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.
Holy Saturday, April 16
The Book of Ezekiel: Historians of the subject seem agreed that Judaism as a “world religion”—a religion sufficiently portable to be carried anywhere in the world—was largely the product of the Babylonian Captivity.
It was during those four decades (587–538 BC) in exile from the Holy Land that Israel perfected, and learned mainly to rely on, the moveable institutions that were to give it defining shape and vitality for the next two and a half millennia: canonical Scriptures, synagogue, rabbinical authority and scholarship, the rituals of domestic piety and personal discipline. During most of the time since 586 BC, in fact, Judaism has not even possessed some of its earlier formative institutions, such as the temple and its priesthood.
Now among the individual figures who contributed to that important development during the Babylonian Captivity, surely none was more significant than the priest and prophet Ezekiel, who had already gone to Babylon eleven years earlier, in 507, as a political hostage. So essential was Ezekiel during that formative time that he has sometimes been called “the father of Judaism.”
Ezekiel was surely a complex man. Mystical, even clairvoyant, he was also very logically methodical, never incoherent, nor aimless, nor rambling. However ecstatic his visions, he had clearly reflected on them with calm and thoughtful deliberation before writing them down. Seldom, if ever, has the entranced appeared so rational.
Ezekiel must likewise be counted among the most educated and cultured men of Holy Scripture. Thoroughly familiar with all the biblical literature that preceded him, even Job, he also shows himself conversant with a vast breadth of other information about an unusual number of subjects: ancient mythologies, various wisdom traditions, geopolitical complexities, international trade, military matters, history and geography.
Most curious is Ezekiel’s sense of geographical and chronological precision. His narrative sometimes supplies the place and usually the exact date of his visions, thus introducing into the Bible a larger dose of “autobiography” than is found in any other prophet. Indeed, we may think of Ezekiel as the first “diarist” in Western religious history, for his book reads as a sort of spiritual journal. Today’s reading illustrates the point; it describes Ezekiel’s call to be a prophet.
In the second half of summer Ezekiel received his inaugural call by the banks of the Kabari Canal, a man-made waterway that flowed out of the Euphrates, through the city of Babylon, and then back to its mother river.
This “fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiakin” is calculated to be the period between April 30 of the year 593 and April 18, of the year 592. The “fifth day of the fourth month” of this year was August 4, 593.
Easter Sunday, April 17
The Lord’s Day: t is not without purpose that this expression, “the Lord’s Day,” has two meanings in Holy Scripture.
The earliest meaning of this word is the day of Judgment. This is the meaning it has in the prophecies of Amos and Zephaniah, the yom Adonai is the day of reckoning, the day when the Lord settles accounts with history. It is the dies illa, “that day,” the day that will belong completely to the Lord.
The Bible’s later meaning of this expression, “the Lord’s day,” is the first day of the week, the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, the hemera kyriake of the New Testament. Thus, St. John in the Book of Revelation says that he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” meaning Sunday. Perhaps this is the meaning of the expression best known to us.
Whereas the earlier meaning of the “Lord’s day” tends to refer to the last day, the final times, in the New Testament it refers rather to first day, the beginning of the new creation brought into being by the Lord’s Resurrection.
In this respect it is unfortunate that we think of Sunday as part of the “weekend.” Sunday has nothing to do with the end of the week. Sunday is the beginning of the week, the day of priority, the first fruits of the rest of the week. And this is why we observe Sunday entirely for the Lord’s purposes. It is the day given over to worship.
Sunday is called the Lord’s day, because it was on this day that God made Him Lord and Christ, this Jesus who was crucified.
Ezekiel 2: After his inaugural vision in Chapter 1, Ezekiel now formally receives his call in Chapter 2. The Spirit (in Hebrew Ruach), of which Ezekiel spoke in 1:4 (where the same Hebrew word is usually translated as “Wind”), now enters into him, causing him to stand up. This is the same Ruach that will enliven the dry bones in Chapter 37.
It will be another six years before Jerusalem will be destroyed, and the exiles, to whom he is sent to preach, are rebellious. Ezekiel is exhorted not to be impressed by them, nor necessarily to expect positive fruits from his preaching. In terms very reminiscent of the calls of Moses and Jeremiah, Ezekiel is instructed to continue preaching to his contemporaries, no matter how they receive his word. It is God’s word, after all, that he will speak.
