Fr. Austin E. Green, O.P. | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Although there are tens of thousands of priests in the Catholic Church, there is, in the most proper sense of the word, only one Priest, and that Priest is Jesus Christ. All other priests, however, many thousands there may be, are sharers in that one priesthood of Christ. They truly share in the priesthood of Christ, but only Christ himself has the fullness of the priesthood. And this is because only Christ is, himself, the Victim and the Priest who offers the Victim. As St. Paul expressed it, “There is one mediator between God and man, the Word of God who is himself a man, Jesus Christ” (1 Tim 2:5). To adapt the simile of Jesus himself, and apply it to the priesthood, we might say that Jesus is the vine, and the other priests are branches; that is, every ordained priest draws his priestly power from the one Priest, Jesus Christ. Jesus has the fullness of the priesthood as the source from which others, precisely as ordained priests, have obtained the fullness of their priestly power, and by which they are sustained, from day to day, in their priestly functions. The ordained priest shares in the fullness of Christ’s priesthood and in the unique mediatorship of Christ.
In the ancient temple at Jerusalem, Levitical priests sacrificed animals as sin-offerings in expiation for the people’s sins, and for the restoration of peace with God. The death of Christ—because it is the death, not only of a man in his created human nature, but also of a man whose Person is the very Son of God himself—far surpasses these ancient sacrifices, which were only a dim foreshadowing of the sacrificial death of Christ. The sacrifice of animals could not take away sin, but could only remind people that they needed to repent of their sins, asking God for forgiveness. This was a forgiveness that was, in fact, granted only through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross; a forgiveness that applied to all sins, those which preceded as well as those which followed upon the sacrifice of Christ.
It is, in fact, this offering of his life on the cross, which essentially constitutes Jesus as priest, our great high priest.
I can't help but think that Melchisedek and Jesus are one and the same. It's the first thing I want to know when I meet Jesus.
Posted by: Mary Myers | Monday, June 04, 2012 at 01:41 PM