 This evening, we have one presentation and the reason why is because this has been a day of travel for some of you a short distance, but for many of you a long distance. And so what I'd like to do in the time allotted is to focus on three principal themes. The first one is on the value of sacred scripture, the importance of knowing it and the power that will come to you as a result of getting to know God and taking that as word. The second principal theme that I'd like to focus on is of course the jubilee, the year of jubilee, but even more broadly the context of the year of jubilee, which is the Sabbath. That is the Sabbath as it was instituted in creation, the Sabbath as it was commanded at Mount Sinai in the Decalogue. But really the Sabbath extended to the sabbatical year every seven years when the land of Israel was supposed to live fallow. But then a kind of hyper extension because the year of jubilee was seven years times seven. But at the end of the 49th year, the seventh sabbatical, the Shemitah, you would have the blowing of the Yovale. That is the ram's horn on the day of atonement. And then you would extend that for another year, the year of jubilee. And so I want to focus on what the principle of the Sabbath teaches us from the Word of God for our own lives. And then finally I'd like to look at the notion of hope and how it is that when we are called upon to go through hard times. When we are called upon to face our own fears, we have the opportunity to grow in hope. A kind of surge in fact. And so let's begin with focusing on sacred scripture. Now that should come as no surprise for people who come to applied biblical studies. But what I want to just set out to state from the beginning is that the Word of God is more important than most of the people of God acknowledge. Now how do I go about proving that? Well, there are different ways. But I think I need to state from the outset that just because I'm going to emphasize sacred scripture doesn't mean that this is sort of like residue from my Protestant past. You know, Protestants, evangelicals often refer to their own tradition as Christianity for an evangelical Protestant is a religion of the book, like the Jews describe theirs or Muslims describe theirs. The catechism though, echoes the Catholic understanding that the Catholic faith is not a religion of the book, but it is a religion of the Word. But the Word was made flesh. And that Word is not just on the page. That Word is a person and not just the second person of the eternal trinity, the Word through whom all of creation came into existence. But the Word that was made flesh to dwell among us to teach us to heal us to die and arise for our salvation. So that doesn't cheapen or devalue the sacred page. No, subordinating scripture to Jesus is what really trans-values it, transforms and deepens our appreciation for the gift of sacred scripture. But perhaps the best way to prove this, the shortest way, the shortcut if you will, is to take a look in Luke 24 at what Jesus decided to do on his first day back from the dead. I won't go into a lengthy explanation. I've done that in years past. But if you were Jesus and you had just come back from the dead after descending into Hades and all of the torment that preceded it, what do you think you would do on your first day back from the dead? That's a reasonable question. You know, stop by and see your mother, drop it on Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, hover over the Sanhedrin and say, I'm back. Repent. But what in fact we discover is that in Luke 24, Easter morning, he takes a walk and meets up with Clovis and his unnamed companion and walks for hours and hours on the road to Emmaus, opening up the scriptures to two apparent nobodies who don't even recognize their rabbi, their teacher, their savior, until they arrive. And there at the table he takes, he blesses, he breaks and he gives the bread, the Eucharist. And of course that's when their eyes were open and that's when he disappears because he's brought them to the point of a Eucharistic revelation that in the Holy Eucharist you have the Word made flesh, the resurrected body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. And so what do those two men do? They walk all the way back much more briskly. They arrive in the upper room. They alert the 11 as to what happened in the late morning and throughout the afternoon and those disciples must have been wondering why would he spend most of his first day back from the dead with these two apparent nobodies, these two lay people when Jesus appears and ends up leading his second extensive scripture study that night for the 11. Not because these men were biblical ignoramuses, but because the Old Testament is like a story in search of an ending with the people of God in exile, with the promises of God seemingly unfulfilled, with everything sort of hanging there in suspended animation when we were expecting something of a fulfillment. But instead it was an apparent failure, an abject failure. We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. That's how they spoke to the stranger. We had hoped they'd given up hope. But then suddenly through the exposition of scripture and then through the unveiling of the Eucharistic presence of Christ, what apparent failure looked like is now divine fulfillment and not just back then and there for them, but for here and now for us as well. So if Jesus places such a priority upon teaching and opening up the meaning of the sacred scripture and he doesn't have a case of misplaced priorities, then perhaps we do and we ought to think about what we'll do in the aftermath of applied biblical studies in order to make greater sense of scripture and to live it out. But as