tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42201390052096176332024-03-26T21:19:46.848-07:00Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception"Ipsa conteret caput tuum" (Genesis 3:15).AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.comBlogger231125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-41255977651274128902024-03-26T21:18:00.000-07:002024-03-26T21:18:45.982-07:00Jesus Christ is the new and everlasting Temple<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsijnKqCSdKAC_Qx-hQSIceR_5qN4L_iT74ewZSN_J6gYjYIQfIPGDTQN_0A0P1gyVx6ueDdQ9kFceL4qb8tveIrHOhMFLVO6x4Rm8sgjraXWMo1JJqlozKNkf_MZ6mF5Ei9GLrZxw_W-ppteM6hAUeWSLyxfwSRBMBQpE96MrELWUc-yydDBLv85HsxVr/s516/1_ymNZDeM4UZ4BW80p6Husyw.gif" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsijnKqCSdKAC_Qx-hQSIceR_5qN4L_iT74ewZSN_J6gYjYIQfIPGDTQN_0A0P1gyVx6ueDdQ9kFceL4qb8tveIrHOhMFLVO6x4Rm8sgjraXWMo1JJqlozKNkf_MZ6mF5Ei9GLrZxw_W-ppteM6hAUeWSLyxfwSRBMBQpE96MrELWUc-yydDBLv85HsxVr/s600/1_ymNZDeM4UZ4BW80p6Husyw.gif"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this Temple, and I will raise it again in three days’.
They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the Temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed
the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken”.
John 2:19-22
The popular quest today for a Third Temple has no actual biblical relevance if pope Benedict XVI was correct in this his view that Jesus Christ is “the new Temple”.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20120502.html
BENEDICT XVI
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our recent Catecheses we have seen how through personal and community prayer the interpretation of and meditation on Sacred Scripture open us to listening to God who speaks to us and instils light in us so that we may understand the present.
Today, I would like to talk about the testimony and prayer of the Church’s first martyr, St Stephen, one of the seven men chosen to carry out the service of charity for the needy. At the moment of his martyrdom, recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, the fruitful relationship between the Word of God and prayer is once again demonstrated.
Stephen is brought before the council, before the Sanhedrin, where he is accused of declaring that “this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, [the Temple] and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:14). During his public life Jesus had effectively foretold the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem: you will “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). But, as the Evangelist John remarked, “he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (Jn 2:21-22).
Stephen’s speech to the council, the longest in the Acts of the Apostles, develops on this very prophecy of Jesus who is the new Temple, inaugurates the new worship and, with his immolation on the Cross, replaces the ancient sacrifices. Stephen wishes to demonstrate how unfounded is the accusation leveled against him of subverting the Mosaic law and describes his view of salvation history and of the covenant between God and man. In this way he reinterprets the whole of the biblical narrative, the itinerary contained in Sacred Scripture, in order to show that it leads to the “place”, of the definitive presence of God that is Jesus Christ, and in particular his Passion, death and Resurrection. In this perspective Stephen also interprets his being a disciple of Jesus, following him even to martyrdom. Meditation on Sacred Scripture thus enables him to understand his mission, his life, his present.
Stephen is guided in this by the light of the Holy Spirit and by his close relationship with the Lord, so that the members of the Sanhedrin saw that his face was “like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). This sign of divine assistance is reminiscent of Moses’ face which shone after his encounter with God when he came down from Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 34:29-35; 2 Cor 3:7-8).
In his discourse Stephen starts with the call of Abraham, a pilgrim bound for the land pointed out to him by God which he possessed only at the level of a promise. He then speaks of Joseph, sold by his brothers but helped and liberated by God, and continues with Moses, who becomes an instrument of God in order to set his people free but also and several times comes up against his own people’s rejection.
In these events narrated in Sacred Scripture to which Stephen demonstrates he listens religiously, God always emerges, who never tires of reaching out to man in spite of frequently meeting with obstinate opposition. And this happens in the past, in the present and in the future. So it is that throughout the Old Testament he sees the prefiguration of the life of Jesus himself, the Son of God made flesh who — like the ancient Fathers — encounters obstacles, rejection and death.
Stephen then refers to Joshua, David and Solomon, whom he mentions in relation to the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, and ends with the word of the Prophet Isaiah (66:1-2): “Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool. What house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” (Acts 7:49-50). In his meditation on God’s action in salvation history, by highlighting the perennial temptation to reject God and his action, he affirms that Jesus is the Righteous One foretold by the prophets; God himself has made himself uniquely and definitively present in him: Jesus is the “place” of true worship. Stephen does not deny the importance of the Temple for a certain period, but stresses that “the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands” (Acts 7:48).
The new, true temple in which God dwells is his Son, who has taken human flesh; it is the humanity of Christ, the Risen One, who gathers the peoples together and unites them in the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood. The description of the temple as “not made by human hands” is also found in the theology of St Paul and in the Letter to the Hebrews; the Body of Jesus which he assumed in order to offer himself as a sacrificial victim for the expiation of sins, is the new temple of God, the place of the presence of the living God; in him, God and man, God and the world are truly in touch: Jesus takes upon himself all the sins of humanity in order to bring it into the love of God and to “consummate” it in this love. Drawing close to the Cross, entering into communion with Christ, means entering this transformation. And this means coming into contact with God, entering the true temple.
Stephen’s life and words are suddenly cut short by the stoning, but his martyrdom itself is the fulfilment of his life and message: he becomes one with Christ. Thus his meditation on God’s action in history, on the divine word which in Jesus found complete fulfilment, becomes participation in the very prayer on the Cross. Indeed, before dying, Stephen cries out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59), making his own the words of Psalm 31[30]:6 and repeating Jesus’ last words on Calvary:
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46). Lastly, like Jesus, he cries out with a loud voice facing those who were stoning him: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). Let us note that if on the one hand Stephen’s prayer echoes Jesus’, on the other it is addressed to someone else, for the entreaty is to the Lord himself, namely, to Jesus whom he contemplates in glory at the right hand of the Father: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God” (v. 55).
Dear brothers and sisters, St Stephen’s witness gives us several instructions for our prayers and for our lives. Let us ask ourselves: where did this first Christian martyr find the strength to face his persecutors and to go so far as to give himself?
The answer is simple: from his relationship with God, from his communion with Christ, from meditation on the history of salvation, from perceiving God’s action which reached its crowning point in Jesus Christ. Our prayers, too, must be nourished by listening to the word of God, in communion with Jesus and his Church.
A second element: St Stephen sees the figure and mission of Jesus foretold in the history of the loving relationship between God and man. He — the Son of God — is the temple that is not “made with hands” in which the presence of God the Father became so close as to enter our human flesh to bring us to God, to open the gates of heaven. Our prayer, therefore, must be the contemplation of Jesus at the right hand of God, of Jesus as the Lord of our, or my, daily life. In him, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we too can address God and be truly in touch with God, with the faith and abandonment of children who turn to a Father who loves them infinitely.
Thank you.
And pope Francis picked up this theme of his predecessor’s in a Mass sermon of November 2014:
Readings:
• Ez 47:1-2, 8-9, 12
• Ps 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9
• 1 Cor 3:9c-11, 16-17
• Jn 2:13-22
Some thousand years before the time of Christ the great Temple of Solomon was built. Previously, the tribes of Israel had worshipped God in sanctuaries housing the ark of the covenant. King David had desired to build a permanent house of God for the ark. But that work was accomplished by his son, Solomon, equally famous for his wisdom—and his eventual corruption due to the pursuit of power and wealth.
In the Old Testament the temple is often referred to as “the house of the Lord”. Sometimes it is called “Zion,” as in today’s Psalm (Ps. 46), a term that also referred to the city of Jerusalem, which in turn represented the people of God. The temple was a barometer of sorts for the health of the covenantal relationship between God and the people. Many of the prophets warned that a failure to uphold the Law and live the covenant would result in the destruction of the temple.
The prophet Jeremiah, for example, warned that having the temple couldn’t protect the people from the consequences of their sins: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD’.” (Jer. 7).
In 587 B.C., the temple was finally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, marking the start of The Exile. During that time, in the 25th year of exile, the prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a new temple (Ezek. 40-48). The description of the temple, part of it heard in today’s first reading, hearkened back in various ways to the first chapters of Genesis (cf., Gen. 2:10-14), including references to pure water, creatures in abundance, and unfading trees producing continuous fresh fruit. This heavenly temple, it was commonly believed, would descend from heaven and God would then dwell in the midst of mankind.
Following the exile, the temple was rebuilt, then damaged, and rebuilt again. …. It was there that Jesus was presented by Mary and Joseph and blessed by Simeon (Lk 2:22-35) and where he, as a youth, spent time talking to the teachers of the Law (Lk 2:43-50). It was also the setting for the scene described in today’s Gospel—the cleansing of the temple and Jesus’ shocking prophecy: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
Was Jesus, in cleansing the temple, attacking the temple itself? No. And did Jesus, in making his remark, say he would destroy the temple? No. But, paradoxically, the love of the Son for his Father and his Father’s house did point toward the demise of the temple.
“This is a prophecy of the Cross,” wrote Joseph Ratzinger in The Spirit of the Liturgy, “he shows that the destruction of his earthly body will be at the same time the end of the Temple.”
Why? Because a new and everlasting Temple was established by the death and Resurrection of the Son of God. “With his Resurrection the new Temple will begin: the living body of Jesus Christ, which will now stand in the sight of God and be the place of all worship. Into this body he incorporates men.”
The new Temple of God did, in fact, come down from heaven. It dwelt among man (Jn. 1:14). “It” is a man: “Christ is the true temple of God, ‘the place where his glory dwells’; by the grace of God, Christians also become temples of the Holy Spirit, living stones out of which the Church is built” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1197).
Through baptism we become joined to the one Body of Christ, and that Body, the Church, is the “one temple of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, 776).
“Come! behold the deeds of the LORD,” wrote the Psalmist, “the astounding things he has wrought on earth.” Indeed, behold Jesus the Christ, the true and astounding temple of God, and worship him in spirit and in truth."
Jesus Christ is the new and everlasting Temple,
He having replaced the stone temple of old.
“The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is
“true” to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God.
Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God's likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility”.
Benedict XVI
When writing the following article, I was particularly struck by Josef Ratzinger’s (pope Benedict XVI’s) wonderfully philosophical discussion of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate regarding ‘What is Truth?’
A Kingdom of Truth not Power
(2) A Kingdom of Truth not Power | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
The basis of the unique kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the very Messiah - and indeed equal to God - was, not earthly power like the Roman kingdom in which Pilate served, but Truth. This was all of course completely mystifying to Pontius Pilate, who could not initially regard Jesus as any sort of threat to Roman law and order. So Benedict writes:
…. At this point we must pass from considerations about the person of Pilate to the trial itself. In John 18:34–35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus' own people, from the Temple authority. It must have astonished Pilate that Jesus' own people presented themselves to him as defenders of Rome, when the information at his disposal did not suggest the need for any action on his part.
Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus' confession. To Pilate's question: "So you are a king?" he answers: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37).
Previously Jesus had said: "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world" (18:36).
That God the Almighty is utterly contemptuous of our much-vaunted human power, the ‘might-is-right’ mentality, is attested by Psalm 2:1-6:
Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the LORD and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
Obviously Pilate, though, had never embraced this deeper wisdom of Divine perspective. Benedict continues:
This "confession" of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía).
Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus' case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has "no legions".
Jesus is operating on a plane completely different from the world of Pilate – a level of being with which this superstitious pagan Roman cannot come to grips. But can we?
So, Benedict:
With these words Jesus created a thoroughly new concept of kingship and kingdom, and he held it up to Pilate, the representative of classical worldly power. What is Pilate to make of it, and what are we to make of it, this concept of kingdom and kingship? Is it unreal, is it sheer fantasy that can be safely ignored? Or does it somehow affect us?
It is Truth, not power or dominion, that actually typifies the kingdom of Jesus Christ:
In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth.
Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with "kingdom": namely, power — authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus' "kingdom" nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: "What is truth?" (18:38).
But Pilate’s question continues to have relevance as it is still, today, being asked in political discussions. And human freedom and “the fate of mankind” may be dependent upon the right answer given to this question:
It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all — criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?
What is truth? The pragmatist's question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?
Benedict now moves on to a philosophical discussion of truth, beginning with the scholastic definitions of it by Saint Thomas Aquinas, so highly regarded in the Catholic world:
The classic definition from scholastic philosophy designates truth as "adaequatio intellectus et rei" (conformity between the intellect and reality; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 2c). If a man's intellect reflects a thing as it is in itself, then he has found truth: but only a small fragment of reality — not truth in its grandeur and integrity.
We come closer to what Jesus meant with another of Saint Thomas' teachings: "Truth is in God's intellect properly and firstly (proprie et primo); in human intellect it is present properly and derivatively (proprie quidem et secundario)" (De Verit., q. 1, a. 4c). And in conclusion we arrive at the succinct formula: God is "ipsa summa et prima veritas" (truth itself, the sovereign and first truth; Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5c).
This formula brings us close to what Jesus means when he speaks of the truth, when he says that his purpose in coming into the world was to "bear witness to the truth".
Pope John Paul II had observed, in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (1998), that a modern distrust of human reasoning has led to thinkers of today greatly limiting the range of their philosophical endeavour:
….
55. Surveying the situation today, we see that the problems of other times have returned, but in a new key. It is no longer a matter of questions of interest only to certain individuals and groups, but convictions so widespread that they have become to some extent the common mind. An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”.
Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures.
Benedict will lament, along very similar lines, that now: “The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear”.
Again and again in the world, truth and error, truth and untruth, are almost inseparably mixed together. The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is "true" to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God's likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.
"Bearing witness to the truth" means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being.
In this sense, truth is the real "king" that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God's perspective — the perspective of creative reason — in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth.
We, like Pilate, lacking a Divine perspective - such as Jesus was attempting to proclaim - end up by falling hopelessly short of the ideal, worshipping power, not truth:
Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.
And, with power, science, since we consider it to supply many of the answers - some would even go so far as to say it encapsulates ‘the theory of everything’.
But, as Benedict goes on to explain, science does not of itself have the capacity to penetrate to the deeper metaphysical truths:
At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: "The language of God was revealed" (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward "truth" itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose.
Truth is indeed most powerful because God’s seeming powerlessness far outweighs any human power:
What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. "Redemption" in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world's standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.
The kingdom offered by Jesus Christ is liberating for man, because in truth man finds his true liberation:
In the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, the subject matter is Jesus' kingship and, hence, the kingship, the "kingdom", of God. In the course of this same conversation it becomes abundantly clear that there is no discontinuity between Jesus' Galilean teaching — the proclamation of the kingdom of God — and his Jerusalem teaching. The center of the message, all the way to the Cross — all the way to the inscription above the Cross — is the kingdom of God, the new kingship represented by Jesus. And this kingship is centered on truth.
The kingship proclaimed by Jesus, at first in parables and then at the end quite openly before the earthly judge, is none other than the kingship of truth. The inauguration of this kingship is man's true liberation.
Jesus Christ is Truth incarnate:
At the same time it becomes clear that between the pre-Resurrection focus on the kingdom of God and the post-Resurrection focus on faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God there is no contradiction. In Christ, God — the Truth — entered the world. Christology is the concrete form acquired by the proclamation of God's kingdom.
The antithesis of the Divine Kingdom of Truth is Satan’s anti-kingdom of un-truth (lies).
“The new Temple of God did, in fact, come down from heaven.
It dwelt among man (Jn. 1:14). “It” is a man: “Christ is the true temple of God,
‘the place where his glory dwells’; by the grace of God, Christians also become temples of the Holy Spirit, living stones out of which the Church is built” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1197). Through baptism we become joined to the one Body of Christ, and that Body, the Church, is the
“one temple of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, 776)”.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-9357287253052772942024-03-24T22:58:00.000-07:002024-03-24T22:58:36.661-07:00Good Friday has no historical equivalent<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMZ3RcLY2hbhRuOzcWbC-4z0TnbtQb58cIWiWxKRldbaXhQHDOJqW7U_VL5RA8zRcRxsswR5BV1QvhGrDt7zaD90vxg8xV7ev4Q80hYzqQs94bj1AgRWdIKeNhLFWCm9u5mwD4CmkhBHwXbu58seaPoTaSjPacecrNvdyIkT40w4n_nTL3QTJyzuIVqhQd/s1080/1_aF56apTdnaPeqDORJlO2iQ.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMZ3RcLY2hbhRuOzcWbC-4z0TnbtQb58cIWiWxKRldbaXhQHDOJqW7U_VL5RA8zRcRxsswR5BV1QvhGrDt7zaD90vxg8xV7ev4Q80hYzqQs94bj1AgRWdIKeNhLFWCm9u5mwD4CmkhBHwXbu58seaPoTaSjPacecrNvdyIkT40w4n_nTL3QTJyzuIVqhQd/s600/1_aF56apTdnaPeqDORJlO2iQ.jpg"/></a></div>
“The entire sequence from the death of Jesus on Good Friday
to his resurrection on Easter Sunday is not only unique in history,
it is unique in its conception in the entire experience of human sensibility”.
Taken from The Weekend Australian (April 16-17, 2022, pp. 20-21):
Union of Heaven and earth
Greg Sheridan
“This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it”.
Ephesians 5:16
….
The lessons of Ukraine are many and terrible. They demonstrate the changeless essence of human nature – people are called to glory and yet every one of us is capable of monstrous evil.
The Russian government is behaving exactly as the Roman Empire did in the time of Jesus, seeking conquest and subjugation with methods of remorseless brutality. We thought we had abolished that, in Europe at least.
If you want to see what Christian hope looks like, google Ukrainians singing hymns. See the solace and courage and inspiration there. Christianity is also evident in Poland’s generosity to Ukrainians fleeing the terror of the Russian military. Poles and Ukrainians don’t have an untroubled past, or an untroubled relationship generally. They are not, typically, best friends. Yet Poland, even today, not an especially rich country, has taken in more than two million Ukrainians so far and the efforts of individual Poles in this crisis are magnificent.
Yet Christianity is dishonoured in Ukraine too. The backing of the invasion given by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is a crime, the most shocking misuse of Christian religious authority, to justify murder and cruelty and dreadful destruction, in many decades. We thought we had abolished that, too.
….
There is simply no way at all that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is a just cause, a last resort or being waged by proportionate or moral means. Therefore, every Christian, including Russian Christians, are obliged to oppose it, or at the very least not to participate in it.
But the tragedy of the Ukraine war engages Christian belief at a more personal, existential level. Every Ukrainian, deciding whether to fight or flee, to stay or go, how to help their family, how to help others, what the war means for their whole life project, for their very human existence, will confront their own mortality, their own human quest for meaning.
Every human being faces, ultimately, the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell.
Easter provides hope because it shows us that death does not have the final victory. But this works for a person, helps them, only if they understand something of the whole supernatural quality of human life. Modern Christians make a tremendous mistake in underplaying the essential supernatural claims of Jesus and the Christian tradition.
It is understandable that modern Christians in sceptical Western societies – phobic about the transcendent, scared of death and trained to mock belief at every turn – tend to emphasise Christianity’s good works, its hospitals, schools and shelters for the homeless. You might not like Mother Teresa’s theology, but how many homeless, diseased people did you personally try to help on the streets of Kolkata?
But, in truth, Christianity stripped of its supernatural claims is not just an attractive ethical system or a picturesque and benign myth. It is literally nothing at all.
Without its supernatural claims it is at best delusional, and really a system of lies. Nothing of lasting good can come from a system of lies. As St Paul says in Ephesians: “If Christ is not risen, our preaching is useless, your faith is useless … we are of all people the most to be pitied”.
There is nice debate among Christians as to whether Western societies such as ours have become so post-Christian that they are in a sense pre-Christian, so removed from their Christian roots that they are wholly innocent of any knowledge of what Christianity is all about.
Easter is a good time therefore to remind ourselves just how absolutely weird and radical Christianity is, how unlike any prevailing social orthodoxy or ethos, how radically challenging it is to the zeitgeist, even though the good things in Western society, such as universal human rights and equality of the sexes, to name just two, derive directly from Christianity.
It’s unclear, at best, that these good things can be sustained in the absence of transcendent belief, at least among a sizeable portion of the society.
But the good things in Christianity in any event are entirely dependent on the supernatural claims it makes, and these should never be watered down, or put to one side by Christianity’s friends.
The entire sequence from the death of Jesus on Good Friday to his resurrection on Easter Sunday is not only unique in history, it is unique in its conception in the entire experience of human sensibility. It teaches, among other things, that resurrection is part of death. But even that is not its most radical claim. The most radical and distinctive claim of Christianity is not after all the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday but the death of Jesus on Good Friday.
Many religious traditions involve the interaction of God with humanity. Many polytheistic traditions even involve the idea of one of the gods walking the earth, sometimes disguised as a human being, and dealing with people. Sometimes the gods fall out. Sometimes they go to war. But true polytheism is, I think, much rarer than is generally claimed. For many seemingly polytheistic traditions have the idea that behind the lesser gods there is a Great Spirit, the author of all things.
The similarity of other religious traditions to elements of the Christian tradition does not suggest that all religions are just man-made artefacts and interchangeable. It suggests instead that profound religious hunger, and equally an instinctive religious knowledge, is part of the human condition, written in our spiritual DNA.
Any religious tradition that believes in any kind of God would hold that the gods can conquer death, or transcend death or not be subject to death.
But in all human sensibility, there is no equivalent, nothing even roughly similar, to the idea of Good Friday, that the eternal, all powerful, all knowing, everlasting God could become a human being, preach the truth, yet be mocked and vilified, be subject to all the limitations of the human condition, be defeated and humiliated, be tortured and killed, physically killed, Suffer, in other words, in earthly terms, comprehensive defeat. That God could die. That is Christianity’s most astonishing claim. That God in moments could need our compassion. It tells us a great deal about distinctive [?] the character of God as understood in Christianity.
First, in Jesus, God didn’t just take on human form, like a disguise; he became a man, a human being, in an act of supreme solidarity with all human beings. Solidarity indeed with all human suffering, and with all the limitations and pains and frustrations of being a person.
In doing this, Jesus uniquely elevated the status of human nature. The ancient world’s first great pro-human rights statement came in the Book of Genesis, where it is declared that God created humanity in the image of God. This is not how humanity was seen before that. The experience of Jesus further elevates human nature. It declares that human nature is worthy of carrying the personality of God himself.
This human nature is not to be trifled with, this human dignity demands respect.
The experience of Jesus also produces the most radical inversion of power in all history, then or now. Until Jesus came along, being weak, being defeated, being humble – these were not considered virtues. At best, you might temporarily endure defeat but hope for revenge. The idea of denying yourself power, making yourself weak to serve others, was revolutionary. It’s still revolutionary.
Jesus is absolutely clear about his divine status and supernatural claims. On the cross, enduring the most savage, extended, agonising death, he is concerned not only for the welfare of his mother and his disciple John, the only one of his male followers brave enough to stand with him at the foot of the cross.
He dies praying, in dialogue with God the father, and he exercises divine authority in offering heaven to the good thief: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”.
After the resurrection, the early Christians were in no doubt about who Jesus was. Many endured violent death rather than deny that he had risen from the dead, or that he was the son of God.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul offers his own answer to the central question of the New Testament: who is Jesus? Paul wrote: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and become as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him a name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father”.
At the start of his breathtaking gospel, John, referring to Jesus as “the Word”, writes: “In the beginning was the Word: the word was with God and the Word was God”.
There is really no halfway house with Christianity. Either Jesus is God and we are immortal beings filled with eternal destiny, moral choice, divine status, irreducible human dignity and irreducible moral responsibility, and loved as though an only child by God, or it’s all lies and I’d rather be at the races. No halfway house works.
Several times in the gospels, Jesus talks of heaven. He doesn’t give us much detail but he certainly confirms its existence. He tells the good thief he will be in paradise that day, he talks several times of the eternal reward prepared by God the father, he explains that in heaven the saints, like the angels, don’t marry.
Yet heaven is a central part of Christianity. You can’t do away with it, and why would you want to? When they stop talking about the supernatural claims of Christianity, you wonder if Christians continue to believe in them.
One of the most enthralling contemplations of heaven is to be found in Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Gilead. This is the best, most important Christian novel so far of the 21st century. Robinson is a liberal Calvinist and Gilead, a novel of sublime transcendence and hypnotic power, concerns the life of a Congregationalist minister, John Ames, aged 77 in 1956. He is likely to die soon of heart disease and writes an account of himself for his seven-year-old son.
Being an actually believing Christian, Ames is much exercised by what heaven will be like and the relationship between life and in heaven and life on earth, especially life with his wife and son. He knows heaven will not be a disappointment.
But how will he meet the people he loves? The idea of everyone meeting as a vigorous young adult appeals to him. But then he’d love once more to have his son as a toddler to jump into his arms. And what will be the relationship in heaven with this life, with all its beauty?
He reflects: “I can’t believe that, when we’ve all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that means the whole world to us. … I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try”.
In other words, in heaven we won’t lose the connection with our life on earth.
One of the great Christian philosophers of the 20th century, Jacques Maritain, a key figure in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as long ago as 1963 lamented the lack of dialogue about and with heaven among Christians.
He wrote: “It seems to me that an extreme negligence prevails among Christians concerning the Church of Heaven …”. He went on to describe a bit of what we might know of heaven: “Just as the Word incarnate had on earth a life divine and human at one and the same time, so also the blessed in Heaven have entered into the divine life through the vision, but they also lead there, outside of the vision although penetrated by its radiance, a glorious and transfigured human life”.
We might all have our visions of heaven, and these might be domestic and quotidian: the family nearby, the Bulldogs winning the grand final in golden point time, chicken curry for dinner. For it is not to trivialise the terrible and the evil, to counterpose the domestic and the good against it.
Christianity is a power for good, because it is true. If it’s not true, it’s not a power for anything. Bu happily it is true. Ukrainians singing Easter hymns in the shadow of war might know this better than we do.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-29741412432269666712024-03-24T22:49:00.000-07:002024-03-24T22:49:57.642-07:00Pope Francis invites people to follow in Jesus’ footsteps <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP9mtx2Sc_YzBiUCFcanrhjoyxssyGmK1z4Apde_teKYaM25SQxE1RNVh4yLE80uj1hw8zG3GCqSkplz4e1ZJVe3JyReDQry439d6wYoSLVFL_hzQOINTfDvdej6Nh61Gb5sTXMc-81XCf-KaSjStvnacB6pbwwvZHLq9D5qkGtcjznwlkmEJ2Rt8XzvHZ/s760/2024032403034_b8181105fdbfb7b886e55d163f1fece1b4c73e1d1099a68e19c5edd914fd59a6.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP9mtx2Sc_YzBiUCFcanrhjoyxssyGmK1z4Apde_teKYaM25SQxE1RNVh4yLE80uj1hw8zG3GCqSkplz4e1ZJVe3JyReDQry439d6wYoSLVFL_hzQOINTfDvdej6Nh61Gb5sTXMc-81XCf-KaSjStvnacB6pbwwvZHLq9D5qkGtcjznwlkmEJ2Rt8XzvHZ/s600/2024032403034_b8181105fdbfb7b886e55d163f1fece1b4c73e1d1099a68e19c5edd914fd59a6.jpg"/></a></div>
By Courtney Mares
Vatican City, Mar 24, 2024 / 09:45 am
On Palm Sunday, hundreds of priests, bishops, cardinals, and laypeople solemnly carried large palm branches in procession through St. Peter’s Square to begin the first liturgy of Holy Week.
“Dear brothers and sisters, since the beginning of Lent until now we have prepared our hearts by penance and charitable works,” Pope Francis said in a soft voice at the beginning of Palm Sunday Mass on March 24.
“Today we gather together to herald with the whole Church the beginning of the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery, that is to say, of his passion and resurrection.”
Speaking in St. Peter’s Square adorned with palms and greenery, the pope invited the crowd to follow in Jesus’ footsteps as he entered Jerusalem “so that being made by his grace partakers of the cross, we may have a share also in his resurrection and in his life.”
Pope Francis chose not to read the homily prepared for Palm Sunday Mass at the last minute without explanation. The 87-year-old pope, who arrived at the Mass in a wheelchair, has had aides read some of his speeches for him in recent weeks.
….
The pope did read the prayers for the Mass and spoke at the end of the liturgy, offering an appeal for peace in Ukraine and prayers for the victims of the terrorist attack in Moscow.
In his peace appeal, Pope Francis gave a brief reflection on the Gospel account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey as the Prince of Peace.
“Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus entered Jerusalem as a humble and peaceful king. Let us open our hearts to him. Only he can deliver us from enmity, hatred, violence, because he is mercy and the forgiveness of sins,” the pope said.
Palm Sunday is the only Mass of the year in which two Gospels are proclaimed. The Gospel of Mark’s account of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey was read aloud at the beginning of the Mass and later the Passion of the Lord was solemnly proclaimed with a choir singing the words of the crowd.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
At the conclusion of the liturgy, Pope Francis rode through St. Peter’s Square on the popemobile greeting enthusiastic pilgrims who waved flags and cheered.
Pope Francis has a busy schedule for Holy Week. He will preside over a chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday morning before going to a women’s prison in Rome to offer Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
At the end of Palm Sunday Mass, Pope Francis said: “And now we turn in prayer to the Virgin Mary. Let us learn from her to stay close to Jesus during the days of Holy Week, in order to arrive at the joy of the Resurrection.”
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-51577427445157766962024-03-24T12:31:00.000-07:002024-03-24T12:31:15.305-07:00Bearing witness to Truth, the basis of the Kingdom of Jesus <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmydxn8GzXXCWTRDviNhTbGD6zyaVB9UbnuwwjBoFujsDHSRJLR6y5Drw5WC066qy48Tx8sG0QX5TE2j-a4K9o-KvXN1jwDTUSk0KWXUWrI4k4pIQznoV6jd0xDulim4yoj0sftLEQGLxnBd7ikqRjF44BSb0Nv6Y49rNgSaHPGgvDQIo-7RGrI-Rk1LXc/s682/20200826210824_5f46b6dcc2bf74d8ccd84a1bjpeg.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmydxn8GzXXCWTRDviNhTbGD6zyaVB9UbnuwwjBoFujsDHSRJLR6y5Drw5WC066qy48Tx8sG0QX5TE2j-a4K9o-KvXN1jwDTUSk0KWXUWrI4k4pIQznoV6jd0xDulim4yoj0sftLEQGLxnBd7ikqRjF44BSb0Nv6Y49rNgSaHPGgvDQIo-7RGrI-Rk1LXc/s600/20200826210824_5f46b6dcc2bf74d8ccd84a1bjpeg.jpeg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
Reading through, on a previous Lent,
by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,
I was particularly struck by his wonderfully philosophical discussion of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate regarding ‘What is Truth?’
The basis of the unique kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the very Messiah - and indeed equal to God - was, not earthly power like the kingdom in which Pilate served, but Truth.
This was all, of course, completely mystifying to Pontius Pilate, who could not initially regard Jesus as any sort of threat to Roman law and order. So Benedict writes:
…. At this point we must pass from considerations about the person of Pilate to the trial itself. In John 18:34–35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus' own people, from the Temple authority. It must have astonished Pilate that Jesus' own people presented themselves to him as defenders of Rome, when the information at his disposal did not suggest the need for any action on his part.
Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus' confession. To Pilate's question: "So you are a king?" he answers: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37). Previously Jesus had said: "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world" (18:36).
That God the Almighty is utterly contemptuous of our much-vaunted human power, the ‘might-is-right’ mentality, is attested by Psalm 2:1-6:
Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the LORD and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
Obviously Pilate, though, had never embraced this deeper wisdom of Divine perspective. Benedict continues:
This "confession" of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía). Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus' case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has "no legions".
Jesus is operating on a plane completely different from the world of Pilate – a level of being with which this superstitious pagan Roman cannot come to grips. But can we?
So, Benedict:
With these words Jesus created a thoroughly new concept of kingship and kingdom, and he held it up to Pilate, the representative of classical worldly power. What is Pilate to make of it, and what are we to make of it, this concept of kingdom and kingship? Is it unreal, is it sheer fantasy that can be safely ignored? Or does it somehow affect us?
It is Truth, not power or dominion, that actually typifies the kingdom of Jesus Christ:
In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with "kingdom": namely, power — authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus' "kingdom" nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: "What is truth?" (18:38).
But Pilate’s question continues to have relevance as it is still, today, being asked in political discussions. And human freedom and “the fate of mankind” may be dependent upon the right answer given to this question:
It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power?
By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all — criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?
What is truth? The pragmatist's question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?
Benedict now moves on to a philosophical discussion of truth, beginning with the scholastic definitions of it by Saint Thomas Aquinas, so highly regarded in the Catholic world:
The classic definition from scholastic philosophy designates truth as "adaequatio intellectus et rei" (conformity between the intellect and reality; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 2c). If a man's intellect reflects a thing as it is in itself, then he has found truth: but only a small fragment of reality — not truth in its grandeur and integrity.
We come closer to what Jesus meant with another of Saint Thomas' teachings: "Truth is in God's intellect properly and firstly (proprie et primo); in human intellect it is present properly and derivatively (proprie quidem et secundario)" (De Verit., q. 1, a. 4c). And in conclusion we arrive at the succinct formula: God is "ipsa summa et prima veritas" (truth itself, the sovereign and first truth; Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5c).
This formula brings us close to what Jesus means when he speaks of the truth, when he says that his purpose in coming into the world was to "bear witness to the truth".
Pope John Paul II had, in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (1998), observed that a modern distrust of human reasoning has led to thinkers of today greatly limiting the range of their philosophical endeavour:
….
55. Surveying the situation today, we see that the problems of other times have returned, but in a new key. It is no longer a matter of questions of interest only to certain individuals and groups, but convictions so widespread that they have become to some extent the common mind. An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”. Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures.
Benedict will, along very similar lines, lament that now: “The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear”.
Again and again in the world, truth and error, truth and untruth, are almost inseparably mixed together. The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is "true" to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth.
And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God's likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.
"Bearing witness to the truth" means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being. In this sense, truth is the real "king" that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God's perspective — the perspective of creative reason — in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth.
We, like Pilate, lacking a Divine perspective - such as Jesus was attempting to proclaim - end up by falling hopelessly short of the ideal, worshipping power, not truth:
Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.
And, with power, science, since we consider it to supply many of the answers - some would even go so far as to say it encapsulates ‘the theory of everything’.
But, as Benedict goes on to explain, science does not of itself have the capacity to penetrate to the deeper metaphysical truths:
At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: "The language of God was revealed" (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered.
But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward "truth" itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose.
Truth is indeed most powerful because God’s seeming powerlessness far outweighs any human power:
What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. "Redemption" in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world's standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.
The kingdom offered by Jesus Christ is liberating for man, because in truth man finds his true liberation:
In the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, the subject matter is Jesus' kingship and, hence, the kingship, the "kingdom", of God. In the course of this same conversation it becomes abundantly clear that there is no discontinuity between Jesus' Galilean teaching — the proclamation of the kingdom of God — and his Jerusalem teaching. The center of the message, all the way to the Cross — all the way to the inscription above the Cross — is the kingdom of God, the new kingship represented by Jesus. And this kingship is centered on truth.
The kingship proclaimed by Jesus, at first in parables and then at the end quite openly before the earthly judge, is none other than the kingship of truth. The inauguration of this kingship is man's true liberation.
Jesus Christ is Truth incarnate:
At the same time it becomes clear that between the pre-Resurrection focus on the kingdom of God and the post-Resurrection focus on faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God there is no contradiction. In Christ, God — the Truth — entered the world. Christology is the concrete form acquired by the proclamation of God's kingdom.
The Devil’s Anti-Kingdom, based on lies
“He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: ‘He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies’ [John 8, 44]”.
Carlo Cardinal Caffarra
Carlo Cardinal Caffarra gave this talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 19, 2017.
It is a perfect illustration of Satan as the ‘ape of God’:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/how-satan-destroys-gods-creation-through-abortion-and-homosexuality
ROME, May 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32]. “The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19].
Reading these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in the world, within the human story, considered in its depths. The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.
The area in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty. And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other.
