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Letters Twenty-Second
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
August 31, 2001In these recent Sunday readings from Hebrews the author has held up for his readers the example of heroes of faith from long ago. Then he spoke of the need for perseverance and for a willingness on our part to accept the efforts and suffering that faith entails. He used the image of athletes in a race and called on this group of Christian believers to be strong and to remain on the right track.
In this Sunday’s reading he tells them where that track has been leading them. He contrasts the assembling place of the old covenant with that of the new.
For the reception of the old covenant, the people gathered on an earthly mountain, Mt. Sinai. There God manifested Himself in lightning and clouds, in tempests and the sound of heavenly trumpets. The author is alluding to the accounts of the giving of the law that are found in Exodus 19.16 ff. and in Deuteronomy 4.11 ff. The people were so awestricken by the sound of God’s voice that they thought they were going to die. For that reason the people asked Moses to serve as their intermediary. He should speak to them instead of God. (Cf. Ex. 20. 18 f.)
In contrast to all that is the assembly of the new covenant. Here the gathering is not on an earthly mountain, but a heavenly one, Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. This is not a stage on a journey for a wandering people, as Mt. Sinai was, but a city, founded with permanence in mind. In this city, the people of faith join numberless throngs of angels in joyful celebration and praise of God. "The assembly of the firstborn" is there, too. This probably signifies those persons of faith that we heard about earlier and who have a special place in God’s affection. "The spirits of the just made perfect" are those who have undergone judgement by God and who have now entered into a final stage of fulfillment. There is Jesus, too, whose ministry brought this new covenant into being, and the blood whose outpouring constituted our salvation. This blood, continuously presented to the Father in heaven for the sake of forgiveness, is more eloquent than the blood of Abel shed on earth and calling for vengeance.
This passage is a kind of summary of the whole Letter to the Hebrews. Recall that the occasion for this letter was the nostalgia for the former covenant that these converted Jews were experiencing. In our passage, the author points out that, while the old covenant was initiated on an earthly mountain, the new covenant is fulfilled in heaven. The old covenant involved dread and fear, while the new is an invitation to a festal assembly composed of angels and saints. The old covenant evoked such fear that the people begged not to have to listen to God’s voice. The new covenant involves immediate contact with the God Who saves us. The new is better in every way!
Notice that, in this passage, we hear again some themes that were developed in the earlier chapters of the letter: angels (no longer superiors as mediators of the law, but fellow citizens of heaven), the new covenant (definitive, redemptive), the sacrifice of Christ (once and for all, eternal).
This summary passage invites us to hope. Christian faith is not a matter of gloom and doom, of a pettifogging God anxious to catch us out in our faults. It’s not a matter of rules and regulations and burdens, all bathed in perennial threats of punishment. Christian faith is a matter of being loved and welcomed by God rather than of fear and trembling.
That’s not to say that our faith invites us to an ongoing state of mindless euphoria, as if there were no possibility of failure, no need for effort. In fact, immediately after this Sunday’s passage, Hebrews warns its readers not to be inattentive to God, since God expects to be listened to. Yet even here the author adds that what God offers us is the possibility of unshaken assurance of final success which calls us to serve Him with gratitude.
I suspect that we all know Christian believers who seem to find great comfort in negativity. The world is in terrible shape! The Church is full of sinners! People don’t believe any more! People don’t seem to know what’s right and, even if they do, they don’t carry out what they know is God’s will! We’re going to have a hard time when the day of judgement comes! There is some truth in all that, of course, but these are only secondary things. The primary reality of our faith, and of the new covenant, is that Jesus died on the cross to bring us salvation and that salvation
will come to all those who are willing to receive it. Believers with a healthy faith are necessarily joyful and optimistic. Christ is already victorious over death!
Hebrews is an elegant and theologically sophisticated book of the New Testament, filled with scriptural learning, obviously the fruit of profound spiritual maturity. But the message it offers - to its first readers and to us - is quite simple: be faithful; be joyful; be grateful.
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Conversation Questions
How is my life oriented toward the heavenly Jerusalem?
Is my faith a source of joy for me and for others?
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