Category Archives: Scripture

Living Between the Ascension and Pentecost

Redemption, Scripture

One of the great gifts that the Church gives us is the Liturgical Calendar. Its purpose is not only to remind us of the marvelous plan of salvation, but also for us to be present in each of the saving mysteries of Christ.  With this in mind, the Church is inviting us during this time to go to the Upper Room with Our Lady and the Apostles and to await the Gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  During the Church’s first Novena from the Ascension to Pentecost, the Apostles must have found themselves reflecting deeply on the mystery of Our Lord’s Ascension and why it was  necessary for Him to go so that He could send the Holy Spirit (John 16:7).  While we join them in prayer, it is expedient that we too meditate on this necessity.

To begin, it is helpful to point out that when Our Lord says it is of necessity He does not mean that both He and the Holy Spirit could not both be present on the earth at the same time.  It is not as if it would create some rift in the space-time continuum to have two Persons of the Blessed Trinity present on earth–especially since They have a single Divine nature.  This means that when one of the Persons of the Trinity acts outside the Trinity, it is all three that act.  It is necessary in the sense that it was a means by which Christ could more fully reveal the Godhead and our relationship with God in Heaven.

To see how this is so, we should recall that the Torah (see Leviticus 1-7) required five main types of sacrifices—the cereal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the burnt offering.  It was the last one—the burnt offering that was meant to be a sign of Christ’s offering on the Cross.  In the holocaust or ascending sacrifice (see Lev 1:3-7, 6:8-13) the animal was drained of its blood and the pieces of the carcass were laid upon the altar hearth from which it ascended to God in the form of smoke.  Unlike any of the other sacrifices, no part of it was given to the worshipper.  Instead it was considered a total gift to the Lord and was fully consumed in the fire.  Its effect was atonement for sin.

ascension

Christ’s ascension then is the completion of His sacrifice on Calvary in which He was both Priest and Victim.  This helps to explain why Christ does not allow Mary to touch Him when she meets Him on the day of the Resurrection because He had “not yet ascended” (Jn 20:17).  His offering for sin was not yet complete.  A first Century Jew reading John’s Gospel would have recognized in Jesus’ saying that He considered Himself as a holocaust offering for atonement.

But saying that Christ had to ascend because He was completing the ritual of the Burnt Offering is like putting the cart before the horse.  The Burnt Offering described in the Torah required the whole sacrifice to rise in smoke because Christ was to ascend into Heaven, not the other way around.  Instead there was a deeper reason.

To understand this deeper reason, it is necessary to grasp a basic understanding of Trinitarian theology.  When we speak of a “personal” God we mean specifically that God has (more accurately, He is) a rational nature.  This means that He has both an intellect and a will.  Because He is a pure Spirit both of these powers of intellect and will must be operative at all times.  This means from all eternity He is knowing and loving.  What is it that God knows?  He knows Himself perfectly.

One of the perfections is existence.  So in order to have perfect knowledge of a person that person must actually exist.  This becomes clear if we look at an analogy.  You may have knowledge of your dream lover, but if that lover is not a real flesh and blood person then they are not perfect.  They must actually exist as real person.  So in order for God’s knowledge of Himself to be perfect, He must exist as a distinct Person.  This Person is the Son or Word.

Likewise with the divine Will whose object is love.  The measure of love is to be fruitful and the perfect love between the Father and the Son bears the Fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Why does this deep theology matter?  Isn’t it all just speculation of what is otherwise a mystery?  In a way, yes, there is some speculation involved in any explanation of the mystery of the Trinity.  But it is this life that we are being invited into when St. Peter says we are to become “partakers of the divine life” (2Peter 1:4).  The blessed in heaven will spend their time not merely looking at God, but actually participating in the life of God.  Heaven is not “resting in peace” in the way we tend to think of it, but is extremely active living in the life of God.  But this is not just reserved to heaven.  Those who have sanctifying grace in their souls participate in the life of God now.  That is what sanctifying grace is—a participation in the life of God.  This understanding of the life of the Trinity has effect on our life in the here and now.  Eternal life begins at Baptism and those who persevere to the end merely have the veil removed.

How is it that we participate in the life of God?  We enter into the life of God by “putting on Christ” (Romans 13:14).  In essence, we participate in Christ’s “place” in His communion with the Father.  This is what it means when St. Paul says we are “in Christ” (c.f. Gal 3:27).

Now the link between the Ascension and Pentecost becomes clearer.  The Son, in keeping His human nature for all eternity, has brought human nature directly into the life of the Trinity.  By ascending to the Father, Jesus reveals that mankind now has the capacity to share in the divine Nature.  This is how He lives forever to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25).

