 All right, Father, it's great to have you back in Deacons, and we've got some fantastic stuff to go over this afternoon. This is going to be kind of a Bible study on the types and prophecies of the Eucharist in Scripture, in solidarity with the USCCB's emphasis on Eucharistic revival, trying to get back to the basics of the faith, and the source of the summit, of course, is the Eucharist because it is Christ, and so we're only too happy to join with the bishops and spend time reflecting and cultivating our Eucharistic amazement as St. John Paul II liked to describe it. So let's begin in prayer this afternoon in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of yourself, your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who remains with us always until the end of time in the most blessed sacrament. And as we ponder this sacrament and its anticipations and foreshadowings throughout the Old Testament, Lord, send down your Holy Spirit upon us in abundance to enlighten our minds and inflame our hearts as we meditate on your Word. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. The name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Now, my own journey into the church was largely centered around coming to discover the real presence of the Lord in the sacrament of the Eucharist. And up until about age 30, the Eucharist was almost meaningless to me. Being raised as a Calvinist, we only had two sacraments, two things that we called sacraments, baptism and Lord's Supper. I didn't even know what the word Eucharist meant until I was 29. I didn't even know exactly what it was, what was being referred to by that. And I had a very non-sacramental understanding of salvation and of the Scriptures. And so I prided myself in my knowledge of Scripture when I went to the University of Notre Dame in 1999 to begin my doctoral program there at age 29. I had already had a pre-seminary degree and an MDiv and a THM, which is a Master of Theology. And all of it focused on Scripture. My THM was in Old Testament, so I thought I knew the Bible pretty well. But I had no sacramental sensibility whatsoever. And so the young man that I met at the University of Notre Dame who ended up becoming my sponsor into the Church befriended me and we talked a lot about Scripture and he defended the Catholic faith on the basis of Scripture. But it was really when he got me to read the Apostolic Fathers and I began to see the testimony to sacramental realism, especially the Eucharist, but not just the Eucharist, baptism as well. But when I was reading in the earliest of the Fathers, that's when I was really impacted by this. In particular, as I've mentioned before, some of you have heard me discuss my conversion before, but Ignatius of Antioch, I was reading Ignatius of Antioch, his seven letters to the Churches of Asia Minor in the fall of 1999. And I came across that passage in St. Ignatius's Letter to the Smyrnians at the end of chapter six in the beginning of chapter seven, where St. Ignatius writing only 10 years after the death of the Apostle Paul warns the Christians at Smyrna to stay away from anyone who, and now I quote, refuses to confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised for our salvation. And I'll say it again, stay away from anyone who refuses to confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins. And it's not who suffered for our sins. You know, you got a relative pronoun there. But if you look in the Greek, the relative pronoun is feminine. It's not referring to Jesus. You can't do any gender-bending stuff back in the first century, okay? It's a feminine relative pronoun because sarks or flesh in Greek is a feminine noun. So it's referring, so it's the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh that suffered and the flesh that was raised to feminine pronouns, which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised. So it's very tangible. It's not just that, you know, that the Eucharist is Jesus in some spiritual sense, which some forms of Calvinism would hold to that Jesus was spiritually present in some particular way. But it wasn't even, you know, some kind of vague spiritual presence, but no, it's the flesh that suffered. It was the flesh that was raised. That's what the Eucharist is. And if you don't confess that, and the term is confess, which has a lot of theological, you know, it's a technical theological term, it's to profess something as divinely revealed, okay? And like, wow, this is only 10 years after the death of the apostle John and already, already interestingly, already there are heretics who are opposing the Eucharist and denying the Eucharist, only 10 years after the death of the last apostle. And already, you know, there are Orthodox bishops who are stressing the real presence and having to emphasize this. And, wow, the lights came on and I realized, oh my gosh, the early church believed and held the real presence. Of course, that's the plain sense of all the Eucharistic passages of the New Testament simply are that the Eucharist is the flesh of Jesus. And I was supposed to be a Protestant who was all about the literal sense. I'm like, how ironic is this? I mean, this argument with this Catholic and he's taking the Bible more seriously than me. You know, I can't let that happen. You know, I can't stay out of the Catholic Church because they take the Bible too seriously. You know, I'm thinking of myself at the final judgment facing Jesus, like, why didn't you become Catholic? Well, Lord, they took the Bible too seriously. So I just didn't see that going over very well. I didn't think he would like that answer. So anyway, all those ideas are going through my mind and eventually, you know, I realized that the early church was Catholic. The Catholic Church is the early church identity between the two of those. And so eventually came into the church not having, you know, I didn't understand the papal doctrines yet. I didn't understand the Marian doctrines. The Marian doctrines didn't fall into place for me until a couple of years after I'd become Catholic, but largely on the basis of the