Paragraph 783 of the Catechism says that Jesus is established as our “prophet, priest and king”. Interestingly, the message of a prophet is always a version of, “You know, if you keep on the way you’re going, you will get to where you’re heading”, with the prophetic implication, that where you’re heading is a deceitfully devilish destination.
It’s in the nature of being a prophet to be the one who is rejected. Both the message and the messenger are marginalized. For Jesus “there was no room in the inn”. “He came to his own and his own received him not”. He was “the stone that the builders rejected.” So, when it’s our turn to have the prophetic word spoken into our individual lives, because of the hardness of our hearts, our default response is to reject it. Very few of us can respond with, “be it be done unto me according to Thy word”, but when our rejection is sown into the soil of grace, it can germinate and sprout into our life as a seedling of repentance. The penitent thief on the cross discovered that Jesus was indeed the Way, the portal that could transport him back to his original future, Paradise.
In the book of Hebrews, it says that Jesus is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. He was the Priest King of ancient Salem; whose place name means peace or shalom. It is the city that became Jerusalem. Melchizedek’s priestly sacrifice was one of bread and wine, the same sacrificial motif that Jesus applied literally to himself at the last supper. On Calvary, Jesus was both our High Priest and the substance of the Sacrifice. At each celebration of the Mass we have the opportunity to place our repentant heart on the altar and have access to the Eucharistic portal.
As Jesus embodies the priestly motif in the sacrifice of the bread and wine, he also embodies the kingdom motif as the one who gathers God’s people into God’s Kingdom, under God’s rule. As Christians we have been redeemed by Jesus’ sacrifice, and because of that we are now his adopted brothers and sisters, and as such we are the subjects of that kingdom that is without end. But our future also encompasses the now. We are laborers in the royal vineyard, and as part of our job description, we too are currently involved in His Father’s business.
Using a storyline from a popular movie as a metaphor: This Pentecost season it may be a good time to pray that the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit overshadow us and infuse our flux capacitor of faith up to the required 3.16 gigawatts, so that each of us can accelerate to 88 miles per hour and literally get Back To Our (Spiritual) Future.
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