Made Perfect?
March 13, 2024
Fr. John Riccardo
In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Hebrews 5:7-9
Prayers? Supplications? Loud cries? Tears? Where are we?
The Holy Spirit is bringing us at this very moment into the Garden of Gethsemane and onto the hill of Calvary. In these few short verses we find ourselves at the very center of Jesus’ Passion. In our minds we see Jesus, the new Adam, sweating blood and wrestling with the enemy in the garden – resuming the fight that had ended so disastrously for the first Adam. And we see Him suspended on Calvary, naked, entirely exposed, utterly ripped to shreds, offering prayers for the ones who did this – us.
There is so much one could and should pray with in these few short verses. What does the author mean when he says Jesus was saved from death? After all, it sure doesn’t look like it! Answer: Jesus died in such a way as to obtain victory (for us) over Death itself – “Dying you destroyed our death,” we used to say at Mass. The Resurrection on Sunday will be the declaration that Good Friday was a victory – not a defeat!
How could Jesus, the eternal Son of God, learn obedience? Was Jesus ever disobedient? Answer: No. However, as the great Hebrews scholar Albert Vanhoye writes,
[I]t is necessary to make an important distinction between the prior disposition to obedience and the virtue attained by obedience and acquired through temptation. For our human nature, the two things are indeed entirely distinct. Only he who faces and overcomes the hardest temptations acquires the virtue of obedience in every fiber of his human nature. At the beginning, he may have been disposed to obedience, but this was not yet the acquired virtue. It is a law of our human nature and Jesus accepted that law. The Incarnation involves this aspect. In himself, he did not need this suffering education. The author says that, although he was Son, he needed to learn through his human nature, just like we do. On the other hand, his obedience was superabundant in the sense that, through his solidarity with us, Christ accepted a fate that he had not at all merited. So his obedience overflows to us. Christ is able to communicate to us his profound docility to God. Here, we can catch on better, it seems to me, to the meaning of the Incarnation and redemption, Jesus has assumed our human nature in its fallen state.
…Christ has assumed this nature of ours in order to transform it and to conform it more perfectly to God’s plan. This is the true meaning of redemption. With an amazing generosity, Christ has accepted being subjected to our place, in our favor, to the suffering education that was indispensable for us. 1
Perhaps the most confusing thing we read in this passage is that through this Jesus was “made perfect.” It is of extreme importance that the Greek word used here is the same word that in the Greek translation of the Pentateuch is only used when talking about the consecration of a priest. In other words, Hebrews is saying that somehow these events served to “consecrate” Jesus as the high priest. In the priesthood of the old covenant, after the consecration ritual, it was thought that nothing remained in the man that could displease God. After all, this needed to be the case so that he could act as mediator between God and the people, which was his task. The problem, of course, was that no priest was actually transformed in this way. He still remained sinful even after the consecration. With Jesus, however, there appears a man who is in radical solidarity with us – since He has a fully human nature – and in a perfect relation with God – since He is the eternal Son of God Himself. Jesus, then, is the perfect mediator between God and humanity, the true high priest.
This all might seem rather esoteric or just a lot of theological mumbo-jumbo until we pause and consider this simple truth: the eternal Son of God didn’t have to do any of this. He didn’t have to become Incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, whom He created. He didn’t have to enter into agony in the Garden. He didn’t have to wrestle with the enemy of the human race. He didn’t have to experience the betrayal of one of his dearest friends and the abandonment of virtually all of them. He didn’t have to endure the shame of the scourging and the crown of thorns and the cross. Hebrews will remind us a bit later that Jesus did all of this “for the joy that was set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2). What joy?
You. Me. Reconciled to Him and to His Father. Freed from the corruption of Sin and Death. Liberated from the grip of Satan. The simple truth is not a one of us has any concept of just how loved we are by God. Or how loved each person we will speak to and see this day is also.
As we draw ever closer to Holy Week – and the celebration of the most important event that has ever happened in human history – let us beg the Holy Spirit to open our minds and hearts to understand the significance of Jesus’ death and how absolutely everything is different as a result.
“We adore You, O Christ, and we bless you, because by Your holy cross You have rescued the world.”
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
March 2024
For the ordained and lay leaders who will be joining us for a Leadership Immersive on our campus.
For our mission with the priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
For all those running The Rescue Project in parishes and homes across the world.
For the Rescue LIVE Revival planning team in Vancouver, BC.
For God's protection upon Fr. John Riccardo, our team and our families.
For the various publishing projects underway with our ACTS XXIX press.