Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

“For if that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second one...” (Hebrews 8:7.)

Pope Saint Leo the Great offers the following insight on this verse from today’s Reading:

“[The Lord] ascended into the retirement of a neighboring mountain and called his apostles to him there. From the height of that mystical seat he could instruct them in the loftier doctrines, signifying from the very nature of the place and act that it was he who had once honored Moses by speaking to him. He spoke with Moses then, indeed, with a more terrifying justice, but now with a holier mercy in order that what had been promised might be fulfilled when the prophet Jeremiah says, “Behold, the days are coming when I will complete a new covenant for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws in their minds, and in their heart will I write them.” He therefore who had spoken to Moses, spoke also to the apostles, and the swift hand of the Word wrote and deposited the secrets of the new covenant in the disciples’ hearts. There were no thick clouds surrounding him as of old, nor were the people frightened off from approaching the mountain by frightful sounds and lightning. Rather, quietly and freely his discourse reached the ears of those who stood by. In this way the harshness of the law might give way before the gentleness of grace, and “the spirit of adoption” might dispel the terrors of bondage.” (Sermon 95)


“The covenant on Sinai is called “this first,” in spite of the existence in the Old Testament of other covenants that preceded it: the covenant of God with Noah (Gen 6:18); then with Noah, his descendants, and all living beings (Gen 9:9-17); and the covenant of God with Abraham (Gen 15:18; 17:2-15). But the covenant on Sinai is the first to have been concluded between the people of Israel and God (Exod 24:3-8), and that is the one that the oracle in Jeremiah mentions in his announcement of another covenant.

In Heb 8:7, the author reasons as he did in 7:11 concerning the priesthood. He constructs a hypothetical conditional sentence that leads his hearers to conclude that the announcement made by God about a second covenant implies that the first one was not “irreproachable”; it did not give satisfaction.” (Cardinal Albert Vanhoye, The Letter to the Hebrews: A New Commentary. Paulist Press 978-0809149285, pages 133.)

Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
Who govern all things,
both in heaven and on earth,
mercifully hear the pleading of Your people
and bestow Your peace on our times.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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