Friday, April 8
Matthew 23: 1-39: In the main, the material in this chapter is proper to Matthew; there are few direct parallels in Mark and Luke. It begins with exhortations to humility and service, traits which Jesus contrasts with the pride and self-serving characteristic of those who have made themselves his enemies. The religion of these people, Jesus declares, is only self-aggrandizement, none of it very subtle.
In the more reliable manuscripts, there follows a series of seven imprecations, verses that begin with “woe to you.” The number seven, which is significant of fulfillment and completion, indicates total spiritual corruption in those to whom Jesus so speaks. In other words, these hypocritical, self-satisfied men have brought to completion and fulfillment the myriad infidelities recorded in biblical history. In denouncing them, therefore, the Lord uses the traditional formula of the prophets, whom their forefathers had murdered—“Woe!”
In this final discourse of Jesus—the last of five—there is a correspondence with his first discourse, the Sermon on the Mount. As that first discourse was an explanation of the beatitudes—“blessed are the poor in spirit”—the final discourse explains these “woes”—“woe unto you.”
The scribes and Pharisees are censured for neglecting the weightier matters of the Torah while concentrating on small particulars of lesser moment. The burden of the Lord’s judgment falls on the failure of these hypocrites to go deeper than the mere surface letter of observance—deeper in the Torah, deeper into their own hearts, where all is corruption and death. They clean the outside, but the neglected inside is in sorry shape. They stay away from an interior transformation that would render valuable the observance of the Torah: judgment, mercy, and faith. This criticism, with its accent on interiority, is an echo and summary of what Israel’s prophets taught over the centuries.
Hence, these leaders deserve the “woe” that those prophets spoke against earlier infidelities. This is pretty standard fare in the prophets. For example, Amos had proclaimed, “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!? For what good is the day of the Lord to you?? Darkness it will be, and not light. . . Woe to you who are at ease in Zion,? and trust in Mount Samaria” (5:18; 6:1).
Or Isaiah: “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim” (28:1). Or Micah: “Woe to those who devise iniquity and work out evil on their beds!” (2:1).
This discourse of Jesus identifies what is about to happen as the fulfillment of a very long and very bad history. Here the parable of the vineyard is pertinent; the proprietor of the vineyard does not send His Son until the vinedressers have killed the prophets who were sent before him.
All that blood of just men just will now descend on those identified as “this generation”; this expression appears repeatedly in Matthew (11:16; 12:39,41; 16:4; 17:17; 24:34).
The story in the Gospel does not constitute a body of truth capable of abstraction from the story itself. The truth of the Gospel is inseparable from the historical drama in which it was presented. The individuals portrayed in the Gospels were not “types”; no one else can substitute for them. The drama of the Gospel cannot be replaced by some other story.
When we declare that Salvation has been wrought upon the earth, we implicitly assert its intrinsic relationship, not only to geography, but also to history. Jerusalem is not reducible to a model; it is a real place, and very real things happened there which decided the destiny of the human race.
Jesus knew this to be the case. Matthew knew this to be the case. Indeed, when Matthew wrote this story, it is most probable that he had already witnessed the downfall of Jerusalem to the Romans in A.D. 70.
Observe the irony: Immediately after Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, the Apostles fail to take the measure of what he has said. Matthew describes their response: “Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not see all these things? Amen, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’”
Since tonight’s reading begins with a moral theme—the contrast between humility and pride—it would be easy to read the rest of the material as simply a continuation of that theme; that is to say, we might understand this story as teaching a moral lesson universally applicable. There would be an obvious value in doing this, inasmuch as it is always true that the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted.
But this is more than a moral story. It is a story of the righteous judgments of God at a particular time and in a particular place. In tonight’s reading from Matthew, we are presented with the righteous judgment of God, which altered the course of world history. The history of the human race is not simply the arena in which man makes moral decisions.
