Below are the pastoral ponderings of 2006.
December 3, 2006
Third Sunday of Advent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
When we think of Adam's fall, there are two passive participles that should come forcefully to our minds: lost and cursed. These two words sum up the human condition without Christ.
First, man is lost. Worse, he continues to get lost. It is a mistake to think of the fallen human being as somehow looking for God. Indeed, the very opposite is true. When the human race fell in Adam, a kind of spiritual inertia came into play, a force that kept him going in the same direction--away from God. Of himself man had no power of initiative to reverse the movement. This is what is meant by the Fall.
If man was to return to God, God had to take the initiative. If God had not sought man out, he would keep going in the same direction-away. This is very clear in the biblical story of Adam's hiding from God immediately after his disobedience. He and all his descendents would still be lying low there in the bushes if God had not come after him, inquiring, "Where are you?"
It was not that God did not know where to find Adam. It was Adam who was lost, rather, not God. God knew where Adam was, but Adam didn't. God's query "Where are you?" was intended to wake lost man up to his real situation. As such, it was the first proclamation of the Gospel, the merciful word that began to reverse the direction of man's existence. Indeed, it was the first step toward the mystery of the Incarnation.
This divine inquiry was necessary, because man had no interest in finding God. It was of God, on the contrary, that Adam was most afraid, because God recognized him to be naked. God understood this and promptly provided a covering for man's nakedness. It was the initial step toward man's final clothing, indicated in St. Paul's exhortation to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 13:14).
But even when confronted by his sin, Adam did not accept the guilt and responsibility. He immediately blamed Eve: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." Indeed, this response even seems to blame God for the Fall. Adam speaks of Eve as "the woman whom You gave me," as though to say, "I did not ask for a wife; this whole arrangement was your idea. This woman, whom You designed, is the one who got me into this mess."
Eve, for her part, follows Adam's example of passing the blame: "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." This too was God's fault, of course, because He created this "creeping thing" (Genesis 1:25). Eve could hardly hold herself responsible for what happened.
Even found, that is to say, fallen man was obviously still lost.
Hence--to come to our second point--fallen man was cursed. In assigning punishment for the original sin, the Lord apparently accepted the order of guilt assigned by Adam and Eve. Accordingly, the snake was the first to be punished, then the woman, and finally the man (3:14-15).
The first word of God's verdict is "cursed" ('arur), because an historical curse is the lasting effect of the Fall. The Semitic root of this expression, 'rr, is found in Akkadian, Ethiopian, and Arabic--in addition to Hebrew. Pronounced out loud, the word sounds, in fact, like a roar. Well, I suppose it should, because both words, 'arur and "roar" (from the Old English root ra) refer to the same thing--a loud and frightening expression of anger. Long before its first written record on Akkadian temple inscriptions, it is obvious that the root 'rr was an onomatopoeia, a word that imitated a sound, in this case the sound of a lion.
Thus, to be "cursed" (another word, we note, that preserves the same guttural ur sound) means to receive a decree of irate and radical disapproval. It signifies expulsion from God's society and communion. Moreover, it is of the nature of a curse that it is effective simply by being pronounced.
The curse incurred by fallen man was related to the very earth from which he was taken: "Cursed is the ground for your sake. . . In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread/ Till you return to the ground,/ For out of it you were taken;/ For dust you are, And to dust you shall return." The curse, that is to say, was man's mortality. What Adam handed on was domination by death; "sin reigned in death" (Romans 5:21). By reason of Adam's Fall, man without redemption is under the reign of death and corruption, because "the reign of death (regnum mortis) operates only in the corruption of the flesh" (Tertullian, On the Resurrection 47).
This is what Adam bequeathed to his offspring, "the reign of death." To die without the grace of redemption is to die eternally. This is the real curse of death, because to die such a death is to be "lost" in a most radical way, lost in the sense of putting oneself beyond the possibility of being found.
December 10, 2006
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Although the popularity of The Da Vinci Code has recently made the Council of Nicaea familiar to a greater number of people, it has also caused that ancient council to be more generally misunderstood. Indeed, many folks nowadays seem to have accepted at face value the notion that the bishops at Nicaea in 325 actually debated and "voted on" the divinity of Jesus and that the "ayes" carried the day by only a slim majority. Until that point, The Da Vinci Code would have us believe, the Church did not believe in the divinity of Christ, or it was at least a disputed question. Nicaea, we are told, settled the matter, giving Christianity a new direction in history.
In fact, nothing of the sort happened at Nicaea. There was no debate about--or vote on--the divinity of Christ at that council, because the conciliar Fathers recognized that the divinity of Christ was already established in the common teaching of the Church and recorded in the pages of the New Testament.
What the Fathers of Nicaea voted on was not the divinity of Christ but the teaching of the priest Arius, who had recently promulgated the idea that God's Son, who assumed our humanity in Jesus, had not been God's Son from all eternity. There was God the Father before there was the Son, said Arius; the Father and the Son were two separate beings, the One prior to the Other.
The question before the council was whether or not this novel teaching of Arius was compatible with what the Apostles taught in their preaching and their Gospels and Epistles found in the New Testament. Jesus was not the matter of debate at Nicaea. Arius was.
The bishops at Nicaea looked carefully at what Arius had published and then asked themselves a simple question, "Are these ideas of Arius compatible with what we find in the tradition and writings of the Apostles?" And they answered, after some animated deliberation, "Well, actually, no. In fact, heck no, we'll be darned if they are."
The reasoning at Nicaea went like this: In Jesus of Nazareth we recognize God's Son. This is why we address God as Father, just as Jesus taught us. If, as Arius said, there was a time when God did not have a Son--some point after which God became the Father--one of two things had to happen. Either God was essentially, inwardly changed (which Nicaea recognized to be impossible), or the Father created the Son. If it was the latter case, then the Son is a created being, of a nature different from God, a being outside of God, a creature not essentially different from the rest of creation.
Now this was a very serious inference, the Nicene Fathers continued to reflect, because a great deal was at stake. If this Son is just another creature different from and outside of God, a creature pretty much like ourselves, then we human beings are still in our sins, because the death and resurrection of Jesus could not have saved us. According to the New Testament, after all, our redemption was "expiated," was "purchased," by the blood of Jesus (Romans 3:25; 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13; Colossians 1:14,20; 1Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:9). Now, if our redemption was something purchased, surely no one but God could pay the price. The very name Jesus means "the Lord saves." The Nicene Fathers perceived, then, that the teaching of Arius touched on the matter of our redemption. This is why they made sure to say that God's Son "became man for us men and for our salvation."
God and Jesus, therefore, are distinct (since the Father sent the Son), but they are not separable. Since there was never God the Father without His Son, then the Son must be as eternal as the Father. Otherwise, the Son would essentially be a creature, someone who had not existed before God made him. That, said Nicaea, is what the Apostles taught, and that was the reason the priest Arius was dead wrong.
To express their condemnation of Arius on this point, the Fathers at Nicaea formulated a new expression, saying that the Father and the Son are not two different beings. They are not separable. They are "of the same being"--homoousios in the Greek language that they used at the council. There can be no God the Father, they declared, without God the Son; otherwise the Father is not really the Father.
It is important to observe that the use of the word homoousios did not "clarify" anything about God. It added no new light or intelligibility to what was already revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is not to throw further light on what is, after all, the fullness of revealed truth. The purpose of dogmatic definitions is, rather, to confound heretics. Dogma serves to "focus" revelation in the sense of declaring what is "not in line" with revelation. Of itself, however, a dogma adds nothing new. Hence, it is wrong to imagine that Nicaea’s declaration clarified revealed truth. It did not. Nicaea told us absolutely nothing beyond what the Apostles had declared. Indeed, the Nicene Fathers went to some lengths to insist on this point.
After all, what is this "being"--this ousia--of God, this "divinity" common to the Father and the Son? Or, to phrase the question differently, in what sense is the Son "begotten" of the Father? The Fathers of Nicaea had no more idea on this matter than we do. Nor did the Apostles. No amount of thinking can "clarify" these things. This is why the conciliar declaration against Arius was an apophatic or negative assertion. The council could not elucidate the "being" of God or the "generation’ of the Son, beyond what Jesus Himself had declared, "I and the Father are one."
The council Fathers could, however, condemn that devilish Arius as a heretic, and this they gladly did with that smack of gusto called an "anathema."
December 17, 2006
Fifth Sunday of Advent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Rather early the Christian mind began to ask, "Why did God become man?" The Council of Nicaea declared simply that the Incarnation took place "for us men and for our salvation." That is to say, it is a dogma of the Church that the intent of the Incarnation was soteriological.
For the rest, however, the history of theology has witnessed a certain diversity in the ways this soteriological intent of the Incarnation was expressed. More specifically, the answer to the question "Why God became man?" depended in no small measure on the meaning of salvation, and Christians, even from New Testament times, have variously described salvation.
For example, the soteriological intent of the Incarnation was expressed very early in the Epistle to the Hebrews. According to this source, the Incarnation provided God's Son with the means of suffering and dying in obedience to His Father. Commenting on Psalm 39 (40), the author wrote with respect to the Incarnation, "Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:/ 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,/ But a body You have prepared for Me./ In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin/ You had no pleasure./ Then I said, \Behold, I have come/ -In the volume of the book it is written of Me- / To do Your will, O God'"(10:5-7). That is to say, the obedience of Christ was to fulfill and replace the various sacrifices of the Mosaic Law, and for this task the Son obviously required a body.
Moreover, the Son needed this body in order to suffer and die for the human race. Thus, commenting on Psalm 8, this author described in what way the Son became man for our salvation. "We see Jesus," he wrote, "who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone" (2:9).
In order to "taste death" in obedience to the Father, then, the Son assumed our flesh. In order to die as an act of sacrifice, he had to share the mortality of our flesh. Hebrews goes on to say, "Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."
In sum, two aspects of the soteriology of the Incarnation are especially to be observed in treatment of the theme in Hebrews. First, God's Son assumed our flesh in order obediently to die in that flesh. Second, His death in the flesh meant the destruction of the devil, "who had the power of death." According to Hebrews, then, God's Son took flesh in order to die, and He died in order to overcome death and the devil. This line of theological reflection--Incarnation, death, victory--continued throughout Christian history, combining with other biblical themes along the way.
In the following century, for instance, Irenaeus, the second bishop of Lyons, followed the same theological line as the author of Hebrews, but he adorned it by introducing the Pauline contrast between Christ and Adam. According to Irenaeus the Word's assumption of the flesh was required for our salvation because Adam's sin had been committed in the flesh. Sin in the flesh required salvation in the flesh. He explained, "So the Word was made flesh in order that sin, destroyed by means of that same flesh through which it had gained mastery and taken hold and lorded it, should no longer be in us," and "that so He might join battle on behalf of our forefathers and vanquish through Adam what had stricken us through Adam" (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 31).
As I noted, Irenaeus here is clearly the heir to St. Paul, who contrasted Christ and Adam in terms of "disobedience unto death" and "obedience unto life" (Romans 5:12-19)
In his treatment of salvation, however, Irenaeus stresses the resurrection much more explicitly than is obvious in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and this in turn colors his approach to the Incarnation. Thus, he writes of "our Lord's birth, which the Word of God underwent for our sake, to be made flesh, that He might reveal the resurrection of the flesh and take the lead of all in heaven." In this way, explains Irenaeus, Christ becomes "the first-born of the dead, the head and source of the life unto God" (op.cit., 39).
