The Blood of the Covenant

Sacred Hearts Convent - June 13, 1982

When Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to his Apostles saying, "Take this; this is my body." Likewise, he took a cup, gave thanks and passed it around saying, "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured out on behalf of many." Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we echo the words of the Lord and we say, "This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven."

In both the Old and the New Testament, the shedding of blood is intimately linked with man's covenant with God. We have a good illustration of that in the first reading. The Israelites are at the foot of Sinai. God has given to Moses the commandments. God was promising his people to be their God, their protector if they accepted to be his people; and the sign they were his people is that they will worship him alone and keep the commandments he was giving them. As Moses presented the terms of the covenant to the Israelites, they all answered with one voice. "We will do everything that the Lord has told us." And they ratified the covenant by offering a sacrifice. In this case, they sacrificed young bulls. The blood of the animals was a substitute for man offering his very life to God, his Lord and Master.

To signify and ratify the covenant, the partnership between God and man, Moses took some of the blood of the bulls and splashed it on the altar, representing God; then he sprinkled some on the people, saying: "This is the blood of the Covenant which the Lord has made with you."

But why blood? The ancient Hebrews saw blood as something sacred. Realizing that blood is essential to life, that if you bleed completely, you die, they believed that life was in the blood. And since life belongs to God, our Creator, and must be treated with the greatest reverence, so blood must be treated with similar reverence. Splashed on the altar of sacrifice and on the people, the sacrificial blood signified the intimate union of man and God: our life is united with his. Blood belongs to God, the author of all life. So do we recognize that we belong to him. And so the Israelites ratified their covenant with God by offering a sacrifice and sprinkling blood.

For the Israelites, blood was believed to be so sacred as to communicate holiness.

• They used it to consecrate priests, anointing them with blood.
• When they restored a cleansed leper to fellowship with the community, they anointed him with blood.
• When, during a sacrifice, they sprinkled blood on the people, it was to make them a people consecrated to God, a holy nation.

One important requirement of any covenant, any partnership, is the free acceptance by both parts of the terms of the agreement. In a marriage covenant, both man and wife have to say yes.

By his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus atoned for our sins and restored us to God's friendship. Once again, God's friendship with man is available to all. But we, like the ancient Israelites must accept the terms of the covenant. We accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; in him and through him, we are united with the Father and became his children. But we must freely accept this friendship, this relationship with God. We must agree to worship God and him alone; we must accept to live by the Gospel.

The Holy Eucharist is our opportunity to say "Yes" to this new pact with God. Of course, we said "yes" to God when we were baptized. But, like our religious vows, we have to continually, daily, renew our commitment and keep our relationship with God alive and growing. There are many other ways we can renew our "yes" to God daily, by doing his will. We must renew our response to God frequently. Otherwise, there is a great risk we will begin to revoke our "Yes" in many ways in our daily living, seeking our own will instead of God's. Our participation in the Eucharist enables us to reinforce constantly our commitment to God, our Yes to his covenant.

And Holy Communion, which is a sharing in the very life of Jesus, strengthens the bond of love with our Lord. His own life flows into us, making us one. What the animal sacrifices signified to the Jews, was only a prefiguring of the wonderful reality which we have in the Eucharist. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life in him and I will raise him up on the last day."

Sermons on the Eucharist Index