I said, the Old Testament is like a story in search of an ending. But on the other hand, the New Testament is practically unintelligible apart from the Old. And so most of us grow up knowing the New, but not the Old. And so we're hearing about the fulfillment of all of these promises, all of these prophecies and we're like, okay, if you say so. Only when you read backwards from the New to the Old do you recognize how serious God the Father was about this plan, not just to forgive us of our sins, not just to heal us of our diseases, not just to perfect us, but also to elevate us as Bob Rice was just saying, we've received the grace of adoption. We've received the grace of divine sonship. And this is the only thing for which all of us were made. And this is what God the Father wants to show us and convince us of, but not just to change our mind, but our lives. And so I would say understanding Sacred Scripture is not something that you can easily overstate or overvalue. I could go on, but I remember an experience that I had back in the early 90s. I think it was 1992. I had not been back to England since 1975. When I was 17, I was playing guitar in the Continentals and we spent three or four weeks in England and Scotland in Belgium and Holland. It was wonderful as well as two months traveling the States. And so England was for me a really cool experience. But then I went back in 92 as a relatively recent convert and I was asked to speak and give lectures in London and then up in Oxford. And then the day after the Oxford lectures, I had an opportunity to speak to a group of older Catholics. Probably the medium age was 50, but there was a sort of senior spokesman named Leo. And after I had presented two talks on the importance of the Bible for ordinary Catholics, we had a Q&A. And he was the first one up with his hand. And so I called on him recognizing that he was sort of the senior spokesman. And people looked to him as a leader with great respect. So I was curious to hear what his question was, what his impressions were. And it took me aback because he said, you make it seem as though knowing sacred scripture is essential for the Catholic life. Whereas I can think of a medieval peasant who was faithful with his family, with his farming or whatever, but was illiterate. He couldn't read the scriptures and yet through the stained glass, through the sacraments, through the saints, he's in heaven. So how would you respond to that? And I'm listening intently and I'm hearing his heart because here he is probably in his mid to late 70s. And he's asking a very fair question because, you know, all of us wonder, especially as we get older, you know, how can you teach old dogs new tricks? And so I said, you know, I would say that you're right. Knowing scripture is not essential for our salvation. Besides scripture is embedded in the liturgy. It's not primarily meant to be read and studied privately is really meant to be read and proclaimed publicly. And so that peasant who's illiterate would have had the great advantage of that. But on the other hand, I can imagine if we could bring that medieval peasant back from the 12th century. And I were to hand over to him the rest of your question and ask him to answer it. I suspect he might say something like this, Leo, you have an opportunity to study scripture. You're literate. You have resources that are available to you and you're using me as an excuse. And he cracked a smile and he said, you won. And he sat down. And I remember this because I didn't return to the UK for a couple, maybe three or four more years. And when I traveled back to Oxford, Leo was in his 80s. And when I ran into him, I was surprised at how much he aged. But I was much more surprised at how excited he was because he said, the year after you left, I just stepped out and began to lead a weekly Bible study. And then after that went so well in our parish, I began to lead a second one at another parish nearby. And he said, I got to the point where I was leading three weekly Bible studies and my faith was on fire, but I'm just getting a little weaker. So I've cut back to two. And I'm like, wow, glory to God in the highest. But even better than that was the testimony of his friends because they had shared that fire too. And so I would propose to you that God's will for us is echoed in those words, did not our hearts burn within us as he opened the scriptures. But then what happens? Our eyes were open in the breaking of the bread. So the scriptures are opened and that brings you almost the whole way. But then the eyes of faith need to be opened to the sacred mystery of the Holy Eucharist. And that's what really completes the circuit. I'm fond of pointing out what should have been obvious to me because it was sort of hiding in plain view, but it took me years to discover. You know, back in high school and college, all I wanted to be was a New Testament Christian as we call ourselves. But when you really get serious and start studying the New Testament, what you discover is that the New Testament never calls itself the New Testament. The only time Jesus uses that phrase, the New Testament, is in Luke 2220. And where is he? In the upper room on Holy Thursday, what is he doing? He's instituting the Eucharist. And when he gets to the chalice and he speaks those words that are so beautiful and solemn and powerful, this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the New Covenant, the blood of the New Testament, Novem Testament. And then what does he say? Write this in remembrance of me. Oh, wait. No, he didn't. He said, do this. And what is this? We call it the Eucharist, but he called it the New Testament. And so the takeaway is rather obvious that the New Testament was a sacrament