1. At the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether - which is the meaning of Pilate’s question - he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory.
Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18, 37].
“Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth. Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but through the truth of which he is witness, which “all who are from the truth” receive with faith” [I. De La Potterie].
Thomas Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself”. Jesus on the Cross attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of which he is witness is resplendent.
Yet this force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth”. That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth, who live in familiarity with it. Pascal writes:
“You would not seek me if you had not already found me”.
He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies [John 8, 44].
The wording is dramatic. The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the beginning” - is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth”. The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth.
It is murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth, the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate. Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan - as today the majority of exegetes believe - do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this refusal; he is this opposition.
The text continues: “because there is no truth in him”.
The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie. From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. When the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature”, he introduces us to the interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in shadows: a house without doors and without windows.
To summarise, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralise the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us.
Yet, not being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living which is specifically human.
Given that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.
There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat. The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they [= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11].
2. In this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.
The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right. Note well: I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation”.
What in fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion?
Firstly, it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6].
The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an “anti-creation”.
By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his “creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein.
St Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I, page 417]. At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation - the human person - is desecrated.
The second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage.
The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other. Only thus does man escape his original solitude.
One of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of conjugal love.
In summary. There are two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness”. The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar.
At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation.
This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation”.
This is the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man. Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendour of the Truth. He is not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness. He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself. And therefore - continues the Satanic discourse - we tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure.
The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves …. I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and cowardly.”
How should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my reflection, I will seek to answer this question.
The reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation, we are called upon to TESTIFY. This testimony is our mode of being in the world.
The New Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter.
I must confine myself to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony.
Testimony means to say, to speak, to announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The March for Life is therefore a great testimony.
Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in particular of the Gospel of Life and Marriage.
Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr. John 16, 8-11]. I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel. As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favour: in favour of Jesus and his Gospel.
Announcement of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of hostility, of challenge, of unbelief. The alternative is one of two options: either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else. Obviously, what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should render themselves… antipathetic to everyone.
St Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle …and to refute the opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6].
In the context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded. On this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical attitude towards the disease.
Augustine writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin”. Note this well. The Latin word per-sequor is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality”.
I CONCLUDE with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, THE WITNESS.
At His crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth”. [The philosophy of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512].
Years ago, from her convent, Sr. Lucia wrote a letter to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, saying: “Do not be afraid … Our Lady has already crushed his head.”
Love over political power
Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life
of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal:
the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.”
He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom.
Pope Francis’s Angelus address for the feast of ‘Christ the King’ (2018) can be read at, for instance:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-11/pope-francis-angelus-christ-the-king-love.html
Pope at Angelus: ‘Jesus’ eternal kingdom founded on love’
Ahead of the Sunday Angelus prayer on the Solemnity of Christ the King, Pope Francis says Jesus came to establish an eternal kingdom which is founded on love and gives peace, freedom, and fullness of life.
By Devin Watkins
Pope Francis prayed the Angelus on Sunday with thousands of pilgrims huddled under umbrellas in a rainy St. Peter’s Square. He even complemented their courage. “You’re brave to have come with this rain!” he said.
In his address ahead of the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father reflected on the day’s Gospel passage (Jn 18:33b-37) and the Solemnity of Christ the King. He said Jesus’ kingdom rests on the power of love, since God is love.
Christ the King
Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal: the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.” He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom.
In the day’s Gospel, Jesus has been dragged – bound and humiliated – before Pontius Pilate to be tried. The Pope said the religious authorities of Jerusalem present Jesus to the Roman governor of Judea as one who is seeking to supplant the political authority of Rome. They say he wants to become king.
So Pilate interrogates him, twice asking Jesus if he is the king of the Jews.
Jesus replies that his kingdom “is not of this world”.
“It was evident all his life that Jesus had no political ambitions,” the Pope said. He noted that, after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus’ followers had wanted to proclaim him king and to overthrow the power of Rome, in order to restore the kingdom of Israel. Jesus responded, the Pope said, by retreating to the mountain alone to pray.
Founded on love
He contrasted this eternal kingdom with short-lived, earthly kingdoms. “History teaches that kingdoms founded on the power of arms and lies are fragile and collapse sooner or later.”
The kingdom of God, Pope Francis said, “is founded on his love and is rooted in the heart, granting peace, freedom, and fullness of life to those who accept it.”
Finally, the Holy Father said Jesus is asking us to let Him become our king. “A king who by his word, example, and life sacrificed on the cross has saved us from death and points the way to people who are lost, and gives new light to our existence that is marked by doubt, fear, and daily trials.”
But, said Pope Francis, we must not forget that Jesus’ kingdom “is not of this world.”
“He can give new meaning to our life, which is at times put to the test even by our mistakes and sins, only on the condition that we do not follow the logic of the world and its ‘kings’
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-52260306871880021942024-03-22T23:29:00.000-07:002024-03-22T23:29:42.088-07:00Revolution of Jesus not politically-based<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLHbdQqL5ghj5ICiHnZatJ7FnGQ6ppzeFx-jZuxkleW7NO-llkuV8NnAT1A_8oThtGh1vJf_V0mtbFX6SgOqm2jy63aK9GkdeLrS0RM94YO80bkCFHxWU1EipxiQKpQDNfnRkYYNjh7bmT-uDBNqbO798hz2mfuHMWhqRs1-8YkxdAjpkwxGRoMLP9PxhN/s750/5f9a6b8d3304f.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLHbdQqL5ghj5ICiHnZatJ7FnGQ6ppzeFx-jZuxkleW7NO-llkuV8NnAT1A_8oThtGh1vJf_V0mtbFX6SgOqm2jy63aK9GkdeLrS0RM94YO80bkCFHxWU1EipxiQKpQDNfnRkYYNjh7bmT-uDBNqbO798hz2mfuHMWhqRs1-8YkxdAjpkwxGRoMLP9PxhN/s600/5f9a6b8d3304f.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Love of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution",
a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power:
the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources
but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly
in his merciful goodness”.
Pope Benedict XVI
Anyone who reads the late pope Benedict XVI”s series on Jesus of Nazareth will appreciate just how pitifully weak is any argument attempting to make of Jesus Christ some sort of political revolutionary bent upon overthrowing the Romans.
According to a 2011 review of his book:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8374056/Pope-Jesus-was-not-a-political-revolutionary.html
In a new book, 'Jesus of Nazareth', Benedict XVI said Jesus comes to the world "with the gift of healing" and to reveal God's power as "the power of love".
He wrote that Jesus "does not come as a destroyer. He does not come bearing the sword of a revolutionary."
In the biography, Benedict also says that Jesus separated religion and politics "thereby changing the world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path.
"This separation ... of politics from faith, of God's people from politics, was ultimately possible only through the cross," he said.
The 83-year old pontiff also speaks out against religious violence, following a wave of attacks on Christians in several parts of the Muslim world. ….
[End of quote]
How can one who promotes his “kingdom” as being one of “truth”, and of service - exemplified by the washing of his disciples’ feet - and who commands us to love even our enemies, be, at the same time, a sword-bearing militant?
In 2007 (18th February), pope Benedict XVI had considered this matter in an Angelus address:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20070218.html
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This Sunday's Gospel contains some of the most typical and forceful words of Jesus' preaching: "Love your enemies" (Lk 6: 27). It is taken from Luke's Gospel but is also found in Matthew's (5: 44), in the context of the programmatic discourse that opens with the famous "Beatitudes".
Jesus delivered it in Galilee at the beginning of his public life: it is, as it were, a "manifesto" presented to all, in which he asks for his disciples' adherence, proposing his model of life to them in radical terms.
But what do his words mean? Why does Jesus ask us to love precisely our enemies, that is, a love which exceeds human capacities?
Actually, Christ's proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it with more love, with more goodness. This "more" comes from God: it is his mercy which was made flesh in Jesus and which alone can "tip the balance" of the world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive "world" which is the human heart.
This Gospel passage is rightly considered the magna carta of Christian non-violence. It does not consist in succumbing to evil, as a false interpretation of "turning the other cheek" (cf. Lk 6: 29) claims, but in responding to evil with good (cf. Rom 12: 17-21) and thereby breaking the chain of injustice.
One then understands that for Christians, non-violence is not merely tactical behaviour but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who is so convinced of God's love and power that he is not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone.
Love of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution", a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the world! Here is the heroism of the "lowly" who believe in God's love and spread it, even at the cost of their lives.
Dear brothers and sisters, Lent, which will begin this Wednesday with the Rite of Ashes, is the favourable season in which all Christians are asked to convert ever more deeply to Christ's love.
Let us ask the Virgin Mary, docile disciple of the Redeemer who helps us to allow ourselves to be won over without reserve by that love, to learn to love as he loved us, to be merciful as Our Father in Heaven is merciful (cf. Lk 6: 36).
With this in mind, I must have serious reservations about writer/director Lena Einhorn’s suggestion, in her admittedly intriguing article "Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet":
http://lenaeinhorn.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Jesus-and-the-Egyptian-Prophet-12.11.25.pdf
that Jesus may have been involved in a battle on Mount Olivet just prior to his arrest, enabling for Lena to make an association of Jesus with Josephus’s Egyptian prophet.
This is how Lena introduces her article:
ABSTRACT
Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John 18:3 and 18:12 state that Jesus on the Mount of Olives was confronted by a speira – a Roman cohort of 500 to 1,000 soldiers. This suggestion of a battle preceding Jesus’ arrest is reminiscent of an event described by Josephus in the 50s (A.J. 20.169-172; B.J. 2.261-263), involving the so called ‘Egyptian Prophet’ (or simply ‘the Egyptian’). This messianic leader – who had previously spent time “in the wilderness” – had “advised the multitude … to go along with him to the Mount of Olives”, where he “would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down”. Procurator Felix, however, sent a cohort of soldiers to the Mount of Olives, where they defeated ‘the Egyptian’.
Although the twenty-year time difference would seem to make all comparisons futile, there are other coinciding aspects: The preceding messianic leader named by Josephus, Theudas (A.J. 20.97-99), shares distinct characteristics with John the Baptist: Like John, Theudas gathered his followers by the river Jordan, and, like John, he was arrested by the authorities, and they “cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem”.
Curiously, although the names of dignitaries may differ, comparing the New Testament accounts with Josephus’ accounts of the mid-40s to early 50s in several respects appears to be more productive than a comparison with his accounts of the 30s: It is in this later period, not the 30s, that Josephus describes the activity and crucifixion of robbers (absent between 6 and 44 C.E.), a conflict between Samaritans and Jews, two co-reigning high priests, a procurator killing Galileans, an attack on someone named Stephanos outside Jerusalem, and at least ten more seemingly parallel events. Importantly, these are parallels that, judging by Josephus, appear to be absent in the 30s. The significance of this will be discussed.
[End of quote]
In a reply to Lena Einhorn, I wrote in part:
.... As I suspected, there is much of interest to be found in your intriguing article, “Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet”.
One point that jumped to mind when reading of your discussion of the arrest of Jesus involving a battle, and a ‘speira’ of some 500-1000 soldiers, is that poor old Razis of 2 Maccabees, who wasn’t then part of a battle, had 500 soldiers sent to arrest him by Nicanor (14:39-40): “Wanting to show clearly how much he disliked the Jews, Nicanor sent more than 500 soldiers to arrest Razis, because he thought his arrest would be a crippling blow to the Jews”.
A show of force rather than a battle.
Razis is, in my historical reconstruction, the great Ezra (Ezras = Razes), a ‘Father of the Jews’, the same approximate appellation given to Razis. ….
[End of exchange]
For more on Ezra as Razis, see e.g. my four-part series:
Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis
beginning with:
(4) Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis. Part One: Introductory section | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
The Shocking Culture of God
“When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”.
Fr. Nadim Nassar
Fr. Nadim Nassar describes it as “shocking”, when “the culture of God” comes into contact with the “culture of the people”. He, the Church of England’s only Syrian priest, urges a theme in his recent book, The Culture of God (Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), that is also central to my own point of view:
Fr. Nassar is “an outspoken advocate for Western Christians to recognise the Middle-Eastern roots of their faith”.
Actually, this is nothing new.
Eighty years before Fr. Nassar wrote his book, pope Pius XI, addressing a group of Belgian pilgrims (1938), asserted that: “Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites”.
“When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”. (Nassar, p. 180)
Jesus Christ, who had come to set all things right, was wont to say (e.g. Matthew 5:21, 22): ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago …. But I tell you …’.
The first part of this statement refers to the received cultural view of long-standing.
Fr. Nassar describes this as follows (p. 180): “For all of us, we organise our world around ourselves according to what we have been taught, with ‘in’ and ‘out’, friends and enemies, right and wrong, values and vices and so on”. He then goes on to describe the second part of Jesus’s statement: “What a shock when God breaks into our lives and sweeps our ordering of the world aside like a house of cards, and says to us, ‘This is not what I want from you’.”
Whilst there is a meek and mild side to Jesus, he can also be, according to Fr. Nassar’s description, “a volcanic Jesus” (p. 10):
In Matthew 23 Jesus launches a series of fierce attacks on [the Pharisees and scribes]:
‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them’. (23:13)
Along with “volcanic” fury, Fr. Nassar also discerns a humour (“funny”) and irony (“ironic”) in this remark that he thinks Levantine people at least would pick up.
He continues (pp. 10-11):
This saying of Jesus belongs to the essence of the culture of God; here, Jesus is being both ironic and funny, and his audience would have laughed when they heard this. Jesus wanted to speak the truth that touches the people’s hearts on the one hand, and on the other, to really strike the leaders. This is how Jesus handled his earthly culture and the culture of God. Nobody now listens to this sentence and smiles – but in the Levant, you would immediately laugh at Jesus’ irony.
Jesus then attacks the religious leaders for their flawed understanding of what is sacred: ‘Woe, to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?’ (23:16-17). Here, Jesus is not only using harsh words – this is also an exceptional way of speaking that Jesus used exclusively when he spoke to or about the religious leaders. He did it on purpose, to show without any doubt that the leadership they modelled does not belong in any way to the culture of God.
Jesus is furious with the religious leaders because they place great weight on minor matters while ignoring what really counts; he calls them hypocrites, ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). Hypocrisy is especially loathed in the Levant, and an accusation of hypocrisy would stain someone’s character.
On p. 183, Fr. Nassar contrasts the West and the Levant:
The dilemma of the early Church is still in the Levant today. In the West, the secular world has also permeated Christian beliefs, especially the Enlightenment and its focus on reason, which pushed Christianity into becoming an intellectual exercise, losing the warmth of the heart. Spirituality is now left to those on the verges of faith. ….
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-46360084229050537932024-03-21T23:48:00.000-07:002024-03-21T23:48:03.179-07:00Zephaniah may afford a link between Babel and Pentecost<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrpB9T5s9Cbxw7weyw4df3IQufS4rxV0qLHYOVAx6LCaCcRymDFyJ4V6uTJUFSkaPnLzVx-LR5W0mHWtVYlIEoRR64SWxQKDdUBcfk1e4DCanLUlFhQWX4LIz6Ep1pjxSMPGEIY6HOKPGYg8onodQq1mhDBlAfswDWYC6NUSvQwJHf3s-oDdArJ0C7YjA/s960/ShowerOfRoses-2298-1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrpB9T5s9Cbxw7weyw4df3IQufS4rxV0qLHYOVAx6LCaCcRymDFyJ4V6uTJUFSkaPnLzVx-LR5W0mHWtVYlIEoRR64SWxQKDdUBcfk1e4DCanLUlFhQWX4LIz6Ep1pjxSMPGEIY6HOKPGYg8onodQq1mhDBlAfswDWYC6NUSvQwJHf3s-oDdArJ0C7YjA/s600/ShowerOfRoses-2298-1.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since
the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection
comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah”.
Paul J. Pastor
To begin with, the poorly known prophet Zephaniah, traditionally a Simeonite, needs to be more adequately identified.
This becomes easier in the context of my revision, which recognises King Josiah of Judah as being the same individual as King Hezekiah of Judah.
The Simeonite prophet, Micah, who was still active early in the reign of Hezekiah (Jeremiah 26:18-19), then becomes identifiable with the Simeonite prophet Zephaniah of whom we read (Zephaniah 1:1): “The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah … during the reign of Josiah …”.
For an even more fully expanded Micah-Zephaniah, see e.g. my article:
God can raise up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
(6) God can raise up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
A long-held Christian tradition
“On the Vigil of Pentecost, the Old Testament reading is of Babel, the mythical tale of humanity’s hubris and the aetiology of the myriad of languages —
and resulting confusion — existing throughout the world. Anyone who has ever fumblingly studied foreign languages can aim his or her frustration at those arrogant ancient citizens clamoring, “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower (or a wall?) with its top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth”.”
Dr Michael M. Canaris
It has long been recognised amongst the Christian faithful that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit effectively reversed the human tragedy - the wilful rebellion against the Divine - that was the Tower of Babel incident.
Dr. Michael M. Canaris has written about it most perceptively for the Catholic Star Herald:
http://catholicstarherald.org/on-pentecost-the-reversal-of-babel-takes-place/
On Pentecost, the ‘reversal’ of Babel takes place
The feast of Pentecost was not originally a Christian feast, but rather a Jewish one marking 50 days since Passover and the first-fruits of the wheat harvest. Yet, in the fullness of time, Christians came to remember the Lord’s sending of the Spirit on that day, and so it is sometimes referred to as the “birthday” of the church (though other sources, like Saint John Chrysostom, identify the piercing of Christ’s side as the moment in which the church formally came to exist).
On the Vigil of Pentecost, the Old Testament reading is of Babel, the mythical tale of humanity’s hubris and the aetiology of the myriad of languages — and resulting confusion — existing throughout the world. Anyone who has ever fumblingly studied foreign languages can aim his or her frustration at those arrogant ancient citizens clamoring, “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower (or a wall?) with its top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth.”
But in its wisdom, the church points out through the connection of the readings that the havoc wrought by human selfishness can be rectified by the always-greater power of God. For on Pentecost, the “reversal” of Babel takes place. Instead of humanity remaining confounded by the din of voices seeking to talk over one another in pride, the Spirit’s arrival as tongues (lingua) of fire at Pentecost enables each to hear the Word of God proclaimed in his or her native vernacular.
Language is then closely associated with Pentecost.
Scholars since Wittgenstein and Heidegger have been quick to point out that thoughts do not occur in some “chemically pure” form and then subsequently come to be articulated in language. Rather, language forms and makes possible conscious thought. “Language is not just an instrument by which we express what we already know, but is the very medium in which knowledge occurs. Language is the voice of Being, and [humanity], in whom language takes its rise, is the loudspeaker for the silent tolling of Being…It permits Being to show itself” (Avery Dulles, “Hermeneutical Theology”).
Christians of various types, especially charismatics and Pentecostals, believe the Spirit can endow them with a gift regarding “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia. The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is often cited as evidence that this mysterious and effusive verbal outpouring is an authentic fruit of the Spirit. Catholics have historically been cautiously open toward this phenomenon, though it is, to be sure, not a very usual occurrence in suburban parishes on Sundays. While the charismatic wing of the church has fostered a greater willingness to explore the genuine spiritual riches of this reality, and the pope himself has prayerfully engaged in groups where it is practiced, Catholic teaching makes clear that it is not necessary for salvation, somehow evidence of greater holiness than in those who do not experience it, or an integral part of formalized liturgical prayer life for most believers.
Images of fire and wind and breath remind us that the Spirit “blows where it will.” Sometimes this is in entirely unexpected places. Popes John XXIII, John Paul II and Benedict XVI all employed language of a “new Pentecost” when describing the Second Vatican Council. The spiritual common ground being sought both within the Catholic Church and across denominational boundaries reminded the participants (which all three popes were in various capacities) of that day when the Spirit enables the Apostles to proclaim anew what they had witnessed, experienced, touched with their hands and accepted in their hearts: the Author of Life, the Rock of Ages, the All-Consuming Fire, the Alpha and the Omega. The victorious Word of God spoken finally, definitively, and irrevocably to human hearers. ….
Zephaniah ‘intertextual link between Babel and Pentecost’
“… Zephaniah's prophecy provides an indispensable link between the
two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the
seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical
in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.
Paul J. Pastor
Marc Cortez has summarised the work and original insight of Paul Pastor in this review:
http://marccortez.com/2011/04/01/zephaniah-as-the-link-between-babel-and-pentecost/
Zephaniah as the link between Babel and Pentecost
Exegetes and theologians have long argued that Pentecost should be seen as a reversal of Babel – the scattering of the human race through the proliferation of languages healed through the unifying power of the outpoured Spirit. But, if these are two events are key bookends in redemptive history, doesn’t it seem odd that relatively little is said about this in the intervening narrative? Does the OT have any concept of Babel as a problem in need of resolution, or is this a brand new theme suddenly tossed into the mix at Acts 2?
These are the questions that Paul Pastor raised in the paper he presented at the NW meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Paul is an MA student at Western Seminary, and the paper was a summary of his MA thesis, “Echoes of ‘Pure Speech’: An Intertextual Reading of Gen. 11:1-9; Zeph. 3:8-20; and Acts 1-2.” Paul has graciously allowed me to upload the complete thesis here.
The basic thrust of Paul’s argument is that Zephaniah 3:8-20 provides the intertextual link between Babel and Pentecost. As he summarizes:
Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah.
It will be argued that the Babel narrative of Genesis 11:1-9 is accessed and developed by Zephaniah 3:8-20; and that that text in turn provides a guiding paradigm of Babel-reversal that is utilized by Luke in the Pentecost account of Acts 2. Seen in this way, Zephaniah’s prophecy provides an indispensable link between the two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.
Intertextual “echoes” of themes and motifs will be traced at length through the three texts, noting linguistic parallel, narrative similarity, and intertextual dependence for the developing trans-biblical narrative.
The thesis that follows is a fascinating example of intertextuality in biblical exegesis. After a brief summary of his intertextual method, Paul argues that the Babel narrative itself is “incomplete,” leaving the reader in suspense as the story never comes to satisfactory resolution. Paul then argues Genesis forms the clear backdrop for much of Zephaniah, setting the stage for identifying further intertextual connections between the two books.
The heart of Paul’s argument comes in the third part of the thesis, where he identifies a number of textual connections between Gen. 11 and Zeph. 3. In my opinion, intertextual linkages like this always bear the burden of proof as they need to establish real textual connections rather than mere linguistic or thematic similarities. And, Paul does a remarkable job of identifying and defending the connections at work, though you’ll have to read the thesis for yourself to follow all the different lines of argument that he offers.
Finally, Paul turns his attention to Acts 2, arguing that Acts 2 bears many of the same textual markers as the first two passages. Given the strong thematic and linguistic connections, Paul concludes that Luke intends for his readers to see Acts two as the conclusion of a narrative arc that begins in Gen. 11 and runs through Zeph. 3.
And, to wrap everything up, Paul offers a few closing words on how a study like this can impact the life and praxis of faith communities:
It is my sincere hope that this study may also impact the thinking and practice of our local churches and communities of faith.
I believe that when scripture is seen with the literary intricacy and vitality that a study of this type highlights, it is compelling and powerful for those who cling to the scriptures as the word of God. The narrative excellence in view here, the thorough intentionality, and the development of a single coherent narrative across the span of centuries and as the product of three very different communities of faith should capture the attention and imagination of modern believers.
Here are a few brief ideas for what the practical and responsive outworkings of this study could look like: Our thoughts about national and international unity should be profoundly influenced by the paradigm offered in these texts. True unity is only possible across ethnic, social, lingual bounds by the power of the Spirit and for the purpose of a shared service and worship of God.
This study is a reminder that truly, “All scripture is profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV).
The Hebrew Bible is frequently under read by Christian readers, and the Latter Prophets even more so. This section of our Bibles is rich with powerful imagery, concept, and nuance, coloring our theology and worldview. It ought to be increasingly read.
In addition to this, it ought to be increasingly taught and preached. Our pastors and teachers ought to carefully interact with this literature both for its compelling content, as well as the dramatic role that it plays in the over arching scriptural meta-narrative. ….
Here is Paul Pastor’s Abstract:
https://westernthm.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/echoes-of-pure-speech-paul-pastor.pdf
Pentecost as a reversal of Babel has been widely seen by exegetes since the early days of the Church. However, these two stories are by no means simple “bookends” with empty narrative space between them. Rather, it shall be shown that an extremely significant instance of textual connection comes from the often overlooked text of Zephaniah.
It will be argued that the Babel narrative of Genesis 11:1-9 is accessed and developed by Zephaniah 3:8-20; and that that text in turn provides a guiding paradigm of Babel-reversal that is utilized by Luke in the Pentecost account of Acts 2. Seen in this way, Zephaniah's prophecy provides an indispensable link between the two texts of Genesis and Acts; simultaneously looking back into the seminal history of the covenant community and forward to the radical in-breaking of the Spirit at the harvest feast of Pentecost.
Intertextual “echoes” of themes and motifs will be traced at length through the three texts, noting linguistic parallel, narrative similarity, and intertextual dependence for the developing trans-biblical narrative. ….
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-49867045456493254182024-03-18T12:49:00.000-07:002024-03-18T12:49:35.515-07:00The Magi and the Star that Stopped<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjJK0NFqibOhU79TF0WuqOHQbhr-iEeKTdxrbiUFll4EBbxKQY61UrJQfVyUbtLz6aH4kEY5JUUJSCeh2VO_acRcATcu2H9DrgqgsSWLYwnXEgn9fc_1h6dJbiqtX21Ibb7UcZSZ3XhSxWCZ0SBj8kNBcKpW8b20Ky2MSqxelCBqB_rgfePhJ9Icjvd1J/s1024/Magi.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjJK0NFqibOhU79TF0WuqOHQbhr-iEeKTdxrbiUFll4EBbxKQY61UrJQfVyUbtLz6aH4kEY5JUUJSCeh2VO_acRcATcu2H9DrgqgsSWLYwnXEgn9fc_1h6dJbiqtX21Ibb7UcZSZ3XhSxWCZ0SBj8kNBcKpW8b20Ky2MSqxelCBqB_rgfePhJ9Icjvd1J/s600/Magi.png"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
This will be a two-part article in which, firstly, I shall attempt to account for the ethnicity of the eastern Magi, and, secondly - but not originally - identify Matthew 2’s “Star”.
Some might call it arrogance, while others might recognise it as a personal conviction that one’s well-researched conclusion is most definitely the correct one. Whatever about all that, the entertaining Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Catholic priest, author and lecturer, is utterly convinced that he has, after a long and serious probe into the matter, properly identified the enigmatic Magi of Matthew 2.
Fr. Dwight tells all about it in the following articles, the validity of whose conclusions I shall consider further on:
https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-myth-of-the-magi/
The Myth of the Magi
About this time in 2017 my book The Mystery of the Magi was published. I had high hopes for it. Of all my books it was the one I had spent the most time on. I had actually done something like RESEARCH believe it or not. I mean, the darn thing had footnotes and a bibliography!!!
Seriously, I had worked hard on the book and thought I had made some important discoveries about the historical basis of the Magi story in Matthew’s gospel. I hoped New Testament scholars and historians of the period might at least read it and that it might be critiqued and if I was wrong in my speculation, that the book would raise the issues of the possible historicity of the story of the wise men.
I was not prepared for how difficult it would be to dislodge centuries of myth about the magi.
Whoa! I hear you say, “Myth! Father, are you a liberal after all? You don’t believe the Bible? You think the Magi story is a myth?”
Yes and no and not quite so let me explain.
First of all, I don’t think Matthew’s account of the magi visiting Bethlehem is fiction.
I think the story is based in real events with real historical characters. However, I’m aware that most Biblical scholars think the whole thing is a fanciful fairy tale. In fact, thinking that the Magi story is a fairy tale is a kind of test of whether you are a serious Bible or scholar or not.
Raymond Brown admits it and even jokes about it in his big fat book The Infancy Narratives.
I was told the same thing by several well known conservative Bible scholars–both Evangelical and Catholic.
“Whoa!” they said, “Don’t you know that if I even suggest that the Magi story might have some basis in historical truth I’ll be laughed out of my job and relegated to teaching Sunday School in North Dakota!” (no offense intended towards the good people of ND)
I had a conversation with one condescending scholar on the phone who said, “But you are beginning from entirely the wrong premise. There is no historical basis for the Magi story.”
“Uh. That is what my book is about. The historical basis for the magi story.”
“You don’t seem to understand. There is NO historical basis for the magi story.”
“No, YOU don’t seem to understand. That is what my book is about.”
The conversation ended.
So why do the scholars think the magi story has no historical basis? Because, of all the stories from the New Testament, the Magi story actually has become rather mythical, magical and mysterious. I explain in my book how the Magi story began to be elaborated by the Gnostic writers in the third and fourth centuries and beyond.
They were very influenced by Manicheanism, and with their emphasis on secret knowledge and magical lore, the magi story was tailor made. The gnostic magi became the heroes of far out and fanciful gnostic apocryphal writings.
Soon they had names, they were kings and they followed a magical star and rode on camels on a long trek across the desert.
Add a few more centuries and a lot more story tellers and soon they came from India, China and Africa. One was old, one middle ages and one young. Then they represented the three main racial groups – African, Caucasian and Asian.
But none of that is in Matthew’s gospel. This mythical version became the received version and it is still the version we tell ourselves at Christmas.
In rejecting this elaborated mythical version, (which they were right to do) the scholars threw out the magi with the magic. They decided the magi story was nothing but a fanciful fable made up long after the birth of Christ by Christians who wanted make him seem more special.
In rejecting the myth they went ahead and created their own myth–the myth that the magi story can’t possible be historically true, and that myth is even harder to shift than a myth that is fanciful and magical.
So I decided to dig past all the myths and explore the culture, history, politics, geography and religion of first century Judea and Arabia. As I did the research I kept asking why nobody had done this before. What I was discovering was truly ground breaking and fascinating. Then I realized, the reason no one had bothered to do the homework was because they all believed the myth.
The traditional folks continued to believe the myth about three wise men named Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar going on a long desert journey on camels following a magical star while the liberals continued to believe the myth that the whole thing was a myth. Consequently neither side bothered to look into the question whether there might have been such characters and where they might have come from and why they might have been motivated to go on a quest to find a newborn King of the Jews
The result was The Mystery of the Magi. Most of those who read it thought highly of the book. Unfortunately many did not read it.
Why? Because they already figured that they knew about it already. In other words, they were not concerned with the Mystery of the Magi because they believed the Myth of the Magi.
….
November 30th, 2019 ….
Fr. Dwight will come to the conclusion that the Magi were wise Nabataean Arabs from the fabulous land of Petra:
https://stream.org/mystery-of-the-magi-solved-an-interview-with-fr-dwight-longenecker/
….
Matthew says they came “from the East.”
He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula.
….
The Stream: So who were the Nabateans? And why would they … or specifically, counselors to the Nabatean king … be interested in some Hebrew prophesy about a Messiah?
The Nabateans were a trading nation controlling the trade routes from Yemen across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean port of Gaza and from Egypt North to Syria and beyond. Their capital of Petra was at the crossroads of these two important routes. They traded in luxury goods from India and China through Yemen and back with goods from across the Roman Empire. Gauze? It came from Gaza. Damask fabric? It came from Damascus.
The Nabatean culture at the time of Jesus’ birth was a blend of Abrahamic tribes that had wandered in the Arabian desert, immigrants from Babylon who occupied the Arabian peninsula and the influence of the Greeks. Petra was therefore a very cosmopolitan city with the traders bringing not only goods, but culture influences from the ancient world from China to Greece and Rome and from Africa North to Syria, Persia and present day Turkey.
As wise men they would have been astrologers, but also students of the prophecies from the different cultures — including the Jewish prophecies. At the downfall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., many Jews went into exile — not only to Babylon, but into the Babylonian controlled territory of Arabia. Some think the second portion of the book of Isaiah was actually written there, and this includes the important prophecy in chapter 60. ….
Were the Magi “enlightened pagans’’?
Although Biblical critics claim to find whom they call “enlightened pagans” all through the Bible (Old and New Testaments), I am not so sure that they always get this right.
I took a sample of such characters:
MELCHIZEDEK;
RAHAB;
RUTH;
ACHIOR;
JOB;
and concluded - in some cases following other researchers - that none of these was in reality a pagan (Gentile). Keeping it very simple by way of summary here:
MELCHIZEDEK was, according to Jewish tradition, the great Shem, righteous son of Noah. Whilst that does not make him a Hebrew (Israelite/Jew), which tribal concepts did not exist at that early stage, he, truly blessed as he was (cf. Genesis 9:26-27), was not, as is commonly thought, an enlightened Canaanite (hence pagan) king.
Melchizedek was the eponymous Semite (Shem-ite), whose “slave” Canaan was (9:26).
RAHAB the prostitute, in the Book of Judges, was truly enlightened (Hebrews 11:31):
“By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient”, but she, actually Rachab, may need to be distinguished from (the differently named) Rahab of Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 1:5).
RUTH was a Moabite only geographically, but not ethnically, otherwise she would have encountered this ban from Deuteronomy 23:3-4:
No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the Assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor … to pronounce a curse on you.
ACHIOR. The same comment would thus apply to Achior ‘the Ammonite’, presuming that he truly was an Ammonite.
He wasn’t. Achior needs some special extra treatment (see further on).
JOB was, in my firm opinion, Tobias, the son of Tobit, a genuine Israelite from the tribe of Naphtali, in Ninevite captivity. I suspect that his given pagan name in captivity was the Akkadian ‘Habakkuk’ (also shortened to Haggai), the prophet of that name.
And I suspect, too, that others could be added to the list, as Israelites, not pagans.
The Magi, for one.
Delilah, a presumed Philistine. Whilst she may not deserve the epithet, “enlightened”, Delilah most probably was an Israelite - as convincingly explained by George Athas:
https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/samson-and-delilah-the-israelite-woman/
Achior, his conversion and circumcision
Various significant misconceptions abound about this important character, ACHIOR. First of all, Achior of the Book of Judith (and the Douay’s Tobit) was not an Ammonite.
The Book of Judith, as we now have it, suffers from an unfortunate confusion of names (people and places), making it most difficult to make sense of it.
“… Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5), should read, instead, “… Achior, leader of all the Elamites”. Not that Achior was ethnically an Elamite, but because king Esarhaddon had assigned him to govern Elam. For Achior was the same person as the famous Ahikar, governor of Elam, of whom the blind Tobit tells (2:10): “… Ahikar took care of me for two years before he went to Elymaïs [Elam]”.
To confuse matters even further, the Book of Judith has a gloss (1:6), in which Achior/ Ahikar is now called “Arioch”: “Rallying to [the king] were all who lived in the hill country, all who lived along the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, as well as Arioch, king of the Elamites …”.
As noted further back, had Ruth been a Moabite, or Achior an Ammonite – as is commonly thought – then the Deuteronomical ban against these two nations (23:3-4) would disallow either from being received into the Assembly of Israel – which, in fact, Achior was, after the triumphant Judith had shown him the head of his Commander-in-chief, “Holofernes” (Judith 14:6-7, 10):
When [Achior] came and saw the head of Holofernes … he fell down on his face in a faint. When they raised him up he threw himself at Judith’s feet and did obeisance to her and said, ‘Blessed are you in every tent of Judah! In every nation those who hear your name will be alarmed’.
….
When Achior saw all that the God of Israel had done, he believed firmly in God. So he was circumcised and joined the House of Israel, remaining so to this day.
The unfortunate misconception that Achior was an Ammonite, who would join the Assembly of Israel despite the Deuteronomical ban, is one of the primary reasons why the Jews (Protestants) did not accept the Book of Judith into their scriptural canons.
The confusion of names (people and places), as already mentioned, is another reason. But this, too, can be rectified.
Tobit himself tells us precisely who was this Ahikar (Achior) (Tobit 1:21-22):
But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and when they fled to the mountains of Ararat, his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael, over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. …. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration and accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria, so Esarhaddon appointed him as second-in-command. He was my nephew and so a close relative.
The Magi were Transjordanian Israelites
Whilst I greatly enjoyed reading Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and I admire both his infectious enthusiasm and his genuine efforts to identify the Magi, my own conclusion is that they were - like those other alleged biblical “enlightened pagans” - true Israelites.
