24 July 2021
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“Offer to God a sacrifice of praise.”
Today’s first reading speaks of the sealing of the covenant at Mt. Sinai between God and his people. Covenants are made between families (or create family bonds), are sealed in blood, and have mutual duties and obligations between both parties. We see all those aspects in today’s reading. God has given the people the law, the people respond in freedom with their assent, the covenant is sealed in the sprinkling of the blood, and a new family is created between God and his flock. The people and God are sealed by oath and blood in a new reality.
The word sacrament comes from the Latin for oath swearing. The Church’s sacraments are living mysteries by which God offers and seals his new covenant with his new flock, just like at the base of Mt. Sinai. This new covenant is sealed in blood – Christ’s blood – and creates a new family. It involves mutual duties and responsibilities between us and God. After we receive the Eucharist, we say the words Amen (“so be it”). They are not just pious words said to fill the silence, but a statement of us assenting to the reality of Jesus in the Eucharist and a daily sealing and assent of ourselves within God’s new covenant. At each ‘Amen’ we, like the Israelites in the first reading, profess union and fidelity to God and to the new covenant in Christ and express the reality of being part of God’s family. At the Mass, God’s shepherding is experienced in all its forms: he draws close to his flock, he feeds them with his own body, he tends and guides them with his word and law, and he sends them out to share what has been received with the World. As we head to Church this weekend, let us pray about the ‘amen’ we will offer as we hear his word and receive his body. Let our ‘amen’ be a joyous assent to the great gift of our Divine Shepherd and to our delight at being part of his flock.