Law, Sin, Forgiveness And Sacrifice--Christ Is The Answer Series

Saturday of the First Sunday in Course 2023

We are very early in the Church’s liturgical year this week, and we are also reading from the first chapters of Mark’s Gospel, which scholars from the first centuries of the Church have called “a summary of St. Matthew’s.” However it was written, it was written for a Church that was still very small, even if there were communities in many parts of the Roman Empire. Moreover, the little Catholic community in Rome was under pressure, even persecution, from civil authorities and their Jewish contemporaries. So Mark shares incidents from the earthly life of Our Lord to encourage and stimulate his people to keep and spread their faith. Yesterday he told the story of one of Jesus’s early healings, one that also established His divine authority to forgive sins. Today we heard, in the calling of the public sinner Levi, the primacy of His mission to heal us of our biggest problem–turning away from God’s commandment of love. Jesus is the answer to the fundamental question, “how can I hope, sinner that I am, to attain eternal union in love with God.”

So when Jesus is confronted, as He was in yesterday’s Gospel, with the accusation that He eats with sinners, whom the Pharisees gave up as forever lost, He responds with a loving word that ought to encourage all of us. Jesus came as a physician. We sinners are the ones who need the medicine of loving forgiveness, and that’s whom Christ has come for.

The psalmist is correct in what he wrote. “The Law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul.” But even if it’s best for us to keep God’s law in our hearts, and always act in love with the Lord and in loving assistance for our neighbor, we sometimes yield to selfishness and refuse to do those things. We sin, and the Law condemns us. It cannot redeem us. We can ask for forgiveness but even the animal sacrifices in the Jewish Temple could not assure it to us. Those priests were sinners just like the rest of us, so they offered sacrifice with soiled hands.

Jesus, however, is not only human, but divine. He is the Son of man, but also the Son of God. God from God, light from Light. As the Word of God, He is a sword that pierces to the division of our soul and spirit, and revealing our thoughts and intentions. And because of His sacrifice on the cross, which we commemorate whenever we gather together, He can bring us, united with Himself as our Head, before the throne of Grace and Mercy. In this we can be confident. In this reality we can know the forgiveness of our sins and offenses. This is the story we must tell to the world, first to our family and then to everyone we meet.