Fr. Dwight was right to look for a biblical East, rather than for a more global one, for the home of the Magi. We recall that he wrote:
Matthew says they came “from the East.” He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula. ….
That, too, the biblical approach, is the one that I favour, but I would identify the Magi’s East, instead, with the East of the Book of Job (1:1-3):
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
I vaguely recall having read of (but can no longer trace it) a tradition that had the Magi descended from the prophet Job.
The best location for Job’s “Uz” is Ausitis in the Hauran region east of the Jordan.
Job, as young Tobias, had returned to that region, to “Ecbatana”, accompanied by the angel Raphael (Tobit 7:1). This was the Syrian Ecbatana, which is Batanaea, or Bashan, south of Damascus. This East was very close to Israel proper.
There, holy Naphtalian descendants of Job patiently awaited the return of “His Star” (Matthew 2:2).
But how did they know that it was coming? And how did they know that it was “His”?
A key to this, and to the identification of the “Star” itself, may be Tobit 13.
Old Tobit (now dying), a possible ancestor of the Magi, proclaimed this to his son, Tobias (i.e. Job) (13:11-18):
A bright light will shine to all the remotest parts of the earth;
many nations will come to you from far away,
the inhabitants of the ends of the earth to your holy name,
bearing gifts in their hands for the King of heaven.
Generation after generation will give joyful praise in you;
the name of the chosen city will endure forever.
Cursed are all who reject you
and all who blaspheme you;
cursed are all who hate you
and all who speak a harsh word against you;
cursed are all who conquer you
and pull down your walls,
all who overthrow your towers
and set your homes on fire.
But blessed forever will be all who build you up.
Rejoice, then, and exult over the children of the righteous,
for they will all be gathered together
and will bless the Lord of the ages.
Happy will be those who love you,
and happy are those who will rejoice in your peace.
Happy also all people who grieve with you
because of your afflictions,
for they will rejoice with you
and witness all your joy forever.
My soul blesses the Lord, the great King,
for Jerusalem will be rebuilt as his House for all ages.
How happy I will be if a remnant of my descendants should survive
to see your glory and acknowledge the King of heaven.
The gates of Jerusalem will be built with sapphire and emerald
and all your walls with precious stones.
The towers of Jerusalem will be built with gold
and their battlements with pure gold.
The streets of Jerusalem will be paved
with ruby and with stones of Ophir.
The gates of Jerusalem will sing hymns of joy,
and all her houses will cry, ‘Hallelujah!
Blessed be the God of Israel!’—
and the blessed will bless the holy name forever and ever.”
Some time later, as the Temple about which Tobit spoke here was nearing completion, the motivating prophet Haggai - who I believe to have been Tobit’s very son, Tobias (= Job/Habakkuk) - will promise the return to the Temple of the Glory of the Lord, commonly known as Shekinah (a name that does not, however, appear in the Bible). Haggai announces (2:6-9):
This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this House with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the LORD Almighty. ‘The glory of this present House [Temple] will be greater than the glory of the former House,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.
His Star “Stopped”
What a contrast in attitudes (personalities?)!
Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s complete certainty that he has identified the Magi, and Matthew Erwin’s almost matter-of-fact right identification (so I think) of the “Star”.
Once again, as in the case of Fr. Dwight, the biblical approach is taken.
Previously I wrote regarding Matthew Erwin and his identification of the “Star”:
At last I have found an article that, for me, makes proper sense of the Nativity Star. Professor Matthew Ervin, in December 2013, explained it as the Glory of the Lord. He uses the word, Shekinah, which word, however, is not found in the Bible.
I would prefer:
Glory of the Lord (כְבוֹד יְהוָה), Chevod Yahweh (e.g. 2 Chronicles 7:1).
Matthew Ervin writes in a simple blog:
https://appleeye.org/2013/12/15/the-star-of-bethlehem-was-the-shechinah-glory/
The Star of Bethlehem Was the Shekinah Glory
….
Theories as to what the Star of Bethlehem was are myriad. The usual answers look to celestial objects ranging from real stars to comets. Indeed, the inquiry has been so wide sweeping that virtually every object appearing in the sky has been posited as the Bethlehem Star. However, when Scripture is examined the identity of the Star is evident. The Greek ἀστέρα or astera simply identifies a shining or gleaming object that is translated as star in Matthew 2:1-10.
The magi specifically referred to it as, “His star” (v. 2). In addition, the behavior of this Star alone is enough to discount any natural stellar phenomenon. ….
If not a regular stellar object then what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? The synoptic narrative in Luke’s Gospel provides an answer:
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
Luke 2:8-9 (ESV)
The glory of the Lord here is a powerful example of the Shekinah Glory.
This type of glory is a visible manifestation of God’s presence come to dwell among men. The Shekinah was often accompanied by a heavenly host (e.g. Ezek. 10:18-19) and so it was at the birth of Christ (Luke 10:13). The Shekinah Glory declared Messiah’s birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-11). The Star of Bethlehem likewise declared to the magi that Messiah had arrived (Matt. 2:9-10). No doubt this is because Matthew and Luke were describing the same brilliant light in their respective gospels.
Although the Shekinah takes on various appearances in Scripture, it often appears as something very bright. This includes but is not limited to a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), a burning bush (Ex. 3:1-5; Deut. 33:16), a pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. 13:21-22), a cloud with lightning and fire (Ex. 19:16-20), God’s afterglow (His “back”) (Ex. 33:17-23), the transfiguration of Jesus (e.g. Matt. 17:1-8), fire (Acts 2:1-3), a light from heaven (e.g. Acts 9:3-8) and the lamp of New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23-24).
It was the Shekinah Glory that dwelled in the Holy of Holies. It was last in Solomon’s temple but departed as seen by Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4-19; 11:22-23). Haggai prophesied that the Shekinah Glory would return to the temple in Israel and in a superior way (Hag. 2:3; 2:9). And yet it would seem that this never happened for the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Perhaps though the Shekinah did return. The Star of Bethlehem was the Shekinah Glory declaring the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and residing in His person. And why not? The Messiah was prophesied to come as a star (Num. 24:17), and Jesus is called the, “bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16). ….
[End of quote]
It would be most fitting for the prophet Haggai to foretell the return of the Glory cloud.
The family of Job-Tobias knew, from what we now have written in Tobit 13, that the Glory of the Lord was going to return after the Exile.
Job, as Haggai, now in his late old age, had advised the people, disappointed at the sight of the second Temple, that the Glory of the Lord would return to it.
And return again it did, with the Birth of Jesus Christ, the New Temple, who would render obsolete “the old stone Temple” (pope Benedict XVI).
In other words, the second Temple was only ever to be temporary, and would be dramatically replaced (destroyed even) by He who is the true Temple of God.
The Shepherds saw the Light at close hand and were able to go directly to the stable. For the Magi, the guiding Light conveniently stopped, just as the shining Cloud was wont to do during the Exodus (Numbers 9:17): “When the cloud moved from its place over the Tent, the Israelites moved, and wherever the cloud stopped, the Israelites camped”.
The Magi had long been expecting it. Their possible ancestor, Tobit, had foretold its return, and his son, Haggai, had confirmed it some time later.
The Magi, who - as descendants of Job, as I think - were undoubtedly clever and educated, did not really need, though, to be able to read the heavens and constellations (as Job almost certainly could, Job 38:31-33) to identify the Star.
They were expecting it and they simply had to wait until they saw it.
This was a manifestation for Israel, to be understood by Israel, which is a solid reason why I think that the Magi must have been Israelites, not Gentiles.
The Nativity Star of relevance to Israel determined the ethnicity of Matthew’s Magi.
Child Jesus at Pontevedra stands on a luminous cloud
The resplendent Christ Child appeared again, with his holy Mother, at Pontevedra, Spain, 10th December, 1925, likewise “elevated on a luminous cloud”.
We read about it at:
https://fatima.org/news-views/the-apparition-of-our-lady-and-the-child-jesus-at-pontevedra/
On July 13, 1917, Our Lady promised at Fatima:
“If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved … I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.”
As Fatima scholar Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité tells us, this first secret of Our Lady “is a sure and easy way of tearing souls away from the danger of hell: first our own, then those of our neighbors, and even the souls of the greatest sinners, for the mercy and power of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are without limits.” ….
Circumstances of the Apparition ….
The promise of Our Lady to return was fulfilled in December 1925, when 18-year-old Lucia was a postulant at the Dorothean convent in Pontevedra, Spain. It was here, during an apparition of the Child Jesus and Our Lady, that She revealed the first part of God’s plan for the salvation of sinners: the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays of the month.
Lucia narrated what happened, speaking of herself in the third person – perhaps, in humility, to divert attention from her role in the event:
“On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to her [Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said:
“‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’
“Then the Most Holy Virgin said:
“‘Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude.
You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess … receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.’”
The Great Promise and Its Conditions
As Fatima author, Mark Fellows, noted:
“The Blessed Virgin did more than ask for reparatory Communion and devotions on five First Saturdays: She promised Heaven to those who practiced this devotion sincerely and with a spirit of reparation. Those who wonder whether it is Mary’s place to promise eternal salvation to anyone forget one of Her illustrious titles: Mediatrix of all Graces.” ….
Our Lady promises the grace of final perseverance – the most sublime of all graces – to all those who devoutly practice this devotion. The disproportion between the little requested and the immense grace promised reveals the great power of intercession granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls. Furthermore, this promise also contains a missionary aspect. The devotion of reparation is recommended as a means of converting sinners in the greatest danger of being lost.
….
For more information, see The Magnificent Promise for the Five First Saturdays (Section III, pp. 8-16). ….
https://fatima.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/cr49.pdf
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-26055185459982941852024-03-07T22:36:00.000-08:002024-03-07T22:36:45.118-08:00How C.S. Lewis made me a Christian – Barney Zwartz<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhURHwPGNeGgxJ1Ye_2_a2mukAYtjF54rnThp2TLgShi32cpaAbZkh5R76LEh_Mhc8RQkC-uOqw0eXGy38nETjAw1TTefx3ladtanu_P_K0HvitLO31n__zQAYACBU5-jRXDTzVPzQerqCkxleubcQD9HA6ga_omfT3KtlLDbmvmFkZtTi6jOzdmxUL15lD/s259/images.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhURHwPGNeGgxJ1Ye_2_a2mukAYtjF54rnThp2TLgShi32cpaAbZkh5R76LEh_Mhc8RQkC-uOqw0eXGy38nETjAw1TTefx3ladtanu_P_K0HvitLO31n__zQAYACBU5-jRXDTzVPzQerqCkxleubcQD9HA6ga_omfT3KtlLDbmvmFkZtTi6jOzdmxUL15lD/s600/images.jpg"/></a></div>
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen,
not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else”.
C.S. Lewis
My son has just finished reading the seven Narnia books to my grandchildren, aged six and five. I am delighted by this because as a child I was addicted to these books, reading them over and over (and again as an adult).
Every good communicator knows the power of a story, and Narnia author C.S. Lewis – a great literary critic and explainer of Christianity whose influence is as strong today 60 years after his death – certainly did.
The first published, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is the most perfect allegory of Christianity but, growing up in a household in which religion was utterly irrelevant, I did not understand this. The power of the story worked on its own terms.
Only after I became a Christian in my mid-20s did I understand how important an influence Lewis was on my journey. He showed me that we live in an ineluctably moral universe, in which personal responsibility really matters. He helped shape my understanding of good and bad as real rather than constructs – without in any way being “preachy”.
Lewis wrote of his Narnia books that such stories could bypass the inhibitions wrought on so many by the religiosity of much Christianity.
“Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.
“But suppose that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their true potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
I have always had my share of watchful dragons, but Lewis’ priorities and values resonated and silently took root.
Speaking of Lewis, theologian Alister McGrath noted: “Stories are not simply things to entertain us, they are things that are there to convey meaning, to open up newer imaginative possibilities. Here is a new way of seeing things, and if you enter into this way of seeing things the world is a very different place.
“This rediscovery of the imagination in human truth-seeking and truth-telling is really very important. Lewis played a very important role in doing that.”
What Lewis showed me in the Narnia books, though I understood this only much later, is well summarised in another of his famous lines: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”
Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-27796747273904983672024-02-25T20:42:00.000-08:002024-02-25T20:42:39.052-08:00Jesus Christ came as Bridegroom
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgvdgQDsu3zmnapj42lne7bOnEaazer3gYMh2Y1-u7kS3SYFs1Cxeb-OcUcoiubRFcFwzDFfba1VFUq6LCZXawnwWkUFfCa846uBOyZYHyk8AgneZllQPph4x7kFxYg4fXCYXwDClxg79Tlz1O6qupUkgGHN3c4czNjTdorhocYQdiOK2RHLHAIXaWJB5/s400/marriage-of-creator-creature-quote-pin-pitre.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgvdgQDsu3zmnapj42lne7bOnEaazer3gYMh2Y1-u7kS3SYFs1Cxeb-OcUcoiubRFcFwzDFfba1VFUq6LCZXawnwWkUFfCa846uBOyZYHyk8AgneZllQPph4x7kFxYg4fXCYXwDClxg79Tlz1O6qupUkgGHN3c4czNjTdorhocYQdiOK2RHLHAIXaWJB5/s600/marriage-of-creator-creature-quote-pin-pitre.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
John the Baptist says,
“You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ’I am not the Christ, but I have been sent
before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom,
who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy
of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.
John 3:28-30
Introduction
Every new disturbance in the world, be it of natural cause such as earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes; political, such as Middle Eastern crises, Islamic Jihads and Chinese aggression; or economic, for example the new wave of food shortages sweeping the world, finds its modern-day interpreter with the Book of Revelation in hand. Depending upon one’s political or religious proclivity the Beast of Revelation (Revelation 13:11) can be, now the President of the United States, or, previously, Saddam Hussein rebuilding the city of Babylon, or even the Pope ruling Catholicism. This sort of frenzied speculation became particularly apparent as Year 2000 approached, with the ‘millennium bug’ seriously biting the loony cultist fringe. For the Israeli government then had to deport a group of American ‘Christians’ for fear that they had violent intentions towards the Old City, suspecting them to be amongst fanatics who believe that the ancient Temple of Jerusalem is destined to be rebuilt in the near future.
This would mean firstly clearing away - even with a bomb if necessary - the great Moslem shrine, the Dome of the Rock, that now occupies the mount.
Meanwhile, certain Protestant and evangelical groups continue to persist with the notion, conceived during the Reformation, that the Pope is Antichrist and that the ‘Roman Catholic Church’ is the “famous prostitute” of Revelation, “riding a scarlet beast which had seven heads and ten horns” (17;2, 3), the seven heads being also “the seven hills” (18:9). This latter, they insist, must be a reference to Rome with its Seven Hills. And they puzzle as to why prayerful, Bible-believing Catholics cannot see this.
The Modernist crisis has only reinforced this view in their minds, especially when they learn of ‘Catholic’ bishops denigrating the Bible and supporting Gay Acceptance, etc.
No doubt some of these non-Catholic brethren are genuine in their beliefs. They are certainly firm in them. Leo Harris for instance, writing the Foreword to Thomas Foster’s The Pope, Communism and the Coming New World (Acacia Press, Victoria), having acknowledged that: “In the present remarkable days, with the Holy Spirit touching the lives of many people in both the Roman Catholic and main-line Protestant churches, one may feel reluctant to expose the errors found in any church system”, feels constrained nonetheless to add a point that will be taken up more vehemently by Foster himself: “However, it is no light matter that any one man should arise and claim supreme headship over the church as Christ’s sole representative or vicar”.
Foster himself will go so far as to identify the Pope as Antichrist (which name, he insists, literally means in the place of Christ).
I personally know of Protestants who, whilst likewise being quite uncomfortable with the concept of the Papacy, are prepared nonetheless - in the current climate of ecumenism - not to make too much of an issue out of it, but to accept that there is presently going on throughout the world what they might call a ‘mustering of all people of good will’ (including even Roman Catholics).
Perhaps this new outlook is the first stirring of unity; the graces of the ecumenical effort.
We Catholics have of course a view quite different from these Protestants regarding the Pope and the Church. We acknowledge the Pope to be the appointed Vicar of Christ on earth (cf. Matthew 16:18), the very foundation of the Church, and infallible in matters of faith and morals. The Church we consider to be pre-eminently Marian (even before it was Petrine). The Blessed Virgin Mary, according to John Paul II, “is the image of the Church whom we likewise call mother” (Homily 18 November 1980. Cf. Lumen Gentium, #63).
We therefore shudder at the accusation made by Luther-inspired Protestants that the Catholic Church is to be identified with the loathsome “Harlot” of the Apocalypse, which derogatory title we consider to be a most appropriate label, symbolically speaking, for the Modernist ‘World Wide Church of Darkness’ (cf. Pope St. Pius X).
Apocalypse already fulfilled
In this article I shall be endeavouring to show - hopefully to assist ecumenical efforts by clearing away misgivings, but especially to provide Catholics with a defence against unwarranted accusations by Protestants - that the mystery Whore, “Babylon the Great”, is not Rome at all (either physical or spiritual) but the ancient City of Jerusalem where Jesus himself was crucified - and where many of the Prophets (beginning with Abel), Apostles and disciples of Our Lord were martyred. In this way I hope to establish that the Whore cannot possibly have anything to do with the Catholic Church.
I shall be arguing here that the Book of Revelation has, in the main, already been literally fulfilled; that it was fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies under Titus in 70 AD, corresponding to the burning of “Babylon” in Apocalypse ch.s 17-18.
Its relevance for us today is allegorical and symbolical (e.g. the above-mentioned likening of the Harlot, which is a city, with Modernism, which is a system of thought with a corresponding praxis). Indeed this view accords perfectly with John Paul II’s statement to a C20th audience that the Book of Revelation is ‘symbolical and figurative in meaning’.
Essentially Revelation is about the divorce of one ‘woman’ (one formerly just ‘woman’ who had gone bad), and the marrying of a new, faithful one.
The scroll of Revelation 5:1 is actually a bill of divorce; the divorce being completed in the most emphatic manner with the annihilation of the harlot city, “Babylon”.
I am indebted to Kenneth Gentry (Jr.) in “A Preterist View of Revelation” for spelling this out.
E.g. [pp. 51-2]:
When viewed against the backdrop of the theme of Jewish judgment, personages (a harlot and a bride), and the flow of Revelation (from the sealed scroll to a capital punishment for “adultery” to a “marriage feast” to the taking of a new “bride” as the “new Jerusalem”), the covenantal nature of the transaction suggests that the seven-sealed scroll is God’s divorce decree against his Old Testament wife for her spiritual adultery.
In the Old Testament God “marries” Israel (see esp. Ezek. 16:8, 31-32), and in several places he threatens her with a “bill of divorce” (Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:8).
(In C. Marvin Pate’s Four Views on the Book of Revelation, Zondervan, 1998. The word “preterist” is based on a Latin word præteritus, meaning “gone by”, i.e. past).
Also I want to clear up the serious problem (one of commentators own making) whereby the Apostles, expecting (according to such commentators) Christ’s final coming (Parousia), in their own day, were thus mistaken because that did not come about - still has not. Such an interpretation would suggest that Our Lord had passed on to his intimate friends the wrong time-table.
This is, of course, quite unacceptable.
My argument here will be that the Apostles were referring first and foremost to Christ’s victorious coming in 70 AD, thus freeing the early Church from her Judaïc (now corrupted and nationalistic) connections.
The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD may not mean a lot to us now in the C20th -especially we who have grown up with Western-based education that tends to eschew (or not understand) everything Semitic - but it meant a heck of a lot to those of the Apostolic era, who were mostly Jews, and who continued to worship in the Jerusalem Temple and the synagogues virtually to the very end.
The emphasis here will be on the historico-literal.
Some Illustrations of this Interpretation
The historico-literal level of biblical interpretation is the most basic one, and Popes and Saints have urged that Scripture scholars firstly identify that level. Saint Thomas Aquinas himself was utterly convinced of its importance; for, according to Monsignor G. Kelly, in his refutation of Fr. Raymond Brown and co. (The New Biblical Theorists, p. 13): “St. Thomas Aquinas is usually cited as a leading Church doctor who knew the importance of discovering the literal sense”.
Obviously there can be only one historico-literal fulfilment of anything.
The ancient prophet Hosea was actually commanded by God to pantomime the tragic situation of Israel’s infidelity to God, by taking for his wife an adulteress from the harlot nation of Samaria (northern Israel). ‘Go, marry a whore, and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh’ (Hosea 1:2). God knew that this woman, a product of her environment, would be unfaithful to the prophet, but He nevertheless urged Hosea to take her back after her infidelity, as a sign to Israel that God was patient and long-suffering and was also prepared to take back unfaithful Israel (3:1-3).
The bad wife/good wife scenario is in fact the whole tension of the Book of Apocalypse.
The pantomime that Hosea had played out in c.700 BC would now be approximately re-enacted by Jesus Christ himself, the Saviour, in his divorce of the unfaithful earthly Jerusalem (Judaïsm) and his marriage with his new Bride, the heavenly Jerusalem.
This time there will be no taking back of the adulteress, Jerusalem - even though He had passionately longed to do so: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused!’ (Luke 13:34).
His patience with her had at last run out, so to speak.
The ‘Holy Family’ of the Old Testament
The prophet Isaiah’s outspokenness before young king Ahaz would not have endeared him to that proud monarch who went on to become one of Jerusalem’s most evil kings. Though Scripture does not spell it out, there is the implication that Isaiah and his family eventually had to flee Jerusalem to escape king Ahaz’s wrath. This would make Ahaz a forerunner of Herod (cf. Matthew 2:13-14). Here is the reasoning behind such an assumption:
Immanuel we are told, would, before he reached the age of reason, “feed on curds and honey” (Isaiah 7:15).
What does that signify?
It suggests that the family must have been obliged to head north, away from Jerusalem, to the region that had already been devastated and depopulated by the Assyrian armies, where briars and thorns had taken the place of abundant vineyards, and where “all who are left in the country will feed on curds and honey” (vv.22, 23).
Now St. John the Evangelist, in the Book of Revelation, picks up this theme of Immanuel and his mother fleeing into the wilderness to escape the wrath of the ‘king’:
The woman brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the desert, where God made a place of safety ready, for her to be looked after in the 1260 days (12:5-6).
This “male child”, the victorious One, who rides the white horse, is the Christ, victorious in his Passion and Resurrection (cf. 5:5). Pope Pius XII stated unequivocally: “He is Jesus Christ” (as quoted in Opus Dei’s The Navarre Bible: Revelation, p. 70).
This is actually quite obvious from Revelation’s further description of Him (19:12-16):
... the name written on Him was known only to Himself, his cloak was soaked in blood. He is known by the name, The Word of God. From his mouth came a sharp sword .... He is the one who will rule [the pagans] with an iron sceptre, and tread out the wine of Almighty God’s fierce anger. On his cloak and on his thigh there was a name written: ‘The King of Kings and The Lord of Lords’.
He is also Immanuel, “God-with them” (21:3).
As to Revelation’s “Woman”, the “Marian Dimension” of this has already been ably explained by others. The Woman also, of course, represents the Church; and, in literal terms, the fledgling Church of St. John’s day, the new Bride, which was forced to flee into the desert for the duration of 1260 days (i.e. 42 months or 3 and a half years - see below); no doubt in obedience to Our Lord’s Olivet command to his faithful to leave the city of Jerusalem on the eve of her destruction (Matt. 24:15-17,20-22; cf. Mark 13:14):
So when you see the disastrous abomination, of which the prophet Daniel spoke, set up in the Holy Place (let the reader understand), then those in Judæa must escape to the mountains .... Pray that you will not have to escape in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation such as, until now, since the world began, there never has been, nor ever will be again.
That this “great tribulation” refers literally to a pre-70 AD scenario - and not to any later time, including the C21st - is obvious from the mention of the “sabbath” restricting the movements of peoples in Palestine.
All that Jewish legalism went right ‘out the window’ after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Jesus Christ challenges “the reader” to “understand” about the “Abomination that makes desolate”, from which the faithful must flee. But what might have been a riddle then for his contemporaries is really made easy for us by St. Luke, who, removing all the mystery, tells us that this refers to the pagan armies that will encompass Jerusalem (Luke 21:20).
These are the Gog and Magog of Revelation 20:8 - the idea for which St. John borrowed from Ezekiel 38 and 39 - the multi-nation armies of the ruling empire that would attack Judæa and Jerusalem.
“Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16) apparently refers to Jerusalem’s strong northern fortress of Har Magedo (Megiddo).
St. John picks up this, Our Lord’s command to flee, when he writes:
“A new voice from heaven; I heard it say, ‘Come out, My people, away from [Babylon] so that you do not share in her crimes and have the same plagues to bear. Her sins have reached up to heaven ...’.” (Revelation 18:4, 5; cf. 18:2).
The 1260 days (i.e. 42 months or three and a half years) pertain to the period of the Jewish war in the era 66-70 AD.
Now the Virgin Mary did not flee into the desert at this time in history, and for that precise duration of time; for She was no longer on earth, having taken her place beside her Son in heaven. So, just as in the case of Isaiah’s young wife, the literal details cannot be made to fit Mary. And yet the Woman of Apocalypse, in the far-sweeping gaze of the Holy Spirit, does symbolise Mary, as does Isaiah’s “maiden”. Fr. Kramer was therefore quite wrong in his blanket assertion in The Book of Destiny (p. 276) that: “The woman of chapter twelve is not the Blessed Virgin Mary”.
Opus Dei, on the other hand, is most emphatic about this Marian connection, based on Pope St. Pius X (ibid., p. 26):
As in the case of the parables, not everything in the imagery necessarily happens in real life; and the same image can refer to one or more things - particularly when they are closely connected, as the Blessed Virgin and the Church are. So, the fact that this passage is interpreted as referring to the Church does not exclude its referring also to Mary. More than once, the Church’s Magisterium has given it a Marian interpretation. For example, St. Pius X says: ‘Everyone knows that this woman was the image of the Virgin Mary ...’.
Less satisfactory, though, do I find Opus Dei’s implication that the Holy Spirit’s text has trouble fitting a specific, given scenario (p. 97):
The mysterious figure of the woman has been interpreted ever since the time of the Fathers of the Church as referring to the ancient people of Israel, or the Church of Jesus Christ, or the Blessed Virgin. The text supports all of these interpretations but in none do all the details fit.
Such a misalignment is, I believe, forced upon those who fail to recognise in the entire Revelation a consistent historico-literal substratum: namely, that of the era of the Apostles.
All of Revelation’s prophecies strongly reflect actual historical events in St. John’s near future, though - as is obvious to any sound commentator - they are set in apocalyptic drama and clothed in poetic hyperbole.
There will be no problem fitting details once one has the appropriate matrix; the matrix that the Holy Spirit has in mind.
Having said that, there is no harm in one’s allegorizing (one of the three spiritual senses) the whole situation of the Woman fleeing into the desert from the great Red Dragon as the current banishment of Marian devotion, by the Modernists, to the desert of oblivion, or the rejection by Catholics of Our Lady of the Rosary (Fatima) and her message.
It seems to me that the historico-literal sense is necessary to the spiritual sense in a way analogous to the need of the soul for the body. Admittedly the soul can exist without the body, even in Heaven, but there is an incompleteness there that will be resolved only on the last day.
Unmasking the Whore, “Babylon the Great”
St. Augustine, in his The City of God, juxtaposed two cities - the camp of the just and that of the evil - from Cain and Abel right down to his own day. Taking a lead from this, but adopting alongside it the perspective relevant to this article, of the good and the evil woman - of divorce and re-marriage - I shall be contrasting Christ’s Bride with the Devil’s Harlot Woman.
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Jerusalem) are typified in many Scriptures (e.g. Isaiah 1:8, Lamentations 2:13) as a Woman. In Ezekiel, Israel is likened initially to a helpless girl-child upon whom God (as Father) took pity, nourishing her and watching her grow. Afterwards He dressed her in finery and (as Bridegroom) took her for His spouse; eventually crowning her with queenship so that she became the envy of the nations (16:4-14).
But, with the passing of time, she became infatuated with her own beauty; using her fame to make herself a prostitute (v.15); even going beyond the excesses of a prostitute (vv. 21, 33-34).
For her punishment, God handed her over to “all the lovers” [i.e., the nations], with whom she had been trafficking, but who had become sick of her filthy ways (v. 28). These were to treat her in the same way as were treated in antiquity “women who commit adultery and murder ... stripped ... stoned and run through with a sword” (vv. 38, 40).
1. Thus did Assyria do to the northern kingdom of Israel which Ezekiel calls Jerusalem’s “sister”. (Fulfilled in c. 720 BC, conventional dating).
2. And so, God warns through Ezekiel, would the Babylonians do to Jerusalem for not having learned from her sister’s mistakes. (Fulfilled in c. 590 BC, conventional dating).
For the Lord Yahweh says this: “I now hand you [Jerusalem] over to those you hate, to those in whom you have lost interest. They will treat you with hatred, they will rob you of the fruits of your labours and leave you completely naked. And thus your shameful whoring will be exposed .... As you have copied your sister’s behaviour, I will put her cup in your hand”.
The Lord Yahweh says this:
“You will drink your sister’s cup, a cup that is wide and deep, leading to laughter and mockery, so ample the draught it holds. You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow. Cup of affliction and devastation, the cup of your sister Samaria, you will drink it, you will drain it; then it will be shattered to pieces and lacerate your breast.
I have spoken - it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks”. (Ezekiel 23:28, 29:31-33, 34).
3. And St. John is right in line with this Old Testament tradition. In Apocalypse he prepares the Jews for the second destruction of Jerusalem (by the Romans), just as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had done for the earlier destructions, of Israel (by the Assyrians) and Jerusalem (by the Babylonians). The Book of Revelation is absolutely saturated with references from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel; for, according to Fr. Kramer (ibid., 3-4. My emphasis):
The Apocalypse is a prophetical book (IV.1), and it ranks St. John with the prophets of the Old Testament (X.11). The “mystery of God” had been declared by His “servants the prophets (X, 7) .... [Apocalypse] is so largely a restatement of the Old Testament prophecies, that some have called it a mere compilation.
All the seemingly idiosyncratic imagery used in the Book of Revelation by Saint John the Evangelist (e.g. “wormwood”, “burning mountain”; “blood sun”, “great hailstones”, etc.) turns out upon investigation to be ‘re-cycled’ imagery in the sense that it has already been used - and its meaning established - in the Old Testament.
Thus the above graphic image by Ezekiel of Jerusalem as the drunken whore, holding the cup of wrath in her hand, is exactly the same image of Jerusalem that we find in the Book of Revelation (though separated in time from Ezekiel by about half a millennium); the harlot drunk with wine and holding a golden cup in her hand. Thus St. John (17:4-6):
The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and glittered with gold and jewels and pearls, and she was holding a golden winecup filled with the disgusting filth of her fornication; on her forehead was written a name, a cryptic name: ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of all the prostitutes and all the filthy practices on the earth’. I saw that she was drunk, drunk with the blood of saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus ....
Here the martyrs of the Old Testament (called “saints”) are distinguished from those of the New Testament (“martyrs of Jesus”); but they all suffered their fate in the one same city. This city, this vile ‘woman’, is apostate Jerusalem! She is also called “the Great City” (e.g. Revelation 14:8; 18:10), and, again, “the Great City known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified” (11:8). Derogatory names like “Sodom”, “Gomorrah” and “Egypt” were indeed code-names - or, rather, labels of contempt - applied by the Old Testament prophets to Israel and Jerusalem turned harlot. Thus Isaiah addressed Jerusalem’s leaders: “Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the command of our God, you people of Gomorrah ... What a harlot she has become, the faithful city, Zion, that was all justice!” (Isaiah 1:10, 21; cf. Jeremiah 23:14).
And St. John, in turn, picks up this usage for Jerusalem - clearly Jerusalem because she is the only city of which it can be said “in which their Lord was crucified” - and he applies to her the mystery name of “Babylon”, “a cryptic [symbolical] name” (17:5).
And, in case we missed it, St. John goes on to tell us of this “Great City” that: “In her you will find the blood of prophets and saints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth” (18:24).
Now the Evangelist’s description could not possibly apply to Rome, despite what even good commentators seem to think. E.g:
Opus Dei (op. cit.) on Rev 17:1-19:10: “This first section of the final scene begins with the depiction of the city of Rome (described as the great harlot, the great city, great Babylon), its punishment, and its connexion with the beast (the symbol of absolutist antichristian power personified by certain emperors (cf 13:18).
Fr. Kramer (The Book of Destiny, pp. 387-8): “The name of the harlot was written on her forehead. Seneca (“Contro. V.i”) says that Roman harlots wore a label with their name on their foreheads. That would make this verse point to Rome, since this woman is the figure of the great city. St. Peter (I Peter, V.13) writes from Babylon, by which he surely [sic] means Rome.
Roman harlots may indeed have worn a label on their foreheads, which was ancient practice, but it was of Jerusalem that Jeremiah shouted: “You had a whore’s forehead” (Jeremiah 3:3).
Note that Rome does not figure at all in the Old Testament until we come all the way down to its very last history, I and II Maccabees. Rome is there mentioned, but not at all in terms of John the Evangelist’s condemnatory: “In her you will find the blood of prophets and saints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth”. Rather, Rome is spoken of most favourably, even eulogised, by the inspired Maccabean writer. Moreover, the Maccabees had actually formed an alliance with Rome (I Maccabees 8:1, 12-16).
And obviously, from St. John’s description of “Babylon” in terms of great antiquity, it cannot refer to any modern-day (historically recent) city.
No, St. John’s “Babylon” refers to Jerusalem!
In fact Our Lord himself told the Pharisees in what great city the blood of all holy men had been shed, and was still being shed (Matthew 23:35-39):
‘... you will draw down on yourselves the blood of every holy man ... from the blood of Abel ... to the blood of Zechariah ... whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [i.e., of the Jerusalem Temple]. I tell you solemnly, all of this will recoil on this generation. Jerusalem Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! ...
Your House [Temple] will be left to you desolate [cf. Abomination that makes desolate], for I promise, you shall not see Me any more until you say: Blessings on Him who comes in the name of the Lord!’ (Matthew 23:35-39).
‘This generation’
There is a lot for us to chew over in this statement alone. For starters, here is mention of that coming of Christ that has so baffled exegetes, that seems emphatically to pertain to that generation. Yahweh God, who had conceded to Israel a 40-year probation in the desert under Moses (c. 1400 BC), would now again in the time of His Beloved Son allow for about 40 years (c. 30-70 AD), a full generation, to enable the Apostles to gather in whomsoever was destined to be saved. And just as Moses, with assistance from his loyal Levite priests, had to carry, cajole and exhort his people during the trying sojourn in the wilderness, so do we find St. Peter, with his loyal team of Sts. John, Paul, etc., doing the same.
Thus St. Peter: “You must repent ... every one of you must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ... Save yourselves from this perverse generation”. (Acts 2:38, 41).
And St. John: “I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ ...”. (I John 2:1).
And St. Paul: “The Holy Spirit says: If only you would listen to Him today; do not harden your hearts, as happened at the Rebellion [Moses’s day], on the Day of Temptation in the wilderness, when your ancestors challenged Me and tested Me, though they had seen what I could do for forty years”. (Hebrews 3:9)
St. Paul in fact most eloquently tried to lift the peoples’ minds above the earthly Jerusalem that was passing away, to the heavenly Jerusalem. “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses [as it indeed had been in the case of those at Mount Sinai, with fire, noise etc.] ...” (Hebrews 12:18, etc.).
St. Peter again: “... men with an infinite capacity for sinning ....They may promise freedom but they themselves are slaves ... to corruption; because if anyone lets himself be dominated by anything, then he is a slave to it; and anyone who has escaped the pollution of the world once by coming to know our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and who then allows himself to be entangled by it a second time and mastered, will end up in a worse state than he began in. It would even have been better for him never to have learnt the way of holiness, than to know it and afterwards desert the holy rule that was entrusted to him. What he has done is exactly as the proverb rightly says: The dog goes back to his own vomit, and: When the sow has been washed, it wallows in the mud”. (2 Peter 2:14, 19-22).
