Our High Priest

A number of years ago, when I was still in seminary, I had the opportunity to spend about two weeks in the Holy Land, including about one week in Jerusalem. Among the highlights of the trip for me was a visit to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism and a place that has always fascinated me. If you’re not familiar, the Western Wall (sometimes called the Wailing Wall) is made of stone, about four stories high, right in the middle of Jerusalem’s Old City. It is the only remaining visible part of the ancient Jewish Temple Mount of the first century, the rest of which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Today, pious Jews visit the Western Wall out of respect and remembrance for all that the Temple symbolized. But for the Jews of Jesus’s age, the Temple was understood as God’s dwelling place here on earth. On high feast days, the Jewish people gathered there to worship the presence of God and each day the Temple priests offered sacrifices in penance for the people’s sins. When the Temple was destroyed, this ritual culture was destroyed along with it, and in many ways, the Jewish religion was changed forever. God’s presence was no longer something near, dwelling among them; instead it felt distant, far off. No longer could sacrifices be offered for sins, but only the private prayers of the people. Today, when Jews from around the world visit the Western Wall, they do so mostly to honor the memory of the past. They may recite quietly a psalm, or place a prayer or intercession on a slip of paper in a crack in the wall, but they are there to recall what once was and to pray for its return.

I mention all of this background because it is helpful to understand the second reading that we heard today. For the last several weeks, our second reading at Mass has come from the Letter to the Hebrews, and we will keep hearing from this letter for the next several weeks to come. The whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews – or as we would call them, the Jewish Christians – is to explain how Jesus Christ is the new High Priest, the one who by his Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection has forged a New Covenant between God and humanity. The author of this letter wants to help his readers to understand that God’s presence is not distant, far off, or unapproachable because of our sinfulness. Rather God still dwells among us, not in a Temple, but in the very person of Jesus Christ, he who is like us in all things but sin.

This week, we hear what may be the very heart of the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus is our High Priest not because he has taken this honor upon himself, but because God chose him for this role. Why? Because unlike other human priests, Jesus was able to offer a perfect sacrifice for sin – his own sinless self, his very life in exchange for our lives. Because of this, God has glorified him, raising him to his right hand. Because our humanity is now with the Father, we share in the identity in the Son – through him, we have become God’s beloved sons and daughters.

That's the general gist of the Letter to the Hebrews, and hopefully, this is not new information to us – this reality is at the very heart of our Christian faith. But the Church reminds us of it in these weeks through the readings of the Letter to the Hebrews in order to gently encourage us in an area that we need encouragement. After all, don’t we often feel like God is distant, far off from our daily realities? Don’t we too often let our sins and shortcomings and limitations prevent us from approaching him? Don’t we unwittingly tend to adopt a mindset of believing God’s presence as something inscrutable or intangible? If you’re like me, the answer is undoubtedly, “Yes.” 

19th cent. Russian icon Christ our Great High Priest and King

It is important to understand that while we may feel this way at times, this is not how God wants us to feel, nor how he truly is. God is not distant from us but utterly near, utterly approachable. In the person of Jesus, God has taken a share in our humanity and has provided for us a remedy for our sinfulness. Because Jesus shares our humanity, we are in a sense present already before God; and because of that, we can call upon his presence at every moment – to heal us, to strengthen us, to remind us that God is not distant but truly near, dwelling among us in the person of his Son. Jesus, our High Priest, did not just save us long ago – he continues to save us even now, interceding always to his Father on our behalf and reaching out to restore our humanity with his own.

“What do you want me to do for you?” That’s the question that Jesus asks in love to Bartimaeus in the Gospel. In love, he asks it also today of us. Like Bartimaeus, we need to give him a concrete answer! Call to mind right now the area of your life where you feel the most broken: the sin that you feel you cannot be rid of; the situation or relationship that needs healing beyond your own powers; the mindset or tendency that draws you away from your identity as God’s beloved son or daughter. Whatever your fault, believe that it is also an opportunity, because it is your answer to Jesus’s question: “What do you want me to do for you?” Through the power of our High Priest, that area of weakness can become an encounter of salvation. How often God wants to give us precisely what we most need, but we fail to ask! Or if we do ask, and we don’t see an immediate a response, we grow discouraged, instead of waiting patiently and confidently to see how God will respond in a way better than we knew.

