22nd Sunday of the Year – August 29, 1971 – CNR
The second and third readings today suggest reflection on the Church–on the people God has gathered for his own, on us assembled for faith and repentance and for thanksgiving.
The passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews compares the constitutive moments of the Old Israel and the Church. Israeli at Sinai stood before its God in storm and fire, confronted with a holiness that terrified men into awe. This is not the Church’s encounter with its God; the new People of God comes before Mt. Sion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. Already its life of worship is participation in the assembly of angels and saints who worship in the heavenly sanctuary of their great High Priest, who mediates the new covenant through the blood he shed, crying out, not for vengeance (as did Abel’s), but for pardon for sinners.
The whole scenario is not one that immediately appeals to our somewhat less than Platonic imaginations; but the vision of Hebrews does communicate a dimension of the Church we should not lose from sight. (more…)