before it became a document according to the document. And what a difference it makes when you're studying the document to read it in the light of the fulfillment of Christ, who's not just a sacrament. He is the Word made flesh. He is the Word that is the creative reason that brought each of us into existence out of nothing. But he's not just the creative reason and the source of the intelligibility of the universe. That would be enough. But he's the redemptive reason of God. He reveals the plan of the Father from all eternity. Again, not just to forgive us, not just to heal us, not just to teach us, but to divinize us, to sanctify us, to make us holy, but only by the cross. His cross and then ours as well. So sacred scripture, I think, has this capacity, this power that we need to tap in order to really affect change, not only in our world, not only in our church, not only in our parishes and our families, but especially starting off in our own hearts. And this is why I want to pivot now, because the notion of the jubilee, rooted as it is in the Sabbath, is what we find in sacred scripture from stem to stern. From the very beginning to the very end of scripture, you have this heptatic pattern, this sabbatical rhythm. It starts off in the opening chapters, as you recall, but then it also is found in the closing chapters. So with the creation of heaven and earth, six days are all ordered to the seventh day. And the seventh day, of course, is the Sabbath and the Sabbath is the sign of the covenant and the covenant is the purpose for God creating the world. So it's not primarily about how much clock time it took. It's really about the purpose that the God the Father has for creatures who are made in His image and likeness to discover themselves as called to become children of God. So the Sabbath in Genesis 2, at the climax of creation, is something that God blesses and He hallows it. And that term for hallowing or sanctifying or consecrating Kadesh, it's the only time the Hebrew word holiness occurs in the 50 chapters of Genesis. And no wonder because the sanctifying grace that our first parents had to make them holy is precisely what they forfeited by committing mortal sin. They committed spiritual suicide. They preferred the finite natural life that they have as humans to the infinite supernatural life that is eternal and divine that God had breathed into our first Father's nostrils and then He expired by giving consent to the sin unto death. When God said the day you eat of it, you'll surely die. He wasn't mincing words. It wasn't an idle threat. They ate and they didn't drop dead physically, but they dropped dead spiritually. And so what original sin was for them, committed, it is for us what we contract when we get natural life that make us humans devoid of divine life that we can only get through Christ, through baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the Sabbath, the notion of holiness doesn't occur anywhere else until God gets the plan of redemption underway in the Exodus, first in the opening three chapters where the Lord appears to Moses in a burning bush. Take off your shoes, those sandals, because the ground on which you stand is Kodesh. It's holy. Ah, we have the return of this central theme of holiness. And then as you continue reading all 40 chapters of Exodus, 98 occurrences of variations of the Hebrew Kodesh for holiness, the holy tabernacle, the holy altar, the holy vestments, all of these things are holy. But when you get to the centerpiece of the book of Exodus, in Exodus 20, we call it the decalogue, the Ten Commandments. And of course, we know that there are ten, but what we often don't recognize is that the third commandment as we count them as Catholics is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And why? Well, because the Lord God created in six days and then he hallowed the seventh day. So the only one of the ten commandments that mentions the term holy is the Sabbath command, and it's mentioned twice. It also happens to be the longest of the ten commandments in terms of word count. But notice that it's not just you that is second person singular. It's remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And then who is it addressed to? Seven personages. How appropriate. So it is to you, the husband and wife, the mother and father, to your sons, to your daughters, to your man servants, to your maid servants, to your cattle, and oh yeah, to the sojourners even in the gates. So God is pretty serious about keeping the Sabbath. And why? It's not because he is seeking attention. He just wants more worship. He gets nothing from our worship, and yet he commands it. And why? Not because he's a divine egotist, but because he knows that from our worship he is able to fill us with more of his own life, more of his own grace, and more of his own holiness. And so when you look at this commandment, you recognize that it really is outstanding. It's the third in the first table of the law, and then of course the other seven follow. And so when we speak of the two tables of the law, we look at the first three, have no other gods before me, don't take my name in vain, and remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, those all have to do with the virtue of religion. That is, theocentricity, making God the center of our lives, establishing the living God who created the universe to be my personal Lord, and now with the Exodus my savior. But not just mine, but yours, not just yours, but ours. And so it is sons and daughters, it is manservants and maidservants, it's even the cattle and the sojourners because salvation is a family affair. And so keeping the Sabbath is a family affair because the covenant is signified by the Sabbath and