Our readings today are filled with anticipation. The days are coming, Jeremiah prophesies in today’s First Reading.
The hour has come, Jesus says in the Gospel. The new covenant that God promised to Jeremiah is made in the “hour” of Jesus—in His death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father’s right hand.
The prophets said this new covenant would return Israel’s exiled tribes from the ends of the world (see Jeremiah 31:1,3-4,7-8). Jesus too predicted His passion would gather the dispersed children of God (see John 11:52). But today He promises to draw to himself, not only Israelites, but all men and women.
The new covenant is more than a political or national restoration. As we sing in today’s Psalm, it is a universal spiritual restoration. In the “hour” of Jesus, sinners in every nation can return to the Father—to be washed of their guilt and given new hearts to love and serve Him.
In predicting He will be “lifted up,” Jesus isn’t describing only His coming crucifixion (see John 3:14-15). Isaiah used the same word to tell how the Messiah, after suffering for Israel’s sins, would be raised high and greatly exalted (see Isaiah 52:3). Elsewhere the term describes how kings are elevated above their subjects (see 1 Maccabees 8:13).
Troubled in His agony, Jesus didn’t pray to be saved. Instead, as we hear in today’s Epistle, He offered himself to the Father on the cross—as a living prayer and supplication. For this, God gave Him dominion over heaven and earth (see Acts 2:33; Philippians 2:9).
Where He has gone we can follow—if we let Him lead us. To follow Jesus means hating our lives of sin and selfishness. It means trusting in the Father’s will, the law He has written in our hearts.
Jesus’ “hour” continues in the Eucharist, where we join our sacrifices to His, giving God our lives in reverence and obedience—confident He will raise us up to bear fruits of holiness.
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St. Cyril of Alexandria (380-444)
from Commentary on the Book of Numbers, 2
As the firstfruits of our renewed humanity, Christ... trampled death under foot and came to life again, and then he ascended to the Father as an offering, the firstfruits, as it were, of the human race... Christ is symbolized in another way by the sheaf of grain the Lord required Israel to offer in the Temple (Lv 23,9), as a brief explanation will show.
The human race may be compared to spikes of wheat in a field, rising, as it were, from the earth, awaiting their full growth and development, and then in time being cut down by the reaper, which is death. The comparison is apt, since Christ himself spoke of our race in this way when he said to his holy disciples: "Do you not say: Four months and it will be harvest time? Look at the fields I tell you, they are already white and ready for harvesting.
The reaper is already
receiving his wages and bringing in a crop for eternal life" (Jn 4,35-36). Now Christ became like one of us; he sprang from the holy Virgin like a spike of wheat from the ground. Indeed, he spoke of himself as a grain of wheat when he said: "I tell you truly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground
and dies, it remains as it was, a single grain; but if it dies its yield is very great". so, like a sheaf of grain, the firstfruits, as it were, of the earth, he offered himself to the Father for our sake.
For we do not think of a spike of wheat, any more than we do of ourselves in isolation. We think of it rather as part of a sheaf, which is a single bundle made up of many spikes. The spikes have to be gathered into a bundle before they can be used, and this is the key to the mystery they represent, the mystery of Christ who, though one, appears in the image of a sheaf to be made up of many, as in fact he is.
Spiritually, he contains in himself believers. "As we have been raised up with him" writes Saint Paul, so "we have been enthroned with him in heaven" (Eph 2,6-7). He is a human being like ourselves, and this has made us one body with him (Eph 3,6), the body being the bond that unites us. We can say, therefore, than in him we are all one, and indeed he himself says to God, his heavenly Father: "It is my desire that as I and you are one, so they also may be one in us" (Jn 17,21). Thus the Lord is the firstfruits of humanity destined to be stored in heavenly barns.
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