Covenants of Hope and Love:
Memorial of St. Agnes
(Heb 6:10-20; Ps 111; Mk 2:23-28)
***************************************
“God is ever mindful of his covenant.”
That sentence from today’s psalm, along with the first reading and gospel not as connected as usual, combine to invite us to be a people in a covenant relationship with God filled with hope and centered on the law of love.
God has from the very beginning desired to have an intimate covenant relationship with God’s people. The first covenant was with a couple, Adam and Eve. To them God promised that a woman would bear a child who would overcome the snake. The next covenant was with a family – Noah was ordered to take his whole family into the ark as the world was cleansed. Then God made a covenant with a tribe – ordering Abraham to take his whole tribe and set out on a journey of faith, not even knowing where he was going to, which is why we call him our father in faith. The first reading describes that covenant as a promise to Abraham guaranteed by an oath.
After that, God made a covenant with a nation – the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai through Moses and the 10 commandments. They were to be icons of God here on earth, drawing all the other nations to God. That, we know, they always failed to do, consistently falling for the false gods of possessions, prestige and power.
Then God made a different covenant with David. God swore to him that God would be faithful to him no matter what he did. And David did fall short, acting out of lust, then arranging a murder to cover up his adultery. However, when confronted by the prophet Nathan, David admitted his guilt, repented, and experienced God’s unconditional love through forgiveness of his sins. That transformed David into the only true king Israel ever had.
That is why Jesus is always referred to as Son of David, of the house and line of David, born in the city of David. He is never referred to as Son of Moses, Elijah or any other prophet. And in today’s gospel, Jesus speaks about a time when David broke the priestly temple rules, just as Jesus would often break the Sabbath to heal.
David did what he did because he knew he was truly loved by God and had been given kingly energy by God. Entering the temple and eating the Bread of Presence was a prophetic gesture demonstrating that he was acting in the name of God, who had made him king. He was proclaiming if God was there at that moment, that is what God would have done – so secure was he in the Father’s love. In that way, David is a prefiguring of Jesus, the true king of Israel, and the final covenant of God’s love for us through the sacrificial love of Jesus for us on the cross.
The first reading mentions this covenant is a source of hope, a steadfast anchor to the soul. Pierre Olivier Trembley OMI, recently named a bishop, states the youth he encountered in his ministry at a university lack hope. They lack hope because they don’t have an infinite horizon, a mega-narrative a bigger picture provided by faith into which they can place the events of their so often confused lives. All they are left with is today, and if something negative happens, like a breakup of a relationship, they despair and some even take their own lives.
Something as simple as the old catechism question, “Why did God make us?” and its answer, “To know, love and serve God in this life, and to be eternally happy with him in the next” provides us with that infinite horizon. It is like the woman who asked, in her will, to be buried with a fork in her hand because her mother always told her, “Keep your fork – the best is yet to come.” When we know the best is yet to come, that our final home is not in this life, we can put up with failure, disappointments and frustration, because we are living in hope undergirded with faith.
In the gospel, we see tension between the Pharisees and Jesus centered around keeping the Sabbath law. They were scandalized at the casual attitude taken by Jesus and his disciples towards not working on the Sabbath.
The Word Among Us offers some insightful thoughts on this matter. Like rules for a young child, the sabbath guidelines that Jesus talks about in today’s gospel were meant to help God’s people make a habit of choosing God’s ways. They were meant to instill the practice of prayer and rest into the rhythm of life. Obeying the law wasn’t the goal. Staying close to God was the goal – loving God and giving God time and space in their lives. This is just as true for us as it was for ancient Israel. God did not create us to slavishly observe sabbath law. He created the Sabbath to help us grow into mature believers who live to worship God and follow God’s law of love.
We are given someone to emulate today, who at a very young age, grasped this mystery of radical discipleship and redemptive suffering. The feast of St. Agnes has been celebrated on this day since the 4th century. Little is known about her. She was likely born in the early years of the 4th century and was martyred at the age of 12 during a Roman persecution. She is a symbol of virginal innocence and has been pictured with a lamb as a symbol of this innocence since the Middle Ages. She can also teach us a lot about the values of purity and chastity, so overshadowed by unbridled lust and sexuality in our present-day society.
One of the 6th century legends is that Agnes was a beautiful girl with many rivals for marriage. When she rejected the proposals, she was denounced to the governor as a Christian and sent to a house of prostitution. Those who came to visit her were struck with awe. One man apparently lost his sight while looking at her but later regained it through her prayers. She was eventually brought before a judge, condemned and executed. She stands as a patron saint for many people, including girls, gardeners and engaged couples.
Here is what the Office of Readings writes about her: “A new kind of martyrdom! Too young to be punished, yet old enough for a martyr’s crown; unfitted for the contest, yet effortless in victory, she shows herself a master in valour despite the handicap of youth. As a bride she would not be hastening to join a husband with the same joy she shows as a virgin on her way to punishment, crowned not with flowers but with holiness of life, adorned not with braided hair but with Christ himself. What menaces there were from the executioner, to frighten her; what promises made, to win her over; what influential people desired her in marriage! She answered: ‘To hope that any other will please me does wrong to my Spouse. I will be his who first chose me for himself. Executioner, why do you delay? If eyes that I do not want can desire this body, then let it perish.’ She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck.” Truly, she was that new wineskin of obedience to Christ and now fully enjoys the new wine of eternal salvation.
The Eucharist is a share in that covenant love of Jesus, and truly an act of praise to our God for God’s love made known to us by his Son.
May our celebration empower us to develop an even deeper covenant relationship with Jesus and empower us to express that covenant through lives of hope and loving service.
