 All right, thank you guys for coming to this workshop. I'm really glad that you are here, and I know that there are many workshops from which to choose, so I really appreciate your presence here, and I'm glad to share with you what I have learned about the priesthood in the Old Testament, priest as ministers of God's holiness, and then eventually also in the New Testament. Let's start with a prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, you have made them a nation of priests, a holy kingdom of people set apart for your own possession. Jesus, the words that we hear in the second letter of Saint Peter, which echo in our liturgy and even in the book of Revelation, are rooted in the choice that you made in the Old Testament times to select your people and from your people certain tribes and men to be your priests. We ask that you please open our minds and our hearts today to understand better the ministerial priesthood and the order of priests into which we are all included by means of our baptism. In your name we pray, amen. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. All right, so what I thought we could go over today are a few different things. I would like to speak, yes, especially like I mentioned in the introduction about Leviticus 8-10, the rights of ordination of priests, but before that, a few things that I think helped to set it up. I'm gonna be following the presentation of a few guys whose works I found to be really helpful. And as a teacher, I like to share with other people the books that I read because I don't wanna plagiarize. One of them was written by John Bergsmut. This book is called Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood. It's exceptional. And with the way that you've heard him speak, he writes in a very down-to-earth, clear and compelling way, but very illuminative. It's a very good theological read. That's more on the level of, I would say, popular scholastic. This one, on the other hand, The Theology of the Priesthood, written by Jean Galot, a Jesuit who taught in Rome in the 1970s. This is the second edition. It's technical biblical theology, but holy cow, is it good. It's in a classic Roman style of going very slowly, like everything happens in Rome. Slowly through every aspect of biblical priesthood and it's exceptional. Finally, a book that I just heard about last week, which was to migrate chagrin, which means I had to sprint to read it. The Bible and the Priesthood. Priestly participation in the One Sacrifice for Sins. This is by a Dominican, Anthony Giambroni, who lives in Jerusalem. And this guy presents what I consider to be the best synthesis of hard exegesis, technical studies, personal experience in prayer, but also sacramental experience in the life of the church. He wrote this book and dedicated it to Benedict the 16th, who called for that kind of synthesis, which we're starting to see more and more in even academic research, thanks be to God. This one was just published and it's exceptional as well. So just wanted to show you where these things, where our conference is kind of coming from. And we'll proceed in order. I wanna speak first about what John Berksma talks about, the priesthood of the patriarchs. How very much every one of the major figures of the Old Testament is depicted in a particular way as a priest. And then we'll look at the transfer of that priesthood from the, or to the Levites, from every family had their father acting as a priest. So the transfer to the Levites and then finally to King David. That'll be the first part. After that then, we're going to get into a little bit more of what Father Gembroni speaks about with regards to Leviticus 8-10, the ordination of priests. So that's how we will proceed. Let's start by talking about the priesthood of the patriarchs along with John Berksma and a caveat at the very beginning of this. It's not easy to make a one-to-one correspondence between Old Testament priests and New Testament priests, be they, lay, or clergy. There are certain elements of the Old Testament priesthood that continue and that are perfected by Christ in our faith. And those things we will definitely emphasize, sacrifice and blessing, the two main elements of Old Testament priesthood that are literally carried over into the new and into our time. But there are other things that are not. The priesthood of old was hereditary. The father who belonged to the tribe of Levi had children and his first son was a priest. Whereas nowadays, the priesthood is not inherited ministerily nor just by inheritance. It's by baptism. So there are similarities and differences between the two and we'll tease them out and show what effect they have on our lives. But let's make a sweep through the patriarchs. Adam, Dr. Hahn mentioned two things, so I'll just say them briefly again. Adam, the first man, enjoyed a certain kind of priesthood. The key text is Genesis 2, when he is commanded to till and to work the earth. Those two Hebrew words, Abad and Shamar, are the same words used to describe the Levites ministering in the temple. Say to Aaron and his sons, Numbers 18, you and your sons will guard your priesthood and all that concerns the altar and that is within the veil. You shall serve it. To till, to serve, to minister. What was spoken of properly of the Levites was actually already spoken of Adam. His priesthood was exercised