testaments

Mystery preacher
While we don't know who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews,
its message rings loud and clear.

laying favorites is something parents are not supposed to do.

Recent studies indicate that Mom and Dad do it all the time. The
fairest, funniest, or most gifted child typically wins the prize of

parental attention, although occasionally it's the runt ofthe litter

who pulls it off by the sheer appropriation of resources.

None of this is news to any of us who have children or were children once ourselves. What's worse
than playing favorites, though, is choosing one
child to be the routine whipping post. Not being
celebrated is one thing; being branded the black
sheep is anothen
It is therefore with shame and trepidation that
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I admit publicly that I, too, have favorites. When

it comes to the Bible, some books I approach with
delight, and others I avoid until it's absolutely necessary to address them.
Sometimes familiarity breeds my contempt:
The overexposure of certain passages in the Sunday lectionary makes my eyes roll at Mass. At
other times it's the opposite: The arcane inscrutability of some texts leads me to feel lost and shut
out ofthe meaning, at which point I lose interest.
Happily there's a cure for underappreciation, and that's education. The longer I study the
By Alice Camille, author of God's Word is Alive and
other titles available at alicecamiUe.com.

"The word of God is living and active." Hebrews 4:12

more obscure books, the greater I admire and

enjoy them. We often view scripture like spinach:
Consume it hecause it's good for you. But it surely
keeps you coming back to the table if you can find
a way to serve spinach that's to your liking.

he Letter to the Hebrews has often seemed a

bleak spot in the New Testament for me. First
there's the name, announcing at once that this message will have special importance to Jewish members of the assembly. But this is a Christian text,
and in the average 21st-century Sunday assembly,
there are no "Hebrews."
Older Catholics rememher when this letter
was ascribed to St. Paul. Lectors would intone,
"A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the
Hebrews." This made attending to it plausible for
the sake of completion of Paul's canon of insights.
But it's been a long time since any scholar.
Catholic or Protestant, would attribute this letter
to Paul. It simply is the work of another person.
And even if you don't know all the academic reasons why that's so, just consider how Paul continually defined himself as the apostle to the Gentiles.
Why would he write a letter to fellow Jews?
This raises the inevitable question: If Paul
didn't write Hebrews, then who did?
We third-millennium types view anonymous
documents with great suspicion. If someone
doesn't own up to his or her work, either it's subversive or just plain dishonorable.
The main prohlem with this attitude is that
we don't know if the original was signed or not.
Our earliest manuscript dates to the third century;
Hebrews was probably written around the year 85.
And frankly, it's not a letter at all but a homily, a
self-described "word of exhortation" (Heb. 13:22).
I imagine most written homilies in America today
are unsigned, since they're intended to be delivered live. Everyone knows whose words these are
because he or she is standing right there.
While other New Testament letters mention
an author or origin in the greeting, Hebrews
gets right down to business: "In times past, God
spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors
through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke
to us through a son." Its final chapter abruptly
takes a turn into something more conversational
and letter-like, but it was clearly attached at a later
date, when it was mailed off to other communities
as must-see material. Neither the first 12 chapters

nor the added sign-off give clues to its composer.

The earliest guess comes from TertuUian (ca.
200). He attributed Hebrews to Paul's co-missionary Barnabas, "a good man,filledwith the Holy
Spirit and faith" (Acts 11:24). Because so little is
known about Barnabas after he and Paul split up
in Acts 15, it would be cool to think we had some
of his work preserved.
In the 16th century Martin Luther proposed
another missionary in Acts as a likely candidate,
citing this description: "A Jew named Apollos, a
native of Alexandria, an eloquent speaker, arrived
in Ephesus. He was an authority on the scriptures.. .[and] vigorously refuted the Jews in puhlic" (Acts 18:24). This, too, is conceivable.
Modern scholars have also considered that
Paul's trustworthy friend Prisca (called hy the
diminutive Priscilla in Acts) could have authored
Hebrews. She and her hushand Aquila ran a house
church and had occasion to correct Apollos when
his teaching proved inadequate (Acts 18:1-3,26;
Rom. 16:3; 1 Cor. 16:19). Since Prisca's name precedes her husband'sunusual for the timeit
suggests she was the star player on that team.

