In the first reading at Mass today, we hear of the shoot that sprouts from the stump of Jesse, and that it is from his roots that a bud blossoms.
As I reflected on that, I could not help but think of the Catholic tradition of the Jesse Tree. The Jesse Tree devotion developed as a way to meditate on the relationship of Jesus Christ to the various people, rituals, and institutions of the Old Testament that God used in His plan for salvation.
Each day throughout Advent, an ornament is added to the tree. Each ornament is a symbol of a person from the Old Testament that has had an important role in salvation history. The namesake, Jesse, is often represented by a crimson robe or a shepherd’s staff. His ornament will be added to trees all over the world on Thursday. Today, the ornament for Jacob is generally added to the tree. He is often represented by a ladder or a kettle.
I think the Jesse tree is a neat devotion that can help us mystically enter into the sense of Messianic anticipation of the Advent season. That said, all of these elements of salvation really come down to one concept: covenant.
Throughout history, the establishment of a covenant required two things: an initiation by one party and a response by the other party. God initiated a covenant with Adam, and Adam responded imperfectly. God initiated a covenant with Noah, and Noah responded imperfectly. God then initiated a covenant with Abraham, and Abraham also responded imperfectly. God initiated a covenant with Moses, and Moses (as you can probably guess) responded imperfectly. And, so one and so forth throughout the history of Israel in the Old Testament....until we get to the Last Supper.
At the Last Supper, in the context of the Jewish Passover, Jesus Christ through His divine nature initiated the new and everlasting covenant. Then, on the cross, Jesus Christ through His human nature offered the perfect response.
I am often asked why Catholics keep Jesus on the Cross. Well, it is very simple. It was on the cross that Jesus Christ drank from the fourth and final Passover cup (which is known as the Chalice of Hallel). It was on the cross that Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself as the true Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. It was on the cross that Jesus Christ declared the consummation of the new covenant finished.
This transaction between initiation of and response to the new and everlasting covenant is the authentic context of Jesus's role as our one and true mediator with God. Only Jesus Christ in His divinity could initiate an eternal covenant. Only Jesus Christ in His humanity could offer a perfect response, on the cross
At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, to be our Passover Feast. The Eucharist is the way Jesus desires us to worship Him. But more than that: The Eucharist is the mechanism Jesus gave us that allows us to substantially participate in His once-and-for-all sacrifice on the cross. The Eucharist is the mechanism Jesus gave us that allows us to efficaciously (effectively) participate in His perfect response to the new covenant on the cross.
This is why the Mass (and by extension, the Catholic Church) is so incredibly important. Without our active participation in the Mass, our personal response to the new covenant is imperfect at best, and quite possibly not efficacious. We need the Mass. We need the Eucharist. We need to drink from the chalice from which Jesus drank (namely, the Chalice of Hallel that is offered at every single Mass through the host). As Jesus said in the Gospel of John, we need to eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood in order to have salvation and eternal life.
For us, it all starts with our baptism. When I minister a baptism, I like to invite those in attendance to reflect on the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. I believe the parable of the Good Samaritan enables us to spiritually enter into the full mystery of what we experience as we are baptized.
Each of us have been in the role of the victim, prior to our baptism. We had been robbed of original dignity by the father of lies and left to live a life without grace. Baptism restores this dignity and births us into the life of grace, which is the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. During the Rite of Baptism, the person about to be baptized is the victim.
The good Samaritan, as you might imagine, is Jesus. He anoints the victim with oil and wine (the oil and wine representing the Sacraments of Initiation which are Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist). He bandages the wounds of the victim (the bandages representing the Christian dignity that comes with sacramental birth).
In the parable, the Good Samaritan takes the victim to the Inn and asks the Innkeeper to take care of the victim until He returns. Many do not realize this, but the Inn is the Catholic Church and the Innkeeper is the Pope, echoing the three-fold instruction of Jesus to Peter in the Gospel of John to tend to and feed His sheep until He returns at His second coming. This is the Catholic Church fortifying us with the sacraments in this life so we can live with Jesus forever in the next.
Every well designed church has the baptismal font at the main entrance of the church. The idea is that it is through baptism that we are born into the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. Baptism is the prerequisite for all the other Sacraments. As the Catechism says, “through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as children of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission.” Or as Jesus simply says in the Gospel of John, we enter into the Kingdom of God (the Church He started) as we are born of water and Spirit.
From there, we see the human and divine natures of the Church as we continue to live the sacramental life.
