Friday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 24, 2025

Hebrews 8, 6-13

Brothers and sisters: Now our High Priest has obtained so much more excellent a ministry as he is mediator of a better covenant, enacted on better promises.  For if that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second one. But he finds fault with them and says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will conclude a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they did not stand by my covenant and I ignored them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his fellow citizen and kin, saying, ‘Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from least to greatest. For I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more.”  When he speaks of a “new” covenant, he declares the first one obsolete. And what has become obsolete and has grown old is close to disappearing.

The Letter to the Hebrews was written before 70 A.D. to Jewish Christians who lived in and around Jerusalem.  According to tradition, it was written by St. Paul.  The style of the Greek and the lack of a greeting at the beginning point to someone else as the author, but Paul could have written it at greater leisure than he had for the other letters he wrote, and the lack of a greeting may indicate that this work belongs to the genre of treatises rather than that of letters.  The author argues that the Jewish Christians should see themselves as very much distinct from the Jews: they are Christians now and they believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  Central to his argument is his point that the old priesthood of the Temple, and the covenant which confirmed it, is dead, and that Christ is the High Priest and has established a New Covenant in his Blood — Blood which he presents to his Father in heaven in unceasing intercession for us.

“Now our High Priest has obtained so much more excellent a ministry as he is mediator of a better covenant, enacted on better promises.”  The Father appointed his Son as our High Priest, as Hebrews 5, 6 makes clear, quoting Psalm 110, 4: “You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech.”  As High Priest, the Son made the Sacrifice of his life in atonement for our sins.  It is a more excellent ministry in that the blood of goats, formerly offered in the Temple, did not take away sins (cf. Isaiah 1, 11).  He is the Mediator of a better Covenant in that it is written not on stone but in our hearts (cf. Jeremiah 31, 33).  It is enacted on better promises, for as Jesus himself said, “For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Matthew 26, 28).

“For if that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second one.”  The Greek word translated here as “faultlessly can also mean “without defect”.  The covenant with Moses which instituted the Law had as its main purpose to be a sign of the Covenant the Lord Jesus would enact in the time of grace.  The first covenant was a preparation; the second was its fulfillment.  In that sense, the old covenant was defective.  But it can also be said that the old covenant was “defective” because the people with whom God made it did not keep it, as it was external to them and could be ignored or denied.  To this point, the author of Hebrews quotes a long passage from Jeremiah 31, 31-34, through which God promises to inscribe this new Law, this New Covenant, in the hearts of the faithful.  This occurs at baptism.

At the time of its writing, the Christian Jews in and around Jerusalem were still going to the Temple to worship.  They continued to circumcise their baby boys, to follow the Jewish dietary laws, and to offer sacrifices.  At the same time, they attended Holy Mass held in the larger houses of believers such as that of Mary, the mother of Mark (cf. Acts 12, 12).  The author of Hebrews does not forbid them from living as Jews, but shows them that they now had a far better way.