Remade in the Image and Likeness of God"

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s first reading from Isaiah we join the prophet on the mountain of the Lord, Zion, which in biblical literature serves as a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem and of God’s holy reign. Isaiah 25, from which today’s reading is taken, falls within a section of the prophetic book called the “Apocalypse of Isaiah,” an oracle about the “Day of the Lord.” Writing before the coming of the Messiah, Isaiah prophesizes about this symbolic “day,” the future Messianic period when God will come to restore righteousness and justice to the earth. Interestingly, we are told that on this day, upon this holy mountain, God will provide his people with “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” Thus the Lord’s desire to nourish and support his people is directly linked to his concern for satisfying their hunger and their thirst for justice and salvation. The Responsorial Psalm, taken from Psalm 23, is a reminder that the justice and salvation promised by God requires casting out into the depths (cf. Luke 5:1-11) and passing through the darkness of death (cf. Psalm 130). This death is literal in more ways than one; it represents not jut bodily death, but also death to all of the things which cause sin to thrive, and thus injustice to flourish. The way to the heavenly Jerusalem, the way up God’s holy mountain where justice reigns and the heavenly banquet awaits, leads through the darkness of the Cross which conquers sin and death. Yet even in the darkness God is present. The Psalmist tells us today that the Lord is our “shepherd,” the one who guides us through the “dark valley” towards the “table” where the cup “overflows.” The Psalm may be considered a metaphor for the truth that the darkness of the Cross leads us to the table of the Eucharist. In the Gospel passage from Matthew, this link becomes even clearer.

In Matthew, we are once again upon God’s holy mountain. However, this time we are in the presence of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd and the one promised by God through Isaiah and the prophets.

There is a clear progression then in today’s readings from Isaiah, through the Psalm, to the Gospel of Matthew. The hunger for justice and salvation on God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 25) is clearly connected to the darkness of Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross (Psalm 23), and through the Cross to fulfillment in the Eucharistic miracle, which is symbolically foreshadowed by the multiplication of the loaves (Matthew 15). The lesson Scripture teaches is clear: the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which is transformed during the Mass into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, is the fulfillment of God’s plan for justice and salvation in our lives. Without the Eucharist we have no life within us (cf. John 6). However with the Eucharist, we are remade in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen. 1:27).

Let us be thankful for the great gift of the Holy Eucharist.

Michael Lombardo