Christ: Our Salvation

“…now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, … and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him, not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives (emphasis mine); how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self (emphasis mine) from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God” (Hebrews 9: 11-14).

 The Old Covenant was but a shadow of the New. God’s power in saving the Israelites from the slavery of the Egyptians—all who sprinkled their doorposts with the blood of the slaughtered unblemished lamb were saved from death--was but a foreshadowing of God saving us by the blood of His only begotten Son from the slavery of Satan, a slavery far more devastating than any kind of slavery here on earth by human beings enslaving other human beings.  Satan roams the world in search of souls to cast into everlasting fire, separated from God for all eternity. The slavery that we endure here on earth never separates us from God, as God’s connection with us is eternal, is of the spirit and can never be severed by what can happen to us physically. Spiritually, God has secured our eternal redemption in Christ Jesus, the unblemished Lamb of God who takes away sin and who sits at the right side of His heaven Father in heaven interceding for us.

Steep me, O God, in this mystery of redemption and the price it cost your Son to save me from the slavery of sin.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: We Shall Overcome Some Day

In today’s  Gospel,  Mark 2: 18-22, St. Mark reminds us that no one “pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined.”  Jesus makes us the “new wineskins” into which is poured forth redemptive graces that stretch us to love as He loved, to reach beyond the boundaries of race and creed, as He did and does. By His death and resurrection, we have the hope that, one day, we shall overcome our hatreds and stop pouring new wine in old wineskins that result in explosions of violence in our streets and neighborhoods.

Today is a public holiday in many U.S. States in honor of Martin Luther King,Jr., who invited us to stretch beyond the boundaries of race. Martin Luther King, Jr., challenged us to embrace all men and women as equals, no matter what color their skin. He challenged us to treat Blacks as men and women deserving of our utmost respect and owed certain inalienable rights as human beings, rights that were denied  them for many centuries and, in many ways, continue to be denied  them today.  Treating people the way the Blacks and Native Americans and so many other so-called minorities have and are treated in our society  is a disgrace to the human race, as disgraceful to us as Jesus’ crucifixion was to so many people of His day.  Jesus suffered as any human being suffers and continues to “offer prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death” (cf today’s first reading, Hebrews  5: 1-10).   Let each one of us today “offer prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who …[is] able to save us” from our prejudices, our hatreds, and  the divisions of race and creed, rich and poor, female and male, sick and well.  

Am I allowing myself to be stretched beyond the boundaries of race and creed or beyond any of my prejudices or the divisions I may have created?   Am I allowing redemptive graces to stretch my way of thinking and acting that deny others their basic human rights?  Do my actions reveal my belief that all persons, no matter the color of their skin or their social status are sons and daughters of the Most High,  who, with me, have been  ransomed  from slavery to sin and made heirs of the eternal kingdom?