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 covenant that God made with Moses was lacking not in terms of what it commanded. The deficiency was that it did not provide power to carry out those commands. This was the reason that "they did not stand by my covenant". They knew what they ought to do and were forced to reckon with their inability to carry it out through their own effort of will. This was the time when, as Paul described, the law was like "the supervision of guardians and administrators" (see Galatians 4:2). What was mankind learning under this supervision? To hope for a savior, the mediator of a better covenant enacted on promises which could truly deliver.
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.
We were made to be partakers of this new and everlasting covenant initially in our baptism, in which we were united to the death and resurrection of Jesus. We died to the world of sin and rose again as heirs of the Father, sons and daughters in the Son. We were given new hearts, filled with the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and made able to stand by the covenant with the same strength with which the Son himself first embraced it as a mediator on our behalf.
Jesus was the mediator of this new and better covenant, the one he himself announced at the Last Supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (see Luke 22:20). This bread and this cup was precisely the one true sacrifice, the same sacrifice that was consummated on the cross, that could break the bondage of our sins fill us with the power of Jesus own resurrection. It was given in such a way that we could receive it into ourselves and, as it were, come to live upon it as our daily bread.
What were the promised results of this new covenant? They were the fulfillment of what God always intended: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people". And this would finally come about because "all shall know me, from least to greatest". The barrier of sin having been finally abolished, a deeply personal relationship with the Lord was now possible for each member of the new covenant. Unlike the old where only one person could enter into the fullness of the presence of God on one day a year it was now possible for everyone with faith to experience this presence.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him (see John 4:23).
Jesus appointed twelve apostles not in order to give them a deeper access to personal relationship with God but to make of them servants who made that relationship available to others. Jesus desired that they would do this by first making sure they were well grounded in it themselves, "that they might be with him". But they were not to remain there. The plan was that from that place of relationship he would "send them forth to preach" the Good News that this relationship to God was now available to everyone. And they were given special power to overcome any opposition, however, diabolical, to this purpose being fulfilled.
Today we can ask ourselves the degree to which the promises of this new covenant have been realized in our own lives. Do we truly know the Lord in a deep and personal way? To be able to do so was promised to all from least to greatest. Do the commandments feel like an arduous external imposition on our freedom? He promised that he would change us from the inside out, writing his law upon our hearts. For all of us there is always more room to grow. Especially as we receive him in the Eucharist let us open ourselves more to anything and everything he desires to do in us.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
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