Lazarus Saturday, April 9
John 11.1—12.11: The Apostles, who are with Jesus, know that he cannot return to Judea without grave danger; his enemies have already determined to murder him.
So the news of Lazarus’s illness poses a quandary. Presumably the Apostles do not want Lazarus to die, but neither are they eager for Jesus to go back to Judea. We observe that, when they learn of the condition of Lazarus, they do not urge Jesus to go south! They are content to say nothing.
Then, out of the blue, Jesus announces that Lazarus has fallen asleep. The Apostles are relieved; this is encouraging news. Lazarus is getting some much-needed rest. He will soon be well! The crisis has passed.
Only after they have expressed this optimism does Jesus tell them, “Lazarus is dead.” This is the second time the Apostles have misunderstood him. Why does he insist on speaking with hidden layers of meaning?
Now, however, the Apostles know that they are about to go south and to danger. In the most ironical statement in the story, Thomas says, “Let us go that we may die with him.” Who is this him? Is it Lazarus, or is it Jesus? Perhaps Thomas intends the remark to be ambivalent, as it most certainly is ambivalent.
Thus, Jesus and the Twelve head south to Bethany. At peril to himself, Jesus goes to raise his deceased friend.
Crucial to the understanding of this event is the dialogue that explains it, the discussion in which Jesus tells Martha (verses 21-27) that He is the Resurrection and the life of those who believe in Him. The raising of Lazarus is the demonstration—the revelation event—of that truth: “Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”
Does Martha’s expression “even now” convey a request for the Lord to raise her brother right away? I believe it does, but the meaning is subtle and implicit. She does not press Jesus overtly, but her hint opens the dialogue to the experience of immediacy. Jesus fills this immediacy by His claim to be, “even now,” the Resurrection and the life. That is to say, the root of the final resurrection is planted in the here and now of faith (verses 25-26; cf. 6:40).
“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” This declaration of Martha expresses the faith of the Maccabees and Pharisees. This was the hope of Israel.
In response to this affirmation, Jesus changes the tense from future to present: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” Martha replies, “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” Martha, invited to confess that faith, gives voice to the answer of the Church with respect to the identity of Jesus: “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (verse 27; cf. 6:69). The dialogue ends with this declaration, and Martha must get busy on the basis of it.
Palm Sunday, April 10
Matthew 20.29—21.17: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was not an event that fizzled. The true and underlying meaning of “Hosanna in the highest” was not dissolved by the later cries of “Crucify Him!” God in His mercy chose to ignore the shout “We have no king but Caesar,” and to keep in mind, rather, the proclamation “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Haggai 2: The first oracle in this chapter was given on October 5, 520 B.C. (verse 1) The twentieth day of the month Tishri was the fifth day of the week called the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. Leviticus 23:34), an autumnal harvest celebration (cf. Deuteronomy 16:13) that paralleled our own Thanksgiving Day.
In the year 520 that festival was especially significant, because God’s people had begun to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, a replacement for the temple destroyed by the Babylonians sixty-six years earlier. As they rebuilt it, however, a very disappointing fact was becoming clear to the people — namely, that this new structure, when finally completed, was going to be pretty small, because the people had nowhere near the financial resources available to Solomon when he had constructed the first temple four centuries earlier. Like the men who were building it, this new temple would be poor (verse 3; cf. Ezra 3:12-13).
Nonetheless, said Haggai, this new house of God would be adorned, in due course, with silver and riches from around the world (verses 7-9). A literal translation of verse 7 from the Hebrew (“I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of the nations will come in”) makes perfect sense, meaning that Jews from all over the world, coming to the new temple on pilgrimage, would continue to adorn and expand it until “the glory of the latter house would outshine that of the former.”
However, the ancient Christian Latin translation of this verse (reflected, curiously, in the King James Version), reads, et veniet Desideratus cunctis gentibus, which means, “and He who is desired by the nations will come.” This translation is echoed, of course, in the final verse of the old Veni Emmanuel hymn adapted from the “O Antiphons” of Advent, “O Come, Desire of nations, bind / in one the hearts of all mankind.” That is to say, the new temple of Haggai’s era was the very temple into which Jesus, the One desired by the nations, would enter.
