obedience and sacrifice (solemn vespers - Candelaria)

A curious thing can be found in our reading this evening. The author of the letter to the Hebrews puts a quotation in the mouth of Jesus, but the author quotes it differently. Instead of saying “an open ear you have given me” from Psalm 40, he had Jesus say instead “a body you have prepared for me.”

The quotation may sound miles apart but the meaning is the same. In fact he reworded the quote to reiterate emphatically and specifically a very important point. God did not just give Jesus an “open ear” to listen to whatever God wishes, to listen to whatever God wills him to do, but Jesus was given “a body” he was given flesh and blood so that he can carry out whatever God wishes, what God specifically wants him to do. Jesus was given a body, Jesus was given flesh and blood so that he can carry out what the Father specifically wants him to do. He was given flesh and blood, he was given a body so that he can suffer and die for us in obedience to the Father.


It is only in this context that one can understand why the sacrifice of Jesus superseded all other sacrifices of the Old Testament be it the sacrifice of rams and bullocks or the sacrifice of turtledoves.

The sacrifice of Jesus was most pleasing to the Father and ended all other sacrifices because it was a sacrifice involving a human body, a body with its consequent faculties, be it the capacity to feel and avoid as much as it can physical pain, and a human body that will naturally veer away and avoid the emotional agony of being deprived and abandoned; a human body which will always choose and struggle in its choice to preserve its own life; a human body which will always naturally cry to let this cup of suffering pass it by, as it craves for the pleasure, as it thirsts for acceptance, as it would naturally and even instinctively struggle for breath and life.

These instincts and natural reaction of our bodies is the same body, exactly the same body which was given to Jesus. It has the same capacity for feelings, the same craving for pleasure, the same wants, the same aversion for pain . . . the same instincts.

But this body, this human body has still something in it that comes naturally as breathing is the natural reflex of our lungs. It has the capacity to choose – to choose even that which our bodies would be naturally and be instinctively averted to. The will, the capacity to choose is stronger than our natural inclinations, stronger than our emotions, stronger than our attachments, stronger than our suspicions, stronger than human logic, stronger than the force of inquisitions, tortures and death. With the natural inclinations of the human body of which Jesus was given, he was also given like all of us the capacity to make a choice.

This is the root of obedience and this is what made the sacrifice of Jesus supersede all other sacrifices made. It was not Calvary that made the difference, it was his choice, the choice of Jesus to embrace Calvary that made the difference. Realize that there is in that body a force stronger than all others, not even your thirsts, not even your aversion to pain, not even the devil and not even God can move. Your choice will always be stronger than all others. “A human body you have prepared for me . . . I have come to do your will, O God.”

Tonight we carry the crowns to the shrine. We will have Jesus crowned with gold and glory. We will have Mary, who gave him his humanity and all its consequent faculties, crowned with gold and glory. It is their choice to be crowned as such and not merely ours, because in his life he chose to do the Father’s will contrary to what his body craved for, and in her life she chose to stick it out with the choice of her Son even at the foot of the cross, and even running contrary to the natural feeling of love which only a mother can have. But she chose not her instinct, she chose not her motherly inclination, no matter how heroic it may look and sound, but she chose the Father’s will over and above all her feelings and logic.

To obey, to choose to obey is greater than sacrifice. In fact there can only be a real sacrifice if that sacrifice is underlined and founded on obedience, on our choice to obey.
And so on this hallowed eve of the Feast of our Lady of Candles we bring home with us the following questions as we prepare to celebrate her glorious feast:

For priests, religious and seminarians: can there be bug-os nga paghiliusa if each of us insists on what we want and what we individually perceive as a better solution? Ours is a life closely connected with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross which we make present in the midst of the Christian community by our celebration of the Eucharist. Is our Eucharist a celebration of the sacrifice of Jesus? Is our life a constant struggle to conjoin ourselves in that sacrifice, a constant struggle to go against our ego, to go against our line of reasoning, our comforts, our attachments, our dreams and personal preferences and even to go against what we can readily and rightfully demand as our human rights – to forgo all these in subservience to the will of God as expressed by our superiors? Very difficult, indeed! It would have been easier to say 8 masses in a day. But that is exactly the reason why obedience supersedes all other sacrifices.

For the lay faithful, the parishioners of La Candelaria, can we move out of our comfort zones and securities and our well established weekly and yearly routine so as to get ourselves involve in the work of our parish? Can we who are so well entrenched for a number of years now in our ministries make way for those who also seek to make a mark in their parish? Can we go the way of Christ embracing the difficult and sometimes heartrending choices we have to make to follow in obedience God’s call for us whether in our homes, in our places of work and in our parish.

It is difficult to give way, as it is with great difficulty to go against an established routine. But there is something in each one of us, there is something in our humanity stronger than our natural aversions and likings. We have the power to choose. And this is the very foundation of our obedience to God. Our participation in the Eucharist tomorrow can only be made whole when in obedience we have undergone the difficult submission of our will to God and make his own, our choice.

“A human body you have prepared for me . . . I have come to do your will, O God.”

In the old calendar Christmas ends on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Mother, this very day. Rightly so, for this feast completes the meaning and the intent of the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God – the body of Jesus, the same body given to you and me, the body born of Mary will be a sacrifice that will replace all others, and in our gospel tomorrow it will be prophesied that Mary will not be spared from pain and suffering because of the choices of her Son.

Tonight we crown them with gold. But lest we forget, before we even thought of honoring them with such magnificence in this beautiful cathedral, Jesus chose to be crowned with thorns, and Mary chose to embrace the sword that has pierced her mother’s heart. The sacrifice that has superseded all others had been made once and for all and replaced all others, because they chose to obey.