From: Deuteronomy 6:2-6
The Shema
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Commentary:
6:1-9. This is a very moving text and one of special importance for the faith and
life of the chosen people. The high-point comes at v. 5, which is reminiscent of
other pages of the Old Testament (Deut 10:12; Hos 2:21-22; 6:6). The love which
God seeks from Israel is preceded by God’s love for Israel (cf. Deut 5:32-33).
Here we touch one of the central points of God’s revelation to mankind, both in
the Old and in the New Testament: over and above everything else, God is love
(cf., e.g., 1 Jn 4:8-16).
Verse 4 is a clear, solemn profession of monotheism, which is a distinctive fea-
ture of Israel that marks it out from the nations round about (cf. the note on 5:6-
10). The first Hebrew word of v. 4 (”shema”: “Hear”) has given its name to the fa-
mous prayer which the Israelites recited over the centuries and which is made up
largely of 6:4:9; 11:18-21 Numbers 15:37-41. Pious Jews still say it today, every
morning and evening. In the Catholic Church, vv. 4-7 are said at Compline after
first vespers on Sundays and solemnities in the Liturgy of Hours.
The exhortations in vv. 8-9 were given a literal interpretation by the Jews: this is
the origin of phylacteries and of the “mezuzah”. Phylacteries were short tassels
or tapes which were attached to the forehead and to the left arm, and each tas-
sel held a tiny box containing a biblical text, the two Deuteronomy texts of the
“Shemá” plus Exodus 3:1-10, 11-16; in our Lord’s time the Pharisees wore wider
tassels to give the impression that they were particularly observant of the Law (cf.
Mt 23:5). The “mezuzah” is a small box, attached to the doorposts of houses,
which contains a parchment or piece of paper inscribed with the two texts from
Deuteronomy referred to; Jews touch the “mezuzah” with their fingers, which
they then kiss, on entering or leaving the house.
6:5. God asks Israel for all its love. Yet, is love something that can be made the
subject of a commandment? What God asks of Israel, and of each of us, is not
a mere feeling which man cannot control; it is something that has to do with the
will. It is an affection which can and should be cultivated by taking to heart, ever-
more profoundly, our filial relationship with our Father; as the New Testament (1
Jn 4:10, 19) will later put it: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he
loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.[...] We love, because
he first loved us.” That is why God can indeed promulgate the precept of love; as
he does in this verse of Deuteronomy (6:5) and further on in 10:12-13.
“With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (v. 5): the wor-
ding shows that love for God should be total. Our Lord will quote these verses (4-
5), which were so familiar to his listeners, when identifying the first and most im-
portant of the commandments (cf. Mt 12:29-30).
“When someone asks him, ‘Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?’
(Mt 22:36), Jesus replies: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first com-
mandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets’ (Mt 22:37-40;
cf. Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18). The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this two-
fold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law” (”Catechism of
the Catholic Church”, 2055).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Hebrews 7:23-28
Jesus Christ Is a Priest After the Order of Melchizedek (Continuation)
[26] For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, un-
stained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens. [27] He has no need,
like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for
those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself. [28] In-
deed, the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the
oath which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect
for ever.
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Commentary:
23-25. Christ’s priesthood is everlasting. Just as Melchizedek had no “end of life”,
so too the Son of God holds his priesthood permanently. The Levites are mere
mortal men; Christ, however, has not been instituted as priest by “bodily descent
but by the power of an indestructible life” (v. 16); that is why he can truly be said
to be a priest “for ever”. This makes sense, for death is a consequence of sin,
and Christ has conquered sin and death. Moreover, death makes it necessary for
there to be a succession of human priests in order to provide continuity; whereas
the everlasting character of Christ’s priesthood renders any further priesthood un-
necessary.