In his development of this idea, Irenaeus is still following the lead of St. Paul, who contrasted Christ and Adam with respect to death and resurrection: (1 Corinthians 15:22,45).
In tying the soteriological intent of the Incarnation to the Lord's resurrection from the dead, Irenaeus advances an important doctrinal perspective. We may contrast this perspective with the soteriology of some later Christians, who concentrated entirely on the Lord's atoning death as the means of our redemption, with scarcely any attention to the soteriological significance of the resurrection.
Thus, Irenaeus, not neglecting the biblical theme of "obedience in the flesh," sets himself to provide a more ample answer to the question "Why Incarnation?" His larger answer to this question, an answer that includes the Lord's resurrection, colors his soteriology with a dominant concern for the total transformation of humanity, and all of creation, in Christ. This became a major theme in Irenaeus.
December 24, 2006
Christmas Eve
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
A special historical problem attends the Gospel accounts of our Lord's Nativity, but the correct solution to that problem, I believe, offers a unique perspective on those narratives. This subject is easily understood and very much worth the pursuit. We will look first at the problem, and then consider its solution.
The problem, as I remarked, is historical. We may put it simply: Just where did Matthew and Luke find the historical material that fills the first two chapters of each of those Gospels?
The significance of this question will be obvious if we examine the content of the earliest apostolic preaching. It is not a hard task to demonstrate that that preaching was based on a defined narrative structure, which invariably began with the ministry of John the Baptist. It contained nothing pertinent to the Lord's conception, birth, and childhood.
We discern the structure of that early apostolic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles. Thus, when St. Peter began to evangelize Cornelius and his friends at Caesarea, he commenced by speaking of the ministry of John (10:36-37). He went directly from John to Jesus; there was nothing mentioned about Jesus prior to His baptism by John.
The same is true of St. Paul's evangelization of Pisidian Antioch. To speak of Jesus, Paul began by linking Him directly to the ministry of John. He included not one word of Jesus’ life prior to that time (13:23-25). That is to say, the "evangelical narrative," the story form in which the Gospel was proclaimed, embraced the ministry of Jesus, beginning with John the Baptist. It contained no information about the earlier years of Jesus, or about His conception and birth.
Now this is exactly what we should expect from a close inspection of the directive that Peter gave to the assembled Apostles prior to the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. When they determined to choose some person to take the place of Judas Iscariot to fill up the number of the Twelve Witnesses, Peter specified the time period concerning which that chosen person would have to bear witness. He must be selected, said Peter, from among "these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism by John to the day that He was taken up from us" (1:21-22). That period of time, beginning with John's ministry, defined the specified limits of the original apostolic narrative, the primitive story structure of the Gospel.
Two of the Gospel writers adhere rather strictly to these specified time limits. Thus, Mark begins his Gospel with the ministry of John the Baptist (1:2-3). Even the evangelist John, whose first words take us up to the eternity of the Word's relation to the Father (1:1-5), commences the story of Jesus' life on earth by introducing John the Baptist. Even before declaring that "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," John proclaims, "there was a man sent forth from God whose name was John." He goes on to describe the Baptist's ministry at some length (1:6-40). He moves directly from John to Jesus. Neither Mark nor John mentions a single detail about Jesus' life from an earlier period.
In short, then, the inherited story structure of the first apostolic witness began the story of Jesus' life at the point of the preaching of John the Baptist. That apostolic witness seems to have contained not a single detail about Jesus prior to the Baptist’s appearance at the Jordan. Matthew and Luke, consequently, in order to lengthen the Gospel story to include accounts of Jesus' conception, birth, and early life, had available no pertinent material from the earliest apostolic preaching. As far as we can tell, no one had ever preached on such material.
Therefore, this is the historical problem: just where did Matthew and Luke obtain the narrative material that fills the first two chapters of each Gospel? What source was available to them?
The only reasonable answer, it seems to me, is Jesus' own mother, of whom we are told, "Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19,51). Luke is obviously disclosing his source here. Mary alone was still alive to remember, years later, those details no longer known anyone else. She is surely the living witness of the precious stories about herself and Joseph, the conception and birth of John the Baptist, her own virginal conception, the manger in the stable, the swaddling clothes, the angels and the shepherds, the Magi and their gifts, the Lord's circumcision, the presentation in the Temple, Simeon and Anna, and the dramatic event that occurred when Jesus was twelve years old.
Matthew and Luke differ greatly between themselves with respect to details and their differing literary and theological interests, but they tell essentially the same story, and it was a story they could have learned from only one source.
Consequently, to read their Christmas stories even today is to enter into a mother's contemplative heart where those stories were preserved until they were written down in the Gospels under the inerrant guidance of the Holy Spirit. Holy Church, in order to proclaim this earlier part of Jesus' life, draws us into the immaculate heart of Mary, to share in her inner faith and contemplative vigilance, to understand Christmas as she understood it.
December 31, 2006
The Sunday After Christmas
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Addressing the question, "Why did God become man?" Athanasius of Alexandria largely follows the lines of response already elaborated in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in Irenaeus of Lyons--namely, the Incarnation was required for man's reconciliation with God.
Man's repentance from sin, Athanasius contended, would not have been adequate to restore him to friendship with God. To imagine otherwise is to suppose an inadequate and unbiblical view of sin. Sin is not a merely moral offense, after all, an injury readily cured by simple repentance. Still less is it just a forensic declaration of guilt that could be reversed by a contrary declaration of reprieve. Nor is sin just a spiritual state that could be altered by some kind of spiritual adjustment. And certainly sin is not the sort of affront that can be remedied by a sincere apology.
According to Holy Scripture sin is bondage to death and corruption. Death and corruption are not punishments imposed on sin from without. They are internal to sin itself, the very "embodiment" of sin. Thus the Apostle Paul declared that "sin reigned in death" (ebasilevsen he hamartia en to thanato--Romans 5:21). To deal with sin, it was necessary to deal with death and corruption.
For this reason, Athanasius argued, the power of sin, which is the corruption of death, had to be defeated in the flesh. This necessity of the Word's enfleshment pertained to what Athanasius called "the divine reasonableness" (to evlogon to pros ton Theon--On the Incarnation 7).
Whereas many later theologians, especially in the West, thought of Redemption in terms of the divine justice, Athanasius thought of it in terms of the divine "reasonableness" or evlogon, that sustained propriety, coherence, consistency and proportion that distinguishes all of God's dealings with men.
The death of Christ in the flesh, in the eyes of Athanasius, was directed, then, not at God's offended justice, but at man's bondage to corruption. Since man had fallen in the flesh, reasoned Athanasius, it was reasonable, symmetric, appropriate, proportionate—in short, evlogon--that man be restored in the flesh. "For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world" (ibid. 8).
Thus, Athanasius explained, it pertained to the Word, "and to Him alone, to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to guard for the Father His reasonableness in all things (to hyper panton evlogon). Being the Word of the Father and above all, He alone was consequently able and qualified to recreate (anaktisai) all, to suffer for all (hyper panton pathein), and to represent all to the Father" (ibid. 7).
Following the line of argument that we find in Hebrews 2, Athanasius reasoned thus: "The Word understood that corruption could not be destroyed except through death. Yet, as God's Word and Son, He was immortal and could in no wise die. For this reason He took on a body capable of dying."
By sharing the flesh of mortal human beings, Athanasius went on, God's Word offered Himself on their behalf: "By surrendering to death the body that He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from all defilement--by this proportionate offering--He obliterated death for all those who shared it with Him" (ibid. 9).
In order overcome this corruption of sin, however, it was required, not only that God's Word should die in the flesh, but also that He should rise again in the flesh. Only in the Resurrection was corruption abolished. Indeed, God's Word assumed the body in order to be raised in the body: "It was the Lord's chief concern to bring about (poiein) the resurrection of the body. With respect to death this was the trophy for public display, to be everyone's guarantee that He had overcome corruption, and that their own bodies would in due course be incorrupt. It was in pledge thereto and as a declaration of everyone's future resurrection that He preserved His own body incorrupt" (ibid. 22).
For this reason, wrote Athanasius, Christ died in order to rise: "death had to precede resurrection, for there could be no resurrection without it" (ibid. 23). "He descended in a body, and He rose again, because He was God in a body. . . . Death pertains to man. Therefore the Word, as God, became flesh in order that, being put to death in the flesh, He might give life to all men by the power that is proper to Him" (Against the Arians 1.44).
In Athanasius, then, whose Christology became the standard of orthodoxy in the fourth century, the Incarnation pertains essentially to the mystery of man’s redemption. He insisted that the Word’s assumption of our flesh was the condition of His death and Resurrection, because he perceived the "fleshly" nature of that redemption. For Athanasius the doctrine of the redemption meant that something changed in man, not in God.
November 05, 2006
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
If asked to identify a single point of emphasis in the Book of Isaiah, a special feature that distinguishes this prophet from the other prophets of the Bible, I suspect the word "holiness" might come to mind. Isaiah is particularly the prophet of the divine holiness.
To begin with, Isaiah's prophetic call came in an overwhelming experience of the holiness of God. He remembered vividly the very year it happened. It was 742 B.C., "the year that King Uzziah died." The prophet saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train filled the Temple. He listened to the alternating chant of the fiery Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring aloft, borne on their pinions, singing the triumphal hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, the earth is full of His glory."
It is perhaps needless to say, Isaiah was never again the same. Throughout the rest of the book that bears this prophet's name, God is repeatedly called "the Holy One of Israel." This expression is found 26 times throughout the Book of Isaiah, in each of its three major parts, whereas the expression appears only six other times in the entire remainder of the Hebrew Bible. God as "the Holy One of Israel" is arguably the most unifying motif in the Book of Isaiah.
In addition to this specific title, Isaiah uses the adjective "holy" (qadosh) in ascription to God more times (33) than all the other books of the Old Testament put together (26). Once again, this ascription of holiness to God is found rather uniformly throughout all of Isaiah.
Its contextual applications, however, are not uniform. To wit:
In the first section of Isaiah, the prophecies of the Messiah (chapters 1-39), the appeal to God's holiness is especially found in the setting of the divine judgment on those that reject that holiness. Thus, we read, "They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel" (1:4; cf. 5:16,24; 30:11; 31:1; 37:23). In this context of judgment the holiness of God is perceived as menacing to the idolatrous and unrepentant nation; even the unclean prophet felt threatened (6:5).
In the second part of Isaiah, the prophecies of the Servant of the Lord (chapters 40-55), the references to the divine holiness consistently appear in the context of redemption. Typical in this respect is Isaiah 41:14: "'Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you,' says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel."
In this setting God's holiness does not inspire fear but reassurance. Thus we read, "When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior" (43:3-4; cf. 52:10). Again, God calls Himself "your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel" (43:14; cf. 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5).
This theme of deliverance also marks the references to the divine holiness in the third section of Isaiah, the prophecies of the Triumphant Warrior (chapters 56-66). Thus, we read of the cargo ships that will come from the west, "to bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the Name of the Lord your God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because He has glorified you" (60:8). Whereas in the first part of Isaiah the unrepentant nation is threatened by the holiness of God, in this last section that same nation receives the promise, "they shall call you the city of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel" (60:14).
Taking the Book of Isaiah as a whole (appropriately, because the book has been handed down to us a whole), we discern that the divine holiness embraces more than one experience. It includes, not only the sense of transcendence and the sentiment of terror, but also the renewal of strength and the resurgence of hope.
