be true, but is true, nonetheless.  No one, save perhaps the Blessed Mother, would have dared to hope that Jesus would rise from the dead.  Even the holy women who went to the tomb, weren’t going because they thought Jesus might rise.  They were going to complete the mourning rites which had to be suspended due to the celebration of Passover on the previous Friday night and Saturday.  In fact, none of the disciples can believe the news that Jesus rose from the dead until they see Him and recognize Him.

All of our Old Testament readings from Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, and Ezekiel were all examples of stories that looked like they were going to have a happy ending, but didn’t.  Adam and Eve are created by God as the crowning of His creation; they are made in the image and likeness of God.  Yet, as the story continues, we know that they disobey God and put mankind on a trajectory of pain, suffering, and death.  

The Chosen People are doubting God as the Egyptians grow closer.  Then God, through Moses, splits the Red Sea in two and they pass through it, even as the water closes in on the Egyptians who follow and destroys Pharaoh’s army.  But, we all know that story.  Not long after they sing their song of freedom, which was sung by our choir after the reading from Exodus, they once again doubt God, and worship false gods.

Isaiah and Ezekiel both prophesy about a time when Israel will be restored to glory, when God will shower His love upon them and give them a new heart and new life.  God promises to take care of Israel, give them peace, and forgive them of their sins for the sake of His Name.  But even after the Israelites return to the Promised Land from their exile in Babylon, after they realize that they were sent away because of their infidelity to God, they still turn away from God, and eventually lose their land and their sovereignty to the pagan Romans.  All of those Old Testament stories have so much potential, so much build up, but never seem to come to the desired climax.

But not so tonight.  Not so with the Resurrection.  This is the night when the good ending finally happens.  This is the night when evil and darkness are conquered, once for all, and good and light win the day.  This is the night which “sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.  This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.”  Tonight we celebrate that we are not relegated to tragic endings, to falling into sin and darkness.  Tonight we participate in and God renews in us the truth that in Him we can thrive and succeed.

And that new life in Christ, made possible by the Resurrection, will be imparted through the waters of Baptism, which Christ Himself makes holy, to Alexis, Brooklyn, and Camryn.  They will put on Christ and have the opportunity to live a life free of grave sin, free of separation from God, free from Satan.  

The new life of Christ will also be perfected in Christine as she makes her profession of faith and as she and Alexis are confirmed and receive the Eucharist for the first time.  They will be strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit not only to claim that new life for themselves, but also to share it with those they meet by word and example.  And for those of us who are baptized, for those of us who are confirmed, we, too, have that new life of Christ in us, and tonight we can start afresh in living that new life.  

Tonight, as we come to the empty tomb of Christ to worship Jesus and His Resurrection, leave at the tomb all that is not of God.  Do not be afraid to place all your sins, your worries, your fallenness at the place of death, and walk away tonight with the Risen Christ, who offers to us the best ending that we could ever imagine: the new life of the Resurrection.