The first link will take you to the site from the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology based out of Steubenville. Talk about extras! This is a site you should bookmark on your computer and come back to over and over again. It's a treasure to find good, trustworthy, interesting, and easy-to-understand Catholic study and reflectional materials. The information that I think will be most helpful for now is on the page with Lesson One: The Master Key that Unlocks the Bible. The Master Key, of course, is Covenant. WARNING: Don't blame me if you spend an hour looking around at all that this site contains. You can simply say, "Thank you."
The second extra that I had promised was a paragraph from a talk that Scott Hahn had given about the Letter to the Hebrews. If you would like to read the entire piece, which delves into the complete Lettter to the Hebrews and has helped me understand each chapter at a much deeper level than I would have ever been able to do on my own, it's called "The Eucharist as the Meal of Melchizedek." Otherwise, here is the excerpt that I read in class today:
“I read that a hundred times before the obvious meaning hit me like a brick in the face. [Jesus] is a priest in heaven ministering now in the sanctuary and he's got something to offer and he's continually offering it. He's just not bleeding and dying and suffering any more. He's not killing any more animals, but he's continually offering the once and for all sacrifice which is himself; but it's a continual sacrifice. It's a perpetual offering. He's not dying, but he's still offering. That's exactly what the Catholic Church teaches about the Mass.
In fact, we're going to be offering this sacrifice forever in and through and with Christ. Not bloody animal sacrifices but our hearts and our souls and our bodies in union with the One whose body and blood, soul and divinity are perfect and pure -- the only acceptable sacrifice which makes our otherwise unacceptable sacrifices perfectly acceptable”
Last but not least, here is the paragraph from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is referenced in our Ignatius Bible in the notation for Hebrews 8:8-12:
“The perfect fulfillment of the Law could be the work of none but the divine legislator, born subject to the Law in the person of the Son. In Jesus, the Law no longer appears engraved on tables of stone but ‘upon the heart’ of the Servant who becomes ‘a covenant to the people,’ because he will ‘faithfully bring forth justice.’ Jesus fulfills the Law to the point of taking upon himself ‘the curse of the Law’ incurred by those who do not ‘abide by the things written in the book of the Law, and do them,’ for his death took place to redeem them ‘from the transgressions under the first covenant.’” CCC 580
Okay. I think that's it. Let me know if there's anything that I've forgotten.
Thanks again for all of your hard work. By our discussions, I can tell it's all beginning to click for us. What looked so overwhelming at the beginning, is coming together. That's the beauty of studying one small part of the Bible at a time and then getting together to hear all kinds of impressions of what that part is trying to reveal to us about God and our faith.
See you all on February 4 for Chapter 9.
