THE SACRIFICE OF THE HIGH PRIEST

GOOD FRIDAY

Isa 52:13-53:12; Ps 31:2,6,12-13,15-17,25; Heb 4:14-1,5:7-9; Jn 18:1-19:42

The High Priest and His Sacrifice for Our Sins

The liturgy of Good Friday is unique and intriguing. It is the single day we do not celebrate the Eucharist because the Church puts the actual crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ before us for our meditation and contemplation. Thus, the Stations of the Cross are prayed and dramatized (if possible) for the people. The celebration of the Lord’s Passion takes place around 3 pm, with the readings and the passion narrative taking a major part of the time. The readings lead us to consider the nature of the High Priest and the sacrifice he offered for our redemption. The first reading from Isaiah contains a prophecy of the human conditions of the High Priest of God’s religion. The prophecy by Isaiah says the Son of Man would be born like any of us and grow among us, with nothing to distinguish him from us and nothing to attract us to him. What would distinguish him would be the purity of our nature he took, which would make him suffer keenly the impurities and sins of all of us. “Like a sapling, he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground. Without beauty, without majesty we saw him, no looks to attract our eyes; a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen their faces; he was despised and we took no account of him.” The Son of Man is one of us and our brother; we must not separate ourselves from him.

Since the Son of Man is like us in everything, his sufferings differ from ours, not essentially, but in the degree of its keenness. The causes of this keener suffering are the purity of human nature he assumed and his total dedication to God as his Servant and Priest in the face of our sins. Because he is a sacrifice to God, his life is opposed to whatever is contrary to the will of the Father. Isaiah prophesied his familiarity with sorrows and sufferings based on our sinfulness. “And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.” Hence, the Son of Man is the High Priest by the purity of his human nature and sinless birth. The Father dedicated him by exempting him from our common sin and consecrating him to his divine will. “See, my servant will prosper, he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights.” Since he is a man like us, the position as our High Priest is not foisted upon him, but he willingly accepted his consecration to the will of the Father and became a sacrifice for our sins. He would not be the High Priest without the voluntary sacrifice of his will to do the will of the Father. The Son of Man did not just share our nature but also shared the consequences of our sins without sinning himself. He did not share our sin because it is not part of our nature from origin but introduced by the evil one.

Though he was taken by force and by law, his willing submission turned his suffering into a sacrifice for our sins. “Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth.” He is not only the High Priest but also the sacrifice and the victim of the sacrifice. He defines the spiritual religion of God by bringing together the priesthood, the sacrifice, and the victim. Our vocation as Christians is to follow him in this holy and spiritual religion of God. The author of the letter to the Hebrews brings out what his role as the High Priest implies for us. “Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven, we must never let go of the faith that we have professed. For it is not as if we had a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin.” His consecration and what he achieved for us give us courage and hope to consecrate ourselves to the cause of doing the Father’s will.

The Passion narrative paints the picture of his sacrifice for us; we hear, meditate, and contemplate his love for us. In the long run, only love consecrates the priests to God. As Isaiah prophesied, the love of the Son of Man for the Father and his desire to accomplish his divine will enabled him to sacrifice himself for us. He willingly went to his death for the love of God the Father and our salvation. What he went through for the love of us, the paschal mysteries of Jesus Christ, are indispensable sources of our growth in his love and dedication to our baptismal consecration as priests of God’s spiritual religion. We must pray daily and open ourselves up to God, who deepens his love in us by the gift of his Holy Spirit. We must never trust in our human strength or devices to grow this love as Peter did and failed. He thought divine love was the same as human feeling and avowed he would give up his life for Jesus Christ without receiving the Holy Spirit of consecration, only to end up denying him three times. “As Simon Peter stood there warming himself, someone said to him, ‘Aren’t you another of his disciples?’ He denied it, saying, ‘I am not.’ One of the high priest’s servants, a relation of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, ‘Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?’ Again Peter denied it; and at once a cock crew.” These reports emphasise the weakness of our nature without God’s grace. Our consecration of ourselves to God follows God’s grace and consecration of us in Jesus Christ. Thus, we pray with the psalm: “Let your face shine on your servant. Save me in your love.”

Let us pray: O God, who by the Passion of Christ your Son, our Lord, abolished the death inherited from ancient sin by every succeeding generation, grant that just as, being conformed to him, we have borne by the law of nature the image of the man of earth, so by the sanctification of grace we may bear the image of the Man of heaven. 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.