What does it mean
to live in a covenant relationship with God?
In the Book of Exodus, Moses reads the book of the
covenant aloud to the people. It
is their first real experience of covenant, and it is grounded in a ritual that
involves holocausts and sacrifices,
after which blood is splashed on the altar and sprinkled on the people. This common offering, an offering made by the
community to God, unites them as a people under the law, and the people
respond, All that the Lord has said, we
will heed and do. The people of
Israel have thus, in ritual form, committed the whole of themselves, their life
and their being, to God. As such, their
promise is not unlike the ritual commitment evoked in Psalm 116, in which the
psalmist takes up the cup of salvation
and calls upon the name of the Lord, offering
a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the
presence of God’s people.
We recognize a
similar ritual in the sacrifice of the Mass, as described in Mark’s
Gospel: Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said, Take
it; this is my body. Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave
it to them, and they all drank from it.
Jesus clearly references the sacrifice typical of Jewish ritual in this
passage, but here, he indicates that he
is the new sacrifice: This is my blood of
the covenant, which will be shed for many.
Jesus is, as the Letter to the Hebrews points out, the mediator of a new covenant, the one and final oblation. Having
shared a common cup with his disciples, Jesus becomes both high priest and sacrifice,
obtaining our eternal redemption with
his own blood.
When we celebrate
Jesus’ death and rising, we are participating in the one sacrifice, in the very
death of Jesus. The Mass is not symbolic
of that death; it is participation in it, and in the new covenant effected in
his blood, in his flesh. His is the
blood that cleanses our consciences,
that we might learn to participate fully in his life. Like the people of Israel, we are called to
dedicate our very lives, the whole of our being, to Jesus – Eucharist calls for
just such a commitment of the whole of our selves to life in Christ. It is what unites us as a people; through
ritual, we come to live that covenant with God, with full participation, the
whole of our life.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