remembering the Sabbath isn't setting your alarm so that on Saturday morning you recall what day it is, I fulfilled the commandment. But remember, Zachar in Hebrew has to do with commemorating, it has to do with celebrating, it has to do with consecrating. And not because doing that makes the Sabbath holy, no, by doing that the Sabbath will make us holy. There's nothing wrong with secularity. Our problem is secularism, where the secular swallows up the sacred, where all of the horizontal concerns of human relations the vertical issue that matters more than anything else, that there is a God, that he's the source of all existence, that we come from him, we'll return to him and give an account for all that we've done. And the rest of eternity will hang in the balance on the basis of what we have done with the truth of him. And so the Sabbath is, in a certain sense, what finishes the first table, have no other gods before the true God, don't take his name in vain, implies that you should take his name with honesty, integrity, and humility. And that has to do with prayer. But the idea of every seven days, you remember, you commemorate, you celebrate, you consecrate, and how? Why not? We know that the Sabbath, they had to do with worship, with liturgy, with sacrifice. But notice in Exodus 20, nothing is said about worship or sacrifice or liturgy. How do you fulfill the commandment? Rather oddly and negatively by not doing anything. Now, is God commanding laziness? No, he's commanding leisure. He's commanding stopping from the work that gets so frantic and entering into this notion of peace and silence and prayer and contemplation where you recognize that if I worked six days, seven days, if I worked 7,000 days in a row, I would never earn through my own works the only thing for which I was made and that is the grace of becoming a child of God. And so we can get really busy with worship and liturgy and sacrifice. Let's decorate the altar. Let's work hard on the music. And I think that's why nothing is said about that in the Sabbath command. Because it's not about what we're doing as liturgical activists. It's what we're not doing so that God can make up for what we can't do and give to us all that we need through the Holy Spirit, through His grace to bring us back to Himself. This is why worship is so central to the Sabbath, but ceasing from our labor. Entering into silence and peace. Short, lighting a candle, the Sabbath candle, but even more than that, recognizing that God's work is needed to complete where our work is lacking. And it's not just one day out of the week. In fact, as you fast forward through Exodus into the next book of Leviticus, you discover that the liturgical calendar of ancient Israel is spelled out in Leviticus 23. And there you have, guess how many feasts every year of your life? Just take a stab. Seven. Oh, what a coincidence. And which is the first of the seven? The Sabbath, which you celebrate every seven days. This is more than a commandment. This is more than an ideal. It's a lifestyle. It's a social order. But it's a theocentric way of living together so that we're not looking at each other competitively, comparatively. We're looking at God with grateful hearts. And then the second feast is what? Passover on the 14th of Nassan where we celebrate the fact that God did for us what we could never do for ourselves in liberating us through the Lamb. But that's just too good for one day. And so the third feast is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Hamatzot, which is a week. And so you extend the Passover from the 15th to the 21st of Nassan in order to really enter into the joy of salvation. And then the fourth feast after Sabbath, Passover, and Unleavened Bread is what we call Pentecost. The Feast of Weeks, Chevalot, literally the Feast of Sevens. The Feast of Oaths. Pentecost, 50 days after Passover. And then that feast, which is a standalone one day, a year type of feast is regulated in terms of the sabbatical rhythm of living out a covenant lifestyle that takes us beyond the contractual, the commercial, the economic, the competitive. There's nothing wrong with hard work, labor, free exchange, owning property, investing and all of that. But you've got to subordinate the contractual, which is human and secular, and good to the covenantal, which is sacred and divine and life changing. And so those are the first four, the last three all occur in, guess which month? The seventh month. And so the Feast of Trumpets is the first day of the seventh month. And then you have Yom Kippur on the 10th day of the seventh month. And then you have for a week the Feast of Tabernacles. That's the seventh feast in the seventh month that lasted seven days. And so all of this gives to you a sense of rhythm that has to do with how work is ordered to worship, how labor is ordered to liturgy, but not to a kind of frantic religious activism, but to a contemplative lifestyle where even in the middle of a busy world, even in the middle of a busy extended family, you will carve out that time that you need for prayer, for peace, for worship, for rest. And for renewing the household. And not just the parents, but the kids, not just the kids, but the man's servants and the maid's servants and even the people who are passing through. Because the family in ancient Israel was not just the nuclear family. The family in ancient Israel was an extended family that becomes a clan. And then there are all these interrelated clans. So you're never just a father. You're a husband. You're a son. You're an uncle. You're a nephew. You're all of these things because you're interrelated and apart from ancestry.com. You know your descendants. You also know that there are going to be those, you