VII.
What do you think it means that in the details Josiah gives to the Priests, the Levites and the people for keeping the Passover he includes the phrase “… sanctify yourselves…”?

As you spend time with this passage once again, hold in mind the call to “sanctify yourselves.”

VIII.
2 Chronicles 35:1-6, 16-19 (NRSVue)

Josiah kept a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem; they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month. He appointed the priests to their offices and encouraged them in the service of the house of the Lord. He said to the Levites who taught all Israel and who were holy to the Lord, “Put the holy ark in the house that Solomon son of David, king of Israel, built; you need no longer carry it on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and his people Israel. Make preparations by your ancestral houses by your divisions, following the written directions of King David of Israel and the written directions of his son Solomon. Take position in the holy place according to the groupings of the ancestral houses of your kindred the people, and let there be Levites for each division of an ancestral house. Slaughter the Passover lamb, sanctify yourselves, and on behalf of your kindred make preparations, acting according to the word of the Lord by Moses.”

So all the service of the Lord was prepared that day, to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, according to the command of King Josiah. The people of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time and the Festival of Unleavened Bread seven days. No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, by the priests and the Levites, by all Judah and Israel who were present, and by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah, this Passover was kept.

IX.
There are a lot of details included in this short passage that to me stresses Josiah’s desire that the Passover be not only “kept” but be done correctly.

But, we don’t get details on what they are to do to “sanctify yourselves.”

In our day and age what do you think we might do to sanctify ourselves?

Is it a matter of getting all the details done right and in the right order? Or is there more to it?

What might be involved in the interior work of sanctifying ourselves as we approach and enter into worship?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}