Friends, as important as it is, there is another site in Jerusalem even holier than the Western Wall. It is the Tomb of Christ – notable because it is empty, because Jesus, chosen from among us to restore us to God, is now risen and at his right hand interceding for us still. Each time we approach the sacred altar, as we will in a few moments, we receive upon our very tongues not only the Lord’s Holy Divinity but the fullness of his Sacred Humanity as well, which heals us of our weakness, restores us in his grace, and reminds us of our identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters. May our Eucharist this day help us to experience anew his Presence dwelling among us and fill us with joy at the “great things he has done for us,” and can do still.

The Path to Glory

All of us, at times, are guilty of it. Amid the routines of our daily lives, especially the challenging or tiresome parts, we think about what it would be like to win the lottery, to release a hit album or bestselling novel, to run for political office and win. We fantasize about how our lives would change if we were transformed into someone rich, famous, or powerful. It’s hard not to let your imagination run wild.

Jesus of Nazareth certainly wasn’t rich or powerful. But he was famous, probably the most famous person that most ordinary people had ever seen or heard before. Imagine what it must have been like to be one of his disciples, even more of one his twelve apostles, among the inner circle of his friends and confidantes. The apostles had come to know Jesus when he was still relatively unknown, and had left everything to follow him. Before their very eyes, Jesus’s fame and authority grew, and as his inner circle of friends and confidantes, so did theirs as well. Naturally, they began to imagine about what would happen when Jesus came into the fullness of his authority, and how they would be affected. They began, in short, to fantasize about their own prospects of power.

In the Gospel today, these daydreams take concrete form: two of Jesus’s inner circle of apostles openly ask to share in his power and authority. With the possible exception of Peter, the brothers James and John might be described as the boldest of the apostles. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has nicknamed them “Boanerges”, or “Sons of Thunder,” probably a description of how they were especially bold and passionate in demeanor. If that’s the case, it’s little wonder then that these sons of Zebedee are the ones to openly ask for what all of the others had been dreaming of.

Rather than immediately dismiss them for arrogance or criticize them for being power hungry, Jesus instead asks if they are really committed to doing what it takes to achieve the glory they desire. Jesus uses two phrases to describe the tests of their resolve – they will be baptized with the “baptism with which I am baptized” and drink the “cup that I will drink”. Those words give us a clue that Jesus is perhaps not thinking of glory in the same way that James and John are envisioning it, but they don’t seem to be dissuaded in the least. They see Jesus not just as a friend or teacher, but as their ticket to an earthly influence that they could never before have dreamed of. They are ready to hitch their wagon to Jesus’s star, to borrow an old phrase, so that he can bring them what they truly desire.

I imagine that we tend to look at James and John with mild pity at their naïveté, or disgust at their ambition, or some mixture of the two. But the truth is that James and John are not far off from the right path. Following Jesus – and being baptized in his baptism, drinking the cup that he drinks – will indeed bring them great glory, though not the fame and influence that they desire. Rather, the glory they will have is a share in the Passion of Christ, which is the only path to sharing in the victory of the Resurrection. Jesus shows the depth of his own greatness when he pours out his very life on the Cross, and so fulfills the mission that his heavenly Father had entrusted to him. To be the disciple of such a master means, as he says, to learn the lesson of suffering, to see service and self-denial as the precious ambitions that lead to true glory.

The Apostles James and John, Sons of Zebedee (c. 1533) by the Master of Ventosilla

While we may think ourselves much wiser or much nobler than James and John, the uncomfortable truth is that we’re probably not. Like James and John, we too want the good things that we believe following Jesus can offer us, but we look to receive them in the here and now. Even if we don’t desire riches or fame for being Christians, we expect to receive other things which are no less worldly: acceptance and admiration, for example, solace and comfort, a general avoidance of suffering, sorrow, and self-denial – despite the fact that Jesus has precisely said that those things cannot be avoided if we wish to follow him.