by keeping stewardship of the gifts of the garden. And not only that, fantastically, his self-sacrifice is a self-sacrifice. His offering was his very life. He laid down to sleep and from his side was crafted Eve. Every sacrifice entails in some way the destruction of life so as to preserve or effect life. So too with Adam. And I love how that puts our orientation firmly on the subjective level. Each one of us priests by baptism are called to make a sacrifice, a gift of self, laying down our life for others, giving them over to God. That's how Adam primarily was a priest. Now, let's move on to Noah. Actually, no, let's pause for just a moment. Romans 12-1, Paul picks up on this and says, I appeal to you, brethren, by the miracles, by the mercies of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship. I like the intentionality here. I'm very blessed that I get to teach seminarians who are a very docile group. They're in the seats, they have to be there. They want to learn about theology and they are mature in human formation. I don't know how people teach high school. I've tried. It's not my gift. But I went into a high school and one of the students in the theology class was very honest, this generation is very open with what they're thinking. Father, I hate going to mass. I never get anything out of it. And he asked me, so what? Oh boy. What came to me was this, something that I had heard from someone else. Recalibrate your prerogative. If you go to mass primarily to get something out of it, you will always be disappointed. The music is terrible, the people are unfriendly, the homily is long. Whereas if you go to give, to give thanks to God for the blessings in your life, to lay something on the altar with the gifts, you will always get something out of it. Our church does not require us to go to mass every Sunday in order to receive the Eucharist. The Catechism says we go primarily to give thanks, living in a perpetual state of awareness of just how good God has been to us, so we go to give him thanks. And so those who don't get a lot out of church and don't go because of it, I think might need to dig deep down into that priesthood that we see already in Adam. Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Put yourself on the altar, thanking God for the gift of life and begging him for help. That's about as good as I get with high school. We'll see. Now, we've just talked about Adam. Let's move on then to Noah. Noah becomes a kind of second Adam figure, recreation with the flood. Notice what does Noah do right after the floodwaters recede and he's able to go onto dry lands. He builds an altar and offers sacrifice. And what I love about this is what God, when he put the rainbow in the heavens, said to Noah, he said to him, I am establishing a covenant with you forever. This is fascinating because the typical terminology for making a covenant is karat barit, to cut a covenant like we saw in the presentation by Dr. Bergsmut, two animals split in half. That's the normal way of saying it. Here with Noah, we find a different word, establish a covenant. It has the sense of standing something back up that has fallen down, renew, reestablish. Very much our priesthood is driven towards and hopefully oriented towards receiving the forgiveness of our sins, reestablishing our state, our pre-fallen state in the eyes of God, just like God renewed the earth with Noah. Now, Noah was famously called a father figure of old. There is a famous commentary on the Old Testament, a medieval commentary called the Glossa, which means like a gloss. It reads this, the Hebrews claim that every patriarch from Noah to Aaron was a priest and that the priesthood was passed from father to son. So in the Old Testament, we see the patriarchs in the role of priests as fathers. God always finds way to keep us humble. I went into a coffee shop about two years ago just to get a coffee on my way to actually teaching high school. And I asked for a cold brew coffee, my personal favorite. And the lady in this coffee shop, which definitely had a culture that was not, shall we say, Franciscan. It was a coffee shop. What name do you want on your coffee? And I had fumbling, I was awkward. And I said, I don't know, father works. And she grinned and said, okay. And I sat down and a minute later, she said, I have a cold brew coffee for father works. Not what I had in mind. But I love how already there is something redeemable here in the patriarchs. Priesthood was passed down from father to son. And in a way that paternity does work. Now, let's go forward to Abraham. Through Abraham, all the families of the earth would find blessing. And what do we see him doing in Genesis 22, offering to God the sacrifice of his son, blessing and sacrifice, the two key elements of the priesthood. Before we get to Genesis 22, we meet a mysterious figure, the king of Salem, eventually Jerusalem, Melchizedek. The sacred author of the text of Genesis in chapter 14 mentions that Melchizedek was a priest to God most high. And he is being presented to Abraham as offering a liturgical sacrifice, a libation. The wine that he held was for the libation and the bread was for a meal offering. And what does Melchizedek do after offering those two things? Blesses Abraham, sacrifice and blessing. The why this is significant we'll see later is that here we will see eventually a shifting