Thursday of Holy Week 2025 (at Matins)
The annual feast of Passover, or Pesach, is attributed to the interaction of Moses with the liberating YHWH/Adonai at the time of the Israelite liberation from Egypt, perhaps 1200 years before Christ. A second feast, about six months later, held the annual confession of sin by the Jews, particularly after the exile in Babylon. Sometime before that exile, or at it, the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the Jerusalem Temple. This was the feast of Atonement, when the high Priest would bring the people into atonement with God by a sacrifice made on the altar in the Holy of Holies, which no other person could enter except on that day. Then the priest would come out of the sanctuary, pronounce the name of God as a blessing on the people, who would go back home shriven of their sins.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews, who seems to have written principally to Jewish Christians before the Temple of Herod was destroyed in 70 AD, actually seems to conflate the two festivals of Passover and Atonement. Jesus is the new high priest, made so by God according to the order of Melchisedek, the priest-king of Jerusalem who offered a sacrifice of bread and wine after the victory of Abram/Abraham over a gang of robber barons even before the birth of his son, Isaac.
You can see the identity of Jesus in this part of the letter: “He is able to deal patiently with erring sinners.” That describes any priest, but especially Jesus, since Jesus is human as we are, but also has a divine insight into the condition of sinning men and women. Moreover, Jesus enters a true sanctuary before the throne of His Father in heaven, and does so with His own blood, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, as John professed. “He offered prayers and supplications [in the Garden] with loud cries and tears [and sweat that contained His own blood] and He was heard because of His reverence.”
He did learn obedience to the Father’s will from what He suffered. What does it mean to say He learned that “from what He suffered”? And why is it followed so closely by the words “and when perfected He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. . .?” I’m certain that Thomas Aquinas would agree that there is no perfecting of the divine nature, which is already perfect, or of the divine person. But the human nature of Jesus bore perfection by suffering. And that’s what we must pray for—that our human natures and persons can be perfected through the suffering we endure. That can only happen if we suffer in union with Jesus Christ and all the saints.
Our reading from the Fathers of the Church comes from Saint Melito of Sardis. It is a summary of all we know about the intention of Christ and His accomplishment in this Holy Week. Melito was bishop of Sardis in western Asia Minor during the second century. My favorite line from this master is “He [Jesus] is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into morning. He. . .smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptian of their offspring. . .out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom. He made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be His own forever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.”
What more can we say? These words presage the deacon’s song, the Exultet, this coming Saturday. Blessed be God forever, Amen.