St Thomas comments that this shows Christ to be the true and perfect Priest in
the strict sense of the word, for it was impossible for the Jewish priests to be per-
manent mediators because death naturally deprived them of their priesthood. The
case of Christian priests is quite different, because they are not mediators strict-
ly speaking. There is only one Mediator, Jesus Christ; they are simply represen-
tatives of his, who act in his name. Christ is to the Levites as the perfect (which
is necessarily one) is to the imperfect (which is always multiple): “Incorruptible
things have no need to reproduce themselves [...]. Christ is immortal. As the eter-
nal Word of the Father, he abides forever: his divine eternity is passed on to his
body, for ‘being raised from the dead (he) will never die again’ (Rom 6:9). And so
‘because he continues for ever, he holds his priesthood permanently.’ Christ alone
is the true Priest; the others (priests) are his ministers” (”Commentary on Heb.,
ad loc.”).
The eternal character of Christ’s priesthood, St John Chrysostom points out,
gives us reason for great confidence: “It is as if the Apostle were saying, ‘Do not
be afraid or think that (although) he loves us and has the Father’s full confidence
he cannot live forever on the contrary, he does live forever!”’ (”Hom. on Heb.”, 13).
We can put our trust in Christ the Priest because his priesthood is an enduring
expression of his heartfelt love for all mankind: “The living Christ continues to love
us still; he loves us today, now, and he offers us his heart as the fountain of our
redemption: ‘he always lives to make intercession for (us)’ (Heb 7:25). We are al-
ways — ourselves and the entire world — embraced by the love of this heart ‘which
has loved men so much and receives such poor response from them”’ (Bl. John
Paul II, “Hom. in Sacre Coeur”, Montmartre, Paris, 1 June 1980).
Christ’s priesthood is an expression of his Love, from which it cannot be separa-
ted; since his Love is everlasting, so too is his priesthood. In the first place, his
priesthood is everlasting because it is linked to the Incarnation, which is some-
thing permanent; secondly, because Christ’s mission is that of saving all men in
all periods of history and not simply one of helping them by his teaching and his
example; thirdly, because Christ continues to be present — St Ephraem says —
not in the victims of the sacrifices of Mosaic worship, but in the prayer of the
Church (cf. “Com. in Epist. ad Haebreos, ad loc.”), particularly in the permanent
efficacy of the sacrifice of the Cross constantly renewed in the Mass, and in the
praying of the Divine Office. Finally, it is everlasting because Christ’s sacrifice is
perpetuated until the end of time in the Christian ministerial priesthood, for bi-
shops and priests “in virtue of the sacrament of Order, are consecrated as true
priests of the New Testament to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful and
celebrate divine worship” (Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium”, 28).
Christ not only interceded for us when he was on earth: he continues to make in-
tercession for us from heaven: “This ‘always’ points to a great mystery,” St John
Chrysostom observes; “he lives not only here but also there, in heaven; not only
here and for a while, but also there, in life eternal” (”Hom. on Heb.”, 13). In sa-
ying that Christ “makes intercession” for us, the inspired text is saying that
Christ “takes the initiative, addresses the Father, presents him with a request or
a demand”, as if Christ were an advocate before the Father, a help, a defender (a
“Paraclete”: cf. 1 Jn 2:1). But in what sense does he continue to make interces-
sion for us, given that he cannot merit any more than he did when he was on this
earth? He intercedes, St Thomas replies, first by again presenting his human na-
ture to the Father, marked with the glorious signs of his passion, and then by ex-
pressing the great love and desire of his soul to bring about our salvation (cf.
“Commentary on Heb.”, 7, 4). Christ, so to speak, continues to offer the Father
the sacrifice of his longsuffering, humility, obedience and love. That is why we
can always approach him to find salvation. “Through Christ and in the Holy Spirit,
a Christian has access to the intimacy of God the Father, and he spends his life
looking for the Kingdom which is not of this world, but which is initiated and pre-
pared in this world. We must seek Christ in the Word and in the Bread, in the
Eucharist and in prayer. And we must treat him as a friend, as the real, living per-
son he is—for he is risen. Christ, we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews [Heb 7:
24-25 follows]” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ Is Passing By”, 116).
