Thursday, 8/7/14
Six hundred years before the birth of Christ Jeremiah spoke
about the New Covenant that Jesus would inaugurate.
A covenant is a contract. Now a contract is an agreement in
which the parties exchange something of value to each. Most of us have entered
into automobile contracts or housing contracts in which we gave money in
exchange for a car or a condo. Or maybe it was the other way, with our giving
the car ro house in exchange for the other party’s money.
A covenant is a special contract in which the parties give
each other their very selves. I have officiated at many weddings at which my
key words were, “Have you come here freely, without reservation, to give
yourselves to each other in marriage.
There was a similar exchange of selves in the Bible’s Old
Covenant. God described it by saying, “You will be my people, and I will be
your God.”
By that exchange of selves the parties become one. By both
the Old and the New Covenants the parties became one with each other and with
God.
Chapter Twenty-Four of Exodus describes the two-step
ratification of the Old Covenant. The first step had Moses exacting pledges
from the people to be one with God by accepting the moral code that flows from his
nature. In announcing each of the Commandments he demanded and received a loud
agreement to live by that law.
Next Moses had the young men slaughter a great number of
bulls, catching the blood of the animals in large brass bowls. Each young man,
with his bowl of blood, moved threw the crowd, sprinkling blood on every
person, but saving a potion of the blood to pour on God’s altar. With their
kosher notion that blood is life itself, they all saw themselves as becoming
one people with God.
The New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah comes into being at
the Last Supper and Crucifixion. (And
in our Mass.) In receiving the blood of Christ we enter into the New Covenant
with him.
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