Hebrews 7:25Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

How can He intercede, in whose authority all judgment lies (Jn 3:19)? How can He intercede, who sends angels to cast some into the furnace and save others (Mt 8:8)?

“Therefore,” he says, “He is able always to save.” He saves because He does not die, because He “always lives” and has no successor. If He has no successor, He can intercede for all.

The high priests here, however glorious they might be, existed only for the time during which they lived, Samuel and all like him, for example. After that they no longer were, because they died.

He is not such, but saves “always.” What does “always” mean? The Apostle suggests a certain great mystery. He saves, he says, not only here, but also there, “those who come to God through Him.”

How does He save? “Since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Do you see how much he has said of Christ humbly according to His human nature?

He did not intercede once and receive the request, he says, but always, whenever intercession for them is needed. This is what “always” means.

“Always” means not only in the present time, but also there, in the life to come. Does He therefore need to pray without ceasing? Is this right?

Even righteous men often received everything by one petition. How then will He pray without ceasing? And why does He sit together with the Father?

Do you see that what is said here of Him is humble, according to His condescension? The meaning is this: fear nothing, and do not say, “Yes, He loves us and has boldness before the Father, but He cannot live forever.” He always lives.

“Since He always lives to make intercession for them.” This is said humbly of Christ according to the flesh. For truly He is High Priest according to the flesh.

Since He is High Priest, it is said that He makes intercession. How does He who raises the dead and gives life, as the Father does, intercede, when He Himself must save?

How does He intercede, in whose authority is all judgment, and who sends angels to cast some into the furnace and save others? Certainly Paul said “to intercede” according to His humanity.

Condescending to his hearers, Paul says: Do not fear and do not say, “Yes, He loves us and has boldness before the Father, but He cannot always perform the high-priestly work for us.”

When I speak of His humanity, I do not separate it from His Divinity. For both have one hypostasis. Rather, I give the hearers to understand what is proper concerning each nature.

Moreover, the very fact that the Son sits with the Father in the flesh is intercession for us. It is as though the flesh entreats the Father for us.

Of course, it was assumed for this very reason, namely, for our salvation.

Some understood the phrase “to intercede for us” to mean that Jesus Christ has the body upon Himself and has not laid it aside, as the Manichaeans vainly say.

This very thing is His intercession and advocacy before the Father. For looking upon this, the Father remembers that love for mankind for whose sake His Son took a body, and He inclines toward compassion and mercy.

Thus we also “have Jesus as Advocate” (1 Jn 2:1). This does not mean that He is humbled before the Father on our behalf and falls down in servile fashion.

Let such a truly servile thought, unworthy of the Spirit, be far from us. It is not proper for the Father to require this, nor for the Son to endure it.

Nor is it just to think this way about God. Rather, having suffered for us as man, He persuades us by this to endurance as Word and Counselor.

This is what I understand by the name intercession, παράκλησις.

Is the daily offering in sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood, in the Mystery of the Eucharist and in many Christian churches, consistent with the Apostle’s teaching on the unity of Christ’s sacrifice?

Does Christ’s sacrifice remain one, despite the repeated and universal celebration of the Eucharist? We answer: yes, it remains one.

The unity, or identity, of Christ’s sacrifice is seen from the following.

1. On Golgotha and in the often-celebrated Eucharist, one and the same Thing Offered, or Person Offered, remains.

In His discourse on communion, the Lord said: “The bread which I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51).

From this it is clear that in the Eucharist, under the form of bread, the very Flesh of Christ is broken and offered in sacrifice.

It is the same Flesh that was given up for the life of the world to the sufferings and death of Golgotha.

One thing is not offered on the altar’s holy table, while another was once offered on Golgotha. Here and there, there is one offering.

The Apostle Paul says that “we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). The Bread of the Eucharist always and everywhere remains one.

For its substance is the one and same unchanging Flesh of Christ.

Were it not for this invisible and everywhere one substance, the Apostle would not have called the Bread of the Eucharist one.

For bread, as the work of human hands, will not be tomorrow what it is today, nor in one church what it is in another (1 Cor 11:25-27).

Although the Eucharistic service is celebrated by various persons, the One Who offers the sacrifice of the Body and Blood remains the one Christ. Priests are only His visible instruments.

