OFFICE OF READINGS:

FIRST READING

From the letter to the Hebrews 10:1-18

We are sanctified through the offering of Christ

Since the law had only a shadow of the good things to come, and no real image of them, it was never able to perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices offered continually year after year. Were matters otherwise, the priests would have stopped offering them, for the worshipers, once cleansed, would have had no sin on their conscience. But through those sacrifices there came only a yearly recalling of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take sins away. Wherefore, on coming into the world, Jesus said:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you have prepared for me;
Holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in.
Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the book,
I have come to do your will, O God.’”

First he says,
“Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings,
you neither desired nor delighted in.”
(These are offered according to the prescriptions of the law.) Then he says,
“I have come to do your will.”

In other words, he takes away the first covenant to establish the second.
By this “will,” we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every other priest stands ministering day by day, and offering again and again those same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins and took his seat forever at the right hand of God; now he waits until his enemies are placed beneath his feet. By one offering he has forever perfected those who are being sanctified. The Holy Spirit attests this to us, for after saying,

“This is the covenant I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts
and I will write them on their minds,”
he also says,

“Their sins and their transgressions
I will remember no more.”
Once these have been forgiven, there is no further offering for sin.