know, the ancestors and the descendants, the past, present and future. It's all one living organism. It's spiritual. It's not just biological. And so what happens in Leviticus 25 where you have the legislation of the year of Jubilee is something that is easily missed or misunderstood in the year of Jubilee. Well, in the first seven verses of Leviticus 25 you have what every professor here at the university longs for. And what is that? A sabbatical, right? But we want a sabbatical so that we can work on all of the projects that the students keep us from. I remember a sabbatical. It was my third sabbatical here. And I was looking at projects but I got permission to apply for a sabbatical to take pilgrimages, four of them. And with the help of 206 tours they became life changing not only for me but for our youngest son who at the time was barely a teenager. And so we went to Guadalupe. We went to Jerusalem, to the Holy Land, to Galilee. And we also went to Fatima and to Lourdes. And then we also went to Rome and Assisi. And so this year was spent for me as a pilgrim seeking God's presence and peace in all of these sacred places. And of all my sabbaticals this was the most productive. It was the most transformative and not only for me but for my wife for our marriage, for our kids, for our family. And I'm convinced that this is the way that God wants us to think. And so when you finish the first seven verses of Leviticus 25 that's the sabbatical year. And that's where you basically are required to let the land lie fallow. It's not just crop rotation though. It's not just an agricultural strategy. It is that and in fact experts will tell you that that's the best way to keep fresh or to rejuvenate land. But apart from the the fringe benefits of keeping the covenant of fulfilling the sabbatical year of letting the land lie fallow and spending an entire year developing through leisure the contemplative habits of prayer, personal prayer, family prayer and then the extended family so that the clan gets together more than just once or twice a year but then the tribe of Judah, Asimian, Levi, Reuben, whoever the tribe is made up of clans. The clans are made up of households. The households are made up of family units but it's all one extended family. And so the land is ours. It's not a marketable commodity to buy and sell for a quick profit. No, the land is the promised land. The land is holy land. The land is where our ancestor buried. That's where they shed their blood that we might have an inheritance. It is the land that is a sacred trust that we pass down to our descendants. At least that is what is in the law because the law of God is covenant law. The logic of the law is love in a way that kind of goes beyond the way we think when it comes to law. You have love and you have law but you can't legislate love but what if you can? What if you must? What if Deuteronomy 6 verse 5 is a commandment but it's the first and the greatest that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. Why? Because of what you owe him because of what he deserves that's just natural that's rational but it's even more it's life changing and not only Deuteronomy 6 5 but Leviticus 19 18 love your neighbor as yourself we tend to forget that these were two out of the 613 commandments but they were the top two and not just Jesus but the lawyer and the rabbis recognized that not all laws are created equal. That the law of love alone is what orders all of the other statutes which is why Paul can say in Romans chapter 13 that love is the fulfillment of the law but he could have said that when he was rabbi Saul because that is the interlogic of the legislation that comes from a covenant that is more than a social contract and it's a lot for us to take in but even more than the sabbatical year is the year of jubilee as I explained earlier after 7 sabbaticals you've come to the 49th year so practically every person will experience a jubilee at least once in your lifetime and on the day of atonement when the yovel is sound of the ram's horn you recognize that God's action through sacrificial atonement is what is going to bring in an extension of a holiday a vacation a sacred time it ends up becoming a symbol of our inheritance in heaven it's not just the promised land of Canaan about the size of a sliver of land you know like New Jersey no this is like a piece of geography that points to something far greater that isn't just on the other side of the Jordan it's on the other side of this life that is mortal and transitory and so in the year of jubilee the land could not be sold it could only be leased and so it reverted to the original family owners as the ancestral inheritance that it was meant to be so that every family would be preserved and if you had no male leaders who could make a profit if you had to lease the land to the debts you know that you're not going to end up in perpetual slavery there's a kind of indentured servitude where servitude is limited for a number of years and then the 7th year you're free and then if you have to lease the land because it's just so much more the debt is exorbitant you get the land back now why do I emphasize this well first of all I want to emphasize the fact that the jubilee is also Dr. Mary Healy tomorrow in talks that will go far beyond the preliminary sketch that I'm drawing right now but the jubilee is how it is worship is established at the center of our lives I mean we think of homo sapiens you know we think of homo economicus the way Carl Marx described humans as being nothing but material physical seeking commodity seeking gain when in fact I recognize if we're made of the image and lightness of God it's homo liturgicus we're made for worship that the cosmos that God