A Homily for Passion Sunday
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God?
—Hebrews 9:14
As
we enter the last two weeks of Lent, we begin to contemplate more intensely the
passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. The
church has taken on an even more somber appearance; the crosses and statues are
now shrouded in purple cloth. Not only
are alleluia and Gloria in excelsis
absent from our liturgy; but even too is gloria
patri. The shadow of
During
the week between Palm Sunday and Easter we will be reminded over and over that
the Passion took place in close proximity to the Jewish feast of Pesach (or
Passover). We will hear that Christ is
the very Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us, and we will be reminded that
in the original Passover the blood of the lamb, smeared on the doorposts of
their houses, protected the children of
The original Passover was a type or foreshadowing of the salvation wrought by Jesus, by whose blood we are spared, and by whom we are led out of captivity to sin and death. The three great days to come are our Christian Passover, the fulfillment of all that was implied by the original Jewish Passover.
But in the Epistle to the Hebrews, part of which was read as our Epistle lesson this morning, the Passion of Jesus is compared to a different Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur (or the day of atonement). The requirement that the Jewish people keep a day of atonement is laid down in the sixteenth chapter of the third book of Moses, called Leviticus.
The
day of atonement was the only day when anyone might enter the holy of holies,
which was the part of the tabernacle (or later of the temple in Jerusalem) in
which God himself was believed to dwell, above the ark of the covenant. And on that day each year the high priest
offered sacrifices to God, not only for himself and his family but for the
whole people of
Two
goats were presented by the people, and the high priest held the head of one of
the goats and recited over it all of the sins of
And Scripture says: “On this day atonement is made for you to make you clean, so that you may be cleansed of all your sins before the LORD”; and: “This shall be an everlasting ordinance for you: once a year atonement shall be made for all the sins of the Israelites. Thus was it done, as the LORD had commanded Moses.”
From
the years wandering in the Sinai desert until the reign of King Solomon, nearly
three hundred years later, the holy of holies was the innermost part of the
Tabernacle, which was, at its heart, a kind of tent. From the reign of Solomon until the
Babylonian captivity, the holy of holies was the innermost part of the great
The
point of the Yom Kippur liturgy was to make atonement to God for the sins of
the Jewish nation and all of its members.
This atonement was accomplished by the sprinkling of the blood of a bull
and goat, as well as by the death of the scapegoat which, although innocent
itself, bore all of the sins of
In the Epistle, the annual sacrifice (or oblation) of animals carried out by the high priest of the old covenant is contrasted with the one oblation of himself once offered by the high priest of the new covenant. Christ, the author says, came as the high priest of good things to come. He came to offer a sacrifice not for temporary redemption, but for perpetual redemption; and he offered it not in the old tabernacle, but in a greater and more perfect tabernacle. The blood that he sprinkled was not the blood of bulls and goats, but his own blood, drawn by the lash, and the thorns, and the nails, and the spear.
And this is the great mystery of the new day of atonement: that Christ was the high priest, and the sacrifice, and, indeed, the temple itself. The old priesthood of Aaron and the old sacrifice of bulls and goats, and the old temple, were all superseded.
Jesus
himself had said, tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days;
and he was speaking of his own body. And
when, as he yielded up the ghost when sacrificed on the altar of the cross, the
veil of the old temple—the veil that separated the holy of holies from the rest
of the temple—was rent in twain, from the top throughout. And then and there Christ entered once into
the holy of holies; not year after year like the priests of the old covenant,
but once for all time, to make atonement for the sins not only of
By whom was the sacrifice offered? By Christ. And what was it that was offered by way of sacrifice? Christ. And in what temple was the sacrifice offered? In Christ. Christ offered himself, through the Holy Spirit, as a pure and spotless sacrifice to God the Father, so that by his death all transgressions might be redeemed, and we might receive the eternal inheritance to which we are called.
This is the significance of the Passion. This is what we contemplate during Passiontide.
The sacrifices of the old covenant were offered year after year; but the sacrifice of the new covenant has been offered once for all time, never to be repeated, but perpetually to be recalled. For the Church offers the sacrifice of the Mass in anamnesis, that is, in remembrance, of the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and by this anamnesis, this remembrance, the Church unites itself with the one oblation of himself once offered.
That is what we come here to do every Sunday and holy day. That is the one act of worship specifically commanded of us by Christ himself, that we do this in anamnesis, in remembrance of him. Without this, we have no reason to exist as a parish, as a diocese, as the whole Catholic church. Our identity is constituted by this anamnesis and for this anamnesis.
Especially at this time, in Passiontide, we ought to think once again about what Jesus Christ endured for our sake. The high priest of the old covenant, on Yom Kippur, first offered a sacrifice to atone for his own sins, before he could offer a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. But Jesus Christ, the high priest of the new covenant, who for our sake and for our salvation came down from heaven, was like us in every respect except sin. He needed to offer no sacrifice to atone for his own sin; and when he offered himself, he offered a spotless sacrifice. Being found in form as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even to death on a cross.
But on the night in which he was betrayed he said, “This is my body. This is my blood. Do this for the anamnesis of me.” Under the old covenant, whenever a sacrifice was offered, the priest who offered the sacrifice and the people for whom it was offered shared in eating what was sacrificed. Therefore, take and eat this bread and drink this cup, in remembrance that Christ died for you, and be thankful, for by this sacrifice we and all the whole Church receive remission of our sins and all of the other benefits of his passion.
09
March 2008
Go to a list of the deacon’s homilies.