And St. John again: “Write to the angel of the church in Sardis and say, ‘... I know all about you: how you are reputed to be alive and yet are dead. Wake up; revive what little you have left: it is dying fast. ... Repent. If you do not wake up, I shall come to you like a thief, without telling you at what hour to expect Me’.” (Revelation 3:1-4).
In this way many were saved, “a huge crowd” (Revelation 19:6).
But “the apostasy” of which St. Paul warned (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and from which St. John, too, was trying to hold back the seven churches of Asia (Revelation 1), and from which, too, St. Peter and the other Apostles would have been striving to protect Judæa and Samaria, was ever working its way also - as it had with Moses’s generation as typified at Meribah and Massa in the desert (Psalm 94).
The ‘fruits’ of this apostasy would ultimately be mass destruction.
Thus I believe the above texts of the Apostles to be all approximately contemporaneous witness and exhortation - not writings separated by decades, before and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD!
The Jewish people (especially) would be given a full generation of 40 years to change, with the Apostles urging them not to fall back. Eventually the destroying angel would pass by those who had been marked with the sign of the Lamb, that is the baptised who had persevered in their faith. But those who wore the mark of the beast (Revelation 14:10), the apostates, would be destroyed, and violently.
This is exactly what Jesus Christ had prophetically alluded to prior to his Passion, when he - having had placed before Him by “some people” the examples of
(i) those slain by the Roman troops of Pilate, and
(ii) others killed by a falling tower – had insisted:
‘Unless you do penance you will all perish as they did [that is, by a violent death]’ (Luke 13:1-5). [Not to mention the danger of spiritual death].
For at the end of the 40 years of probation thousands upon thousands of Jews did die violent deaths at the hands of the Romans, with towers likewise falling upon them, and missiles, stones and fire.
Our Lord’s warning applies to all wicked generations, including our own. And we have also had a ‘John and a Paul’ (in John Paul II) telling us, specifically with reference to Revelation, that Vatican II is most essentially a Council of Advent, of the Coming.
But let us once and for all get away from the idea that some modern-day Beast is going to implant 666 micro-computer chips in the foreheads of his followers. More plausibly the ‘mark of the beast’ is - like a Satanic aping of the tau marked upon the forehead by the angel in Ezekiel (9:4) - an invisible, spiritual character that the destroying angel could discern, to kill or to spare.
Nor should anyone be living in fear of terrible storms of hail of unnatural size. [Comment: I first wrote this before Sydney’s awesome hailstorm in April of 1999, when some claimed to have seen hailstones even “the size of a bucket”]. The “great hailstones weighing a talent each” of Revelation 16:21 are undoubtedly the same as those of the exact same weight as described by the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, eyewitness to the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (The Jewish War, 3.7.9, cf. 3.7.10, emphasis added): “... catapults ... threw at once landed upon them with great noise, and stones of the weight of a talent were thrown by the engines that were prepared for that purpose, together with fire .... which made the wall so dangerous that the Jews durst not to come upon it”.
They were stones from the Roman catapults, not hailstones from the clouds.
Josephus’s description of this doomed generation, fittingly punished, completely backs up Our Lord’s numerous complaints about it being “an evil and adulterous generation”, (e.g. Matthew 13:39; Mark 8:12; Luke 11:29), and even worse than Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15; 11:24 Mark 6:11; Luke 10:12). Josephus wrote in retrospect (ibid., 5.10.5): “Neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world”.
Is there an analogous situation with the post-Vatican II generation - again one of history’s worst? Is its time of probation also running out?
Those blessed to have the gift of Faith need to be exhorters and encouragers like the Apostles were to their “perverse generation”, to save some at any cost (cf. Romans 11:14; I Corinthians 9:22).
“Must Soon Take Place”
Revelation is a book of urgency. The events it describes were to happen soon. [When the Bible says “soon”, it means soon, as in the case of the birth of Isaiah’s Immanuel - not in the Third Millennium!]. We learn that lesson when we start reading Revelation at its beginning. Plato, in The Republic, had stated an important maxim: “The beginning is the most important part of the book”, and this principle holds a special significance for the would-be interpreter of Revelation.
“Unfortunately”, as Gentry rightly notes (op. cit., p. 40), “too many prophecy enthusiasts leap
over the beginning of this book, never securing a proper footing for the treacherous path ahead”.
The key to Revelation is found in St. John’s beginning (1:1a, 3):
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon [Gk. tachos] take place .... Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near [Gk. engys].
Again, in case we missed it, St. John repeats this soon-ness at the very end (22:6):
The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirit of the prophets, sent His angel; to show His servants the things that must soon take place’ .... Then he told me, ‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near’.
Just as it would have been senseless for Isaiah’s “sign” for king Ahaz to have been something that would not occur until 700 years later, so would John the Evangelist - according to Gentry (op. cit. p. 42) “... be taunting [the churches] mercilessly if he were discussing events two thousand or more years distant. God answers the anxious cry “How long?” by urging their patience only a “little while longer” (6:10-11). Revelation promises there will no longer be “delay” (10:6)”.
The angel’s command to St. John not to seal up the scroll is also tellingly in favour of this “soon” interpretation. The prophet Daniel, by contrast, had been commanded by the angel to keep his “words secret and the book [scroll] sealed until the time of the End”, because the things Daniel was shown were not to happen for a long time in the future - in fact several hundred years later, in the time of the Apostles’ generation. For Our Lord himself had, during his important Olivet Discourse when facing the Temple of Jerusalem, referred to the “abomination that makes desolate of which the prophet Daniel spoke” (Matthew 24:15; cf. Mark 14:13).
We know from Josephus’s history that the Roman armies of Cestius Gallus, that came up to (and surrounded) Jerusalem in 66 AD, and had all but conquered the city, had suddenly, most strangely, retreated. Even Josephus recognised the hand of Providence in this most unexpected turnabout. Many Jews, he said, fled the city at the time - no doubt e.g. those obedient to Jesus Christ’s Olivet warning. And Josephus is correct in seeing this intermission as only intensifying the pressure ultimately, so that with the return of the Roman armies the final destruction of Jerusalem, when it came (in 70 AD), would be total.
Thus would be fulfilled Our Lord’s prophecy that ‘Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24).
St. John recalls this in Revelation 11:2: “But exclude the outer court [of the Temple]; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months”.
As Gentry has observed (op. cit., p. 66): “... the trampling of the temple in AD 70 (Dan. 9:26-27) after its “abomination” (9:27; cf. Matt. 24:15-16; Luke 21:20-21) ends the Gentiles’ ability to stamp out the worship of God. In Daniel 9:24-27, Matthew 23:38-24:2, and Revelation 11:1-2, the “holy city” and its Temple end in destruction”.
But how do the “times of the Gentiles” relate to the forty-two months of Revelation 11:12)?
Well, the period would range from the spring of 67 AD - when Emperor Nero sent his general, Vespasian, to put down the revolt of the Jews - to August 70 - when the Romans breached the inner wall of Jerusalem, transforming the Temple and city into a raging inferno: a period of forty-two months.
The five months of Revelation 9:5 pertain specifically to the period when the Jewish defenders held out desperately (one might say, fanatically), from April 70 - when Titus began the siege of Jerusalem - until the crescendo at the end of August. According to Gentry (61): “This five months of the Jewish war happens to be its most gruesome and evil period” (cf. Wars, 5.1.1, 4-5; 10:5; 12:4; 13:6).
The Setting
Palestine, not the world, is the stage for the drama of Revelation, despite translations that tell us of Christ’s judgment bringing mourning upon “all the tribes of the earth” (NIV).
Literal translation of the text shows that St. John actually focusses on all the tribes of “the land” (Gk. tês gês), the well-known Promised Land in which the Jews lived. We should probably translate the Greek word hê gê as ‘the land’ rather than ‘the earth’ in the great majority of cases where this occurs in Revelation.
According to Gentry (p. 72):
After mentioning the redeemed/sealed of Israel in 14:1-5, John turns his attention to further judgements on the land by means of three woes (14:6-21) and the seven bowls (chaps. 15-16). Though the prophecies are crafted in dramatic hyperbole, they refer to historical events.
For instance, consider the reaping of the grapes of wrath: “they were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia” (14:20). For compelling reasons, “the city” here appears to be Jerusalem:
(1) John defines the city earlier as Jerusalem (11:8);
(2) the “harvest” is in “the earth/land” (Gk hê gê; 14:15-19);
(3) this judgment falls on the place where Jesus was crucified; “outside the city” (John 19:20; cf. Heb. 13:11-13); and
(4) the Son of Man “on the cloud” (Rev. 14:14-15) rehearses Revelation’s theme regarding Israel (1:7).
The distance of blood flow is 1,600 stadia, which is roughly the length of the land as a Roman province: The Itinerarium of Antoninus of Piacenza records Palestine’s length as 1664 stadia.
This prophecy refers to the enormous blood flow in Israel during the Jewish war. Allow me to document this:
In his Wars Josephus writes: “the sea was bloody a long way” (3.9.3); “one might then see the lake all bloody, and full of dead bodies” (3.10.9); “the whole of the country through which they had fled was filled with slaughter, and Jordan could not be passed over, by reason of the dead bodies that were in it” (4.7.6); “blood ran down over all the lower parts of the city, from the upper city” (4.1.10); “the outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood” (4.5.1); “the blood of all sorts of dead carcasses stood in lakes in the holy courts” (5.1.3); and “the whole city ran down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood” (6.8.5).
The Burnings
The burning up of a third of the trees of “the land” (Revelation 8:7) reminds of the Romans’ setting villages on fire in conjunction with their denuding the land of its trees. Gentry (ibid.):
Note what Josephus writes about the policy of the Romans: “he also at the same time gave his soldiers leave to set the suburbs on fire, and ordered that they should bring timber together, and raise banks against the city” (Wars 5.6.2).
The Romans destroyed the trees in Israel for fuel and for building their weapons: “All the trees that were about the city had been already cut down for the making of the former banks” (Wars 5.12.4). “They cut down all the trees that were in the country that adjoined to the city, and that for ninety furlongs round about” (Wars 6.1.1; cf. 3.7.8; 5.6.2). Of Vespasian’s march on Gadara, Josephus writes: “He also set fire, not only to the city itself, but to all the villas and small cities that were round about it (Wars 3.7.1.; cf. 4.9.1). Galilee was all over filled with fire and blood” (Wars 3.4.1.). Vespasian “went and burnt Galilee and the neighbouring parts” (Wars 6/6/2).
When the temple finally burns, Josephus moans: “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the temple stood, was seething hot, as full of fire on every part of it” (Wars 6.5.1).
And, of course, ultimately the whole city of Jerusalem goes up in flames so that as the Romans take the Jews captive to Rome, they relate that they are from “a land still on fire upon every side” (Wars 7.5.5.)
“Babylon”, the code name for the impious city of Jerusalem, was “ruined within a single hour”. “They see the smoke as she burns” (Revelation 18:9, 19).
A friend of mine remarked that, if our times are following a pattern parallel to all of this, then what sort of punishment is our world in for!
‘Great Tribulation’
Now the ‘great tribulation’ of which Our Lord spoke is none other than the ‘great tribulation’ of which St. John wrote in, e.g., Revelation 7:14 (cf. Matthew 24:21). These are not meant to be separated by millennia! No need to extrapolate to, say, the Third Millennium, to find the “great tribulation” [though, allegorically, modernistic Relativism today are ‘in the spirit’ of the religious persecution that the Jews were then suffering at the hands of their own people]; the seven churches of Revelation (1:9; 2:9-10, 13) were already feeling the strain of it.
And no need even to go to Rome and Nero for a terrible persecution of the early Christians. Jerusalem is far enough. On the eve of Nero’s accession, there was a great famine that “spread over the whole empire” (Acts 11:28; cf. Matthew 24:7). “It was about this time that King Herod started persecuting certain members of the Church. He beheaded James the brother of John, and when he saw that this pleased the Jews he decided to arrest Peter as well” (Acts 12:1-3).
Some Church Fathers thought that Nero was the Beast of Apocalypse, having shown that his name adds up to 666; the Beast’s heads being the succession of Roman emperors. Be that as it may, in Herod (not either of the Herods contemporary with Jesus, of course) the Beast would have found an appropriate ally. Thus (Acts 12:21-23):
... Herod, wearing his robes of state and enthroned on a daïs, made a speech to them. The people acclaimed him with, ‘It is a god speaking, not a man!’, and at that moment the angel of the Lord struck him down, because he had not given the glory to God. He was eaten away with worms and died.
Need we even necessarily go to the Eternal City of Rome for the martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul?
I don’t know.
St. Peter’s bones, we are told, lie beneath St. Peter’s in the Vatican. But that is not necessarily proof that he died there (cf. Exodus 13:19, where Moses carried Joseph’s bones from Egypt to Israel). In this regard, I was interested to read in the Opus Dei commentary re the two witnesses of Revelation 11, who definitely died in Jerusalem (v. 8), that “because the two witnesses testify to Jesus Christ and die martyrs, tradition identifies them with Sts. Peter and Paul ...”.
But the two witnesses of Revelation could just as well - perhaps even more likely - be two other of the Apostles slain in Jerusalem before the city’s destruction by the Romans: e.g. James the Lesser. Eusebius (The History of the Church) wrote in detail about this great miracle-working Patriarch of Jerusalem whose martyrdom, he says, was “instantly followed” by the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans (13:1).
Some of the Fathers thought that the two witnesses would be Enoch and Elijah, said not to have died. But this could be only in an allegorical sense; in the sense of the two witnesses coming “in the spirit” of Enoch and Elijah (like St. John the Baptist).
The next thing we read in Scripture is Jesus’s telling his disciples re the Temple that ‘not a single stone standing here will be left on another’ (Matthew 24:2), and then afterwards telling His four chief Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James and John, privately (the famous Olivet Discourse), about what would happen to Jerusalem.
The Book of Revelation is Our Lord’s revealing all of this through St. John now, several decades later, to an audience far larger than just the select four. The Book of Revelation is, I maintain, a continuation of the Gospels and especially of the Olivet Discourse. Why, then, don’t commentators realise the obvious; that Sts. Peter and John are referring to Jerusalem; but under the cryptic name of “Babylon”?
And why “Babylon”, instead of, say, “Sodom” or “Egypt”?
There is a sad and biting irony in this choice of epithet. Whereas the Babylonians had been they who had destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem the first time round, now it will be the Jews themselves, nick-named “Babylon”, who will be responsible for burning to the ground their very own Temple. And this time it would be irrevocable.
Admittedly, what makes somewhat confusing the identifying of Revelation’s “Babylon” is that this scarlet Woman is portrayed as riding on a Beast whose description, “seven hills”, seems to point clearly to Rome. Commentators then take the whole package, Woman plus Beast, as pertaining to Rome; which city - according to tradition - did persecute the followers of Jesus. However, according to the following, this description could actually fit Jerusalem (http://musingsofanoldpastor.blogspot.com.au/search?q=seven):
The City on Seven Hills
Jerusalem was known long before Rome as the city of Seven Mountains/hills.
Rev 17:9: And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
1. Mt. Gareb, 2. Mt. Acra, 3. Mt. Goath 4. Mt. Bezetha, 5. Mt. Zion, 6. Mt. Ophel, 7. Mt. Moriah.
Revelation more naturally evokes the image of Jerusalem as the city seated on seven mountains in 17:9 than Rome. The view that Babylon is a cipher for Jerusalem in the Apocalypse cannot then be dismissed on the basis of this common objection; not only can it be defended that the evidence of 17:9 can fit Jerusalem, there are strong reasons to believe that it in fact does most properly fit Jerusalem. ….
Nevertheless, we have already seen in the paradigmatical Old Testament cases of Israel and Jerusalem that two protagonists, not one, were involved, namely:
1. The once just Woman turned Harlot; and;
2. Her suitors who have wooed her in the past, made her rich, but who eventually come to loath her, then turn on her and destroy her.
So some could argue that the same situation is to be found in Revelation: 1. The Woman, Jerusalem, rides on 2. Roman power, but is to be distinguished from the latter which will eventually cause her destruction.
The Woman is Jerusalem; the Destroyer is Rome.
When was the Book of Revelation Written?
What has exacerbated the whole exegetical problem of properly interpreting Revelation on a literal level is, I believe, the conventional opinion that St. John wrote this Apocalypse in hoary old age, in c. 95 AD, about a quarter of a century after Jerusalem had been destroyed. Hence many commentators are loath to see any relevance for Revelation in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Protestant and Catholic writers alike accept the late 95 AD date of authorship (Protestant Thomas Foster sharing this view in common with Opus Dei and Fr. Kramer).
However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, there has emerged a new scholarship of great expertise as typified by Fr. Jean Carmignac, showing that the books of the New Testament literature (esp. the Gospels), were composed much earlier than was originally thought.
And the signs are that the entire New Testament, including Revelation, pre-dates 70 AD.
I believe that there is abundant evidence in the Apocalypse to indicate that it was written early. In fact the reason that prevented my writing this article initially was: Where to start? There is so much! My effort in the end had been greatly assisted by my finding Gentry’s preterist interpretation on the eve of commencing this article.
The whole Book of Revelation is focussed upon the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. The Temple; the golden altar; the 24 elders keeping watch at Beth Moked in the north from where an attack might come (and general Titus did in fact take Jerusalem from there, at the city’s weakest point); the sabbath restrictions; etc., etc.
Apart from their late dating of St. John’s Revelation preventing commentators from recognising the obvious, that “Babylon” is Jerusalem, this path they have taken leads them into other awkward anomalies as well. It is commonly believed that St. Paul had already completed his missionary activity and had been martyred well before St. John the Evangelist wrote the Book of Revelation.
Paul is given the credit for having established the seven churches to which John later wrote. This view forces commentators into making such strange observations as Fr. Kramer’s: “... St. John could not have interfered in the administration of the churches in the lifetime of St. Paul” (op. cit., pp. 7-8).
Oh, no? Was St. Paul (who even refers to himself as a very late arrival on the scene, I Corinthians 15:8) greater than St. John, the Beloved Disciple of Our Lord?
St. Paul himself would answer us an emphatic: ‘No’! Of his visit to Jerusalem after his 14 year absence, he tells us: “... James, Cephas and John, these leaders, these pillars, shook hands with Barnabas and me .... The only thing they insisted on was that we should remember to help the poor ...” (Galatians 2:9, 10).
St. John was by no means subservient to St. Paul; but apparently gave orders to the latter.
All the Apostles had a hand in establishing the churches throughout Judaea and Samaria, as Jesus Christ had commanded them, and then “to the ends of the earth”, which St. Paul boasted had been achieved even in his day (Colossians 1:23).
And Our Lord told the Apostles, “solemnly”, that they would not have completed “the rounds of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23).
We had better look now briefly at that particular ‘Coming’.
The ‘Coming’ for the Apostles
The Son of Man refers on various occasions to his ‘coming with His kingdom’ in the context that it would occur whilst some of those present were still alive (e.g. Matthew 16:28; Luke 9:27). Liberal modernist exegetes, imagining that Christ could here be referring only to his final and definitive Coming, love to point out that, because it has not occurred to this day, Jesus Christ was prone to error, was not omniscient, and that the Apostles who had expected His coming in their day were deluded (especially St. Paul).
But there may be more than one biblical ‘coming’.
Only a matter of about a week after Our Lord had addressed the above words to His disciples, there had occurred the Transfiguration, to which St. Peter would refer back in later years in the context of “the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 2 Peter 1:16 and 1:18-19). At least, it seems to have been a kind of preview of the real thing. The risen Lord told Peter, in regard to John: “‘If I want him to stay behind till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow Me’. The rumour then went out among the brothers that this disciple [John] would not die. Yet Jesus had not said to Peter, ‘He will not die’, but, ‘If I want him to stay behind till I come’.” (John 21:21-23)
Since the Apostles greatly yearned for the ‘coming’ of Jesus Christ, could that have been the definitive ‘coming’ at the end of the world? I suggest not. Too far away. Rather the Apostles were yearning for a ‘coming’ of Jesus in their own day; one that would, in some cases, coincide with their martyrdom, their being uplifted into Heaven (as in the case of the deaths of the two witnesses). Apparently Christ had apprised them of this; for St Peter wrote: “I know the time for taking off this tent is coming soon, as Our Lord Jesus Christ foretold to me” (2 Peter 1:14). Presumably the Master would also have told St. Paul; for did he not ‘show [Paul] how much he himself must suffer for My name’ (Acts 9:16)?
Was this ‘coming’ for the Apostles therefore the kind of consoling heavenly visitation that St. Stephen Protomartyr had experienced just before his death (Acts 7:56): ‘I can see heaven thrown open ... and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’?
Did it, for many of them, coincide with his victorious coming in 70 AD as the Rider upon the white horse, to oversee the destruction of harlot Jerusalem and the now-corrupted Judaïc system?
Because Our Lord’s predictions are - for those who believe him to be the Word Incarnate - infallible, there must have been a ‘coming” already in the days of the Apostles, of that particular generation. 70 AD (conventional dating) is then the likely date for it.
The 40 years of probation for the ‘woman’ were now up. It was to be divorce and execution.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-54029199493669313802024-02-25T10:35:00.000-08:002024-02-25T10:35:53.449-08:00Judith’s fame continued to spread<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCFMufeNmgq2CWE1YR5KEg8hlVlyLWR17lYltUITZXAMZHVijc3Mz97AVexBYdZNuIYxOWNulXVfKtdprqiR-yyXlKsRf9CB_jw7R-BEL2boW99NX-Uq83itZx2XDOpX1p1xjVDlas07Q7MaCwjqUJJfmxraFDMFWkZb2x_cWgZ1jeumfs5v0NOc-az_G2/s298/images.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="169" data-original-width="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCFMufeNmgq2CWE1YR5KEg8hlVlyLWR17lYltUITZXAMZHVijc3Mz97AVexBYdZNuIYxOWNulXVfKtdprqiR-yyXlKsRf9CB_jw7R-BEL2boW99NX-Uq83itZx2XDOpX1p1xjVDlas07Q7MaCwjqUJJfmxraFDMFWkZb2x_cWgZ1jeumfs5v0NOc-az_G2/s600/images.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Her fame continued to spread, and she lived in the house her husband had
left her. Before she died, Judith divided her property among her husband’s
and her own close relatives and set her slave woman free. When she died
in Bethulia at the age of 105, she was buried beside her husband,
and the people of Israel mourned her death for seven days.
As long as Judith lived, and for many years after her death,
no one dared to threaten the people of Israel”.
Judith 16:23-25
Introduction
Judith became immensely famous in the eyes of the people of Israel, for, as we read in Judith 16:23 that “her fame continued to spread”. Even before her heroic action in the camp of the Assyrians, we are told of this goodly woman that (Judith 8:7-8): “[Judith] lived among all her possessions without anyone finding a word to say against her, so devoutly did she fear God”.
Moreover she had, according to the elder, Uzziah, shown wisdom even from her youth (vv. 28-29):
“Uzziah replied, ‘Everything you have just said comes from an honest heart and no one will contradict a word of it. Not that today is the first time your wisdom has been displayed; from your earliest years all the people have known how shrewd you are and of how sound a heart’.”
Aside from the recognition of her renowned beauty, by
(i) the author (Judith 8:7; 10:4);
(ii) the elders of Bethulia (10:7);
(iii) the Assyrian unit and soldiery (10:14, 19);
(iv) Holofernes and his staff (10:23; 11:21, 23; 12:13, 16, 20), we learn that even the coarse Assyrians were impressed by her wisdom and eloquence (11:21, 23).
And Uzziah, after Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, proclaimed magnificently in her honour (Judith 13:18-20):
… ‘May you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most High, beyond all women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth, who guided you to cut off the head of the leader of our enemies!
The trust which you have shown will not pass from human hearts, as they commemorate the power of God for evermore.
God grant you may be always held in honour and rewarded with blessings, since you did not consider your own life when our nation was brought to its knees, but warded off our ruin, walking in the right path before our God’.
And the people all said, 'Amen! Amen!'
And the stunned Achior, upon seeing the severed head of Holofernes, burst out with this exclamation of praise (Judith 14:7):
‘May you be blessed in all the tents of Judah and in every nation; those who hear your name will be seized with dread!’
Later, Joakim the high priest and the entire Council of Elders of Israel, who were in Jerusalem, came to see Judith and to congratulate her (Judith 15:9-10):
On coming to her house, they blessed her with one accord, saying: ‘You are the glory of Jerusalem! You are the great pride of Israel! You are the highest honour of our race! By doing all this with your own hand you have deserved well of Israel, and God has approved what you have done. May you be blessed by the Lord Almighty in all the days to come!’
And the people all said, 'Amen!'
‘Blessed by God Most High, beyond all women on earth’.
‘The glory of Jerusalem,
the great pride of Israel,
the highest honour of [her] race!’
What more could possibly be said!
From whence came this incredible flow of wisdom?
We may tend to recall the Judith of literature as being both beautiful and courageous - and certainly she could be most forthright as well, when occasion demanded it, somewhat like Joan of Arc (who was supposedly referred to, in her time, as ‘a second Judith’).
Yet, there is far more to it: mysticism.
T. Craven (Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith), following J. Dancy’s view (Shorter Books of the Apocrypha) that the theology presented in Judith’s words to the Bethulian town officials rivals the theology of the Book of Job, will go on to make this interesting comment (pp. 88-89, n. 45.):
Judith plays out her whole story with the kind of faith described in the Prologue of Job (esp. 1:21 and 2:9). Her faith is like that of Job after his experience of God in the whirlwind (cf. 42:1-6), yet in the story she has no special theophanic experience. We can only imagine what happened on her housetop where she was habitually a woman of regular prayer.
[End of quote]
Although the women’s movement is quite recent, it has already provided some new insights and some radically different perspectives on Judith.
According to P. Montley (as referred to by C. Moore, The Anchor Bible. “Judith”, pp. 65):
… Judith is the archetypal androgyne. She is more than the Warrior Woman and the femme fatale, a combination of the soldier and the seductress …
…. Just as the brilliance of a cut diamond is the result of many different facets, so the striking appeal of the book of Judith results from its many facets. …
[End of quote]
M. Stocker will, in her comprehensive treatment of the Judith character and her actions (Judith Sexual Warrior, pp. 13-15), compare the heroine to, amongst others, the Old Testament’s Jael – a common comparison given that the woman, Jael, had driven a tent peg through the temple of Sisera, an enemy of Israel (Judges 4:17-22) – Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday, who had, during the French Revolution, slain the likewise unsuspecting Marat.
“If viewed negatively – from an irreligious perspective, for instance”, Stocker will go on to write, “Judith’s isolation, chastity, widowhood, childlessness, and murderousness would epitomize all that is morbid, nihilistic and abortive”.
Hardly the type of character to have been accorded ‘increasing fame’ amongst her people!
Craven again, with reference to J. Ruskin (‘Mornings in Florence’, p. 335), writes (p. 95): “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus are counted in art as the female “types” who prefigure the Virgin Mary’s triumph over Satan”.
Judith a Heroine of Israel
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The way that I see it, these early commentators had the will, if not the history/archaeology, to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the archaeology had become available, commentators no longer had the will.
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What did the young Judith do to achieve her early fame?
Well, if the typical contemporary biblical commentators are to be believed, Judith did nothing in actual historical reality, for the famous story is merely a piece of pious fiction.
Here, for instance, is such a view from the Catholic News Agency [CNA]:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/bible/introduction-to-the-old-testament/judith/
Judith
….
Judith is often characterized as an early historical novel. Yet ironically, its content is unhistorical. The book begins by telling us that Nebuchadnezzer was the king of Assyria ruling in Ninevah. But Ninevah was destroyed seven years before Nebuchadnezzer became king. And he was king of Babylon, not Assyria. It would be similar to an author beginning a book, "In 1776, when Abraham Lincoln was the president of Canada..." The author of Judith clues us in that he is not telling a typical story. While the story is replete with proper names of places and people, many of them are not placed "correctly" and many of them are unknown from other sources.
The book of Judith is not trying to narrate an historical event nor is it presenting a regular historical novel with fictional characters in a "real" setting. Rather, Judith is iconic of all of Israel's struggles against surrounding nations. By the time of its writing, Israel had been dominated by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks. The name "Judith" means "Jewess." The character of Judith is therefore representative of the whole nation of Israel. In an almost constant battle against the surrounding nations, the Israelites depended on the Lord for their survival and sustenance. Judith represents the best hopes and intentions of the Israelites-the vanquishing of the oppressors and the freedom of the land of Israel.
The general Holofernes, whom Judith assassinates, represents the worst of the oppressors. He is bringing 182,000 troops against a small city in a corner of Israel to force them to worship the head of foreign oppression: Nebuchadnezzer. The city is terribly outmatched, but Holofernes opts for a siege rather than a battle. When the people are at the point of despair because they have run out of water, Judith volunteers to try an unusual tactic. She leaves the city with her maid and gets close to Holofernes because of her beauty. She uses a series of tricks and half-truths to find Holofernes drunk and vulnerable. Then she beheads him with his own sword!
It is crucial to see the irony of the story and of Judith's words. For example, the Ammonite [sic] Achior who Holofernes rejected was supposed to share the cruel fate of the Israelites at the hand of the Assyrians, but he is saved with the Israelites instead (6:5-9). Judith uses the phrase "my lord" (Adonai in Heb.) several times, but it is unclear whether she is referring to Holofernes or to God. The great nation is defeated by a humble woman. The story is similar to the famous David and Goliath episode. The reader should look for ironic moments where a character's intentions or statements are fulfilled, but in the way that he or she would least expect.
The book of Judith is divided into basically two sections, ch. 1-7 and 8-16. The first seven chapters lay out the "historical" background and describe the political situation which led to Holofernes attack on Israel.
It is important to understand that the events are not historical, but they are full of details that one finds in a good novel. Achior plays a key role by narrating Israel's history and firmly believing in God's protection of his people (5). He eventually converts to Judaism after the Assyrians are defeated (14:10). The second half of the book (8-16) focuses on Judith herself and her heroic acts. Once the Assyrians discover Holofernes decapitated body, they flee in confusion and the Israelites rout them. Ch. 16 contains a hymn about Judith's deeds. ….
Judith is a book of the Bible that is meant to be enjoyed. By enjoying the story and the Lord's victory over the great nations through Judith, we can appreciate the paradoxical way God chooses to work on earth, using the weak to conquer the strong, the poor to outdo the rich.
[End of quote]
But this attribution of non-historicity to the Book of Judith was not the standard Catholic approach down through the centuries, until, say, the 1930’s. During that long period of time, Catholic scholars generally tended to regard the book as recording a real historical drama, whether or not their valiant efforts to demonstrate this were convincing.
The way that I see it, these early commentators had the will, if not the history/ archaeology, to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the archaeology had become available, commentators no longer had the will.
A combination of will and more scientific history/archaeology would make for a really nice change.
For, today it is very rare to find any who are prepared to argue for the full historicity of the Book of Judith.
I, in my university thesis, A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background (http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/5973), wrote regarding this situation (Preface, p. x):
I know of virtually no current historians who even consider the Book of Judith to be anything other than a ‘pious fiction’, or perhaps ‘historical fiction’, with the emphasis generally on the ‘fiction’ aspect of this. Thus I feel a strong empathy for the solitary Judith in the midst of those differently-minded Assyrians (Judith 10:11-13:10).
In that thesis I had argued (with respect to the book’s historical and geographical problems) for what I consider in retrospect to be the obvious scenario: that the Judith event pertains to the famous destruction of Sennacherib’s army of 185,000 Assyrians.
The heroine Judith initiated this victory for Israel by her slaying of the Assyrian commander-in-chief, which action then led to the rout and slaughter of the army in its panic-stricken flight.
For my up-dated version of this, see e.g. my article:
“Nadin” (Nadab) of Tobit is the “Holofernes” of Judith
http://www.academia.edu/36576110/_Nadin_Nadab_of_Tobit_is_the_Holofernes_of_Judith
This is the incident that had made Judith so famous throughout Israel in her youth – a fame that apparently only increased as she grew older.
But Judith, even more than being the most beautiful and courageous woman that she was, had already, at a young age, exhibited - as we have read - amazing wisdom and even sanctity.
Her wisdom (some might say cunning) was apparent from the way that she was able to beguile the Assyrians with her shrewd and bitingly ironic words.
Judith was so formidable and significant a woman and one would expect to find further traces of her in the course of her very long life.
She has a further significant biblical presence in the form of Huldah, teacher and expounder of the Torah:
Judith and Huldah
(2) Judith and Huldah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
I believe that Judith has, as well, been picked up in many literatures and mythologies of many nations.
Judith a Universal Heroine
Glimpses of Judith in BC Antiquity
Some ancient stories that can be only vaguely historical seem to recall the Judith incident. Two of these that I picked up in my thesis appear in the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ (dated 99 BC), relating to the Greco-Persian period, and in Homer’s classic epic tale, The Iliad.
The Lindian Chronicle
Thus I wrote in my thesis (op. cit., Volume Two, pp. 67-68):
Uzziah, confirming Judith’s high reputation, immediately recognized the truth of what she had just said (vv. 28-29), whilst adding the blatantly Aaronic excuse that ‘the people made us do it’ (v. 30, cf. Exodus 32:21-24): ‘But the people were so thirsty that they compelled us to do for them what we have promised, and made us take an oath that we cannot break’. Judith, now forced to work within the time-frame of those ‘five days’ that had been established against her will, then makes this bold pronouncement – again completely in the prophetic, or even ‘apocalyptic’, style of Joan of Arc (vv. 32-33):
Then Judith said to them, ‘Listen to me. I am about to do something that will go down through all generations to our descendants. Stand at the town gate tonight so that I may go out with my maid; and within the days after which you have promised to surrender the town to our enemies, the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand’.
A Note. This 5-day time frame, in connection with a siege - the very apex of the [Book of Judith] drama - may also have been appropriated into Greco-Persian folklore.
In the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ it is narrated that when Darius, King of Persia, tried to conquer the Island of Hellas, the people gathered in the stronghold of Lindus to withstand the attack. The citizens of the besieged city asked their leaders to surrender because of the hardships and sufferings brought by the water shortage (cf. Judith 7:20-28).
The Goddess Athena [read Judith] advised one of the leaders [read Uzziah] to continue to resist the attack; meanwhile she interceded with her father Jupiter [read God of Israel] on their behalf (cf. Judith 8:9-9:14). Thereupon, the citizens asked for a truce of 5 days (exactly as in Judith), after which, if no help arrived, they would surrender (cf. Judith 7:30-31). On the second day a heavy shower fell on the city so the people could have sufficient water (cf. 8:31, where Uzziah asks Judith to pray for rain). Datis [read Holofernes], the admiral of the Persian fleet [read commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army], having witnessed the particular intervention of the Goddess to protect the city, lifted the siege [rather, the siege was forcibly raised]. ….
[End of quote]
Apparently I am not the only one who has noticed the similarity between these two stories, for I now find this (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “The Israeli scholar Y. M. Grintz has pointed out the parallels between the theme of the book [Judith] and an episode which took place during the siege of Lindus, on the island of Rhodes, but here again the comparison is extremely weak”.
Yes, the latter is probably just a “weak” appropriation of the original Hebrew account.
I have written a lot along these lines of Greek appropriating, e.g.:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
http://www.academia.edu/8914220/Similarities_to_The_Odyssey_of_the_Books_of_Job_and_Tobit
Whereas the goddess Athena may have been substituted for Judith in the Lindian Chronicle, she substitutes for the angel Raphael in the Book of Tobit.
I made this comparison in “Similarities to The Odyssey”:
The ‘Divine’ Messenger
From whom the son, especially, receives help during his travels. In the Book of Tobit, this messenger is the angel Raphael (in the guise of ‘Azarias’).
In The Odyssey, it is the goddess Athene (in the guise of ‘Mentes’).
Likewise Poseidon (The Odyssey) substitutes for the demon, Asmodeus (in Tobit).
It may also be due to an ‘historical’ mix up that two of Judith’s Assyrian opponents came to acquire the apparently Persians name of, respectively, “Holofernes” and “Bagoas” (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “Holofernes and Bagoas are to be identified with the two generals sent against Phoenicia, Palestine and Egypt by Artaxerxes III towards 350 [BC]. The names are certainly Persian, and are attested frequently …”.