26-28. These last verses form a paean in praise of Christ, summing up and roun-
ding off what has gone before. Christ is proclaimed to be “holy, blameless, un-
stained,” that is, sinless, totally devoted to God the Father, just and faithful. Sa-
cred Scripture uses similar language to describe people of outstanding holiness,
such as Zechariah and Elizabeth (cf. Lk 1:6), Simeon, who was “righteous and
devout”, Joseph of Arimathea (cf. Lk 23:50), the centurion Cornelius (cf. Acts
10:22), etc. The praise given Christ here, however, hints at a perfection which is
more than human. Christ is, at the same time, “separated from sinners”, not in
the sense that he refuses to have any dealings with them or despises them, for,
on the contrary, we know that the Pharisees abused him, saying, “Behold, a
glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Mt 11:19) and
“This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2; cf. Mt 9-11:13 and
par.; Lk 7:34); he is “separated from sinners” because he can have no sin in him
since the presence of sin in his human nature is absolutely incompatible with the
holiness of the unique person that Christ is—the divine Word. He is the perfect em-
bodiment of all the ancient prerequisites for a priest of the true God (cf. Lev 21:4,
6, 8, 15). Christ, finally, from the point of view of his human nature also, has been
“exalted above the heavens” not only ethically speaking, by virtue of his sublime
holiness, but also in his very body, through his glorious ascension (cf. Acts 2:33-
26; 10:42); he is therefore the “Son who has been made perfect forever”.
“Who was Jesus Christ?” St Alphonsus asks himself. “He was, St Paul replies,
holy, blameless, unstained or, even better, he was holiness itself, innocence it-
self, purity itself’ (”Christmas Novena”, 4). And St Fulgentius of Ruspe extols
Christ in these beautiful terms: “He is the one who possessed in himself all that
was needed to bring about our redemption, that is, he himself was the priest and
the victim; he himself was God and the temple—the priest by whose actions we
are reconciled; the sacrifice which brings about our reconciliation; the temple
wherein we are reconciled; the God with whom we have been reconciled. There-
fore, be absolutely certain of this and do not doubt it for a moment: the only-
begotten God himself, the Word made flesh, offered himself to God on our behalf
in an odor of sweetness as sacrifice and victim — the very one in whose honor as
well as that of the Father and the Holy Spirit the patriarchs, prophets and priests
used to offer sacrifices of animals in Old Testament times; and to whom now,
that is, in the time of the New Testament, in the unity of the Father and the Holy
Spirit, with whom he shares the same unique divinity, the holy catholic Church
never ceases to offer on behalf of the entire universe the sacrifice of the bread
and wine, with faith and charity” (”De Fide Ad Petrum”, 22).
The sublimity of Christ’s priesthood is a source of encouragement, hope and holy
pride for the priests of the New Testament, given that “every priest in his own way
puts on the person of Christ and is endowed with a special grace. By this grace,
the priest, through his service of the people committed to his care and all the peo-
ple of God, is able the better to pursue the perfection of Christ, whose place he
takes. The human weakness of his flesh is remedied by the holiness of him who
became for us a high priest, ‘holy, blameless, unstained, separated from sinners’
(Heb 7:26)” (Vatican II, “Presbyterorum Ordinis”, 12). For all these reasons St
Pius X, addressing priests, wrote: “We ought, therefore, to represent the person
of Christ and fulfill the mission he has entrusted to us; and thereby attain the end
which he has set out to reach [...]. We are under an obligation, as his friends, to
have the same sentiments as Jesus Christ, who is ‘holy, blameless, unstained’
(Heb 7:26). As his ambassadors we have a duty to win over men’s minds to ac-
cept his law and his teaching, beginning by observing them ourselves; insofar as
we have a share in his power, we are obliged to set souls free from the bonds of
sin, and we must ourselves be very careful to avoid falling into sin” (St Pius X,
“Haerent Animo”, 5).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.