Day Seventeen: Covenant, Part Three

                They seem to Love it when I explain the morbid details of a Covenant sacrifice! I start by reminding my students that the belief was (and is) that in order for a “new” family to be made, or to welcome someone new into a family, God was needed. Naturally, we have a family that God intended for us by virtue of, well, the rules of nature. But if we were to adopt or marry into a new “family”, God was needed to facilitate that “miracle”. So, the first question is, “How do we get God’s attention?” Some of the scholarship tells us that when an animal was sacrificed and then roasted, the smoke and the scent from the roasting animal was intended to attract and entice God. The more pure the sacrifice, the more enticing the aroma. Of course, this is not the reality of what is happening, but it is a nice detail to pass on to my students.

Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland. In the sacrifice of Jesus at the Cross, the perfection and purity of Jesus' sacrifice forms a New Covenant that invites, not only the people at the foot of the Cross, but all humans for all eternity into a relationship with God.

                If God is enticed to the celebration, He could then create family in a way that humans cannot. How did this happen? How did He know who was to be joined with whom? Well, after the animal had been killed on the altar, the animal’s blood was gathered and, in the case of a couple being married, the bride and groom to be would be placed on opposite ends of said altar. The altar, already covered in blood, would be like a bridge between the two people. Excess blood would be sprinkled on the bride and groom to signify to God the ones being joined in family. Blood, I tell my students, is central to this action because blood equals life and life equals God. They were now, quite literally, joined over the altar by blood. We don’t do this anymore (well, most Christians don’t), but we do have other signs that help us realize the presence of God in Matrimony, in particular, but we study that later on.

                At the end of this part of the lesson, I just want my students to understand that when God makes a covenant with us, He is Truly present. As we explore this idea more, we discuss how in a covenant, God is really asking us to be His family. He is not simply making a family between people; He is making a family between us and Him.