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
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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