creates is a cosmic temple that the garden of Eden into which he put it our first father is in effect the sanctuary the holy of holies when he disobeys it's more than a transgression it's a desecration he's driven out and God post to cherubin with flaming swords by the entrance of the gardener recall every Israelite would recognize the two cherubim are posted only one place only one other place and that is the holy of holies the sanctuary in the temple and so this is a way of seeing the world through the eyes of faith seeing this is my father's world that I don't have to kind of make this up I don't have to project religious sentimentality onto this impersonal cosmos to kind of make it feel a little safer that's the way it is the eyes of faith grasp reality because reality is more than what you see what you see is a sign that points beyond itself and this is what the whole sabbatical system was for and it's why that it's more than a sabbatical economy it's a sabbatical order that is rooted in the covenant that goes beyond commerce it is centered on God and even though the covenant benefits humans more than contracts it's a kind of theocentric humanism we quote our dear friend Clem Harrell a theocentric humanism because the best thing we can be as humans is centered on God and then we'll discover he's centered on us more than we are even when we're selfish the tragedy of course is that there's no empirical evidence that Israel ever kept the jubilee sorry about that and yet the Lord God does we don't have the time to get into the calculations but there's actually a book called jubilees 15 copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls now most of you haven't read it I have several times I really enjoy it Dr. Bergman got to study under the world expert on the book of jubilees Dr. Jim Vanderkamp he's written a two volume commentary on jubilees jubilees is this book that delivers a message to Moses when he brings to Israel to Mount Sinai and so what he discovered that there have been 50 jubilees since creation well less 40 years that 40 years after they arrive at Sinai they're going to enter into the promised land the holy land and guess what that corresponds to the jubilee of jubilees now whether you buy it or not the kumran covenanters who were the most devout Jews back in the first century had 15 copies of this commentary on Genesis and Exodus which means that second only to the Psalms Deuteronomy, Genesis and Exodus they had jubilees more than any other Old Testament book and again I'm not trying to sell you on jubilees but it is in the Ethiopian Jewish canon we discovered in the 18 and 1900s and in fact it is also in the Ethiopian Jewish Christian canon and so it illuminates this tradition that was practically lost except of the prophets and so when in Isaiah 61 Isaiah is proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord he's not just kind of like Roland and Ice and hoping God's timing is right no the spirit of the Lord is upon me anointing me it's not just the luck of the draw that will bring us back to the land it is the blessing of the Holy Spirit who will empower the Messiah the servant who will suffer and die in order to usher us all into something that is much larger than Palestine or New Jersey and that is our heavily inheritance that which the holy land signified and so the more we get in step with the rhythm of the Sabbath the rhythm of the covenant the more we're going to see how the new fulfills the old I don't have the opportunity or the time to go into this but just as circumcision cutting off the mortal flesh of the male organ for generation gives way to baptism because the blood of circumcision didn't redeem you but the water of baptism does sanctify you and restore sanctifying grace to you and likewise just as the Passover slaying a lamb slashing his throat draining his body of all of the blood roasting it and eating it is a profound and sacred symbol the fact is the Eucharist where the Lamb of God lays down his life and fulfills the old is why we don't celebrate the Passover annually we celebrate the Eucharist weekly we celebrate the Eucharist daily because Jesus taught us to pray to give us this day our daily bread like God provided the manna every day give us this day our super substantial bread literally in the Greek and in the Latin and that of course is the Eucharist so circumcision in the old is a prophetic sign Colossians 2 we discover that when Jesus is crucified and resurrected that mortal flesh is cut off and our hearts are circumcised in baptism likewise the Passover lamb gives way to the Eucharist but the seventh day that comes at the end of the week gives way to what the eighth day Sunday the Lord's day the first day and why is that because in seven days God created the old creation and it fell and so there would be an eighth day which would be the first day which would be the day of resurrection the day of new creation and so this is already in the air you're breathing in the first century even if you happen to be Jewish Christian you recognize okay circumcision has great value but baptism has redemptive power the Passover is to be revered and celebrated as long as the temple is standing and yet we have the Eucharist as the fulfillment and so the Sabbath which creates the rhythm of waiting expectantly for hope because you work day after day after day and then at the end of your labor comes the day of rest at the end of the Old Testament comes the Messiah and so just as Adam was made on the sixth day so Jesus the new Adam enters into the trial on the sixth day Friday and as Adam went into the deep sleep of his own ecstasy and from his side came forth Eve the early church fathers were fond of pointing out that the new Adam went