Finally, all three parts of the Book of Isaiah are concerned with the same figure of holiness, because the Messiah, the Servant of the Lord, and the Triumphant Hero are all the same Person. He is the Messiah in His conception and birth--the mystery of the Incarnation, about which Isaiah says a great deal (7:14; 9:1-2,6-7; 11:1-5). He is the Servant of the Lord in His sufferings and death--the mystery of the Cross, which Isaiah describes in unforgettable detail (50:4-9; 52:13-15; 53:1-12). He is the Triumphant Warrior in His Victory over sin and death--the mystery of His Resurrection and Exaltation, the theme on which Isaiah ends (56:6-8; 59:15-20; 60:1-22; 61:1-3; 62:1-5; 63:1-6).
More clearly than any of the other prophets, Isaiah perceived the revelation of the divine holiness in all of these mysteries of Christ our Lord, "when he saw His glory and spoke of Him" (John 12:41).
November 12, 2006
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
In the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches of the West, the several weeks prior to Christmas are known as Advent, a name from a Latin word meaning "coming." It happens that the beginning of Advent always falls on the Sunday closest to November 30, the ancient feast day (in both East and West) of the Apostle Andrew. Among Christians in the West, this preparatory season, which tends to be slightly less rigorous than Lent and often involves no special fasting at all, always begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Thus, from year to year it will vary in length between 3 and 4 weeks, but always with four Sundays.
The observance of the season of Advent is fairly late. One finds no sermons for Advent, for instance, among the liturgical homilies of St. Leo the Great in the mid-fifth century. About that time, however, the season was already was already emerging in Spain and Gaul. A thousand years later, the time of the Reformation, Advent was preserved among the liturgical customs of the Anglicans and Lutherans; in more recent years, other Protestant groups have informally begun to restore it, pretty much as it had originally started--one congregation at a time.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the corresponding penitential season of preparation for Christmas always begins on November 15, the day after the Feast of the Apostle Philip. For this reason it is popularly known as St. Philip's Fast. A simple count of the days between November 15 and December 25 shows that this special period lasts exactly 40 days, the same as Lent.
More recently Christians of the Orthodox Church have begun to call this season by its Latin name, "Advent." One now finds the term standard in publications of the Antiochian Archdiocese, for instance. The adoption of the word "Advent" by Eastern Orthodox Christians is inspired by the same reason that prompted the adoption of other Latin theological terms, such "Sacraments," "Incarnation," and "Trinity." Very simply, these are the recognizable theological terms that have passed into Western languages. They also happen to be theologically accurate! If the Christian West can adopt Greek terms like "Christology," it seems only fair for the Christian East to adopt Latin terms like "Incarnation."
(On the other hand, one finds some Orthodox Christians, especially among recent, hyperactive converts from Western churches, who resist the adoption of the word "Advent," preferring to speak of "Winter Lent" or some such anomaly. One is hard pressed to explain this eccentric, lamentable preference for Anglo-Saxon over Latin on a point of theology.)
Several other features of Advent deserve some comment:
First, in the West the First Sunday of Advent is treated as the beginning of the liturgical year. (In the East, the liturgical year does not begin with Advent but on September 1, which bears the traditional title, "Crown of the Year." Its historical relationship to the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashana is obvious.)
Second, during the twentieth century there arose the lovely custom of the Advent wreath, both in church buildings and in homes. This wreath lies horizontal and is adorned with four candles. The latter, symbolic of the four millennia covered in Old Testament history, are lit, one at a time, on each Saturday evening preceding the four Sundays of Advent, by way of marking the stages in the season until Christmas. This modern practice has already started in some Orthodox Christian homes, where the longer season requires six candles on the Advent wreath.
Third, because of its emphasis on repentance, Advent is a season of great seriousness, not a time proper for festivity, much less of partying and secular concerns. Advent is not part of the Christmas holidays, and Christians of earlier times would be shocked at the current habit of treating this as a period of jolly good times and "Christmas cheer," complete with office parties, the trimming of Christmas trees and other domestic adornments, the exchange of gifts, caroling, and even the singing of Christmas music in church.
All of these festive things are part of the celebration of Christmas itself, which lasts the 12 days from December 25 to January 6.
The seasons of the liturgical year involve more than liturgical services. The liturgical seasons is supposed to govern the lives of those who observe them. For this reason, anticipating these properly Christmas activities during Advent considerably lessens the chance of our being properly prepared, by repentance, for the grace of that greater season; it also heightens the likelihood that we will fall prey to the worldly spirit that the commercial world would encourage during this time.
November 19, 2006
First Sunday of Advent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Among the themes that unify the Book of Isaiah, one of the more notable is that of Jerusalem, or the roughly synonymous "Zion," the city of God. The names "Jerusalem" and "Zion" appear ninety-seven times in Isaiah. From the very first verse of that book, this prophecies have to do with "Judah and Jerusalem' (1:1; 2:1; 3:1,8, etc.). Arguably more than any of the other prophets, Isaiah was the prophet of Jerusalem.
We may have suspected this would be the case, because it was in Jerusalem that Isaiah received his prophetic vocation (6:1). Indeed, he is the only biblical prophet who makes that claim.
Jerusalem had been a religious center long before David's forces captured it near the beginning of the tenth century before Christ (2 Samuel 5:6-8). In the Bible's first mention of that city, we learn that its king, Melchizedek, was also a priest (Genesis 14:18). Indeed, Josephus claims that Melchizedek was the founder of the city (The Jewish War 6.438). When David, some eight centuries later, made Jerusalem his capital (2 Samuel 5:9), the traditional imagery associated with that ancient priest/king Melchizedek was absorbed into the official imagery of its new king, David. With respect to Israel, David was the successor of Saul. With respect to Jerusalem, however, David was the successor to Melchizedek, whom we find identified as both king and priest in a psalm related to the Davidic throne (Psalms 110 [109]; cf. Matthew 22:43-45). Isaiah himself was the major prophetic heir to the royal and sacral imagery of ancient Jerusalem.
The theme of Jerusalem is treated differently in each of Isaiah's three parts: the prophecies of the Messiah (chapters 1-39), the prophecies of the Servant of the Lord (chapters 40-55), and the prophecies of the Triumphant Warrior (chapters 56-66).
Much of the context of the first part of Isaiah is the reign of Ahaz (735-716), the grandson of Uzziah. It was a period of massive, officially sanctioned apostasy, so Isaiah's message to Jerusalem was one of judgment. In fact, the book begins with indictment: "Alas, sinful nation,/ A people laden with iniquity,/ A brood of evildoers,/ Children who are corrupters!/ They have forsaken the Lord,/ They have provoked to anger/ The Holy One of Israel,/ They have turned away backward./ Why should you be stricken again?/ You will revolt more and more" (1:4-5). This theme of impending divine judgment on Jerusalem continues through much of this first part of the book (1:8,16; 4:3-4; 10:12,24-24,32; 22:1-14).
Also in this first part of Isaiah, however, but especially during the reign of Ahaz's son and successor, Hezekiah, the prophet speaks of the city's preservation (26:1; 31:4-9; 35:1-10; 37:21-25,33-35; 38:6). The context of these oracles is formed by the various invasions of the Assyrians into Judah, none of which succeeded in conquering Jerusalem.
In the second part of the Book of Isaiah, the prophecies of the Servant of the Lord, the historical context is the Babylonian Captivity. The oracles in this part of Isaiah are concerned with Jerusalem's restoration: "Speak comfort to Jerusalem,/ and cry out to her,/ That her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned;/ For she has received from the Lord's hand/ Double for all her sins" (40:2). And somewhat later in the same chapter, "O Zion,/ You who bring good tidings,/ Get up into the high mountain;/ O Jerusalem,/ You who bring good tidings,/ Lift up your voice with strength,/ Lift it up, be not afraid;/ Say to the cities of Judah, 'Behold your God!'" (40:9; cf. 52:1-2,7-8).
This theme of restoration continues in the third part of Isaiah, the prophecies of the Triumphant Warrior: "'The Redeemer will come to Zion,/ And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,'/ Says the Lord" (59:20; cf. 62:11-12).
What is especially striking about Isaiah's oracles on Jerusalem is the repetition of images and ideas about the holy city in all parts of the book. For example, in both 35:10 and 51:11 we find, "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,/ And come to Zion with singing,/ With everlasting joy on their heads./ They shall obtain joy and gladness,/ And sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Again, in 65:25 we read about Jerusalem, "'The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,/ The lion shall eat straw like the ox,/ And dust shall be the serpent's food./ They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,'/ Says the Lord." These images of the holy city had all appeared in the first part of Isaiah (11:6-9).
What is perhaps most ironical about Isaiah's oracles on Jerusalem--one the most "fought over" places on the face of the earth--is the prophet's vision of that city as a symbol of universal and everlasting peace. Isaiah’s final word on Jerusalem is well expressed in an ancient Christian hymn that begins, Urbs Ierusalem beata, dicta pacis visio--"Blessed city Jerusalem, called the vision of peace.
November 26, 2006
Second Sunday of Advent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which many Christians have seen as a parable of man's Fall and Redemption. Such an interpretation is usually elaborated in three steps.
First, there is the story of the Fall, concerning which we are told, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead." This man started in Jerusalem, we observe. He began his history in the garden place of God's presence. But he did not stay there. He made a deliberate decision to go down on a journey. No one told him to go. He made the decision on his own, as an assertion of his independence. "Man in honor, did not abide," says the Psalmist; "He became like the beasts that perish" (Psalms 49:12).
These robbers did not kill the fallen man completely. They left him, says the Sacred Text, half dead. Even fallen, he did not suffer total depravity. That is to say, there was still some chance for him, though he had no way of saving himself from his terrible predicament. By this man's disobedience, in fact, sin entered the world, and by sin death. Indeed, death reigned already in his mortal flesh. How shall we describe this poor man's plight except that he was "alien from the commonwealth of Israel and a stranger from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world"? (Ephesians 2:12) He had been left half dead, Holy Scripture says, and there was no help for him in this world.
Along came a priest and then a Levite, men representing the Mosaic Law, but they had to pass by the fallen wayfarer, because by the works of the Law is no man justified. The priest and the Levite were hastening to the Temple, in order to offer repeatedly the same sacrifices that could never take away sins. Indeed, matters were made even worse, because "in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins" (Hebrews 10:3-4
Second, a Samaritan, the Bible tells us, "as he journeyed, came to where the man was, and when he saw him, he had compassion." In the fullness of time, that is to say, God sent His Son to be a good neighbor to him who fell among the thieves. This Son, being in the form of God, did not think equality with God a thing to be seized, but He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. Indeed, this Son became an utter outcast--in short, a Samaritan, a person without respect or social standing. Although He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty we might become rich.
What was the first thing this Samaritan did for the man that fell among the thieves? He saw him, says the Bible. He looked upon the man in his misery. When Nathaniel was still under the fig tree, our Samaritan saw him. A certain paralytic lay beside the pool of Bethesda with an infirmity thirty-eight years, and our Samaritan saw him lying there. Showing Himself to be a good neighbor, this Samaritan, passing by, saw the man who was blind from birth. Blessed is he that falls under the gaze of our Samaritan. Such a one may say, "Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also have been known."
What did the Samaritan do for the man that fell among thieves? He washed him in the waters of Baptism, cleansing his wounds, and into those wounds he poured His grace in the form of anointing oil, the holy Chrism, and the Eucharistic wine to prevent infection. He gave the fallen man those Sacraments by which he was initiated into a renewed life in the Holy Spirit.