in the priesthood. Melchizedek was not of the tribe of Levi. And so he is being presented here without father, without mother, meaning without Levitical mother, Levitical father as a priest of God. Some rabbinic tradition thinks that Melchizedek was actually Seth, a grandson of Noah. And so that way, the patriarchal paternity of the priesthood carries through in him. There are the Hebrews pounces on this and shows that Jesus who was not of the tribe of Levi could still be a priest, much like David. We'll see that in a moment. Now let's go to Genesis 22, that famous scene of the binding of Isaac. We know the story. Abraham at the base of Mount Moriah goes to offer up his son and what do we read? That Isaac asked the question, here's the wood, here's everything else, where's the lamb for sacrifice? And Abraham says, God himself will provide the lamb. And what happens then? Isaac flanked by two servants, wood is placed on his shoulders and he walks up willingly, lays down his life willingly. He was a young man, he could have overpowered Abraham, but instead allowed himself to be offered in that way. This whole chapter describes a priestly act being performed, cooperation of father and son. The father is a priest in this case, but the son is also a priest and a victim. It's no mistake then that this passage has been called the Calvary of the Old Testament. It was mentioned that I've written a book on the Holy lands, I love going to the Holy land, I take our seminarians there every January. And one thing that I like to get into is looking at archeological debates that have a practical relevance for our faith and for our prayer. One of those debates that is still live to this day is where is the Praetorium of Pontius Pilate located? Most tour guides will say it's the north of the temple where the Via de la Rosa, the way the cross begins. Others will say it's on the left side of Jerusalem at Herod's fortress. Church tradition through the ancient pilgrims will say actually it's on the bottom left, the south central of the city, right next to the temple. Why? Because it's there where Abraham put wood on the shoulders of his son. And notice how we see this in Luke's Gospel. In Luke's Gospel alone it says that there were two people next to Jesus when the wood of the cross was placed on his shoulders. That is where we believe Jesus took up the wood of the cross flanked by the two criminals making the moment of Calvary a fulfillment of what we saw in Abraham and Isaac. The parallels are amazing. They go up, Abraham's hand is stayed, they look over in the bush, they don't see a lamb but a ram and it's caught in the thicket with its head and its horns just like Jesus, the lamb of God will wear a crown of thorns, amazing. It's all from the priestly sacrifice that Abraham was making. Adam, Noah and Abraham. Rapid fire through the next couple of patriarchs, Isaac. In Genesis 26, after the Lord appears to him, what does Isaac do? He builds an altar and he calls on the name of the Lord, which was a Hebrew idiom for inactive worship. At the end of his life, what does he impart to Jacob his son? Blessing, sacrifice and blessing. In this way, he carries out the main roles of the priesthood. Jacob as well, in Genesis 35, he builds altars all over the place and sets up sacred pillars. And finally, in chapter 48, when he is dying, he blesses his sons. Again, priesthood is blessing and sacrifice. Now, we see something slightly different when we get to the book of Exodus. We see a development. In chapter four, verse 22, God commissions Moses to go to Pharaoh and God speaks of Israel as my firstborn son. God's original firstborn son was Adam. But notice the parallel. Genesis begins with God's firstborn son, leaving paradise and losing his priesthood, Adam. Exodus begins with God's firstborn son, Israel, leaving an Egyptian hell and regaining the priesthood. So when God declares Israel as firstborn son, all of the dignities of Adam are being conferred on Israel as a people. We see this even subtly in some of the details in Exodus chapter three, the appearance of God at the burning bush. Moses goes to the burning bush, sees something strange, goes to investigate. God says, don't come any closer. And while you're at it, remove the sandals on your feet because the ground on which you stand is holy. What does the removal of sandals on the feet actually mean? That actually was the Hebrew idiom for the action of taking possession of something. If you sell a piece of land to someone, you would remove your sandal and pass it over to him and he would put it on the ground, on his foot, making that land yours. So Moses at the burning bush is told, take your shoes off, why? Because he can make no claim to own the divinity. That's why John the Baptist says, I'm not worthy to unloosen the sandal of Jesus. I am not the bridegroom or the bride. I have no possession over him. That's why, fast forwarding, good Friday. The liturgy actually says in the liturgical books when we venerate the cross, the priest is supposed to take his shoes off before he genuflex three times in front of the cross. And actually all of the faithful have the option. When you come forward to venerate the cross, you can take your shoes off too. That imagery goes back to the priestly acknowledgments in Exodus that God is God, I don't own him. I approach him with humble reverence. So