22nd Sunday 2022
Sirach 3:17-20, 28-29; Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22-24; Luke 14: 1, 7-14
With your permission (or even without it, since I am going to do it anyway, as I am the one holding the conch (1) I would like to focus on the Second Reading. It is taken from the closing chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews, the author of which is unknown, and it summarises the situation of those who belong to God’s people, the Church.
From your schooldays, you may remember exam questions beginning “Compare and contrast”. That is what the author of this letter is doing today.
He recalls the self-revelation of God to the Israelites as described in the Book of Exodus. The Israelites are the original Church, the QAHAL, ekklesia in Greek, literally “those called out”, called out from among the nations, and called out from slavery in Egypt, to stand before the Lord.
At Mt. Sinai, God appeared to the Israelites in a way which terrified them, and which our writer describes: “a blazing fire, a gloom turning to total darkness, a storm, trumpeting thunder, the great voice speaking” which the people found unbearable. The appearance of God to the first Church, the people of Israel, overawed them.
That is not, the writer claims, how God appears to us, the new people of God. Yet, he insists, God does reveal Himself. As members of the new Israel, we too have God among us, truly present, though not yet revealed in all His glory. Whenever we gather as God’s people, as we have gathered this morning, God is with us, revealing Himself to us.
Because we have come together into the presence of God, we are gathered as were the Israelites at Mount Sinai; though the Letter speaks no longer of Mount Sinai, a stage on the journey, but of Mount Zion, the new Jerusalem, our destination.
In other words, when we gather as the Church, we are in heaven, however unheavenly it may feel. This is the “already” and the “not yet” of which we shall be reminded constantly in Advent. The Kingdom of God is already present, though its fullness is not yet. We are already gathered at the banquet of the Messiah, though not yet in all its richness. We are in the company of the saints, though not yet in glory.
The writer to the Hebrews is speaking in eschatological terms, eschatology being literally “the study of the Last Things”. What we have here is “realised eschatology”, the study of the Last Things already present, though in embryo. The angels and the saints are here with us, though we do not see them; they are represented, to our senses, by the people around us, our fellow members of the Church, our fellow saints, as St. Paul puts it in his letters.
Take a moment to look around you, and to realise that the people you see are saints: and if you are thinking “well, they don’t look like saints”, remember that they are looking at you, and thinking the same. Realise too that, here with them, though invisible to us, are the “completed” saints, those “who have been made perfect”, as they are described, who have completed their purgation, their purgatory.
Jesus too is present, the “mediator who brings a new covenant”, the covenant sealed in His blood, and renewed at the altar in every celebration of Mass, as “the blood of the new and eternal covenant” is made present for us.
For reasons known only to themselves, the compilers of the Lectionary have omitted the closing words of this passage, which recall that Jesus brings “a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s”. As an old hymn which you may recall puts it: “Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies, but the blood of Jesus for our pardon cries,” (2) that blood which we receive even when, because of the pandemic, access to the chalice is restricted.
So, by gathering in this chapel, you are gathering in heaven. The latter is not yet complete for us, but in celebrating Mass we are receiving the promise of its complete fulfilment.
1. See “The Lord of the Flies” by William Goulding.
2. “Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pains”.
