January 23, 2019
(St. Vincent, Deacon and Martyr)
Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, met Abraham as he returned from his defeat of the kings and blessed him. And Abraham apportioned to him a tenth of everything. His name first means righteous king, and he was also “king of Salem,” that is, king of peace. Heb_7:1-3,15-17
Since we’ve entered this Church season of Ordinary time, the Gospel readings have been concentrating on examples of Jesus manifesting His divinity; proving to us that He truly IS God in the flesh.
Between His healing miracles, His exorcism of evil spirits and His power over nature, there should have been absolutely no question of the Messianic nature of Jesus. And yet the Jewish religious leaders were constantly testing Jesus to find a reason to silence Him.
You see, their God had become, for them, so distant, so powerful, so unlike man, that there was no way, in their minds, that He would ever walk among them in the flesh. So they refused to believe even what their own eyes and ears saw and heard. Until the only solution they could conceive for silencing Jesus was to put Him to death.
And yet, their own forefather, Abraham, as we heard in our first reading, was more than willing to offer a huge 10% of his battle spoils – to a totally unknown Priest and King, by the name of Melchizedek – solely because he was a Servant of God.
We often hear St. Paul refer to Melchizedek in his letters as a prefiguring of Jesus. And the reason he did so, was because in the Old Testament Scriptures there was no reference as to where this Melchizedek came from, nor what ever happened to him – after his encounter with Abraham. In essence, Melchizedek was immortal, with no beginning and no end, just like Jesus.
And all of that, simply leaves us with hope.
Unlike the Pharisees, our minds are open to recognizing Jesus in our brothers and sisters. Our hearts, too, are open, like Abraham’s, to offer the very best of our resources, our talents, and even our lives to our immortal God. And our futures, even though we know that we’ll have to pass through that tunnel of death, our futures are filled with the certain hope of eternal life in union with our loved ones again, and especially with our Jesus, who walks along with us through it all.
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Whispers to the Wind 