From a certain perspective, today’s selection from the Letter to the Hebrews (13:1–8) is simply a smorgasbord of moral exhortations. Coming as they do one after another, the calls to let brotherly love continue, not to neglect hospitality, and to be free from love of money might feel like an addendum to the more explicitly theological material with which we’ve prayed in the liturgy over the past several weeks. But here, as is the case in so much of Scripture, there is in fact a deep connection between the theoretical and the practical, the dogmatic and the ethical.
It is precisely because we are now in a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ, our merciful and faithful high priest before God (Heb 2:17), that our relationships with one another have been and must continue to be transformed. If Christ has truly entered behind the veil on our behalf (6:19), if we have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God (12:22), then we are called to live lives of holiness that reflect where and with whom we stand!
Today, then, let us reflect on the demands that God’s immense gift of love makes on us. Or better yet, let us consider what immense gratitude at God’s salvation should move us toward in our lives, asking for the grace to correspond to the great gift which we have been given.