Eucharist alone, because it's so huge. Can you imagine if the Eucharist is Jesus, that makes all the other things that we argue about just pale, you know, like little nitpicky things, you know? But if the Eucharist is Jesus and only the Catholics have it, then I'm there, you know? We'll talk about predestination later. Get that figured out, you know? All this other kind of stuff, you know? Just that's such a huge reality that's so existentially important. The Eucharist is the flesh of Jesus. So that led me into the church. And then to my surprise, the Eucharist began to change my whole reading of Scripture from, you know, from completely sacramental, you know, from reading the Bible without any sacramental consciousness at all, and no kind of Eucharistic sensibility at all in my reading of Scripture, to coming to realize that the Eucharist is the goal of Scripture. Okay? All of Scripture leads up to it. Yeah. You know, in his first homily, as Pope, when he sat down in the chair of St. Peter and St. John Lateran, Benedict XVI gave a homily where he said, if we do not recognize the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we fail to understand Scripture. And I read that, you know, and this is even years after, you know, obviously years after I'd come into the church, I was already teaching here at Franciscan. And at first I thought, oh, that sounds a little bit hyperbolic, a little bit exaggerated. But then I began to realize, no, as is so often the case, Benedict XVI is right, you know, is right. Because all of Scripture is a series of covenants that lead up to the new and eternal one. And in Luke 2220, the new and eternal covenant is identified as the Eucharist. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. We'll talk more about on Thursday. I don't want to steal all my fire for Thursday. But if that's the case, and if all the Scriptures are a series of covenants leading up to the new and eternal one, then the Bible is really in a sense about the Eucharist and the Eucharist is the goal of Scripture. So this is, this is a little, some of you will recognize this. This is from Bial Basics for Catholics, the first book I wrote. And these are little doodles, little stick figures of the seven covenants of Scripture that I began doing on the board, on the Blackboard for my students back in 2004 when I first started teaching here, eventually put this into book form, etc. And I'll do this for parish missions. I'll come, I'll do a talk I call the Bible in an hour where we just go over the covenants and we draw these, etc. But this is a handy way of visualizing salvation history by its epochal points, or its great transitional stages, which are covenants. So you began with the Adamic covenant between God and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And of course they broke that by, by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And then there was a restoration of a covenant with Noah, but Noah himself sinned and things degenerated again. And so God comes back and establishes a covenant with Abraham. And that's a, that's kind of complicated. And the covenant with Abraham has three stages that get progressively more serious until we have that great test of faith, where he's asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the very mountain where Jerusalem will later be built and the temple will be built and our Lord will give his life on Calvary there. And, and then Moses bringing Abraham's descendants out to Mount Sinai and establishing a covenant with the descendants of Abraham in fulfillment of what had been promised to Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation. We call that sometimes the Mosaic covenant or the Sinai covenant, which of course the people broke with the golden calf, but nonetheless they, they patched things up and moved forward and eventually entered the land. But then a big step forward with David, that spirit-filled king anointed in 1st Samuel 16. The Holy Spirit rushes on David. David has this, this possession of the Holy Spirit that's very rare for anybody in the Old Testament to have. It's almost as if David is living in the New Testament in advance. And it's David that prepares for the building of the temple and consolidates worship in the sacred city of Jerusalem with the ark. And God gives him a covenant of eternal kingship. But after Solomon, most of David's descendants and heirs are rascals. And so we enter into this time of decline where God sends the prophets. The prophets keep promising that in the future that we're going to have a righteous son of David and we're going to have a new temple, which is ultimately brought by our Lord, who is the righteous son of David and also his body is the temple, John 221. And he culminates all of salvation history and passion week, forming the new covenant first in the upper room by means of sacrament and then on Calvary by means of his bloody self gift on the cross. And then that is perpetuated and memorialized and solemnized and communicated to us through the Eucharist. So the Eucharist is central. All of salvation history leads up to it. So that's a little visual. But we're going to look at some of these texts this afternoon. And go in a little more depth than I usually have the opportunity to do. We're going to look at some of the less common types. But once you realize that there's this telos, there's this goal of moving towards the Eucharist, characterize the scripture, you begin to see types of the Eucharist everywhere. The scriptures are inundated with images, with anticipations of what God's going to do by providing a food that will lead to eternal life and to communion with God. And so the first type of the Eucharist in salvation history is the tree of life. The Lord God planted a garden and Eden in the east. And there he put the man he had formed. There's priestly language in that verse, if we unpacked the Hebrew there. And out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But we know how that turned out. In Genesis three, four, the serpent said to the woman concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will not die. Okay. That think about that. You won't die. If you're never going to die, what's going to happen? Going to live forever, right? So look at how the devil presents the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as if it's a surrogate tree of life. What the devil says about the other tree is actually true of the tree of life. You will not die. So it's a tree from which you can eat of it and you won't die. God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil. Now, that's not actually true. That's a lie about this tree he's discussing, but it's true about the tree of life. When you eat of that tree, you partake of eternal life, which is becoming like God. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and the tree was desired to make one wise, this is the threefold concupiscence, lust of the flesh, lust of eyes, and pride of life here. She took of its fruit in eight and she also gave some to her husband and he ate. That's interesting because Adam was commissioned to guard the garden back in Genesis 2.15 and we got this snake in the garden. Are snakes ever a good thing? No. So from Genesis 3.1 where you got the snake, they're like, what is Adam doing? Where is Adam? Is he over on the other side of the garden, hoeing the peas or something like that? Where is he? Why isn't he putting it? And here we find out he's been with her the whole time. I don't know, smoking a moral borer and leaning up against some other tree. Okay, hey, babe. Yeah, looks good. Men always eat whatever women give them. Stupid male. And I also give some to her husband and he ate. So he's passive and just as an aside, there's so many dimensions of this narrative. But he's a priestly character. Genesis 2.15 says he's placed in the garden to work and to guard it. That's priestly terminology from the book of Numbers where the priests are commissioned to work the work and guard the guardianship. That's literally how it is in Hebrew. It's the two duties of the priesthood. So Adam's the original priest and he's supposed to guard the sanctuary, which is the Garden of Eden. And the snake gets in and doesn't do anything. He just lets the snake chat with his wife, you know. And so there's this failure of priestly vigilance, a failure of priestly vigilance that creates the conditions of possibility for the breach of covenant, for the breaking of the covenant. And so even before Eve eats, there's this, you know, a kind of sin of sloth on the part of Adam as a priest. And so that's something to think about. That's a sobering thought. The priesthood has to be vigilant to protect the people of God from the snares of evil, from the temptations of the evil one. Amen. We need priestly vigilance and vigilant priests. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked. It's so comical that the snake promises in the world, you're going to know everything. You're going to have all knowledge. You're going to be like, God, give me enlightenment, infusion of wisdom. Okay. And there's only one thing that they actually find out. It's only one thing they learn. You're naked. One piece of data that they discover. You're naked. All this knowledge, cosmic wisdom. You're naked. That was a letdown. Totally not worth it. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked. That's all they know. That's all they find out. Such a, such a, you know, over, over-promising here. They're near their naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. Yeah, that's going to work. That's going to work. Yeah, fig leaves. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, just, you know, these fig leaves, it's such an incompetent, you know, form of clothing, you know, leaf clothing that's never really caught on, you know, just doesn't, doesn't wear well, you know, doesn't wash well, et cetera. But it's symbolic of our, of our incompetence and our inability to, to atone for our own sin, to make reparation, to cover over our own weaknesses, et cetera. All right. So what do we find out in the aftermath? So the, the snake tries to sell them, and I guess he's successful, the, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a kind of pseudo fruit of the tree of life. And they buy into it. And that's, that has catastrophic consequences. And underlying the story of the fall into sin in Genesis three, is a kind of paradox. The paradox is this, if you are faced with a tree of wisdom that gives you wisdom, and a tree that gives you eternal life, the paradox is, what's the wise choice to make? The wise choice is to choose eternal life and not just wisdom for its own sake. It's kind of ironic there. Okay. And, and so they're faced with this choice between eternal life and kind of wisdom for its own sake. And ironically, they make the unwise choice, which is to choose the tree of wisdom when they should have chosen the tree of life. And so that, that actually is a theme throughout scripture that the wise man chooses life rather than knowledge for its own sake. Okay. Knowledge that puffs up as St. Paul will later describe it. And the, and the Eucharist, the Eucharist is that fruit of, that fruit of life, which, which looks like silliness and superstition to the world. Looks like, you know, medieval, hocus pocus quite literally to the world for us to go forward and receive this wafer that we claim is God. So there's a kind of humiliation in the act of receiving the Eucharist, a humility, a humbleness, but it ends up being the choice of wisdom, the wise choice because it leads to eternal life. Well, in the aftermath of the fall and descend, the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living, and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins. Huh. Well, what do you got to do to get skins? Got to kill something, right? So this is the first sacrifice. Okay. Quietly in the background here, some animals have been killed and their skins are used to clothe Adam and his wife. And this is the beginning of the sacrificial economy of salvation, where animals will die on behalf of humans until we finally get the supernatural lamb of God who can take away the sins of the world. So