Greco-Persian history is still awaiting a proper revision.
“The Iliad”
Earlier in my thesis (pp. 59-60) I had written in similar vein, of Greek appropriation, regarding the confrontation between the characters in the Book of Judith, “Holofernes” and “Achior”:
Achior had made an unexpected apologia on behalf of the Israelites. It had even come with this concluding warning to Holofernes (5:20, 21):
‘So now, my master and lord … if they are not a guilty nation, then let my lord pass them by; for their Lord and God will defend them, and we shall become the laughing-stock of the whole world’.
These words had absolutely stunned the soldiery who were by now all for tearing Achior ‘limb from limb’ (5:22). Holofernes, for his part, was enraged with his subordinate. Having succeeded in conquering almost the entire west, he was hardly about to countenance hearing that some obscure mountain folk might be able to offer him any meaningful resistance.
Holofernes then uttered the ironic words to Achior: ‘… you shall not see my face again from this day until I take revenge on this race that came out of Egypt’ (6:5); ironic because, the next time that Achior would see Holofernes’ face, it would be after Judith had beheaded him.
Holofernes thereupon commanded his orderlies to take the insolent Achior and bind him beneath the walls of Bethulia, so that he could suffer, with the people whom he had just verbally defended, their inevitable fate when the city fell to the Assyrians (v. 6).
After the Assyrian brigade had managed to secure Achior at Bethulia, and had then retreated from the walls under sling-fire from the townsfolk, the Bethulians went out to fetch him (6:10-13). Once safely inside the city Achior told them his story, and perhaps Judith was present to hear it. Later she would use bits and pieces of information supplied by Achior for her own confrontation with Holofernes, to deceive him.
[End of quote]
In a footnote (n. 1286) to this, I had proposed, in connection with The Iliad:
This fiery confrontation between the commander-in-chief, his subordinates and Achior would be, I suggest - following on from my earlier comments about Greco-Persian appropriations - where Homer got his idea for the main theme of The Iliad: namely the argument at the siege of Troy between Agamemnon, supreme commander of the Greeks, and the renowned Achilles (Achior?).
And further on, on p. 69, I drew a comparison between Judith and Helen of Troy of The Iliad:
The elders of Bethulia, “Uzziah, Chabris, and Charmis - who are here mentioned for the last time in the story as a threesome (10:6)” … - are stunned by Judith’s new appearance when they meet her at the town’s gate (vv. 7-8): “When they saw her transformed in appearance and dressed differently, they were very greatly astounded at her beauty and said to her, ‘May the God of our ancestors grant you favour and fulfil your plan …’.”…. Upon Judith’s request (command?), the elders “ordered the young men to open the gate for her” (v. 9). Then she and her maid went out of the town and headed for the camp of the Assyrians. “The men of the town watched her until she had gone down the mountain and passed through the valley, where they lost sight of her” (v. 10).
“Compare this scene”, I added in (n. 1316), “with that of Helen at the Skaian gates of Troy, greatly praised by Priam and the elders of the town for her beauty. The Iliad, Book 3, p. 45”.
See also my article:
Judith the Jewess and “Helen” the Hellene
(10) Judith the Jewess and " Helen " the Hellene | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
We recall that Craven had grouped together “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus …”.
Whilst Judith and Jael were two distinct heroines of Israel, living centuries apart, I think that Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus must be - given the ancient variations about the death of Cyrus - a fictitious character. And her story has certain suspicious likenesses, again, to that of Judith.
Tomyris and Cyrus
I have added here a few comparisons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great#Death
Death …
The details of Cyrus's death vary by account. The account of Herodotus from his Histories provides the second-longest detail, in which Cyrus met his fate in a fierce battle with the Massagetae, a tribe from the southern deserts of Khwarezm and Kyzyl Kum in the southernmost portion of the steppe regions of modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, following the advice of Croesus to attack them in their own territory.[68] The Massagetae were related to the Scythians in their dress and mode of living; they fought on horseback and on foot. In order to acquire her realm, Cyrus first sent an offer of marriage to their ruler, Tomyris, a proposal she rejected.
Compare e.g.: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context
“Holofernes declares his intention of having sexual intercourse with Judith (12:12). Judith responds to his invitation to the banquet by saying “Who am I, to refuse my lord?”, clearly a double entendre! Holofernes, at the sight of Judith, is described as “ravished.” But he does not get any further with Judith than Cyrus would with Tomyris, for Judith, upon her return to the camp, will proclaim (13:15-16):
‘Here’, she said, ‘is the head of Holofernes, the general of the Assyrian army, and here is the mosquito net from his bed, where he lay in a drunken stupor. The Lord used a woman to kill him. As the Lord lives, I swear that Holofernes never touched me, although my beauty deceived him and brought him to his ruin. I was not defiled or disgraced; the Lord took care of me through it all’.
Wine will also play a vital part in the Cyrus legend, though in this case the defenders [i.e., the Massagetae - replacing the Israelites of the original story], rather than the invader, will be the ones affected by the strong drink:
[Cyrus] then commenced his attempt to take Massagetae territory by force, beginning by building bridges and towered war boats along his side of the river Jaxartes, or Syr Darya, which separated them. Sending him a warning to cease his encroachment in which she stated she expected he would disregard anyway, Tomyris challenged him to meet her forces in honorable warfare, inviting him to a location in her country a day's march from the river, where their two armies would formally engage each other. He accepted her offer, but, learning that the Massagetae were unfamiliar with wine and its intoxicating effects, he set up and then left camp with plenty of it behind, taking his best soldiers with him and leaving the least capable ones. The general of Tomyris's army, who was also her son Spargapises, and a third of the Massagetian troops killed the group Cyrus had left there and, finding the camp well stocked with food and the wine, unwittingly drank themselves into inebriation, diminishing their capability to defend themselves, when they were then overtaken by a surprise attack. They were successfully defeated, and, although he was taken prisoner, Spargapises committed suicide once he regained sobriety.
It is at this point that Tomyris will be stirred into action, more as a warrior queen than as a heroine using her womanly charm to deceive, but she will ultimately - just like Judith - swear vengeance and decapitate her chief opponent:
Upon learning of what had transpired, Tomyris denounced Cyrus's tactics as underhanded and swore vengeance, leading a second wave of troops into battle herself. Cyrus the Great was ultimately killed, and his forces suffered massive casualties in what Herodotus referred to as the fiercest battle of his career and the ancient world. When it was over, Tomyris ordered the body of Cyrus brought to her, then decapitated him and dipped his head in a vessel of blood in a symbolic gesture of revenge for his bloodlust and the death of her son.[68][69] However, some scholars question this version, mostly because Herodotus admits this event was one of many versions of Cyrus's death that he heard from a supposedly reliable source who told him no one was there to see the aftermath.[70]
Herodotus’s claim that this was “the fiercest battle of … the ancient world”, whilst probably not befitting the obscure Massagetae, is indeed a worthy description of the defeat and rout of Sennacherib’s massive army of almost 200,000 men.
But this was, as Herodotus had also noted, just “one of many versions of Cyrus's death”. And Wikipedia adds some variations on this account:
Dandamayev says maybe Persians took back Cyrus' body from the Massagetae, unlike what Herodotus claimed.[72]
Ctesias, in his Persica, has the longest account, which says Cyrus met his death while putting down resistance from the Derbices infantry, aided by other Scythian archers and cavalry, plus Indians and their elephants. According to him, this event took place northeast of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[73] An alternative account from Xenophon's Cyropaedia contradicts the others, claiming that Cyrus died peaceably at his capital.[74] The final version of Cyrus's death comes from Berossus, who only reports that Cyrus met his death while warring against the Dahae archers northwest of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[75]
[End of quote]
Scholars may be able to discern many more Judith-type stories in semi-legendary BC ‘history’.
Donald Spoto, in Joan. The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007), has referred to the following supposed warrior-women, a re-evaluation of whom I think may be worth considering (p. 73):
The Greek poet Telesilla was famous for saving the city of Argos from attack by Spartan troops in the fifth century B.C. In first-century Britain, Queen Boudicca [Boadicea] led an uprising against the occupying Roman forces. In the third century Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (latter-day Syria), declared her independence of the Roman Empire and seized Egypt and much of Asia Minor.
[End of quote]
But there are also a plethora of such female types in what is considered to be AD history.
Glimpses of Judith in (supposedly) AD Time
Before I go on to discuss some of these, I must point out - what I have mentioned before, here and there - a problem with AD time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 600-900 AD), akin to what revisionists have found to have occurred with the construction of BC time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 700-1200 BC). Whilst I intend to write much more about this in the future, I did broach the subject again in my article:
Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ
(10) Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
and some of this will have a direct bearing upon Judith (see Axum and Gudit below).
But here is a different summary of attempts to expose the perceived problems pertaining to AD time, known as the “Phantom Time Hypothesis”, by a writer who is not sympathetic to it:
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-phantom-time-hypothesis/
by Alan Bellows
When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper on the “phantom time hypothesis,” he kindly asks his readers to be patient, benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2005, but rather 1708; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.
The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators.
This would mean that all artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other times, or are outright fabrications. For instance, a man named Heribert Illig (pictured), one of the leading proponents of the theory, believes that Charlemagne was a fictional character. But what evidence is this outlandish theory based upon?
It seems that historians are plagued by a plethora of falsified documents from the Middle Ages, and such was the subject of an archaeological conference in München, Germany in 1986. In his lecture there, Horst Fuhrmann, president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, described how some documents forged by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages were created hundreds of years before their “great moments” arrived, after which they were embraced by medieval society. This implied that whomever produced the forgeries must have very skillfully anticipated the future… or there was some discrepancy in calculating dates.
This was reportedly the first bit of evidence that roused Illig’s curiosity… he wondered why the church would have forged documents hundreds of years before they would become useful. So he and his group examined other fakes from preceding centuries, and they “divined chronological distortions.” This led them to investigate the origin of the Gregorian calendar, which raised even more inconsistency.
In 1582, the Gregorian calendar we still use today was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to replace the outdated Julian calendar which had been implemented in 45 BC. The Gregorian calendar was designed to correct for a ten-day discrepancy caused by the fact that the Julian year was 10.8 minutes too long. But by Heribert Illig’s math, the 1,627 years which had passed since the Julian calendar started should have accrued a thirteen-day discrepancy… a ten-day error would have only taken 1,257 years.
So Illig and his group went hunting for other gaps in history, and found a few… for example, a gap of building in Constantinople (558 AD – 908 AD) and a gap in the doctrine of faith, especially the gap in the evolution of theory and meaning of purgatory (600 AD until ca. 1100). From all of this data, they have become convinced that at some time, the calendar year was increased by 297 years without the corresponding passage of time. ….
[End of quote]
As with the pioneering efforts of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos) to reform BC time, some of this early work in AD revisionism may turn out to be extreme and far-fetched. But I would nevertheless agree with the claim by its proponents that the received AD history likewise stands in need of a massive renovation.
In my articles on Mohammed - {who, I am now convinced, was not an historical personage, but a composite of various biblical (pseudepigraphal) characters, and most notably (for at least the period from Birth to Marriage), was Tobias (= my Job), son of Tobit} - I drew attention to a very BC-like “Nehemiah”, thought to have been a contemporary of Mohammed.
Moreover, the major incident that is said to have occurred in the year of Mohammed’s birth, the invasion of Mecca by Abrahas the Axumite, I argued, was simply a reminiscence of Sennacherib’s invasion and defeat:
… an event that is said to have taken place in the very year that Mohammed was born, c. 570 AD, the invasion of Mecca by Abraha[s] of the kingdom of Axum [Aksum], has all the earmarks, I thought, of the disastrous campaign of Sennacherib of Assyria against Israel.
Not 570 AD, but closer to 700 BC!
Lacking to this Qur'anic account is the [Book of] Judith element that (I have argued in various places) was the catalyst for the defeat of the Assyrian army. ....
But, as I went on to say, the Judith element is available, still in the context of the kingdom of Axum - apparently a real AD kingdom, but one that seems to appropriate ancient Assyrian - in the possibly Jewish heroine, Gudit (var. Gwedit, Yodit, Judith), ostensibly of the mid- C10th AD.
Let us read some more about her.
Judith the Simeonite and Gudit the Semienite
Interesting that Judith the Simeonite has a Gideon (or Gedeon) in her ancestry (Judith 8:1): “[Judith] was the daughter of Merari, the granddaughter of Ox and the great-granddaughter of Joseph. Joseph’s ancestors were Oziel, Elkiah, Ananias, Gideon, Raphaim, Ahitub, Elijah, Hilkiah, Eliab, Nathanael, Salamiel, Sarasadai, and Israel”, and the Queen of Semien, Gudit (or Judith), was the daughter of a King Gideon.
That the latter, Gudit, is probably a fable, however, is suspected by the following writer: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=314380
Bernard Lewis (1): The Jews of the Dark continent, 1980
The early history of the Jews of the Habashan highlands remains obscure, with their origins remaining more mythical than historical. In this they areas in other respects, they are the mirror image of their supposed Kin across the Red sea. For while copious external records of Byzantine, Persian, old Axumite and Arab sources exist of the large-scale conversion of Yemen to Judaism, and the survival of a large Jewish community at least until the 11th century, no such external records exist for the Jews of Habash, presently by far the numerically and politically dominant branch of this ancient people.
Their own legends insist that Judaism had reached the shores of Ethiopia at the time of the First temple. They further insist that Ethiopia had always been Jewish. In spite of the claims of Habashan nationalists, Byzantine, Persian and Arab sources all clearly indicate that the politically dominant religion of Axum was, for a period of at least six centuries Christianity and that the Tigray cryptochristian minority, far from turning apostate following contact with Portugese Jesuits in the 15th century is in fact the [remnant] of a period of Christian domination which lasted at least until the 10th century.
For the historian, when records fail, speculation must perforce fill the gap. Given our knowledge of the existence of both Jewish and Christian sects in the deserts of Western Arabia and Yemen it is not difficult to speculate that both may have reached the shores of Axum concurrently prior to the council of Nicaea and the de-judaization of heterodox sects. Possibly, they coexisted side by side for centuries without the baleful conflict which was the lot of both faiths in the Mediterannean. Indeed, it is possible that they were not even distinct faiths. We must recall that early Christians saw themselves as Jews and practiced all aspects of Jewish law and ritual for the first century of their existence. Neither did Judaism utterly disavow the Christians, rather viewing them much as later communities would view the Sabateans and other messianic movement. The advent While Paul of Tarsus changed the course of Christian evolution but failed to formally de-Judaize all streams of Christianity, with many surviving even after the council of Nicaea.
Might not Habash have offered a different model of coexistence, even after it’s purported conversion to Christianity in the 4th century? If it had, then what occurred? Did Christianity, cut off from contact with Constantinople following the rise of Islam, wither on the vine enabling a more grassroots based religion to assume dominance? While such a view is tempting, archaeological evidence pointing to the continued centrality of a Christian Axum as an administrative and economic center for several centuries following the purported relocation of the capital of the kingdom to Gonder indicates a darker possibility.
The most likely scenario, in my opinion, turns on our knowledge of the Yemenite- Axum-Byzantine conflict of the 6th century. This conflict was clearly seen as a religious, and indeed divinely sanctioned one by Emperor Kaleb, with certain of his in scriptures clearly indicating the a version of “replacement theology” had taken root in his court, forcing individuals and sects straddling both sides of the Christian-Jewish continuum to pick sides. Is it overly speculative to assume that those cleaving to Judaism within Axum would be subject to suspicion and persecution? It seems to me likely that the formation of an alternative capital by the shores of lake Tana, far from being an organized relocation of the imperial seat, was, in fact, an act of secession and flight by a numerically inferior and marginalized minority (2).
Read in this light, the fabled Saga of King Gideon and Queen Judith recapturing Axum from Muslim invaders and restoring the Zadokan dynasty in the 10th century must be viewed skeptically as an attempt to superimpose on the distant past a more contemporary enemy as part of the process of national myth making.
What truly occurred during this time of isolation can only be the guessed at but I would hazard an opinion that the Axum these legendary rulers “liberated” was held by Christians rather than Muslims. ….
[End of quote]
See also my series:
Judith the Simeonite and Judith the Semienite
(10) Judith the Simeonite and Judith the Semienite | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
and:
(10) Judith the Simeonite and Judith the Semienite. Part Two: So many Old Testament names! | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Judith and Joan of Arc
Perhaps the heroine with whom Judith of Bethulia is most often compared is the fascinating Joan [Jeanne] of Arc.
Donald Spoto again, in his life of Joan, has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”.
Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided military assistance to Israel.
Spoto, having referred to those ancient pagan women (Telesilla, etc.), as already discussed, goes on to write (p. 74):
Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give direction to soldiers. .... Africa had its rebel queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth century. In the seventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess of Montfort, took up arms after her husband died in order to protect the rights of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and dressed in full armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s rear camps.
Joan [of Arc] was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk of both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her as the prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel with an army of men?
Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy.
[End of quote]
I think that, based on the Gudit and Axum scenario[s], there is the real possibility that some of these above-mentioned heroines, or ancient amazons, can be identified with the famous Judith herself – she gradually being transformed from an heroic Old Testament woman into an armour-bearing warrior on horseback, sometimes even suffering capture, torture and death - whose celebrated beauty and/or siege victory I have argued on many occasions was picked up in non-Hebrew ‘history’, or mythologies: e.g. the legendary Helen of Troy is probably based on Judith, at least in relation to her beauty and a famous siege, rather than to any military noüs on Helen’s part.
In the name Iodit (Gwedit) above, the name Judith can be, I think, clearly recognised.
The wisdom-filled Judith might even have been the model, too, for the interesting and highly intelligent and philosophically-minded Hypatia of Alexandria.
Now I find in the Wikipedia article, “Catherine of Alexandria”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Alexandria
that the latter is also likened to Hypatia. Catherine is said to have lived 105 years (Judith’s very age: see Book of Judith 16:23) before Hypatia’s death. Historians such as Harold Thayler Davis believe that Catherine (‘the pure one’) may not have existed and that she was more an ideal exemplary figure than a historical one. She did certainly form an exemplary counterpart to the pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the medieval mindset; and it has been suggested that she was invented specifically for that purpose. Like Hypatia, she is said to have been highly learned (in philosophy and theology), very beautiful, sexually pure, and to have been brutally murdered for publicly stating her beliefs.
Interestingly, St. Joan of Arc identified Catherine of Alexandria as one of the Saints who appeared to her and counselled her.
Who really existed, and who did not?
Judith of Bethulia might be the key to answering this question, and she may also provide us with a golden opportunity for embarking upon a revision of AD time.
For there are also many supposedly AD queens called “Judith”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Judith
Queen Judith may refer to at least some of these:
• Judith of Babenberg (c. late 1110s/1120 – after 1168), daughter of Leopold III, Margrave of Austria and Agnes of Germany, married William V, Marquess of Montferrat
• Judith of Bavaria (925 – June 29 soon after 985), daughter of Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria and Judith, married Henry I, Duke of Bavaria
• Judith of Bavaria (795-843) (805 - April 19 or 23, 843), daughter of Count of Welf and Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria, became second wife of Louis the Pious
• Judith Premyslid (c. 1057–1086), daughter of Vratislaus II of Bohemia and Adelaide of Hungary, became second wife of Władysław I Herman
• Judith of Brittany (982 – 1017), daughter of Conan I of Rennes and Ermengarde of Anjou, Duchess of Brittany, married Richard II, Duke of Normandy
• Judith of Flanders (October 844 – 870), daughter of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans, married Æthelwulf of Wessex
• Judith of Habsburg (1271 – May 21, 1297), daughter of Rudolph I of Germany and Gertrude of Hohenburg, married to Wenceslaus II of Bohemia
• Judith of Hungary (d.988), daughter of Géza of Hungary and Sarolt, married Bolesław I Chrobry
• Judith of Schweinfurt (before 1003 – 2 August 1058), daughter of Henry, Margrave of Nordgau and Gertrude, married Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia
• Judith of Swabia (1047/1054 – 1093/1095), daughter of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor and Agnes of Poitou, married Władysław I Herman, successor to Judith of Bohemia
• Judith of Thuringia (c. 1135 - d. 9 September after 1174), daughter of Louis I, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hedwig of Gudensberg, married Vladislaus II of Bohemia
'Woe to the nations that rise up against my people!
The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment;
he will send fire and worms into their flesh;
they shall weep in pain forever'.
Judith 16:17
Judith of Bavaria
‘second Judith’ or ‘Jezebel’?
“The poems depict her as "a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation”.
We read in my article:
Isabelle (is a belle) inevitably a Jezebel?
http://www.academia.edu/35191514/Isabelle_is_a_belle_inevitably_a_Jezebel
of a whole list of supposedly historical queens Isabelle (or variations of that name) who have been likened to the biblical Jezebel, or have been called ‘a second Jezebel’.
One of these queens was:
Isabella of Bavaria ‘like haughty Jezebel’
http://www.academia.edu/35177941/Isabella_of_Bavaria_like_haughty_Jezebel
Now the Bavarians do not fare too well, because apparently they also had a C9th AD queen Judith who was likened to Jezebel – though, alternately, to the pious Judith:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_of_Bavaria_(died_843)
Scandals: Contemporary criticisms of Judith’s role and behavior ….
However, the rise of Judith’s power, influence and activity in the court sparked resentment towards her. Agobard of Lyons, a supporter of Lothar, wrote two tracts Two Books in Favor of the Sons and against Judith the Wife of Louis in 833. These tracts were meant as propaganda against Judith from the court of Lothar in order to undermine her court and influence.
The tracts themselves attack her character, claiming her to be of a cunning and underhanded nature and of corrupting her husband. These attacks were predominantly anti-feminist in nature. When Louis still did not sever marital ties with Judith, Agobard claimed that Judith’s extramarital affairs were carried out "first secretly and later impudently".[4] Paschasius Radbertus accused Judith by associating her with the engagement in debauchery and witchcraft … of filling the palace with "soothsayers... seers and mutes as well as dream interpreters and those who consult entrail, indeed all those skilled in malign craft".
Characterized as a Jezebel and a Justina … Judith was accused by one of her enemies, Paschasius Radbertus, of engaging in debauchery and witchcraft with her purported lover, Count Bernard of Septimania, Louis' chamberlain and trusted adviser. This portrayal and image stands in contrast to poems about Judith.[2] The poems depict her as "a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation".[2]
However, Judith also garnered devotion and respect. Hrabanus Maurus wrote a dedicatory letter to Judith, exalting her "praiseworthy intellect"[11] and for her "good works".[11] The letter commends her in the turbulent times amidst battles, wishing that she may see victory amidst the struggles she is facing. It also implores her "to follow through with a good deed once you have begun it"[11] and "to improve yourself at all times". Most strikingly the letter wishes Judith to look to the biblical Queen Esther, the wife of Xerxes I [sic] as inspiration and as a role model ….
[End of quote]
A tale of two more Judiths
“In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who,
during the siege of Jerusalem [sic] by the Assyrians, saves her city
by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him
and return in triumph to her people”.
Patrick J. Geary
Patrick Geary has written:
https://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com/2014/01/medieval-age-tale-of-two-judiths.html#!/2014/01/medieval-age-tale-of-two-judiths.html
JUDITH OF BAVARIA AND JUDITH OF FLANDERS
If mythical women stood at the beginnings of origin legends, this may be because real flesh-and-blood women stood at the beginnings of great aristocratic families.
After all, such families of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries largely owed their status, their lands, and their power to women. As Constance Bouchard and before her Karl Ferdinand Werner have pointed out, the great comital families might often appear to spring from “new men” in the ninth or tenth centuries, but actually these new men owed their rise to fortuitous marriages with greater, established families. ….
Family chroniclers and genealogists were well aware of the importance of such marriages in preserving and augmenting family power and honor — it was a constant and essential element in generational strategies throughout the Middle Ages. As Anita Guerreau-Jalabert has argued, the image of a strictly agnatic descent through generations is more an invention of nineteenth-century genealogists than a reflection of medieval perceptions of kinship.2 At the same time, the question of how much credit for the successes of kindreds should be attributed to these women rather than to the men of the kindred remained very much in question. As Janet Nelson points out, elite women played a double symbolic role within their husbands’ lineages: first, they made possible the continuation of the lineage, but at the same time, because they did not themselves belong to it, they made possible the individualization of a particular offspring within the lineage.3 Thus reconstruction of family histories meant coming to terms, under differing needs and circumstances, with the relative importance of such marriages and of the women who put not only their dowries and their bodies but their personalities and kinsmen to work on behalf of their husbands and their children. Over time, the ideological imperative of illustrious male descent could best be fostered if memory of the women who made their rise possible was removed from center stage in favor of the audacious acts of men.
In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who, during the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, saves her city by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him and return in triumph to her people.4 The biblical Judith was thus, as Heide Estes has pointed out, one of the few models of a woman playing an active role in public life available, although the reception of the story of Judith in the Middle Ages shows the dangerous ambiguity attached to this woman.5 The younger of the Judiths considered in this chapter was the grand-daughter of the elder, and their stories illustrate the two principal ways that women could be at the start of families’ fortunes. The story of how these beginnings were reformed over time suggests the complexities of aristocratic dynastic memory in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
….
… the alliance that moved this kindred to the very center of the Frankish stage was the marriage of Judith, daughter of Welf and Heilwig, to the emperor Louis the Pious in 819, following the death of Louis’s first wife, Irmingard. Judith, according to the Annales regni Francorum and the account of an anonymous biographer of Louis known as the Astronomer, was selected in a sort of beauty pageant, in which the emperor examined daughters of the nobility before making his choice, a practice some have seen as imitating Byzantine tradition.14 More recently, Mayke de Jong has pointed out that this description, and particularly that of the “Astronomer,” is less a reflection of Byzantine court tradition than an image of Judith modeled on the biblical figure of Esther, a comparison already made by Hrabanus Maurus in his defense of the empress. ….
[End of qu0te]
“... ideal of the Christian woman”
“Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as
the ideal of the Christian woman … but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum”.
Maryan Ainsworth and Abbie Vandivere
The two authors write, with relation to Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen’s, famous painting of c. 1530 AD (conventional dating), “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (pictured above):
https://jhna.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/JHNA_6.2_Ainsworth_Vandivere.pdf
….
When considering for whom this painting of Judith, expressing female power, wisdom, and fortitude, may have been painted, a likely candidate comes to mind -- Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. It may well have been through Jan Gossart or perhaps Bernard Van Orley (ca. 1491/92–1542) that Vermeyen was introduced to Margaret, who held her court in Mechelen.
He must have entered the service of Margaret in 1525, for a document of 1530 petitions the regent for back pay for a period of about five years, indicating that Vermeyen had already been working for her.37 During this time, Vermeyen seems to have been mostly engaged in making portraits of the royal family and other nobles, such as the Portrait of Cardinal Érard de la Marck that with the Holy Family formed a diptych which belonged to Margaret.
The importance of the widow Judith as a model of strength and feminine virtue for Margaret of Austria and the iconography of the Burgundian-Habsburg court cannot be underestimated. The reminders of Judith’s importance as a just, vigorous, and brave ruler took many forms. Some of these were ephemeral, such as the tableaux vivants devoted to Judith that were performed at the official entries of princesses, such as Margaret of York, Mary of Burgundy, and Juana of Castile, into Netherlandish cities.38 Margaret of Austria owned a Judith tapestry (no longer extant) that was originally part of her trousseau for her marriage to Juan of Castile, and when she returned to Flanders after Juan’s death, the tapestry accompanied her.39 Possibly commissioned by Margaret from Bernard van Orley (her court painter), although not mentioned in the inventory of her possessions, was a tapestry of the Triumph of Virtuous Women that survives only as a petit patron (Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. no. 15463).40 Featured in the foreground before the triumphal all’antica chariot are Jael killing Sisera, Lucretia committing suicide, and Judith with the head of Holofernes on the tip of her sword. Margaret’s court sculptor, Conrad Meit, produced one of the masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture, a Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Munich, Bayerische Nationalmuseum), circa 1525–28. Although it is not listed among Margaret’s belongings, it certainly reflects courtly taste and was most likely commissioned by a woman for whom Judith was a noble exemplar.41
Margaret’s library contained books on virtuous women, among them Giovanni Bocaccio’s De femmes nobles et renomées (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Fr. 12420). Judith has a featured role in one of the most influential texts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Parement et triumphe des dames, written in 1493–94 by Olivier de la Marche. Here the author gives lessons to a noble lady of the virtues of humility, wisdom, loyalty, fidelity, and so forth in prose stories of famous virtuous women. Margaret of Austria owned an early version of the text, published between 1495 and 1500 (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. 10961-70).42
In 1509, Agrippa of Nettesheim dedicated to Margaret his treatise De nobilitate et praecellentia foemini sexus, where he notes that Judith “depicted herself as an example of virtue, which should be imitated not only by women but also by men,”43
Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as the ideal of the Christian woman44 but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum.45 Just as Judith saved her people from the Assyrians, so, too, did Margaret defend her people in a politically active role.
Her success in this endeavor was acknowledged in a monumental woodcut by Robert Péril (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 849-21), showing the genealogy of the Habsburgs, which praised Margaret as: “the Regent and sovereign of the Low countries, which she wisely ruled for Emperor Charles, her nephew; she opposed the enemy with the force of weapons and transferred the lands of Friesland, Utrecht and Overissel into the following of his majesty [Charles V].”46
In terms of Margaret’s remarkable political acumen, a singular event comes to mind that may have a specific connection to Vermeyen’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes. In August of 1529, around the time of the painting’s presumed date, Jan Vermeyen accompanied Margaret to the signing of the so-called Paix des Dames or Ladies’ Peace, otherwise known as the Peace of Cam- brai: the most extraordinary diplomatic achievement of the regent’s career. Meeting her sister-in- law Louise of Savoy (mother of Francis I) almost in secret in Cambrai, Margaret -- representing her nephew Charles V -- negotiated a peace between the French and the Habsburgs. This treaty, which included the arranged marriage of Eleanor of Austria (sister to Charles V) to Francis I, ended, at least for a time, the fighting between the forces of King Frances I and Emperor Charles V. An obvious parallel exists between Margaret and Judith: two virtuous and powerful women, who managed to find a solution to the lust for battle of men and nations and create peace. Whether this painting commemorates a specific event or generally celebrates the heroic achievement of one woman, it is certainly a product of the milieu of Margaret of Austria’s court. ….
[End of quote]
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Odabella
“Odabella implores him to kill her, but not to curse her.
She reminds his fiancé the story of the Hebrew Judith,
who saved Israel from the Babylonians [sic] by beheading
their leader Holofernes. Odabella has sworn to revenge …”.
“Attila” by Giuseppe Verdi
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Ildico
“The tradition that Attila died in a wedding-night may be true.
But Attila is so much like Holofernes and Ildico so much like Judith…
that we suspect the tradition, even in its most sober version”.
Otto Maenchen-Helfen
Taken from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nice-things-to-say-about-attila-the-hun-87559701/
[Attila’s] spectacular demise, on one of his many wedding nights, is memorably described by Gibbon:
Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors…. Yet, in the mean while Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired, at a late hour, from the banquet to the nuptial bed.
His attendants continued to respect his pleasures, or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil…. The king…had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which instead of finding a passage through his nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. ….
The real story goes as follows (Judith 13:1-10):
When evening came, his slaves quickly withdrew. Bagoas closed the tent from outside and shut out the attendants from his master’s presence. They went to bed, for they all were weary because the banquet had lasted so long. But Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was dead drunk.
Now Judith had told her maid to stand outside the bedchamber and to wait for her to come out, as she did on the other days; for she said she would be going out for her prayers. She had said the same thing to Bagoas. So everyone went out, and no one, either small or great, was left in the bedchamber. Then Judith, standing beside his bed, said in her heart, “O Lord God of all might, look in this hour on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. Now indeed is the time to help your heritage and to carry out my design to destroy the enemies who have risen up against us.”
She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, “Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!” Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag. ….
Judith and Queen Elizabeth 1
Aidan Norrie has written (2016): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rest.12258
Elizabeth I as Judith: reassessing the apocryphal widow's appearance in Elizabethan royal iconography
Abstract
Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England was paralleled with many figures from the Bible.
While the analogies between Elizabeth and biblical figures such as Deborah the Judge, King Solomon, Queen Esther, King David, and Daniel the Prophet have received detailed attention in the existing scholarship, the analogy between Elizabeth and the Apocryphal widow Judith still remains on the fringes. Not only did Elizabeth compare herself to Judith, the analogy also appeared throughout the course of the queen's reign as a biblical precedent for dealing with the Roman Catholic threat. This article re-assesses the place of the Judith analogy within Elizabethan royal iconography by chronologically analysing of many of the surviving, primary source, comparisons between Judith and Elizabeth, and demonstrates that Judith was invoked consistently, and in varying media, as a model of a providentially blessed leader. ….
[End of quote]
Will true Elizabeth stand up?
Compared to Judith and Esther, she was a
new Moses and as wise as King Solomon.
According to this article:
http://www.ibrarian.net/navon/paper/The_Development_of_the_Cult_of_Elizabeth_I.pdf?paperid=20396591
On one … of the first portraits of [Elizabeth I] as a queen she appears in a religious context, she washes the feet of twelve poor women at a Maundy ceremony. …. On the title-pages of the different editions of the Bible Elizabeth’s figure appears: she is surrounded by the four cardinal virtues on the 1569 edition, while on the 1568 edition between the figures of Faith and Love she personifies the third New Testament virtue, Hope.
At the beginning of the Coronation Entry as she left the Tower she praised God for her deliverance from prison during the reign of Mary and compared herself to the prophet Daniel spared by God by special providence: “I acknowledge that Thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with me as Thou didst with Thy true and faithful servant Daniel, Thy prophet, whom Thou deliverest out of the den from the cruelty of the greedy and raging lions. Even so was I overwhelmed and only by Thee delivered.” ….
During the first decade Elizabeth was mostly compared to figures of the Old Testament. In the fifth pageant of the Coronation Entry she appeared as Deborah, the Old Testament judge, listening to the advice of three figures representing the three estates of England, the clergy, the nobility and the commons. …. In sermons she was compared to Judith who rescued her people, and to Esther who interceded for her people. …. She was seen also as a new Moses leading his people out of the captivity of Egypt, and as Solomon the wise king.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-14683734304472933302024-02-16T13:17:00.000-08:002024-02-16T13:17:28.991-08:00Divine Mercy loathes tepidity, lukewarmness<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNhHzJOb4d8Q5hNefw613Nm-oFzahm7Z35cfJGkq3Dkf88uZz3ekZ870e1J9G_LDf5bgWc0WbpMhaEZS542TXj5VERgfCxvT0DZ1fgUOOWo-IvNDZRdtwO4JAEGK_Ss-EgiOyTa78tztHt7p5tSXlHdPrk9BmHgyjhKa5hP1n9p2tfjm74pjQ9cchc6s4/s1280/divine_mercy_cross_10_in__59643_zoom.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1057" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNhHzJOb4d8Q5hNefw613Nm-oFzahm7Z35cfJGkq3Dkf88uZz3ekZ870e1J9G_LDf5bgWc0WbpMhaEZS542TXj5VERgfCxvT0DZ1fgUOOWo-IvNDZRdtwO4JAEGK_Ss-EgiOyTa78tztHt7p5tSXlHdPrk9BmHgyjhKa5hP1n9p2tfjm74pjQ9cchc6s4/s600/divine_mercy_cross_10_in__59643_zoom.jpg"/></a></div>
‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either
one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—
I am about to spit you out of my mouth’.
Revelation 3:15-16
For the ninth day, Christ asked Saint Faustina to pray for the sake of all the souls who have become lukewarm in their belief. She recorded the following words of Our Lord in her diary: “Today bring to Me the Souls who have become Lukewarm, and immerse them in the abyss of My mercy. These souls wound My Heart most painfully. My soul suffered the most dreadful loathing in the Garden of Olives because of lukewarm souls. They were the reason I cried out: ‘Father, take this cup away from Me, if it be Your will.’ For them, the last hope of salvation is to run to My mercy.”
Divine Mercy Novena
Taken from: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/when-lukewarm-soul-reheated
When a Lukewarm Soul is Reheated
MAY
07
2019
David Van Sise, a recovering lukewarm soul, knows all about that particular character flaw that keeps some souls from stepping out in faith.