In today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the Desire of the Nations does come to his Temple, the same structure of which the prophet Haggai wrote, and he comes to purge that Temple of its defilement.
Monday, April 11
Psalms 38 (Greek & Latin 37): With its heavy emphasis on sin and suffering, Psalm 38 is one of the rougher parts of the Psalter, and its thematic conjunction of sin and suffering is also the manifest key to its meaning. It is certainly a psalm to be prayed during this special week devoted to the sufferings of Christ and his victory over sin and death.
Suffering and death enter the world with sin. To humanity’s first sinners the Lord said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow,” and “Cursed is the ground for your sake” (Gen. 3:16, 17). So close is the Bible’s joining of suffering to sin that some biblical characters (such as Job’s friends and the questioning disciples in John 9:2) entertained the erroneous notion that each instance of suffering was brought about by certain specific sins.
Like Psalm 6, the present psalm commences with a prayer for deliverance from divine anger: “O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.” Already the poet feels overwhelming pain which he describes, whether literally or by way of metaphor, in the most physical terms: “Your arrows [thunder bolts?] pierce me deeply, and Your hand presses me down.” What he suffers comes from sin and the response of the divine wrath, from which he begs to be delivered: “There is no soundness in my flesh, because of Your anger, nor any health in my bones because of my sin.” The equation: sin = wrath of God.
Whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual—or all of them together—what we suffer in this life are the incursions of death, and death is simply sin becoming incarnate and dwelling among us, for “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
Such is the essential conviction of our prayer in this psalm: “For my iniquities are gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds are foul and festering because of my folly.”
The proper response to sin and suffering? Confession of sins and the sustained cultivation of repentance, for “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Thus we pray in this psalm: “For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually (tamid ) before me. For I will declare my iniquity; I will be in anguish over my sin.” Notwithstanding a widespread heresy that says otherwise, repentance is not something done once, and all finished; according to one of the last petitions of the litany, it is something to be perfected (ektelesai ) until the end of our lives. This sorrow for sin, says our psalm, is continual, ongoing (tamid ). Every suffering we are given in this life is a renewed call to repentance. Every pain is, as it were, the accusing finger of Nathan: “You are the man” (2 Sam. 12:7).
Psalm 38 is not the happiest of psalms, but it is exceedingly salubrious to the spirit. If its message can be summed up in one line, that line may well be David’s response to Nathan: “I have sinned against the Lord.” These words make all the difference, because, as another psalm insists, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” Over and over the tax collector “beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13).
Sin is also the great solvent of our relationships to one another. As is clear in the accounts of the first sins (Gen. 3:11–13; 4:12), sin means isolation and alienation. Sin separates us, not only from God, but also from one another. Our psalm speaks of this isolation: “My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague. And my relatives stand afar off.”
We are not talking about morbidity here. Contrition and sorrow in this psalm are accompanied by repeated sentiments of longing: “I groan because of the turmoil of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You; and my sighing is not hidden from You. My heart pants, my strength fails me. . . . For in You, O Lord, I hope; You will hear, O Lord my God.”
Finally, there are the enemies; the demons are the only enemies of the man who correctly prays the Book of Psalms. Nowhere does Holy Scripture exhort us to forgive or pity the demons. They are the only true enemies that our prayer recognizes. Unlike human enemies who are to be prayed for, the demons are always to be prayed against. Our fight with them is unsleeping, as is their fight with us, plotting our ruin: “Those also who seek my life lay snares for me; those who seek my hurt speak of destruction, and plan deception all the day long.”
Tuesday, April 12
Matthew 25.1-13: This story of the ten maidens awaiting the arrival of the Bridegroom continues Matthew’s theme of the delay of the parousia, the Lord’s return. Everything is going just fine in the account, except for the delay involved: “But while the Bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept” (25:5). That is to say, they were not cautious about the warning, “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (24:44).
