This week's meditation come to us from Fr Ronald Creighton-Jobe, of the London Oratory, to who we are, as ever over many years of his generous service to us, very grateful.
In times of great moment in the history of Israel, God’s people were summoned to observe a year of special import, a Jubilee, summoned by the deep, resounding notes of the shofar, but above all, summoned by the Word of God to reaffirm their fidelity to the sacred covenant established by God between Himself and His people. ‘Hear, O Israel.’ The Word of God is not an object; it is the means whereby that Lord who rules His people dwells amongst them. It is the covenant that expresses the reality that is at the heart of our understanding of God’s abiding love for His people.
It is difficult for us to really understand man’s relationship with ‘the other’ before revelation. It was dominated by fear, the deified forces of nature must be kept away; the gods must be propitiated at all cost. Sacrifice was essential, even of one’s first-born.
And then came the momentous change. The God who creates man, chose, out of no other motive than love, to reveal Himself. He enters into a loving relationship with His creatures. He establishes the covenant.
Abraham sets out from all he gives him, security and identity, impelled by the conviction that God has spoken to him, that He has made a promise and given His word: ‘I will give you a land. I will make your descendants as the sands on the shore of the sea.’ He goes out into the desert on a journey, summoned by the Word of God.
To His servant Moses he reveals His name, invites him into living intimacy with Him; even more he opens to him the mystery of His very nature. ‘I am who I am. Tell them I AM has sent you.’ And he delivered His people from bondage. He liberates his chosen ones and the sign of this is the blood of the lamb – freedom, redemption. As the psalmist proclaims: ‘He saved us because He loves us.’ The lamb is slain instead of the first-born of Israel.
The sacrifices continue in the life and rhythm of the temple, but the prophets deepen the concept; the sacrifice most acceptable to God is a pure heart, a heart at peace with God.
We know the fulfilment of this long process. The last of the prophets cries out in ecstatic greeting: ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’
Jesus comes to initiate and seal a new covenant. He does so with His own blood. The first-born becomes the Lamb who is slain. We remember this wonder in the great Eucharistic discourses of St John: ‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Unless a man eat my flesh and drink my blood, he can have no life in him.’ He eats the Passover with His disciples, the first Mass with the new Israel. ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ The drama is not complete until the cup of consummation is drained on Calvary, and He cries out in triumph: ‘It is finished; it is accomplished.’
This divine action continues in His mystical body, the Church, where he continues to realise His presence until He comes again. In the Church, His body, the Word of God is not merely proclaimed, it is also made effective through the Holy Spirit who presides over the sacramental life of the New Israel and is the life of the individual believer.
This indissoluble bond between the Word and the Church must never be seen as something which reduces the sacraments which realise this link to mere images. That is the classic Protestant understanding. If we were to limit the presence of the Word only to its manifestation in the scriptures, as indeed the Reformers did, then, in the end, the Word is deprived of its very content. The Word of God is always an action in which Someone is giving Himself to someone – and this giving involves a true revelation of the very nature of Him who is the giver – in this case the Eternal Word of God Himself, made flesh for our sake, living and active in the Church with those who have been incorporated into His life through baptism.
It is the Church, founded on the rock of the apostles, and chief amongst them the rock of Peter, that the Lord, risen and glorious continues to give Himself, is made present and continues to speak to us.
In the Mass, quite naturally, we proceed from the mystery proclaimed to the mystery revealed and made present. The things of this world, bread and wine, are brought to the altar, and then, in a miracle beyond imagining, they are changed into His very self. In Holy Communion He feeds us and transforms us into Himself and we take Him to others to share in His love for all His creatures. We are literally Christ-bearers, accepting His command to love one another. The Mass is our source of union with God and with our fellow men.
One cannot separate the Body of Christ present on our altars from His abiding presence in each and every one of us. This should transform and illumine the whole challenge of love of neighbour. In our fellow Christians, we find realised, the presence of our Saviour whom we adore in the sacramental presence in the sacrifice of the Mass. In the Mass we are summoned by the Word of God to enter more deeply into the mystery of His passion, death and glorious resurrection. We are challenged to grow in love, to renew our fidelity to Christ and His Church in a world which seems so often unaware of His loving presence. And we are commanded to love one another, even as He loved us and continues to offer Himself for us in this, the greatest of His gifts.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
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