He knows, for instance, what Jesus told St. Faustina about lukewarm souls - that "My soul suffered the most dreadful loathing in the Garden of Olives because of lukewarm souls" (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1228).
And how does the Lord define lukewarm souls? As "souls who thwart My efforts" (Diary, 1682).
Thwarting Jesus' efforts certainly was never David's intention. But in retrospect, a spiritually lukewarm David Van Sise meant that, among other things, Jesus' Divine Mercy message wasn't reaching certain hardened criminals in a New Jersey maximum security federal prison. That's no longer the case.
David, an insurance industry executive from East Windsor, New Jersey, now engages in prison ministry, each week going cell to cell helping the greatest of sinners come to know of God's love for them.
His own lukewarm faith began heating up in 2014 when he discovered a Marian Press pamphlet explaining the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
"It spoke to my heart," said David. "I said to my wife, Chrystyna, 'This St. Faustina - she has a Diary, too.' Chrystyna said, 'I know,' and she pulled it out and handed it to me. I just kept reading and reading the Diary. I'm still reading it."
He felt the call to learn every-thing he could about Divine Mercy. Eventually, he learned of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy. He and Chrystyna visited. During Mass, he felt the Lord speak to his heart, telling him to come to the Shrine on the first Sunday of every month and to bring people with him. He's been doing that ever since.
"I went from being a lukewarm Catholic, raised in the faith, but I didn't live my faith," he said. "I lived as if I wasn't worthy of God's
love. But then I read the Diary and came to know that God's mercy is for everybody - the greater the sinner, the greater the right I have to His mercy (see Diary, 723). I realized He never turned His back to me. He was waiting for me with His arms stretched."
During the Church's extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy three years ago, David vowed to obey the command Jesus gave to the world through St. Faustina when He said, "I demand from you deeds of mercy, which are to arise out of love for Me" (Diary, 742). He decided to spend the year engaging in each of the works of mercy. But when he got to "Visit the imprisoned," he seized up.
"That's just not for me," he concluded.
But he eventually went to a workshop led by prison ministers and felt called to help out. Now he looks forward to his weekly prison visits. Each week, in the prison's toughest section, he goes cell to cell and offers himself as a merciful presence and listening ear. He offers the inmates materials on Divine Mercy and Our Lady. He offers to pray for them.
"I make the Sign of the Cross, and I do my best to ask the Lord to speak through me and give me the words that are going to bring some light to them," David says. "And many times afterwards they're like, 'Wow, man. Thanks a lot. That was really good.'"
Why does he choose to minister to an inmate population whom society has declared the worst of the worst?
"What I see is that they thirst for something," David says. "They have an emptiness in their hearts, and many of them have spent their whole lives filling that with drugs, alcohol, pornography, and other vices, and there's never been an opportunity for them to put anything good inside that emptiness."
He has witnessed conversions. Mostly, he's witnessed inmates finding comfort in the simple fact that someone cares and that Jesus never gives up on us.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-17832050823982064572024-02-12T11:03:00.000-08:002024-02-12T11:03:02.049-08:00Jesus is the Alpha and Omega <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixiiUQ0ZyPD4Dtk-bXNRotaOfNb6E8qAWnXJPL_SjjVZZITEcjtjKYR0lxBpLiaVS2BUhZEdijLVqV8oBBBAZdKwn9uirZG9wTxPYeHTHJ4hEHAabQlfvNNJfbUA1O2n2JQyHoUrdntIGE3_1PSPNjU64rJuGLwClBdyUs3V6pXQrn7F-aAK0ojPSL7zjG/s1920/christ-in-revelation-alpha-omega.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixiiUQ0ZyPD4Dtk-bXNRotaOfNb6E8qAWnXJPL_SjjVZZITEcjtjKYR0lxBpLiaVS2BUhZEdijLVqV8oBBBAZdKwn9uirZG9wTxPYeHTHJ4hEHAabQlfvNNJfbUA1O2n2JQyHoUrdntIGE3_1PSPNjU64rJuGLwClBdyUs3V6pXQrn7F-aAK0ojPSL7zjG/s600/christ-in-revelation-alpha-omega.jpg"/></a></div>
“Jesus is God incarnate. Because of his human nature, he is the only human being who can say he is the Alpha and the Omega. Jesus is the person who is, who was, and who always will be”.
Carolyn Humphreys
Taken from: https://www.hprweb.com/2020/07/alpha-and-omega/
Alpha and Omega
JULY 2, 2020 BY CAROLYN HUMPHREYS, OCDS
Francis of Assisi is known to have said: “Sanctify yourself, and you will sanctify society.” On the Christian map, there are many roads to sanctity. Whatever the road, there is only one major and very necessary guide for this journey. His name is Jesus Christ. Jesus is known by many fascinating titles. One of the most captivating titles is the Alpha and the Omega, which are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The Alpha and Omega are familiar church symbols that we see on altars, candles, vestments and walls. Because Jesus is the incarnation of God, the Alpha and Omega are also used as a monogram for Christ.
During Jesus time, the Jewish rabbis commonly used the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet to signify the wholeness of anything from beginning to end. Because it was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean people, the New Testament was first written in a form of Greek, and eventually translated into English.
The words alpha and omega are introduced to us in the New Testament in several places in the Book of Revelations. They symbolize the oneness in the divine nature of God the Father and Jesus his Son. Their divine nature is exactly and entirely identical. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Because of the oneness of their divine nature, what is said about God the Father can also be said about God the Son. Their divinity is limitless and unbounded, transcending every human comprehension or description.
The Alpha and the Omega are a sign that the beginning and end of everything is God. Paul the apostle refers to Jesus as the first born of the new creation and the end or goal of our lives when all creation will be drawn up into him. In other words, God is the all; the first and the last, the beginning and the end of everything, and of everything in between. God is the source and the conclusion of life on earth.
Jesus is God incarnate. Because of his human nature, he is the only human being who can say he is the Alpha and the Omega. Jesus is the person who is, who was, and who always will be. Actually, he always is. Was and will be are descriptions of, and changing characters within, the past and future in time, as we know them to be. God, and his Son, however, are ever existing, and have neither a beginning nor will they ever have an end. Augustine describes God as “an infinite circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
When Jesus came to earth as man, he was born, lived for only thirty three years in Judea, showed us the way to God the Father and died. In the natural realm, we know about him through a time and in a place in history. However, there is so much more to Jesus than what we understand from a historical perspective. In the supernatural realm, he existed before and after his earthly life. Jesus, the infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent God became man for us to redeem us. Jesus is the beginning of all created temporal life and this will remain so until he comes again at the end of time. His second coming will be the beginning of the end of creation as we understand it on earth. Heaven is eternal and Jesus is as eternal as God the Father.
The middle space between alpha and omega indicates that Jesus encompasses all history.
He is historically present in the New Testament, and in the movements of grace, throughout all phases of history up to the present day. At the beginning of time, as God, he was the one through whom all the world, the universe and all its complex mysteries came into being. Jesus said that he existed before Abraham was born and identifies himself with other statements from the Old Testament. He is the “I am” of Exodus 3:14. He is the good shepherd of Psalm 23. He is the Lord of the Old Testament and will bring history to a close when he comes again on the last day.
The wholeness of the Alpha and the Omega refers to Jesus the Christ as the word of God, and the wholeness of God’s revelation, to all humankind in every era.
On a personal level, Jesus is the beginning and the end of a Christian’s spiritual journey in this life. Jesus is the fullness of truth, beauty, goodness, and wisdom. We need him throughout our faith journey while on earth, and will rejoice with him when we reach our heavenly goal. At the center of our hearts, Jesus is dynamic in the presentation and orchestration of all our good behavior, actions and pursuits. However, we must respond positively to what we believe he wants of us, both as a unique individual, and together with the people of God in his one, holy Catholic and apostolic Church. He is the head of his mystical body, the Church. Jesus is the reason why we live as we do, the master teacher in our Catholic Church, and the end for which we were made. This brings to mind the words of an old hymn by Samuel J. Stone: “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water and the Word. From heav’n he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.”
The Spectrum
The first and the last are two opposing points. In temporal terms, they can be seen as a spectrum. When experiencing daily feelings this connection is not a straight line, but rather a line that has many peaks and valleys. A phone call can bring grief to a happy day. Laughter can lighten a sad occasion. Ever changing feelings are a normal part of daily life. They can flare up when least expected and can change in an instant. Can we control the severity of our feelings? An old Native American story is told about a grandfather who said to his grandson: “I feel like I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is mean spirited, angry and attacks everything. The other wolf is forgiving, loving and kind.” “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” the grandson asked. “The one I feed,” said the grandfather. Which wolf do we feed?
Within sadness and joy, Henri Nouwen wrote:
Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.
There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a perfectly unadulterated joy. Even in the happiest moments of our existence can be tinged with sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of failure. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. . . . But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our earthly existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.
And this perfect joy is only possible by being with Jesus. Therese of Lisieux understood this well: “Life is passing, Eternity draws nigh, soon shall we live the very life of God. After having drunk deep at the fount of bitterness, our thirst will be quenched at the very source of all sweetness.”
The Dove and the Serpent
Jesus asks us to be as wise as serpents and as simple as doves. If we go below the surface meaning of these words, they are more of a blending than a balancing act. The serpent and the dove can indicate when to stay put and when to fly away. We discern to stay or fly when we are able to judge our abilities and strength with the situation at hand. The wisdom of the serpent sustains us in seeing potential danger in people, events and situations that could weaken our friendship with God. The simplicity of the dove maintains a gentle but firm spiritual orientation that is evident in our goodness and kindness to all we meet. We aim to combine the shrewdness of the serpent with the sensitivity of the dove by cultivating a steadfast mind and a tender heart.
It is said that serpents are wise, have keen eyesight, and are quick to learn. Their tongue protects them from nearby predators, and is useful in following trails, identifying prey, and locating shelter. Serpents are crafty in their use of resources or skills. To be wise as a serpent means to have sound, basic knowledge of what areas we should and should not be. This helps us guard the most precious part of being, our soul. Serpents are quick to get out of the way of trouble. If someone or something evil lunges at us, we step aside. Like serpents, we must always be watchful for snares, traps and deceptions that can subtly take us away from God’s love. There are dark sides of people, and society, that can be inconspicuously present to us, and can take us off our course, or enslave us in dark areas, if we are not vigilant.
Doves are meek, innocent, gentle, harmless and are universal symbols of peace. Jesus said he was meek and humble of heart. Meekness draws from humility, the truth that reminds us from where we came, who we are, and where we are going. As doves, we avoid duplicity and keep our conscience clean. We maintain sound Catholic priorities in private and in public. We assume risks as vulnerable, non combative persons. We forgive easily. Difficulties are managed with patience and gentleness. If we are as simple as doves, our demeanor is soothing and has an approachable softness. We discover the splendor of God’s truth, beauty, and wisdom in humankind and all his creation.
As doves, we gently bring the peace of Christ to others and therefore infuse it into society. How are we signs of peace to those with whom we associate?
Because Jesus is our beginning and our end, he sustains us amid the ups and downs, gains and losses, clarity and confusion, comforts and hardships and, above all, the mysteries in life. He is our “lift” that transcends what is disturbing during dark times, and enhances the beneficence we find during times of light. A Christian way of life can be envisioned as a scale that keeps all things in balance with Jesus’s love and mercy. We let go of things that distance us from Christ and embrace the habits and experiences that bring us into union with Christ.
Jesus, Alpha and Omega,
God before the world began,
First and last,
beginning, ending,
Mighty Word and Son of Man,
Great Creator,
Liberator! Author of salvation’s plan!
You have loved us! You have freed us!
Made of us a chosen race, royal priesthood,
holy nation, your own people, born of grace!
Ever living King forgiving,
soon we’ll see you face to face!
With the clouds return in glory;
you have sworn it!
Come and stay!
God who was and is and will be,
Strengthen us to watch and pray!
Find us steady, faithful, ready!
Hasten, Jesus! Speed that Day!
Keith Landis
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-88764125223455892552024-02-10T22:40:00.000-08:002024-02-10T22:40:14.664-08:00 Immaculate Conception made visible at Lourdes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVtqkl-ijMcpFt4jkhjAhFljZA2yNC1gJEVFCYWFEMYGIcgCdT-7tafne0Zd6s6bdVsnS1QXI63NmG6olAP1_CpnfGaPUnsWWriIYv-nfl5a94sWZn6B1cKFXXShx6-btvniEcZLWEYiVQHbdiBuhmjD4VfNDVXJgbkHC8e0LO1KY1jMyoWNnYpUwdaRV/s1920/bandeau-annonciation.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVtqkl-ijMcpFt4jkhjAhFljZA2yNC1gJEVFCYWFEMYGIcgCdT-7tafne0Zd6s6bdVsnS1QXI63NmG6olAP1_CpnfGaPUnsWWriIYv-nfl5a94sWZn6B1cKFXXShx6-btvniEcZLWEYiVQHbdiBuhmjD4VfNDVXJgbkHC8e0LO1KY1jMyoWNnYpUwdaRV/s600/bandeau-annonciation.jpg"/></a></div>
We read at:
https://militia-immaculatae.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Lourdes_Booklet_EN.pdf
….
In 1914, as a clerical student Saint Maximilian was miraculously cured by means of water from Lourdes. To have lost his right thumb could have prevented him from receiving priestly orders. His miraculous cure was a visible sign of Mary’s care of his priestly vocation.
During his life Saint Maximilian Kolbe visited Lourdes only once. It was on the 30th of January 1930, before undertaking his mission to the Far East. In Lourdes Saint Maximilian celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Basilica, he prayed the rosary in the Grotto, he drank the miraculous water and he sank his finger in the water, he kissed the rock in the Grotto and he commended his prayers to Mary. Summarising his visit to Lourdes, he stressed the experience of a great love of His "Mamusia (Mammy)", as he fondly called the Immaculata. The apparitions in Lourdes had a special place in the Marian treaty begun by Father Maximilian (which he never completed). The Saint gave a description of the apparitions. However, most of all, St. Maximilian discussed the meaning of the name 'Immaculate Conception': "The Immaculate Conception — this privilege must be particularly dear to her if, at Lourdes, this is how she herself wanted to be called: I am the Immaculate Conception. These words must indicate accurately and in the most essential manner who she is."
"'Immaculate Conception' — these words came out of the mouth of the Immaculata herself. Therefore, they must indicate accurately and in the most essential manner who she is. Who are you, O Immaculate Conception? Not God, for He has no beginning; not an angel, created directly out of nothing; not Adam, formed with the mud of the earth; not Eve, taken from Adam; and not even the Incarnate Word, who existed from eternity and is 'conceived' rather than a 'conception'. Prior to conception, the children of Eve did not exist, so they may be better called 'conception'. Yet you differ from them also, for they are conceptions contaminated by original sin, while you are the only Immaculate Conception."
Also, in Lourdes, the Immaculata did not define herself as 'Conceived without sin', but, as St. Bernadette herself recounts: "At that moment the Lady was standing above the wild rose bush in the same way in which she is depicted on the Miraculous Medal. Upon my third question her face took on an expression of gravity and at the same time of profound humility… Joining the palms of her hands as if in prayer, she lifted them up to her chest… turned her gaze toward Heaven… then, slowly opening her hands and bowing to me, she said in a voice in which you could notice a slight tremor: 'Que soy era Immaculada Councepsiou!' (I am the Immaculate Conception!')".
The whole meaning of the life, sufferings and death of Saint Maximilian was to underline the answer given by the Most Holy Virgin Mary to Bernadette, when she asked the Lady to reveal her name. Saint Maximilian had a desire to live by that answer as well as to feed others with it. Countless times and without rest Saint Maximilian repeated: "The Most Holy Mother, asked by Bernadette what her name was, replied: 'I am the Immaculate Conception'. This is a definition of the Immaculata."
In her apparition at Lourdes, in 1858, the Mother of God held in her arms the rosary, and through Bernadette, recommended to us the recital of the Rosary. We can conclude, therefore, that the prayer of the Rosary makes the Immaculata happy.
St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe
Mugenzai no Sono, before October 1933
Father C.B. Daly
The Meaning
of Lourdes
While Lourdes and its apparitions add nothing to the Church's dogmas, they do deepen our appreciation of her teachings and enliven our response to them. The need for prayer and penance, an awareness of Jesus truly present in the Eucharist, the duty of fraternal charity — all this has ever been part of Christian life. At Lourdes, however, we are confronted with these things anew. Mary there shows us their importance as a mother would, by making them more actual, one might even say tangible. By bringing us face to face with human weakness and misery in the pilgrims who come to that shrine, she pleads that we make prayer and penance, love of Jesus and charity for others the very fabric of our daily existence. It is here that she lets us see the significance of her Immaculate Conception and know the extent of her Co-redemption. The first privilege kept her free from sin and therefore empowered her to love both God and man perfectly. The other gave her the responsibility to aid us, her children, in working towards that same freedom and attaining that same love. Mary's concern at Lourdes is, then, to help us bear witness to the realities that lie hidden in the truths of faith.
Lourdes and Revelation
In investigating the meaning of Lourdes, one has to begin by eliminating some mistaken hypotheses. We know, for example, from general theological principles, that Lourdes cannot be intended to teach us any new truth about Mary or about the divine plan of salvation. No apparition or private revelation, however approved by the Church, could reveal to us any new truth of faith or morals, or add any truth to what is to be believed by Catholic faith. Pope Benedict XIV, as Cardinal Lambertini, in his classic work on "The Beatification and Canonization of the Servants of God", says, speaking of private revelations:
Such an ecclesiastical approbation is nothing else than a permission to publish (a narrative) after mature examination, in view of the instruction and utility of the faithful... The assent of Catholic Faith to revelations thus approved is not merely not obligatory, but is not possible; (such revelations) demand only an assent of human credence in conformance with the rules of human prudence which represents them as probable and piously credible. ….
Jean Guitton, speaking of mariophanies and places of Marian pilgrimage, has well said:
The veneration of the faithful is not directed to the place itself, but to the mystery that is conceived to be connected with the place... It may happen that the seer of the vision is canonized; if so, it is not for his visions alone, but for the heroic virtues of his life... Suppose the worst: imagine facts come to light which throw serious doubt on the genuineness of the vision... That would take nothing at all from the truths this particular vision represented. These would not depend on any new vision; the Church already possessed them in her deposit of faith. Nor would it detract from the graces received where the vision occurred.
These statements only repeat fundamental theses of the theology of faith and of revelation. In their light it is evident that it is only with qualifications that we can speak of Lourdes as having been intended by God as a miraculous confirmation of the truth of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception defined four years earlier by Pope Pius IX.
This is indeed a very natural way to speak and it contains important truth. The episcopal document whereby Mgr. Laurence in 1862 gave official ecclesiastical recognition to the apparition already pointed out that, by appearing at Lourdes, and calling for a sanctuary to be built there, Our Lady seemed herself to have wished "to consecrate by a monument the infallible pronouncement of the successor of St. Peter."
The popes themselves have spoken in this way. Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical for the fiftieth anniversary of the Definition of 1854, wrote:
Pope Pius IX had hardly defined as of Catholic faith the truth that Mary was from her conception exempt from sin, when there began at Lourdes the marvellous manifestations of Our Lady.
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical for the centenary of Lourdes recalled a statement from his earlier encyclical, Fulgens Corona, that
the Blessed Virgin Mary herself wished, it would seem, to confirm by a marvellous event the definition which her Son’s Vicar on earth had a short time before proclaimed.
However, the Pope in the same centenary encyclical noted that
The infallible word of the Roman Pontiff, authentic interpreter of revealed truth, needed no heavenly confirmation in order to command the belief of the faithful.
But yet, he continued:
With what emotion and what gratitude the Christian people and its pastors received from the lips of Bernadette the reply coming from Heaven, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
These words of Pope Pius XII are the most accurate expression of the matter. In one sense Lourdes cannot confirm the truth of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, because we are more sure of the truth of the dogma than we are of the reality of the apparitions. For the former we have divine authority; for the latter we have strictly only human credibility. Yet, in the concrete case, these distinctions seem somewhat academic and unreal. Lourdes does not add any new ground of objective certitude to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; but it does confirm our personal apprehension of that truth.
Perhaps we might use Newman's formula, and say that Lourdes helps to change our attitude towards the dogma from a notional into a real assent. Mary's mission at Lourdes was not to reveal new truths, but to give us a deeper realization of the truths revealed by her Son once and for all time, the truths she kept while on earth and pondered in her heart.
It is, therefore, theologically inexact and inadvisable to speak of Lourdes and the other great Marian manifestations of modern times as marking a new and Marian epoch in the economy of redemption. Preachers sometimes speak of this as the Age of Mary and develop their theme by suggesting that God first sent His Son to draw mankind to His love; and when men refused to come to His Son, He in the last times sends them Mary. Frequently implicated with this theme is another and probably more serious aberration which crept into certain mariological expressions and images since the sixteenth century.
This trend of thought would have it that, as between Jesus and Mary, Mary provides the pity and the pleas to Jesus for mercy, and Jesus the rigour of divine justice and wrath towards sinners. Such language and imagery are, of course, devotional rather than theological, and it is perhaps unfair to assess them by rigorous theological criteria.
Rightly interpreted, the apparitions at Lourdes and a century of Lourdes devotion stand opposed to these aberrant concepts and constitute a recall to the traditional and true theology of Our Lady.
"I am the Immaculate Conception"
It is natural to look for some centre of unity amid the diversity of facts and words associated with Lourdes. There can be no doubt that this centre was provided by Our Lady herself when on the 25th of March 1858 she at last spoke the word that all had been waiting, praying and hoping for. She spoke her name. She said: "I am the Immaculate Conception."
Nothing more surely attests to the doctrinal soundness and the supernatural origin of the apparitions than these words. Bernadette did not know what they meant.
Her cousin, Jeanne Vedere, who had the story directly from Bernadette at the time, describes how Bernadette had to repeat the words over and over again on her way to tell them to the Curé for fear of forgetting them; and that when M. Peyramale asked her what the words meant, she confessed that she did not know.
This apparition was always the climax of Bernadette's narration of the events of Massabielle. She accompanied her narration with a re-enactment of the gestures of Our Lady as she spoke the words. Our Lady had had her hands joined, with the Rosary hanging from her right arm. In response to Bernadette's thricerepeated appeal to her to declare her name she smiled, then extended her arms downwards in the attitude of the Virgin of the Miraculous Medal, so that the Rosary slipped towards her wrist; then joined her hands again upon her breast and with eyes raised towards Heaven, spoke with indescribable humility and tenderness the words, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
Bernadette's repetition of these gestures and words made an unforgettable impression on all who witnessed it. The sculptor, M. Fabisch, who had already executed the statuary of La Salette, and was chosen to make the first statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, came in 1863 to hear from Bernadette herself the description of the Lady of her visions. He asked her to describe the scene of the Lady's self-revelation. He later wrote:
The girl stood up with perfect simplicity. She joined her hands and raised her eyes towards Heaven... But neither Fra Angelico, nor Perugino, nor Raphael has ever created anything so gentle, and at the same time so profound as the look of that little girl... I shall never forget, as long as I live, the beauty of that expression.
There is no doubt, then, that the sixteenth apparition, and Our Lady's words on that occasion, are the heart of Lourdes and the key to its whole meaning. Bernadette herself, who deplored the fact that too many people skim over the surface of things, remarked: "I would like to see emphasis placed on the apparition in which the Blessed Virgin declared her identity." Everything in the story of Lourdes is related to and made meaningful by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
The grammar of Our Lady's words is strange and cannot be accidental. The authenticity of the words has been questioned on theological grounds: how could Our Lady be her Immaculate Conception?
But the construction surely invites juxtaposition with two sentences from the New Testament. The first is that in which St. Paul says of Our Lord: "Him who knew no sin (God) hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21). The second is that in which Our Lady herself says, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord"; in other words, "I am the slave of the Lord; I am nothing but the fulfiller of His will."
St. Paul says that God made Christ sin, that we might be made the justice of God in Christ. But in Mary and in her alone the divine plan of redemption is already and fully and finally realized. Through Christ, her Son, she is already made "the justice of God." She is the justice of God accomplished.
She is the Immaculate Conception, in whom through Christ sin is totally defeated. Christ was made sin that she might be sinless. Christ was made sin for us; she is made "anti-sin" in order that she may be the model of the sinlessness that we, poor sinners, must painfully, penitentially labour to achieve in Christ.
But Mary's sinlessness is not merely a state which she passively receives. It is also a total, dedicated disposition of will which she actively lives and is. In this sense also she is her Immaculate Conception; that is to say, she is the justice of God; she is the complete fulfiller of all the justice of His just will. "I am the Immaculate Conception" was Our Lady's repetition, on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1858, of the words she spoke at the Annunciation itself: "I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to Thy word."
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-6014376692587571532024-02-02T13:27:00.000-08:002024-02-02T13:27:27.521-08:00 A ‘preview’ of Mary in 2 Kings 5<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWyloAQKcpAc5BNduNdhSsOnice4rzGxxxPgPLK7A3KWPu2gRlZd7RL9-PmBn-VQKNHm0ogBnVtdCdbaLeUG8S-_cGwtMNL2dcvbV4jyqOn6xhlzFdHIe0HdtwrJOeSxSaAes6Uo6d3d5C5TXSuQWpiND_xdQGoIAReCEnjZGjSvMjl9pr9Vm29OxYeXf/s280/download.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWyloAQKcpAc5BNduNdhSsOnice4rzGxxxPgPLK7A3KWPu2gRlZd7RL9-PmBn-VQKNHm0ogBnVtdCdbaLeUG8S-_cGwtMNL2dcvbV4jyqOn6xhlzFdHIe0HdtwrJOeSxSaAes6Uo6d3d5C5TXSuQWpiND_xdQGoIAReCEnjZGjSvMjl9pr9Vm29OxYeXf/s400/download.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
A most important person now emerges in the narrative, a person of absolutely the
lowest status in the entire story, but whose charitable intervention on behalf of Na’aman
will have cosmological ramifications. That person is a “little girl”, a “servant”, as was
Mary of Nazareth (Luke 1:38): ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’, whose intervention in history became its defining moment: ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word’.
We read the account of the Syrian captain, Na’aman, his miraculous cure from leprosy and his conversion to Yahweh, in 2 Kings 5.
Na’aman, whose name means “pleasant”, was a famed military captain, who had assisted his Syrian master-king, Ben-Hadad [I], by winning “great victories” for him.
Legend even has it that it was Na’aman who had drawn his bow at a venture and had struck king Ahab of Israel with a fatal arrow shot.
This Na’aman, however, was terribly afflicted with a skin disease, or “leprosy”.
As sometimes happens in the Scriptures - and indeed also in history down through the ages - the Lord seems to be ‘driving the war chariots’ of the ‘baddies’, in this case Aram (or Syria), against those who are meant to be the ‘goodies’, in this case, Israel. For it is the Lord, we learn, who is giving victory to the Syrians. The same would happen later, at the time of the prophet Isaiah, when Sennacherib’s “Assyria” would be described as “the rod of My anger”, God’s punishment over and over again against his apostate people.
Not that these Syrians, or these Assyrians, would have been the least bit aware of how they were being employed in, or conscripted into, Yahweh’s service, their minds bent entirely upon their own personal glory and conquest.
This, God’s seeming blessing upon the deeds of the wicked has much troubled the godly types down through history, those like Job and Jeremiah, for instance. ‘Why do the wicked prosper?’
We have seen it again in our modern era, with tyrants seemingly going from strength to strength, all of their ambitions coming to fruition. Totally self-reliant, full of hubris, they never appear to give a single thought to God. Some of these will eventually collapse in a sad heap (like Hitler), but others will seem to go on and on, for decades, with no hope of change in sight.
There are also rare occasions, like in the case of king Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’- another of those enemy kings of Israel being powerfully upheld by the Lord - when the tyrant will undergo a significant change of heart (metanoia).
In the days of Samuel, the enemy Philistines would succeed (though much to their own discomfiture) in capturing the Ark of the Covenant, owing to the graft and corruption of Israel’s leading priests at this time. It befell King David to retrieve the sacred object.
The era of Na’aman was a time of similar wickedness throughout Israel, with king Ahab in charge, urged on by that ‘baddest’ of all wives, Queen Jezebel.
That may be the most likely explanation as to why the Syrian armies, capably led by Na’aman, were being allowed by the Lord to run riot, as if He himself had taken over the helm.
Na’aman, a proud Syrian worshipper of his own gods, the greatest of them being Rimmon, would have been, just like the blasphemous Assyrian king, Sennacherib, blissfully unaware of the Lord’s designs upon him, which will, in the case of Na’aman, go well beyond providing him with military victories for Ben-Hadad’s Syria. Thus see e.g. my article:
Akhnaton’s Theophany
(1) (DOC) Akhnaton's Theophany | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
A most important person now emerges in the narrative, a person of absolutely the lowest status in the entire story, but whose charitable intervention on behalf of Na’aman will have cosmological ramifications. That person is a “little girl”, a “servant”, as was Mary of Nazareth (Luke 1:38): ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’, whose intervention in history became its defining moment: ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word’.
It happened that the Syrians had, in one of their raids, captured an Israelite girl, who “had been given to Na’aman’s wife as a maid”.
The girl’s rôle will be crucial.
In her kindness and forgiveness, the girl will tell her mistress: ‘I wish my master [Na’aman] would go to see the prophet [Elisha] in Samaria. He will heal him of his leprosy’. The girl’s wish, expressed to her mistress, had opened the door to a miracle. Compare the (Israelite) Jewish Mary at Cana again, concernedly pointing the guests to, not a prophet of Israel in this case, but to Jesus Christ himself, the King of all prophets: ‘Do whatever He tells you’.
Wine, lacking at the marriage feast, will now be drawn as the finest wine, drawn from water.
Incredibly, Na’aman, who, as the narrative informs us, was an extremely proud man, takes this information from a young and foreign slave girl, and goes with it to the great king himself, Ben-Hadad. Just as incredibly, the king of Syria has no problem with his captain traipsing off to Samaria to seal the deal. This may have been during one of those occasions when a truce prevailed between the two countries. What it does strikingly reveal, it seems, is the tremendous confidence that the king of Syria has in his right-hand man, Na’aman.
But, whatever the political situation at the time, the un-named king of Israel goes into a panic. ‘Am I God that I can cure leprosy?’ Who could blame him?
Elisha, who must have been on fairly good terms with this particular king of Israel, asks him, ‘Why are you upset? Send Na’aman to me, and he will learn that there is a true prophet here in Israel’.
Indeed, ‘Na’aman … will learn’ that; but not without his first having to undergo an intense inner struggle. This Na’aman was, as we have learned, a highly competent military commander. He was disfigured by leprosy, a cure for which he was apparently so desperately seeking that he had even resorted to taking the advice of a young slave girl. A bit like a superstitious punter who will latch on to almost anyone’s tips for some success at the races.
Na’aman’s outward disfigurement was a sign of his inward disfigurement of superstitious pride. Desperate for a cure, he nonetheless romped up to Samaria in full military pomp, with horses and chariots. The cure was to be on his own terms, a quick blessing from the prophet, and then a return to life as normal. Moreover, he was loaded down with lavish presents. This, he may have reasoned, ought to coax the prophet into swinging things his way.
Elisha was there to tell him that it does not work like that.
Well, actually Elisha was not there to tell him.
The fearless Elisha, for whom nothing was too hard, and who feared no one, having heard the noisy thunder of horses and chariots marching his way, did not like the way that Na’aman was shaping up. So the prophet did not even come out to greet the Syrian captain.
Elisha’s first lesson.
Instead, he sent “a messenger” to tell Na’aman, tersely: ‘Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of your leprosy’.
This was not what Na’aman had wanted to hear, and he let it be known. Going off in a huff, he exclaimed: ‘I thought that he would at least come out for me. I thought that he would just wave his hand over the leprous spot and I would be cured’. Anyway, he mused, the impressive rivers of Damascus, with their abundant waters from Syria’s gods, are far more potentially healing than Israel’s miserable Jordan River.
There is much more to Na’aman’s chagrin than may be apparent to modern, western minds when encountering this biblical passage. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg and co-author, Lisa Loden, have explained it in terms of the significance that an ancient people’s river had for them with its connection with life, fertility, agriculture, their gods, and so on (“The Syrian in Israel’s War Story (Naaman and the Gospel)”, preachitteachit.org.
In short, the authors explain: “… [Na’aman] was asked to do nothing less than betray the faith of his fathers. He was being asked to be willing to acknowledge that there was a possibility that Israel’s God could do something that the Syrian god [Rimmon] was unable to do”.
It was left to our Israelite slave girl to rescue Na’aman from his own folly. ‘Surely, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, you would have done it’.
Na’aman yields once again to the advice of this wise girl, goes off and immerses himself in the Jordan River, as Elisha had first told him to do, and his flesh becomes as clear as that of a child.
Catholics generally, and most unfortunately, do not take the simple advice of the Jewish maiden (Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima) who told us to do the Five First Saturdays, or Communion of Reparation, with specific points of instruction. This is what heaven wants, but many like to do things their way – possibly even the harder way.
Immerse yourself in the Five First Saturdays, and you can come away spiritually re-invigorated, made new again - just as Na’aman was.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-23383201459685450822024-02-01T12:17:00.000-08:002024-02-01T12:17:05.737-08:00Resplendent Child of Pontevedra in Spain<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkiv8Vplp4DKSN_079gkyD9VBB2Rognwb5dc7fWA1fyJNQbD32VsXU2Dl03h2KSA_LO4Ldz6WIBDgydKlA0rbcXLrXvJ3P46DHDqQjykx1p6oE-Vu21SnnTN5TmXk7cuUzF2cl6XypW60usGvpRd3tuER_YR1EOLkF3wPgxIn6dwy0ZEJ4HmPEXijc1YLS/s176/pontevedra2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkiv8Vplp4DKSN_079gkyD9VBB2Rognwb5dc7fWA1fyJNQbD32VsXU2Dl03h2KSA_LO4Ldz6WIBDgydKlA0rbcXLrXvJ3P46DHDqQjykx1p6oE-Vu21SnnTN5TmXk7cuUzF2cl6XypW60usGvpRd3tuER_YR1EOLkF3wPgxIn6dwy0ZEJ4HmPEXijc1YLS/s600/pontevedra2.jpg"/></a></div>
by
Damien F. Mackey
Today is the 10th of December (2021), on which day, nearly a century ago,
Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise:
“I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation
on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Five First Saturdays book
1925: Our lady Fulfils Her Promise
On the 10th of December, 1925, Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise of the 13th of July (1917) with regard to the First Saturdays, when She told the three children: “I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Lucia was by then a Dorothean postulant at Pontevedra in Spain. The most holy Virgin appeared to her in her room, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a Child.
In order perhaps to appreciate Our Lady’s first gesture at this particular, intimate apparition, we must take the reader back to the biblical scene before the throne of king Ahasuerus, at the very moment when Queen Esther had presented herself in all her majesty, unannounced - and not summoned - before the Medo-Persian king.
“On the third day, when [Esther] ended her prayer, she took off the garments in which she had worshipped, and arrayed herself in splendid attire. Then, majestically adorned, after invoking the all-seeing God and Saviour, she took her two maids with her, leaning daintily on one, while the other followed carrying her train. She was radiant with perfect beauty, and she looked happy, as if beloved, but her heart was frozen with fear. When she had gone through all the doors, she stood before the king.
He was seated on his royal throne, clothed in the full array of his majesty, all covered with gold and precious stones. And he was most terrifying. Lifting his face, flushed with splendour, he looked at her in fierce anger. And the queen faltered, and turned pale and faint, and collapsed upon the head of the maid who went before her. Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. And he comforted her with soothing words, and said to her,
‘What is it Esther? I am your brother. Take courage, you shall not die, for our law applies only to the people. Come near’.
Then he raised the golden sceptre and touched it to her neck; and he embraced her, and said, ‘Speak to me’ …. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her’. (Esther 15:1-16).