Our Samaritan did not leave beside the road this half-dead victim of the fall among thieves. On the contrary, "He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him." And then he went away. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. This Samaritan is also the great high priest that entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. But even as He went away, He said to the inn keeper, "Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you."
And this promise brings us to the third point. Our Samaritan says to the innkeeper, "when I come again." He does not say, if I come again, but when I come again. There is no "if" about the return of this Samaritan. This same Samaritan, which is taken up from us into heaven, shall so come in like manner as we have seen him go into heaven. We solemnly confess, then, that He will come again in glory to judge the living the dead, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, apart from sin unto salvation.
All of history is given significance by the two visits of the Samaritan. Only those who abide in the inn, waiting the return of the Samaritan, really know the meaning of history. The inn is the house of history, the Church where innkeeper cares for the Samaritan's friends.
This parable does not describe that return of the Samaritan. It says simply "when I return." The parable leaves that return in the future. The story ends in the inn itself. It goes no further. The parable terminates in the place where the Samaritan would have his friends stay--at the inn. It is imperative for their souls' health that they remain within this inn, to which our Samaritan has sworn to return. In this inn, which has received the solemn promise of the Samaritan, His friends pass all their days, as in eagerness they await His sworn return. This hope they have as "an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which enters into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."
October 29, 2006
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Not so terribly long ago the normal college survey course in the History of Philosophy began with the Pre-Socratics, went on to the classical period of Plato and Aristotle, maybe noticed the Stoics and the Neo-Platonists, moved into early Christian philosophy (often enough reduced to St. Augustine), proceeded to the medieval Schoolmen, and came finally to the modern period. This last period, beginning roughly with Bacon and Hobbes, I suppose, took up about half of the textbook.
When I have occasion to speak to college students nowadays, however, I learn that the contemporary survey course on the History of Philosophy does not include anybody between Plotinus (A.D. 3rd century) and Descartes (first half of the 17th century). That is to say, more than a millennium of Western thought is simply eliminated. I live within walking distance of a university where this is the case.
Obvious this new arrangement is designed to preserve the discipline of philosophy from contamination by "revealed religion," specifically the Bible. Whatever merit is ascribed to that alleged preservation, nonetheless, it seems to me that the historical study of philosophy thereby suffers a disadvantage in (at least) two respects, both having to do with history.
First, such an approach to the History of Philosophy fails by the most elementary criterion of history. No historical study of any subject can simply skip a thousand years at will. Imagine a History of Weapons that leaped over everything from the slingshot to intercontinental ballistic missiles. Suppose the writer of such a study argued, in defense of this method, that he didn’t want his study of weapons to be "contaminated" by considerations of the sword or the introduction of saltpeter. Sound likely?
Neither is it feasible for some person's biographer to decide he will skip ages 20 to 45 of that person's life. Suppose Gerald Clarke, for instance, in his biography of Truman Capote, had written about Capote's childhood up to about age 19 and then skipped the rest of his life up to the final ten years. We would scarcely know that Capote is mainly remembered as a writer. Would anyone agree that this was a useful biography? The idea is just as silly in the history of philosophy as it is in the life of Capote.
History, after all, has to do with continuity, so a "History of Philosophy" is not really a history if it is not continuous. You can’t skip the middle thousand years of a 2500 years of history.
The second objection also pertains to history, and it is this. During the "skipped" period in question, the era of Christian philosophy, it is arguable that philosophy itself was more directly tied to the history of common culture than at any other period.
After all, the average man on the street in classical Athens did not think along lines in the least like Plato (to which fact Plato sometimes made grumbling reference). Again, precious few people in the 17th century thought along lines like those of Descartes or Spinoza (for which circumstance may a merciful God be praised). During both its very early and very late periods, that is to say, philosophy was largely the preoccupation of the elites, not of the common people of history.
This was not true of the period of Christian philosophy. For a millennium and a half every Christian in the world knew the basics of Christian philosophy. If we ask what these basics were--which were the most characteristic and most significant ideas that the Christian Church added to the history of philosophy—the first two answers would have to be (if my shorthand is permitted) "Being" and "beings."
First, Being. According to Christian philosophy, God is the eternal, personal, and necessary Being (He who, if He does exist, must exist). The God "whose being is to be" never entered the mind of classical philosophy. Neither Plato nor Aristotle identified God in these terms. Christian philosophy, however, "contaminated" by the Bible, derived this concept from Exodus 3:14--ego eimi Ho On--"I am He Who Is." The simplest Christian, the Christian least given to philosophical speculation, knew this. No elite education was required. This concept formed the basis of a whole new culture that utterly transformed the history of all who received the Christian Gospel.
Second, beings. According to Christian philosophy, God created from nothingness all other things that are. No thing, outside of God, has its existence except by God's creating act. Classical pagan philosophy never dreamed of such a thing. Once again, however, Christian philosophy, still hopelessly "corrupted" by Holy Writ, knew this from the opening of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." No advanced study was necessary to grasp this idea. The least educated Christian knew it.
As soon as folks heard these two ideas for the first time, they suddenly thought to themselves, "Well, obviously. Now that you say it, Moses, it's as clear as day. The ideas are perfectly coherent and compelling. Darn, I wonder why we never thought of it before" (I paraphrase St. Augustine, Confessions 11.3.5). These ideas, perfectly self-evident on being enunciated, were the foundation stones of Christian philosophy.
In the early 2nd century Hermas of Rome laid it out succinctly: "Before all else believe that there exists only one God, who created and finished all things, and brought all things into being out of nothing" (The Shepherd, Mandata 1.1).
These, evidently, are the sorts of ideas the new college curriculum wants to leave out. Nonetheless, because the ideas proper to this philosophy actually gave shape to history, they would seem properly studied in a History of Philosophy.
April 16, 2006
Palm Sunday
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Among the several images used in Holy Scripture to describe the redemptive work of our Lord there are several in which the language itself is borrowed from the world of commerce. Indeed, the very word "redeem" means "to buy back" or "to pay off." Similarly, sin is spoken of in Holy Scripture as a debt, and Jesus is said to have paid a "price." Since these are mercantile terms, we should probably not wonder that some readers of Holy Scripture have been disposed to think of salvation as some sort of business arrangement, as though Jesus on the Cross handed over a price to a creditor in order to free us from sin and death. Various theories of redemption have been elaborated on such a model.
Theories of this sort fail, however, because they by-pass the traditional metaphorical value with which such terms were already freighted in biblical language.
Take the noun "redemption" and the verb "redeem," for instance. Because the root meaning of "redeem," means "to buy back" and was often applied to the paying of ransom for a slave, "to redeem" rather early came to mean any kind of liberation of a slave. Used in such a sense, there was not necessarily a real price paid to the enslaver.
Redemption often has this extended sense in Holy Scripture, especially when used in a religious context. For example, when God "redeemed" His people out of Egypt, He did not pay Pharaoh some designated sum of money. There was no trade. There was no commercial transaction at all. God simply raided Egypt and took what was His. As we see repeatedly in Isaiah, the Psalms, and elsewhere, this is the normal meaning of "redeem" in the Bible whenever God is the subject. This is also the meaning in the New Testament. When Jesus "redeemed" us from the slavery of sin and power of death, He did not make a payment to the Devil; He raided hell and took what was His.
Similar comments are appropriate when Holy Scripture speaks of the blood of Jesus as the "price" for our sins. The term is a metaphor with not the slightest commercial connotation. Certainly the shedding of Jesus’ blood was the price for our sins, but it is quite inappropriate to inquire to whom the price was paid. When used in a metaphorical sense, the word "price" has no a mercantile sense.
We are already familiar with such a meaning of the word. When a soldier dies defending his country, his death is the "price" of his country’s victory. When an athlete disciplines himself for coming competition, that exercise is the "price" he pays. We all recognize that the word "price" is used in such cases in figurative way that does indicate a commercial transaction. The price is simply paid; we would not think to ask, "to whom was the price paid?" We recognize that the question is inappropriate, and there is never a correct answer to a wrong question.
The blood of Jesus is the greatest price ever paid, but there is no correct answer to the question, "to whom was that price paid?" There is no correct answer, for the simple reason that it is not a correct question. Such a question ignores the properly metaphorical sense of the term. This is the reason that such a question is not posed nor addressed in Holy Scripture.
Much the same must be said about the "debt" of our sins, as when the Apostle Paul writes that Christ wiped out our "debt" (chreigraphon, perhaps best translated as an "IOU") in Colossians 2:14. Such indebtedness is a metaphor for the sinner’s relationship to God, not some actual quantitative liability. Jesus uses the same image in His parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23-35), where we all recognize it in a metaphorical sense.
To describe these terms as theological metaphors does not weaken their meaning nor dilute their content. The "debt" of our sins is not less crushing for being a figure of speech. The "price" paid in Jesus’ blood was not less painful for being expressed in a rhetorical trope, nor was our "redemption" less costly. These words are all metaphors to describe what lies beyond description, beyond comprehension, and beyond all theory. No words suffice to describe what God does, but we may be certain that His work conforms to no human theory on the matter.
There are no "theories of atonement" in Holy Scripture, though there are several ways to describe the atonement. I am not confident that we really need a "theory of atonement," but if we must have one, it should at least respect the correct sense of the words with which the Bible describes the atonement.
April 2, 2006
Fourth Sunday of Lent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
When the Apostle Paul speaks of our redemption in Christ, he especially describes it in terms of its effects, the all-encompassing effect being man's reconciliation with God, his restoration to friendship with God.
Such a reconciliation is unintelligible, of course, except on the premise that man, apart from Christ, lived in a state of alienation from--and rebellion against—God, by reason of sin.
Paul asserts repeatedly that because of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, this ancient and inherited alienation has been removed, and mankind now has access to his Creator. When Paul speaks of such reconciliation, he normally speaks of it in with respect to God the Father: "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation" (Romans 5:10-11).
A traditional English word to express this reconciliation with God is the lovely noun "atonement," which literally refers to the act of "setting at one," establishing unity, "one-ment" (yes, it was once a real English word), where there had been estrangement before. Etymologically, then, "to atone" means to reconcile. This is the correct biblical sense of atonement: reunion with God.
Paul ascribes this atonement to the redemptive work of God's Son, who reconciled us to God by removing the alienation of sin. He alludes to this theme repeatedly. He tells the rebellious Corinthians, for instance: "Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). This latter expression "the word of reconciliation" (ton logon tes katallages) refers to the Gospel itself, the message and transmission of what God's Son has accomplished on our behalf and for our benefit.
Paul writes later of this reconciliation as a fact wrought in Christ's crucified body, "And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death" (Colossians 1:21-22).
On the other hand, although this reconciliation with God is real and ontological as it pertains to humanity in general, it is not automatic or self-sufficient with respect to each human being. It must be received in faith. For such reconciliation with God to be realized in a man's life, that man must turn and actively assent to the word of reconciliation from his own side. The "word of reconciliation," then, which is the Gospel, contains an explicit imperative. Paul sharply enunciates this imperative, "we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Reconciliation with God, moreover, necessarily implies reconciliation with all others who are reconciled to God. The ancient divisions of humanity are thus "atoned" in the blood of God's Son. Paul writes of this fact particularly with respect to that most elementary social alienation in Holy Scripture, the division between Jew and Gentile. Of the removal of this estrangement, Paul writes, "For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:14-17).
Besides theological and social, the atonement is likewise cosmic, a fact we may already have suspected from Paul's assertion, quoted above, that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." Paul elaborates on this theme in a later epistle: "For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things [ta panta] to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross" (Colossians 1:19-20). In the blood of Jesus, therefore, all of creation is reconciled to the Father.
