Epistle, V Sunday Lent

Hebrews 5, 7-9

St Paul speaks in this part of his epistle about Christ’s priesthood.  In these few short verses he elaborates on Christ’s virtue of obedience.  Maybe it would be good for us to parallel this virtue with our lives.  Today obedience is undervalued and even derided, though we like to think that we are a society of law and order, of structure and authority, of liberty, not libertinism.  When it comes down to brass tacks, everyone in our society must obey another, everyone has a superior to whom he must respond.

Anyway, St Paul is telling us, in his florid language, that when Christ was alive, and even though he is God, he responded in perfect obedience to the Father.  He did not like what he knew he was to suffer, he knew that it would be dangerous to his health, he would suffer and die, and he even prayed with loud cries and tears.  In the end, he knew that the Father wanted him to endure all of that and he did willingly.  He learned the difficulty of obedience, just as we experience it, though he knew that the Father would hear his prayer and save him from death.  We also should have this as our final and basic prayer.  We ask for many things, we lament our sufferings, we even lament our inconveniences found in seminary life, but we continue forward in obedience to our superiors and ask the Father that we unite our obedience with Christ’s and that we be saved from death, though Christ, who has become our source of eternal salvation.