Homily for Tuesday, Week 3 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
3d Week of Ordinary Time

Jan. 28, 2025
Heb 10: 1-10
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“Behold, I come to do your will, O God” (Heb 10: 7).

Christ in the Garden
"Not my will but yours be done"
(after Titian)

The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the sacrifices of the Old Testament with the sacrifice of Jesus.  The Old Testament sacrifices were offered year after year—the reference is particularly to the Day of Atonement—because, the author alleges, they didn’t, and couldn’t, truly cleanse those who offered them.  Theologically, that may be debatable.

But the sacred writer’s point is that Jesus offered a perfect sacrifice with no need for repetition:  “once for all” (10:10).  He didn’t present God with a burnt offering but with his own body, and his body represented something yet more substantial:  his will.  Jesus’ will, perfectly conformed to his Father’s intention, consecrates all who join themselves to it, cleansing us of sin.  This is the consecration, the self-offering, that the Father desires from everyone, “ears open to obedience” (Ps 40:7).  God’s able to save those who submit to him, as Jesus did.

God consecrates those who join themselves to Jesus’ self-offering by bringing them into fellowship with himself, members of the divine family:  “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).

Submitting our wills to God is hard.  Taking to heart the Scriptures, the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of Christ’s Church, the directives of our superiors, the travails of age and illness—it’s all hard.  Submitting to God brought Jesus to his cross, the offering of his body.  It also brought him to resurrection.  With Jesus, then, “I have waited, waited for the Lord, and he stooped toward me” (Ps 40:2).  We wait patiently—a word rooted in the Latin patior, “I suffer, I endure”—confident that the Lord Jesus stands with us and with him we’ll be raised up to live with God.