CITIZENS OF HEAVENLY JERUSALEM

SAINTS PAUL MIKI AD HIS COMPANIONS, MARTYRS  

Heb 12:18-19,21-24; Ps 48:2-4,9-11; Mk 6:7-13

We have come to the Heavenly Jerusalem

In today’s passage, the author of Hebrews puts everything together in a beautiful summary of the whole letter. The passage is a comparison between Judaism and Christianity. It compares the inauguration of Israel as the old people of God with Judaism as the religion that came from the inauguration to the Christian people as the new people of God with Christianity as the heavenly religion. The comparison is between a copy and the reality of the religion of heaven. The former is physical, appeals to the senses, and uses sensible images, while the latter is spiritual and full of spiritual meanings. “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm; or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them.” Even Moses, the mediator of the covenant and religion, was terror-stricken at the physical manifestations. These physical manifestations describe the old religion of Judaism and every other religion mediating God to the worshippers. Though God has spoken to us through various means and media, the closest to the heavenly reality is the revealed religion of the Jews. The nearest copy of the heavenly reality is put aside because it is still a copy and not the reality. If the closest is put aside, what do we say of imperfect copies as in our various traditional religions?

The Christian religion is spiritual, appeals to the spirits, and uses spiritual language for spiritual meanings. Only faith admits us to this home of spiritual realities. “But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven.” The Law of Moses for the first-born sons shadows this heavenly reality as given on the feast of Presentation of our Lord. The direct consecration of every Christian to God makes him a citizen of heaven, even while still on earth. Thus, we live in an expanded reality constituted of physical and heavenly things. Therefore, the characteristic mindset of a Christian is that of a ‘first-born son’ consecrated to God. The sacrificial orientation of the Son must be in us while we are still in the body, as we explained yesterday. The sacrificial orientation of the Son is the Spirit of adoption in each of us.

The sacrificial orientation remains until God perfects us in Jesus Christ through the ongoing circles of presentation, purification, and sacrifice, as accomplished in the saints. “You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant and a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s.” The Son’s sacrificial orientation within us is his Spirit and power within us to overcome every spirit of disobedience to the Father’s will, which is the origin of sin in the world. The gospel tells of Jesus sending his disciples out with the said orientation. “And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic.’” The spiritual orientation of the Son was the perfection of the Japanese martyrs we celebrate today. Paul Miki was born in Japan between 1564 and 1566. He joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and preached the gospel to the Japanese people with success. He was arrested during the persecution of the Catholics together with twenty-five others, mocked, tortured, and taken to Nagasaki on 5 February 1597, where they were bound to crosses and speared to death. Only faith-vision of the heavenly realities can endow us with this sacrificial spirit of Jesus Christ. We pray for this supreme blessing from God.

Let us pray: O God, strength of all the Saints, who through the Cross were pleased to call the Martyrs Saint Paul Miki and companions to life, grant, we pray, that by their intercession we may hold with courage even until death to the faith that we profess. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.