Holy Week
As we celebrated Passion Sunday, took home our palms, and placed them in our homes for another year, we embark on the holiest week of the Christian year. Sunday, we heard the passion narrative from Matthew and focused on Jesus’ persecution and death. The Triduum, meaning the three sacred days of Holy Week, consists of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.
But before those days come, there is time beforehand to reflect and refresh our understanding of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. St. Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, provides a good catechism and explanation of why God needed to send his son to expiate sin.
In the old covenant, the priests entered the holy of holies annually and offered the blood of bulls and goats to atone for their sins and those of the people. They were limited because they, too, would die, preventing them from remaining in office.
Although the ancient priests dutifully performed the rites, they themselves were just sinful human beings. All things commanded by God were performed through agency, and the sacrifice had to be offered year after year for his sins and those of the community.
That all changed in the new covenant, when Jesus, the Son of God, through obedience to the Father, became the high priest, the sacrifice, and the means of expiation. Jesus removed any separation between God and humanity by being divine and human without sin. As a priest, he offered himself eternally, as sacrifice took the place of the animal’s death, allowing us to be one with God.
The new covenant was announced early in Jesus’ public life by St. John the Baptist. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, John proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” St. John, by this one sentence, described the mission of Jesus to forgive sins and offer eternal life directly through him.
Because Jesus remains forever, his priesthood will not pass away. As God himself, Jesus can save those who approach God through him, and he always intercedes for them. Unlike the other high priests, Jesus is “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and higher than the heavens”.
There is no need for Jesus to enter the Holy of Holies because he himself is the presence of God. Nor does he use the blood of bulls and goats, for he offered his own blood to the heavenly Father. Jesus is at once priest, the temple, the sacrifice, and God himself.
He is all these things, but instead of a lofty title, he took on the world’s sin and evil as a servant. He is not alone in these roles, for he shares them intimately and unbreakably with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
What a marvelous gift Jesus has given by his passion and death. Sinless as he was, there was no need for him to reconcile with the Father, but as a servant, he took on our sins and atoned for them. The word atone means to be at one with God. This opportunity is what we adore and worship the one who made it possible.
All that was prescribed in the old covenant about sacrifice and blood was not annulled but brought to perfection in the sacrifice of Jesus, where, unlike the blood of a beast, it is the means by which humanity is saved in every generation. By offering his body and blood through the Eucharist, the sacrifice and the reparation of sin are accomplished each time Mass is offered.
We are people of the new covenant, paid for by the body and blood of Christ. May God give us the grace and courage never to take it for granted.