To explain how the blood of Jesus "atoned" God and the whole of creation, we will need to explore three other biblical concepts that Paul employs to speak of the mystery of the Cross: expiation, liberation, and justification.
April 23, 2006
The Resurrection of our Lord
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
The Gospels describe how our Lord's enemies, during the last week of His earthly life, came to Him, day by day (Mark 11:12,20,27; 14:1,12; 15:1), in order to test and challenge Him, group by group, in hopes of discovering some viable charge on which they could put Him to death. Matthew says that Jesus was approached in this way by the chief priests (21:15,23,45), the scribes (21:15), the elders (21:23), the Pharisees (21:45; 22:15,35,41), the Herodians (22:15), and the Sadducees (22:23). At the end of these menacing encounters, "no one dared to ask Him any more questions" (22:46 NIV).
The question put to Jesus by the Sadducees, a fanciful supposition that challenged the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, is particularly curious, in the sense that it is the most "theoretical" question in the series. Placed within the long succession of hostile engagements, it shares in the drama of the context as a whole, but if we look at it separately, it lacks the sense of immediacy of the other stories in the sequence. For example, on the part of the Sadducees the story mentions no explicit indications of personal animosity and malicious intent. In this respect this account may be contrasted with other parts of the sequence (for instance, Matthew 21:23,45; 22:15,35). Except for Matthew's comment--and his alone--that the meeting with the Sadducees happened "on that day" (en ekeine te hemera--22:23), this story could fit into almost any period of our Lord's public life.
Three special points of interest may be noted about Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees.
First, their question introduces the theme of the resurrection from the dead, a doctrine that they denied. When the Sadducees raise this question on the very threshold of the Lord's Passion, the incident serves the literary and theological purpose of the evangelists themselves, because all the Gospels culminate in the Lord's resurrection from the dead.
Second, in Matthew's narrative this story of the Sadducees is the first of three that are concerned with the interpretation of specific texts of the Hebrew Scriptures. It deals with Exodus 3:6,15, the account of the burning bush (Matthew 22:32). The second instance is about the true meaning of the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36-39; Deuteronomy 6:5; 10:12; 30:6; Leviticus 19:18), and the third deals with the interpretation of a line in the Psalter (Matthew 22:44-45; Psalms 110 [109]:1). The confrontation series thus ends with Jesus as interpreter of the Bible.
The theme of biblical interpretation, which Matthew elaborates here, is far from incidental to his interest. Throughout his Gospel Matthew repeatedly emphasizes, as a dominant motif, the fulfillment of Holy Scripture in Jesus' deeds and the circumstances of His life (1:22-23; 2:5-6,15,17-18,23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 21:4-5; 26:54,56; 27:9-10). Truly, Jesus' fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets pertains to the very spine of Matthew's work. Hence, it is significant that the evangelist finishes his long series of confrontation stories with three accounts of Jesus interpreting Holy Scripture. Jesus interprets Holy Scripture, because He fulfills Holy Scripture.
Third, it is most striking that Jesus invokes the revelation at the burning bush in order to argue for the resurrection of the dead. When God spoke to Moses on that occasion, says our Lord, He called Himself "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Since, however, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive, not dead.
With respect to this argument Matthew remarks that "when the multitudes heard it, they were astonished at His teaching." And just why, I am prompted to ask, were they astonished?
Surely the reasoning itself did not astonish them. Those multitudes, being the ardent students of logic they doubtless were, recognized right away the validity of Jesus' reasoning. In form, mood, and figure, they perceived that it was a straightforward Datisi syllogism: First, God is the God only of the living; Second, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; ergo, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are living. Surely no one in that crowd of Palestinians Jews, sound students of logic every man jack of them, would have quarreled with Jesus' argument.
If there was nothing wrong with Jesus' logic, then, why were the people "astonished at His teaching"? Let me suggest that they were perhaps astonished for the same reason that biblical scholars have been astonished ever since. Jesus was demonstrating the doctrine of the resurrection in a biblical passage where no one had ever before, or since, thought to look for it--in the story of the burning bush. Indeed, were it not for the word of Jesus, would any reader of Exodus, at any time before or since, have thought of finding the doctrine of the resurrection in the story of the burning bush? Evidently Jesus perceived a great deal more in the burning bush than Moses did, and this is the point of the story.
What Matthew calls Jesus' "teaching" (didache) at this point is obviously more than an exercise in logic. It is even more than an exercise in biblical interpretation. In fact, if anyone but Jesus had sought to do what Jesus does in this case, we would probably find the exercise somewhat disconcerting and a bit of a stretch.
What Jesus does in this story of the burning bush is not what we usually call exegesis. Our Lord reads the passage from the inside, as it were. He identifies the Speaker and draws an important inference from that identification. He knows the intention and power (dynamis-Matthew 22:29) of the One who speaks. When Jesus argues, then, for His interpretation of the thesis enunciated from the burning bush, the assent of our minds has as much to do with our trust in Jesus as with our faith in logic.
Jesus appeals to logic, because He is the Logos, both the true Meaning of the Sacred Text and the very Foundation of the gift of reason. Our minds, in following His words, are not asked to assent to something unreasonable, but as the present instance demonstrates, our reliance on Jesus in faith permits us to explore both logic and the Bible in a way we would never have attempted on our own.
All of this, says Jesus, was revealed in the burning bush. With regard to His understanding of that event, I think there are two further points to be mentioned.
First, Jesus does not read the Scriptures as other people do. He reads them from within, because He is their fulfillment. His understanding of the Bible comes from His own identification with its deepest meaning. He is the allegory (Galatians 4:24), the type (1 Corinthians 10:6) concealed below the surface of the Sacred Text. In the story of the burning bush Jesus recognizes His own voice, for it was He that spoke to Moses, and He knows what He meant.
Second, Jesus' understanding of the burning bush story points to the mystery of the Exodus itself, of which the account of the burning bush is the introduction. Israel's deliverance from Egypt was the foreshadowing and prophecy of the definitive liberation of God's people from servitude to death. The God who performed the first will also accomplish the second--and that very soon--precisely because He is "the God of the living."
April 30, 2006
St. Thomas Sunday
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
The notion of Atonement, in the mind of St. Paul, is impossible to separate from that of freedom, "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). It is the liberty of slaves that have been "redeemed," set free, "bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:22).
In the sociology of the Old Testament the one who purchased the release of a slave or captive, normally a relative or friend, was called the go'el, and Holy Scripture often ascribes this title to God in the context of the Exodus (Exodus 6:6-7; Deuteronomy 7:6-8; Psalms 111 [110]:9; Isaiah 43:1), or the return from Babylon (Isaiah 51:11; 52:3-9), or in a more general sense (Psalms 18 [17]:15; 77 [76]:35; Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 44:6; 47:4).
When applied to God, of course, this term for "redeemer" or "liberator" does not imply the actual paying of a ransom, for God owes no one anything (Isaiah 52:3).
Although the Christian Tradition, from very early times, has been accustomed to referring to the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer (lytrotes--Justin Martyr, Dialogue 30.3; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catachesis 2.12; Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Addresses 15; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 10.2), it is a curious fact that this word is never used in the New Testament in reference to Jesus. He is called, rather, our "Redemption"- "you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God-and righteousness and sanctification and redemption [apolytrosis]" (1 Corinthians 1:30). Paul speaks likewise of "the redemption which is in Christ Jesus"(Romans 3:24).
From what, then, are we set free by "the redemption which is in Christ Jesus"? We are liberated, says the Apostle Paul, from our sins (Romans 6:6-11; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14; Titus 2:14), from the ineffectiveness of the Mosaic Law (Romans 7:3-6; Galatians 2:4; 4:22-31; 5:1), from our own weakness (Romans 7:13-23), and, most of all, from death (Romans 8:2). In a more general sense the whole existence of believers is permeated with the sense and experience of liberation (1 Corinthians 9:1,19; 10:29; 2 Corinthians 3:17).
Few truths of Holy Scripture, however, have been so misunderstood as Christian freedom. Even in New Testament times there were occasionally those who took it to mean liberation from all restraint and principle, and this heresy has shown its head from time to time throughout Christian history. In modern times some Christians have confused it with political history, mixing Christian freedom with Marxist liberation theories. Great spiritual harm has come from such confusions.
If we think of Christian liberation in its biblical background and framework, we are not surprised that in some sense the one who redeems the slave owns the slave. Hence, Holy Scripture speaks of God's deliverance in terms of acquisition and possession, even of adoption (Exodus 15:16; 19:5; Isaiah 43:21; Psalms 74 [73]:2; 135 [134]:4; Revelation 5:9-10). It is for this reason that the Apostle Paul, when he writes of our redemption in Christ (Galatians 3:13; 4:5), this concept is inseparable from the thesis that those redeemed in Christ belong to Christ (Romans 6:16-22; 14:7-9). Theirs is a "redemption of acquisition" (Ephesians 1:14), whereby "He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again" (2 Corinthians 5:15). Christian liberty is never freedom from Christ!
Finally, this freedom in Christ, because it is being worked out in history, is as yet incomplete. It is not only a fact of human experience; it is also a promise of cosmic hope. Indeed, the Apostle Paul describes the cosmos itself as awaiting its final manifestation: "For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. . . . For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." And for what is all of creation waiting so eagerly? Nothing less than its own participation in man's liberation from death: "the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:19-22).
In the Epistle to the Romans, the vocabulary of salvation most often refers to the future, when all of creation will be transfigured by the resurrection of the glorified bodies of those who belong to Christ. Universal liberation from death is the final victory.
April 9, 2006
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Among the biblical concepts supporting St. Paul's theology of atonement, one of the most important, surely, is that of expiation. What does the Apostle mean when he writes, "God set forth [Jesus Christ] as the expiatory in His blood" (Romans 3:25)? Although this is the only time St. Paul uses the noun hilasterion, I believe that the full context of his epistles, along with the Old Testament substratum on which they depend, provides the correct and adequate meaning of that term.
If I seem to belabor an obvious point--that we should go to the Bible for enlightenment on the subject of expiation-- let me say that I do so from a sense that some readers of Holy Scripture in recent centuries either have not done so, or have done so inconsistently. They have borrowed misleading ideas from elsewhere.
In classical and Hellenistic Greek, the verb "to propitiate" (hilaskomai), when used with a personal object, normally signified the placating of some irate god or hero. It is a curious fact that since the rediscovery of ancient Greek literature in the West, beginning from the Renaissance, there has grown a strong tendency to impose this pagan meaning of "expiation" on the teaching of the Bible.
Understood in this way, Paul is presumed to teach that Jesus, in His self-sacrifice on the Cross, placated God's wrath against sinful humanity. That is to say, the purpose of the shedding of Christ's blood was to propitiate, to assuage an angry Father.
Let me say that this interpretation of the Apostle Paul is very erroneous and should be rejected for three reasons.
First, this picture is difficult to reconcile with Paul's conviction that God Himself is the One who made the sacrifice. How easily we forget that the Cross did cost God something. He is the One that gave up His only-begotten Son out of love for us. It was Jesus' Father "who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all" (Romans 8:32). Sacrificial victims are expensive, and in this sacrifice the Father Himself bore the price. He gave up, unto death, that which was dearest and most precious to Him. In the death of Jesus, everything about God is love, more love, infinite love. There is not the faintest trace of divine anger in the death of Christ.
