In this Jubilee year, with its focus on hope, I have been paying attention to any references to hope that I can find because many events happenings in our world are contributing to a sense of gloom and doom.
On January 21, the feast of St Agnes, I noted how, in the first reading from the letter to the Hebrews, we are invited to “take a firm grip on the hope that is held out to us” It goes on to say, “here we have an anchor for our souls, as sure as it is firm”.
It would seem from evidence found in the Roman Catacombs that the anchor appears very early as a Christian symbol. It contains the image of the cross but partly in a disguised form, perhaps because Christians at the time were threatened by persecution.
The community addressed by the letter to the Hebrews was mostly made up of Jewish Christians who were experiencing a longing for the clear boundaries that were provided by the Law. The world of the spirit in which they now found themselves was unclear and confusing. In his commentary on Hebrews, William Neil says that they were like “people adrift in a vast uncharted ocean”. So, the writer to the Hebrews presents them with the image of Christ as an anchor for their souls, providing stability in an uncertain situation.
The same passage goes on to say that Christ has entered beyond the veil. The reference here is to the controlled access to God that the temple represented. Gentiles could go into the court of the Gentiles but no further. Women could go into the next court, that of the women. The next court was for Jewish men, while another court closer to the centre was reserved for the priests. The heart of the temple, the Holy of Holies, could only be accessed by the high priest once a year on the day of Atonement. However, with Christ, access to God was open to all. Jesus is the pioneer leading people into the presence of God.
The ritual of opening the sacred door, which launched the Jubilee Year, is a powerful image of the access to God that Jesus makes possible. St. Paul, in reporting back what had been happening in the mission to the gentile world, spoke of how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
The images of the anchor and the open door are invitations to hope in a world where people are often adrift and who are locked out by the closed doors they often encounter.
Fr Pat O’Shea lives and works in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
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