The coming of the Bridegroom in this parable is identical to the parousia of the Son of Man mentioned several times in the preceding chapter (24:39,44,50).
The ten maidens are divided between those who are “foolish” (morai) and those who are wise, prudent, or thoughtful. However we are to translate this latter adjective, phronimoi, it has just been used to describe the faithful servant that awaits his master’s return (24:45). Matthew is fond of this adjective, which he uses seven times. He uses the adjective moros six times, the only Synoptic evangelist to do so.
In addition, the distinction between moros and phronimos comes in the final parable of the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a phronimos who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a moros who built his house on the sand” (7:24-26).
The difference between the five foolish maidens and the five prudent maidens is that the latter have prepared themselves to deal with the prolonged passage of time. Not considering the possibility of delay, the foolish maidens have not provided oil for their lamps. They are unable to “go the distance” with God.
In context, then, the prudence required is a kind of thoughtfulness, the habit of critical reflection, a cultivated ability to think in terms of the passage of time, a sensitivity to the movement of history. These wise maidens are not creatures of the moment. Consequently, they carry along their little jugs of oil, to make sure that their lamps will not be extinguished. They are able to “go the distance,” because they have thoughtfully made provision.
Time is the test of all these women, because the Bridegroom is “delayed”–chronizontos tou Nymphiou. This is the same verb, chronizo, previously used of the wicked servant: “My master is delayed”–chronizei mou ho Kyrios (24:48).
The prudent, thoughtful maidens enter into the wedding festivities, and the door is closed (verse 10). This closing of the door represents the end of history; the deed represents finality. In an earlier parable Matthew had narrated the exclusion of a man from a wedding festival because of his failure to take it seriously (22:11-14).
Like the parable that comes before it and the two that will follow, this is a study in contrasts. It portrays the antithesis between those who think wisely and those who don’t think at all. This contrast indicates an essential component of the life in Christ, because wise reflection is necessary to “gong the distance.” Critical, reflective thought is not optional in the Christian life; it is a moral imperative.
It is important to observe that all ten of these maidens are Christians. Some will be saved, and some will not. The difference between them is somewhat analogous to the difference between the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13:24-30,36-43. It is bracing to consider that some will be reprobate: “Amen, I say to you, I never knew you” (verse 12). These are very harsh words to be directed to Christians who had been waiting for their Lord’s return. They waited, but they did not do so wisely, and everything had to do with vigilance through the passage of time: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming” (verse 13). Five of these Christians failed the test of perseverance.
Spy Wednesday, April 13
Matthew 26.1-16: There are four brief scenes in these sixteen verses. These scenes alternate back and forth between Jesus’ friends and Jesus’ enemies.
This first section (verses 1-2), unlike the other gospels, includes a fourth prophecy of the Passion, specifying that it will happen “after two days.” (verse 2). Since our Lord has already prophesied the Passion on three earlier occasions, he can preface this fourth prophecy with, “You know.”
In the second scene (verses 3-5) the action shifts to a conspiracy of Jesus’ enemies assembled in the courtyard of the high priest. Caiaphas was the high priest from A.D. 18 to 36. His whole family was involved in opposition to Jesus and the Church.
In spite of their decision to wait until after the Passover before arresting Jesus, the Lord’s enemies will take advantage of an opportunity provided for them by Judas Iscariot.
Matthew and Mark demonstrate how the betrayal of Judas was associated with a specific event, which both evangelists next proceed to describe; this is the third scene, Jesus’ anointing at Bethany.
In the story of the anointing in Bethany, it is clear that our Lord’s disciples were not completely “with” him. Failing to grasp the implications of this most recent prophecy of the coming Passion, they are unable to grasp the dramatic significance of what transpires at Bethany.