this, this, this sacrifice that takes place in the background of Genesis 3 21 is also a type of the Eucharist. And just as Christ dies to clothe us in his righteousness, which is applied to us through the Eucharist. So this animal died in order to clothe Adam and Eve. And then the Lord said, behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. And now, let's he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Okay. So the tree of life gave eternal life. And this lies in the background of John six. You know, we preached on John six and year B in the summer. Year B, of course, is the gospel of Mark, which is a short gospel. It's not quite long enough to fill the whole year. And so we supplement it with John. Right. So when we get in mark to the account of the feeding of the 5000 and mark six, then we kind of do a little digression into the gospel of John in the summer and year B. And we have that five or six weeks in a row where we read, read through John six, of course. And I feel sorry for you guys. You must run out of all your Eucharistic sermons by the time that stretch is done in the summer of year B. But we talk a lot about the manna because the manna is brought up as a clearly as a type in John six. But often what's overlooked is our Lord's references to the fruit of the tree of life. So in this line, John six, 54, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And a few verses later, he who eats this bread will live forever. These are allusions to the tree of life in Genesis two and three. And yes, Jesus is saying my flesh is the manna that comes down from heaven. But my flesh is also the fruit of the tree of life now offered for you again. And you know, one of the one of the first sermons that I can remember from Bishop Jenke, who is then the auxiliary of Fort Wayne South Bend, who confirmed me on February 24 of 2001. And then a couple of weeks later, he was preaching. He's a fantastic preacher. And he was preaching a homily at St. Matthew's Co Cathedral in South Bend. And he set up the typology of the tree of life and the cross, you know, and he said, just as we sin by eating, so we are saved by eating, the tree of life bears fruit that leads to eternal life. Now the cross bears the fruit of the body of Jesus, which is his Eucharistic body given to us for eternal life. And I'm listening to this, I'm like, wow, Bishop Jenke is brilliant. It's brilliant biblical scholarship. Now he is brilliant. But that homily was just kind of whole home. You know, this is stuff from the church fathers. It's kind of rehearsing classical stuff for the church fathers. I didn't know that. Okay. I don't know that this is all over in the church fathers. This is the first time I'm hearing this stuff. I'm like, wow, you know, he got this, this balance to salvation history and sin by eating, saved by eating all this stuff. Anyway, so later found out, yeah, this is all kind of stock and trade for the Catholic spiritual tradition. But that was, that was the beginning of, you know, the Eucharistic lights coming on for me as we travel through scripture. And as I said, it's very full and it's very intense. So the tree of life, this is the first type of the Eucharist that we have in scripture. And we move on from the Adamic covenant where they lost access to this food, which granted eternal life. And, you know, we have the flood, etc. The scattering of mankind. And then God initiates a new covenant with Abraham and through Abraham, God is going to spread his blessing throughout the human family. And then in this drawn out covenant with Abraham, which has three stages, we see several types of the Eucharist in the covenant making process between God and Abraham. One of the more important episodes is this meal with the three angels that Abraham experiences in Genesis 18. And the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre. As he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, three men stood in front of him. And when he saw them, he said, let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. And he took curds and milk and the calf, which he had prepared, set it before them and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. So Abraham has this experience. Of course, the church fathers understood these three men as emblematic of the persons of the Trinity. This is the Trinity coming down and Abraham is sharing a meal with the Trinitarian God. This is what the Eucharist is. It's a meal shared with the divinity, with the Trinity. And also this meal is connected with the promise of the coming son. They said to him, where is Sarah, your wife? And he said, she is in the tent. The Lord said, I will surely return to you in the spring and Sarah, your wife will have a son. That son, of course, is Isaac. Isaac is one of the key types of our Lord in the Old Testament because in the next Eucharistic episode from the narrative with Abraham, it's going to be about the sacrifice of Isaac, this one and only son. Abraham had a son by his servant woman, Hagar, Ishmael, but he disowns Ishmael and sends him away in Genesis 21, which leaves Abraham with one single descendant, his son, Isaac, by his first legitimate wife, Sarah. And so in Genesis 22, we read, after these things, God tested Abraham and said, take your son, your only begotten son, Isaac. This is the RSV Second Catholic Edition, which correctly, I believe, renders this rare Hebrew word, yachid, which means singular or one and only or peculiar or one of its kind, a word that many scholars believe, Saint John the Apostle renders into Greek as monogenes in the most famous book of verse of the Bible, John 316, for God so loved the world that he gave his monogenes his only begotten son, that whosoever believed with him should not perish but have everlasting life. That's actually the verse with which Bishop Doherty of Lafayette in Indiana began his address to the Confermans last night, my nephew, one of my nephews was confirmed, I was his sponsor in Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Carmel, Indiana last evening. And the bishop began with John 316. That was beautiful. You know, growing