I prefer not to be covered by the Blood of Christ, like God’s priests in the Temple, and the people they sprinkled with the blood of sacrificed lambs. God called them to do this for atonement, for the purpose of covering their sins so they could be the people of a sinless Father.
But what is covered is still there, and their sins were merely hidden under sacrificial blood.
No, I prefer the wonderful and miraculous effect on my sinfulness that the Blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, whose blood is not a cover or a bath, but real drink which enters my body and fills my soul. And there, in the deepest part of me, my sins are not hidden but taken away by the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
When God’s people had their sins covered by the blood of animals they could take their place at His table again, like guests dressed up for a wedding feast. The price they paid was to endure the horror, discomfort, and smell of a dead thing which stood in for the horror, discomfort, and smell of their own death in sin. All they did was stand for the priests to sprinkle them. For the priests it was for every day of their lives, to have their own sins covered enough to enable them to serve the people the same atonement.
Jesus asks me to do more than stand and receive.
He asks me to confess, to repent, and to sin no more. With as clear a conscience as I can offer him, having done these things, I can sit at his table, dressed for the feast and, under my covering, clean. And should I fall from this state, he lets me do it again, so long as my desire to conquer sin with the help of his grace is honest and true. For his flesh is real bread, and his blood is real drink.
He will not cover me so that I may continue to wallow in the sins that are hidden. He will expect me to bring them into the light as an offering of my love. Then he will have mercy and take them away. One by each one of us, he will take away the sins of the world.
I prefer the truth he gives that will set me free through the wonderful and miraculous sacrament of the Catholic Church.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation: Rising Again to New Life
