The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek

The Priest-King Melchizedek appears in only two verses in the Old Testament but in Salvation History he is a link in a chain from Noah to Abraham to Christ the King.

“The Lord has sworn and he will not repent; you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

— Psalm 110:4

The readers of Beyond These Stone Walls have read and heard a lot about priesthood in the trenches in recent weeks. However, readers have told me that nothing could have prepared them for the shock and awe of our first-ever video post about what happened in my priesthood, “A Documentary Interview with Father Gordon MacRae.”

Many readers have said that they did not know whether to cheer or cry by its end. I hope you do neither. The truth is its own reward and solace, and I am grateful for an opportunity to stand by it. As I told Louisville, Kentucky attorney Frank Friday who was instrumental in finding and publishing this long-lost video, “For a priest in my situation, being heard now feels almost as important as being free! Almost!”

For many readers who have read and listened, one truth is clear. The assault on the priesthood both from within and from without in recent decades is a story of spiritual warfare. Anyone who enters this battle unaware of its real source and meaning is doomed. We who have faced spiritual warfare no longer doubt this.

On the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Catholics are introduced in the First Reading at Mass to Melchizedek, a priest of God Most High and the King of Salem which, in time, will become “Jerusalem.” He is the first person in the Bible to be referred to as a priest.

This story reaches back in time to the earliest point in Salvation History bearing historical and spiritual resonance with Christ. But first, I must take a short side road into another mystery with a tiny thread of connection in this Great Tapestry of God.

I have long pondered the hidden meaning of one of the most difficult passages to interpret in all of Sacred Scripture. From the Church Fathers of the first few centuries to the present day, scholars have struggled with its meaning. The passage is in the First Letter of Peter.

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.”

— 1 Peter 3:18-20

These words, put forth by the first Vicar of Christ in the mid-First Century Anno Domini, are cryptic and mysterious. For obvious reasons, I was drawn to the notion that the Risen Christ “went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey.” The connection with “the days of Noah” broadens the possible meanings of this Biblical mystery. For an in-depth look at the theological meaning of this, see my post “To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell.”

In the Time of Noah

It is difficult to ponder back 2,000 years into the mindset of Peter and the post-Resurrection early Church. And when we consider Melchizedek’s role in all this, we have to ponder backwards yet another 2,000 years to the time of Abraham. But this reach back into time becomes even more complex. There is a connection to Noah as well, and it reaches back into time immemorial.

I have written in several posts that spiritually, we live in a very important time. We exist today in the 21st Century after Christ while the summons of Abraham — humanity’s first Covenant with God, the first since the Great Flood of Noah’s time — took place in the 21st Century before Christ. It is no cosmic mystery that believers encounter spiritual battle in our time.

For some, St Peter’s reference to Christ attending to “the spirits in prison” refers to what the Apostles Creed declares as “he descended into hell.” In the early Third Century, St Cyril of Alexandria interpreted the above verses from the First Letter of Peter to mean that on Holy Saturday, Christ descended to the dead to make a final offer of salvation to the deceased sinners of Noah’s day.

St Augustine, in the Fifth Century, proposed a more complex interpretation. Citing the “preexistent divinity” of Christ, a theological concept I described in “Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane,” Christ urged the ancient world, through the person of Noah, to repent before being swept away in the floodwaters of God’s judgment.

Modern scholarship proposes another possibility. Some suggest that “the spirits in prison” were never human at all, but rather rebel angels, “the Watchers” who corrupted the world of men before the Flood. This accords with the frequent use of “spirits” for angels in the New Testament (see Matthew 12:45, Luke 10:20, and Hebrews 1:14).

Whether evil or merely unrepentant, this descent to spirits in the spiritual underworld is consistent with millennia of Jewish tradition and, for Christians, a declaration that Christ has reversed the fall of man.

His post-Resurrection descent “to the spirits in prison” may well be a proclamation of victory to the infernal spirits whose power had been crushed by his redeeming death. For those who have faced spiritual battle, this verse from Saint Peter reveals Christ as a cosmic refuge from evil.

