Note. The passion of our divine Savior is the main cause of his life on earth, for which he sighed several times during his apostolic life and with great vehemence he desired to reach that moment, because in it he would fully comply with the Divine Will and fully satisfy our redemption. For the Church, his Immaculate Spouse is the essence of the liturgical year, it is where she expands, manifesting her sadness and regret with the lamentations of the great prophet Jeremiah, lamentations that are like inexpressible groans that arise from the depths of the heart of our Mother the Church. From which it follows that in this article Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of the figure of the sacrifice of the Cross and of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It should, for us, mean the same and unite us with a great magnanimous and generous spirit to this passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Although this Good Friday has already passed, where the Church, with great solemnity, celebrated her Passion and Death on the Cross.
The
Of the passion of Christ in the Holy Scripture. (a.1-3)
When we read the prophetic
oracles about the Messiah in the Old Testament, we notice that he is always
presented to us as a glorious monarch, who defends the cause of the humble
against the violence of the powerful, who receives the homage of the peoples
and the Kings. This conception could not but flatter the Israelite people, who
end up seeing in the messianic kingdom an idealization of the kingdom of David.
From this it comes that the people expressed their faith in the messianic
dignity of Jesus calling him the Son of David and clarifying to him at his
entrance in Jerusalem with the voices of "Blessed the kingdom of David,
our father, who comes" (Mc, 11,10). For this reason the apostles did not
understand the words of the Savior when he announced his passion in Jerusalem
(Mt. 6,22 s),
However, it could not be that
the Old Testament failed to predict the great mystery of the redemptive passion
of the Son of God. Saint Luke tells us that the risen Saviour, when appearing
to the two disciples, who were walking towards Emmaus, said to them: ¡Oh men
without intelligence and slow of heart to believe everything that the prophets
predicted! Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer this and enter into
his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he declared to them
everything that referred to Him in all the Scriptures (Lc. 24,25-27).
Well, this is the program
that we propose to develop in this introduction. In order to achieve this, we
need to remember that Jewish exegesis admitted to Holy Scripture, in addition
to the literal historical sense, a deeper literal sense, which today is usually
called the full sense, and then the typical sense. This without counting the
comfortable sense, which the doctors of the Law used and abused. All these
senses, without excluding the comfortable one, which is not the sense of
Scripture, but of its interpreter, can be found in the writings of the New
Testament.
Sacrifices
in the Old Testament.
Among the festivals that the Israelite people
celebrated, Easter occupies a prominent place. On Nisan 10, each family will
separate a lamb or a kid from the flock; On the 14th, at sunset, they will
sacrifice it and eat it at night, roasted with unleavened bread and wild
lettuce.
Only
the circumcised will be allowed to participate in this banquet.
This is Yahweh's Passover
sacrifice, which passed by the houses of the children of Israel when he Aryan
to Egypt, saving our roses (Ex. 12,27). Easter recalls the liberation of Israel
by virtue of the promises made to the patriarchs, later confirmed with the
Sinai covenant. The Apostle undoubtedly refers to these promises when he says
of Moses that by faith he celebrated the Passover and the sprinkling of blood,
so that the exterminator would not touch the firstborn of Israel; (Hebr. II,
28). The consummation of this Easter is declared to us by Saint Paul writing to
the Coryritians: put away the old yeast to be new dough, as you are unleavened,
because Christ, our Easter, has already been immolated (1 Cor. 5,7). The
paschal sacrifice, commemorating the deliverance of Israel, is thus the type of
Christ's sacrifice, with which the liberation of the human race was
accomplished. For this reason Saint John, declaring why the Savior's legs were
not broken like thieves, brings the words of Exodus in which it was commanded
not to break the bone of the paschal lamb (I. 19,36; Ex. 12,46).
The main act of worship is
sacrifice. The patriarchs, wherever they set up their tents, erected an altar
and offered sacrifices to the Lord: The sacrificed victim was the substitute
for the offerer, who was offered and sacrificed in it. The oblation of blood
represented the soul of the one who offered it. For this reason, when devotion
was lacking in the offerer, by which the victim was incorporated, the sacrifice
was not pleasing to the Lord, and, on the other hand, devotion, however it
manifested itself, constituted a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord. But it is
already seen that only the most perfect devotion to the Son of God could be
pleasing to the heavenly Father, and that of others, inasmuch as they
participated in it.
In Leviticus we are made
aware of the various kinds of sacrifices admitted by the Mosaic ritual: the
holocaust, the peaceful sacrifice and the double expiatory sacrifice for sins
(Lev. 1-5). Of these, the holocaust was regarded as the most perfect, because
in it the entire victim was consumed as a gift to God, without either the
offerer or the priest reserving any part. From the peaceful sacrifice, the
blood and entrails were offered to God; The meats were shared between the
priest and the offerer, who had to eat them in the sanctuary, in a communion
banquet, offered by God himself, who had sanctified it. The expiatory
sacrifices were ordered to expiate sins and purify souls. The priests only
received a portion of them, for which they were said to eat the sins of the
people: Only faith and devotion made all these sacrifices pleasing, which from
the sacrifice of Christ received the virtue of pleasing God and expiating sins.
In this is found the reason of type that all of them have to figure the
sacrifice of Calvary
Among the expiatory sacrifices,
those that were offered beyond the seventh month in the festival of atonement
occupy a preferential place, which are described in great detail in chapter 16
of Leviticus and which in the Epistle to the Hebrews is declared in its typical
sense (9 -10). Through these sacrifices, the people believed themselves
purified of their sins and fully reconciled with their God. Two things must be
distinguished in the virtue of this feast, as in that of the other Mosaic
rites: purification from legal impurities, which had their origin in the law
itself, and purification from sins or infractions of God's law. The first were removed by the rites of the
same law that put them; but the latter were only removed by devotion and faith
in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
All this will appear more
clearly in the sacrifice of Isaac, which the exegetical tradition has always
regarded as the most expressive type of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Human
sacrifices offered to false gods were common in Canaan. Parents offered their
divinities the one they loved the most, their own children. With this, they
thought they deserved their thanks... That this barbaric custom was introduced
into Israel is proven by the case of Jephthah, who offered his daughter to God
after the victory over the Ammonites... The intention of the sacred author in
referring Isaac's sacrifice is, without a doubt, showing what is pleasing to
the Lord in sacrifices... To understand the meaning of this story, one must
begin by taking stock of what Isaac was for his father: the much-desired son,
the heir of divine promises. For the Lord demands it of Abraham, and the
patriarch prepares to make the sacrifice and, when he was about to consummate
it, God reveals his will and how satisfied he was with his obedience. Abraham
was both the priest and the victim. As he strikes the killing blow on his son,
he strikes his own heart.
The
death of Jesus Christ as the supreme and unique sacrifice.
For the death of Jesus
Christ, arranged by the Father, accepted by the Son from the beginning,
requested by the Jews, executed by the Romans, and endured by the Savior in
accordance with the will of the Father, is a true sacrifice, the only one
accepted by God. God the Father, and in attention to which the ancient
sacrifices of the law had value as their figures. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
the Apostle speaks to us extensively of the priesthood of Christ, of the
sacrifice he made of himself and of the fruits of that sacrifice (Hebr. 7,27';
29,11s; ro, 4-I.14 ), and writing to the Romans, Saint Paul says that God has
placed Christ Jesus as a propitiation sacrifice, through faith in his blood,
for the manifestation of his justice, for tolerance of sins (3,
IV.