Neither Mark nor Matthew identifies the woman who pours out the precious myrrh on the flesh of Jesus, but John—in our Gospel reading for this past Sunday—tells us it was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus.
The Evangelists draw our attention to the negative reactions of Jesus’ disciples. These, especially Judas Iscariot, are indignant at what they regard as a waste of resources. Clearly they are insensitive to the drama unfolding before their eyes.
For these Apostles the Gospel has been reduced to a social ministry aimed at caring for the poor. It is obvious that the person of Jesus—Jesus himself–is not central to their view of things. They are anxious to serve Christ in the poor, evidently in response to the final parable of the previous chapter—the parable of the Last Judgment—but they forget about the more immediate Christ right in front of them. They separate the message of Jesus from the person of Jesus.
Consequently, in his response to the disciples, Jesus makes the matter “personal”: “She has done a beautiful thing for me . . . You do not always have me.” Jesus “knows” what these men are made of; he is aware of the weakness of their loyalty to him. They, themselves, will not become aware of that weakness until later in the week.
Jesus explains the meaning of what has just transpired: This woman has done a prophetic thing—she had prepared His body for burial. It is worth noting that Matthew, thus understanding the event at Bethany, will later omit mention of the anointing of Jesus’ body in the tomb.
This deed pertains to the “Gospel,” says Jesus. The Gospel, after all, is about Jesus; it is not about social concerns separable from his own person. The woman in this story is concentrated on Jesus, and such concentration pertains to the essence of the Gospel.
Judas, at least, seems to understand this, and in the fourth scene he makes his move. He has stayed with Jesus as long as it has been to his advantage. Judas is very sensitive to his own advantage.
Alone among the New Testament writers, Matthew names the actual price of the transaction: thirty silver pieces, the price of a slave (Exodus 21:32), the low wages of the shepherd in Zechariah 11:12.
This deal, says Matthew, was a turning point. There was now a traitor among the disciples, waiting for his opportunity. It would come on the following night.
This section of Matthew is a story of irony and contrasts. One irony consists in the antithesis between the intention of Jesus’ enemies and what they actually accomplished. Not wanting to provoke a riot by arresting Jesus during the Passover, they set in motion a train of events that would in due course lead to the destruction of their Holy City. Hoping to dispose of a troublesome religious teacher, they unwittingly implemented a divine determination to supplant their own religious authority. They murder the Beloved Son, and they lose the stewardship of the Lord’s Vineyard.
Judas, complaining of the loss of 300 coins from his purse, sells Jesus himself for one-tenth that amount.
The chief contrast in the story is between the gracious anointer on the one hand and all the cruel, or insensitive, or treacherous individuals on the other.
Chief among these is Judas Iscariot, whose cold calculation about Jesus’ “worth” is one of the crudest responses in all of Scripture. Not one of us, I think, would ever say such a thing with respect to a loved-one. We who know, trust, and love Jesus as God’s Son and our Savior are shocked by the crass response of Judas, which demonstrated that he was already on the side of Jesus’ enemies. How could anything done for the love of Jesus be thought extravagant or overly generous? This is obvious to us. It was obvious to Mary of Bethany, as well.
Thursday, April 14
The Lord’s Supper: We have the testimony of the Apostle Paul that “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes” (1 Cor 11:26). Although the seed of this biblical verse contains the richness of a thousand sermons and countless meditations, I propose today to reflect on only one of its references, the expression “as often.”
In the canonical Greek text, this expression is only one word, hosakis. The word is repeated from the previous verse, which contains the Lord’s command, ““This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often [hosakis] as you drink it, unto the memorial of Me.”
The Greek expression is indefinite, in that it does not determine the frequency of the Eucharistic rite. It does suggest, nonetheless, that the deed—“Do this—will be a thing of common expectation. Its frequency will be determined, first of all, by the nature of the rite itself.
Since Christian doctrine regards this rite as the theological fulfillment of the Passover, a certain kind of logic would conclude that it should be done once a year, just like the Seder. Some Christians, in fact, are very much disposed to reach exactly that reference.