That Christ, Who gave His Flesh over to suffering and death, Himself gives it in the Eucharist for the faithful to eat, is seen from the same discourse on communion.

There the Lord says that He Himself, and no other, will give the bread of life, which is His Flesh (Jn 6:51 and others).

The Jews understood His words in no other way when they said, “How can He give us His flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52).

But if Christ gives us His Flesh in the Eucharist to eat, then He also offers it at that time as a saving sacrifice.

For we know that the giving of the Body and Blood in this Mystery has the meaning of a sacrifice.

Therefore the Lord said: “This is My Body, given for you, broken for you. This cup is the New Testament in My Blood, which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:24).

He did not say, “given to you” or “broken to you,” as though He wished only to show for whom the Body is broken and given.

He said, “for you,” wishing to show for whom the Body is offered in sacrifice.

Therefore in the Eucharist, the One Who Gives, Breaks, and Pours Out, even by the hands of priests, is at the same time the One Who offers sacrifice.

And who among men, even if sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, would dare to dispose of the Flesh and Blood of Christ?

He would not dare unless the very One Offered presided over the sacrifice.

Therefore in the Eucharist, always and everywhere, there is one Offerer: the King of kings, “Who comes to be slain” as sacrifice “and to be given as food to the faithful,” in the words of the Church hymn.

The Stundists will say to us: why do you present Christ as repeatedly offering His Body and His Blood, when the Apostle clearly teaches that Christ sanctified us by the one offering of His Body (Heb 10:10, 14)?

But we too acknowledge that Christ’s offering of His Body was once for all. The Body and Blood of Christ do not repeatedly become a sacrifice for us.

Yet, having been offered once, they did not afterwards lose the sacrificial significance that became theirs in the days of the Son of God’s saving self-emptying for us.

Always and everywhere they are a sacrifice for us.

The Blood of the covenant did not dry up on Golgotha, nor is it silent. It speaks and cries out, like the blood of Abel.

Only it speaks better. It cries out not for vengeance on the guilty, but for their forgiveness and mercy (Heb 12:24).

Where, then, is this interceding Blood on earth? Nowhere but in the Church, in the Chalice where the Lord Himself appointed it to be.

He said: “This cup is the New Testament in My Blood,” and, “This is My Blood of the New Testament” (Lk 22:20; Mt 26:28).

Thus the Body and Blood of Christ were offered in sacrifice once for all. But their sacrificial, or intercessory, significance was joined to them forever.

It remains unchangeably with Christ’s humanity in every condition. This is so whether it sits at the right hand of the Father on the throne of glory.

It is so whether it is present under the forms of bread and wine on the holy table of the church. It is so whether it is broken or given to the faithful.

In the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ are a sacrifice for us, not by virtue of a new sacrifice of them, but by virtue of the change of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood.

The following circumstance can clarify the thought about the constant intercessory, or sacrificial, significance of Christ’s Body and Blood.

When the Lord instituted the Eucharist, He designated His Body as sacrificial not only once, and not only in one condition of that Body.

He said first, “broken for you” (1 Cor 11:24), and then, “given for you” (Lk 22:19).

The expression “for you,” which indicates the intercessory, or sacrificial, significance of the Body, belongs to it both when it is broken and when it is given.

Therefore it belongs to it constantly and can never be taken from it.

The same thought is also suggested by this. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial animal was considered and called a sacrifice and a holy thing not only at the moment of sacrifice.

It was so called also after the sacrifice, when the remains of the sacrifice were given to the priests or eaten (Lev 2:3, 10; 6:18, 26, 30; 7:6, 16; 10:17, and many others).

The meat of pagan sacrifices is also called idol-sacrifice when it is set upon the table (1 Cor 10:28).

Therefore Christ’s Body is a sacrifice wherever it may be, but especially in the Eucharist, where it is offered to us for eating.

Thus the Body and Blood of Christ appear in the Eucharist as sacrifice through their very presence there, and not because they are offered there anew in sacrifice.

They could not and never can lose the sacrificial quality they received in the days of the Son of God’s self-emptying.

Christ’s sacrifice is one in the object of the offering, for the One Offered is one. It is one in the Person Who performs the offering, for the Offerer is one.

It is also one in the action of the sacrifice, as a once-for-all offering that continues in its effects.