9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
Redeemer. “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she
shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gn 3:15). God made this covenant
with humanity that the serpent, sin, might be vanquished and that fallen humanity might be
redeemed and saved. When men’s sins became unbearable, the Lord sent the Deluge. After
the flood, however, He renewed His covenant with Noe, the second father of the human race,
and later with Abraham, the father of the Israelites. He again made a covenant with the chosen
people, whom He had brought out of Egypt, when on Mount Sinai, amidst thunder and
lightning, He solemnly proclaimed the law of the covenant. Moses wrote down the law and
erected an altar. The people sacrificed to the Lord and promised to observe the law and the
Ten Commandments given to them by God. Moses then took some of the sacrificial blood
and sprinkled it on the people, saying: “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath
made with you concerning all these words.”
“This is My blood of the New Testament” (Mt 26:28). God makes a perfect covenant with
humanity in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is an immutable covenant, full of grace and glory. “Sacrifice
and oblation thou wouldst not. . . . Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. . . . Then said I: Behold,
I come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb 10:5 ff.). Here we have the covenant of the Father with
His only-begotten Son, who became man for our redemption. The Son enters this world and
takes upon Himself in His Incarnation our human nature in order to fulfill the great work He
has chosen to undertake. He has come to fulfill the Father’s will in the poverty of the stable of
Bethlehem, through a life of prayer and work at Nazareth, through the pains and privations of
His public life, and in the sufferings and humiliations of the Passion. “I came down from heaven,
not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me” ( Jn 6:38). “This is My blood of the
New Testament.” The New Covenant has been made and sealed with His blood. The anger of
the Father has been appeased, the power of sin and hell has been broken, and heaven has been
reopened. We are children of God again, His “holy and beloved” (Col 3:12). “The charity of
God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us” (Rom 5:5). Ours are
the sacraments with their graces; ours is the Church with her inexhaustible riches of truth,
life, and power. All these gifts have been founded on the covenant which God made with us
in Christ and through Him, without any work or merit of ours. God showed this mercy to us
even before we had been called into existence.
To us, as to the Israelites of old, God addresses His promise: “I will take you to Myself for
My people, I will be your God” (Ex 6:7). “Happy is that people whose God is the Lord” (Ps
143:15). We are the people of the New Covenant, the covenant of grace and redemption that
has been assured us through a holy legacy. We are happy and grateful to be the people of the
New Covenant.
“To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed,” which is Christ, the head of the Church.
Through the Church we also receive these promises. In the New Covenant, sealed by the blood
of Christ, the fullness of truth and grace is deposited. Since we have become members of the
New Covenant in baptism, all the riches of redemption are ours. It is therefore our first duty to
become ever more closely united with Christ and His Church. He is the fullness of grace, the
ocean of divine life; He is the source of all true holiness and strength.
The blood of the New Covenant, mysteriously flowing on our altars during the celebration
of the Mass, is placed in our hands as a gift of sacrifice that we may offer it to God in atonement
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