PERFECTED BUT UNDERGOING SANCTIFICATION


WEDNESDAY, THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Heb 10:11-18; Ps 110:1-4; Mk 4:1-20

The Sanctification of the Perfect

We proceed with the author of the letter to the Hebrews in his distinction between the Levitical priesthood and the priesthood of Jesus Christ. In his explanation, we also understand the reason for multiplying the instantiation of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, which is different from the reason for the multiplication of the Levitical priesthood. He had already thrown much light on the former. The additional input in today’s passage is that the Levitical priests perform their duty of offering their sacrifices daily, irrespective of their inability to take away sins. “All the priests stand at their duties every day, offering over and over again the same sacrifices which are quite incapable of taking sins away.” The weakness of the Levitical sacrifices to address the problem of sins is its inability to remove or correct the root cause of sin, namely, ignorance of God’s will and loving consecration of our nature to him. The devil exploited the ignorance and the corresponding lack of consecration in the Garden of Eden. The priests repeat the sacrifices daily to keep the consciousness of sins alive in us so that we may long for the ultimate solution God promised us at the fall of Adam and Eve. The old sacrifices, as the Law, function to keep us conscious of our sins, and not to take them away. 

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ at his conception fulfilled the promise God made for our salvation from sins and evil, as the Psalm echoes. “A prince from the day of your birth on the holy mountains; from the womb before the dawn I begot you. The Lord has sworn an oath he will not change. ‘You are a priest forever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.’” Because he is a priest, he offers sacrifices. Since his priesthood is forever, his sacrifice must be eternal. So, his sacrifice to God is his life, and the victim is the humanity of our Lord. His body and blood signify this sacrifice that we offer every day. Because the Person of the Eternal Word, in human nature, made the sacrifice, his soul and divinity are part and parcel of the offering to the Father. The new covenant and sacrifice address the root cause of the problem of human sins through the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, by which human nature knew God and got consecrated to the will of the Father in principle or origin. God’s promise to create enmity between the Woman and the devil, between her Offspring and the seed of the devil, implied this consecration of a pure human nature to his Word. The consecration would solve the problem if it becomes the beginning or principle of a new humanity. Our baptismal consecration and profession achieve this in us.

This consecration is the new sacrifice of Jesus Christ offered once and for all. “He, on the other hand, has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken his place forever, at the right hand of God, where he is now waiting until his enemies are made into a footstool for him.” The sacrifice is single because it is an offering of his whole life; it is one because it is continuous and unbroken. The same sacrifice continues when and wherever the life of Jesus Christ is instantiated or realised. The sacrifice happens eternally in heaven, mystically in the Church as his mystical body, and spiritually in each of the believers who are his members. The purpose of the ordination of ministerial priests is for the sacramental realisation of the presence of Jesus Christ for the sacramental offering of the new sacrifice, which helps the faithful to mystically unite with Jesus Christ, the body and the head, in his offering of the one single and eternal sacrifice to the Father. The author calls this sanctification of the perfect. “By virtue of that one single offering, he has achieved the eternal perfection of all whom he is sanctifying.” The same sanctification is happening in the faithful through his words we internalise and practice as he explained in the parable of the Sower. “And there are those who have received the seed in rich soil: they hear the word and accept it and yield a harvest, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” His word sanctifies us to bear fruits of holiness.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to understand the mystery and miracle of our salvation in Jesus Christ, that we may devoutly offer ourselves in union with him through the Holy Spirit daily for the completion of the work of sanctification in us. Through the same Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.  

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