up as a Protestant, we didn't believe that Catholics had the gospel. And to hear a bishop of the church just begin, you know, it could have been a message from Billy Graham, you know, it's like John 316. But everybody knows John 316, but that phrase only begotten few realize it's an illusion to Genesis 22, where three times Isaac is referred to as the only begotten son of Abraham. So your only begotten son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them on together. So Isaac carries the wood of his sacrifice up the mountain of Moriah. Later, this will be called Mount Moriah. And in Second Chronicles, we'll find out that Solomon builds the temple there. Okay, so it's the Temple Mount. So this one and only son carries the wood of his sacrifice up this mountain, where he's going to be laid on the wood and offered to God out of love and obedience to his father in the strongest image of Calvary that we have in the Old Testament. And as they're traveling up there, Isaac says, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. What a provocative phrase. And it can be read, God will provide himself as the lamb for a burnt offering. So strong Eucharistic typology here. And this is one of the backgrounds for John the Baptist statement in John chapter one, where he sees Jesus passing along and he says to Andrew and John, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John the Baptist recognizes in Jesus that God has provided himself as the lamb for the offering. And so they go to the top of the mountain. And then Abraham lifted up his eyes at the top of the mountain. This is after the angel calls to him and stops him from plunging the knife into Isaac. He lifted his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son. Now these thickets were like thorn bushes and the sheep would get their horns caught in there. And to get them out, you didn't untangle the thorns from their horns. You just cut the branches around and you take the animal back and still got all those thorns tangled in its head, right? Makes us think about something, right? So this ram that's offered up instead of the firstborn son is also a type of Christ, in a sense also a type of the Eucharist as it is offered on the altar. So observe this theme of the lamb for the firstborn son. Adam was the firstborn son of God. Okay, that's the last verse of Luke three says Adam was son of God. And we don't know, it's not explicit that it was a lamb, but that's tradition. You know, a lamb was sacrificed in the Garden of Eden and the skins were used to clothe Adam and Eve. That's the first time of the sacrifice lamb set the firstborn will be saved. Now the legal firstborn of Abraham here is saved by the offering of a ram in his place. That's a theme that we're going to see again and again leading up to the Eucharist. And then after Abraham has shown his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, we get this profound oath from God in Genesis 22 16 through 18 by myself, I have sworn says the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your only begotten Son. See, since your love for me corresponds to my love for you, I will indeed bless you and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sandwiches on the seashore. I'm translating literally here. It says seed, not descendants. It's what it means, but the word is seed and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. This is the unilaterally sworn divine oath that finalizes the covenant between God and Abraham and makes the covenant unbreakable because again it's unilaterally guaranteed by God's oath. This is the foundation of our salvation right here. Saint Paul will call this the pre-avangelism or the proto-gospel when he discusses this incident in Galatians chapter 3 and so that's the foundation of our salvation there, that covenant with Abraham and it merits salvation for Abraham's descendants and so centuries later Abraham's descendants are in Egypt and Moses is raised up to take them out of Egypt and that escape from Egypt is what we call of course the Exodus and but a meal is associated with the Exodus, one of the more important Eucharistic types. It's the course of the Passover on the 10th day of this month. It's a month Nisan the first month in the calendar for the Jews. The Israelites I should say a lamb for a household. The lamb shall be without blemish a meal a year old. They shall keep it until the 14th day when the whole assembly shall kill their lambs in the evening and they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts in the lintel of the house. She'll eat the flesh that night roasted let none of it remain in the morning. She eat with your loins girded, your sandals on your foot, your staff in your hand. She'll eat in haste it's the Lord's Passover. Lord will pass over the land and smite the firstborn of the land of Egypt. So the firstborn of the land of Egypt were smitten but do you remember what happens to the firstborn of Israel? A little bit of a trick question. Well we read elsewhere in Exodus 13.2 for example consecrate to me all the firstborn whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel both of man and beast is mine. Skipping ahead to numbers it says for all the firstborn are mine on the day that I slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel. Okay so this is the double effect of the Passover we all remember that the firstborn of the Egyptians were slain but we often forget that the firstborn of Israel were consecrated firstborn men I should say firstborn boys okay and to consecrate a male human being in the Old Testament is virtually synonymous with ordination. Okay so this was the Passover was the ordination of the firstborn sons of the people of Israel to what we would call a ministerial priesthood on behalf of the people and this shows that you know this is the Passover but the Passover is connected with the priesthood of the firstborn sons it's connected to priesthood just like the upper room just like the institution the Eucharist is so bound up with priesthood okay so they're connected to one another because the firstborn son is the