at this point in Exodus, the whole people had a priestly status. The firstborn son served in the capacity that we would understand as a ministerial priesthood, leading liturgies and offering blessings. Then we see a transfer of the priesthood from firstborn sons of every family to the tribe of Levi. We know this happened after the sin of the golden calf in Exodus 32. God goes up, Moses goes up the mountain, receives the commandments, comes back down. Aaron and everybody else starts worshiping a golden calf. And at that moment, as was mentioned earlier in this conference, Moses called the Levites and said, everyone around you who is worshiping the calf strike them down and many people died. And then at that moment, the Levites became the only ones in Israel who would have access to and control over the cult because everybody else messed it up. So the priesthood is being restricted now to the Levites. So much so that in the desert wandering in the wilderness, the camp of the Hebrew people looked like this, a big long rectangle outside of which all of the tribes had their tents. Then a little rectangle in the middle in which all of the Levites had their tents. And in the very middle of that, the meeting tent. The Levites literally served as a kind of fence keeping the wrath of God away from the people but also making sure that the sinful people don't get too close to God and mess it up again. They serve as a bit of a barrier between the people and God, mediating his presence. That line of priesthood continues all the way through the Old Testament until we get to the person of David. Something strange happens in one Samuel 16. We encounter an Israelite who is not a Levite and defies the priestly categories, King David. At his anointing, it is said that the Spirit of God rushed upon David and remained with him for the rest of his life. This stable possession of the Holy Spirit in David made him in a way a new Adam, just like the Holy Spirit filled Adam's nostrils in which he was also made then a priest. That's why we see David doing unusual things that only priests would do. The famous instance of him with his army on campaign, Hungary, going into a priestly city, Nab, only inhabited by Levites and taking the show, Brad, that only the priests could eat. The high priest there does not object. David goes right for it to feed his hungry people. Then we also see David when he brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, he unifies the tribes of Israel around worship, around rites, cults and worship. For that purpose, what does he do? He puts on the priestly garment called an effod, which was lined with very precious gems. And finally, with regards to King David, the court singer, the psalmist, wrote a famous psalm to David, sung aloud in his presence, Psalm 110. It establishes an explicit link between Melchizedek and David. You are a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek. That was significant because David was not of the tribe of Levi. And so the priestly passing down from father to father is beginning to be broken and expanded. And that sets up very much Jesus in the New Testament. Okay, that's the patriarchs. To recap, the priesthood of the patriarchal age, sacrifice and blessing, specifically with regards to the action of worship. Now, let's move on from there. And now let's talk a little bit more closely about the cults of the Hebrew people and the priesthood in the desert. Let's begin with what we read, actually the theme of our whole conference, Leviticus 19-2, Be Holy as I am Holy. Really glad that I did not give talks before Dr. Han gave his talk and told us all the things that holiness is not. I had to strike out a few things in my own notes from this. I love the comment though that he made that only God is holy, therefore he's the only one who can make holy. I had to learn this the hard way. I did a doctorate in Rome on Matthew 548, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. 387 pages on that verse. And I learned that that verse is very hard to interpret. What makes it so hard is that Jesus seems to be making reference to Leviticus 19-2, Be Holy as I am Holy. It's called an imitatio de formula, an imitation of God. But he changes the word from holy to perfect. Why would he do that? Especially because God is never called perfect in the Old Testament, explicitly directly. So why would Jesus say to Hebrew people, be perfect like your heavenly father is? What would they have understood by that? The answer is it's complicated. But here's what I read. Every single biblical theologian except people affiliated with this institute and the St. Paul's Center of Biblical Theology, I kid you not, I've read the literature. Every single theologian refers to those kind of formulas as anthropomorphism. It is not actually imitating God, but rather our best selves projected onto him. Because all we know is what we find in our senses. So when we say that God is merciful, we probably have in mind someone we know who's merciful. And so we're not actually imitating God, but our best selves transposed onto him. All theology is anthropology, Forerbach, an atheist from the 1800s. Everybody has bought it. And so no scholars are talking about imitating God anymore. They just aren't. Books are not being written on it. And in fact, the last guy who wrote on it in 1956 called it a große