Toward the end of this chapter he will be handed a scroll of God’s word, which he is instructed to eat. This is one of several places in Holy Scripture where God’s Word is likened to food.
This image also indicates the prophet is to assimilate God’s Word and to preach it from within the digestive processes of his own mind and heart. It is always the word of man as well as the Word of God. According to Christian theology God speaks to man through the inner creative workings of his mind and heart. In that inspiration by which God caused the Holy Scriptures to be written, man himself was a co-worker with God, a synergos. God’s word is likewise, then, the word of some human being who is properly called an “author.”
Monday, April 18
Redemption & Resurrection: Too often—if my impressions are correct—the Resurrection and Ascension of our Savior are treated simply as the aftermath of the sacrifice of the Cross, the first effects of Redemption, so to speak. It has often been assumed that Redemption took place entirely on the Cross—everything else was a kind of aftermath.
A Christian theology informed by Holy Scripture, however, will insist that the Lord’s Resurrection and the Ascension. His glorification on high accomplished that liturgical perfection which was but faintly symbolized in the Old Testament sacrifices that prefigured it.
The victims of the Old Testament sacrifices, after all, were not only immolated, expressing the self-gift of those who offered them; they were also transformed by sacred fire and thereby ascended to God as the expression of Israel’s worship. God received them in the fire.
In the case of our High Priest and Victim, the Holy Spirit was the true fire that transformed His immolated Body and raised it up to the Father as the perfect oblation, the supreme act of worship. The Father received the sacrifice of Christ in the fire of the Holy Spirit.
This is what St. Paul had in mind when He wrote that Christ “gave Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:2). On the cross Christ “through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God” (Hebrews 9:14).
This truth respecting the sacrificial quality of the Lord’s glorification is perhaps best expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which portrays Jesus’ entry into the true and heavenly sanctuary as the final act—the liturgical act—by which He was perfected in His priesthood. Indeed, if Jesus “were on earth, He would not be a priest” (8:4).
Ezekiel 3: The point of eating the scroll was that the prophet should internalize God’s message, assimilating it into his own being, so that he could speak God’s word as his own (cf. Revelation 10:8-11). It remains one of the great images of prophetic inspiration: “All my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart.”
Thus, we believe that the teaching of the Pentateuch is not simply the word of God, but also the word of Moses. We contend that God spoke to Moses through divine inspiration, a Spirit-breathed process that included the thinking and imaginative powers of . . . Moses. Biblical Inspiration means that God’s word was filtered through—digested by—fermented in—the mind and heart of a human author.
Revelation comes to us, accordingly, through the inner anguish of Jeremiah, the soaring minds of John and Isaiah, the probing questions of Job and Habakkuk, the near despair of Qoheleth, the structured poetry of David, the disappointments of Jonah, the struggles of Nehemiah, the mystic raptures of Ezekiel, the slow, patient scholarship of Ezra, the careful narrative style of Mark, the historical investigations of Luke, and that pounding mill, the ponderous thinking of Paul.
God’s Word finds expression in inspired literature, because it first assumed flesh in human thought and imagination. This truth is indicated in that vision where Ezekiel sees God’s word on a scroll that he must eat. That is to say, God’s word always comes to us in a fermented, pre-digested form.
This great vision is then followed by seven days of reflection (verses 15-16), at the end of which Ezekiel is made aware of his new vocation as a watchman for God’s people. Whether they heed him or not, the watchman has a divinely commissioned responsibility to give proper warning. This theme will return in Chapter 33.
Tuesday, April 19
Luke 24.13-25: All of Christian doctrine is rooted, I believe, in Jesus’ paschal discourse to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The timing of that discourse is likewise significant, for it took place on the very day of His rising from the dead; on that day “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,” demonstrated that He “was worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.” He was worthy to do this because He was slain and had redeemed us to God by His blood (Revelation 5:5, 9). Jesus interprets Holy Scripture—indeed, he is the interpretation of Holy Scripture—because he “fulfills” Holy Scripture through the historical and theological events of his death and Resurrection. His blood-redemption of the world is the formal principle of Christian biblical interpretation.
