Bound in Love

The readings today speak to a cry for justice by the one enduring persecution. Jeremiah was a prophet sent to tell the Israelites that they were about to be sent into captivity because they had abandoned the ways of God. The Psalm today is a Psalm of Good Friday and is a cry of the persecuted, abandoned disciple of God. The gospel holds the promise Jesus made to his apostles and all his disciples, that everyone who acknowledges Jesus before others will be acknowledged by Jesus before his heavenly father. If we name him and if we claim him, he will lead us home to our heavenly father. And St. Paul in his letter to the Romans explains that we got ourselves in this predicament through the choice made by Adam and Eve to turn away from God and to follow the devil. And after sending through the centuries many prophets like Jeremiah full of words of warning, God loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for all our sins. That is the gift of sacrifice that is at the heart of the Holy Mass.

Father Neil last week preached on what the Mass is. He started by eliminating some parts of the Mass that people occasionally overemphasize: the Mass is not really about the homily, though homilies should be good; the Mass is not really about the band, though the music should be good; and perhaps more surprising to many Catholics, the Mass is not about holy communion, though Catholics not in mortal sin should make a holy communion as a part of their participation in the Mass.

Father reminded us that what is at the heart of the Mass is sacrifice. Sacrifice is what priests do in every religion. The priests of the Israelites were the ones to whom the faithful brought their cereal or their turtle doves or their goat to be sacrificed by the priest on behalf of the people. Most of the time they were sacrifices for the expiation — the erasing or rubbing out — of the sins committed by the faithful.

Christian sacrifice is not like that. Our sacrifice is distinctive in at least four ways. In the first way, it is not a bloody sacrifice of a replacement animal. Father Neil does not kill a turtledove as part of his priestly duties to offer the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. So what is the Christian sacrifice? The Christian sacrifice is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. We call it the liturgy of the Eucharist to remind ourselves that it is a liturgy of thanksgiving. That is what the word Eucharist means: Thanksgiving. And we Christians find in the Old Testament support for the idea that what God really wants is not the blood of animals but thankful and contrite hearts. In Psalm 50, he asks, “do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of he-goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God; fulfill your vows to the most high. Then call on me on the day of distress; I will rescue you, and you shall honor me.”

The third way that Christian sacrifice is distinctive is that it is not bound by time and space in the way that every other sacrifice in every other religion is. The Mass that the priest offers this morning in this location is — in some mysterious way — a full participation in the sacrifice by Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary on that particular day in the year 33 A.D. It is also, again mysteriously, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that participates in the eternal heavenly banquet which was revealed to us in the book of Revelation by St. John. And, the Mass that we offer this morning participates in a mysterious way with all the Masses that are being offered today around the globe, and all the Masses that ever were offered around the globe through the centuries.

The fourth way that Christian sacrifice is distinctive is that it is a sacrifice in which we all participate. It is not a sacrificial act performed exclusively by the cultic priests, the ordained priests who are given a special power to offer sacrifice through their ordination. As Father Neil explained last week, every one of us through our baptism participates in the threefold ministry of Jesus Christ: priest, prophet, and King. Through the common priesthood, all of us who are not ordained priests participate in the sacrificial offering of the Holy Mass.

The sacrificial nature of the Mass is a little bit easier to see in some settings than in others. If the altar were pushed back a few feet, and if the tabernacle were pushed forward a few feet then Father could offer the liturgy of the Eucharist from the front of the altar table, and that would make it very clear visually that he, and we, were participating in something that was being offered up to God through the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. When the altar is pulled far away from the tabernacle and put in the middle of the people, and when Father stands behind the table and talks at us, it can be visually difficult to see this as a sacrifice and much easier to begin to think of it as a meal. So sometimes the way that we pray can either reinforce or subtly work against the things that we say we believe.

But what we do believe is that the liturgy of the Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. We bring gifts of bread and wine forward at the offertory. And Father takes those gifts and blesses them and offers them to God. He prays for the church, he prays for the living, he prays for the dead, he connects us to all the apostles and the martyrs; and the central act is when he repeats the words that Jesus gave his apostles, so that by the power of God’s word what was bread and what was wine mixed with water is now truly, substantially, at its essence, at its core, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. Where other religions sacrifice a replacement animal, we Catholics re-present – show again, re-participate in, bring to our time – the self-sacrifice of the son of God on the cross. Only an ordained priest with the proper intention of the church can effect the Eucharist. There really is only one Eucharistic minister at the Mass.

But by virtue of our common priesthood, we all can do our part. Our part is to bring forward our sacrifices. These are not sacrifices of bread and wine like the priest Melchizedek. These are our sacrifices that in small ways are crosses. It’s not the cross of Calvary, but it is the cross of illness, it is the cross of losing loved ones, it is the cross of children who walk away from the faith, it is the cross of poverty. It is also an offering of praise and thanksgiving. It is our acknowledgment that God truly is great. It is our testimony that he really does care for us. It is our witness that we really do trust him. It is our statement of faith that even though we may experience as Jeremiah did terror on every side, we will be, as Jesus taught the Twelve, no longer afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. These crosses on which we sacrifice our losses and other ways that we have died to self, and these offerings of praise and thanksgiving in which we acknowledge and adore our heavenly father who loves us, these are the ways that we participate in the sacrifice of the Holy Mass.

If you managed to get to the church before the procession, then now you know what your prayers before Mass should be. Lord, let me think about the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and self-denial that I wish to offer to you during the liturgy of the Eucharist. If you did not manage to get to church before the procession, then consider using the time of the offertory to gather your thoughts so that when Father begins the Eucharistic prayer, you are ready to offer your gifts of self-sacrifice, of praise, and of thanksgiving. At the end of the Eucharistic prayer, the Great Amen will not only mean, “I agree with what Father said,” but also, “and all the things I brought to my God.” This is what active participation really means. We in the pews or up here as deacons or altar servers can put our minds and our hearts on the focus of the sacrifice that is at the center of our liturgy. If we do this, then our communion will truly be a Holy Communion.