Abraham meets Melchizedek, mosaic at Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice

In the Order of Melchizedek

The above is background for a fascinating theological connection Saint Peter draws between Christ’s post-Resurrection visit to the nether world and the story of Noah and the Great Flood. That in turn connects to the Priest-King Melchizedek, his blessing upon Abraham, and the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

In consulting extensive scholarly research on the Melchizedek story, I discovered that much of it was compiled in the Jerome Biblical Commentary by my late uncle, Father George W. MacRae, S.J., Rector of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem and later Dean of Harvard Divinity School.

Here’s the short version of the back story to the First Reading from Genesis on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. In the 21st Century before the Birth of the Messiah, in the Eighth Century before Moses encountered Yahweh in the Burning Bush, Abram encountered God as “El Shaddai,” a name which in Hebrew means “God on the Mountain” or “God Most High.”

At Shechem in the Book of Genesis (17:5) El Shaddai established a covenant with Abram promising him descendants and the land of Canaan. At this time God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. Later, a raiding party sent by the Mesopotamian overlords of Canaan was pursued by Abraham after they ravaged his encampment and took prisoners, including his nephew, Lot. Abraham prevailed in battle, rescued the prisoners, including Lot, and restored the bounty of what would one day become Israel.

On his return route, Abraham was met at Salem (later called Jeru-Salem) by its king, Melchizedek. The First Reading at Mass for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi tells this story. With echoes of the Eucharistic Feast, and in a dramatic variation from the Hebrew tradition of animal sacrifice…

“Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High [God on the Mountain], he blessed Abram with these words: ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.’”

— Genesis 14:18-20

This story preserved for Judaism the living memory of what would become its spiritual capital, Jeru-Salem. Besides being the King of Salem, Melchizedek is the first person in Sacred Scripture to be called a priest. His dominant position in the brief narrative in Genesis (14:18-20) reveals him as King of Kings, the first of the Canaanite kings. His name in Hebrew is “Malchi-Zedek” meaning “My King Is Righteous.” Hebrew tradition ascribes to him another title: Prince of Peace.

Being a patriarch, Melchizedek possessed both ruling authority as a king and religious authority as a priest. His identity as both is widely seen as a foreshadowing of the Kingship and Priestly ministry of Christ. The link between Melchizedek and the patriarchal priesthood is clear in both Jewish and Christian traditions, and is a centerpiece of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews.

But before I describe that, it is a fascinating revelation that ancient scholarship from both Jewish and Christian sources identifies Melchizedek as the Patriarch Shem, the first-born son of Noah and a righteous survivor of the Great Flood and the Ark. According to the genealogy of Noah in Genesis, Shem lived hundreds of years, well into the time of Abraham.

The genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke places his lineage from Shem through the line of David to the adoption of the Christ Child by Joseph. The Hebrew tradition that Melchizedek is actually Shem, son of Noah, is in the oldest translations of Genesis. It appears also in the earliest Patristic writings, in the Letters of St Jerome (Letter 73) and in the Commentary on Hebrews by St Thomas Aquinas.

In the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, Christ is linked to Melchizedek through His Royal Priesthood. For much of the Old Testament, the offices of king and priest stemmed from two different traditions. Aaron (brother of Moses) and his descendants were priests from the tribe of Levi. David and his descendants from the tribe of Judah comprised the line of kings. In only two Biblical figures are these roles combined: Melchizedek and Jesus.

The ministry of Melchizedek in Salem (the early Jerusalem) foreshadows the ministry of Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22) . The notion of divine inheritance is also present. God has raised his first born Son, exalting him even over the angels (Hebrews 7:26) as well as over the Mosaic Covenant (Hebrews 9:15). Melchizedek, as Shem, is the first born son who inherits the Covenant with Noah.

Lastly, and most importantly for this post, Jesus chooses the elements of his sacrifice in the Eucharistic Feast as bread and wine. In the Heavenly Sanctuary, Jesus continues to offer the Father the sacrifice of His Body and Blood with the sacramental appearance of bread and wine.