As for the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, Jesus continues to act his play to the end: “Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone farther.” This is at least the third time, since the trip started, that Jesus teases these men in order to take the conversation in the direction he wants it to go. As though reluctantly—and only at their explicit invitation—“He went in to remain with them.”
Ezekiel 4: Here begins a sequence of symbolic actions that Ezekiel is commanded to perform, as though in pantomime, to serve as efficacious signs to his brethren in the Captivity. These actions function as prophecies too, prophecies conveyed in sign language as it were. These prophetic actions have their counterparts elsewhere in Holy Scripture, such as the symbolic names that Hosea and Isaiah gave their children, and Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree.
The first of Ezekiel’s signs, a sort of symbolic enactment of the siege of Jerusalem, involves the prophet playing like a child with building blocks, placing the various pieces into an elaborate scene, accompanied by a narrative. Children do this kind of game all the time. A solitary child, indeed, may spend hours at it, telling himself the story as he moves the little pieces around.
The second action, more abstract, symbolizes the punishment of Israel and Judah, the former destroyed in 722 and the latter to be destroyed in the near future.
The prophet’s third action portrays the suffering of the siege about to come upon Jerusalem. Most significant to this prophetic priest is the ritual uncleanness that must accompany the preparation of the food and the circumstances of the people’s defeat. In the few words that Ezekiel himself speaks in this chapter, we observe the intense emotional pain felt by the prophet in the enactment of these symbolic gestures.
Wednesday, April 20
John 20.1-10: From the beginning, the proclamation of the Gospel has always involved a claim that the full weight of universal human wisdom declares to be impossible: the resurrection of a man who had been dead in his grave for a couple of days—as distinct from the mere resuscitation of someone who was presumed to be dead.
This claim, without which there is no Gospel, is the primary component of the “folly” mentioned by the Apostle Paul as inevitably characteristic of the Christian message. That is to say, those who proclaim the Gospel must face the fact that everybody knows it cannot be true!
For this reason, those who believe the Gospel inevitably find themselves separated from what the rest of the human race considers normal and sane. They willingly place themselves outside of every premise and expectation common to the race of men. From the minute they accept the Gospel thesis, they implicitly declare that they no longer care a fig about what the rest of the world thinks; they are prepared to be regarded as fools on the earth. Believers go for broke. They have burned their bridges with respect to this world. All their eggs are in the Easter basket.
This detachment from the expectations of the world is the source of an immense practical freedom for the Christian people. Believers are aware that the world—if it is wrong with respect to its most fundamental premise and most tenacious preconception—may be wrong with respect to just about anything.
Consequently, they may now start from scratch with respect to human opinion on any matter whatever. If they cannot concede to human wisdom at least that point—the physical finality of death—there is never again a compelling reason to concede any point to human wisdom. They have nothing to fear from the world.
Ezekiel 5: This chapter begins with the fourth symbolic action imposed on Ezekiel, which signifies the various fates awaiting the citizens of Jerusalem as the siege nears its end. It is clear that only a tiny remnant of them will survive. The rest of the chapter is a stirring oracle explaining why so severe a judgment is falling on Jerusalem. It will be so grievous, the Lord says, because He expected so much more of the city that He had chosen as His dwelling place on earth.
Ezekiel, as a priest charged to minister in the temple, was deeply acquainted with the sacred worship that made Jerusalem so special. This elect place of God’s presence and His proper worship have been particularly defiled by the idolatry of the populace (5:11). Whereas Jeremiah (7:1-15) had already warned the people of Jerusalem that they would not be saved by their mere possession of the temple, Ezekiel now instructs them that this possession will render their punishment all the more severe. God expects more from the one to whom He has given more, but the chosen Jerusalem has offended Him even worse than the nations that He did not choose.
Thursday, April 21
1 Peter 1.1-8: The recipients of this letter are “chosen,” or “elect” (eklektoi), a term of long usage in the Bible, particularly in reference to Israel as the Lord’s Chosen People. For instance, “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6).