This Gospel affords us the chance to look at how well we are living up to the standard that Jesus has given us: “to serve rather than be served.” If we are frank with ourselves, it’s likely that often we are not much better than the rest of the world in the very things we should be, if we truly sought to make the Lord’s mindset our own – things like: bearing gracefully insults and slights that come our way; guarding against judgmentalism of mind and heart; seeing in the poor, downtrodden, or detestable the face of Christ himself; desiring not fame, influence, or riches, but a conformity to Christ that will show others and ourselves we are serious about following the Master.

The good news is that no matter how often we may fall short, we can begin anew. Jesus has left us an abiding testimony of his love for us the sacrifice of the Cross; but it also is an example for the kind of love and service that he calls us to. The Cross is not just an unavoidable stop on our path to glory; it’s the very road to get there. What a worthy practice it is to carry a crucifix with us each day to remind us of this, or to make sure we always pray with one, to remember the kind of love that Christ calls us to. Being a Christian is not a self-improvement project – it’s about learning how to love in a true way, in a way that must die to self in order to serve the other.

Friends, following Jesus won’t bring us earthly fame or success, but it should transform our lives nonetheless. Even more, it can secure for us our heavenly reward. James and John, those “Sons of Thunder,” received at long last – and continue to enjoy – the glory they so greatly desired, but it came as the fruit of the love and service, rather than of ambition or self-interest. It is the glory promised to every person who accepts the vocation to Christian service that Jesus calls us to and for which he has given us the Cross as the path to follow. So, let us be bold and passionate and ambitious – not for ourselves, but for Jesus, and for others, by practicing humility, love, and service. Christ has called us, and has shown us how to follow after – let us begin!

The Danger of Riches

I have been a priest for a little over six years, and thus far, I have been blessed to minister quite a bit to young people. I’ve been the pastor here at St. Thomas Aquinas for just over three years, and before that, I was chaplain and administrator at a junior high school in Fort Smith. If there is one thing about young people that my experiences with them have taught me it’s that they value, above all else, authenticity. They love a "straight shooter" – someone who tells it like it is, who lays his cards openly on the table, because it’s honesty that they love best and deceit that they hate most. Even if they disagree with you, they appreciate authenticity. 

In today’s Gospel, a rich man approaches Jesus with an honest question. The Gospel according to Mark that we heard doesn’t mention it, but we know from the other Gospels that this rich man is also a young man. Perhaps he is used to people trying to beguile him because of his youth, or flatter him because of his money. He sees in Jesus a straight shooter, and so he rushes up to him to ask him the question that dominates his thinking: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s very much the question of a young person – direct, sincere, and focused on what he has to do to get what he wants. Anyone who has worked with young people recognizes such eager intensity.

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler (1889) by Heinrich Hofmann

How does Jesus respond? Gently. He reminds him of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments – specifically those that relate to how we are to treat others: to not kill; to not commit adultery; to not steal, bear false witness, or defraud; to honor father and mother. The young man responds that he has been faithful to these commandments, and Jesus takes him at his word. But having affirmed him in what he is doing well, he now tells the young man where he is “lacking.” As the Gospel says, he looks upon him with love, and then tells him to sell all that he has, to give it to the poor, and to come and follow him. If the young man desired straight shooting from Jesus, he certainly got it. Even today, we might tend to think that Jesus is asking an awful lot, perhaps too much. After all, this is by all accounts a decent man, a man who treats others fairly, who wants to receive eternal life. Must he really give up everything in order to enter heaven?

One of the deepest truths of our faith is that God knows us better than we know ourselves; he sees us as we really are, beauty spots and blemishes. The Letter to the Hebrews today says that the “word of God … is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating… able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” When Jesus Christ, the Word-made-Flesh, encountered the young man, he saw him at the deepest possible level. He saw that he was at heart a decent person, and that he had obeyed the commandments that related to others. However, he also saw that he was lacking in the first and greatest commandment: to love God above all else, with one’s heart and soul and mind and strength. The young man immediately understands how right Jesus is; he has allowed his material possessions to occupy the primacy of place at the foundation of our very self that only God must have. Only by giving up worship of a lesser god can he secure what he rightly desires: eternal life with the true and living God. Perhaps we can see then that, far from being unfair or too demanding, Jesus has helped the man go directly to the crux of the matter – he has given the man the insight to see himself as God sees him.