Of the redemption of Christ (a.4)
In ancient times, hunger was
the object of trafficking. And not only the individual, also in the Scriptures
it is the people en masse. The defeated were, by right received everywhere,
slaves of the victor, who could sell them as part of the spoils of war. In
Deuteronomy (28.68) threatening Israel with the punishment of his
prevarications, it is said: Yahweh will end up making you return in ships to
Egypt by the way he had told you about; You won't come back for him. To him you
will be offered to your enemies for sale, as slaves and slaves, and there will
be no one to buy you. The slave could not legally recover his freedom but by
paying the due ransom to his owner. The prophets use this image to explain
God's behavior toward Israel. Isaiah makes Yahweh speak in this way: ¿Or who is
that of my creditors to whom I have sold you? For our crimes you were sold
(50,15). and the psalmist complains to the Lord saying; You have sold your
people for nothing; you did not raise its price much (44.13) and in the song of
Deuteronomy; ¿How can one soto pursue a thousand, and two put ten thousand to
flight, except because his Rock sold them and Yahweh delivered them (32,30)? In
opposition to this, Isaiah speaks, in the second part of his book, of the
Redeemer of Israel, which he says; For you I sent against Babylon and broke the
bars of your prison, and the Chaldeans were bound with ropes (43,14). He before
he had spoken with more respect of the rights of the Chaldeans over his people,
saying; I gave Egypt as your ransom, I give Ethiopia and Saba for you. Because
you are in my eyes of great esteem, of great price, and I love you, and I give
up kingdoms and peoples for you in exchange for your life (43,3S). It is the
providential interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Egypt towards the
end of his reign.
Redemption or ransom
supposes, naturally, the servitude of the ransomed. This will be the slavery of
sin (Tit, 2,13) or the slavery of the devil. The apostles often speak of
Christ, who has come to be, from God, wisdom, justice, sanctification and
redemption, so that, as it is written, he who glories may glory in the Lord (1
Cor. 1,30S). And later; You have bought
a place at a price; do not become servants of men (7,23). That price that was
given for us is none other than Christ, who gave himself for the redemption of
all (1 Tim.m, 2,6). And more concretely, it is the blood, that is, the life of
Christ, which rescued us, or in Him we have redemption by virtue of his blood
(Eph. 1,7; Hebr. 9, 12, I5). Not with
gold or silver, which are corruptible, says Saint Peter, you have been
redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ (I Petr. 1,18s•). And Saint
John says that the slaughtered Lamb was the one who bought men from every
tribe, language, people and nation with his blood for God, and made us kingdom
and priests for our God (Apoc, 9S). Saint Paul, who had felt, in his life as a
Pharisee, the full weight of the law and who esteemed being free from it, says
to the Galatians: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a
curse for us. for it is written, Cursed
is everyone who hangs on a tree (3,13.44S).
V.
Efficiency of the passion of Christ (a.5-6)
The last article serves to
propose another new question about the way Christ works for the health of men.
Philosophers distinguish four causes, two internal to things, because they
enter into their constitution, which are material and formal; two other
external a. the things, which are the final one, which acts as an attraction
towards itself, and the efficient one, which acts as an impeller, the machine
that pushes or pulls the train, is the efficient cause of its movement. To this
physical efficient cause is reduced the moral cause, the advice, the mandate,
the example.
How is this realized in the
passion of Christ? Returning to the principle indicated above, it is necessary
to see in Jesus the divinity and the humanity. The first is the main cause of
human health; humanity, the instrumental; the two efficient, but subordinate,
since the instrument does not act if it is not moved by the main cause, the pen
by the hand of the clerk, but the main one, everything it does, does so using
the instrument. Otherwise it would not be a main cause, but a unique cause. The
application of this doctrine to these divine things usually has its
difficulties, since only by analogy can human doctrines be applied to the
declaration of divine mysteries. That is why I am not surprised that the
sentences of the theologians do not agree in explaining this question that the
Aquinas proposes here. Let's see how to do it by relying on his words. There
are in Christ two natures, the divine and the human, the human being the
instrument of the divine; that one works, suffers and dies for the health of
the world; but his works, sufferings and death receive the virtue of working human
health from divine nature, Human weakness is made strong by the virtue of
divinity, When the faithful soul moved by God, unites in the passion and death
of Christ through faith, divinity works by communicating the fruits of Christ's
passion and death, which are fruits of salvation.
Source: Saint Thomas Aquinas.
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