Reading through the book of Judges

Again from my ongoing cover-to-cover reading of the Holy Bible, his was quite a horrifying reading, I must say. It's been some time since I've read through Judges, and the atrocities within it are astonishing. Even the sacred author, writing probably at a much later time, during the Israelite monarchy, apologises in many places for the evils described by saying several times that:

"This was in the days before any king ruled in Israel, when men lived by the best light they had." - Judges, 21: 24

Obviously coming from a different tradition, and one that sought to glorify the Israelite hero Iosue/Joshua, the book of Joshua had made very quick work of the settlement of the Holy Land, accomplished in Joshua's own life-time and divided out among the tribes by himself and the high-priest Eleazar. But now, in the book of Judges, we are given a rather different sequence of events. Many of those great bloodbaths of Joshua have not quite occurred and the tribes are often portrayed as either not able to take over the lands that have been assigned to them or are living in some type of peaceful coexistence with the inhabitants of the land. Anyhow, the land is taken, but much more slowly than in the book of Joshua. However, the Chanaanites here are truly a force to reckon with, and in the places where coexistence became necessary, this is noted in a negative manner by the author of the book of Judges and given as a sort-of ongoing temptation and test by God of the Israelites' fidelity to Him.

"And now the Lord’s angel removed from Galgal to the place that is called Lamentation. And his message was, 'I have taken you away from Egypt, and brought you to this land in fulfilment of the promise I made to your fathers, an oath irrevocable. But you, too, had your part to play; you were to make no terms with the men who dwelt in it, you were to overthrow every altar of theirs. How is it that you have disobeyed My command? With good reason I have spared them utter destruction, so that there may be enemies at your side, and gods of the enemy, ready to compass your downfall. And all the sons of Israel wept aloud at the angel’s message; that is why the place was called Lamentation." - Judges, 2: 1-4

And the rest of the book is a narrative of the people repeatedly falling into the trap of idolatry, worked through their association and intermarriage with the enemies at their side, and when they fell in worship before the gods of the enemy, their downfall was certain. And each time they called for assistance and God was able to raise up warrior captains (rulers or judges of the people) that could lead armies composed of men from various combinations of the twelve tribes, to deliver portions of the Israelite people from subjugation to various tribes and princes. So, when the Mesopotamians invaded under Chusan-Rasathaim, Othoniel son of Cenez was the great hero. And when Eglon of Moab attacked with the aid of the Ammonites and the Amelecites, Aod son of Gera (a Benjaminite), rose to the occasion. Other judges quickly followed: Samgar son of Anath, Debbora wife of Lapidoth, Gedeon son of Ioas, Abimelech son of Gedeon, Thola son of Phua, Iair the Galaadite, and Iephte son of Galaad. It seems meaningless to name all these judges, whom we hardly ever hear off at Mass or in Bible study. But we must understand that these were popular heroes of the Hebrew nation, to which our Lord, His Mother and the Holy Apostles belonged. It's worth recognising at least a few of the names, such as the prophetess Debbora and Gedeon who raided and destroyed a vast camp of Madianites with only three hundred men and a bag of tactics. And then after Abesan of Bethlehem, Ahialon of Zabulon and Abdon son of Illel of Pharathon, we come to the legendary Nazarite, Samson son of Manue the Danite, who judged Israel for twenty years and whom primary school children could tell us about in great detail.

The last part of the book is a type of appendix that tells firstly of the origins of the Danite religion in the north of the Holy Land (a syncretist religion that seems to have included the national religion, with origins in chapters seventeen and eighteen) and the near destruction of the tribe of Benjamin for sexual immorality and murder. Both of these, as mentioned above, are apologised for by the writer of Judges as an unfortunate state of events that existed before there was a king to unite the tribes of Israel, at a time when the people didn't have a common catechism and acted according to their own local wisdom.

"It was in Rohob their city lay, and the men of Dan rebuilt it to make their home in it, calling it Dan, after their ancestor that was Israel’s son, and Lais no longer. And there they set up the image; the tribe of Dan had its own priests down to the day when it went into exile, descended from Moses’ son Gersam, and his son Jonathan. All the time God’s house was at Silo, there in Dan stood Michas’ image. So it was in the old days, before a king ruled in Israel." - Judges, 18: 28-31

The tabernacle was at Silo and the priests of Aaron's family (the only ones permitted by the Law of Moses), but the Danites had acquired an order of priests of Moses' family, giving worship to an idol. Interesting. The book ends with the terrible civil war that was raised against the tribe of Benjamin by all the others, who had been horrified by the abuse and murder of a woman, who happened to be the wife of a Levite from Bethlehem-Juda (chapters nineteen to twenty-one). Thousands seem to have died in the battle, until only six hundred men of Benjamin remained, every other member of that tribe being ruthlessly destroyed. The end of the book is the ugly search for wives for the six hundred, so that the tribe might have a chance to survive after all. I'd rather pass over that now and get over to the book of Ruth, which tells of the immediate generations before the advent of King David. If this was 'the best light men had,' it was an evil time. And yet, I don't think we've come really far from all that, have we? Human nature is a wretched thing.

