This is what Christ said, on coming into the world: ... God, here I am! I am coming to obey your will (Hb 10:5,7,9).
We celebrate today the mystery of Incarnation, full of joy: well aware, all the while, that only next week Good Friday will be upon us: the most sorrowful day in the year. Today with the whole Church we focus on who Jesus is. Next week we will be confronted by the question of why he came: or what he came to do, and to achieve. Today’s second reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, supplies for us a clear link between these two aspects of the one mystery of Christ.
With St. John’s Gospel, among all the books of the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews insists most clearly on the divine identity of Jesus. He is God’s Son, in the strongest possible sense: not just a man metaphorically adopted as God’s Son, like the Kings of Israel, and definitely also not a mere Angel sent down from heaven to earth. As we read in the opening verses of Hebrews: He is the heir of all things, and through him God created the ages. He reflects the glory of God, and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the Universe by his word of power (1:2-3). Unless we first establish Christ’s divine identity, all that follows makes no sense. But having established it, the author of Hebrews moves rapidly on to his point, which is that Jesus was born above all in order to die.
Our reading from Hebrews today gives us a brief but very wonderful passage taken from Chapter 10. The author here presses into his service a text from Psalm 39, in its Greek version. Twice in succession he quotes it, attributing its words to the pre-Incarnate Son of God.
You wanted no sacrifice or oblation he says (10:5). This idea is frequently found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Did not Samuel himself begin the tradition, by telling King Saul: Obedience is better than sacrifice; submissiveness than the fat of rams (1 Sm 15:22)? We find the theme developed, time and again, in Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, and it occurs several times also in the Psalms. This anti-sacrificial polemic might seem at first a bit odd, since God himself commanded the sacrifices of the law. Their details are set out at great length in the books of Moses, and especially in the book of Leviticus.
Let no one accuse the author of Hebrews of ignoring the Book of Leviticus! He roots his argument precisely in its ritual sacrifices, instituted as a symbolic counter to sin. He understands, with the whole Jewish tradition, that the essence of sin is a turning away from God. To fail to honour God; to give worship instead to false gods; to murmur against God; to dwell in ingratitude, and hardness of heart; to disobey God’s commands: all this cuts man off from the source of his life; it merits the loss of paradise, and deserves the punishment of death. All other sins, pride, greed, anger, lust and the rest, flow from this fundamental sin. Their religion directed the Jews of old to reject all sin; to live in right relationship with God; to obey him and love him, and humbly to receive his blessings. But as our text says: Bulls’ blood and goats’ blood are useless for taking away sins. All they were truly useful for was to point forward to the perfect sacrifice that was to come: the offering of Christ’s own body on the Cross.
Here I am! said Jesus on coming into the world. I am coming to obey your will. What is this will of God? Our passage from Hebrews tells us: God’s will is for us to be made holy, by the offering of his body, made once for all by Jesus Christ (10:16).
The child will be holy, said the Angel Gabriel (Lk 1:34). How holy? He will be holy with the very holiness of God. Holy enough, then, to sanctify all of us. How holy does he want us to be? Here we can only step back in astonishment as we attempt, always inadequately, to consider the greatness of the redemption Christ has won for us. Not, indeed, just a remission of richly deserved punishment. Not just a saving from endless death. Not just a cleansing from past sins. Not even just a gateway to fitting worship of God. No, as today’s Collect puts it: Christ came to make us sharers, with him, in God’s own nature. The theological tradition, especially amongst the Greeks, boldly uses for this reality the word “divinisation”. Jesus came not just to heal us of our woundedness, not just to wipe away our wretchedness, but to raise us up very high; to bring us to his own level; to make us one with God. He became man, we say, in order that we might become God. And he suffered a terrible death in sacrifice for our sins, to make us fit, able, ready, to receive all he wants to give us.
Today it’s for us to try to respond fittingly to this infinite generosity, this display of divine love beyond measure, this outpouring of divine goodness: with gratitude; with our own love; with open and rejoicing hearts. To our gratitude to God we add today especially a like gratitude to our Blessed Lady. Very obviously she was a crucial actor in the event of the Incarnation. She remains centrally important in the drama of my own salvation. She is the perfect model of how to respond to Christ’s humility and obedience: how to echo his joyful cry to God: Here I am! Mother of God, and Mother of the Redeemer, Mary Immaculate is also my own Mother.
We need a feast to celebrate all this! Or a whole series of feasts will be even better, so that we can focus in turn on particular aspects of this one tremendous mystery. We need also some means of expressing adequately our gratitude to God, our love for him, our worship of him, our acceptance of his blessings. So now we have this holy Sacrament, given us for that purpose. We come now before God, not indeed to offer the blood of bulls and goats, but to offer instead the perfectly efficacious and precious blood of Christ (cf. 1 Peter 1:18). United with him now in faith and hope and love, we may be confident of receiving at last our promised eternal inheritance (Hb 9:15).