The Sacrifice of the New Covenant

Dominican Academy - May 31, 1970

Beautiful and profound word of St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."

We all yearn for God, down deep in our heart, whether we realize it or not. That is because our heart was created for him. We were created to be united with God. And this union with God is what religion is all about.

But how can we reach for God to be with him? We can’t by our own effort. God is completely beyond our reach. God himself must come to us and, in a way, give himself to us. And that is just what he did. The Creator would not have made us for himself in the first place, had he not planned to make the attainment of that goal possible.

And so, as far back as the Old Testament, beginning with Noah, then with Abraham, finally with Moses on Mt. Sinai, God made a covenant with man. This divine covenant was a sort of "friendship treaty". God alone could take the initiative of such an agreement. So he made a proposal: "If you worship me and me alone, and keep my commandments, I will be your God and you my people." in other words If you accept my offer, and keep my commandments, I will love you like a father loves his children or like a husband loves his wife, I will be with you to cherish and bless you richly. This was the substance of the Old Covenant, the heart and center of the religion of the Old Testament. A union of man with his God, made possible by God's initiative, and sealed by a covenant, a solemn contract wherein the two parties pledged mutual fidelity. Like a marriage contract.

THE FIRST READING OF TODAY'S MASS relates how such a covenant was struck at the time of Moses. Moses receives from Yahweh on Mt. Sinai the commandments men must live by. Moses comes down the mountain and reads the commandments to the people assembled, and tells them that these are the terms of a covenant God is proposing to them. The people, with one voice declare their willingness to do all that the Lord has said. Finally, the proposed and accepted covenant is ratified, sealed by the offering of a sacrifice. Why a sacrifice?

Sacrifice offered signifies total submission of man to God. The things offered in sacrifice, like animals, are intimately associated with our own life: we eat the flesh of animals to sustain our life. And so we take animals, as substitutes for our own life, we give up our rights on them by burning and destroying them, and we offer them to God, as if we were offering our very lives to God. We declare, symbolically, that we belong to him completely and that we surrender our lives to him in offering a sacrifice. That is the religious meaning of sacrifices.

SPRINKLING OF BLOOD. You noticed in the 1st reading, that Moses took the blood of the slain animals. A half of it he sprinkled on the altar (representing God), and the other half he sprinkled on the people. This sprinkling signified the union of God and his people: both a share in the blood of the same victim. Thus was the Covenant between God and his people sealed in the days of Moses.

SECOND READING from Hebrews: The New Covenant was likewise ratified and sealed by blood: the blood shed by Jesus on Calvary.

By sin, man had time and again broken his part of the covenant with God. He was not capable, by his own effort, of reaching to God to be reinstated in his friendship. God alone could forgive his sin and offer a new covenant.

That is precisely what he did. Jesus, like a new Moses, became the mediator of the New Covenant, as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "Christ came as high priest... not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood and achieved eternal redemption... That is why he is mediator of a new covenant."

GOSPEL: That is why we read in the Gospel today, and every time we offer the sacrifice of the Mass: "This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the New Covenant, that will be shed for many.”

By shedding his blood on Calvary, Jesus atoned for our sins and restored friendship between God and us. A new treaty or friendship pact was enacted: the NEW COVENANT. And this is the heart and core of our religion. That is why the holy Eucharist is so important to us, so central to Christianity.

Every Mass is a sacrifice whereby we renew in the blood of Christ, our Covenant with God. That is why the Mass follows a striking parallel with the events that went into the making of the Old Covenant on Mt. Sinai.

FIRST, we hear the word of God. All of the Scriptures, in one way or another, presents to us the terms of God's covenant: his loving designs of union with us, and the way he wants us to live his teachings, his commandments, in a broad sense.

Secondly, we respond to God's Word, to his proposal. We say, like the Israelites: "All that the Lord has said, we will do." We pledge our fidelity to God, as we acclaim his word; we accept his love and friendship, but, at the same time we surrender our whole life to him. It is very much like a marriage contract. Or shall we say it is a renewal of our baptismal vows by which we first accepted God’s Covenant.

FINALLY, we ratify and seal our covenant with God by offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice. This we do every time we offer the Holy Sacrifice. We surrender our whole lives to God. Seen in this light, the Sacrifice of the Mass takes on a new depth of meaning.

And during the Mass, Christ, stands in our midst, like Moses, acting as Mediator between God and us. At every pass he brings to us God's covenant of friendship achieved by his blood on Calvary, and he recalls some of the terms of the covenant we must live by. And he demands a response of us: a response that involves more than words or liturgical rites; it is a sincere acceptation of God's friendship and a pledge to live in total fidelity to his love.

If every Mass were celebrated with this vision of faith, with this understanding, every Mass would deepen and strengthen our union with God and, at the same time, bring our whole life into fuller submission to him. How much more meaningful too would not our Communion be, as the sacrament of our union, our friendship with God, the sacrament of love!

My dear sisters, let us try to understand what we are about to do. May today’s Mass be truly for each of us the Sacrifice of our covenant with God, in the blood of Christ. Amen.

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