> ‎Chapter 9‎ > ‎Chapter 10‎ > ‎Chapter 11‎ > ‎Chapter 12‎ > ‎Chapter 13‎ >   

 

 

 

Chapter 8: Summary

The point of our reasoning so far is this: Such is the high priest
we have - one who has taken his place at the right hand of the
Throne of Majesty in the heavens. He is a minister of the real tent
or sanctuary, one pitched by the Lord, not by human hands.

Every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. So
Jesus had to have an offering to make. If He were still on earth,
He would not be recognized as a priest at all, for the Levitical
priests were there according to the law, and no one of His tribe,
that of Judah, had ever ministered at the altar ( 7. 13 above). The
place where these old priests ministered is only a copy of the true
reality. For God once said to Moses: Make everything in the
tabernacle according to the pattern you were shown on the mountain.

But as it really is, Christ has received a better ministry, He is
the minister of a better covenant, based on better promises. If the
first covenant had been without fault, there would be no need or
room for a second covenant.

But God showed that it was not without fault, and so He said
through Jeremiah (31. 31-33): The days are coming when I will make
a new covenant. It will not be like the covenant I made with their
ancestors when I took them out of Egypt. They did not obey my
covenant, and I did not take care of them. But this is the covenant
that I, God, will make in the days to come: I will put my laws into
their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God,
and they will be my people. There will be no need for each one to
teach another and say: Know the Lord. For they will all know me,
from the least to the greatest. I will be merciful to their sins,
and remember them no more.

(In passing, we note that in the new covenant, as in the old, there
was a law to be obeyed, and on condition of that obedience, He
would be their God. the obedience of the old was that of the people
- very poor indeed. The essential obedience in the new was that of
Jesus, the guarantor of the new covenant: cf. 7. 22).

When He spoke of a new covenant, He showed that the first one was
old, and about to disappear.

Chapter 8:Comments

We rendered the opening word - kephalaiaon - as meaning: This is a
summary of what we have seen. It could also mean,"the chief point".

Christ, our high priest, has gone even into the heavens, and
instead of having to kneel or stand in petition, He is seated at
the right hand of Divine Majesty. The sanctuary He has entered is
not one made by human hands, like the old temple, after a model
shown to Moses. It is the true one, made by the Lord.

A high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. So Jesus
had to have something to offer: it was His own body, His life. If
Jesus were still on earth, He would not be considered a priest: For
He was not of the line of Levi. So He would be considered a layman.

But He is not on earth: He has completed His sacrifice once-for-
all.

The words once-for-all do not mean there is nothing more to be
done. It is one thing for Him to have earned all graces and
forgiveness; it is another thing to give out or apply these to
those who obey Him.

While still on earth He made provision for that, in saying to His
Apostles: "Do this in memory of me." They were to say over bread
and wine, just as He had done: "This is my body... . this is my
blood". In itself those words could speak of a mere symbolic
presence. But His first followers did understand them to refer to
His own real presence, His body and blood. St. Paul in 1 Cor 10.
16-21 makes it parallel to Jewish and pagan sacrifices, and says
that one who receives the body and blood of Jesus unworthily is
guilty of [an offense] against the body and blood of the Lord (1
Cor 11. 26-30) said too that by doing this rightly "we show forth
the death of the Lord until He comes (1 Cor 11. 26).

If we compare this to words of God in Isaiah 23. 19 we can
understand better. God said there that the people honored Him with
their lips, but their hearts were far from Him. That is why God, so
many times over in the great prophets, said He did not want the
ancient sacrifices, even though he had ordered them. So in what
sense could He say He did not want them? He meant that the work of
the lips, the external sign, was empty. What was needed was that
the lips should express the heart, the heart that obeyed God. Jesus
did precisely that, as St. Paul said in Romans 5. 19: "Just as by
the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so by
the obedience of the one man, the many would be made just."

This lets us see why He said: "Do this in memory of me." If the
people did not do as He did, if they did not obey the Father. then
the Father would again say that they honored Him with their lips,
but their hearts were far from Him. If they even committed
fornication and murder a thousand times a day as that false, so-
called follower Luther said, God would still have to say: They
honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. - And
when they would come to join themselves to God's embrace forever,
He who is Holiness, He who is "like a refiner's fire" so that no
one can stand when He appears, unless He be pure - then the Father
would reject them, or rather, burn out the corruption from them. .

