CHRIST THE HIGH PRIEST

A MESSAGE FOR PASSION SUNDAY

Our Passiontide begins today with a reading from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews in which the apostle outlines the whole reason why there ever had to be a Passion and Divine Sacrifice in the first place.  It is a simple outline, and it is useful for us today to spell it out in some very basic detail, as a reminder why Christ suffered and died as he did.

God created us because he loved us.  He loved us before we even existed in time, and wanted to have creatures with free will who would love him in return.  Ever since the two sons of Adam offered up their sacrifices to God, it has been the natural yet divinely inspired aspiration of man to give back their love to God in the form of sacrifice.  True love after all is the giving up, the sacrifice, of our own will to please the one loved.  And so, through the ages, we offered up the best of what we had, the first-born and unblemished of our flocks, spilling their blood and presenting it to our almighty Father.

However, God’s love for us is infinite.  Our offences against him are thus infinite in their effect.  How can the sacrifice of a created being, a mere animal, be sufficient to make reparation for an infinite offence?  So God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his first-born son, Isaac.  Human sacrifice perhaps would be a more appropriate and higher oblation to offer for our iniquities…  Of course, as we know, the idea of human sacrifice is abhorrent to God, and he stopped the hand of Abraham, even as he was prepared to sacrifice his son and obey what he thought was the divine will.

The ultimate solution to the problem of making sufficient reparation for our infinite offences against God could only be accomplished by an equally infinite sacrifice offered by the infinite divine being.  And so he sent his only-begotten and immaculate Son as High Priest to offer up himself for the sins of mankind.  The Jews chose to reject this new covenant between God and man, and so God’s new holy and apostolic church was founded as his new chosen people.  They would understand that Christ’s supreme and infinite sacrifice could not be confined to a mere moment in history, but was to be continuously renewed in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  The sacrifice of Christ the High Priest would now be offered daily by his priests of the new and everlasting covenant.

Today, we are able to partake of the graces of Calvary at that same Mass offered here today.  Our union with God, the reason we were created, can be realized in your own soul here and now.  Let us not neglect our Lord’s invitation to do so.