Homily for 22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 31, 2025
Heb 12: 18-19, 22-24
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

Mt. Sinai and its wilderness
(Picture Study Bible - Exodus. Bible History Online)

“You have approached Mt. Zion and the city of the living God” (Heb 12: 22).

Our passage this afternoon from the Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the experience of the Hebrews whom Moses led out of Egypt with the experience of Jesus’ followers, and the eloquence of the blood of Abel with the blood of Jesus.

In the book of Exodus, Mt. Sinai, site of the old covenant, is described as a terrifying place, with thunder, lightning, fire, and the sounds of trumpets signifying God’s awful presence, in the sense of inspiring awe, “so that all the people trembled” (19:16).  God commanded that no one except Moses should approach even the base of the mountain under penalty of death (19:12-14).

But God has come down to us in the humble person of Jesus of Nazareth.  He’s not only approachable, but he invites us, “Come to me, for I am gentle and humble of heart” (Matt 11:29).  He wants our company.  “God’s dwelling is with the human race,” the Lord proclaims to John the Visionary in the book of Revelation (Rev 21:3).

Jesus, companion of the 12 apostles—the root of the word companion means one you break bread with and share a meal—Jesus, our companion, mediates a new covenant in which God redeems us with love and calls us to the heavenly wedding banquet:  “Blessed are those who are called to the wedding feast of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9).  At that feast, all are invited to ascend to a higher position (Luke 14:10), to a place of honor with Jesus, and to break bread with him, to celebrate the union between Christ our bridegroom and his bride the Church.

We already break bread with Jesus because he’s gifted us with his body and blood in the form of bread and wine.  Sharing in this heavenly food is a foretaste, an appetizer, of the heavenly banquet.

Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God—we approach that already when we come to the table of the Eucharist.  Jesus tells us, “Come!”  Everyone who follows Jesus is invited to approach, to partake in the bread of the new covenant, unlike the Hebrews at Mt. Sinai who, in spite of the old covenant, had to keep their distance.  The only caution to our approach, St. Paul reminds the Corinthians, is that we come worthily:  “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.  A person should examine himself” lest he “eat and drink judgment on himself” (I, 11:27-29).

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that we “have approached the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect” (10:23).  “Assembly” translates εκκλησία, which in other contexts we render as “church.”  The church is the assembly of God’s chosen, gathered first on earth and eventually to be gathered in “the heavenly Jerusalem.”

The “firstborn” is, in the first place, Jesus.  At his birth, he was identified as Mary’s “firstborn son” (Luke 2:7), and at his resurrection he became “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18), “the firstborn of many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8:29).  Here in Hebrews, “firstborn” is plural, i.e., all who’ve been baptized into Jesus Christ are God’s firstborn:  beloved, privileged children who have been “enrolled in heaven” as citizens in “the city of the living God.”

The New Jerusalem
(Armenian ms., 1645)

Our weekly assembly as God’s εκκλησία brings us already into God’s presence; we stand here in God’s house, on the threshold of “the heavenly Jerusalem.”  Partaking of the divine banquet here, we are stepping toward the banquet that won’t end, among “countless angels in festal gathering … and the spirits of the just made perfect” (12:22-23).

To speak briefly of the reference to “sprinkled blood”:  As part of the ritual by which the Hebrews at Mt. Sinai ratified their covenant with God, Moses sprinkled the blood of a sacrifice upon the altar and upon the people, binding both parties, God and the people, to the terms of the covenant.  We’ve been sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, which gushed from the wounds of his passion.

In the book of Genesis, when Cain murdered his brother Abel, Abel’s blood cried out to God from the soil, cried to be avenged (3:10-11).  The blood of Jesus, however, doesn’t call for vengeance; it calls for forgiveness, for the redemption of us sinners.  It speaks to our Father in heaven “more eloquently than Abel’s blood.”  We were washed in Jesus’ blood at Baptism, and we drink his blood in the Eucharist—more richly symbolized when we share also in the chalice, and not only in what looks like bread (no longer bread, as we know, but Christ’s living body and blood).  His blood cries out to “the judge of all” for mercy and for our enrollment among the just.