natural priest of the family he's the natural representative of the father and the second person of the Trinity as the firstborn son of the father is the natural priest as it were okay the natural face of the father if you've seen me have seen the father this is written into nature but it's reflective of ultimate reality so in the Passover we have this meal where the lamb is slain so that the angel of death passes over the firstborn son and the son is not killed but consecrated and Israel is God's firstborn as we read in Exodus 4 22 Israel is my firstborn son so the Passover follows that pattern that we saw in the garden and that we saw in Genesis 22 and now we're seeing here of the lamb in place of the firstborn son so that the firstborn son can be a priest can can serve God and so we looked at these passages about the priesthood of the firstborn and then we start traveling out we have the Exodus then when we start traveling through the wilderness to get to Sinai and along the way to Sinai we get another image another type of the Eucharist the manna which comes down from heaven this bread from heaven that the people pick up and when they when they look at it and they they see it they say what is it which in Hebrew is man who which becomes mana which is what they call this it's like what's it or what's him a call it okay so it's this this what's him a call it you know collect the what's him a call it and put it in a put it in an urn eat it now the house of Israel call it stay mana which is like coriander seed white and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey so the bread from heaven which the Lord God gave to them to sustain them in the wilderness this is like the Eucharist the supernatural bread that God provides us to sustain us in this valley of tears don't need to belabor this too much because it's one of the more familiar types of the Eucharist in the Old Testament so the Passover was a type the man is a type then we get to Sinai and we have a sacrifice at the foot of Sinai when the covenant is solemnized that's also a type and so let's look at that covenant solemnization at the foot of Mount Sinai we don't we don't talk about this event enough but it's very closely intimately related to the upper room so Moses told all the people all the words of the Lord and all the people answered all the words which the Lord has spoken we will do it's like a marriage vow I do right all the words the Lord has spoken we will do and the prophets regarded this event as a betrothal and so you see this in Jeremiah in Ezekiel in Isaiah they all look back to Sinai as a betrothal between God his husband and the people his bride we do and the Moses rose early in the morning built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes and he sent young men of the people who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings to Lord what offering burnt offerings and sacrificing peace offerings is a priestly duty what are these random young men doing just being sent to do the duty of priests give me some Levites right well no we don't have Levites yet because that's not till chapter 32 who are these young men being sent well the any good Jewish rabbi will tell you these are the firstborn that were consecrated by the Passover for priestly duty so this is the priesthood of the firstborn sons and Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar the altar represents God okay so half of the blood gets poured on God and what happens to the blood that's in the basins well Moses took that blood and he threw it on the people okay and said behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words so they offer these sacrifices they get the blood God receives half the blood the people receive half the blood the blood has two meanings the blood means kinship right like we'll say I when I was growing up we say my cousin well he's blood to me right that's how we refer to our cousins oh he's my blood okay this is in Virginia back in you know this 1970s or whatever okay so blood is representative of kinship right but but the blood also represents curse if I break the family commitment that I'm entering into now may my blood be shed like the blood of these animals that's getting sprinkled upon me so kinship and curse it's the twofold meaning of the blood and the blood goes equally on God and the people so God and the people share one blood that's the meaning of this a covenant forms a family a covenant forms a family covenant is all about family it's not primarily about law I mean families have law my family has laws all of our laws are posted in the most prominent place in the house the most sacred place of the house the refrigerator where you get food right because food is life right so very deep it's all are typical right so the food comes from the magic box so upon the magic box goes go the laws of the covenant okay right all the all the children's duties are on the fridge but covenant is not law covenant is family a covenant is a family formed by an oath so this is the blood of the covenant and it's actually this line from exes 24 eight that gets echoed in mark and Matthew's account of the last supper where Jesus says this is my blood of the covenant and this phrase blood of the covenant doesn't occur again except in one place in Zachariah which is referring back to Sonny but otherwise you never see this phrase blood of the covenant again until you get to the upper room and then our Lord says this is my blood of the covenant so what does this mean mark 14 24 this is my blood of the covenant it means that what Jesus is doing with the 12 apostles in the upper room is as apocle and is as history shaking as what Moses did with the 12 tribes at Sinai Jesus is remaking that covenant between God and his people will delve into this more on Thursday because some people read the you know some people read the gospel is like oh yeah it's just a you know Jesus has a little snack of bread and wine to like you know do this and think about me sometimes you know this little meal you know I was pour yourselves a glass of wine break some bread you know think about me