As on all the previous occasions when the Esther chronicle has been quoted in this book in relation to the Fatima story, Catholics who read these inspired words cannot fail to be impressed by how perfectly this Old Testament narrative continues to chime in with the details of its New Testament counterpart. It gives us a clear insight into the truth, alas one not sufficiently stressed and so not sufficiently appreciated, as to how truly Our Blessed Lady is placed between the wrath of God on the one hand, and sinful humanity on the other. Or, as She herself showed us, between the wrath of God and an eternal Hell!
As an immediate consequence of this neglect, we have it that in our days, ‘not all His servants seek to comfort Her …’. If this had been the situation in the presence of king Ahausuerus, he would no doubt have interpreted this neglect on the part of some as a slight on the Queen, and therefore as an insult upon himself.
By the same token, we must now extend and enlarge this scene, and truly see the holy Catholic Church herself as being placed in that perilous position of mediation between God and humankind, between Divine wrath and an eternity in hell. And within that enlarged panorama we begin to discern how first Lucia, and then ‘all those servants who seek to comfort Her’, have been placed in the rôle originally assumed by Queen Esther on behalf of her people, but truly fulfilled by the Lamb of God and the ‘New Eve’, and extended in time by the holy Catholic Church on behalf of all humankind.
There are in fact some distinct similarities between Esther and Sr. Lucia in the more important aspects of their lives. In the first place, both Esther and Lucia were marked out by Heaven for special favour and were raised up by God from obscurity to public prominence, in order to carry out their respective tasks of the utmost importance. But their being in the public eye was a cause of grave anxiety to both Esther and Lucia. Esther wrote about it to Mordecai:
“Thou knowest my necessity – that I abhor the sign of my proud position [i.e. the crown], which is upon my head on the days when I appear in public” (Esther 14:16).
Lucia, too, underwent grievous misery and mental suffering during the apparitions.
For instance, she related that for a period of time after the second apparition, she “lost all enthusiasm for making sacrifices and acts of mortification”, and she was temped to say that she had been lying about the apparitions, “and so put an end to the whole thing” (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 69).
Both Queen Esther and Lucia were prepared to risk death rather than quit the task that God had assigned to them. Esther courageously went with her two maids into the presence of Ahasuerus the Great, who had the power of life and death over them. Lucia and her two cousins prepared themselves to suffer an agonising death in boiling oil at the hands of the sub-prefect, Santos, rather than reveal Our Lady’s secret to him. Ultimately the king, and Santos, each relented. In the case of Queen Esther, she so won over the king that his heart and hers were united thereafter in a common cause against the enemy, who had now become their enemy. This bond, this unity of heart and mind, was sealed by the visible gesture of the king, when he raised the golden sceptre and placed it on the shoulder of his terrified Queen.
So when, on the 10th of December, 1925, according to Lucia, “Our Lady rested Her hand on my shoulder”, we may, on the strength of the Esther parallel, take this to mean much more than a simple gesture of maternal reassurance, and see in it the passing on of a royal authority for what was to come next. For, “as She did so”, Lucia continues, “She showed me a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time the Child said: ‘Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them’. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 195).
Next, the Blessed Virgin revealed to Lucia the full program of the Five First Saturdays, as the means by which She was to be consoled for the sins directed against her Immaculate Heart:
“Look, my daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive holy communion, recite five decades of the rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me” (ibid.).
This was the long-awaited moment. In the presence of her Divine Son, the Queen of Heaven had at last completely unveiled the second phase of Heaven’s wondrous redemptive Plan for the apocalyptic age: the mystical weapon of the Five First Saturdays.
In its components, there is nothing new in this devotion; for essentially it consists of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, sacramental Confession and the holy Rosary, accompanied by meditations on the Mysteries. Thus there is nothing in the devotion with which Catholics should be unfamiliar. It is quite within the reach of all. But what characterises the devotion and makes it perhaps unique, is the purity of intention that is meant to accompany the practice of it. In other words, the Five First Saturdays is a totally unselfish devotion, requiring of those who practice it that they go beyond their own interests, so as to make of themselves an oblation of pure love to Our Blessed Lady.
This wonderful first apparition at Pontevedra seems clearly to have its prefiguration in that scene from the Book of Esther that we have just been discussing. The king reached out with his golden sceptre, saying to Esther, “‘Speak to me’. And she said to him, ‘I saw you, my lord, like an angel of God, and my heart was shaken with fear at your glory. For you are wonderful, my lord, and your countenance is full of grace’.
But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her” (15:12-16).
The King of Heaven and earth is there in the Person of the Child Jesus; the Queen of Heaven herself, greatly in distress; the solicitous servants in the person of Lucia, standing in for all those who would take the divine message to heart; and finally there is the mandate to carry the message to the whole world with the authority of the Magisterium. Truly, then, a Catholic would be hard pressed to find a more accurate and better inspired resumé of an old devotion presented under this beautiful new form of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As the Cardinal had said: It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your own hands”.
1926: The Resplendent Child Returns
On the 15th of February, 1926, Lucia, now at Tuy in Spain, received a further apparition pertaining to the Five First Saturdays devotion. At this point in time Lucia was in a state of great perplexity as to how she might propagate the devotion. Her confessor had written to her that it was necessary for the vision of the 10th of December to be repeated, “for further happenings to prove its credibility” (ibid., p. 197). And despite the fact that Lucia’s Mother Superior was prepared to propagate the devotion, her confessor had insisted that the latter, on her own, “could do nothing to propagate this devotion” (ibid.).
It was at that stage that Sr. Lucia had a further encounter with the Divine Child in the garden. She had also met the Child, “some months earlier”, she says, and, without suspecting who He was, she asked Him if he knew the “Hail Mary”. He said that He did. She then asked Him to say it, but, as He made no attempt to say it by Himself, she said it with Him three times over, at the end of which she again asked Him to say it alone. But as He remained silent and seemed unable to say the “Hail Mary” alone, Lucia asked Him if He knew where the Church of Santa Maria was. To which he replied that He did. Thereupon, Lucia asked Him to go there every day and to say this: “O My heavenly Mother, give me your Child Jesus!” Lucia taught this to Him and then left Him.
When the Child returned on the 15th of February, Lucia questioned Him: “Did you ask out heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus?” The Child turned to her and said:
“and have you spread through the world what our heavenly mother requested of you?”
With that He was transformed into a resplendent Child.
Lucia, knowing then that it was Jesus, explained to Him the difficulties that she was experiencing at that stage with her confessor, who had asked for the vision of Pontevedra to be repeated, and who had said that the Mother Superior alone could not effectively promote the devotion. To this, Our Lord replied with these telling words:
“It is true that your Superior alone can do nothing, but with My grace she can do all. It is enough that your confessor gives you permission and that your Superior speaks of it, even without people knowing to whom it has been revealed” (Ibid., pp. 196-197).
But that was not the only problem that poor Lucia had to clarify with the Divine Child. Her confessor had also suggested in his letter to her that the devotion which she had described to him in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was fairly widespread throughout the world at that time. Were there not many souls who receive Holy Communion on the First Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, he argued?
Again Our Lord’s reply is highly instructive; for He insists that not just any devotional routine will do. He is very specific about what he wants. Essentially it is obedience that he is after:
“It is true, My daughter, that many souls begin the First Saturdays, BUT FEW FINISH THEM, and those who do complete them do so in order to receive the graces that are promised thereby. It would please Me more if they did Five with fervour and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, than if they did Fifteen, in a tepid and indifferent manner …” (Ibid., p. 197).
We might be surprised to learn that our Divine Lord chose to appear to Sr. Lucia, not as an adult, but as a little Child. But as St. Louis de Montfort had explained in his Love of Eternal Wisdom:
“… when the Incarnate and glorious Wisdom appeared to His friends, He appeared to them, not in thunder and lightning, but meekly and gently; not assuming the majesty of a king or of the Lord of Hosts, but with the tenderness of a spouse, the kindness of a friend. Sometimes, He has appeared in the Holy Eucharist, but I cannot remember having read that He ever did so, EXCEPT UNDER THE FORM OF A MEEK AND BEAUTIFUL CHILD”.
And so, fittingly, Our Lord appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy in His gentlest possible guise, under the aspect of the “little Lamb” of the Eucharist, to encourage us and to remind us that the devotion that Our Lady of Fatima has named the “Communion of Reparation”, is essentially a Eucharistic-oriented devotion.
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-29428642327261443752024-01-31T13:40:00.000-08:002024-01-31T13:40:15.162-08:00 Preferred early dating for Gospels
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by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Benedictus, the song of Zachary, is given in Luke 1:68-79. In Greek, as in English, the Benedictus, as poetry, seems unexceptional. There is no evidence of clever composition. But, when it is translated into Hebrew, a little marvel appears”.
Fr. Jean Carmignac
Astute scholars such as Jean Carmignac, John Robinson and Claude Tresmontant have breathed some refreshingly healthy new air into biblical studies by arguing for much earlier dates than conventionally accepted for the various books of the New Testament, and, in Carmignac’s case, for the Greek texts of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), in particular, to have arisen from Semitic originals.
And I personally would favour Robinson’s view, too, that the entire New Testament was written before the Fall of Jerusalem, in c. 70 AD.
The following brief article summarises Carmignac’s ground-breaking efforts - including his wonderful reinterpretation of the “Song of Zachary” - and it also makes references to the research of Robinson and Tresmontant:
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/were-the-synoptic-gospels-composed-in-hebrew
Were the Synoptic Gospels Composed in Hebrew?
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Were the Synoptic Gospels Composed in Hebrew?
Forget what Winston Churchill said about Russia being "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Yes, it was a memorable line, but it should have been applied to modern biblical scholarship.
Here's a field for those wanting to make a name for themselves, who want posterity to know about the Smith Hypothesis or the Jones Theory. You can come up with any idea you like, and you can do a sophisticated form of proof-texting establishing your thesis.
All you must do is cite in your notes the Usual Suspects--there are only two or three dozen names to get right--and Authority is on your side. Your work will become part of the "assured results of modern biblical scholarship."
Unless, of course, you take an entirely new tack. Some things are simply off limits. People look down their noses at you, for instance, if you posit early dates for the authorship of the New Testament books.
Look at the cool reception the late John A. T. Robinson got when Redating the New Testament appeared in 1976. Robinson was already a well-respected scholar. More than that, he was a liberal scholar, founder of the New Morality school of thought, which started with his Honest to God.
But here he was, taking a fresh look at the presuppositions used in dating the New Testament books and realizing that the presuppositions were worthless. They were little more than prejudices.
He started from scratch and came up with the conclusion that every book of the New Testament was written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and even John he put as early as the forties, which, if true, would pretty much prove that the men whose names their bear wrote them.
Redating the New Testament was politely but not, for the most part, enthusiastically reviewed in the scholarly journals. What could one expect? People who had staked their reputations on dating the New Testament as late as possible--even, parts of it, well into the second century--were displeased that someone not able to be classified as a reactionary should come up with answers Augustine would have been comfortable with.
Robinson "worked from an exclusively historical methodology," wrote Jean Carmignac in The Birth of the Synoptics. "I work with a methodology which is principally philological but historical on occasion." Carmignac, a Dead Sea Scrolls translator and an expert in the Hebrew in use at the time of Christ, reached conclusions similar to Robinson's, but he came at the problem from a different angle.
He translated the synoptic Gospels "backwards," from Greek into Hebrew, and he was astonished at what he found.
"I wanted to begin with the Gospel of Mark. In order to facilitate the comparison between our Greek Gospels and the Hebrew text of Qumran, I tried, for my own personal use, to see what Mark would yield when translated back into the Hebrew of Qumran.
"I had imagined that this translation would be difficult because of considerable differences between Semitic thought and Greek thought, but I was absolutely dumbfounded to discover that this translation was, on the contrary, extremely easy.
"Around the middle of April 1963, after only one day of work, I was convinced that the Greek text of Mark could not have been redacted directly in Greek and that it was in reality only the Greek translation of an original Hebrew."
Carmignac, who died recently, had planned for enormous difficulties, but they didn't arise. He discovered the Greek translator of Mark had slavishly kept to the Hebrew word order and grammar.
Could this have been the result of a Semite writing in Greek, a language he didn't know too well and on which he imposed Hebrew structures? Or could the awkward phrasings found in our Greek text have been nothing more than overly faithful translations (perhaps "transliterations" would be more accurate) of Semitic originals?
If the second possibility were true, then we have synoptic Gospels written by eyewitnesses at a very early date.
Carmignac spent most of the next twenty-five years meticulously translating the Greek into Hebrew and making endless comparisons. The Birth of the Synoptics is a popular summary of what he hoped to publish in a massive multi-volume set. It is a delightful shocker of a book.
Consider just one example. (Carmignac gives many, but his short book isn't weighed down with them.) The Benedictus, the song of Zachary, is given in Luke 1:68-79. In Greek, as in English, the Benedictus, as poetry, seems unexceptional. There is no evidence of clever composition. But, when it is translated into Hebrew, a little marvel appears.
In the phrase "to show mercy to our fathers," the expression "to show mercy" is the Hebrew verb hanan, which is the root of the name Yohanan (John).
In "he remembers his holy covenant," "he remembers" is the verb zakar, which is the root of the name Zakaryah (Zachary).
In "the oath which he swore to our father Abraham" is found, for "to take an oath," the verb shaba, which is the root of the name Elishaba (Elizabeth).
"Is it by chance," asks Carmignac, "that the second strophe of this poem begins by a triple allusion to the names of the three protagonists: John, Zachary, Elizabeth? But this allusion only exists in Hebrew; the Greek or English translation does not preserve it."
Carmignac gives many other examples, and he draws these conclusions about the dating of the synoptics: "The latest dates that can be admitted are around 50 for Mark . . . around 55 for Completed Mark, around 55-60 for Matthew, between 58 and 60 for Luke. But the earliest dates are clearly more probable: Mark around 42, Completed Mark around 45, (Hebrew) Matthew around 50, (Greek) Luke a little after 50."
These dates are all approximate, of course, particularly those for Mark and Matthew, and they are the result of Carmignac's mainly philological analysis.
Claude Tresmontant, in The Hebrew Christ, working parallel to Carmignac but with a different methodology, comes up with these datings: Matthew, early 30s (within a few years of the Resurrection); Luke 40-60; Mark 50-60.
Carmignac keeps to Marcan priority, while Tresmontant goes for Matthean priority. Regardless, each denies what is the majority opinion among biblical scholars, that the synoptics were written late in the first century, possibly into the last decade or two.
Carmignac draws a few other conclusions:
"(1) It is certain that Mark, Matthew, and the documents used by Luke were redacted in a Semitic language.
"(2) It is probable that this Semitic language is Hebrew rather than Aramaic.
"(3) It is sufficiently probable that our second Gospel [that is, Mark] was composed in a Semitic language by St. Peter the Apostle" (with Mark being his secretary perhaps).
Expanding on this last point, he says that "it is probable that the Semitic Gospel of Peter was translated into Greek, perhaps with some adaptations by Mark, in Rome, at the latest around the year 63; it is our second Gospel which has preserved the name of the translator, instead of that of the author."
As he wrote The Birth of the Synoptics, Carmignac suspected his "scientific arguments [would] prove reassuring to Christians and [would] attract the attention and interest of non-believers. But they overturn theories presently in vogue and therefore they will be fiercely criticized." They will also be, with Carmignac's death, fiercely ignored.
But not forever. Truly honest scholars will have to grapple with what Carmignac has come up with. Others will continue where he left off. It may be, a few decades from now, that the "assured results of modern biblical scholarship" will look quite different from what we have been told to accept as gospel truth.
-- Karl Keating
Luke 1:68-79
New International Version (NIV)
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn[a] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
Institut Catholique de Paris ignores Carmignac
“The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts.
It discovered that Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique
in Paris where he had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care
not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all,
it has prohibited people from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...”.
The Wanderer
In the 1990’s, colleague Frits Albers (RIP), PH.B, wrote about what he considered to be the “betrayals” perpetrated by Paul Cardinal Poupard, the Archbishop of Paris, including his complete snub of the research of Fr. Jean Carmignac.
...
History has recorded several major betrayals by Cardinal Paul Poupard, Archbishop of Paris and president of its Institut Catholique. I will briefly describe two of them here as an introduction to his major one, his ‘resolution’ of the Galileo Case.
PART ONE: WHY I MISTRUST CARD. PAUL POUPARD
Here follows the official text of this “public put-down”, issued by the Holy See press office on July 11, 1981, as it appeared in the Osservatore Romano of July 20 1981, mentioning Archbishop [by then not yet Cardinal] Paul Poupard by name.
The letter sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to His Excellency Mons. Poupard on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin has been interpreted in a certain section of the press as a revision of previous stands taken by the Holy See in regard to this author, and in particular of the Monitum of the Holy Office of 30 June 1962, which pointed out that the work of the author contained ‘ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors’.
The question has been asked whether such an interpretation is well founded. After having consulted the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith, which, by order of the Holy Father, had been duly consulted beforehand about the letter in question, we are in a position to reply in the negative. Far from being a revision of the previous stands of the Holy See, Cardinal Casaroli’s letter expresses reservations in various passages - and these reservations have been passed over in silence by certain newspapers - reservations which refer precisely to the judgment given in the Monitum of June 1962, even though this document is not explicitly mentioned.
The second example of betrayal involving the Institut Catholique of Paris and its president, Archbishop Paul Poupard, centres on interference with the dissemination of truth by means of the direct and wilful suppression of Catholic scholarship in favour of a free and unencumbered promotion of doctrinal errors. The scandal appeared in the March 19, 1992 edition of the American Catholic paper The Wanderer, quoting two other major European Catholic periodicals, 30 Days and Il Sabato.
Reporting a scandal: An editorial in the current issue of 30 Days magazine (issue no. 2), titled “Scandal at the Institut Catholique” raises some tough questions about the openness of modern biblical scholars to research which offers evidence that the Gospels were written by A.D. 50.
Reporting on investigative work conducted by the Italian Catholic weekly Il Sabato the editorial asks why the Institut Catholique in Paris will not allow to be printed, or even acknowledge the existence of, the biblical scholarship of Fr. Jean Carmignac.
Fr. Carmignac, until his death in 1986, was one of the world’s leading experts in Hebrew and Aramaic, and his extensive research in language and the Fathers of the Church led him to believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written their Gospels by A.D. 50.
In addition, Carmignac noted the scholarship of 49 other recognised experts who agreed with him, but whose works also had either been ignored or censored or else they did not dare wage a battle in the name of their scientific conviction.
“For the consequences”, stated the 30 Days editorial, “would have revolutionised the dominant exegetical trends today. Many ideas, whose certainty is taken for granted today, would have crumbled ... If the Synoptic Gospels were written in a Semitic language it means they were written soon after Jesus’ years on earth, when the protagonists were still alive. It means that the Synoptic Gospels are the testimonies of people who saw and heard, of witnesses to the facts. It means they are not late elaborations by anonymous transcribers of popular traditions”.
In 1983. Fr. Carmignac published a small book containing his findings and conclusions, and promised a later book which he described as “more convincing than ever and, I hope, irrefutable”.
But at that time an effort began to bury his work, the editorial said, under hefty shovelfuls of earth ... Six years after his death, none of these texts has ever been published. An impenetrable curtain of silence has fallen on Fr. Carmignac and his work. The Catholic weekly Il Sabato has been hunting down his manuscripts. It discovered that Fr. Carmignac’s entire archive is to be found at the Institut Catholique in Paris where he had taught. In all these years, the Institut Catholique has taken care not to tend to the publication of those pre-announced works, and, above all, it has prohibited people from seeing the material when they ask to see it ...
One of the 49 scholars mentioned here by the late Fr. Jean Carmignac is, no doubt, Claude Tresmontant whose magnificent book on that very same topic, The Hebrew Christ, carries a lengthy foreword by the Most Reverend Jean Charles Thomas, Bishop of Ajaccio, dated May 1, 1983: three years before the death of Fr. Jean Camignac. In his Foreword Bishop Thomas refers specifically to the same general state of affairs as was reported by the three Catholic papers mentioned above. There is no change of heart in either the ‘Institut Catholique’ or its president, Paul Poupard ...
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-68301422569401342362020-07-26T16:25:00.006-07:002020-07-26T16:27:55.221-07:00Pearl of Great Price<u><span style="color: #000025; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: x-small;"></span></u><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: -.45pt;">Pope Francis said that the “decisive and radical”
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Pope Francis says we are called to become
“healthily restless seekers of the Kingdom of Heaven,” as he reflects on the
parables of the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great value
during the Sunday Angelus.</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">By Christopher Wells</span></b><span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">At the
Angelus on Sunday, Pope Francis reflected on two of the parables told by Jesus
in the day’s Gospel: that of the treasure hidden in the field, and that of the
pearl of great value.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">In both parables, those who finds the
“precious” items, that which is most dear to them, sell everything they have in
order to obtain them. “With these two similes,” said Pope Francis, “Jesus
proposes to involve us in the building of the Kingdom of Heaven, presenting one
of its essential characteristics: Those who fully pledge themselves to the
Kingdom are those who are willing to stake everything.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Pope
Francis said that the “decisive and radical” decision to give up everything to
seek even more precious treasures shows that “the building of the Kingdom
requires not only the grace of God, but also the active willingness of the
human person.”</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 24.0pt; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Healthily
restless seekers</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">“We are
called to assume the attitude of these Gospel figures,” Pope Francis continued,
“so that we too may become healthily restless seekers of the Kingdom of
Heaven.” As in the parables, this involves a cost: we must give up “worldly
sureties” – such as “covetousness for possessions, the thirst for profit and
power, and thinking only of ourselves” – which can hinder our search.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 24.0pt; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Pope to young people: use the ‘fantasy of love’ to reach out to the
elderly</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Too often,
said the Pope, people lead “mediocre and dull lives, because they do not go in
search of real treasure.” Seeking after the Kingdom of Heaven, on the other
hand, is the very “opposite of a dull life: it is a treasure that renews life
every day and leads it to extend towards wider horizons.” Seekers after the
Kingdom “have a creative and inquisitive heart” leading them to “new paths” for
loving God, our neighbour, and ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 24.0pt; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">The adventure of holiness</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">“Jesus,
Who is the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value, cannot but inspire
joy, all the joy in the world,” said Pope Francis: “the joy of discovering a
meaning in life, the joy of committing oneself to the adventure of holiness.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">Pope Francis concluded his reflection with
the prayer that the Blessed Virgin Mary “might help us to seek after the
treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven every day, so that the love God has given us
through Jesus may be manifested in our words and acts.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4d555a; font-family: "inherit" , serif; letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"><a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-07/pope-francis-becoming-restless-seekers-of-the-kingdom-of-heaven.html">https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-07/pope-francis-becoming-restless-seekers-of-the-kingdom-of-heaven.html</a></span></div>
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</span></span></span></span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-91017734126596696212020-07-22T17:03:00.005-07:002020-07-22T17:03:42.717-07:00Cardinal Scola calls out Pope Francis’ critics: ‘The pope is the pope’<h3 class="post-title entry-title" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: bold 22px Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<a href="https://amaiceducation.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/77686-corpuschristipope.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" class="alignnone wp-image-1702 size-full" data-attachment-id="1702" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Paul Haring","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"\u00a9 2013 Catholic News Service","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="77686-corpuschristipope" data-large-file="https://amaiceducation.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/77686-corpuschristipope.jpg?w=610" data-medium-file="https://amaiceducation.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/77686-corpuschristipope.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://amaiceducation.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/77686-corpuschristipope.jpg" data-orig-size="610,375" data-permalink="https://amaiceducation.wordpress.com/2019/06/24/receive-communion-every-time-as-if-it-were-the-first-time-pope-says/77686-corpuschristipope/#main" height="375" sizes="(max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px" src="https://amaiceducation.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/77686-corpuschristipope.jpg" style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-image: none; border-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.2); padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="610" /></a></span></h1>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><img alt="" class="img-responsive" height="75" src="https://www.americamagazine.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_voice_small_sc_75x75/public/profile_photo/oconnell.jpg.png?itok=EqJO-8dH" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-color: black; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position-x: 0%; background-position-y: 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image-outset: 0; border-image-repeat: stretch; border-image-slice: 100%; border-image-source: none; border-image-width: 1; border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.2); padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="75" /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/voices/gerard-oconnell" style="text-decoration: none;">Gerard O’Connell</a></span></strong></div>
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Cardinal Angelo Scola, the runner-up in the last papal conclave, has
twice in recent weeks come out strongly against those, especially within
the church, who frequently and increasingly attack Pope Francis. “It’s a
very strong sign of contradiction and denotes a certain weakening of
the people of God, above all of the intellectual class,” he said. “It is
a profoundly wrong attitude because it forgets that ‘the pope is the
pope.’”</span></div>
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“It is not by affinity of temperament, of culture, of sensibility, or
for friendship, or because one shares or does not share his
affirmations that one acknowledges the meaning of the pope in the
church,” the cardinal said in an interview published on the Archdiocese
of Milan’s website on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his
priestly ordination on July 18.</span></div>
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“[The pope] is the ultimate, radical and formal guarantor—certainly,
through a synodal exercise of the Petrine ministry—of the unity of the
church,” the cardinal, theologian and former rector of the Pontifical
Lateran University stated.</span></div>
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Cardinal Angelo Scola, the runner-up in the last papal conclave, has
come out strongly against those who frequently and increasingly attack
Pope Francis.</span></div>
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Then, referring to the countless ways in which attacks have been
launched against Pope Francis in these years, the former
cardinal-patriarch of Venice and archbishop of Milan declared, “I
consider these forms of pronouncements, letters, writings, pretenses of
judgments on his action, above all when they establish irritating
comparisons with previous papacies, a decisively negative phenomenon
that is to be eradicated as soon as possible.”<br />
Both in the interview and in a new introduction to the second edition of his autobiography, <em>Ho scommesso sulla libertà </em>(“I
Bet on Freedom”), written with the Italian journalist Luigi Geninazzi
and released on June 13, the Italian cardinal emphasized that one has
“to learn the Pope” (“<em>imparare il papa</em>”), an expression he said he got from St. John Paul II.<br />
“It means to have the humility and the patience to empathize with his
personal history, the way he expresses his faith, addresses us, and
makes choices of leadership and governance,” Cardinal Scola said. He
added that this is “even more necessary in relation to a Latin-American
pope, who has a mentality and a different kind of approach than we
Europeans.” He recalled that “something similar also happened with John
Paul II.”<br />
Cardinal Scola declared, “I truly consider admirable and moving the
extraordinary capacity of Pope Francis to make himself close to
everyone, and especially to the excluded, to those who are subjected to
‘the throw-away culture’ as he so often reminds [us] in his keenness to
communicate the Gospel to the world.”<br />
Cardinal Scola: “Ever since I was a child, I learned that ‘the pope
is the pope,’ to whom the Catholic believer owes affection, respect and
obedience.”</span><br />
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Moreover, he said, “some gestures of Pope Francis strike me very much
and are certainly very significant for everyone, even for nonbelievers.
