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  • Order of Levitical Blessing:Fruitfully Reclaiming a Patristic, Liturgical Typology of the Diaconate
  • David A. Lopez (bio)

In the Leonine Sacramentary,1 from the prayer of consecration for the ordination of a bishop, there is a beautifully clear expression of Christianity’s theological and liturgical appropriation of Old Testament types:

[O] God, who in private familiar converse with Moses your servant also made a decree, among the other patterns of heavenly worship, concerning the disposition of priestly vesture; and commanded that Aaron your chosen one should wear a mystical robe during the sacred rites, so that the posterity to come might have an understanding of the meaning of the pattern of the former things, lest the knowledge of your teaching be lost in any age; and as among the ancients the very outward sign of these symbols obtained reverence, also among us there might be a knowledge of them more certain than types and shadows. For the adornment of our mind is as the vesture of that earlier priesthood; and the dignity of robes no longer commends to us the pontifical glory, but the splendor of spirits [does], since even [End Page 52] those very things, which then pleased fleshly vision, depended rather on these truths which in them were to be understood.2

This short paragraph presents several of the fundamental principles of Catholic liturgy. It notes that liturgy is done at the divine command, according to the revealed will of God.3 It affirms that liturgy expresses spiritual realities by means of tangible symbols, and that the resulting layers of symbolic meaning are intended to be catechetical.4 It claims that symbols drawn from the Old Testament, such as Aaron’s high priestly vestments, are types of Christological realities5—in this example, of the high priesthood of Christ, given also to the Apostles.6 And it notes that these signs, though exterior, refer most profoundly to interior, spiritual realities.7

Among the Old Testament symbols, to which one might apply this same theological method, is the second levitical priesthood. The first priesthood is that of Aaron, the sacrificial priesthood, established by God through Moses in Exodus 28 and Leviticus 8. In Numbers 1, 3, and 4, however, the other branches of the tribe of Levi—called Gershonites, Kohathites, and Merarites—are given separate priestly duties, not “for the sacrifice, but for the ministry,”8 having charge of ritual preparations and all the sacred ritual objects:

Number not the tribe of Levi, neither shall you put down the sum of them with the children of Israel: But appoint them over the Tabernacle of the Testimony, and all the vessels thereof, and [End Page 53] whatsoever pertains to the ceremonies. They shall carry the tabernacle and all the furniture thereof: and they shall minister, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle (Num 1:49–50).

Christians have consistently understood the sacrificial priesthood of Aaron as a type of the eternal sacrifice of Christ. Because there is only one priesthood in Christ, all the aspects of the Old Testament priesthood are subsumed and transformed in Christ’s priestly sacrifice on the Cross.9 His sacrifice is “once and for all time,” the unique sacrifice and saving priesthood for the salvation of the world. There is, therefore, a single Paschal Mystery, one heavenly liturgy it both imitates and foreshadows, and one eternal high priesthood.10

If the levitical priesthood is a relevant type and symbol for the Church, then, it must have some theological and liturgical expression within the one priesthood of Christ, parallel to that of the sacrificial priesthood of Aaron. And one does indeed find such expression, used throughout the Patristic and medieval Church to identify typologically the diaconate, the third grade of Holy Orders, with the Levites of the Old Testament. Outside of the liturgy, such a typology can be seen (to name just for a few examples) in Pope St. Clement I’s letter to the Church in Corinth,11 funerary inscriptions of Pope St. Damasus [End Page 54] I,12 sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great,13 correspondence of Pope St. Gregory the Great,14 and the Commentary on the Books of Sentences by St...

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