Sadly, as we see, the rich man is not ready to follow Jesus’s invitation. There are many things that can prevent us from hearing and heeding the voice of God. Among them, though, it seems that wealth – especially the love of possessions – presents a particular risk. Why is it so dangerous? Perhaps because it is so attractive, so alluring, and so misleading. Riches and possessions can lure us into the false sense that we are safe and secure, protected from many of the things that can cause unhappiness in this life. The rich young man in today’s Gospel certainly did not have to worry about the things that many people in first century Palestine did: how to secure another day’s wages, how to put bread on the table for another meal, how to keep a roof over their family’s head. But while his wealth offered him a certain amount of worldly security, it did not answer the deep longing that he had for the assurance of gaining eternal life. In fact, as we saw, in the end his riches became the primary obstacle for the heavenly inheritance that he desired.

The Gospel today presents us with a chance to examine how we treat the things of this world, especially our material possessions. We may not tend to think of ourselves as overly wealthy – certainly we can think of others who have more than we do. But the truth is that – compared to others whom we know, compared to others in our society and around the world, certainly compared to others throughout history – most of us in fact live lives that are quite comfortable and comparatively well off. How subtly at times do we fall into that mindset of making our material possessions the standard by which we judge our security, the goal toward which all of our efforts and striving are aimed!

Friends, we would do well to listen to the voice of Jesus, speaking with love to us – he who knows us so well, and who desires our perfection. Like the rich young man, most of us are decent enough – but it is not mere decency that will save us. Instead, we must be willing to do what the young man was not: to give up whatever occupies the primacy of place in our hearts that is not the living God. Do we give greater attention to material rather than spiritual matters? Do we treat our resources as an end, rather than a means to provide for those in our care, to help the less fortunate, to build up the Church? Have we let the desire for possessions or a focus on financial security distract us from the heavenly inheritance that God calls us to share? Do we spend more time thinking and worrying about what we have, what we don’t have, or what we want to have than we do about the state of our souls?

Pope Benedict XVI once said, “Christ did not promise an easy life. Those who desire comforts have dialed the wrong number. Rather, he shows us the way to great things, the Good, towards an authentic human life.” The rich young man in today's Gospel was not ready to accept the Lord’s invitation, but there are many who have. Today in Rome, Pope Francis canonized seven new saints for our Church – men and women who heard the voice of Christ speaking to them, and who responded. Unlike the rich young man, they knew that true, lasting wealth lies in being in relationship with the living God, and they sought to love him with all of their heart and soul and mind and strength, forsaking whatever else threatened to take his place. If we desire to join their company, let us hear the Lord’s gentle, loving invitation this day, and respond by doing whatever we must to inherit eternal life.

A "No" for a Deeper "Yes"

As a priest, I am used to being asked a lot of questions. Some are easier to answer than others. “What time is Mass?” That can be answered pretty easily. “Why do we believe in Purgatory?” That one takes a little longer. 

Maybe the most difficult questions though are the ones not about beliefs but about behavior. “Is such-and-such wrong?” “Can I do X?” “Why should I feel bad about doing Y?” These questions are hard because to answer them well can take a long time. It’s easy enough to say, “No, you shouldn’t do that,” but explaining the “why” behind it is often a more elaborate exercise. Generally, the point that I try to explain is that when the Church teaches us that not to do something, it is so that we can fulfill a higher or deeper good. A child hears its parent say, “No,” – perhaps as it reached out to touch a hot stove or tried to run out into traffic – but that “No,” is really founded upon a deeper and fuller, “Yes,” a “Yes” to the child’s ultimate well-being and happiness. In just the same way, our faith teaches us that many things are wrong – not because it wants to spoil our fun, but because it wants us to avoid those things that can turn us away from the deeper happiness that God wants for us.

In the Gospel today, the Pharisees confront Jesus with a seemingly simple question: “Is divorce lawful?” The question is straightforward but also deceptive. Divorce was lawful for Jewish people, since it had been allowed by Moses; but it also was understood as something less than what God had intended in the beginning. The Pharisees pose the question in the hope that Jesus will either seemingly compromise the higher ideals, or contradict Moses, either of which would make him appear ridiculous to his followers. But Jesus is the Son of God – he is the very Author of human life and love, the one “through whom and for whom all things have been created” (Col 1:16). To answer their question, he will not be tricked into giving a simplistic “Yes” or “No,” but rather he wants to give them a deeper explanation, the full “why” that lies at the heart of their question.