from the garden like Adam but to the right tree the cross and went into the deep sleep of death and from his side came the water and the blood that empowered the Blessed Virgin through the breath of the Holy Spirit that he breathed out upon her and us so that we could enter into a new creation and so the seventh day for him was the day of rest where his mortal flesh is in the but the eighth day is the day of new creation the day of the new covenant and this Easter Sunday is the day when suddenly the law and the prophets begin to make sense that which was like a story in search of an ending is now intelligible and so the new is concealed in the old and the old is revealed and fulfilled in the new but in a way that surpasses the highest hopes of the Hebrew people and yet even the Hebrew rabbis recognize that the eighth day always had a certain transcendent meaning the founding father of modern Orthodox Judaism Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch is the one who pointed out in his commentary on Genesis 17 that the fact that Abraham had to get circumcised and that circumcision subsequently was to be administered on what day the eighth day not an option even if that eighth day happened to be the Sabbath it must give way to circumcision and so the eighth day points to the day when our mortal flesh is cut off through the Messiah so there's a deeper logic there's a deeper love there's a deeper fulfillment when we see how the new is concealed in the old and how the old is revealed and fulfilled in the new again it goes beyond their highest hopes but I think it goes beyond ours as well so what I'd like to just say as I conclude this second section on the Sabbath on the Jubilee on this covenantal rhythm of life that is not just for me and you but for us and not just for nuclear families but extended families for parish families as well is that this is what we mean when we say it is right and just it is truly right and just our duty and our salvation always and everywhere to give you thanks that our religion is not some kind of private thing tucked away that we do once a week for an hour and then we just get back to real life this is real life this is like Prince Caspian this is like the silver chair this is like the hour when suddenly reality makes sense and so we've got to be open to the possibility that our world has gotten entirely wrong and it's getting it more and more wrong but we don't have political structures we don't even have to change the ecclesiastical structures let's just change the way we live the rhythm of daily life by emphasizing prayer and for us as married couples and as families don't give up hope this I believe is the key so now as I transition into the third and final section and that is hope and why hard times often lead us to holiness what I'd like to do is to emphasize the fact that our hope for holiness is not something like our hope for winning the lottery no this hope is a thing that is theologically certain now when we speak of faith and we distinguish it from hope what we mean is that the object of faith is the word of God the sacred mysteries that are absolutely certain the certainty of faith now whatever we find in scripture and tradition has that authority it's divinely revealed it is the object of faith we might have all kinds of questions about the sacred mysteries but as Cardinal Newman once wrote ten thousand questions don't add up to a single doubt because the truth is divinely revealed but the certainty of faith is not the same thing as the assurance of hope now if you could show me in scripture where I read in Deuteronomy book 38 verse 4 Scott Hans name is written in the lambs book of life that I could say I've got it made in the shade and I've got the certainty of faith because it's in the word of God but it's not and so when we take the objective truth of the faith and apply it to our own subjective experience what do you call that transfer that is hope that is the assurance of hope and I think sometimes because Protestants exaggerate it and talk about the certainty of salvation as though it is there on the pages of sacred scripture I'm saved one saved always saved no matter what I do well that's a kind of false assurance but that doesn't exclude true assurance so I want to propose to you that God the Father wants to give you solid grounds for hope for assurance for a kind of moral certainty that yes I am a beloved daughter of God despite all that I've done despite what others have done to me I am a son of God and he loves me and when he sees me he sees his son in me and he's going to perfect his son in me through my struggles through my travail through my apparent failures will come the fulfillment and I am convinced that this is what he wants for each and every one of us but I'm also convinced that it seems to come harder for Catholics and almost in the other Christian group I know and that's because we tend to approach the faith as though it's an employment contract there's that word again contract but the fact is we don't work out our salvation with fear and trembling as employees we work out our salvation with fear and trembling as sons and daughters who know our own awareness and how easy it is to betray our savior and how easy it is to desecrate the sacred gifts that the father has given his beloved children so yes perfect love casts out all fear but whose love among us is perfected yet so there's a room for fear but not servile fear of getting caught and punished but what is called filial fear that is a fear of disappointing Abba father a fear of disobeying and of being disinherited but what really is meant is more than just that kind of fear it really is the hope that comes from faith and leads to love above all things and