Fr. Alan's homily for Sunday October 29th 2006
"Christ our High Priest:" we sometimes look at a cross with a robed and crowned Christ on it. The Letter to the Hebrews, our New Testament reading these last few Sundays, invites us to reflect on this image.
Hebrews understands Christ's saving ministry in two ways. First, it is sacrificial. The offering costs not less than everything. Christ's whole life and work culminating in his death and resurrection is the sacrifice, summed up for us in his words at the Supper: This is my Body given/my Blood poured out for you and for the many.
Second, it is eternal. It does not stop with Christ's resurrection, because he is interceding for us eternally in heaven. It is an eternal sacrifice, realised on earth each time the Eucharist is celebrated. The image of Christ the High Priest is a reminder to us of what the Eucharist is about.
The Lord's mandate, Do this is memory of me, likewise has a double meaning. It is an order to celebrate the Eucharist and an invitation to live in accord with his spirit and teaching, to be as he is, as someone in the world but not of it.
It is easy to celebrate Mass. It is much harder to live in accord with his spirit. For then we are not of the world, and indeed increasingly likely to be against it. The Mass is not called the Sacrifice of the Lord's Body and Blood for nothing.
It is a growing practice to have communion services in the absence of a priest. But the Church is cautious, because you cannot truly have the Lord's communion without the Lord's sacrifice. Too much communion outside the celebration of Mass might let us get away with the idea that we can have a comfortable relationship with Jesus and forget the cross. The indispensable prelude to communion is the Eucharistic Prayer, the memory of his sacrifice. The meal ticket to Christ's table has the price of Christ's sacrifice on it.
For this reason, Pope John Paul said that bishops should not give permission for such services easily, and certainly not where Mass is available at no great distance.
Recently the Government announced proposals to oblige faith schools to admit a proportion of children from non faith backgrounds. For Catholics, this would have represented a departure from the tradition of partnership between state and Church that has worked since the Butler Education Act of 1944. The Government has wisely stepped back from that.
But that episode is a serious indication that we can no longer take it for granted that we can be good citizens, if the price of citizenship is the denial or watering down of what we believe in.
Living according to the spirit and teaching of Jesus, being conformed to him, becoming Christ, in a sense, through the offering of his Body and Blood: that is not going to be a comfortable option. We could simply take what he gives and ignore his challenge of Eucharistic living. We could opt for easy communion and ignore the costliness of sacrifice. But then we would have no business celebrating the Eucharist at all.
Back to the image of Christ the High Priest. Notice that although robed and crowned, he is wounded in the hands and feet and side. He lives as one that has been slain. Remember too the hymn: Christ the High Priest/ Bids us all join in his feast/ Victims with him on the altar.
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