From the very beginning, nonetheless, it was determined that the identity of the Christian people—an identity defined by the rite of the Holy Eucharist—would not be adequately served by something done so infrequently.
The first Christians adopted the pattern Jewish week, a discipline that put them completely at odds with the 8-day cycle of the Roman Empire. Nowadays it is difficult for most of us to appreciate how radical and revolutionary a change that was. The adoption of the Jewish 7-day week was a bold and massive cultural alteration. By adopting the 7-day, Christians loudly asserted their organic continuity with the history of the Chosen People. To borrow the striking expression of Pope Pius XI, Christians would become “spiritual Semites,” finding their identifying roots in Judaism.
From the very beginning, then, Christians deliberately structured their existence according to the first chapter of Genesis. They did not simply accept the Gospel and then go on and live as they had lived before. The Gospel imposed on them a way of life that was distinctively Jewish.
At the same time, this Jewish week was dramatically transformed by the personal history of Jesus. In His resurrection from the dead on the first day of the Jewish week, Christians believed, Jesus had inaugurated a new Creation.
Immediately and with apparent spontaneity, Christians determined that the Holy Eucharist, the self-defining act of the People of God, was appropriately to be enacted on first day of each Jewish week—their new week. The experience of this propriety was so deep in Christian sentiment that this discipline has remained the same for the past two-thousand years.
If Christians had conceived on the Eucharist as simply the repetition of the Last Supper, they would doubtless have observed it on Thursdays. If they had conceived it simply as a memorial of the death of Jesus, they would have observed the Eucharist on Friday.
By the regular observance of Sunday, however, they placed the determining stress on the Resurrection and the New Creation. In the Eucharist they were to proclaim, not “the Lord’s death,” but “the Lord’s death.” That is to say, the Eucharist was to be, within the Church, the solemn proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus, his victory over sin and death and corruption.
Good Friday, April 15
The Sacrifice of Christ: We may make three points relative to the redemptive sacrifice of Christ:
First, it is unique and self-defining. We call the death of Jesus a “unique” sacrifice, not only in the sense that it happened but once (eph’ hapaxs), but in the formal sense that it is the one sacrifice that does accomplish, in truth, what it sets out to accomplish; namely, the “holy society” by which human beings are joined to God. Any deed (opus) is a “sacrifice” in the measure that it copies, reflects, is analogous to, or partakes of the sacrifice on Calvary. Calvary defines sacrifice.
Probably no theologian has expressed this teaching better or more eloquently than St. Augustine of Hippo: “Proinde verum sacrificium est omne opus quo agitur ut sancta societate inhaereamus Deo—Thus, the true sacrifice is every act done in order that we may cling to God in a holy society.”
This sancta societas is the Body of which Christ is the Head. It is the corporate, covenant union of men with God and with one another in the singular redemption purchased at so great a price. The Holy Eucharist is the sacrifice offered by the sancta societas, the place where we make an oblation of our very lives. Augustine goes on: Therefore, man himself (ipse homo), who is consecrated by the name of God and devoted to God, inasmuch as he dies to the world in order to live for God, is a sacrifice. . . . We also make our body a sacrifice when we discipline it—as we should—for the sake of God and do not yield our members to sin as instruments of evil but to God as instruments of righteousness (The City of God 10.6; cf. Romans 12:1).
Second, the sacrifice of Christ is expiatory. The underlying Greek expression is hilasterion, a word that appears only twice in the New Testament.
St Paul uses the word in Romans 3:25, where he says, “God set forth [Jesus Christ] as the hilasterion in his blood” (Romans 3:25).
The other place is Hebrews 9:5, which explains what Paul meant when he used the word. This text says of the Ark of the Covenant that it was “overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant; and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the hilasterion.
