Friday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 30, 2021

Leviticus 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34b-37

The Lord said to Moses, “These are the festivals of the Lord which you shall celebrate at their proper time with a sacred assembly. The Passover of the Lord falls on the fourteenth day of the first month, at the evening twilight. The fifteenth day of this month is the Lord’s feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first of these days you shall hold a sacred assembly and do no sort of work. On each of the seven days you shall offer an oblation to the Lord. Then on the seventh day you shall again hold a sacred assembly and do no sort of work.”  The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the children of Israel and tell them: When you come into the land which I am giving you, and reap your harvest, you shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest, who shall wave the sheaf before the Lord that it may be acceptable for you. On the day after the sabbath the priest shall do this. Beginning with the day after the sabbath, the day on which you bring the wave-offering sheaf, you shall count seven full weeks, and then on the day after the seventh week, the fiftieth day, you shall present the new cereal offering to the Lord. The tenth of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement, when you shall hold a sacred assembly and mortify yourselves and offer an oblation to the Lord. 

The fifteenth day of this seventh month is the Lord feast of Booths, which shall continue for seven days. On the first day there shall be a sacred assembly, and you shall do no sort of work. For seven days you shall offer an oblation to the Lord, and on the eighth day you shall again hold a sacred assembly and offer an oblation to the Lord. On that solemn closing you shall do no sort of work. These, therefore, are the festivals of the Lord on which you shall proclaim a sacred assembly, and offer as an oblation to the Lord burnt offerings and cereal offerings, sacrifices and libations, as prescribed for each day.”

Previous to the Mosaic Law, the Hebrews had no Sabbaths, and almost no holy days.  Neither did they have set rules for what was to be offered to Almighty God in sacrifice, or when.  What they did have to hold them together was their heritage as descendants of Abraham, signed physically on the males with circumcision, and thus to his God.  Their recent common experience of leaving Egypt and miraculously crossing the Red Sea acted as a bond, too.  But it was the Law given by God to Moses that truly “formed” the Hebrews into a people and nation.  This Law superseded and took the place of tribal laws, rules, and customs, and regulated the people across tribal divisions.  

The Law was God-given.  God gave the Law to the Hebrews and their descendants not in order to benefit from it himself, but in order to benefit the Chosen People.  The individual ordinances provided guidance and structure on how to live, and the Law as a whole existed as a sign of God’s love and care for his people.  Through the Law the Hebrews could know themselves as God’s people, his chosen, and understand their proper place among the other nations as special to God.  The comprehensive array of laws within the Law also told the people about God: that he was a God of order who had created an orderly world.  There was no place, then, for the superstitions or magic that played such a large role in the lives of the people of other nations.  Nor did the Hebrews need fear God’s arbitrary wrath and punishments, for he was a God of justice, a quality that is the pinnacle built on order.

Ultimately, the Law, the laws within it, and the holy days specified by it are fulfilled by the Lord Jesus.  The Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Day of Atonement are fulfilled in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord, who gives us his Flesh to eat so that we might flee the world and its temptations and enter the Promised Land of heaven.  The Feast of Booths is a harvest feast which is in a way fulfilled by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples after the Lord’s Ascension, and will be completely fulfilled in the gathering of the just into the barns of heaven at the end of the world (cf. Matthew 13, 30).

For those who are Christians, each day we celebrate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord.  Each day is a feast day.  And each of today’s feast days prepares us for the one great feast day in heaven, which will never end.