Daily Readings Reflection for 1/26/11

Scripture: Lectionary 319. Hebrews 10:11-18. Psalm 110:1.2.3.4. Mark
4:1-20

Cardinal Vanhoye, S.J. presented a structured presentation for the Epistle
to the Hebrews that shows us the great skill of the anonymous writer of
this work by an Alexandrian convert to Christianity. This long essay is
unified, coherent, clear, and emphatic on its theology of the
priest-messiah Jesus Christ. The reading we have been listening to for a
few weeks will come to an end this week. These last four chapters have
great value for our own spiritual development through our patient
endurance, our being faithful to sharing our faith in a community, and
through our baptismal gifts of faith, hope, and love. We continue to be
instructed in chapter ten about the uniqueness of Jesus' sacrificial
priesthood that cuts across all human history and its times and is
effective for salvation for everyone. It has, like death, been a once and
for all experience of Jesus who now is at the right hand of God as our
mediator and highpriest.

We are encouraged again and again to be faithful to our new covenantal
relationship to God through the sacrifice of Jesus and by imitating his
doing the will of the Father. We are to be patient pilgrims on a journey of
faith to the heavenly courts of God where Jesus is now our higpriest and
messiah.

We return to Psalm 110, a messianic Psalm that was explained already by our
author. He now returns to a verse that emphasizes the victory of Jesus as
king-messiah over his enemies which we now interpret as death, sin, and
Evil Personified in the prince of darkness, the devil. The verse contained
in our passage is:"Until I make thine enemies thy footstool" (Verse 1b).
This is a metaphor for the decisive defeat of enemies, originating in the
custom of the victor placing his foot upon the neck of the conquered
general or king (Joshua 10:24).

We are nourished by our reading of this essay not only since it is a New
Testament writing but also because it carefully goes to the Septuagint or
Greek translation of the Hebrew psalms and prophets and Torah that is
chosen to illustrate the identity of Jesus as our highpriest and messiah.
Thus we see that the unity of reading both the New Testament and the Old
Testament is part of the Christian Scripture and its long tradition
emphasized by the earliest theologians and fathers and mothers of the
Church. Amen.