Second, in those places where Holy Scripture does speak of propitiating the anger of God, this propitiation is never linked to blood sacrifice. When biblical men are said to soften the divine wrath, it is done with prayer, as in the case of Moses on Mount Sinai, or by the offering of incense, which symbolizes prayer. Because blood sacrifice and the wrath of God are two things the Bible never joins together, I submit that authentic Christian theology should also endeavor to keep them apart.
Moreover, when the Apostle Paul does write of God's anger, it is never in terms of appeasement but of deliverance. At the final judgment, when that divine anger, far from being placated, will consume the realm and servants of sin, Christ will deliver us from it, recognizing us as His faithful servants (1 Thessalonians 1:10; Romans 5:9). There will be not the slightest hint of appeasement at that point.
Third, the word hilasterion, which I have translated as the substantive "expiatory," seems to have in Paul's mind a more technical significance. In Hebrews 9:5, the only other place where the word appears in the New Testament, hilasterion designates the top, the cover, of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Almighty is said to throne between and above the Cherubim. In this context, the term is often translated as "mercy seat," and it seems reasonable to think that this is the image that Paul too has in mind.
On Yom Kippur, the annual Atonement Day, the high priest sprinkled sacrificial blood on that hilasterion, "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions of all their sins" (Leviticus 16:16). Therefore, by saying that God "set forth" (proetheto) Jesus as the expiatory, or "instrument of expiation," for our sins, Paul asserts that the shedding of Jesus' blood on the Cross fulfilled the prophetic meaning and promise of that ancient liturgical institution of Israel, reconciling mankind by the removal of the uncleanness, "their transgressions of all their sins." The Cross was the supreme altar, and Good Friday was preeminently the Day of the Atonement. The removal of sins was not accomplished by a juridical act, but a liturgical act performed in great love: "Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma" (Ephesians 5:2). Loving both the Father and ourselves, Jesus brought the Father and ourselves together by what He accomplished in His own body, reconciling us through the blood of His Cross.
In the Bible, "the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Leviticus 17:11). The victim slain in sacrifice was not the vicarious recipient of a punishment, but the symbol of the loving dedication of the life of the person making the sacrifice. This sacrificial dedication of life is the means by which the sinner is made "at one" with God. Such is the biblical meaning of expiation and the proper context in which to interpret Paul's teaching on the sacrifice of Christ.
August 13, 2006
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica knew his history. In fact, his own family made a great deal of the history that he knew. Intermarried with other prominent households, such as the Paullus and Gracchus families, the Scipiones were one of the most important dynasties in Roman history, giving the Republic some of its most illustrious generals and political leaders. For example, Nasica’s first cousin, Publius Scipio Africanus, was the conquering hero of the Second Punic War, an extended conflict in which a number of his illustrious relatives had perished. Nasica himself, born in 227, became a consul of the Republic in 191 and figured prominently in Roman history, especially in Spain and Gaul, for the next twenty years.
Rome had defeated Carthage in the First Punic War just fourteen years before Nasica’s birth, and during much of his early life those two powers fought the Second Punic War (218 to 201), a long series of campaigns in which the Romans seemed to lose most of the battles and came very close to losing the war. (Fortunately for them, Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, failed to bring siege engines adequate to storm the walls of Rome.)
The ensuing peace was always tenuous, and some years later Rome, looking for another excuse to attack its rival in Africa, started the Third Punic War (149-146). At the end of this conflict the Romans, following the counsel of Marcus Porcius Cato (Carthago delenda est), razed Carthage to the ground and forbade anyone to live there. A popular consensus said that three wars with one enemy were quite enough.
According to St. Augustine, however, Scipio Nasica, with his superior knowledge of history, would never have agreed with that decision. Except for the constant impetus provided by its competition with Carthage, Nasica believed, Rome would never have become so strong, and he feared that Rome would decline if that competition were definitively removed.
Nasica, Augustine explained, "feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. Nor was he mistaken; the outcome proved how wisely he had spoken, for when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman Republic was delivered from its great source of anxiety, many disastrous evils came about from the new conditions of prosperity" (The City of God 1.30).
The Bishop of Hippo proceeded to list Rome’s ensuing many moral evils, which eventually led to Alaric’s sacking of the city in A.D. 410, the disaster that prompted Augustine’s own reflections on Roman history.
The Rome that Augustine knew was a self-satisfied, self-indulgent place, in which the citizens felt free to pursue whatever they fancied, secure in the assurance that no one could prohibit them. Had the Romans listened to Nasica, Augustine argued, and preserved Carthage, they would never have had reason to fear Alaric.
Since he was making an argument of social morality, Augustine’s point was political, and political leaders of all times—perhaps our own times and our own nation especially—should prudently consider his case. Indeed, Augustine’s description of the decline of Rome (2.10, for instance) bears striking resemblance to American life since the downfall of the Iron Curtain. The comparison is sobering, to say no more.
Augustine’s argument is applicable in many other respects, however, because the effort born of competition is valuable in a host of endeavors. Nowadays this is not a popular thing to say, because competition invariably involves someone’s losing, and there is a current and strong bias against any idea of losing. Life itself, alas, entertains no such bias.
Perhaps Christian asceticism is the area in which Nasica’s counsel and Augustine’s argument are most readily applicable. "You can’t lose" seems almost seems to be the rallying cry of much popular American religion, which strikes me, on the whole, as enormously lazy and self-satisfied. The plain truth is that we can lose. Never here below are we completely beyond the reach of spiritual disaster. At least the Apostle Paul did not think so. Even as he argued that nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God," he also exerted every effort not be "disqualified" (Rom 8:39; 1 Cor 9:27).
August 20, 2006
The Feast of the Prophet Samuel
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
In our regular recitation of the Creed that binds us together, we first declare our faith "in one God, the Father almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible" The Church has always understood this declaration to refer to two aspects of God, God in eternity and God in time. From all eternity He is the Father; in realm of time He is the Creator. It is this second aspect that I want to consider now. What does it mean that God is the Creator of "heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible"? There are three points to be considered on this subject.
We should reflect, first, that this is a revealed truth. Creation refers to a specific act that cannot be reached by the power of reason. Creation, as the Christian faith understands that term, means the passage from non-being to being. I do not know, nor can I know, by the ability of reason, that all things, visible and invisible, have passed from non-being to being.
My reason tells me, of course, that myself and the world around me have a rational source. The intelligent design that my reason beholds in the universe cannot possibly have come from a series of undirected accidents; my mind cries out that it is utterly irrational to imagine otherwise. Only a fool would affirm it. (In fact, the Bible uses the word "fool" when it mentions this possibility.)
Still, the intelligent design that I see in the world does not tell me that all things, visible and invisible, come from nothing. Science and philosophy have never breathed a word of it. Creation is a truth divinely revealed, which is why it is contained in the Creed. It is not the business of the Creed, after all, to affirm things that can be affirmed apart from the Creed.
How, then, do I know that all things have been created from nothing? To borrow a phrase, "this I know for the Bible tells me so." Typical of the Christian conviction on this point, one may cite St. Hilary of Poitiers: "For all things, as the prophet says, were made out of nothing; it was no transformation of existing things, but the creation of non-being into a perfect form" (De Trinitate 4.16).
Who was this "prophet" cited by St. Hilary? In fact, it was a prophetess, because St. Hilary was quoting the mother of the Maccabean martyrs, who said to one of her tortured sons, "I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also" (2 Maccabees 7:28). This text from 2 Maccabees was the standard biblical proof text for the Christian Church in respect to creation from nothingness. We find the thesis in late Judaism, from which it passed into the Christian faith as an essential teaching.
But it is important to reflect that we believe it as revealed by God, and we have no access to that truth except through divine revelation. Creation is an absolutely unique act of the biblical God. Philosophy and science know nothing of it.
Second, what has been created from nothing? We affirm, "heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible." Not just earth, we understand, but heaven too. Not just the material world that we see, but also the invisible world that we cannot see. Not just the chemical substances of things, but also the mathematical theorems and physical laws that give them coherence. Everything that is not God has been created from nothingness, no matter how high, how metaphysical, how spiritual. Apart from God, there is absolutely nothing that was not made from nothing.
No part of creation, then, is an emanation of the divine being. Nothing of God's essence has passed into what He has made. Not only is the human brain created from nothing, but also the human intellect that uses that brain; and not only the human intellect but also the rational principles by which that intellect functions. The very laws of logic have been created from nothingness. According to a summary of St. Bonaventure, "the world was produced in being, and not only according to itself as a whole, but also according to its intrinsic principles (sed etiam secundum sua intrinseca principia), which were not produced from other things but from nothing" (On the Sentences 2.1.1.1).
Third, God's creating act is the only thing that separates all things from nothing. No creature is adequately considered, then, if it is considered only in se, in itself. Creatures do not have their being a se, of themselves. They are held in existence only because an immense and continuing act of love holds them in existence. All things that endure, endure because the Creator's hand sustains them in being.
Each of us is held in existence by this same act of unspeakable love. We depend utterly on the sustained activity of the Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being. Even when I disobey God and stray from Him, God holds me in existence. Even when I insult Him and spit in His face, God's creating love preserves me in being. His hands ever fashion me and sustain me.
Under this consideration, who is the wise man? The wise man is the one that knows this truth and lives on the basis of it. He does not pretend that he has an independent existence, which is a mirage and a deception. If the doctrine of creation is true, the wise man is the one who finds that place in his being where God touches him and holds him in existence. The wise man does not pretend that he is anything in se, in himself. His very existence is a created existence, and the Holy Scriptures give him the wisdom to know this.
This, then, is the first declaration contained in our Creed, and it is a declaration of dependence. This is the wisdom handed down in the Holy Scriptures and affirmed in our faith.
August 27, 2006
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
I will not be at All Saints when this Pondering appears in our weekly parish bulletin, so I am preparing it early. I plan to fly in the next few days to Albania, where I will be until August 30, at which time I will come back in order to speak at the Orthodox Missions and Evangelism Conference in Colorado Springs during the first week in September.
As I prepare to leave for Albania, to be with our missionary, Lynette Hoppe, in what seem to be her final days on earth, I am certain that I could write nothing more profitable to the soul than what Lynette wrote just a few days ago. Because she has taken so dramatic a turn for the worse, these words truly form something of a final testament from dear Lynette.
Raised in the mission field as a child, Lynette has literally never been out of the mission field during her whole life, except for the years she spent getting an education to become a missionary. She and her husband Nathan are the first members that our parish, All Saints Church in Chicago, sent to the foreign mission field. They went over in 1997. Nathan and the children will stay there, and it is in Albania that Lynette wishes to be buried.
The third family from our parish, the Luisi Family (our daughter and son-in-law and grandson), will be leaving for Albania on September 7. Please remember them too in the charity of your prayers.
For the rest, let's have Lynette speak here for herself. You will not be disappointed.
(OCMC, by the way, means "The Orthodox Christian Mission Center," the normal controlling agency for foreign missions from the United States.)
August 14th, 2006
We're in the middle of our third girls' camp and things seem to be going smoothly. Today we lost two girls, who said that they were unaccustomed to being in such a closed environment with so much religious activity. Their reason for leaving was a bit difficult to comprehend, but the girls must not have realized that this was a Church camp. Everyone else seems to be in high spirits, including me. This is the first summer that I have attended all three camps, but the time has been very precious. Nathan has had a lot of work to do in Tirana this week, but he has made the effort to be with us almost every night. This has necessitated doing a lot of driving late at night on a terrible road that winds through the mountains. Last night he left Tirana at midnight and ran into dreadful fog and couldn't move faster than 20 mph. The road, with its many sharp turns, has few guardrails, and no lines painted on it. I couldn't sleep until Nathan arrived, but thank God he made it safely.