The origin of bread and wine as elements of transubstantiation is found in these verses in Genesis (14:18-20) and cited in the Roman Canon of the Mass, which at one time was the only Canon of the Mass, as “the offering of your high priest, Melchizedek.” The solemnity of Corpus Christi reaches across the millennia to the very foundations of the covenant between humanity and God. It extends across the eons between us and Father Abraham, and at its very center in time stands Christ the King and High Priest.

“Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Your dearly Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and the sins of the whole world.”

— From the Divine Mercy Chaplet of Saint Maria Faustina

Judas Iscariot: Who Prays for the Soul of a Betrayer?

Judas Iscariot: The most reviled name in all of Sacred Scripture is judged only by his act of betrayal, but without him among the Apostles is there any Gospel at all?

False witness and betrayal are two of the most heinous themes in all of world literature, and Sacred Scripture is no exception. Literature is filled with it because so are we. Not many of us get to live our lives without ever experiencing the false witness of an enemy or the betrayal of a friend.

Recently, I was confronted by the death of someone whom I once thought of as a friend, someone who once betrayed me with a self-serving story of false witness for nothing more redemptive than thirty pieces of silver. It’s an account that will be taken up soon by some other writer for I am not objective enough to bring justice, let alone mercy, to that story.

But for now, there is one aspect of it that I must write about at this of all times. As I was preparing to offer Mass late on a Sunday night, the thought came that I should offer it for this betrayer, this liar, this thief. Every part of my psyche and spirit rebelled against that thought, but in the end, I did what I had been beckoned to do.

It was difficult. It was very difficult. And it cost me even more of myself than that person had already taken. It cost me the perversely comforting experience of eternal resentment. I have not forgiven this false accuser. That is a grace I have not yet discovered. Nor could I so easily set aside the depth of his betrayal.

In offering the Mass, I just asked God not to see this story only as I do. I asked Him not to forever let this soul slip from His grasp, for perhaps there were influences at work that I do not know. have always suspected so.

The obituary said he died “peacefully” just two weeks before his 49th birthday. It said nothing about the cause of death nor anything about a Mass. There was a generic “celebration of his life.” False witness does not leave much to celebrate. Faith, too, had been betrayed for money.

I am still angry with this person even in death, but I take no consolation that his presence in this world has passed. My anger will have to be comfort enough because at some point I realized that my Mass was likely the only one in the world that had been sacrificed for this soul with any legitimate hope for salvation.

That’s the problem with false witness. Its purveyors tell themselves they have no need for salvation. I do not know whether he is any better off for this Mass having been offered, but I do know that I am.

Ever Ancient, Ever New

The experience also focused my attention on history’s most notorious agent of false witness and betrayal, Judas Iscariot. Who has ever prayed for the soul of a betrayer? Not I — at least, not yet — but I also just weeks ago thought it impossible that I would pray for the soul of my accuser.

I cannot get Judas off my mind this week. And as with most Biblical narratives, once I took a hard look, I found a story on its surface and a far greater one in its depths. In those depths is an account of the meaning of the Cross that I found to be staggering today. It changes the way I today see the Cross and the role of Judas in bringing it about. It strikes me that there is not a single place in the narrative of salvation history that does not reflect chaos.

Understanding the Sacrifice of Calvary requires a journey all the way back to the time of Abraham, some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah. God had earlier made a covenant with Abraham, a promise to make of his descendants a great nation.

The story of the birth of his son, Isaac, foreshadows that of John the Baptist who in turn foreshadows Jesus. Abraham and Sarah, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, were too old to bear a child, and yet they did. And not just any child. Isaac was the evidence and hope of God’s covenant with Abraham. “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven.”

Then, in Genesis 22, God called Abraham to do the unthinkable: to sacrifice his only son, the one person who was to fulfill God’s covenant. The scene unfolds on Mount Moriah, a place later described in the Book of Chronicles (2 Ch 3:1) as the very site of the future Jerusalem Temple. In obedience, Abraham placed the wood for the sacrifice upon the back of his son, Isaac, who must carry the wood to the hilltop (Gen 22:6).

On that Via Dolorosa, the child Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham’s answer “God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” Notice the subtle play on words. There is no punctuation in the original Hebrew of the text. The thought process does not convey, “God Himself will provide the lamb…. but rather, “God will provide Himself, the lamb for sacrifice.”