It would still be true that the Son had earned forgiveness and all
grace for them - but they would have closed themselves, made
themselves incapable of taking it in. They would not fulfill what
St. Paul said in Romans 8. 17: "We are heirs together with Him
provided we suffer with Him", so we may be glorified with Him. (cf.
also the other parts of this great syn Christo theme: Romans 6. 1-
6; 8. 9; Col 3. 1-4; Eph 2. 5-6).

Really what He told His Apostles to do in memory of Him, that which
would "show forth the death of the Lord until He comes" was a
sacrifice, not one to earn anew, but one to apply the fruits of
that once-for-all offering. . We can get a hint of this in that St.
Paul in 1 Cor 10. 21 speaks of the "table of the Lord", and
compares it to the table of false worship - which is yet a
sacrifice. Cf. also the altar in 13. 1. The two elements of which
God spoke through Isaiah are present, in doing this in memory of
Him, namely: there is an outward sign, the same as that which He
Himself used on the first Holy Thursday, the seeming separation of
Body and Blood, standing for death - as if He said to the Father:
"I know the command you have you have given me: I should die
tomorrow. Very good, I turn myself over to death. I accept. I obey"

The second element is of course the obedience of the same High
Priest who is present on that altar. For if He said "where two or
three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them" how
much more is He here when that community does what He commanded to
be done: "Do this in memory of Me". In other words, He on the altar
still has the obedience of His heart, of which He spoke on entering
into this world, as we see in Hebrews 10. 7: "Behold I come to do
your will O God." Hebrews 10. 10 speaks of that "will"

that, is disposition of obedience in His will. He still has that
"will" by which He made His offering on entering into the world. He
made that offering on entering into this world; He never took it
back, and now after His death and resurrection, His heart has not
changed. Death makes permanent the attitude of heart with which one
leaves this world. So when He is present, He does not repeat or
renew His obedience - it is simply continuous from the first moment
of entering into this world.

We said it is one thing for Him to have earned most perfectly all
forgiveness and grace by His once-for-all offering. It is another
thing for Him t make provision for giving out the fruits of His
offering. He did that, as we have been showing, by ordering: "Do
this in memory of me." He made provision also when He commanded His
Apostles to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He made provision
when, on the very first visit to the Apostles after His
resurrection, He at once told them: "Whose sins you shall forgive,
they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retrain, they are
retained." It was as if He wanted at once to give out the fruits
for which He had so dearly paid. He arranged to give them out by
commissioning His Apostles to give out His forgiveness.

When we read that His offering was once-for all does that conflict
with what we have just said above? Not at all. WE explained this
matter in advance in our comments above on chapter 2. 1-9. First,
as we said, it is one thing for Him to earn, another thing to give
out the fruits of that earning. Secondly, even in the Mass, it is
not His obedience that is repeated - as we said, that obedience was
continuous from His entry into the world when He said: "Behold I
come to do your will, O God", up to the present day. His heart
never changes. So what is multiplied in the Mass is only the
outward sign, carried out by a priest to whom He gave a
participation in His own priesthood, in fulfillment of His command:
"Do this in memory of me." Still further, there is no additional
merit or satisfaction the Mass: there is simply the giving out of
the fruit of His merit and satisfaction by the means He Himself
ordered. the Father, in His love of good order, is pleased to have
something to serve as a title for giving something out, even though
that title does not really move Him (cf. St. Thomas, Summa I. 19.
5. c)

So our text continues: God found fault with the people, who did not
obey, and with the inadequate covenant. Therefore He announced
through Jeremiah (31. 31-33) that the time was coming when He would
make a new covenant. In saying new, He indicated the previous one
was old and about to fall away.

