Jan 19: Melchizedek, Priest-King of Salem

Dieric Bouts the Elder:
The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek
Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven, 1664-67

Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Reading I: Heb 7:1-3, 15-1

King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the Most High God, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever (NRSV, Heb 7:1a,3).

Father, how much, over the centuries, we have misunderstood you, often making you over in our own image, as if you were a creature like us. We have such difficulty in comprehending that you are the unchanging, boundless One. In all of our needs we turn to you begging you to come to our help as if you had to be convinced to aid us. We act as if our supplications can somehow change you so that you will, as a result of our pleading, do something that you were not doing before. It is as if you were not already, in your one act that is your being, coming to our assistance with your life and power at every moment, even before we ask, always pouring out your Holy Spirit upon us if only we would say “yes” and accept.

In our sinfulness, we sense that you turn away from us, sometimes in angry, and that we must through sacrifices and penance curry your favor once again. How little do we realize that you are always there pressing in upon us through your Word, always offering renewed life and forgiveness, if it were only accepted and allowed to change our lives.

So great is the spiritual distance between you and us, that we have thought it necessary to designate certain among us to represent us to you. Taking from us our gifts and petitions, they would go apart, into the inner recesses of a sacred building or atop a holy mountain, to plead with you in our name hoping to return with some favor that you grant. How we ignore that we always have direct access to you in your Spirit through your Word always present to us, your Word who does not abandon us even in our sinfulness but remains ever with us inviting us to turn back to you.

We are thankful, Lord, for the mysterious appearance of Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem, who greets Abraham with gifts of bread and wine on Abraham’s return from defeating the marauders who had carried off his nephew. Melchizedek without father or mother, or ancestors, or beginning or end, just appears as if out of nowhere. He has no past or future. He does not become. He is just there. Melchizedek brings home to us, Lord, your unchanging self, present to us in your Word begotten but uncreated and also unchanging through whom we have immediate access to you, Father. It is through the Word that you offer us the one unchanging gift that enables us to do all things, the gift of your divine life.

How grateful we are also that, unlike the mysterious Melchizedek, who is never heard of again, your Word, who is our true high priest, comes into this world in a human body to be truly one of us, the Lord Jesus Christ, to teach us and sanctify us as he shows us the way to you.

Alleluia. Amen.