As we said, through the Sacrament of Baptism that Jesus Christ instituted in the Catholic Church, we have been brought to the Inn of the Catholic Church to be spiritually fed by the Eucharist and the other sacraments. However, living in the Inn means that we are living by everything Jesus teaches through His Holy Catholic Church.
There are certainly times in our lives when we are tempted to think we know better than the Catholic Church. That temptation may lead us to choose to break one of the Ten Commandments or choose to not follow one of the Precepts of the Church.
Objectively speaking, when we make that choice, we have committed a mortal sin. At that point, we are no longer in a state of grace. At that point, we are no longer living in the Inn but we are once again wandering in the dark wilderness. Because we are no longer in a state of grace, we have been effectively cut off from the grace of God. We are no longer in a relationship with Father, until that relationship has been repaired in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
This is why Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation when he breathed the Holy Spirit on the Apostles in the Gospel of John and said, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” This sacramental authority has been passed down solely through the Apostolic Succession of the bishops of the Catholic Church.
Sure, we can go straight to God and pray for forgiveness, but that ignores (and perhaps even outright rejects) the full revelation of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, God can forgive whoever He wants. But, it is very clear that Jesus built a visible Church to be His authority on earth to administer the sacraments for our salvation. This responsibility to administer the sacraments belong solely to the bishops and those ordained to assist them.
This remains true to the very last breath we take in our mortal life. I know you will cover the sacraments in other sessions, so I won’t deep dive into the sacramental theology of any of them today. Still, when we discuss the importance of the Catholic Church, we have to at least mention the sacraments. I cannot stress enough the importance of the Catholic Church, the sacramental life, and the sacraments that Jesus Christ instituted for our salvation.
The lives of the saints repeatedly and consistently attest to the truth of the sacramental life and the truth of the Catholic faith. The end of our mortal life on earth (which is in the womb of the Catholic Church), is not the end; but rather, is our birth into eternity.
At the same time, the importance of the Catholic Church goes beyond the sacramental life into the world around us.
Our society seeks to define their own subjective truth based on their own desires as opposed to simply allowing the ultimate Truth of Jesus Christ to inform them. Ultimately, society seeks a world without the true God.
Particularly since the protestant reformation, there has been a continually widening gap between what society believes and the actual Truth. Sadly, that gap continues to widen with each subsequent generation.
As each generation grows further from the Truth, an increasing number of people get to the point where they can no longer recognize the Truth, even when it is plainly in front of them.
Where society is today is simply the natural progression of a society that has abandoned God.
The amount of violence and evil that we are bombarded with in the news seems to continually increase and the number of people celebrating the evil is shocking, though (to be honest) not entirely surprising when we come to realize this is the natural conclusion to a worldview where God does not matter...a worldview where objective truth (the Truth of Jesus Christ) does not exist.
Our society suffers from a total disregard for the value of life…total disregard for human dignity. Somehow, to our society at large, it has become okay to kill someone just because they disagree or because they have become an inconvenience.
Sadly, I do not believe it is going to get any better. In fact, I think it will only get worse as society continues to progress further away from the Truth.
Think about it, if you can make up your own version of truth based on what you want to believe, you can do whatever you want. You get to say what is good and what is evil. You get to judge others based on what you say is true.
Saint Paul tells us in his second letter to Timothy that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
Indeed this is true, but Paul never said only scripture is good for these things. In fact, he said in his second letter to the Thessalonians, to hold fast to both written and oral tradition. The inspired author of the letter to the Hebrews said to “obey and submit to” those that are ordained to be your spiritual leaders.
Jesus said it best when He told the Jews in the Gospel of John, “You search the scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.” Jesus never gave us a book, He gave us a Church and He sternly warned against not listening to the Church in the Gospel of Matthew.
It was the authority of the Catholic Church that determined the role of Mosaic Law in the life of a Christian in the Acts of the Apostles. It was the authority of the Catholic Church that definitively settled the matter on gnosticism, arianism, montanism, and all the other early Church heresies…many of which surfaced as a product of appealing to Scripture separate from the Church.
In short, the historic theme is that when society listens to the Catholic Church, we see peace and unity. When society does not listen to the Catholic Church, we see conflict and division.
The protestant reformation began the process of removing the Catholic Church, the pillar and foundation of Truth, from influencing society. That, in turn, opened the door to the French Revolution; which began the process of removing God, particularly the Truth of Jesus Christ, from influencing society.
Our society has been systemically separated from Jesus Christ over time through the onslaught of intellectualism, socialism, moral relativism, human secularism, and the like.