An Angel of the Lord ultimately stayed Abraham’s hand, and then pointed out a ram in the thicket to complete the sacrifice. In his fascinating book, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (Image Books 1999) author Scott Hahn provides a reflection on the Genesis account that I had long linked to the Cross:

“Christians would later look upon the story of Abraham and Isaac as a profound allegory for the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.” (p. 18)

The similarities in the two accounts, says Scott Hahn, are astonishing. The first line of the New Testament – Matthew 1:1 — identifies “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…” Jesus, like Isaac, was a faithful father’s only son. Isaac, like Jesus, carried “the wood” for his own sacrifice upon Mount Moriah. In fact, Calvary, the place of the Crucifixion of Christ, is a hillock in the Moriah range.

This places three pivotal Scriptural accounts — each separated by about 1,000 years — in the same place: The site where Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, the site of the Jerusalem Temple of Sacrifice, and the site of the Crucifixion of Christ.

In Hebrew, that place is called “Golgotha,” meaning “the place of the skull.” Its origin is uncertain, but there is an ancient Hebrew folklore that the skull of Adam was discovered there. Before the Romans arrived in Palestine, it was a place used for public executions, primarily for stoning. The word “Calvary” is from the Latin “calvaria” meaning “skull.” It was translated into Latin from the Greek, “kranion,” which in turn was a translation of the Hebrew, “Golgotha.”

No angel would stay the Hand of God. God provided Himself the Lamb for the sacrifice. This interplay between these Biblical accounts separated by 2,000 years is the source for our plea in the Mass, “Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”

At the Hour of Darkness

The four Gospel accounts in the Canon of Scripture all came into written form after the apostolic witnesses experienced the Resurrection of Jesus. So everything they set out to preserve for the future was seen in that light. The outcome of the story is triumphantly clear in the minds of the New Testament authors. Had the Gospel ended at the Cross, the accounts would be very different.

Judas Iscariot, therefore, is identified early in each Gospel account when he is first summoned by Jesus to the ranks of the Apostles as “the one who would betray him.” John (6:71) adds the Greek term, “diabolos” (6:70), to identify Judas. It is translated “of the devil,” but its connotation is also that of a thief, an informer, a liar, and a betrayer, one drawn into evil by the lure of money.

These adjectives are not presented only to explain the character of Judas, but also to explain that greed left Judas open to Satan. Each Gospel account is clear that Jesus chose him among the Twelve, and in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus presents a constant awareness of the coming betrayal of Judas — seemingly as a necessary part of the story.

During Holy Week this year, we hear the full account of the Passion Narrative from Mark (on Palm Sunday) and John (on Good Friday). But for this post I want to focus on the version from Luke. The Gospel of Luke is unique in Scripture. It is the only Scriptural account written by a non-Jewish author.

Luke’s Gospel is the only account with a sequel, Acts of the Apostles, which was also written by Luke. And it is the only Gospel account to include the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, all of which figure into this story set in motion by the betrayal of Judas.

Luke, though a Gentile and a physician, was also a scholar. He makes few direct references to Old Testament texts, but his Gospel is filled with echoes and allusions to Old Testament themes. Greek Christians may not have readily understood this, but he also wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians in the Diaspora who would have found in Luke a rich and valuable affirmation of salvation history in their life of faith.

What is most clear to me in Luke’s treatment of Judas is that the story is written with a theme that I readily identify with spiritual warfare. The Passion Narrative has a thread that begins with a story I have written before. In “A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ,” I wrote about the meaning of Satan’s temptation of Christ in the desert. It ends in Luke’s Gospel:

“When the devil had ended every temptation [of Christ], he departed from him until an opportune time.”

— Luke 4:13

Luke constructs his account of the Judas story with threads throughout his Gospel. He shows that the power of Satan, which is frustrated by Jesus in the account of his 40-day temptation in the desert “until an opportune time,” finds its opportunity, not in Jesus, but in Judas whose act of betrayal triggers “the hour of darkness” and the Passion of the Christ:

“Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, who was a member of the Twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests….”