you know meal to remember me you know so much more than that is a culmination of all the Bible right but we'll stay calm all right so so after after they solemnize the covenant at the foot with the sacrifice the sharing of the blood between God and the people then representatives of the people go up and they have a family meal okay meals are often used to help solemnize covenants because covenants form families and families eat together so representatives of the people go up on the mountain and there they see God they saw the God of Israel verse 10 wow amazing and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone like the very heaven for clearness and he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel they beheld God and ate and drank so the represent yeah the represents the people go and they have a picnic with God on the top of Mount Sinai you know lay out the blanket here's some roast goat you know all the stuff and and they eat with God but but the rabbis saw something more in this some of the rabbis read the Hebrew there at the end as in this way they beheld God and in this way they ate and drank in other words they feasted on the divine vision okay the sight of God was their nourishment beholding God was their food and drink you can see the powerful Eucharistic typology here behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world at one of the high points of the mass were told to just behold just to look at God and eat and drink so so together you know that the sacrifice at the foot of the mountain the meal at the top of mountain critical scholars want to divide those and attribute one to the J source and one to the peace or like no you don't get it okay you have a sacrifice in order to create food that you can eat you know you kill the animals on the altar you cook them and then you go eat them all right and and this whole thing you know is the mass a sacrament a sacrifice or a meal it's not an either or thing sacrifices and meals were always it was a sacrificial meal okay you sacrifice the animal then you ate the animal okay so it's both it's altar and tables we don't pit these things against one another nor do these two narratives are not to be pitted against one another either they're both signs of the covenant that's forming the family and then the in in the theology of the mosaic covenant you have this Sinai covenant experience and then Moses goes up on the mountain to receive the instructions of the tabernacle and the tabernacle was was thought of as a portable Sinai the tabernacle was the perpetuation of Sinai this structure that you could enter to re-engage in the communion with God that had been made available to God's people at the foot of the mountain so the tabernacle was a mobile Sinai and then within the tabernacle there was a perpetuation of this meal of this covenantal meal with God and that that perpetuation was the bread of the presence which was laid out on a golden table in the holy place 12 loaves for the 12 tribes kept fresh in God's presence we call it the bread of the presence but literally in Hebrew it's the bread of the face okay the bread of the face of God and in a perpetuation of God's presence in the bread for his people one of the more again more powerful images yes of the Eucharist and also of the second person of the Trinity like to say more about that but want to move on we know that after the mosaic covenant the next major covenant in salvation history is the covenant given to David that spirit filled king who arises to put to rest the darkness of the time of the judges and to establish a righteous monarchy over the people of Israel and lead them to worship at the holy city of Jerusalem and one of his first acts as king on behalf of David was to bring the ark to his capital city so that his political capital could also be the spiritual capital and so he as king could set the example for his people by worshiping before the Lord before the sacred ark which was the kind of the condensation of Israel's liturgy and covenant and so the ark of the Lord came into the city of David in 2 Samuel 6 16 and David was leaping and dancing before the Lord and they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent which David had pitched for it and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings whoa how can David do that well because in the previous chapter he captured Jerusalem and became king of Jerusalem and sat down on the throne of Jerusalem and who established the throne of Jerusalem Melchizedek absolutely Melchizedek was the the legendary founder I mean legendary in the sense of of renowned not in the sense of you know fictitious because he wasn't that but Melchizedek was the founder of the of the city of Jerusalem its first king he's a priest king and when David captures the city in 2 Samuel 5 he becomes the successor of Melchizedek and as king of Jerusalem along with that role as king of the sacred city there went a priesthood and so we see David periodically doing priestly things not ministering in the tabernacle David never goes into the tabernacle to minister to there because that was a duty given to the Levitical priests according to Moses but he does perform kind of extraordinary liturgies outside the tabernacle by virtue of his Melchizedekian priesthood and here he offers burnt offerings and peace offerings and blesses the people in the name of the lord of hosts that's the priestly blessing from number six may the lord bless you and keep you make his face shine upon you etc he does that and then he distributes among all the people the whole multitude of Israel both men and women to each a cake of bread and a cup of wine this is sometimes translated a portion of meat or something else like that but there's strong reason to regard this Hebrew here as a cup of wine and a cake of raisins and then all the people departed each to his house so look at this this in the reviews of the Eucharist Neal test with this is free typically overlooked but very significant here we have the Davidic king who brings the whole nation together to worship the god of the covenant in the holy city