Saint Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church

A few days ago now, I set out two paragraphs on the Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas, a powerful mind in the great days of the high medieval period, whose theology has come to define the Latin Church as a whole, in the way that Saint John Chrysostom characterises the Greek churches and Saint Ephrem the Syrian churches. But today we have another powerful figure from only a little later, from the other great Order of friars, then only young: the Franciscans. 

Born Giovanni di Fidanza in about AD 1215, with an early devotion to Saint Francis, that grew when he encountered the Friars Minor in Paris, where he had completed his secondary education. Convinced that the life of Saint Francis was similar to the life of the earliest Christians, and so of divine origin, he applied to join and was clothed in the habit in 1243, with the name Bonaventura. He then acquired a strong formation in theology at Paris, specialising in Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. In Paris at the time, there was a movement by the secular clergy against the Dominicans and Franciscans teaching at the university, for they had upset the status quo with their unique (for the time) lifestyles and they were receiving much acclaim. Bonaventure attempted a defence of the new Orders and their approximation to the perfection demanded by the Gospel. By the personal intervention of the Holy Father Alexander IV, in 1257, Bonaventure was made doctor and master of the university, but he was obliged to give it up when he was made master general of the Order. To unite the friars, he at once proposed and had ratified a compilation of the norms regulating the life of the Order. To standardise the teaching of Saint Francis, he also researched and put out the biography of the Saint called the Legenda Maior, which was revised and reduced to form the Legenda Minor, which became the official biography. In 1273, the Holy Father Gregory X made Bonaventure a bishop and cardinal and asked him to prepare the second council of Lyons, attempting to reunite the Latin and the Greek churches, which Bonaventure worked hard at but was unable to complete, dying in 1274.

Bonaventure is known by the Church as the Seraphic Doctor. Like Saint Thomas, he was optimistic about human nature and human reason. Thomas thought that theology was both an intellectual exercise of coming to know God and a practical exercise of growing in moral rectitude. But, where he prioritised the intellectual practice, Bonaventure provides a third way, which embraces both the first two: knowledge of Christ naturally proceeds towards love and moral development. His priority is love of God and unity with God in love, over knowledge through study. But these are two approaches to union with God; reason is still valid, but is transcended by love, as shown by Christ Crucified. And finally, in the ascent towards God, always beyond our strength and so the work of God Himself, Bonaventure thought that prayer was indispensable.

Advent

"...make no mistake about the age we live in; already it is high time for us to awake out of our sleep; our salvation is closer to us now than when we first learned to believe. The night is far on its course; day draws near. Let us abandon the ways of darkness, and put on the armour of light. Let us pass our time honourably, as by the light of day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites." - Romans, 13: 11-14

Advent has the character of a liturgical vigil. We Christians inherit the idea of a vigil or a keeping-watch before a great feast from our Jewish forebears. Traditionally, a vigil is a time of preparation before a great celebration and, in the Latin tradition, it is accompanied by the colour purple. And by a spirit of deepening prayer and abstinence from common delights. Simultaneously, our liturgical readings and other texts place us in the shoes of the Jewish communities of the late period, when the Holy Land fell under the imperium of Rome. In that intense time of expectation, multiple messianic figures seemed to arise here and there (we see hints of that in the Gospels and contemporary histories, often because of the punishment that was delivered by the Romans to the ringleaders of the movements that grew up around them, because of the political mayhem that resulted). It almost seems as if people knew that something was up and they were looking about for messiahs who would, in the words of the Apostles, 'restore the dominion to Israel' (Acts, 1: 6). The key word is 'expectation,' and Advent causes us to climb into this pre-Christ period, standing with the shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, with the astronomer kings/magi of the East watching the stars and attempting to read the signs they found there.

The quote above from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans is wonderfully appropriate. It tells us to come back to our senses, waking up from the stupor that this worldly existence tends to draw us into, for salvation is ever closer to us and we need to move along with that grace constantly, setting aside sin once and for all, and behaving well. We are to be spiritual soldiers, arming ourselves with Christ. We are to keep the solemn vigil of the feast day in a spirit of repentance and a renewed hope in God's deliverance. 

Mass intentions

A quick recap of the Mass intentions at the tail end of the liturgical year. Last week, Masses were offered for the repose of the souls of Mick Prendergast (+), Paul Bridges (+), Tony Leckey (+) and other Holy Souls. This week, Masses were offered for the repose of the souls of Rosaleen And Paddy Farrell (++) and other Holy Souls. May they rest in peace all. 