We had better note the comparison of this to St. Paul in Romans
11;1 and 29: God as not rejected His people... . His call is
without repentance, without change. So the Jews are still called to
be part of His people. Some have accepted that call. But in the
middle of that same chapter Paul makes a comparison of two olive
trees: the tame one is the original people of God; the wild one is
the gentiles. Many branches fell off from that original tree.
Sadly, that means they stopped being part of the people of God. We
recall the frightening words of Our Lord in the parable of the
wicked tenants, in Matthew 21. 33-46. He told the Pharisees that
the kingdom, that is membership in the people of God, or the Church
or the messianic kingdom - all are the same - would be taken from
them. So they would no longer be part of the people of

God. They would be the branches that fell off the original olive
tree by their rejection of the long-promised Messiah. In their
place the gentiles were engrafted , a things the Jews had never
understood from the many OT prophecies of gentiles coming to
Jerusalem. (They thought it meant all gentiles would become Jews.
But St. Paul in Eph 3. 6 reveals a mystery not known before: the
gentiles are to form one people with those Jews who remained
faithful to the original covenant: one flock and one shepherd (John
10. 16).

So the final picture is this: the new covenant is both a
continuation and a fulfillment of the old, with the Messiah so long
promised being accepted by those who were faithful to the original
covenant. But the one flock and one shepherd consists of both Jews
who accepted the Messiah, and of gentiles who also did so. They
become one flock. They are spiritually children of Abraham, as St.
Paul brings out in Romans 4. They are as some say today "spiritual
Semites". Racial descent is unprofitable (cf. Matthew 7. 13-14; Lk
13. 23-24 - which seem to tell the Jews that it not enough to be
racially children of Abraham, who they thought would not let any
circumcised Jew enter into Gehenna); it is following in the faith
of Abraham that counts.

This covenant theme, quoting as it does Jeremiah 31. 31-33, was
especially pertinent to the time of Jeremiah when in 621 BC the
book of the law was found in the temple, and King Josiah solemnly
renewed the covenant for himself and for his people - except that
so many of the people merely went through the ceremony outwardly,
as Jeremiah seemed to very soon (cf. Jeremiah, 3. 6-10 and chapter
11).

What of the law being implanted in their hearts? This is the same
as that of which St. Paul wrote in Romans 2. 14-16, where he cited
this very text of Jeremiah: The gentiles who do not have the
revealed law do naturally what the law requires, for they read what
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, writes on their hearts. In
so doing, they are really Christian - as St. Justin Martyr wrote
(Apology 1. 46) of Socrates and others like him.

Hosea lamented (4. 1 & 6) that there was no "knowledge" of God in
the people. The usual translation is inadequate. It notes that the
noun dath is used, which can be used to mean knowledge. Yet since
it is really an infinitive of yada, which has broad meanings: know,
love, obey etc. therefore knowledge would be better translated as
obedience, obedience to the covenant. Hence in Hosea 6. 1 God says:
I want hesed , obedience to the covenant - more than sacrifice, and
knowledge of God rather than holocausts. Again, knowledge really
stands for obedience, as indicated by the parallel part of the
sentence calling for hesed, obedience to the covenant.

Further, if all "know" -- in the sense of obey - God, then there is
no such thing as a permission to commit fornication and murder a
thousand times a day and still be right with God because of the
once-for-all sacrifice. That sacrifice earned all forgiveness - it
still had to be accepted, by knowledge of God, that is, obedience
to Him.

We may well wonder if Jeremiah understood the full objective import
of his prophecy (Cf. Vatican II, Lumen gentium 55 which shows
uncertainty of whether or not the authors of Genesis 3. 15 and
Isaiah 7. 14 really saw in their lines what the Church today sees).
He would naturally tend to think of the obedience to the law
written on hearts as parallel to the obedience required at Sinai,
that is, the obedience of the people. But it really referred
essentially to the obedience of the coming high priest, obedience
even to death. Hence that high priest was the guarantor, as we saw
in 7, 22 of the new covenant. It was His obedience that validated
it. The people still had to "know" God, and be like their high
priest. Again, we think of the syn Christo theme we spoke of above.

Whether or not Jeremiah saw all the implications of His own words,
yet the Holy Spirit, the chief author of all of Scripture, surely
saw and intended them (cf. again Vatican II, Lumen gentium 55). Our
present Epistle speaks of that obedience of the high priest so many
times, especially in 10. 7.