Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them. We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:7-16)

That he might sanctify the people with his own blood, Jesus suffered without the gate.

 

You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. 

 

 

Hebrews has Christ identifying with the bodies of the animals that were burned outside the camp. To be placed outside the camp or outside the gates in such a community-oriented society meant more than a shunning or an exclusion. It was a denial of existence itself the ultimate act of Jesus' being made a nonperson. Yet it was in accepting this ultimate degradation that the fullness of redemption could be achieved…. [T]the cross becomes the new dwelling place of God, juxtaposed against the pretensions of the human city, which tries to create its own reality on its own terms. But what counts for strong and weak, for acceptable and rejected, in that city is not held so by God. Hebrews has the pilgrimage procession of Christians going out of that humanly defined city and gathering around the cross. "Through him let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips which acknowledge his name" (13:15). This helps bring some clarity to those hopeless situations in which we can find ourselves. To hope for salvation only within the terms of our own resources is to fool ourselves. Salvation calls for pilgrimage, acknowledging that the current situation cannot be the frame of reference. Rather, we must go out of that city and seek a crucified Christ outside the gates. Seen in this fashion, that new and everlasting covenant inaugurated in the heavenly liturgy is not simply a grand spectacle representing the culmination of the current age. It is sharply critical of the presence of sin in the world today, of injustices left unrighted. That a new covenant had to be inaugurated says something about the state of our participation in the previous covenant. That heavenly liturgy cannot be understood from the sanctuaries of our temples, but only from the perspective of being outside the gate, standing at the foot of Jesus' cross. It is only from that vantage point that we can come to understand what that heavenly liturgy is trying to say. A spirituality of the one who comes in water and in blood is a spirituality that offers hospitality and a renewed life, and it also brings with it the prospect of witnessing even unto blood. It offers a cup of blessing and a cup of suffering. It is a spirituality that calls for solidarity with the poor and those who suffer, as close to concrete existence as the need for water and as essential to life as the flow of blood. To be a disciple of the one who has come in water and in blood is to attend to the physical and the immediate even as we hope for the future and struggle for a better world. It is to know the numbing ache of chronic pain and to experience the exuberant rush of the dawning of our expectations. It seeks the healing of a fractured world and the rebirth of grace.  

Now may the God of peace 

Who brought up from the dead our Yeshua 

That great shepherd of the sheep

Make you complete 

In all you do, as you do His will

And may you always please

The one who finds His pleasure in you

Through the blood of His own Son. 

To Him be glory, to Him be glory, 

Forever and ever, 

Amen

 

 

 

 

And the Lord said, “This is the way 

you shall bless the children of Israel”

Hebrew: The Lord bless you and keep you

Hebrew: The Lord make His face shine upon you 

And be gracious unto you

Hebrew: The Lord lift up His countenance on you 

And give you peace

 

 

And may you always please 

The one who finds such pleasure in you 

Through the blood of His own Son 

To Him be glory to You be glory, 

Forever and ever, 

Amen

 

 

 

O God,

your mercies are beyond measure

and infinite the store of your goodness.

Increase the faith of this people consecrated to you,

that with due understanding we may grasp

how great is the love that created us,

how precious the blood that redeemed us,

and how holy the Spirit who gives us new life.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever. Amen. (Votive Mass The Mercy of God)