What happens when mankind has a direct communion with the Father?  The fruit of this communion leads to the Holy Spirit.  It is of the very nature of God from all eternity that the union between the Father and the Son yields the Holy Spirit.  If mankind is caught up in this through the Son’s human nature, then the Holy Spirit comes to mankind.  Without this communion, the Holy Spirit cannot come (John 16:7).  Pentecost is a direct result of the Ascension.

To conclude I want to return to the difficult verse regarding Our Lord’s admonition to Mary Magdalene not to touch Him because it helps to bring to light a necessary distinction.  Our Lord tells her that He is “going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).  The point is that while we participate in the life of the Trinity, we do not become God.  It is not as if we are substituted for the Son.  There remains a distinction between His relationship with the Father (“my Father”) and ours (“your Father).  He “participates” in God by Nature, we only participate by grace.  As long as we maintain this distinction, we are able to pull back the veil ever so slightly.  Certainly it enables us to better understand Our Lord’s words and the causal relationship between the Ascension and Pentecost.

John 6 and the New Manna

Eucharist, Scripture

There is an expression among biblical scholars that we would all do well to remember: “A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof-text.”  The point that they are making is that we must always be on guard when reading and meditating upon Scripture to be sure to understand the context in which it is written.  As Catholics we read John 6 as a proof-text for the Eucharist (which it is) but John includes this chapter in his gospel for a deeper reason than merely introducing the Real Presence of the Eucharist.  As the Church offers us this chapter this week in the Daily Liturgy, it is instructive to examine some of the background.

While it is true that many first century Jews were looking for a political messiah, to paint with a broad brush and say all were waiting for this type of Messiah is not true.  Most were awaiting a new Exodus.  For the Jews, the Passover and the Exodus were (and still are) the central events of their faith because they represented God’s definitive action and future promise to save them.  This would have been readily known by the Jewish Christians in John’s Community and is an important interpretive key for understanding John’s Gospel as a whole and John 6 specifically.

Jesus makes reference to the new Exodus most clearly when He is asked point-blank by the disciples of John the Baptist whether He is the Messiah.   He responds by making reference to one of Isaiah’s prophecies regarding the new exodus—“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” (Mt 11:4-5)

In the Transfiguration Moses and Elijah were to speaking to Jesus about His “exodus which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem”—this gives us an essential clue to when the new exodus would be fulfilled: during Jesus’ passion and death in Jerusalem.

This new Exodus could be summarized in four key events:

(1) The New Moses—see Dt 18:15-18 where Moses promises a “prophet like me.”   This is a theme throughout John’s Gospel, the most obvious of which is the Woman at the Well where she mentions that she has found “the Prophet.”

(2) “Cut” a New Covenant—the making of the first Sinai Covenant involved a heavenly meal like when Moses and the elders feast in the presence of God—“They beheld God and ate and drank” (Ex 24:11).  The promise of the New Covenant comes in Jeremiah 31:31-33.  Jesus’ fulfillment of it (with its accompanying meal) is done at the Last Supper (Luke 17:14-20) but not consummated until the Cross (John 19:30).

(3) The New Temple—This one is the most obvious from John’s Gospel.  One can see Micah 4:1-2 for the prophecy.  The Cleansing of the Temple is Jesus’ sign that He will fulfill this (rather than chastising Him for cleansing the Temple, the Jews merely ask “what sign do you give us for this?”).  Another significant text that factors into our discussion is Mt 12:1-8 when Jesus says, “Something greater than the Temple is here.”

(4) The New Promised Land—See Is 60:21.  There is more detail on this as well, but for the sake of our discussion we can set this aside.

Any Jew would have known that if there was a new exodus then there must also be a new Passover.  If Jesus saw Himself as inaugurating a new exodus then He would have seen the need to provide food for the journey.  What is often forgotten or overlooked is the fact that not only did manna come from heaven but flesh came from heaven in the evening as well.  If the first Moses gave Israel manna, then it was expected that the second would as well.  The people clearly expect this as well as John 6:22-34 shows.

Another key question is how is God worshipped once the new exodus begins?

Although many Christians are familiar with the animal sacrifice of the Old Testament, there were actually two types of sacrifices performed in the Old Testament.  The first is the bloody animal sacrifice and the second was an “unbloody “sacrifice which consisted of bread and wine.

This second offering is a sacrifice of thanksgiving (the Greek word is Eucharistia) that was offered every Sabbath day (see Lev 24:5-7).  This was a perpetual sacrifice that was to be offered “forever” since it belongs to the Melchizedekian priesthood (see Gn 12, Ps 110, Hebrews 5-8 in which this priesthood is applied to Christ).  It is only the bloody sacrifice for sin that ceased when the Lamb of God was offered “once for all.” A first century Jew would have been well aware of the weekly offering of the Bread of the Presence.

