Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins (Heb 5:1).
The Dominican brothers ordained last weekend, even with the restrictions from COVID-19, will soon start wearing any number of hats. Vicars, pastors, preachers, students, missionaries, professors, administrators, campus-hopping Thomistic Institute coordinators: the list of possible ministries goes on, and of course the newly ordained never lose their identity as Dominican friars. But whatever else will demand their attention, they will also now be priests, called to offer sacrifice: “One does not take the honor upon himself, but he is called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb 5:4).
As the Letter to the Hebrews makes clear, all the Temple sacrifices only foreshadowed the perfect self-offering of Jesus, whose infinite love truly did take away sin and consecrated humanity for God: “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10). Nothing could possibly augment what happened on Good Friday, as the epistle insists (Heb 9:23-26). And still, it concludes with a strong exhortation to all Christians to join our Lord “outside the camp”: through faith and charity, we are to offer “sacrifices . . . pleasing to God” (Heb 13:11-16). The mark of every Christian is to participate personally in the one Sacrifice, “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5).
What then will these men, as ordained priests, now do differently? “Acting in the person of Christ, [the ordained priest] makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people” (Lumen gentium 10). By virtue of ordination, the ministerial priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, re-presenting the one mystery of the Cross in consecrating the Body and Blood “which is for you,” as he obeys Jesus’ command: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24). The priest only secondarily offers his own personal sacrifices at the altar: he first offers Jesus Christ, and then conforms himself to the offering of the Son as another “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1).
In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke gives us Paul’s final instruction to the elders (presbyteroi or “presbyters”) of his beloved church at Ephesus, with these words: “And now behold, I am going to Jerusalem, bound in the Spirit, not knowing what shall befall me there; except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22-23). Since we already know that Paul’s death will come in Rome, not in Jerusalem, this emphasis on the holy city seems misplaced: A mob attacks Paul in Jerusalem, but the Roman cohort then saves him, and, thanks to bureaucratic inefficiency, he lives on to preach in Rome for “two whole years” (Acts 28:30-31). Why should today’s passage about Jerusalem have such finality if we still have eight chapters, a city riot, and a Mediterranean shipwreck before the end?
The answer lies in the Gospel: Paul, in his priesthood, has become another Christ (see Gal 2:20). In Luke’s Gospel particularly, Jesus’ free self-offering begins when “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Jerusalem is the place of sacrifice, chosen for divine worship (cf. Deut 12:1-14); Luke’s emphasis in Acts on the journey to the place where Paul will not die clearly recalls Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, so prominent a theme in his Gospel.
The newly ordained have been journeying toward Jerusalem as living sacrifices for a long time, especially through their vows; they will continue to do so through their service and preaching, when, like Paul, they “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). But, every morning, they will now also bring us to the Upper Room and to Calvary, acting and speaking in the person of the one High Priest, “who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven” (Heb 8:1).
✠
Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
