| Readings for June 10, 2012
THE BLOOD OF THE NEW COVENANT
Having just completed the Easter Season, we have two Sundays on which we celebrate special solemn feasts. Last week we celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Our celebration this week is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi). Both of these solemn feasts, celebrated on the Sundays following Pentecost, clearly help us to carry on the message of Pentecost and the entire Easter Season into the remaining Sundays of the Liturgical Year. Today's solemnity gives us the opportunity to focus on the meaning of the covenant poured out for us in the sacrifice of Jesus.
The first reading from Exodus focuses on the blood sacrifice of animals which was important in fulfilling the law and keeping the covenant. Moses mediated the covenant between God and the Israelites. After the Israelites accepted the covenant, Moses sprinkled animal blood on them. This ritual represents the ancient view that blood was effective in establishing community between God and the Israelites.
In the passage from Hebrews, Jesus is depicted as both the mediator and the sacrificial victim on behalf of the people.
The Gospel, which is Mark's passage of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, also focuses on the covenant. This, however, is not the old covenant. It is not the shedding and sprinkling of animal blood that is the sacrifice and the ritual. It is the shedding and the consumption of the blood of Jesus which seals the new covenant.
"This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God."
Through the cross of Jesus, through the shedding of his blood, we were given the chance to enter the Kingdom of God. The new law replaces the old law, and the new law is Jesus and the sacrifice he gave for us. Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus makes a blood offering incomparably superior to the sacrifice of old. In doing so, he inaugurated a new covenant relationship between God and us. By grace through faith, we may be redeemed for eternal life and renewal in the image of God.
Let us continue this remembrance of the promise of salvation and its empowerment for our Christian living as we move through the season of Ordinary Time, because the Body and Blood of Jesus fills us with strength for our journey to the Kingdom.
PRAYER FOR THE WEEK
(Collect-The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ)
O God, who in this wonderful sacrament
have left us a memorial of your Passion,
grant us, we pray,
so to revere the sacred mysteries of your Body and Blood
that we may always experience in ourselves
the fruits of your redemption.
Who live and reign with God the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
one God, forever and ever. Amen.
Jim Wojcik, is active in many liturgical ministries at Ascension, most especially, as coordinator of the Art and Environment Committee. Jim works in the Undergraduate Admissions Office at the University of Chicago.
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