anthropomorphismus, German. It is a huge anthropomorphism to say be perfect like God is. So I had to spend one chapter of my dissertation on redirecting the conversation. Epistemology, what we know. How can we actually say that we are imitating God, not just ourselves, looking up onto him? Well, not gonna go into the whole dissertation, just one particular point. Think about it this way. It's all about language. Can you name or think about someone who is holy without making reference to God? No, a holy person is someone dedicated to God. A holy place is where God is worshiped. A holy thing is an object that is used to worship God. God is the first known. What Aristotle calls prosthen in analogy. He is the thing without which none of it, the rest of it makes any sense. That's why we read in Ephesians three. Paul says, I bow before the Father from whom all paternity on earth is named. Psalm 36, in your light we see light itself. In other words, this whole exercise in imitating God's holiness is not naval gazing. We actually are talking about and looking at and trying to imitate him, not us. And so that's why when Scott said that look, if God alone is holy, he's the only one who can make us holy exactly. What is holiness? It's the Godness of God, scholars say. The only way we can get to it is by his grace, his action, his work in us. Anyway, that was 200 pages of trying to figure out and get scholars to start talking about that again. That was tough, but really, really good. Now, one thing that we see in the desert with Moses and the Levites is a focus on the altar. Every priest is connected to a sanctuary and the holiest thing in the sanctuary was the altar. In fact, in one point there's a vision, I think it's in Ezekiel, where God tells Ezekiel, measure the altar then measure the priests. As if to say that the priests are liturgical objects that gain their holiness from the altar. Even of old, but even to this day. I think the most meaningful homily that I ever heard as a seminarian was this. It was literally one sentence. It's in the seminarian room and there was an old priest who must have been about 86, 87, had a real hard time walking but was stubborn and would not use a walker or a cane. He insisted on walking throughout the sanctuary when he celebrated Mass, so we, okay, fine. The deacon read the gospel and then we all sat down and the deacon went to the altar because he knew this priest was coming. He bowed and went back to his chair. The priest lumbering his way towards the pulpit, trips and grabs hold of the altar and catches himself and says into the microphone, gentlemen, I have to hold on to the altar or I don't know if I'm gonna make it. And he realized what he said and then sat back down. The source of priestly holiness in the old covenant, the altar, the source of all of our holiness, the work of God that is done on the altar, lay and clerical priests alike, amazing. Now let's talk briefly about the selection of the Levites. The Levites were chosen actually in a very particular way which I find really fascinating. They actually were chosen as a tithe. We've talked a little bit about tithing already but actually the Levites were themselves tithed. This is what I read in this Jambroni book. The clever notion of Levi as a human tithe helped to solve the problem of priesthood. Jacob, having promised in Genesis 28 to offer a tithe of everything that he was, counted his 12 sons starting backwards with Benjamin and arrived 10th at Levi whom he accordingly consecrated to God as a priest. That seemingly random mode of selection in effect makes the priesthood a fall of the lot. When priests were chosen, they were chosen by lot rolling dice and rolling bones even. That's how Zachariah was chosen to serve by lot in the Tabernacle. And I love that notion because that's where we take our idea of tithing. An exercise of our common priesthood is to make that self-sacrifice of giving of our own goods. Now, the exact phrase casting lots in Greek edokin clarus is a Levitical practice from which we get the word cleric. The word for lot is a clerus. Clerics were those who were chosen by lot. Why that's significant is because that means that the one ultimately chose choosing the priest is not us but God. We leave it up to his providence to choose the ones whom he wants. It's kind of how it happened in my vocation story which is no big lightning bolt moment. I started serving Mass when I was seven years old up in North Dakota. I have a twin brother and my mom would take my twin and me to daily Mass. And up there back then you started serving in second grade but the servers never showed up. So the priest would always look around and point to the two of us when we're seven and say come on up. So we loved being near the altar and serving. And I just got to know this priest very well and I noticed that he, a young guy, was very careful and deliberate with his words and his gestures at the altar. Something about his comportments made me want to be a deeper part of the Mass. Not just to wash his hands but someday maybe to have some little guy washing my hands. Not just to ring the bells but elevate the host and have someone ring them for me. This funny, reverent priest was someone who attracted me to the altar. Then we actually got a new priest a couple of years later who was the former state champion wrestler, Minnesota and a Navy SEAL, five, six. And first day dunked a basketball all of us and I was like, sign me up, I'll do it. The priesthood didn't really come to me as something that I sought out. It's something that God sought out for me when he chose me. And it's a good daily dose of humility. Fast forwarding just a few years. When I was in high school I always had in the back of my mind, I'm gonna be a priest. That's fine. I didn't really date anyone in high school because I thought I'm gonna be a priest. And then there was the junior ring dance. My high school friend group, 10 people, five guys, five girls. Since nobody dated anybody in my friend group so we just kinda swapped. Who took who to the dances? And junior ring, it happened to be my lot to take Lauren, this girl in our group to as my date for the night. And yeah, I had a bit of a crush on her. I will freely admit. Our first slow dance song of the evening, she says out of the total blue, Father Samson, you know, you'd make a great priest someday. Seriously? Fine. The call comes from God. If it were up to us, what's that? Oh, he's teaching in high school. Yeah, so. Right, but just to say that yeah, the call is God's to make. It's up to us just to participate and respond. Okay, now let's do Leviticus eight to 10, the ordination of the first priests. It was mentioned tongue in cheek that the most worn part of our Bibles is that middle section of Leviticus. Leviticus is a hard book to read all the way through. What's fascinating though is that of all the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, guess what book rabbis first read to their kids? Leviticus and not just Leviticus, Leviticus eight to 10, which really do constitute a midpoints, not just in that book, but a midpoint in the whole Torah, the very middle of it, the ordination of the first priests. That's fascinating, but also quite convicting because it's really hard for us to read that. It does serve as a foundation for the Christian priesthood. In that, we find the most important of several foundation stories about the origins of Israel's priesthood. It is central. The gift and the advent of the priesthood within Israel's national life takes shape within the heart of God's own theophany. And I love this. The priesthood ordained and God manifests himself in fire on the mountain. The ministerial priesthood has always been about manifesting God's presence, showing other people who and how God is. It shows that the priesthood is all about revealing the presence of God. That's why St. John Viani, parish priest in the 1800s, lived a life of abject poverty, eating moldy potatoes and only in the last year of his life, stale milk, spent all of his money on the orphans and on vestments and the liturgy. Famous story about him when he saw a cart coming in from Leon that was surely carrying the vestments that he ordered. He whisked a parishioner out into the street and said and brought him there and opened up the box of vestments and said, look at this, nothing is too nice for Jesus. That could only come from someone who spent most of his money on the poor. But I love the example that he gave in which I've taken for my own personal devotion of priesthood. I lived in Rome for nine years doing studies and I had the inspiration in prayer one day that I am going to spend my money where God is most present in the liturgy and in the persons of the poor. So every time I bought a vestment I've had to find a way to give that same amount of money over to the poor. I left Rome broke, but it was so good because we attend to God where he is most manifest and we all of us priests by baptism we are intended to show forth his presence to others. Amazing. Okay. So let's read Leviticus eight, one to four. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, take Aaron and his sons with him, the vestments, the anointing oil, the bowl of sin offering, the two rams and the basket of unleavened bread. Assemble the whole congregation at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Moses did as the Lord commanded him. This little excerpt is actually taking back up what was begun in Exodus 29, but which was not yet finished. There was a whole bunch of narrative interlude that had to happen between Exodus 29 and Leviticus eight that had to build the Tabernacle and the sanctuary to show the link between sanctuary, sacrifice and priesthood. We also see an important parallel between the Theophany of Exodus 40 that is the glory of God descending on the completed Tabernacle and the section of Leviticus. Again, it's all about the manifestation of God. Let's talk about each one of those elements briefly that appear in that passage. Let's start with Aaron and his sons. I love what it says that God says, take Aaron and his sons. The word in Hebrew for take is lah. It's got a nice guttural ha at the end of it. That word is a significant word in the Old Testament. It usually is used, especially in the book of Genesis to describe Abraham, excuse me, describe Adam and Eve taking her as his wife. However, we also find in this passage of Leviticus another word, which isn't lock, take, but rather whyyakreb, which is Hebrew for to present. You shall present your brother Aaron with his sons first from among the Israelites to serve as priests. I love how this is what God is saying here. Take these people, Aaron and his sons, out of the tribes of Israel and bring them forward to present them to me as priests. If you've ever been to the ordination of a deacon, you will see this happen at the right of ordination. After the gospel is read, someone says out loud, let those to be ordained deacons please come forward, calls their name, the deacons are seated in the pews with the rest of the laity. They rise and say present, and they walk forward crossing the threshold into the sanctuary where they are presented to the bishop. I love how this word present already has this sacramental sacrificial connotation to it. You're presenting these people to he who represents God. It's probably for me the most powerful moment of the ordination of deacons. I also love how the Italians do the right of ordination. They have such melodrama built into their language and their affect. We, when a deacon stands up says present, very abstract, non-emotional. The Italians stand up and say echo me, which means behold me. I love this radical presentation, even dramatic, of priest to he who represents an ax in the person of God. Now, Aaron and his sons, let's talk about the vestments. Various fabrics and weaves were used to cover the high priest and they correspond to the precious materials and skilled methods of manufacture that was used to make the veils in the tabernacle. In other words, there was always a close link between what the priest wears and what is shown materially in the tabernacle. Blue purple, red purple, red woolen threads of rochem, embroidery used for Aaron's sons. You know how they got purple in antiquity? They took mollusks, hundreds of thousands of mollusks from the Mediterranean, crushed them and stirred around what remained and from those mollusks came purple dye. It's the only way that people got purple back in the day, meaning it was super expensive. It was only used for the most precious materials. So the Hebrews use that for the tabernacle and for the vestments of the priest. A curious detail about this, what the priests are supposed to wear is no joke, undergarments. In the ancient Narees, so the people around Israel, it was not unknown for priestly figures to serve in the sanctuary entirely naked. That curiosity is seen on multiple ancient plaques and reliefs that depicted ministers officiating in a state of nudity. Against this background, God's explicit command that Israel's priest must wear linen undershorts acquires a more pointed cultural resonance. In undergarment, covering the loins was not a standard part of ancient dress and so a certain amount of sexual propriety explains this peculiar priestly girding. One might even say that it's a distant forerunner of the Catholic priest's syncture. When the priest and deacon put on every article that they wear, they say a prayer with it and most of it is linked to Old Testament imagery. When the priest puts on the syncture, he says, prae chingeme domene chingolo puritatis et extinguene lumis meis humorum libidinis. Gird me, O Lord, with the syncture of purity and extinguish in me any movement of passion so that I may serve you. That has its links back to the undergarments that the priest wore in Leviticus 8-10. Now, let's move on from the vestments to the oil, the anointing oil. In Exodus 29, Moses instructed, he started to give these instructions but didn't finish them until Leviticus 8. In Exodus 29, he instructed, take the anointing oil and pour it on Aaron's head and anoint him. Then a long parentheses of 20 chapters until we get to Leviticus 8. What we see inserted is the anointing of the tabernacle, the altar and other implements in the tent. What's going on here is that there is a parallelism between the high priest and the dwelling. We see this reflected in Catholic piety as well. Notice that when the priest comes to an altar, he references it, not just because there are contained in the altar relics of the saints, but because the altar was anointed with chrism. Everything that's anointed with chrism oil is usually veiled. A chalice, veiled. The tabernacle, veiled. The altar that's anointed five times to show the five wounds of Christ, veiled with a cloth. One wall of the church by which they consecrate they usually cover that as well. One of my friends who wears a veil when she goes into a chapel, she said, that's the reason why I wear a veil when I pray. I received chrism on my forehead and so I was consecrated, so I put a veil on it. An interesting way to think about it. That's also one of the reasons why all priests in the local diocese gather for the chrism mass. It's one of my favorite masses of the whole year as a priest. We come together to celebrate the creation of new chrism because we feel connected to it. Our hands were anointed with that chrism which conferred sacramental power. Now, Aaron would be doused seven times during the course of the week as the Holy One of the Lord, Kodesh Le Adonai. I love this. On Aaron's hat was the phrase, holy to the Lord God as if he were God's own possession. Even though he wears that sign on his head, he is not the holiest object in the tabernacle. The altar is as mentioned. That's one of the reasons why in the extraordinary form of the Roman right, if you notice, people will genuflect not to the tabernacle, but to the altar because the altar stands for Christ in a unique and decisive way. It's the source of the priest's holiness. Okay, let's move on to the bowl and the