There are tens of thousands of non-Catholic ecclesial communities that all claim to believe the Truth, but teach unique and conflicting doctrines of faith that reflect their version of truth…many of these doctrines of faith were invented in the last two or three hundred years.
Fortunately, for you and for me, we have the Catholic Church, the pillar and foundation of Truth as exclaimed by Saint Paul in his first letter to Timothy. The Catholic Church has the seat of Saint Peter, whose successor holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, as we hear in the Gospel of Matthew. The Catholic Church has a continuity of teaching that goes back to the Apostles…a continuity of teaching with no conflicts…a continuity of teaching with no inconsistencies.
Think of all the new circumstances that have come into existence that did not exist 2,000 years ago. We can clearly know what the will of God is in these matters. Think of all the complex issues that we have today that did not exist when Jesus walked the earth: in vitro fertilization, cloning and DNA resequencing, artificial intelligence, and the list is seemingly ad inifinitum. Unlike most of our separated brothers and sisters, we do not have to guess about the morality of these issues. We can know the will of God through the teachings of His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
When we come to Mass, we hear the voice of Truth during the Liturgy of the Word, and then we sacramentally receive the Truth during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
If we diligently follow the teachings of the Catholic Church and diligently live the sacramental life Jesus instituted in the Catholic Church, then we are securely anchored to the Truth…the Truth that the rest of society is in desperate need of.
A lot of this comes down to perspective For the first century Jew, the Temple was the center of the universe… very presence of God in their midst. As you know, Jesus (and therefore the Eucharist) is the fulfillment of the Temple (as He indicated in the Gospel of John). We must remember that the new covenant fulfillment can never be less than the old covenant prototype. Therefore, the Eucharist (and by extension the Catholic Church) must be the center of our universe.
To the first century Christian, the Eucharist was absolutely the center of the universe. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of the Apostle John said, “I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible”.
Saint Ignatius also said regarding the Eucharist, “They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes”. That should sound very familiar when we look out at the world around us.
Everyday, the news is filled with conflict, violence, and death, which more and more people seemingly celebrate. Even our government cannot function due to conflict. We cannot ignore the correlation of this reality to the rejection of the Eucharist by our society and the fact that the Eucharist is not the center of our universe….even for many Catholics.
Our recourse in the strife of this chaotic world is solely in the Eucharist. We must turn completely to Jesus Christ, who is truly present in the Eucharist, for strength and sanity during these troubling times. The Eucharist is our lifeline and refuge from the chaos of the world. The Eucharist is ultimately our source and summit of faith, and our only means for eternal life.
One other important aspect of the Catholic Church is that it is the household, or family, of God as declared by Saint Paul in his first letter to Timothy. Unfortunately, I am running short of time, and cannot discuss the details of this aspect today. I invite you to come to either the 5PM Mass or the 6PM Mass on the weekend of the 28th. I am the scheduled homilist for those Masses on the Feast of the Holy Family, and I plan to talk more about the Catholic Church as the family of God.
If we are to believe in Jesus and trust in the Word of God, then we must believe and trust in everything that He said. This includes the authority of the Church He started. This includes His true presence in the Eucharist, the movement of grace through the sacraments, and the reality of the sacramental life. This includes His warning that those who reject these things reject Him. If we do not have an intimate, covenantal relationship with Him through the Catholic Church and the sacramental life, then (on our judgement day), we will risk hearing the dreadful words, “I never knew you. Depart from me.”
The whole aim of the sacramental life of the Catholic Church is to enable us to interact with the Divine through the world around us, to conform us into Christ, to purify us of those things that are not compatible with the true image of God, and to make us part of the whole Christ…essentially, to help us truly and intimately know Him.
There is one moment mentioned in the Catechism that every Catholic should all look forward to participating in: “The Father's power 'raised up' Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son's humanity, including His Body into the Trinity.”
Think about that for a moment. His Body, the Body of Christ, consisting of those who diligently live the sacramental life of the Catholic Church, introduced perfectly into the Holy Trinity.
I think we can all agree, that is no mere personal relationship. The mechanism for this ultimately happens through the Eucharist and through authentically living the sacramental life of the Catholic Church.
As the Jesse Tree, and the stump of Jesse, reminds us of all the people, rituals, and institutions God has used to reveal to us the plan of salvation and to make the Kingdom of God manifest on earth, we realize Jesus brings all things to their ultimate fulfillment through His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Through the Catholic Church, justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
Thanks be to God!
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