Given my temperament, I would not be able to do them; but then each one
has his own personality.”<br />
In the introduction to his autobiography, the 78-year-old cardinal,
who enjoyed a very close relationship with John Paul II and Benedict
XVI, wrote, “Pope Francis seeks to shake up consciences by calling into
question consolidated habits and customs in the church, each time
raising the bar, so to speak.”<br />
“This can cause some bewilderment and upset,” he said, “but the ever
harder and more insolent attacks against his person, especially those
that come from within the church, are wrong.”<br />
Cardinal Scola added, “Ever since I was a child, I learned that ‘the
pope is the pope,’ to whom the Catholic believer owes affection, respect
and obedience, since he is the visible sign and secure guarantor of the
unity of the church in the following of Christ.” Moreover, he said,
“communion with the successor of Peter is not a question of cultural
affinity, or human sympathy, or a sentimental feeling; rather it relates
to the very nature of the church.”<br />
Concluding his strong critique of attacks against Pope Francis, the
cardinal went on to express concern over “the polemics and divisions
that are becoming ever more bitter, also at the expense of truth and of
charity.” But, he stated, “I do not see the risk of a schism; I fear
instead a journey backward” to “the postconciliar debate between
conservatives and progressives” over the legacy of Vatican II.<br />
He sees the return of this in “the re-emergence in agitated tones” of
“the sterile contraposition” between “the guardians of Tradition
rigidly understood” and “the proponents of what is intended to be the
adaptation of practice and doctrine to worldly demands.” But like Pope
Francis, Cardinal Scola believes the way to overcome these tensions is
to entrust oneself to the Holy Spirit, “who does not allow himself to be
harnessed by the logic of the opposing camps.”<br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/07/21/cardinal-scola-calls-out-pope-francis-critics-pope-pope" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/07/21/cardinal-scola-calls-out-pope</a><a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/07/21/cardinal-scola-calls-out-pope-francis-critics-pope-pope" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">-francis-critics-pope-pope</a></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-43008244696441212022020-07-06T13:00:00.001-07:002020-07-06T13:02:40.151-07:00Pope at Angelus: ‘the poor are the builders of the new humanity’<h1 class="entry-title" style="clear: both; color: #fc5605; font-family: Abel, sans-serif; font-size: 38px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.035em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div class="article__subTitle" style="background-color: white; color: #4d555a; font-family: Abel, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.7px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Pope Francis reflects on the Gospel reading of the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time noting that the solace that Christ offers to the weary and the oppressed is not merely psychological relief or almsgiving.<br />
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<b>By Vatican News</b></div>
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Pope Francis addressed a scattering of well-distanced faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday with a reflection on the Gospel reading of the day (Mt 11: 25-30), which he explained, is divided into three parts.</div>
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In the first part, he said, “Jesus raises a prayer of blessing and thanksgiving to the Father, because He revealed to the poor and to the simple the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven.”</div>
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READ ALSO</div>
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<img alt="Pope's Angelus of 5 July 2020" class="loaded" src="https://www.vaticannews.va/content/dam/vaticannews/agenzie/images/srv/2020/07/05/2020-07-05-angelus/1593943562634.JPG/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.thumbnail.cropped.250.141.jpeg" style="height: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></div>
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05/07/2020</div>
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<a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope-francis/angelus/2020-07/pope-s-angelus-of-5-july-2020.html" style="color: #ee4e00; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Pope's Angelus of 5 July 2020">Pope’s Angelus of 5 July 2020</a></h2>
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Then, he continued, “He reveals the intimate and unique relationship between Him and the Father.”</div>
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Finally, the Pope added, “He invites us to go to Him and to follow Him to find relief.”<br />
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Giving thanks</h2>
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When Jesus gives thanks to the Father, he explained, he praises Him for having kept the secrets of His Kingdom hidden from those he ironically calls “the wise and the learned”.</div>
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Pope Francis explained that he calls them so “with a veil of irony, because they presume to be so and therefore have a closed heart.”</div>
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But Jesus, he continued, says that the mysteries of His Father are revealed to the “little ones”, that is, to those who confidently open themselves to His Word of salvation, who feel the need for Him and expect everything from Him.</div>
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Total reciprocity</h2>
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Then, the Pope said, Jesus explains that He has received everything from the Father. He calls Him “my Father”, to affirm the unique nature of His relationship with Him.</div>
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“There is total reciprocity only between the Son and the Father”, he said, “each one knows the other, each one lives in the other.”</div>
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It is this unique communion that gives life to Jesus’ invitation: “Come to me…”, he explained, because the son wishes to give what He receives from the Father.”</div>
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Preference for the ‘little ones’</h2>
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The Pope then went on to point out that “Just as the Father has a preference for the “little ones”, Jesus also addresses those “who labour and are burdened”.</div>
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He highlighted that Jesus’ full dedication to the Father, and his meekness and humility are not a model for the resigned, nor he said, “is He simply a victim,” but rather He lives this condition “from the heart” in full transparency to the love of the Father, that is, to the Holy Spirit.</div>
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“Jesus is the model of the ‘poor in spirit’ and of all the other ‘blessed’ of the Gospel, who do the will of God and bear witness to His Kingdom,” he said.</div>
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Pope Francis wrapped-up his reflection pointing out that the “solace” that Christ offers to the weary and oppressed is not merely psychological relief or almsgiving, but the joy of the poor to be evangelised and to be builders of the new humanity.</div>
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A message for all</h2>
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“It is a message for all people of good will,” he said, which Jesus still conveys today in a world that exalts those who become rich and powerful, no matter by what means, trampling at times upon the human being and his or her dignity.”</div>
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It is also a message for the Church, he said, that is called to live works of mercy and to evangelise the poor.</div>
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Pope Francis concluded invoking the Virgin Mary to help us “discern her signs in our lives and be sharers in those mysteries which, hidden from the proud, are revealed to the humble.”</div>
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AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-90595485779988005432020-04-23T12:30:00.001-07:002020-04-23T12:32:14.744-07:00Pope at Mass: May Europe be united in dream of the Founding Fathers<div style="text-align: center;">
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Source: <a href="https://dailyverse.knowing-jesus.com/1-corinthians-2-8">Verse of the day of 1 Corinthians 2:8</a></div>
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Pope Francis prays at Mass on Wednesday for Europe to show unity in response to the Covid-19 crisis, and reflects on the depth of God’s love for us. (Playback included)</div>
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<b>By Devin Watkins</b><br />
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As he began Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Wednesday morning, Pope Francis urged all nations to be united as they face the Covid-19 pandemic. He prayed especially for Europe.<br />
<i>“At this moment in which unity is very necessary between ourselves and between nations, we pray today for Europe, so that Europe might succeed in creating this fraternal unity dreamt of by the founding fathers of the European Union.”</i><br />
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God loves us madly</h2>
In his homily, the Pope reflected on Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in the day’s Gospel (Jn 3:16-21): “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”<br />
Pope Francis said this passage contains a wealth of theological revelation about Redemption.<br />
He focused his attention on two aspects: the revelation of God’s love and the existential choice between light and darkness.<br />
“God loves us,” said the Pope. “He loves us madly. As one saint used to say, God’s love seems like madness.”<br />
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Cross contains all Christian wisdom</h2>
The cross, said Pope Francis, is the highest expression of this love. He added that everything is revealed to those who contemplate the cross.<br />
<i>"So many people, so many Christians, pass time gazing at the Crucified... And there they find everything because they have understood. The Holy Spirit teaches them that therein lies all science, all of God’s love, and all Christian wisdom. Saint Paul speaks about this, explaining that all human reasoning is useful only up to a certain point. But true reasoning – the most beautiful way of thinking which also explains everything – is the cross of Christ, is Christ crucified, who is scandal and madness. But He is the way. And this is the love of God. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. Why? So that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life. This is the love of the Father who wants His children with Him."</i><br />
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Light over darkness</h2>
Pope Francis then reflected on the choice between light and darkness. He said there are some people – “including us sometimes” – who are unable to live in the light, because they have become accustomed to darkness.<br />
<i>“Light blinds them and they cannot see. They are like human bats: they can only move about during the night. We ourselves, when we are in a state of sin, find ourselves in this condition, unable to tolerate the light. It is easier to live in the darkness; light slaps us on the face and shows us what we don’t want to see.”</i><br />
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Corruption blinds</h2>
Though it is difficult to face what the light reveals to us, said Pope Francis, it is worse when the eyes of the soul become ignorant of the light.<br />
<i>“So many human scandals and corruption teach us this. Those who are corrupt do not know what the light is, and don’t recognize it.”</i><br />
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Child of God… Or bat?</h2>
Pope Francis concluded inviting us to let the light of God’s love shine in our lives through the Holy Spirit. And we can ask ourselves:<br />
<i>“Do I walk in the light or in darkness? Am I a child of God? Or have I ended up like a bat?”</i><br />
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https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope-francis/mass-casa-santa-marta/2020-04/pope-francis-mass-european-fraternal-unity.html</div>
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-80888726206935865662020-04-18T15:12:00.002-07:002020-04-22T19:57:23.944-07:00Pope to celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday in Rome church<h3 class="rtecenter" style="text-align: center;">
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This year, the feast of Divine Mercy, which is celebrated on the Sunday after Easter, turns 20. Pope Francis will mark it on Sunday with a Holy Mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Sassia, the centre of the devotion to Divine Mercy in Rome.</div>
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<i><b>By Robin Gomes</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>Some 200 meters from St. Peter’s Square is the Church of the Holy Spirit, the sanctuary and centre of the devotion to Divine Mercy in Rome, where Pope Francis will mark Divine Mercy Sunday, April 19. The Mass that will be streamed and televised live, will have only a handful of faithful because of the coronavirus lockdown in Italy and the Vatican.<br />
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<b>Saints Faustina and John Paul II</b></h2>
The devotion to Divine Mercy was popularized by the 20th-century Polish nun, Saint Faustina Kowalska, as requested to her by Jesus in visions and conversations..<br />
Saint Pope John Paul II instituted Divine Mercy Sunday on the occasion of the canonization of St. Faustina, April 30, 2000, the Second Sunday after Easter, thus opening the devotion and the feast of Divine Mercy to the Universal Church.<br />
From his early years, Pope John Paul II had an ardent devotion to Divine Mercy, as promoted by Sister Faustina, who died in 1938 at the age of 33 in Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla was to become archbishop, cardinal and was later elected Pope in 1978.<br />
Pope John Paul II who beatified Sister Faustina on April 18, 1993, Sunday after Easter, died on April 2, 2005, the eve of the Sunday after Easter.<br />
John Paul II himself was beatified on May 1, 2011, Divine Mercy Sunday, and declared a saint on April 27, 2014, also Divine Mercy Sunday.<br />
In an Apostolic Letter issued on the occasion of Divine Mercy Sunday, April 7, 2002, Pope John Paul II granted indulgences to Catholics who go to confession, receive Communion and recite specific prayers on that day. Subsequently, this was formally decreed by the Apostolic Penitentiary.<br />
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<b>Popes John Paul II and Francis</b></h2>
During his general audience live-streamed on Wednesday, Pope Francis told Polish pilgrims that on Sunday, April 19, he will celebrate the feast of Divine Mercy, established by St. John Paul II, in response to the “the request of the Lord Jesus to St. Faustina”. “Jesus said: ‘I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls.’ Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My Mercy.”<br />
The Holy Father urged that prayers be said with “confidence to Merciful Jesus for the Church and for all humanity, especially for those who suffer in this very difficult time”.<br />
Divine Mercy is certainly a strong, common bond between the Popes John Paul II and Francis. “Dives in Misericordia” (Rich in Mercy), the 1980 encyclical of the Polish Pope is often cited by Pope Francis, the hallmark of whose pontificate has been mercy.<br />
In this regard, we particularly recall the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy that Pope Francis called from December 8, 2015, to November 20, 2016.<br />
Both the pontiffs are known for their sensitivity to human dignity, poverty, disease and suffering, and the need to show mercy.<br />
Pope Francis envisages the Church as a “field hospital” that particularly reaches out to the least, the lost and the last. On the eve of his election, he said that “the Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all forms of misery.”<br />
Today, the devotion to Divine Mercy is widespread across the world. Churches and shrines dedicated to Divine Mercy have sprung up across the world, most importantly the Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow, which houses the remains of Saint Faustina. Built between 1999–2002, the sanctuary has been visited by 3 popes. Millions of pilgrims from around the world visit it every year.<br />
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-04/pope-francis-divine-mercy-sunday-20-years-holy-spirit-church.html</div>
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Holy Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday and recitation of the Regina Coeli</h2>
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AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-26550914661398399042020-04-11T22:21:00.001-07:002020-04-11T22:23:19.896-07:00Easter offers solace for us all in the depths of coronavirus crisis<div style="text-align: center;">
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Coronavirus has declared war on Easter, but I suspect that Easter will win in the end.</div>
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For only the second time in modern Australian history, churches are silent by state edict, this time silent at Easter, the season of triumph and resurrection.</div>
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Churches were closed briefly during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-19. But there was such social unrest, such misery at being deprived of the comfort of church, and especially at a temporary ruling that banned clergy from quarantine areas meaning they could not minister to the dying — though ministers were more than willing to take the risks — that the restrictions were speedily revised.</div>
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Open-air church services, with everyone wearing masks, were quickly permitted. Today, church is only accessible online. It’s not a computer virus, after all.</div>
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But Easter is much more than a church service. Easter Sunday is the pivot of history. It also represents the apex of human solidarity.</div>
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Easter is love in the time of COVID-19.</div>
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The worst thing about the epidemic is the assault the coronavirus way of death makes on normal human solidarity. That’s an assault on Christianity. For Christianity is solidarity.</div>
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Coronavirus gives you a very lonely death. And loneliness is at the heart of all human misery.</div>
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Albert Camus, in his classic novel The Plague, an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France, observed: “The chief source of distress, the deepest as well as the most widespread, was separation.”</div>
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Throughout this time of virus we are torn apart, when we want to be together. And we never want more to be together than at the time of death.</div>
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Death is a part of life, a part of humanity. It comes to every person. But this virus means that a victim must die mostly alone, without a partner or relative or friend, or even a stranger, to hold their hand, to pat them on the shoulder, to encourage and console them with a touch or kiss.</div>
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Instead, the last sight for many will be a heroic health worker behind heavy layers of protective gear, looking something like a robot in an old science fiction movie. Perhaps at the last the patient will see only the distant eyes of a nurse, compassionate or preoccupied, caring or distracted, doing their best.</div>
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Easter is the human triumph over death. Of course it is a human triumph enabled by God. In Christian belief, Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But he was also a man who lived and died, and then in Christian belief rose from the dead, a little over 2000 years ago.</div>
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Before he was known as God, he was known to his friends and family as a man. Fully human, fully divine, his divinity never diminished his human vulnerability.</div>
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Rightly transfixed as history is by the divine claims and nature of Jesus, it is too easy to lose sight of the intense humanity of his story. The gospels are worth reading, just for the story.</div>
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Selfless courage</div>
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The death of Jesus in the crucifixion, while agonising in a way that most deaths are not, has about it nonetheless something of the coronavirus death.</div>
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Like a COVID-19 patient, Jesus was in his death physically separated from the people who loved him most. At the foot of the cross were his mother, as well as Mary Magdalene and a beloved disciple. So often in the gospels, as in all the Christian story, it is the women who are the most faithful.</div>
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The things Jesus said as death approached tell a story not of an all-powerful, conquering god, with which the ancient world was all too familiar, and a facsimile of which so many people try to become today, but of a human man bearing the unbearable, which is the fate of all human beings in death.</div>
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Let me be very straightforward. I believe Jesus is God, as the gospels claim, but the God side of him didn’t overwhelm or subvert or negate the human side. The story of his life is therefore the ultimate story of human solidarity.</div>
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Much of Jesus’ last words recall to me things I have heard friends and family say as they lay in hospital beds approaching death. At one point, Jesus looks down from the cross at his mother, Mary. He instructs her, regarding the male disciple: “Woman, this is your son”, and to the male disciple: “This is your mother”. And from that day, Mary lived in the disciple’s house.</div>
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Everyone I have known approaching death has been concerned more than anything with the people they will leave behind. The request I’ve most often heard from a friend near death is: “Look after him when I’m gone” or “Keep in touch with her, won’t you?”. I heard a beloved uncle say as he lay dying: “Won’t you get my wife a cup of tea?”</div>
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In the ancient world, the childless widow was uniquely marginalised, generally with no income, often no home and no male champion to protect her. Jesus was concerned with Mary’s welfare in a practical way. Looking after his mother was all he asked of his disciple.</div>
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Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, in World War II. Out of that experience he wrote the magnificent Man’s Search for Meaning. He observed that the worst element of a beating, of which he received many, was the implied insult. Jesus’ death, alone on the cross, as he was mocked and ridiculed and humiliated, had the insult not implied but explicit.</div>
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And yet he prayed: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”</div>
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This may seem virtuous beyond the scope of the human. Yet Frankl records prisoners in the camps who gave away their last piece of bread so that someone else might eat, manifesting through themselves the presence of God, even in a death camp.</div>
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But the most searing cry of Jesus on the cross surely was this: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Nearly, nearly, nearly Jesus shares our despair. Christianity is a religion in which God himself almost for an instant despairs of God. Even Jesus feels in this moment abandoned by God.</div>
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The story of Jesus is fulfilled in the Easter resurrection. Jesus conquers death. All of Christianity centres on the person of Christ. But as Frankl observes, the final freedom of every human being is the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.</div>
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It is the attitude of Jesus to his death on the cross, while he is undergoing it, which is most telling. For after asking God why it is that he is suffering in this way, Jesus finally cries with a loud voice: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”</div>
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It is his last statement before death. It is the culmination of Jesus’ life before the resurrection. And the centre of it is complete surrender of his human will to the Father and his complete reliance on the Father.</div>
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Into your hands I commend my spirit. I can do no more. I can say no more. I have no more solutions, no more agency, no more action. Father, I am yours.</div>
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If this seems superhuman in its devotion, I think in fact it is close to the attitude every believer tries to take to death: thank you for this life, please look after the people I love, I am sorry for my wrongs (Jesus didn’t need to say that), please let this suffering pass, now I am yours and I rely on you absolutely. That is how Jesus transcends his humanity — by surrendering absolutely.</div>
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So why do I say that Easter is the triumph of human solidarity?</div>
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The basic shape of all human solidarity is to stay behind with the suffering person, to make their suffering your suffering, to share the burden with them where you can, and where you can’t, simply to be by their side to hold their hand at the last, to stay with them all the way through. It’s as simple as sitting up with a sick child or spouse. To have that same care for people beyond your kin is a necessary, wider human solidarity. The sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark, in his The Triumph of Christianity, offers two striking sociological reasons for the early and rapid spread of Christianity.</div>
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First, Christians valued women and girls more than any movement in history. They didn’t practise female infanticide, so Christian families had many more daughters than pagan families. As a result, they were much happier and the daughters converted their pagan husbands.</div>
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Christian care</div>
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Second, Christians didn’t run away during plagues, but tried to help. Cyprian, a 3rd-century bishop of Carthage, who was later martyred, offered the main historic description of the 3rd-century plague that afflicted the Roman empire and that historians speculate may have been an influenza pandemic. There were said to be 5000 people dying in Rome per day, accompanied by all manner of barbaric and ruthlessly selfish behaviour — especially the shunning of anyone who was sick.</div>
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Cyprian wrote that the plague “searches out the justice of each and every one and examines the mind of the human race; whether the well care for the sick, whether relatives dutifully love their kinsmen as they should, whether masters show compassion for their ailing slaves, whether physicians do not desert the afflicted”.</div>
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Today we can admire profoundly the bravery of our medical frontline people, as well as the police and the fireys, who share the suffering of the afflicted and do not desert them.</div>
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So how does this all link up to Easter?</div>
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Throughout all human history, people have been conscious of God. But they haven’t always known whether God is near or distant, merciful or capricious, personal or indifferent.</div>
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In the life of Jesus, God uniquely expresses maximum solidarity with humanity, and with human suffering. He not only comes among us but literally becomes one of us, with all of our travails. He stays behind to share our suffering, to give it meaning and, on Easter Sunday, to redeem it in resurrection.</div>
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The story of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter Sunday is the story of God carrying out an act of human solidarity at great cost — becoming a human being, with all our limitations and pains, and then leading us beyond to an eternal life that is promised but not yet seen.</div>
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Peace lies within</div>
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What good is all that right now, when we can’t meet Jesus in the flesh, can’t see him for ourselves, can’t ask for his help?</div>
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In the extremity of his own suffering, Frankl found one deep consolation — the contemplation of his wife, who was in another Nazi camp, where she died. There was a time when he wanted nothing more than to be allowed to think of her, to conjure in his mind her face and her voice.</div>
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He recalled the Song of Solomon, from the Old Testament: “Set me like a seal on your heart, love is as strong as death.”</div>
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As he is forced relentlessly into pointless, cruel labour for the Nazis, Frankl can still find bliss in the mental image of his wife. For the first time, he understands the heavenly hosts of angels lost in perpetual adoration of God.</div>
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The contemplation of God is helped by the kindness of others. Christians try to bring the mercy of God, and the light of God, into the world through their actions. God knows often enough they mess it up dreadfully.</div>
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The church has always been messy. Jesus chose 12. One betrayed him to death, three fell asleep as he suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane.</div>
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The most important early church leader, Paul, had been a persecutor of the innocent. And Peter, the man Jesus chose to lead the Apostles, who became the leader of the Christians after the resurrection, denied Jesus out of cowardice.</div>
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If Jesus was human, so too were his followers. All too human, in fact. Yet Peter and Paul also found the conviction to go to their deaths as martyrs for their beliefs, executed by the brutal Roman emperor Nero. Every death suffered in hope is a kind of martyrdom.</div>
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The Easter resurrection is the triumph of all martyrs, and the hope of all human beings.<br />
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FOREIGN EDITOR</div>
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Greg Sheridan, The Australian's foreign editor, is one of the nation's most influential national security commentators, who is active across television and radio and also writes extensively on culture. He has w... <a class="author-module__read-more" href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/Greg+Sheridan" rel="author">Read more</a><br />
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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/easter-offers-solace-for-us-all-in-the-depths-of-coronavirus-crisis/news-story/64e47113d3704cc0b7f1409e05fe4759</div>
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AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-70095011603786893322020-04-08T18:08:00.002-07:002020-04-08T18:10:09.106-07:00Pope Francis says pandemic can be a ‘place of conversion’<div style="text-align: center;">
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by <a href="https://www.thetablet.co.uk/author/130/austen-ivereigh">Austen Ivereigh</a></div>
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The Tablet Interview</h2>
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<strong>In an exclusive interview recorded for The Tablet – his first for a UK publication – Pope Francis says that this extraordinary Lent and Eastertide could be a moment of creativity and conversion for the Church, for the world, and for the whole of creation.</strong><br />
• Towards the end of March I suggested to Pope Francis that this might be a good moment to address the English-speaking world: the pandemic that had so affected Italy and Spain was now reaching the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Without promising anything, he asked me to send some questions. I picked six themes, each one with a series of questions he could answer or not as he saw fit. A week later, I received a communication that he had recorded some reflections in response to the questions. The interview was conducted in Spanish; the translation is my own.<br />
<strong>The first question was about how he was experiencing the pandemic and lockdown, both in the Santa Marta residence and the Vatican administration (“the curia”) more widely, both practically and spiritually.</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> The Curia is trying to carry on its work, and to live normally, organising in shifts so that not everyone is present at the same time. It’s been well thought out. We are sticking to the measures ordered by the health authorities. Here in the Santa Marta residence we now have two shifts for meals, which helps a lot to alleviate the impact. Everyone works in his office or from his room, using technology. Everyone is working; there are no idlers here.<br />
How am I living this spiritually? I’m praying more, because I feel I should. And I think of people. That’s what concerns me: people. Thinking of people anoints me, it does me good, it takes me out of my self-preoccupation. Of course I have my areas of selfishness. On Tuesdays, my confessor comes, and I take care of things there.<br />
I’m thinking of my responsibilities now, and what will come afterwards. What will be my service as Bishop of Rome, as head of the Church, in the aftermath? That aftermath has already begun to be revealed as tragic and painful, which is why we must be thinking about it now. The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development has been working on this, and meeting with me.<br />
My major concern – at least what comes through my prayer – is how to accompany and be closer to the people of God. Hence the livestreaming of the 7 a.m. Mass [I celebrate each morning] which many people follow and appreciate, as well as the addresses I’ve given, and the 27 March event in St Peter’s Square. Hence, too, the step-up in activities of the office of papal charities, attending to the sick and hungry.<br />
I’m living this as a time of great uncertainty. It’s a time for inventing, for creativity.<br />
<strong>In my second question, I referred to a nineteenth-century novel very dear to Pope Francis, which he has mentioned recently: Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). The novel’s drama centres on the Milan plague of 1630. There are various priestly characters: the cowardly curé Don Abbondio, the holy cardinal archbishop Borromeo, and the Capuchin friars who serve the lazzaretto, a kind of field hospital where the infected are rigorously separated from the healthy. In the light of the novel, how did Pope Francis see the mission of the Church in the context of Covid-19?</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> Cardinal Federigo [Borromeo] really is a hero of the Milan plague. Yet in one of the chapters he goes to greet a village but with the window of his carriage closed to protect himself. This did not go down well with the people. The people of God need their pastor to be close to them, not to over-protect himself. The people of God need their pastors to be self-sacrificing, like the Capuchins, who stayed close.<br />
The creativity of the Christian needs to show forth in opening up new horizons, opening windows, opening transcendence towards God and towards people, and in creating new ways of being at home. It’s not easy to be confined to your house. What comes to my mind is a verse from the Aeneid in the midst of defeat: the counsel is not to give up, but save yourself for better times, for in those times remembering what has happened will help us. Take care of yourselves for a future that will come. And remembering in that future what has happened will do you good.<br />
Take care of the now, for the sake of tomorrow. Always creatively, with a simple creativity, capable of inventing something new each day. Inside the home that’s not hard to discover, but don’t run away, don’t take refuge in escapism, which in this time is of no use to you.<br />
<strong>My third question was about government policies in response to the crisis. While the quarantining of the population is a sign that some governments are willing to sacrifice economic wellbeing for the sake of vulnerable people, I suggested it was also exposing levels of exclusion that have been considered normal and acceptable before now.</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> It’s true, a number of governments have taken exemplary measures to defend the population on the basis of clear priorities. But we’re realising that all our thinking, like it or not, has been shaped around the economy. In the world of finance it has seemed normal to sacrifice [people], to practise a politics of the throwaway culture, from the beginning to the end of life. I’m thinking, for example, of pre-natal selection. It’s very unusual these days to meet Down’s Syndrome people on the street; when the tomograph [scan] detects them, they are binned. It’s a culture of euthanasia, either legal or covert, in which the elderly are given medication but only up to a point.<br />
What comes to mind is Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. The great controversy at the time was over the [contraceptive] pill, but what people didn’t realise was the prophetic force of the encyclical, which foresaw the neo-Malthusianism which was then just getting underway across the world. Paul VI sounded the alarm over that wave of neo-Malthusianism. We see it in the way people are selected according to their utility or productivity: the throwaway culture.<br />
Right now, the homeless continue to be homeless. A photo appeared the other day of a parking lot in Las Vegas where they had been put in quarantine. And the hotels were empty. But the homeless cannot go to a hotel. That is the throwaway culture in practice.<br />
<strong>I was curious to know if the Pope saw the crisis and the economic devastation it is wreaking as a chance for an ecological conversion, for reassessing priorities and lifestyles. I asked him concretely whether it was possible that we might see in the future an economy that – to use his words – was more “human” and less “liquid”.</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> There is an expression in Spanish: “God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives.” We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods? I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses.<br />
We have a selective memory. I want to dwell on this point. I was amazed at the seventieth anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings, which was attended by people at the highest levels of culture and politics. It was one big celebration. It’s true that it marked the beginning of the end of dictatorship, but no one seemed to recall the 10,000 boys who remained on that beach.<br />
When I went to Redipuglia for the centenary of the First World War I saw a lovely monument and names on a stone, but that was it. I cried, thinking of Benedict XV’s phrase inutile strage (“senseless massacre”), and the same happened to me at Anzio on All Souls’ Day, thinking of all the North American soldiers buried there, each of whom had a family, and how any of them might have been me.<br />
At this time in Europe when we are beginning to hear populist speeches and witness political decisions of this selective kind it’s all too easy to remember Hitler’s speeches in 1933, which were not so different from some of the speeches of a few European politicians now.<span class="s1">What comes to mind is another verse of Virgil’s: [forsan et haec olim] meminisse iubavit["perhaps one day it will be good to remember these things too”].</span> We need to recover our memory because memory will come to our aid. This is not humanity’s first plague; the others have become mere anecdotes. We need to remember our roots, our tradition which is packed full of memories. In the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, the First Week, as well as the “Contemplation to Attain Love” in the Fourth Week, are completely taken up with remembering. It’s a conversion through remembrance.<br />
This crisis is affecting us all, rich and poor alike, and putting a spotlight on hypocrisy. I am worried by the hypocrisy of certain political personalities who speak of facing up to the crisis, of the problem of hunger in the world, but who in the meantime manufacture weapons. This is a time to be converted from this kind of functional hypocrisy. It’s a time for integrity. Either we are coherent with our beliefs or we lose everything.<br />
You ask me about conversion. Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity: the opportunity to move out from the danger. Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption (Laudato Si’, 191) and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. We need to reconnect with our real surroundings. This is the opportunity for conversion.<br />
Yes, I see early signs of an economy that is less liquid, more human. But let us not lose our memory once all this is past, let us not file it away and go back to where we were. This is the time to take the decisive step, to move from using and misusing nature to contemplating it. We have lost the contemplative dimension; we have to get it back at this time.<br />
And speaking of contemplation, I’d like to dwell on one point. This is the moment to see the poor. Jesus says we will have the poor with us always, and it’s true. They are a reality we cannot deny. But the poor are hidden, because poverty is bashful. In Rome recently, in the midst of the quarantine, a policeman said to a man: “You can’t be on the street, go home.” The response was: “I have no home. I live in the street.” To discover such a large number of people who are on the margins … And we don’t see them, because poverty is bashful. They are there but we don’t see them: they have become part of the landscape; they are things.<br />
St Teresa of Calcutta saw them, and had the courage to embark on a journey of conversion. To “see” the poor means to restore their humanity. They are not things, not garbage; they are people. We can’t settle for a welfare policy such as we have for rescued animals. We often treat the poor like rescued animals. We can’t settle for a partial welfare policy.<br />
I’m going to dare to offer some advice. This is the time to go to the underground. I’m thinking of Dostoyevsky’s short novel, Notes from the Underground. The employees of that prison hospital had become so inured they treated their poor prisoners like things. And seeing the way they treated one who had just died, the one on the bed alongside tells them: “Enough! He too had a mother!” We need to tell ourselves this often: that poor person had a mother who raised him lovingly. Later in life we don’t know what happened. But it helps to think of that love he once received through his mother’s hope.<br />
We disempower the poor. We don’t give them the right to dream of their mothers. They don’t know what affection is; many live on drugs. And to see them can help us to discover the piety, the pietas, which points towards God and towards our neighbour.<br />
Go down into the underground, and pass from the hyper-virtual, fleshless world to the suffering flesh of the poor. This is the conversion we have to undergo. And if we don’t start there, there will be no conversion.<br />
I’m thinking at this time of the saints who live next door. They are heroes: doctors, volunteers, religious sisters, priests, shop workers – all performing their duty so that society can continue functioning. How many doctors and nurses have died! How many religious sisters have died! All serving … What comes to my mind is something said by the tailor, in my view one of the characters with greatest integrity in The Betrothed. He says: “The Lord does not leave his miracles half-finished.” If we become aware of this miracle of the next-door saints, if we can follow their tracks, the miracle will end well, for the good of all. God doesn’t leave things halfway. We are the ones who do that.<br />
What we are living now is a place of metanoia (conversion), and we have the chance to begin. So let’s not let it slip from us, and let’s move ahead.<br />
<strong>My fifth question centred on the effects on the Church of the crisis, and the need to rethink our ways of operating. Does he see emerging from this a Church that is more missionary, more creative, less attached to institutions? Are we seeing a new kind of “home Church”?</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> Less attached to institutions? I’d say less attached to certain ways of thinking. Because the Church is institution. The temptation is to dream of a de-institutionalised Church, a gnostic Church without institutions, or one that is subject to fixed institutions, which would be a Pelagian Church. The one who makes the Church is the Holy Spirit, who is neither gnostic nor Pelagian. It is the Holy Spirit who institutionalises the Church, in an alternative, complementary way, because the Holy Spirit provokes disorder through the charisms, but then out of that disorder creates harmony.<br />
A Church that is free is not an anarchic Church, because freedom is God’s gift. An institutional Church means a Church institutionalised by the Holy Spirit.<br />
A tension between disorder and harmony: this is the Church that must come out of the crisis. We have to learn to live in a Church that exists in the tension between harmony and disorder provoked by the Holy Spirit. If you ask me which book of theology can best help you understand this, it would be the Acts of the Apostles. There you will see how the Holy Spirit de-institutionalises what is no longer of use, and institutionalises the future of the Church. That is the Church that needs to come out of the crisis.<br />
About a week ago an Italian bishop, somewhat flustered, called me. He had been going round the hospitals wanting to give absolution to those inside the wards from the hallway of the hospital. But he had spoken to canon lawyers who had told him he couldn’t, that absolution could only be given in direct contact. “What do you think, Father?” he had asked me. I told him: “Bishop, fulfil your priestly duty.” And the bishop said Grazie, ho capito (“Thank you, I understand”). I found out later that he was giving absolution all around the place.<br />
This is the freedom of the Spirit in the midst of a crisis, not a Church closed off in institutions. That doesn’t mean that canon law is not important: it is, it helps, and please let’s make good use of it, it is for our good. But the final canon says that the whole of canon law is for the salvation of souls, and that’s what opens the door for us to go out in times of difficulty to bring the consolation of God.<br />
You ask me about a “home Church”. We have to respond to our confinement with all our creativity. We can either get depressed and alienated – through media that can take us out of our reality – or we can get creative. At home we need an apostolic creativity, a creativity shorn of so many useless things, but with a yearning to express our faith in community, as the people of God. So: to be in lockdown, but yearning, with that memory that yearns and begets hope – this is what will help us escape our confinement.<br />
<strong>Finally, I asked Pope Francis how we are being called to live this extraordinary Lent and Eastertide. I asked him if he had a particular message for the elderly who were self-isolating, for confined young people, and for those facing poverty as result of the crisis.</strong><br />
<strong>Pope Francis:</strong> You speak of the isolated elderly: solitude and distance. How many elderly there are whose children do not go and visit them in normal times! I remember in Buenos Aires when I visited old people’s homes, I would ask them: And how’s your family? Fine, fine! Do they come? Yes, always! Then the nurse would take me aside and say the children hadn’t been to see them in six months. Solitude and abandonment … distance.<br />
Yet the elderly continue to be our roots. And they must speak to the young. This tension between young and old must always be resolved in the encounter with each other. Because the young person is bud and foliage, but without roots they cannot bear fruit. The elderly are the roots. I would say to them, today: I know you feel death is close, and you are afraid, but look elsewhere, remember your children, and do not stop dreaming. This is what God asks of you: to dream (Joel 3:1).<br />
What would I say to the young people? Have the courage to look ahead, and to be prophetic. May the dreams of the old correspond to your prophecies – also Joel 3:1.<br />
Those who have been impoverished by the crisis are today’s deprived, who are added to the numbers of deprived of all times, men and women whose status is “deprived”. They have lost everything, or they are going to lose everything. What meaning does deprivation have for me, in the light of the Gospel? It means to enter into the world of the deprived, to understand that he who had, no longer has. What I ask of people is that they take the elderly and the young under their wing, that they take history under the wing, take the deprived under their wing.<br />
What comes now to mind is another verse of Virgil’s, at the end of Book 2 of the Aeneid, when Aeneas, following defeat in Troy, has lost everything. Two paths lie before him: to remain there to weep and end his life, or to follow what was in his heart, to go up to the mountain and leave the war behind. It’s a beautiful verse. Cessi, et sublato montem genitore petivi (“I gave way to fate and, bearing my father on my shoulders, made for the mountain”).<br />
This is what we all have to do now, today: to take with us the roots of our traditions, and make for the mountain.<br />
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<em>Austen Ivereigh is a fellow in contemporary church history at Campion Hall, at the University of Oxford. His latest book is Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis’s Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church, published by Henry Holt.</em></div>
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AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-44512563875659438072020-04-03T14:41:00.003-07:002020-04-03T14:48:05.465-07:00Pope encourages Catholics to contemplate ‘seven sorrows’ of Mary<div style="text-align: center;">
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ROME - On the Friday before Holy Week, Pope Francis asked people to keep a long tradition of Catholic piety by focusing on “the suffering and sorrows of Our Lady.”</div>
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“Honor Our Lady and say, ‘This is my mother,’ because she is mother. This is the title that she received from Jesus precisely there, at the cross,” the pope said at Mass April 3. Jesus “did not make her prime minister or give her ‘functional’ titles. Only ‘mother.'”</div>
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Mary did not ask for any honor or special titles, the pope said. “She didn’t ask to be a quasi-redemptrix or a co-redemptrix, no. There is only one redeemer and this title cannot be duplicated.”</div>
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For decades, some Catholics have been petitioning the popes to recognize Mary as “co-redemptrix” to highlight the essential role she played in redemption.</div>
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“Just disciple and mother - and in that way, as mother, we must think about her, seek her out, pray to her,” Pope Francis said. “She is the mother in the church that is mother. In the maternity of Our Lady, we see the maternity of the church, which receives everyone, good and bad, everyone.”</div>
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The Friday before Palm Sunday is observed in many places as the “Friday of Sorrows,” a special day of Marian devotion.</div>
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Pope Francis asked Catholics to spend time considering the “seven sorrows” of Mary: Simeon’s prophecy that a sword would pierce her heart; the flight into Egypt; the worry when the child Jesus could not be found because he was in the temple; meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary; seeing Jesus on the cross; witnessing Jesus, lifeless, being taken down from the cross; and seeing Jesus being buried in the tomb.</div>
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Mary bore those sufferings “with strength, with tears - it wasn’t a fake cry, hers was truly a heart destroyed by pain,” the pope said.</div>
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Pope Francis said that late in the evening, when he prays the Angelus prayer, he contemplates the seven sorrows and recalls “how the mother of the church, with so much pain, gave birth to all of us.”</div>
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With the morning Masses from the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae livestreamed during the coronavirus crisis, Pope Francis begins the liturgy with a special thought and prayer intention each day.</div>
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“There are people who already are thinking about the ‘after,’ what happens after the pandemic,” the pope said April 3. They already are strategizing ways to alleviate “all the problems that will come - problems of poverty, jobs, hunger. Let us pray for all the people who are helping today, but also thinking of tomorrow to help all of us.”</div>
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<a href="https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/04/pope-encourages-catholics-to-contemplate-seven-sorrows-of-mary/">https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/04/pope-encourages-catholics-to-contemplate-seven-sorrows-of-mary/</a></div>
AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4220139005209617633.post-79846134517796182642020-04-02T13:14:00.002-07:002020-04-02T13:14:46.592-07:00Vatican Grants Emergency Plenary Indulgence for Divine Mercy Chaplet<h1>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">By Chris Sparks</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">The Church is responding to the problems we all face as a result of this pandemic with great seriousness and generosity. The Holy Father is throwing wide open the doors of the Church’s storehouses of grace for the faithful, making it as easy as possible for all of us to be assured of the graces we need to speed the sick and the dying through Purgatory, and to be assured of the graces needed for salvation at the moment of our deaths.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Spread the news of these special graces to every Catholic on the front lines of facing this disease that you know. Make sure they know how to make use of these graces.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">New Plenary Indulgence</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Because of the pandemic, anyone who, with “the will to fulfil the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer according to the Holy Father's intentions), as soon as possible,” recites the </span><a href="https://www.thedivinemercy.org/message/devotions/pray-the-chaplet"><span style="color: #961300; font-family: 'arial';">Divine Mercy Chaplet</span></a><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';"> with the intention “to implore from Almighty God the end of the epidemic, relief for those who are afflicted and eternal salvation for those whom the Lord has called to Himself,” can receive a plenary indulgence each day.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">This great news was announced in an </span><a href="http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/03/20/200320c.html"><span style="color: #961300; font-family: 'arial';">official decree</span></a><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';"> from the Apostolic Penitentiary on March 20, 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">There are other ways to gain this special plenary indulgence, as well:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">the faithful suffering from coronavirus and subject to quarantine by order of the health authority in hospitals or in their own homes, with a spirit detached from any sin, can gain the plenary indulgence if they “unite spiritually through the media to the celebration of Holy Mass, the recitation of the </span><a href="https://www.marian.org/13th/howto.php"><span style="color: #961300; font-family: 'arial';">Holy Rosary</span></a><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, to the pious practice of the </span><a href="https://www.shrineofdivinemercy.org/stations-way"><span style="color: #961300; font-family: 'arial';">Way of the Cross</span></a><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';"> or other forms of devotion, or if at least they will recite the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and a pious invocation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, offering this trial in a spirit of faith in God and charity towards their brothers and sisters, with the will to fulfil the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer according to the Holy Father’s intentions), as soon as possible.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">“Health care workers, family members and all those who, following the example of the Good Samaritan, exposing themselves to the risk of contagion, care for the sick of Coronavirus according to the words of the divine Redeemer: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15: 13), will obtain the same gift of the Plenary Indulgence under the same conditions.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">“This Apostolic Penitentiary also willingly grants a Plenary Indulgence under the same conditions on the occasion of the current world epidemic, also to those faithful who offer a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or Eucharistic adoration, or reading the Holy Scriptures for at least half an hour, or the recitation of the Holy Rosary, or the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross, or the recitation of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, to implore from Almighty God the end of the epidemic, relief for those who are afflicted and eternal salvation for those whom the Lord has called to Himself.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">And here’s a crucial concession to us all, in case we can’t receive the Anointing of the Sick during this period of pandemic and quarantine:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">“The Church prays for those who find themselves unable to receive the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and of the Viaticum, entrusting each and every one to divine Mercy by virtue of the communion of saints and granting the faithful a Plenary Indulgence on the point of death, provided that they are duly disposed and have recited a few prayers during their lifetime (in this case the Church makes up for the three usual conditions required). For the attainment of this indulgence the use of the crucifix or the cross is recommended (cf. </span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Enchiridion indulgentiarum</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, no.12).”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Divine Mercy graces and promises</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">And more: Make sure they know of the special graces promised to us by our Lord through St. Faustina. Make sure people know that we can obtain unimaginable graces for ourselves, for those suffering as a result of this coronavirus, and for the whole world as we groan beneath the burden of this pandemic.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Jesus told St. Faustina of a number of ways to help people make sure that their final destination is Heaven.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Jesus made extraordinary promises for </span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">At the hour of their death, I defend as My own glory every soul that will say this chaplet; or when others say it for a dying person, the pardon is the same. When this chaplet is said by the bedside of a dying person, God’s anger is placated, unfathomable mercy envelops the soul, and the very depths of My tender mercy are moved for the sake of the sorrowful Passion of My Son (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 811).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">… when they say this chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as the merciful Savior (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 1541).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">He also made extraordinary promises for </span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">veneration of the Divine Mercy Image</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You. I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I Myself will defend it as My own glory (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 47 and 48).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Jesus made extraordinary promises for </span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">those who trust in Him</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 1578).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">My daughter, know that My Heart is mercy itself. From this sea of mercy, graces flow out upon the whole world. No soul that has approached Me has ever gone away unconsoled. All misery gets buried in the depths of My mercy, and every saving and sanctifying grace flows from this fountain. My daughter, I desire that your heart be an abiding place of My mercy. I desire that this mercy flow out upon the whole world through your heart. Let no one who approaches you go away without that trust in My mercy which I so ardently desire for souls.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Pray as much as you can for the dying. By your entreaties, obtain for them trust in My mercy, because they have most need of trust, and have it the least. Be assured that the grace of eternal salvation for certain souls in their final moment depends on your prayer. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">You know the whole abyss of My mercy, so draw upon it for yourself and especially for poor sinners. Sooner would heaven and earth turn into nothingness than would My mercy not embrace a trusting soul (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 1777).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Jesus also made extraordinary promises to all those who </span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">spread the message and devotion of Divine Mercy</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire lives as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior. At that last hour, a soul has nothing with which to defend itself except My mercy. Happy is the soul that during its lifetime immersed itself in the Fountain of Mercy, because justice will have no hold on it (</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Diary</span><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">, 1075).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Turn to Our Lady</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">So during this pandemic, let’s thank God for the tremendous graces He’s made available to us through the Holy Father and through St. Faustina. Let’s make sure we spread the word of God’s merciful love, and make regular use of the devotions He’s given to us with such exceptional promises. And let us join the Holy See in asking the Blessed Mother for her special help now:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, Health of the Sick and Help of Christians, our Advocate, help suffering humanity, saving us from the evil of this pandemic and obtaining for us every good necessary for our salvation and sanctification.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Pray for me; I’ll pray for you.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book </span><a href="https://www.shopmercy.org/how-can-you-still-be-catholic.html"><span style="color: #961300; font-family: 'arial';">How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question</span></a><span style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: 'arial';">.</span><br />
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AMAIChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14460852293132739396noreply@blogger.com0