Sin Offerings

Homily for Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

For the past two weeks, we have been reading through the Letter to the Hebrews, the only book of the Christian Scriptures or New Testament that does not reveal the name of its author. Even though there is some dispute about whether some of the letters ascribed to St. Paul were actually written by him, all of those letters and every other part of the New Testament bears the name of one of the disciples of Jesus. All we can know for sure about the author of this letter is that he had to be Jewish, for the contents of this letter depend heavily upon knowledge of Jewish temple worship.

Religion was created by man in order to provide human beings with access to God. As a religion, Judaism must be viewed with this particular function in mind. Human beings were separated from God by sin; consequently, every religion must also include the notion of sacrifice. Access to God demands purity; somehow the sin of humanity must be atoned for and his uncleanness cleansed. With these ideas in his mind, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews goes on to show that Jesus is the only High Priest who brings a sacrifice that can open the way to God. That sacrifice is himself.

On the Day of Atonement, two great sacrifices were offered in the temple. The first was that of a bull which the High Priest offered for his own sins. The second was that of a goat which was to bear the sins of the people. While the bull was sacrificed on the altar in the temple, the goat was led out into the wilderness and slaughtered outside the city walls.

We believe that our sins were washed away not through the blood of a bull or a goat, but through the shedding of Jesus’s blood on the cross. Jesus was led out of the city of Jerusalem to Golgotha, the place of execution for criminals. The Gospels recount that as Jesus died on the cross, the veil that had hidden the Holy of Holies from the sight of those gathered in the temple was torn in two.

While the sacrifice of animals was a common practice in those days, we must remember that for these people blood was considered life itself. The blood of animals was drained from their bodies and sprinkled on the altar and on the people themselves. The life of the animal, sacrificed for the sins of humanity, was used to wash away their sins. It was for this reason that Jesus had to die and shed his blood for the sins of all men and women.

The celebration of the Eucharist is referred to as the unbloody sacrifice and was handed on to us from Jesus through the apostles so that we could participate in the death and, eventually, the resurrection of Jesus. Washed clean of our sins, we were able to come into the presence of God. As the great Eucharistic prayer reminds us each and every day, this is the sacrament of our reconciliation with God. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, the celebration the bloody sacrifices of the Temple pale by comparison to the celebration of the Eucharist.