— Luke 22:3

The origin and meaning of “Iscariot” is uncertain. It is not known whether it is a name or a title associated with Judas. In Hebrew, it means “man of Keriot”, a small town marking the border of the territory of the Tribe of Judah (see Joshua 15:21.25), to which both Judas and Jesus belonged. Betrayal is all the more bitter when the betrayer is closely associated. The Greek Iskariotes has the cognate sicarias, meaning “assassin,” a name ascribed to a band of outlaws in New Testament times.

It is clear in Luke’s presentation that this act of Judas is equated with original sin, the sin of Adam and Eve lured by the serpent. At the Last Supper, after the Institution of the Eucharist, Jesus said:

“But behold the hand of him who is to betray me is with me at this table, for the Son of Man goes as it has been determined.”

— Luke 22:21

Jesus added, “But woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.” That “woe” is symbolized later in the way the life of Judas ends as described below. The phrase, “as it has been determined,” however, implies that the betrayal was seen not only in its own light but also as a necessary part of God’s plan.

Later, with Judas absent, Jesus warned his disciples at the Mount of Olives, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” They did anyway. After the arrest of Jesus at Gethsemane, they scattered. Peter, leader of the Twelve, denied three times that he even knew him. Then the cock crowed (Luke 22:61) just as Jesus predicted. This is often depicted as a literal rooster crowing, but the bugle ending the third-night watch for Roman legions at 3:00 AM was also called the “cockcrow.”

At Gethsemane, Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, perverting a sign of friendship and affection into one of betrayal and false witness. This is what begins the Passion Narrative and the completion of Salvation History. Jesus tells Judas and the servants of the chief priest:

“When I was with you day after day in the Temple you did not lay a hand on me, but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

— Luke 22:53

Later, in the Acts of the Apostles (26:18) Luke identifies the power of darkness as being in opposition to the power of light, an allusion to spiritual warfare. For Luke’s Gospel, it is our ignorance of spiritual warfare that leaves us most vulnerable.

Following immediately after the betrayal of Judas, one of the disciples present draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the servant of the High Priest. In the Gospel of John, the disciple is identified as Peter. This account is very significant and symbolic of the spiritual bankruptcy that Judas set in motion.

In the well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel, a priest came upon the broken body of an injured man left beaten by robbers on the side of the road. Jesus says in the Parable that the priest just passed by in silence, but this was readily understandable to the Pharisee to whom the parable is told.

The Pharisee, an expert in the Old Covenant law of Moses, understood that the Book of Leviticus forbade a priest who is defiled by the dead body of an alien from offering sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple. The severed ear of the High Priest’s servant at Gethsemane refers back to the same precept:

“So no one who has a blemish shall draw near [to the Sanctuary], no one who is blind or lame or has a mutilated face…”

— Leviticus 22:18

The symbolism here is that the spiritual bankruptcy of the High Priest, who is not present at the arrest, is represented by his servant. In Luke’s Gospel, and in Luke alone, Jesus heals the ear. It is the sole miracle story in the Passion Narrative of any of the four Gospels and represents that Jesus wields the power of God even over the High Priest and Temple sacrifice.

When the role of Judas Iscariot is complete, he faces a bizarre end in Luke. The Gospel of Matthew (26:56) has Judas despairing and returning his 30 pieces of silver to the Temple. Luke, in Acts of the Apostles (1:16-20) explains that the actions of Judas were “so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled.” But in Luke, Judas meets an even more bitter end, bursting open and falling headlong as “all his bowels gushed out.” The field where this happened then became known as the Field of Blood, and the money that purchased it, “blood money.”

The point of the story of Judas in the Gospel of Luke is that discipleship engages us in spiritual warfare, and spiritual blindness leaves us vulnerable to our own devices, as it did Judas. This life “is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The plot against Jesus was Satan’s, and Judas was but its pawn.

So who prays for the souls of our betrayers? I did, and it was difficult. It was very difficult. But I can see today why Jesus called us to pray for those who persecute us. It is not only for their sake but for ours.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. For further reading, the Easter Season comes alive in these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

• Casting the First Stone: What Jesus Wrote in the Sand

• The Chief Priests Answered, “We Have No King but Caesar”

• Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

• Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah