Our reading from the very beginning of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a good short course in Christology. This is because, in this passage, the apostle establishes Jesus as being both human and divine. Some four hundred years later, at the Council of Chalcedon, this is defined as what we now as “the hypostatic union.” In Greek, hypostasis means that certain something that makes something what is and not something else.
In in the one person of Jesus Christ, two hypostases- divine and human- are joined in the words of the Council of Chalcedon
without mixture, change, division, or separation; the difference of natures not being removed by their union, but rather the propriety of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person… so that he is not divided or separated into two persons, but the only Son, God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, and one and the same person1Paul is very clear about his vocation, his calling. He was called to “bring about the obedience of faith” among the Gentiles, that is, among non-Jews. Of course, being a Jewish person as well as a Roman citizen who likely spoke Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and probably passable Latin while also being multi-cultural, made Paul ideal for carrying out the evangelization of Roman Empire.
What is the surest sign of Jesus’ divinity, according to the apostle in this passage? Being resurrected from the dead. This, in Paul’s view is what “established him in power.”2 Of course, to be resurrected, he not only had to have a body, to be incarnated, but to die.
Jesus, too, in our Gospel, points to his own, then future resurrection as the surest sign of his divinity. He does this response to people coming to see him perform signs and miracles, to witness the magical mystery tour of the itinerant carpenter from Nazareth.
Especially in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus is quite ambivalent about the miracles he performs. In this passage from Saint Luke’s Gospel, the Lord minces no words- despite the signs and wonders he performs, his own people, his fellow Jews refuse to believe. This dovetails nicely with our Gospel from Matthew yesterday.
The Queen of Sheba, from the Medieval manuscript Bellifortis by Conrad Kyeser and dates to c. 1405.
The parable of the Wedding Feast is a thinly disguised allegory. The king is the Father. The king’s son is Jesus. The servants sent out call the invited guests to the wedding banquet are the prophets and the invited guests the Israelites, the Jews, God’s chosen people. What about those from the highways and byways? That’s us, the gentiles. The idea that we somehow secretly belong to one of the ten lost tribes, besides being historically laughable, defeats the Gospel.
As for the man lacking the proper clothing, he’s that one that believed, who accepted the invitation and came but was not really convinced or converted. Perhaps his fault is that he lives a life of presumption. Presumption holds that, in the end, God’s mercy wins out. Therefore, how I live doesn’t really matter. This is the one who is convinced that being a “pretty good” person will suffice in the end. And so, one needn’t bother too much about adhering to Church teaching handed on in Scripture and Tradition.
Worldly wisdom, after all, is often easier, more practical, perhaps more common sensical whereas adherence to Christian teaching requires something of you. As Chesterton sagely noted: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”3
Getting back today’s Gospel, a similar dynamic is in play. Jesus tells his fellow Jews that they will be judged by gentiles who believed, the Queen of Sheba and the Ninehvite, who heeded those who we less than Jesus on much less evidence. In context, these are shocking words. They are meant to provoke repentance and belief in the Son of God.
We’re very much in the same situation as those Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel. During this year of Eucharistic Revival, we can either reduce Christ’s Real Presence to only that in consecrated bread and wine, thus limiting our understanding of the words and gestures of consecration, like those seeking a sign, as some kind of magic. Or we can seek arrive at an ever deeper understanding that in giving himself to us body, blood, soul, and divinity, Jesus asks nothing less from us than the pledge of our body, blood, soul, and humanity.
The Communion Rite is the Catholic altar call. Our “amen” to the words “the body of Christ, the blood of Christ” is not just a profession of belief that we’re receiving him- though it is that- it is also pledging ourselves to him, a renewal of baptismal promises, the firm intention, with the help he gives us in and through this sacrament, “to sin no more and avoid whatever leads me to sin.”4
The high point of Mass is the not consecration of the bread and wine, which, by the Holy Spirit’s power become for us the body and blood of Christ. The high point of the Mass, the point to which it all builds, is the Communion Rite. This is when, together, we receive the One who makes us what we are- the Body of Christ, the Church, those whom not only in but through Christ is made present. Having received him, we are then sent forth, dismissed, to “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord,” to spread the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the message of Alleluia to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death.5
1 From the Chacedonian Creed.↩
2 Romans 1:4.↩
3 G.K. Chesterton. What’s Wrong with the World, Part I Chapter 5- “The Unfinished Temple.”.↩
4 From The Act of Contrition.↩
5 Roman Missal, Concluding Rites; Luke 1:79.↩
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