“How often do you see blood today? How many people here are doctors or nurses? Just a few, not as many as I was thinking. Besides them, generally all of us don’t really see much blood, maybe our own blood, but we don’t live on farms anymore. We don’t prepare our own food. We go to the grocery store and we see the meat there nicely laid out, chicken is already cut up, but in the old days they saw blood all the time and really the three scripture readings we have today is filled with blood. That could be the common theme that it talked about blood this whole time. Embarrassingly I used to be able to handle dead animals when I was in boy scouts. I would see it and it would become a normal thing. We would cook duck at my house and things like that and now it’s embarrassing that I might see a road kill and I cringe. I think I’m getting soft, but in the old times, in the biblical times they would use blood. Also they used blood for covenants that they would make with God and make with other people. That’s why they always had to sacrifice an animal. If you were going to make a covenant with someone you would state your legal oath to each other and then you would sacrifice an animal. You would cut it completely in half and you would split it right before you and then each of the people that were making that oath to each other would walk through it symbolizing that if I break this oath then I would end up just like this animal. It symbolized something great that the covenant should not be broken. Your life depends upon it and then I’ve seen times where you make a legal document and maybe each person will cut their finger and they will put their bloody fingerprint on it symbolizing that ok once again my blood is on the line. My life is on the line, so blood in the biblical time and even still now we look at it as a life source, but when we look at blood we have to understand how blood is to understand covenants, okay?
The first reading today of Moses is a covenant, is a covenant that he makes ultimately with the israelites, with God and there’s three parts to every covenant: a familiar one, a relational aspect, a legal aspect, a liturgical all of those in a liturgical rite and I’ll show you in the first reading. The legal oath that they say is the very beginning of our first reading where Moses tells the Israelites to state what God has done, state what they will do then Moses writes the words of God down, then he builds an altar again the liturgical ritual, he sacrifices the lamb, pours half of the blood into a basin and the other half he sprinkles on the altar and then he sprinkles on the people. He sprinkles it on the people marking that they now have made a covenant with God. Then after that they have a meal. The 70 elders, Moses and Aaron at Mt. Sinai have this great feast this banquet in some ways to celebrate this covenant they made with God. As we get later on in history in Jerusalem, Kink David and then his son Solomon build a temple and once a year at Yom Kanpur, the day of atonement, the high priest will go into the Holy of Holies, the only time in the year he will go in. He will take a lamb with him. For all the people they will cast their sins upon this lamb. He will sacrifice another animal. He will sprinkle the animal, this lamb, he will sprinkle the Holy of Holies and then he will go out to all the people of Jerusalem and sprinkle them with this blood representing the covenant.
Then we get to the Gospel reading- Jesus. Jesus who says he is the lamb of God now instituting the Eucharist. He says, ‘This is my body.’ And then when he takes the chalice he says, ‘This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now what do we do at Mass? We acknowledge our sins. We gather together as one people after the homily when we prepare the altar. What do we do? We gather the sacrifices of the people, the spiritual sacrifices, the physical sacrifices, we bring it to the Lord. We move it to the altar to the scapegoat which is Christ who died for our sins just like the lamb who was the scapegoat for the people where they cast out in the desert to die. Jesus is our scapegoat. We conform our sacrifices at this altar of the Mass and then Christ himself in persona Christi says ‘This is my body given up for you.’ And then he takes the cup and says, ‘This is my chalice the blood of the new and everlasting covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of God.’ And then the priest doesn’t come down and sprinkle you with the blood, but what does he give to you? He gives you the body and blood of Christ to eat to consume. Again the blood and the body is a life force in the biblical times, but now Christ is giving us his divine life in the body and blood of Christ that we receive every single Mass. The covenant isn’t our covenant with God it’s actually now God making a covenant with each one of you that you will be his people and he will be your God. If you eat his body and drink his blood which is truly there that you will have life within you and those who don’t will not have life. This is our faith. This is the reason we come to Mass is to receive the life of God given to us for our sins so that we may go out and then be Christ to others that his body and blood his sacrifice for us will transform our lives into who we were always meant to be that we would be free from our ins and then be a shining light of Christ to the world that we may participate with him in the salvation of the world. So as you come before the Lord today where Christ is present with you truly here in the sacrifice of the Mass have the strength and the courage in a few moments to gather your sacrifices, your sins, to the Lord that maybe sacrifice of Christ that then he will give you his very divine life that you may change the world with yours. Amen.”