Commentary on Ezekiel 37:21-28

About today’s First Reading, the St Joseph Weekday Missal says:

“The union of all tribes is a frequent element in messianic prophecy. God is to unite the nation in a new covenant in which there are five essential elements:

The prophet foresees a time when the two divided kingdoms of the Jews (Israel/Ephraim and Judah, the Northern and Southern kingdoms) will be united forever into one, and when all those living abroad who belong to Israel will come back. This will be a feature of the Messianic age.

The reading says:

I shall gather them together from everywhere and bring them home

This sentence is echoed in the Gospel when John says about the unwitting prophecy of the high priest Caiaphas:

Jesus was to die not for the nation only, but to gather together in unity the scattered children of God.

These will then will give up all their sinful ways and all forms of idolatry and abominations, with which they had been plagued for so many generations, and will be cleansed by God.

My servant David will be their prince for ever and there shall be one shepherd for them all.

The coming Messianic ruler is called David because he will be a descendant of David and will achieve for Israel what David had – except more fully. He is likened to a shepherd, who cares for his flock, echoing where Yahweh says he will be a “shepherd for his people” (Ezek 34). We recognise Jesus in this ‘Messianic David’, and later Jesus will also call himself the Good Shepherd, protecting his own and looking for those who are lost.

I shall make a covenant of peace with them, an eternal covenant… I shall set my sanctuary among them forever.

The phrase ‘eternal covenant’ occurs 16 times in the Old Testament, referring to that made with Noah, with Abraham, with David, and a ‘new covenant’ made in Jeremiah (32:40).

The covenant formula, a pledge of mutual commitment, is once again repeated:

I will be their God and they will be my people

It is through Jesus, through the covenant signed by his blood on the cross, that the New Covenant will be ratified and is still in force. With one big difference – it extends now, not to one people or race, but to the whole world:

The nations will know that I am Yahweh, the sanctifier of Israel, when my sanctuary is with them forever.

And that ‘sanctuary’ for us is the ongoing and visible presence of the Risen Lord, no longer identified with a building, but in his People, who are now his Body:

Surely you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you. (1 Cor 3:16)

Don’t you know that your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you? (1 Cor 6:19)

And the bread we break: when we eat it, we are sharing in the body of Christ. Because there is the one loaf of bread, all of us, though many, are one body, for we all share the same loaf. (1 Cor 10:16-17)

And indeed, as today’s Gospel ends, it points to the coming Passover feast when the sacramental celebration of Jesus’ Pasch will be celebrated – that celebration by which we commemorate and make present the inauguration of the New Covenant on Calvary.