Clearly then the Bread of the Presence (or showbread as some translations [KJV, NAB] call it) was a sacrifice (see Ez 41:21-22 where there is an altar and incense which are obvious accompaniments of sacrifice), but what did the Jews believe about the Bread itself—why was it called the “Bread of the Presence” or more accurately in Hebrew “the bread of the face (panim)”?

During the three main Jewish feasts (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles), Jewish men were commanded to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order to “appear before the face of the Lord God (panim), the God of Israel” (Exodus 34:23; 23:17).  If we turn to extra-biblical sources of the time (Babylonian Talmud for example) we find that the priests would raise the bread of the Presence before the people at the festivals and tell them “Behold God’s love for you.” (Babylonian Talmud, Menahoth 29A).

Now it may be granted neither the Old Testament nor the extra-biblical sources tell us whether the Jews viewed the Bread of the Presence as merely a symbol or the actual face of God.  Either way it is important that we come away with the two main points – that it was a sacrifice and (at least) a symbol of God’s Presence.

If we go to any of the Last Supper accounts, we see Jesus equating the Bread and Wine with Himself.  As Christians, we have heard this so often that we do not give it a second thought.  But this is really strange language unless the idea of bread and wine representing a person is not a foreign concept.  With this Old Testament background, we see now why the Apostles have no questions at the Last Supper when Jesus did this.

Feeding 5000

With our first Century Jewish Christian lenses cleaned off, we commence at the beginning of John 6.  We find that the Passover is near.  This is a hint to the reader that Jesus’ sign is intimately tied up with the Passover and that His actions and discourse will give a new and greater meaning to it.  After the miraculous feeding of the multitude, we then find Jesus “parting the waters,” so to speak, and crossing the sea.  Immediately the reader is thinking, “Passover, miraculous bread, walking on water, this must have something to do with the new Exodus.”  Lo and behold, we find that when the people catch up to Jesus they raise the topic of Moses.  “Could this be the new Moses?” is what they are thinking.

Some key verses for us to reflect on:

John 6:25—Jesus asks the crowd why they are truly seeking Him.  Is it because they saw a miracle in the multiplying of the loaves or because they really saw a sign?  It turns out that it was the latter because they make mention of Moses.  But the Manna from Heaven ceased and would perish at the end of the day.  Some people misread this and think that the people just like the idea of getting a free meal.  But these people are seeking the new manna because they want to be a part of the new exodus.  The people want the bread of God that lasts always and not the old manna which perished at the end of the day.

John 6:35—This is the first half of the discourse that serves as an invitation to faith.  Here we find Jesus first introducing the idea of Him as the Bread of Life.  This is meant both as an invitation for the people to come to Jesus and believe in Him for salvation.  But the people do not ask why He has called Himself bread (not such a strange concept given what was said above regarding the Bread of the Presence) but instead how He could be from Heaven.

John 6:48—This is the second half of the discourse in which Jesus is no longer speaking symbolically as He was in verses 35-47.  Instead He repeats several times that the Jews must eat His body and drink His blood.  Again this is not what they question, however.  Instead what they question is how He can give His body to eat.   It seems pretty straightforward in Jn 6:55 that Jesus is saying that His flesh and blood are real food and only those that eat them abide in Him.

John 6:58-59—This is the crux of the issue and proof that Jesus is not speaking symbolically.  He says that the Bread that He gives is the fulfillment of the manna from Heaven.  Remember, this was one of the things that they were awaiting as a result of the messianic age.  What exactly was the first manna?

It was the supernatural “bread of angels” (Ps 78:25) come from Heaven.  The question that one must answer then is this – if the first manna was supernatural bread from Heaven, how could it’s fulfillment that Jesus is bringing about just be a symbol?  In other words, the old manna would be greater than the new if the new manna is just a symbol.  If Jesus was speaking symbolically here, this would be the one and only place in salvation history laid out in the Bible in which the Old Testament prefiguration is something that is greater than the New Testament fulfillment.

“A Hard Saying”—Again the stumbling block for the Jews was not so much that they had to eat his body and drink His blood, but how this could be possible.  Jesus’ response says that it will only make sense when the “Son of Man ascends to where He was before.”   “It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail.”  What this means is that it is His resurrected (and ascended) flesh that they will eat and not His earthly flesh.  It is His spiritual body that comes under the appearance of Bread and Wine (see Luke 24:35).