love abides you know and so I remember somewhat vividly years ago in prayer coming to grips with God in all honesty in a way that seemed a little risky but I'd read in the catechism that the first prayer recorded in scripture comes from the lips of Abraham in Genesis 15 where after God has told him that he will have descendants inherit the land he says how will I know that this is going to be true well because God just said it to you well how shall I know it's not because God's reputation was so weak it's because Abraham knew that his faith was so weak so God made a covenant but the catechism says that Abraham's first prayer is quote availed complaint a complaint yeah a complaint now you would think that's out of bounds you know you don't complain to God no but if you don't complain to God you'll end up complaining about him I've discovered that with our six kids if they don't come to me with their gripes they're going to go tell their friends and others but when they come to me it's because they know I care they believe I can do something and I'm like forget it I don't care about you I don't do that not at any age and if that's true for me it's more true for God and so I remember just coming to him and saying why am I so unsure why am I so afraid you know how can I know that I'm one of your children whoa and I felt like the Lord's presence manifested himself you know and it was like do your children wake up wondering whether or not they're your children and like I don't think they do no and why is that Scott is that because you're a better father than me well no that's not what I'm saying but it really was and so he said why do your children not wake up wondering whether or not they're your children and I'm like well okay I'm writing in my prayer journal and I come up with a list number one because they live in my house they share the same address and phone number and they know why but at the time you know we had students living with us as well you know Tim Gray Ted Sri Curtis Martin back in the early 90's we've had over 60 since then they live in my house but they're not part of my family strictly speaking so number two they live in my house they're called by my name those other guys don't have Han at the end our kids do so at this point I'm on a roll they live in my house they're called by my name and they share my flesh and blood I could prove it DNA or whatever besides they eat at my table I feed them I'm the provider I'm the breadwinner and number five my bride is their mother and they know how much they owe me because of that and six I discipline them and punish them at times not the neighbors kids even though they deserve it much worse and then the seventh thing came to me because we're always celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and all kinds of things they don't wake up wondering whether or not they're my children and the Lord said take a look at that list and I took a second look they live in my house and then I realized that the most frequently used term to describe the church that Christ established in the New Testament is the household of faith they're called by my name well how do we enter the family of God we're baptized in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit okay and what's next I forget they live in my house they're called by my name they sit at my table where Jesus was one of the institutes of the Eucharist and when we receive communion we share flesh and blood like my kids do only it's Jesus flesh and blood it's the Eucharistic real presence and my bride is their mother but who is the bride of Christ the church as St. Cyprian would say you can't have God as your father if you refuse to have the church as your mother the bride of Christ and we're disciplined we're instructed we get penance we go to confession and we get educated and all of the rest but above all we're celebrating we're commemorating we're remembering in the New Covenant the Lord's Day and the liturgical year that gives us a lifestyle a way of walking in step with God our Father now I want to conclude by pointing out the obvious and that is we try and we fail but we don't give up hope so the question I want to leave with you is this if you had no fear of failure what would you attempt for God if you had no fear that you would fail what would you try to do for the Lord now we all have fear but we hear God say be not afraid or to Josh would be strong and courageous and so we confront our fear but then we confront the face of our Father and we realize that his power is greater than our weakness so we keep trying and we keep failing but what looks like a failure turns out to be a fulfillment and a divine success I'm fond of this saying from a famous athlete who was my first born's hero way back in the 90s he said and I quote I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career I've lost almost 300 games 26 times I was trusted to take the game winning shot and missed and I've failed over and over again and that is why I succeed said Michael Jordan so let's keep trying because the fact is God our Father is at work in our hearts and our lives so that even when we fall we fall on to His mercy we don't fall down we fall upward in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Almighty God our Father in heaven we thank you for the gift of your Word but above all for the gift of the Word made flesh and in the name of Jesus we ask that you would help us to keep the new covenant with you stepping into the rhythm of what it means to be your sons and daughters of what it means to know your peace of what it means to restore our hope Holy Mary our hope's seat of wisdom pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit thank you so very much God bless you