This is indeed a full and perfect sacrifice, as the Lord tells us in speaking of gifts and contributions as his: You will offer to me my oblation in my festal days, sparing nothing and setting nothing aside, but offering a full, complete and perfect sacrifice. By festal day is meant the Lord’s Day, a time appropriate to acts of perfect virtue. These acts are made perfect if our souls quell the anxieties of this world and the enticements of the flesh in a victorious struggle over hedonism. Thus the soul is free from the world and dedicated to God, departing not even in the slightest way from the path of good intentions and casting aside all distractions, whether of pleasure or of toil. The wise—and no one else—celebrate with due solemnity this festal day.

Because they could not have borne it^[1] if when giving the law for the sabbath God had said, Do your good works on the sabbath, but do not the works that are evil, therefore he restrained them from all alike. You must do nothing at all, he says, and even so they were not kept in line. But in the very act of giving the law of the sabbath he signified, though in shaded language, that he restricts them from evil works only, for he says, You must do no work, except what shall be done for your life.^[2] And in the temple too all went on each sabbath with even more diligence and double toil. Thus even by shadows he was secretly opening them to the truth.

After these, in the seventh month other festivals are celebrated. On the first day of the month there is the new moon of trumpets, just as it says in the psalm, Play the trumpet at the beginning of the month.^[1] But on the tenth day of the seventh month^[2] there is the festival of atonement. Only on this day is the high priest dressed with all the pontifical garments. Then he is dressed in the manifestation and truth.^[3] Then he goes into that inaccessible place where he can approach only once a year,^[4] that is, into the Holy of Holies. For once a year the high priest, leaving the people behind, enters that place where the mercy seat is, and above the mercy seat is the cherubim, where the ark of testimony and the altar of incense^[5] are, where no one is permitted to enter except the high priest alone.^[6]

Therefore if I should consider how the true high priest, my Lord Jesus Christ,^[7] having indeed been placed in the flesh, was with the people all year, that year about which he himself says, He sent me to proclaim good news to the poor and to announce the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of forgiveness,^[8] I perceive how once in this year on the day of atonement he enters into the Holy of Holies.^[9] That is, when with his dispensation fulfilled he penetrates the heavens^[10] and goes to the Father to make atonement for the human race and prays for all those who believe in him.