Peter’s Christian readers are described as eklektoi in the sense that they represent and embody the historical extension of Israel, God’s Chosen People. As such, they are “God’s flock” (5:2). This is a familiar theme in the New Testament, of course. Just a few years before this epistle from Rome, the believers at Rome had received from St. Paul another letter, in which the Gentile Christians were portrayed as alien branches grafted onto the ancient olive stock of Israel (Romans 11:13-24).
It is important to observe that the modifier, “elect” or “chosen,” is plural; it refers to the whole People of God, as it does throughout Holy Scripture. There is no suggestion here of some theory of individual predestination to salvation: indeed, the idea is alien to the Bible. Except when it refers to individual calls to ministry and service, the modifier “chosen” is normally plural and refers to God’s People.
Ezekiel 6: The prophet, standing in Babylon, faces westward, the direction of Israel, to pronounce this oracle of doom. The threefold destruction predicted here (sword, famine, and pestilence) stands parallel to the three portions of Ezekiel’s shaved hair and beard in the previous chapter, as does the prophecy of a remnant that will be delivered.
Whereas in chapter 5 Ezekiel addresses Jerusalem, in the present chapter he addresses the rural areas of Israel, the hills and valleys. The immediate listeners to this oracle, however, are those Israelites who have already been brought to captivity in Babylon. It is they who must take warning, for they will soon see God’s judgment on idolatry.
Idolatry—the worship of whatever is not the true God—is the root sin against which all the Lord’s interventions in history are directed. Since idolatry always involves human bondage, the Lord’s interventions are directed to deliverance from bondage. The Exodus itself set Israel free from the gods of Egypt.
Idolatry is the sin that is about to bring about the destruction of Judah, says Ezekiel, as well as Israel not so long before; idolatry is the reason that the masses of their population were carried into exile. Indeed, idolatry is itself a form of exile, an alienation from the true God.
Friday, April 22
1 Peter 1.13-25: 1 Peter 1:13-25: This section is an invitation to hope (verses 13,21). Christian hope is sustained by a twofold consideration. First, it is inspired by the final goal of the life in Christ (verses 13-17), and second, by the initial grace of the life in Christ (verses 18-21).
With respect to the first, hope is directed to the final “revelation of Jesus Christ,” his “being made visible” (apokalypsis—verses 7,13; 4:13). Relying “completely” (teleios) on this hope, believers refuse to conform to the deeds of their past, aware of their responsibility to be holy, even as God is holy (verses 14-16; Leviticus 19:2; 18:1-5,30; Clement of Rome, To the Corinthians 29.1—30.1).
In the New Testament the expression “be not conformed” (me syschematizesthe, in which we observe the English word “schema”) is found only here (verse 14) and in Romans 12:2—“And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (We observe in passing that both of these works are associated with the church at Rome.) No less than the Chosen People of old, Christians are called to be a holy people in the midst of an unholy world. The latter is characterized by “ignorance” and “passions” (verse 14). We may compare this passage with 1 Thessalonians 4:5—“not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
Christians are reminded that God’s judgment discerns the difference between His “holy ones” (“saints”) and the world (verse 17). In view of this divine discernment, Christians are to be ever mindful of the coming judgment (Romans 14:10-11; 1 Corinthians 3:12-15; 4:4; 2 Corinthians 5:10-11). Christian hope is not without this appropriate “fear” (en phobo—verse 17; cf. 2:18; 3:2,16; Acts 9:31).
Ezekiel 7: If the Bible likens good to a seed that grows, develops, and matures, the same is likewise true of evil. Like the enemy that Jesus described as sowing tares among the wheat, Ezekiel says that Israel is about to behold the blossoming and fruit of many years of evil sowing.
The scene of the coming judgment portrayed in this chapter is marked by the same cataclysmic finality that characterizes Jesus’ own predictions of the fall of Jerusalem. The “land” of Israel cursed in this chapter is to be understood in a geographical, not just a political, sense. That is, the very earth is cursed, as the ground is cursed in Genesis 3. Drawn from the earth, man pollutes that source by his accumulated sins. God’s patience is immense, but, as it relates to times and seasons, it is not infinite. The end has come, says Ezekiel. When God is “fed up,” there is nothing in this earth that can prevail against His judgment.