and there they celebrate a sacred meal which is funded at the king's own expense the king foots the bill for the entire people to eat bread and wine for free as part of a covenantal act of worship this foreshadows the great meal of the covenant that will be paid at the expense of the son of David on Calvary so that the entire people of God can eat that covenantal meal free and when we get into the prophets they foresee that what scholars call eschatological banquet the meal of the end times that the Messiah is going to provide and Isaiah speaks of it in 25 on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples not just Israel that's significant a feast of fat things a feast of wine on the leaves of fat things full of marrow of wine on the leaves well refined says rich banquet that will what destroy in this mountain the covering that's cast over the peoples the veil that has spread over the nations the deceptions of paganism and polytheism and so they tear that veil away he will swallow up death forever so this banquet on the mountain of God which is Mount Zion will will will usher in eternal life swallow up death forever the Lord God will wipe away tears from all their faces and the reproach the people would take away the Lord has spoken so here Isaiah talks about that the messianic banquet and also in a couple of typically overlooked verses of strong Eucharistic significance in the second half of Isaiah in the midst of two glorious servant songs one in Isaiah 42 and one in Isaiah 49 two servant songs which are very similar to one another in both of these places the Lord God speaks to the servant who we all know is the Messiah the anointed one we get we make that equation from Isaiah 61 the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me okay that makes me the anointed one the Messiah and so here the Lord speaks to the servant says I am the Lord I have called you the servant okay in righteousness I have taken by the hand and kept you I have given you as a covenant to the people and this is repeated in Isaiah 49 eight now this is really strange brothers because how can a person become a covenant I mean there's lots of things that you can do with covenant in the ancient Near East you can write a covenant you can solemnize a covenant you can break a covenant you can uphold a covenant you can renew a covenant all sorts of things you can you know stipulate the terms of the covenant but a person can't become a covenant okay how is that supposed to work I have given you as a covenant to the people what is that supposed to mean everybody would love to know what the Israelites thought about this verse of Isaiah back in the day but we don't have any commentaries for example from the Dead Sea Scrolls on these particular verses so we don't know what they thought about them it only makes sense in hindsight looking back when our Lord takes bread and wine makes it into his flesh and blood and gives himself and says this cup is the new covenant in my blood which means consisting of my blood which is my very life because the life is in the blood that's the principle of scripture right so the the Messiah is going to give his flesh and blood and call it the new covenant in the fulfillment of these verses in in an event which is described in Isaiah in these words ho everyone who thirsts come to the waters and he who has no money come buy and eat so we're addressing people that have no money ergo the poor of the earth come buy wine and milk without money without price because you don't have any you need a free meal why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy so harken diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in fatness incline your ear and come to me hear that your soul may live and I will make with you an everlasting covenant my steadfast sure love for David so here the prophet cries out to the poor of the earth calls all the poor to come to a free meal offered by God and if they heed the voice of God and come to this meal they will enter into an everlasting covenant with God which is described as my steadfast sure love for David now that very wordy phrase steadfast sure love for David that's actually just one word in Hebrew it's the word has day which is the what we call the construct plural of chesedine which is from chesed which which is covenantal love and fidelity it's a it's the covenantal love and fidelity of David and that word chesed here used in the plural is is often a a synonym for covenant okay so this everlasting covenant is going to be the covenantal bond that David enjoyed okay and what kind of covenantal bond did David enjoy well he enjoyed a covenantal bond where he was the Son of God and he was filled with the Holy Spirit as we see in 1 Samuel 16 so this new covenant is going to be a covenantal family bond between God and all the poor that listen to the voice of God and come to God and all those who do and share in this meal will enter into the same intimacy with God that King David enjoyed into in the 10th century when God extended a royal covenant to him and so this is why we read this as one of the seven readings of the Old Testament during the Easter vigil well gentlemen we have surveyed the Old Testament and the types of the Eucharist in it let's go to the Lord in prayer in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Father we thank you that you did not leave us blind and and unguided but for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear throughout the course of our journey with you as as as God and we as your people again and again you were showing us by signs and figures what you were one day going to provide for us the very presence of your Son our Lord who is who is one with you to remain with us forever as our food the food of eternal life Lord may this reflection on your word help us to cultivate Eucharistic amazement and awe as we again and again come back to contemplate this source and summit of our faith help us to experience that awe and may it become contagious and we may we spread it to our people we ask this through Christ our Lord amen and the Father Son Holy Spirit amen