rams of sacrifice. So there's one bowl and two rams offered and they each have symbolic meaning. The bowl is meant as a sin offering to purify and remove unworthiness from the altar. Why did that have to be offered because Aaron, the high priest sinned in Exodus 32 with the golden calf? But I love what's instructive about this here. Aaron's sin and his imperfections are not an obstacle to his service and worship. And I think that can carry over to all of us as well. Sometimes when we sin, we go super hard on ourselves and we might even count ourselves out. I'm not gonna go to church today because I'm not worthy to go there because I've sinned. What we see with the example of Aaron is that a sin offering was made. His weaknesses are not inhibitions to his participating in the cults. And so too with the mercy of God, neither are ours. Now, one thing that's really neat here, the first ram that is offered, blood is splashed around the sides of the altar in a broad gesture. Whereas, so it's splashed around the altar, whereas the bowl that was the first offering what Aaron has to do is he has to take a little bit of that blood and put the blood carefully on the four corners of the altar. And what Aaron will experience is actually a similar anointing. He will, blood will be placed on Aaron's earlobe, his thumb and his big toe. Seems random, but what it's going after here is head and members. The redding of Aaron's hands and feet to complete the sacral work assigned to him. What's really cool about this is that those three elements, the earlobe, the toe, and the hand, that also is prescribed of the cleansing of a leper in Leviticus 14. There is an implicit affinity between a cleansing and a priestly consecration. We priests are also have our sins and so we need to be not just cleansed but healed in a way. Okay, the final element, the unleavened bread. We read this in Leviticus 26 to 27. From the basket of unleavened bread that was before the Lord, Moses took one cake of unleavened bread, one cake of bread with oil and one wafer and placed them on the fat and on the right thigh. He placed all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons and raised them as an elevation offering before the Lord. What this is is actually the Hebrew idiom for ordain. Even to this day in modern Hebrew, to ordain a priest literally means to fill his hands. Hebrew is an abstract language. It doesn't have high concepts for abstract things. Instead of saying somebody is angry, it says his nose got white because when you get really angry and you scrunch up, your nose gets white. It's very corporeal. So to ordain a priest, literally their metaphor was to fill their hands, to fill Aaron's hands with the artifacts that he would be offering. A passive reception from Moses' hands of these rich sacrificial offerings clearly signifies the gift-like character of priestly service. Aaron receives his priesthood as a gift, which is why John Paul II, in reflecting upon his vocation, titled his book, Gift and Mystery. It's something that we receive. And of course, we see this gesture in ordination of priests to this day. Right after the priest is ordained with chrism and clothed with a chasable, what happens, he goes to the bishop and the bishop puts the chalice in his hands, along with the bread and trusting to him these sacred objects. For some centuries in the medieval era of the church, it was believed that that was the exact moment when the man actually becomes a priest, when his hands were filled with the sacrificial offerings because it goes back to Leviticus. Interestingly enough, when Aaron and any priest who was ordained received those gifts, he then holds them up and waves them left to right and then up and down, lifting up his hands just like Jesus on the cross, offering his body as a sacrifice on that instrument that was both vertical and horizontal. Wow, very much showing him to be a priest. Then once the men are ordained, once the offerings of the ram and the lambs have been extended, Aaron and his sons sit down and feast. They eat the boiled flesh of the ordination ram, together with the bread that remained in the basket. Thereby, they communicate with the Lord in a shared human and divine meal, God taking his part on the altar, consuming it with fire and the priests as accords with the consumption of holy things sitting in the forefront of the tent of meeting. A union of the human and the divine occurs with those priestly sacrifices. We ingest what God ingests by fire. That's why it's one of the things that's hardest to do at weddings and the funerals and other big masses. It's hard to explain it well when we ask that those who do not share our Catholic faith receive a blessing instead of receiving the Eucharist. People always say to me, Father, that's so unfair, that's so unwelcoming, it's exclusive, et cetera. The only way that I can find to explain it is that we practice what we call holy communion, one with. If somebody is not one with all that we believe, taking that little communion would be in a way disingenuous. Saying aloud that you're not in union with but then receiving it in that action as if you were, that union of divine and human takes place at a priestly offering. Thank you all very much for coming to this conference. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. Have a good rest of the conference. Thank you.