Who can fathom the love of God for men? He created a perfect world for man’s first parents, Adam and Eve, endowed them with wisdom of immensely high order and freedom from suffering and death. But, they still committed the “pride of life” and wanted to be gods.
Through the ages, God desired to have a personal union and friendship with men despite their sinfulness.
And so, He, likewise, sent prophets to remind men how to avoid sin and follow God’s commandments. Then God wanted to reveal himself even more to man. This was done through Jesus Christ, God’s son who will teach man who God really is.
The new covenant
God named a grandson of Abraham, Jacob, which means one who prevails with God.
God, likewise, appointed David to rule all of Israel. The kingdom were Israel in the North and Judah in the South, united during the time of King David and briefly during the reign of his son, King Solomon. Then the tribes of Israel separated from the kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.
God promised to make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31), it will be unlike the covenant when God freed them from bondage of Egypt.
The covenant will not be written in stone tablets but “upon their hearts. No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the Lord, all from least to greatest, shall know Me” (Jeremiah 31, 33-34).
In God’s time, Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity, became man, died on a cross for the expiation of sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
Pope Clement VI, in 1343 “Jubilee Bull Unigenitus Dei Filius,” wrote that Christ “shed His blood copiously as if it were floods, even though one little drop of His blood can suffice to redeem the whole human race.”
Son of God became man
Saint Paul said the first man Adam was “living soul,” and Jesus the last Adam “a life-giving spirit.” The first Adam was made by the last Adam, and “stamped His image on the first Adam when He created him.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), quoting Saint Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 117, states: “That is why Jesus took on Himself the role and name of the first Adam in order that He might not lose, what He had made in His own image.”
Adam of the Garden of Eden had a beginning, “the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first as He himself says: I am the first and the last.”
In Indiculus, Pope Innocent said that Adam our first parent “betrayed by his freedom forever, would have remained weighed down by his fall had not later the advent of Christ raised him up by His grace.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas said: “No mere man could have ever made a complete satisfaction for the whole human race. Only God could pay the debt, but certainly God did not owe it. Hence, it was right that the payer of the debt be both God and man.”
Eucharistic covenant
God becoming man, except in sin, crucified and rising again on the third day and ascending to heaven is the climax of salvation history.
Jesus’ sacrifice, which extends for all time in the world is renewed in every Mass. The Mass ensures that the covenant established by God with His own blood is “made present by the liturgical action” (CCC 1409)—the Eucharistic celebration “of Christ Himself the eternal high priest of the New Covenant acting through the ministry of the priest” (CCC 1410).
This covenant ensures that all sins are forgiven if men truly and humbly repent and confess the sins to a covenant priest of God.
During the Last Supper, Jesus took the cup, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which will be shed for you” (Luke 22:20).
Mother Church, however, teaches that this “salvific will of God” necessitates cooperation of man—repentance for his sins and a continuous collaboration with God’s divine mercy to follow His commandments. And man, endowed with thinking and willingness, can respond to God’s invitation to redemptive grace.
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.