October 21st, 2018 - The Scapegoat and the Cross

Fr. Kirby Longo's Homilies

So each year the Israelites sent a goat into the wilderness on Yom Kippur with their sins, for a moment being free of the burden of sin, and shortly thereafter they would sin again, being broken humans like ourselves, and await the following year when Yom Kippur would come. More urgently, they awaited the messiah who would set things straight, he who “will arise, the sun of justice with his healing rays... To turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”

Jesus is the messiah, he is the one who takes all the sins of Israel- indeed the whole world- upon himself and dies for us. This sacrifice of Christ is the most fitting, the most perfect sacrifice. It need be only once, for Jesus is God and the great exchange which happens in this sacrifice sits outside of history- above history- we could say. It is Jesus let us lay hands on him, who take upon himself all the hatred, the venom, the sin of the world, and died with it. Thus it is swallowed up in Christ’s death.