While it's
fun to play
"Who wrote
Hebrews?"
the more
important
question is,
"Why?"

hile it's fun to play "Who wrote Hebrews?"

the more important question to ask is
"Why?" The goal of the piece is to persuade its
audience that the old covenant of blood and sacrifice, administered by the priests of Jerusalem,
has been rendered unnecessary by the new and
everlasting covenant involving the self-sacrifice of
Jesus. The timing of the argument is important:
the second Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 70
A.D. and the era of priestly sacrifice is really over
this timea fact that some Jewish leaders may have
begun to suspect.
Judaism without the Temple is unfathomable,
until rabbinic Judaism grounded in Torah study
in synagogues would definitively replace it. This
development is one that most Jews of the time
would have found horrendous to contemplate. Its
acceptance is also precisely what saves Judaism for
the future.
Acknowledging the end of temple sacrifice
isn't the same as adopting the notion of supersessionism, however. Also known as "fulfillment" or
"replacement" theology, this is the belief that the
Christian covenant "supersedes" the validity of
the Jewish covenant altogether.
Catholic teaching is not supersessionist;
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testaments

rather, it agrees with St. Paul's afiirmation that

"the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable"
(Rom. 11:29; see also Rom. 9:4-5). The Catechism
of the Catholic Church states the Catholic perspective on Judaism succinctly: "The Jewish
faith... is already a response to God's revelation."

he Letter to the Hebrews simply makes the

argument to these shaken Jewsinside and
outside the Christian clan, perhapsthat the
Temple's destruction was inevitable after Jesus: He
predicted it himself. Its loss and that of a functioning priesthood is likewise irrelevant, since Jesus
completes the sacrifice once for all.
Some scholars propose that the homily's original audience was composed of newly unemployed
Jewish priests. It may have included Essenes, who

had rejected the Temple rituals and leadership

more than a hundred years earlier to escape what
they viewed as its corruption.
Whoever was listening, the homily is a masterpiece of in-speak. The priesthood of Aaron
consecrated the priest as a vessel of God, literally
separating him from human contact like sacred
vessels.
How remarkable, then, that Jesus chooses to
become a radically different priest! He himself
bleeds, suffers, and diesnot withdrawing from
the humblest human realities but identifying with
our humanity in grisly detail.
Binding divinity to humanity, Jesus reconciles
heaven and earth permanently: "yesterday, today,
and forever" (Heb. 13:8). You don't have to be a
benched high priest to love an idea like that. USC

Is the Mass still celebrated

as a sacrifice?

A:

asked
Got a question?
editors(S>uscatholic.org

fev\/ years ago the Vatican issued a revised verbion of the General Instruction of the Roman
Missal, the "guidebook" for how to celebrate the
Mass. The cover of the document's American edition showed a part of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck's
magnificent 1432 altarpiece painting Tiie Adoration
of ihe Mystic Lamb.
In this great work the whole of the Christian
worldthe communion of saints, the apostles, the
four evangelists, martyrs, prophets, and even the
cardinal virtuesstream in from the four corners
of the earth to worship before the fountain of the
water of life and the paschal lamb, who stands
serenely on an altar, a small stream of its blood
spilling neatly into a waiting chalice. Little further
symbolic statement was needed that "the holy sacrifice of the Mass" had not gone away, obscured in a
haze of alleged post-Vatican II liturgical irreverence,
but was in fact back, and with a vengeance.
The term "holy sacrifice of the Mass" can, however, have the unfortunate effect of implying that
the entire Mass is mainly and even exclusively a sacBy Joel Schorn, a writer and editor living in Chicago.
He is the author of Holy Simplicity: The Little Way of
Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Thrse of Lisieux
(Servant Books).

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rifice. That's unfortunate because the Mass is many

things. It's an assembly of the faithful, the body of
Christ made visible. It's the celebration of a sacred
meal and communion with the risen Lord and the
church. It's a prayer of thanksgiving. And, yes, it's
also a sacrifice.
The Mass is a sacrifice because it brings
together two "sacrificial moments": Jesus' last meal
with his disciples and his death on the cross. When
Jesus called the bread and wine his body and blood
he was joining the offering of the meal with his selfoffering on the cross.
The Mass does the same thing in reverse order.
It continues the sacrifice of the cross in the reenactment of the meal. The purpose comes directly from
the mouth of Jesus: The "blood of the covenant...
shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins"
(Matt. 26:28). Or, in the resounding words of the
Council of Trent in 1562: "This sacrifice is truly propitiatory.... For by this oblation the Lord is appeased
...and he pardons wrongdoing and sins...."
The Mass, then, is a real sacrifice, Christ's oncefor-all offering of himself that nonetheless happens
again and again for the benefit of the church. It is
an opportunity for the assembled community to join
itself to Christ's gift of his life and imitate it in their
own sacrificial love. USC

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