What is this hilasterion? It is the top, the cover, of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Almighty is said to throne between and above the Cherubim. In this context, the term is often translated as “mercy seat.” On Yom Kippur, the annual Atonement Day, the high priest sprinkled sacrificial blood on that hilasterion, “because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions of all their sins” (Leviticus 16:16).
Therefore, by saying that God “set forth” (proetheto) Jesus as the hilasterion, or “instrument of expiation,” for our sins, Paul asserts that the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the Cross fulfilled the prophetic meaning and promise of that ancient liturgical institution of Israel, reconciling mankind by the removal of the uncleanness, “the transgressions of all their sins.” The Cross was the supreme altar, and Good Friday was preeminently the Day of the Atonement. The removal of sins was not accomplished by a juridical act, but a liturgical act performed in great love: “Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:2).
Loving both the Father and ourselves, Jesus brought the Father and ourselves together by what He accomplished in his own body, reconciling us through the blood of his Cross.
In the Bible, “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). The victim slain in sacrifice was not the vicarious recipient of a punishment, but the symbol of the loving dedication of the life of the person making the sacrifice. This sacrificial dedication of life is the means by which the sinner is made “at one” with God. Such is the biblical meaning of expiation and the proper context in which to interpret Paul’s teaching on the sacrifice of Christ.
Third, the sacrifice of the Cross was a paschal sacrifice. It cannot be separated from the feast of the pesach, the Passover. Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.” It ties John also to St. Peter, who declared our redemption by “the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19).
This theme of Christ as the Paschal Lamb has been much developed in the thought and imagery of Holy Church, and this from earliest times. Thus, in the second century St. Justin Martyr wrote, “And the blood of the Passover, sprinkled on each man’s door-posts and lintel, delivered those who were saved in Egypt, when the first-born of the Egyptians were destroyed. For the Passover was Christ, who was afterwards sacrificed, as also Isaiah said, ‘He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.’ And it is written, that on the day of the Passover you seized him, and that also during the Passover you crucified him. And as the blood of the Passover saved those who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed.”
The considerations pertain the Christian Passover at the end of Lent each spring, that feast of which St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote, “Then comes the Sacred Night, the anniversary of the confused darkness of the present life, into which the primeval darkness is dissolved, and all things come into life and rank and form, and that which was chaos is constrained to order. Then we flee from Egypt; that is, from sullen persecuting sin; and from Pharaoh the unseen tyrant . . . .”
St. Gregory perceives the conflation of the imagery from Exodus 12 and Isaiah 53. Here is how he describes the Paschal Lamb: “Thus then and for this cause the written Law came in, gathering us into Christ; and this is the account of the Sacrifices as I account for them. And that you may not be ignorant of the depth of His Wisdom and the riches of His inscrutable judgments. He did not leave even these unhallowed altogether, or useless, or with nothing in them but mere blood. But that great—and if I may say so—in its first [divine] nature “unsacrificeable” Victim was intermingled with the sacrifices of the Law, and was a purification, not for a part of the world, nor for only a short time, but for the whole world and for all time.”
Recognizing that the wool of the lamb—though it is the lamb’s native nakedness—provides the clothing for the human being, Gregory transposes this imagery to the case of Christ, whose very innocence becomes the proper clothing for the wedding feast, the very garment of incorruption: “For this reason a Lamb was chosen for its innocence, and its clothing of the original nakedness. For such is the Victim offered for us, who is both in name and fact the garment of incorruption.”
This is the meaning of the Passover, said Gregory, because “the Lamb is slain, and act and word are sealed with the Precious Blood.” He goes on, “we will feed on the Lamb toward evening—for Christ’s Passion was in the completion of the ages; because, in addition, he communicated his disciples in the evening with his Sacrament, destroying the darkness of sin.”
Here we perceive the symbolism of the darkness that covered the earth for three hours, as the true Paschal Lamb was being slain. Here we detect the mystery of the redemptive blood that flowed from his side to anoint our hearts and minds against the avenging angel.