Friday 20 March 2015

The sacrifice offered on the cross was divine. (John Chrysostom) Patristic Lectionary,

Night Office John Chrysostom.
COMMENT: 
From my Lenten Read was focused on 'The Kingdom of the Divine Fiat', words from John Chrysostom illuminated, "The sacrifice offered on the cross was divine... priest in his divinity, Christ both offered and in his human nature was offered ".
Hebrews 10:9,  "Here I am, I have come to do your will."
[AMP]. Heb 10:9  He then went on to say, Behold, [here] I am, coming to do Your will. Thus He does away with and annuls the first (former) order [as a means of expiating sin] so that He might inaugurate and establish the second (latter) order. [Ps. 40:6-8.] 
Heb 10:10  And in accordance with this will [of God], we have been made holy (consecrated and sanctified) through the offering made once for all of the body of Jesus Christ (the Anointed One). 

FOURTH WEEK OF LENT
  FRIDAY    Year I
 First Reading Hebrews 10:1-10
 Responsory      Heb 10:5-7.4; Ps 40:7-8
 Sacrifices and offerings you did not desire, but you prepared a body for me. Burnt offerings and sin offerings could not please you, so I said: + Here I am, Lord God, I come to do your will.
V. The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, and so when Christ came into the world he said: + Here I am ...

Second Reading From a homily by Saint John Chrysostom (Horn. de cruce et latrone 1, 1-2: PG 49, 400)

The sacrifice offered on the cross was divine

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, and if you ask where he was sacrificed, it was upon a high scaffold. This was a new kind of altar of sacrifice because the sacrifice itself was new and amazing. The victim and the priest were the same. Victim in his humanity, priest in his divinity, Christ both offered and in his human nature was offered. Listen to Paul's explanation of both these truths. He says: Every high priest taken from among the people is appointed to act on their behalf. This high priest too must have something to offer, then, and so he offers himself But in another place Paul says: Christ, having been offered once for all to take away the sins of many, will appear to those who await him to save them.

Perhaps you will ask why the sacrifice was offered outside the city walls and not in the temple. It was to fulfil the text of Scripture that says: He was reckoned among the wicked. It was offered outside the walls to show you the universal nature of the sacrifice. The purification was not for only a few as with the Jews, but for everyone. God has commanded the Jews to offer sacrifice and prayer in one place on earth to the exclusion of all others, because the whole world was polluted by the smoke and fat of burnt offerings and all the other defilements of pagan sacrifice, but for us the whole world has been purified by the coming of Christ, so that every place has become a place of prayer. And so Paul boldly urges us to feel free to pray everywhere. In every place, he says, I want the men to lift up reverent hands in prayer.

Do you not see then how the world has been purified? We are able in every place reverently to raise our hands to God because the whole world has become holy, holier than the innermost shrine of the temple. The sacrifice offered in the temple was an irrational beast but that offered on the cross was divine, and the more perfect the victim, the more perfect too is the sanctification.

          Responsory Is 53:12; Lk 23:34

Christ surrendered himself to death and was counted among the wicked. +He bore the crimes of many and prayed all the while for sinners.
V. Jesus prayed: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. + He bore the ...



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