Nathan's work has involved overseeing an OCMC short-term team from the States. Part of the team is focusing its efforts on the children's home and helping with the orphans there. The other part of the team has organized and is now implementing a seven-day English camp in Tirana. The program, which is being attended by 40-45 children, is going well, and the team has taken to it with a great deal of zeal and energy. We thank God for their helpful and serving spirits.
My craft project of making hemp bracelets and necklaces with beads continues to be a hit with the girls. As the ages of the girls has increased with each camp, their skills have increased as well, and they are able to learn more complex designs as well as complete the projects faster. At the end of this camp, the girls will probably go home with their arms and necks dangling with numerous bracelets and necklaces.
Each summer we realize the importance of these camps in feeding the girls spiritually. They have so little Christian teaching, if any, in their homes, so we want to take advantage of the time to plant and water spiritual seeds in their hearts and minds. Nathan and I will both give talks at this camp as well as have discussions on various relational issues.
The third week of August will see the start of another series of children's camps in Kosovo. Nathan, for the most part will spend his time with me, but he may go up with the group and open the camps, then return after the first few days. If the camps start smoothly then our Albania staff can carry on by themselves without Nathan. These camps are extremely challenging and intense, as shown by the camps early this year, in which the press and government got involved, but our Albanian staff does a very good job of overseeing them. Despite this, it is still important for Nathan to be there if he can. For certain, George Russell will accompany the group to Kosovo, and his help will be much appreciated.
I had a CT scan made of my thorax and abdomen the day camp started. The results were startling. The liver had grown dramatically. We were all surprised because the blood counts from my previous tests three weeks ago had indicated very early stages of cancer activity in my liver. The only reason I went in for a scan last week was because I was beginning to feel swelling in my abdomen, which was accompanied by difficulties in breathing and eating, and I wanted to have these things checked out.
My blood tests yesterday indicated that the liver counts had more than quadrupled, indicating that the liver is failing rapidly. The doctor said it was likely that I had only weeks to live, not months. It was all very sobering.
I'm not sure how one copes with such bad news. I cried some, of course, thinking about leaving my husband and children, but the Lord also gave me a tremendous amount of grace to be joyful in a time of crisis.
As I have reflected back on the past three months-the duration of our stay here and the "incubation" period of my liver cancer-I am amazed that I have felt so well, that I have almost been unaware of anything going on in my liver, so I have felt no anxiety about it. I have been able to prepare for the camps without any interruptions. Camp ends this week and it will probably be the last formal ministry I will do on earth, but I'm so happy about it. I have loved doing these camps, knowing that it truly is important in the lives of these girls. Pray
I have had this overwhelming sense that God is allowing me to stay in the saddle until the end. It appears that I am being allowed to fall off my horse at the last minute and won't have a long, drawn-out illness like my mother had. If this is truly the case, I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be active until the end, but we'll see what God actually has for us.
One thing that is proving to be rather challenging is the question of where to be buried. Nathan is really taking this to heart. We had wanted me to be buried at St. Vlash, the natural choice for us because we are connected with the school there and really love the place. I asked the Archbishop, but he felt that it would not be appropriate. Others have asked and been refused, and if I am granted permission, others will ask in the future and will question why I was allowed and they are not. It is rather complicated. I have resigned myself to this reality, but now, where do we go? The major cemeteries are large, crowded miserable places. Today we will look at the village cemetery just outside the monastery grounds of St. Vlash. This might be close enough, and most certainly the land was a part of the former property of the Church as all of the land surrounding the monastery and school was at one, but it hasn't been returned to the Church, and probably never will be.
You ask, how am I feeling spiritually? and I answer, very well, thank God. This is manifestly the result of God's grace. Both Nathan and I feel ourselves overwhelmed by the amazing grace that God has given to us. We could not be so joyful without his help. I pray that this will continue to the end. Who knows what will happen when I begin to feel poorly, but for now, I am happy and feel a great sense of joyful anticipation at my home-going. God is with us and will continue to be with us until the end.
Nathan spoke with the children a little bit last night about what may be coming in order to prepare them a bit for the end. They were surprisingly peaceful. Tristan said, "If mommy does die, then she'll be with Jesus." Then they asked if I would be here for Christmas. The truth is that because I do not look or act sick, they can't really get their little minds around my going. The truth is that we can't either.
One exciting thing for me is that so many people want to come and see me before the end, including members of my own family, my best friend and her daughter, who is also my goddaughter, and several priests with whom we are very close. Here, also, we have our dear co-workers who are ready to help with the smallest detail. Dennis and Constance Luisi, new missionaries with the OCMC who are from our home parish, are planning to arrive on 8 September, and they will be so attentive to any needs we may have. The Archbishop, too, has offered whatever help we may need. From him, we have asked for a hospital bed for such a time as I may become bed-ridden. We are hoping to find a reclining chair as well, but these are not available in Albania and it may be very hard to find one. I know my mom spent a lot of time sitting in her recliner, so that she would not have to be in bed all day long.
Running through my mind is what do I need to do with my last days. I have this urgent sense that I need to complete some projects-writing letter to leave with the children for the special events in the future-birthdays, graduation, weddings, first babies, and so on. I'm also doing photo memory books for them. Tristan's is almost done, but I have yet to start Katherine's. I have recorded some songs at the request of some of our young people here who like my singing. I'm also writing a book for Nathan of our memories together. Please pray that I will have both the discipline and the wits to complete these projects. I really would feel bad in the end if I didn't complete these.
When I first got news of my pending departure, I was frantic, thinking I needed to do some kind of "ministry," but I soon realized that there was no value in ministry at this point. What I have done until now is what I have done. What I have become, is what I am. To try to have some kind of dramatically different prayer life is simply an attempt to "win his favor" and would actually be rather artificial. I am allowing myself to simply relax in the love of Jesus, to enjoy him in a new way. To think about joining him soon.
I have so much peace in thinking that there is nothing I can do to win over Christ. All I can do is throw myself into his arms and know that it is only through the work of Christ that I can be saved. I feel that I am ready to die a "painless, blameless, and peaceful death" even as we pray every liturgy. I may have a lot of physical pain, but in spirit I feel no pain, other than the pain of leaving those I love.
August 6, 2006
The Transfiguration of our Lord
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
One of the features of Israel's most ancient Wisdom literature is its "exhortation to the child," a rhetorical form recognized by its use of the direct address "my son" (beni--Proverbs 1:8,10,15; 2:1; 3:1,11,21; 4:1,11-and so on).
This exhortation indicates that the transmission of Wisdom is by age. Wisdom in the Bible is "inherited." That is to say, the young, inexperienced person is to benefit from the accumulated insight and perspective of the generations to which he is heir. The earlier generations have already learned, from experience and study, what the neophyte needs to know, and the transmission of this Wisdom pertains to his inheritance.
And what, according to that early tradition, did bygone generations learn that will be of service to those who come afterwards? Well, they learned very practical sorts of things having to do with moral uprightness, vigilance, and the steady application of effort. In these exhortations the young person is repeatedly promised that he can expect blessings and other good things if only he keeps the traditional rules, applies himself industriously, and avoids occasions of sin. The tone is entirely upbeat and positive.
When, however, many centuries later, we come to the last of the Bible's "exhortations to the child," we immediately recognize a very different tone, not so upbeat, not so optimistic in its promises. This last exhortation is found near the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, written during the second century before Christ. It is worth reviewing in detail:
"Child, when you come to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare your soul for temptation. Humble your heart, and endure, . . . and make not haste in the time of attack . . . . Take all that shall be brought upon you, and in your sorrow endure, and in your humiliation keep patience. For gold is tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation" (Sirach 2:1-5).
Ecclesiasticus introduces here two ideas not so obvious in earlier examples of the exhortation to the child. First, Wisdom consists in the service of God (doulevein Kyrio). Second, the attainment of Wisdom is impossible without patience in tribulation. Neither of these themes, which are certainly inseparable, was very pronounced in the earlier Wisdom perspective represented in the Book of Proverbs.
I would like to suggest that, in bringing these two themes (the service of God and patience in trial) into Israel's "mainline" Wisdom transmission, Sirach is the heir of the Book of Job, that later and thornier reflection on Wisdom.
The Book of Job, we may recall, mounted what was virtually a challenge to the themes of the Book of Proverbs. Whereas Proverbs promised divine blessings on the blameless and upright man, who feared God and shunned evil, the Book of Job told a very different story. At the beginning of the Book of Job, this just man is the very embodiment of the moral ideal held up in the Book of Proverbs. Yet the entire book goes on to describe the terrible trials and torments to which Job was subject in soul, body, and condition.
In Sirach's exhortation we find these ideas from Job now incorporated into the traditional exhortation given to the young person. Like Job (Job 1:8; 2:3; 42:8), he is called to "serve" God, in a service where he can expect to be tried and humiliated, almost beyond measure. This idea Sirach learned from Job--that the true servant of God is a suffering servant.
The young person, therefore, must receive an augmented instruction. He must learn, not only of the blessings promised to those that endeavor to please God, but also of the trials that will accompany that effort. He must be informed, at the very beginning, what to expect in this regard. This, too, is part of his inheritance, learned by the sufferings that God's people had endured in recent centuries: the Babylonian Captivity, the Persian dominance, the persecutions endured under Greek rule.
It is the merit of Sirach that he introduces this theme of patient endurance into the traditional exhortation that had always been part of Israel's Wisdom literature. He sees that the child, the expected beneficiary of this inheritance, should know the whole story. It is not enough to tell him that all will go well if only he keeps the rules and brings godly governance into his life. He must also know that the Lord permits His servants to be tried by fire.
February 12, 2006
Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Explicit teaching about an afterlife is somewhat sparse in the Old Testament, but during the age of the Maccabees devout Jews reached a high level of awareness, hope, and expectancy of the resurrection of the dead. That new hope was expressed in new ways. For instance, because of the hope of the resurrection the Jews began to pray for the dead (2 Maccabees 12:38-45), a custom inherited by the Christian Church and continued to the present day. This is but one of the ways in which Judaism's late hope for the resurrection prepared the path for the coming of the Gospel and the faith of the Christian Church.
The origins of that hope of the resurrection were probably varied and complex, but at least one of its chief components was Israel's inherited sense of justice. Thus, they reasoned, "How could the just God permit the continued persecution and slaying of His servants with no hope of matters being set right in the future?" And they answered, "Well, no, it just isn't possible, so there certainly will be a resurrection in the future, at which time the righteous God will adjust the accounts of history."
The Apostle Paul believed, moreover, that the Resurrection of Jesus vindicated not only the Jewish hope of the resurrection (Acts 23:6), but also the Jewish argument on which that hope was built: "I have hope in God, which [the Jews] themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust" (24:15). Both the just and the unjust will rise and, each in his own way, face the music.
It is not difficult to trace in 2 Maccabees 7 the argument leading to that conclusion. This is the story of the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons, an event still honored among Christians by a feast day on August 1. These Maccabean martyrs have always enjoyed a popularity-if that is the word we want-among Christians, and panegyrics on the theme were preached by a number of Church Fathers, east and west, including Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, and Leo the Great of Rome.
