When we are weak, we need him the most.
And in the face of widespread sickness and death, we need him most of all.
We need him because he understands. For as Saint Paul tells us, our great high priest, Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, “was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned.”
Tempted to fear sickness and death. Tempted to anxiety and despair. Tempted to wonder whether God would really keep his promises.
He knew the fears that assail the heart of the old man who has just been found COVID positive, wondering whether he will have to go to the Hospital or to ICU or be put on ventillator. He knew the fears of that old man’s wife, who in her desperation wonders whether everyone she loves is going to get sick and be taken away from her.
He knew the fears of the mother whose children are more dear to her than life itself, and who just lost her job waitressing at the same time her husband was laid off from the factory.
He knows all our fears, this great High Priest, and he lifted them up upon the Altar of the Cross, upon which he offered them in a great sacrifice of praise to his heavenly Father. A sacrifice which destroyed death and opened for us the gates to a that heavenly realm where there will be no sickness or crying out or pain and where even death itself will never reign again.
So he understands our weakness, when like Saint Peter we turn away three times, doubt that he is really there and stand trembling in the dark. That is why, as Saint Paul has taught us, we can confidently approach him to receive mercy and favor and to find help in time of need.”
And so too with those of us ordained as his priest, he deals patiently, for he knows that we too are beset by weakness. We too are afraid. And we too doubt. But in every parish Church, some streamed and some standing all alone at the altar, your parish priest is praying for you and joining the sacrifices of your lives to the perfect Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross.
In every parish Church, your priests are praying for you, these modern day Melchizedeks, joining our sufferings to the Passion of Christ. And as he does, rest assured, he sees your face in his mind’s eye along with the familiar faces of all those whom you love. He prays for you, this son of Aaron at the Altar, even when you can’t be there. And in his praying you are joined with the countless multitudes from every Church throughout the world who find their hope in the great Sacrament which is the source and the summit of our lives.
And they can offer this perfect sacrifice for you and your families because they have been chosen by Christ to act in his person on your behalf. For Christ has taught priests how to pray to his heavenly father by the way he did it. He who prayed to his Heavenly Father upon the Altar of the Cross, crying aloud from the altar of the cross.
For this day, the Thursday we call Holy, is the day of that last Passover, when Christ obediently gave himself up to suffering for our salvation. And as blessed Melito reminds us, he “took the pain of fallen man upon himself, triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit…dealt…death, a fatal blow.”
This is that blessed feast, when Christ was “led forth like a lamb” to the slaughter and “sealed our souls…with his own blood.”
And all the suffering of the world, was but a foreshadowing of his. For when Abel was slain, or Isaac bound, Jacob exiled, Joseph sold into slavery or Moses exposed to die, it was but a vague shadow of what was to come on Calvary hill.
So when you tremble in the face of COVID-19, or wonder how the world can go on in the face of such suffering, remember this Holy Thursday, and the Passover lamb, “dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night.… the One who rose from the dead, and who raised mankind from the depths of the tomb.”