The Pharisees are fixated upon divorce as a legal reality, as something “right” or “wrong” in the context of behavior. But Jesus shows that to consider the lawfulness of divorce, you really have to consider what marriage is and what purpose it has in the plan of God. In creation, marriage has two natural purposes: the loving partnership of husband and wife, and the procreation and education of offspring. That is God’s plan “in the beginning”, as Jesus says – that man and woman should find in each other a commonality and a complementarity such that together they form a new family, and from the love of their “one flesh”, new life springs forth. Marriage, in short, has a purpose in God’s creation of helping us to thrive, to prosper, and to be happy.

Jacob de Backer, The Garden of Eden (c. 1575)

God’s plan for marriage doesn’t end there. It has those natural ends that I mentioned – the union of the spouses, and the raising of children – but it also has a supernatural purpose as well. God foresaw in the love of man and woman an image of his love for humanity. In the radical self-gift that is marriage, he foresaw the total self-gift of his Son on the Cross for us, to save us from sin and to reconcile us to him. Thus, marriage in God’s plan is not just an earthly reality but a heavenly sign. It is, in short, a sacrament – a means by which human beings can participate in the very love of God himself and become themselves a symbol of the union he intends for us to have with him for all eternity.

After looking at what God desires marriage to be, perhaps we can better see why divorce is a corruption of his plan. If marriage were only about making us happy on earth, we might conclude that divorce is fairly sensible; after all, who wants to be in an unhappy marriage? But marriage is about more than mere happiness on earth – it’s intended to be a sign of the heavenly marriage of God and his creation. Through the mutual sacrifice, commitment, and self-gift of marriage, spouses learn to love each other in a way that goes beyond mere nature – they learn to love with God’s love, and so help each other get to heaven.

That, in short, is God’s vision for married love – but as we know, that is not always how it works out. Some people, for example, deeply desire to be married, but never find the right person to whom to give themselves. For others, they know personally the sting of divorce. While God has intended for marriage to be lifelong, it is true there are times and situations – such as chronic instances of infidelity or abuse – in which divorce might be not only justified but necessary. And some people are called to give up their natural desire for married life in order to give themselves to a higher reality – to priesthood, to religious life, or to the consecrated single life.

We can’t really do justice to all of these matters here – they would have to be topics for other homilies. Instead, if there is one thing that we should take away from today’s readings it is this: as Christians, we have to view everything about our earthly lives in view of the heavenly calling we each have. God’s plan for marriage is about earthly happiness, but even more it is about preparation for the life to come – a kind of training course of sacrifice, of mutual self-gift that opens our hearts to learn to love with the love of Christ. That is not just God’s plan for marriage, though – it’s the plan for every vocation, every call to holiness that is planted in the heart of the Christian.

Friends, the great thing about our God is that he never ceases to draw us to himself. If you are married, or if you believe yourself called to marriage, God is offering you the amazing gift of allowing your married love to be a sign to all of his eternal love for humanity. Remember though that marriage, like all the things of this world, is a preparation for the life to come and we have to keep that eternal destination in mind whenever it, or anything else in life, becomes challenging. If marriage is not your calling – or if something happened along the way, and loss or divorce or some other sadness has touched your life – do not despair! Our primary identity, as Jesus says at the end of the Gospel, is children of the heavenly kingdom, and whatever the circumstances of our lives, God can transform the love we have now into one that is purer, deeper, more like the love of Christ’s, more like the love of heaven.

Our lives our filled with numerous questions – about what we can do and about what we should do. All of us are created for relationship, either in marriage or in some other vocation. At times, we will run up against a hard “No” to what we may desire, either because of the circumstances of the world or because of what our faith teaches. But when that happens, we must discern beneath it the deeper “Yes” that God speaks to each of us – the calling to eternal life with him, and the invitation to regard all of the things of this life as an aid in getting there. That is the answer to every question, the response to our every desire. May the Eucharist we will receive in a few moments help us to regard our relationships, our marriages, our sins and struggles, and every aspect of our lives, in such a way that we may hold fast to that eternal reality to come.