In the biblical account of their martyrdom it is not difficult to detect a seven-stage progression of the argument that Jews pursued in their hope of the resurrection. Thus, their testimony, or martyria, commences with the first brother's assertion that the righteous man will die rather than be unfaithful to God (7:2). But this willingness to die makes no coherent moral sense if death has the last word on the subject. Therefore the second brother affirms a final resurrection in which God will vindicate the moral decision of the righteous (7:9).
In addition, it is morally imperative that at that final resurrection there be a strict identity between the body of the just man who dies and the body of the just man who is raised again. This stage of the argument, made by the third brother (7:11), testifies that what man suffers in his flesh must be redeemed in his flesh. (Job, earlier, seems to have sensed this too.)
The Apostle Paul will voice the same insistence, by declaring, "So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural (psychikon) body; it is raised a spiritual (pnevmatikon) body" (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). In each case here, what is sown is exactly what is raised; there is no discontinuity between the body that dies and the body that is raised.
With inexorable moral logic the fourth brother declares that both kinds of moral choices, good and evil, will be reflected in the "afterlife." Just as the righteous will be vindicated with a resurrection unto life, something quite different awaits the wicked (2 Maccabees 7:14). Resurrection, therefore, necessarily means judgment. This thesis is further specified by the fifth brother, who proclaims that a fearful punishment awaits the wicked (verse 17).
In the argument's sixth stage the biblical author distinguishes between the swift temporary punishment of the righteous, which is corrective and restorative, leading to the humility and a renewal of repentance, and the delayed punishment of the wicked, which comes at the end and is final (7:18-19,32-38). This is a standard theme in 2 Maccabees.
The seventh stage of the argument is social, because man in his body is radically and necessarily social. At the final resurrection, therefore, the righteous will be restored to one another. The mother thus says to the seventh son just before his death, "So thou shalt not fear this tormentor, but being made a worthy partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren" (7:29).
This is an important dimension of the doctrine of the resurrection. We are not going to be raised singly, one by one, but all together. The resurrection is not only the vindication of our physical composition. It also vindicates the social relationships that are based on our physical composition.
Foremost among these relationships, of course, is the family, in which we are related to one another more immediately by our bodies. The final restoration of the family is among the last of God's wonders, when those who have died are given back to one another in their very bodies. This is a message of deep consolation.
The development of moral doctrine in 2 Maccabees, beginning from the adherence to the commandments and proceeding to the resurrected life of incorruption, roughly follows the sequence in the Bible's late Wisdom Tradition. Of Wisdom we read, for instance, "For the beginning of her is the most true longing (epithymia) for discipline (paideia). And the care of discipline is love: and love is the keeping of her laws: and the keeping of the laws is the firm foundation of incorruption: And incorruption brings near to God. Therefore longing for wisdom leads upwards (anagei) to a kingdom." (Wisdom of Solomon 6:18-21).
February 19, 2006
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Before ever he met the Apostle Paul, the life of young Timothy was already full of blessings. Indeed, Paul himself, among the last lines he wrote on this earth, reminded Timothy of those blessings: "But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:14-15).
Both Paul and Timothy knew who were the latter's first teachers of Holy Scripture. Paul wrote earlier in this same epistle, "I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also" (1:5).
These two women, Timothy's mother and grandmother, had raised him, not only in the faith but also in the study of the Sacred Writings, ta hiera grammata--sacred grammar. It was this early study of Sacred Letters, carried on in the home, that grounded the soul of young Timothy and prepared him to become, in due course, an apostle of the Church and the bishop of Ephesus. The whole Church, for the past two thousand years, owes to these two women an immense and unpayable debt of gratitude.
When, as a child, Timothy was taught the grammar of Holy Scripture, what did he learn from Lois and Eunice? Many things, to be sure, but let us consider three benefits to be ascribed to that early instruction in God's Word.
First, Timothy learned to take possession of his heart. The rich and varied narratives that enabled him to make sense of his heart. Placing his young soul under the authoritative guidance of Sacred Grammar, Timothy learned who he was, his place in this world, what God expected of him, and what he himself could expect, both during his life and at the end of it.
The stories of the Bible--but more especially the central, core story---assimilated in the context of his family, gave shape to Timothy's moral imagination, conferring on his conscience a narrative moral sense. These biblical stories gave imaginative organization to his mind. He was enabled to inform his personal life from the biblical history. From these stories, learned especially in the setting of his home, Timothy was educated in the habits of the heart. He was, in the full, rich sense of that word, indoctrinated, sacred doctrine being placed in the heart and mind, giving formation to his character
Timothy learned, from inside, the Bible's perspective on the world. He slowly became versed in the narratives, poetry, and maxims that would enable him to organize his own heart, give structure to his thought and feelings, and imaginative, rational formation to his conscience. All of this is to say that Timothy was the blessed recipient of a biblical culture
Second, the study of the Bible, for Timothy, was not a private thing. Thanks to the two older generations that instructed him-and those longer generations to which his mother and grandmother were heirs--Timothy was enabled to read Holy Scripture through the eyes of the living Sacred Tradition, in which alone the Bible is properly understood.
After all, there is no such thing as a private culture. All culture is traditional culture. It is not a commodity that can be purchased. By definition, a culture can only be inherited. All culture is necessarily transgenerational.
This is true of biblical culture as well. It is necessarily social. Timothy's study of Holy Scripture was a great socializing agent in the formation of his character. By it he became one with his own history, including his family's history, where he assimilated the organizing influences of a biblical world view.
In Timothy's case, the transmission of this biblical culture was a somewhat difficult task, because Timothy's father was apparently not a believer (Acts 16:1). Thus, the young man did not enjoy in his home the benefit of what the behavioral sciences today call a "male role model." Timothy learned his faith and Sacred Grammar from the women in the household, and the experience seems not to have hurt him at all.
Third, from the instructions of Eunice and Lois, Timothy learned to take his place in the continuance of biblical history. After all, the Bible not only records history; it also creates history. By this I mean that the Bible, as written down, read, and proclaimed in the ongoing community of faith, influences, and directs the course of history. The Bible changes history by changing the lives of those that come under its transforming power.
Like ourselves, young Timothy was part of the history created by Holy Scripture. He belonged to the gathering of those who in the Holy Spirit are assembled to attend to God's Word. In the history that it records, the Bible itself prolongs that history in those who receive it in faith.
This unified history, comprised of what the Bible records and what the Bible creates, is a single, living, ongoing reality-a living culture--in which there is a continuity between the words of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition's understanding of those words. If there were to be a break between the Bible and its interpretation, that continuity would be lost. That is the very essence of heresy, which is the loss of biblical continuity.
This ongoing continuity is called Holy Tradition, which embraces, as a single reality, the history narrated in the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures themselves, and the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Bride that reads these Scriptures in her worship, understands them in her teaching, and proclaims them in her ministry to the world.
Thanks to two wise women, a godly mother and a devout grandmother, this was also Timothy's personal history.
February 26, 2006
Meatfare Sunday
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
At the risk, I suppose, of being taken for a polytheist, let me confess to a strong personal misgiving about contemporary popular monotheism.
I shall describe what I mean. Modern popular monotheism is usually voiced along the following lines: "Since there is only one God, those who worship only one God must all be worshipping the same God." Those who think this way go on to urge us, often enough, to find our common moral roots in this supposedly shared monotheism. This effort will lessen international tensions, they assure us, and prepare the way for world peace. They have even been known to get together in large congresses to pray for world peace, as though they were all seeking this blessing from the same divinity.
Their venture strikes me not only as dubious and illogical but also as unbiblical. I submit that Biblical monotheism is not an agreement about a quantitative proposition with respect to the divinity. Biblical monotheism is not simply a matter of confessing one god, as distinct from two or more. Let me see if I can work myself around to an explanation.
First, those who confess only a Superior Being (a being who happens to be superior to other beings, that is to say) are not really monotheists, even if they deny the existence of all other gods. It is not the shortage of extra gods that renders a man a monotheist.
Second, the difference between polytheism and biblical monotheism is not merely quantitative. Monotheism is not a mathematical truth, nor is polytheism a mathematical problem. The thing is not quantitative. You can't get "close" to biblical monotheism. The confession of two gods comes no nearer to monotheism than the confession of a hundred. Biblical monotheism has less to do with the number of gods than with the nature of God.
Nor does man arrive at monotheism by a process of reduction, as it were, eliminating all other gods until only one is left. (Indeed, if a man goes at monotheism in this way, he may as well keep going to atheism, freeing himself at last from the final burden of the process.) Monotheism is not the inference drawn from a set of premises.
Thus, and third, no matter how cogent the monotheistic thesis appears to the metaphysician, it is a historical fact that monotheism did not make its first appearance in this world as a metaphysical proposition. It was an auto-identification announced, rather, by a personal voice on Mount Sinai.
That is to say, monotheism first appeared as an intrusion into man's thought, not as a product of man's thinking. Although it is a perfectly rational thesis--indeed, far more rational than its alternatives--this monotheism was not attained by a rational process. It was declared by the voice from a burning bush. The other gods were rejected, not because man's mind no longer needed or wanted them, but because the One God would not tolerate them.
Since monotheism, as a metaphysical principle, makes perfect rational sense, how strange it is that man's mind had to be slapped and jarred into clear thinking on the subject by an insistent voice booming on a desert mountain.
Fourth, God did not tell us that He is one except by telling us Who He is. "Who He is" is what requires monotheism, not simply the inconvenience of rival gods. God's being is such that there can be no other. This is the metaphysics of Sinai.
In the metaphysics of Sinai, the fact that "God is" is identical with "Who God is." God is Who is, Ho On. The Quis is the same as the Qualis. The fact of God is inseparable from the "Who" of God. His being is identical with His existence. This is not some "superior being" speaking to lesser beings. This is Someone who is Being.
It is not human thought, then, that discovers this identification between God's being and His existence, but the pronouncement of the One who responded to Moses' request, "Who shall I say sent me?"
It is not as though the mind of man already knew there was a single God and Moses was simply trying to clarify a point or two on the question. On the contrary, monotheism itself came forth from the self-identifying "I" who, by intruding Himself into man's history, forced Himself upon man's reflection. Authentic metaphysics was born of that intrusion.
It seems to me that this is not what we have today, when monotheism, separated from the historical revelation of Exodus, is pretty often just another form of idolatry, the confession of a god who just happens to be one rather than several. Indeed, such a god may as well be several, because there is nothing about him that requires him to be just one. He is no improvement over the gods of Egypt.
In some cases, in fact, he appears to be a good deal worse. I fear that this alleged divinity, this "shared god" of the so-called monotheistic religions may not be nearly so bland, so benign, so harmless as his more wishful thinking devotees take him to be. Look around. Some folks in this world who confess but one god are manifestly evil men, whose deeds are violent and whose feet are swift to shed blood. A sane person would prefer some kindly form of polytheism any day, don't you think?
Anyway, the oneness of the true God is specific to the true God. Other folks may worship a single god, but he is not the Existing One. Lacking the Ho of Ho On, he is not, so to speak, the genuine article.
February 5, 2006
St. Agatha of Sicily
Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
Today's pilgrim, standing on Mount Nebo and gazing westward on a clear day, is blessed to see the Holy Land rather much as Moses beheld it more than three thousand years ago. Many features of the landscape will claim his notice, but perhaps none more strongly than a long, wide, curving line of deep green that wends its way down from the north. Our pilgrim is looking at the serpentine journey of the Jordan River, and the rich green that he sees are the myriad trees that grow along both its banks. Among these trees, too indistinct to be discerned f