Masses were also offered for the intentions of J. K., the workers in our Health Service (especially in this period of virus control and treatment), the Holy Father and the Bishop, for vocations to the priesthood and Religious life, and (certainly not the least) for the sick and the dying, especially those of our parish. May all concerned be blessed in their ministry and in their suffering, and may they grow in their devotion everyday. 

And thus, I retire the Diocesan Ordo for the year 2019-20, and it's already Advent.

Preparing for Advent; candles at the ready...

The sung Lord's Prayer at Mass

When the powers that be decide that we can sing at Mass again, we'll be singing the Our Father. Here's the music and chant from the 2010 Mass-book on the altar:

Bach - Mass in B minor - Van Veldhoven (the Netherlands Bach Society)

I've had this playing in the background as I said my rosary this evening. It is beautiful, and it reminds me of the dreadful plight musicians are in at the moment, with the restrictions causing a collapse of the arts industry, leaving artists and musicians with little to no work. It is quite abominable. Like so many others, they have probably fallen back on their savings. 

Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church

I'm running a little through my little book on the Doctors of the Church, and here's the great Carmelite friar, Saint John. I remember doing a whole course on Carmelite mysticism in seminary, and he was a rather large part of it. I can't remember so very much, so here's something of a refresher...

John is known to have reformed the Carmelite Order significantly, with the assistance of his friend, another great Saint, Teresa of Ávila. John is called the Mystical Doctor, because of his spiritual experiences and his ability to present those didactically to the Church. He was born in AD 1542 near Ávila to a rather poor family, for his father had been disowned for marrying a below his station. When he lost his father, he moved away to Medina del Campo, near Valladolid, where he acquired some medical skill and worked briefly as a nurse. At 18, he entered a Jesuit College and was given a classical education and discovered his vocation to the Religious life. In 1563, he began his noviciate in the Carmelite Order, becoming Fra Juan de Santo Mattía, whereupon he completed his education at Salamanca. Ordained priest in 1567, he returned to the community at Medina del Campo to celebrate his first Mass, and met his life-long friend Saint Teresa. She had a plan to reform the Order and requested his assistance. Together, in 1568, they opened the first house of the Discalced Carmelites (OCD), at Duruelo - a community of friars who lived according to the primitive rule of the Carmelites. John now took the new name, John of the Cross. In 1572, Teresa asked him to be chaplain and confessor at her own convent of Sisters in Ávila. This was a time of great friendship, and many of their greatest literary achievements date to then. Reforming an existing Order, brought great suffering to the reformers - John was at one point in 1577 imprisoned at Toledo for four months by his confreres, and he spent that time composing his best known work: the Spiritual Canticle. Finally, he made a daring escape to the nuns in that town and went to Andalusia. He rose within the Order to be vicar general and returned home as part of the government of the now well-recognised discalced Carmelites. He lived for a while in Segovia, but was later directed to the new province in Mexico. While preparing for the voyage westward, he fell ill and died AD 1591. His relics were removed to Segovia where, after several subtractions, they still remain.

John's great works are the Ascent of Mount Carmel, the Dark Night, the Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame of Love. Like Saint Teresa, he speaks of the progressive purification of the soul in her growing possession of God, in the transforming union with her Maker. His image of the soul falling ever deeper in love with God is that of her bursting into flame as she learns to cooperation with the grace of God to ascend towards perfection. The Dark Night of the Soul presents a vision similar to the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible and demonstrates God's drawing the soul towards Himself, while performing the vital act of purification of the senses within her. So, then, John's constant theme is holiness. Like Saint Thomas Aquinas, he is optimistic about human nature, and he speaks therefore of the increasing perfecting of what is already in essence good (for it was created by God), by the progressive elimination of dependence on created things and so a turning towards God. In this, it is God who principally acts, although we would do well to cooperate with His grace, through living a virtuous life. And this is just where the Mystical Doctor becomes a practical theologian and a model of the Christian life, for he lived what he taught and did his greatest work while suffering terribly. 

And that is Saint John of the Cross. Find the other Doctors listed on this page of the blog.

Reading through the letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians

This is the last update from my Bible in a year series for a week. It's been a rather feverish trip so far, because I'm following a day-by-day reading plan. It's got to the point where the day seems incomplete if I haven't done the work. I've just got to the end of the letter to the Ephesians. The Church in Ephesos (west of Asia Minor, just across the Aegean from Macedonia and Achaia) was always a good egg, apparently. In the last book of the Bible, she received a good report from Christ Himself for her discernment, with regard to the Apostolic authority:

"To the angel of the church at Ephesus write thus: A message to thee from Him who bears the seven stars in his right hand, and walks amidst the seven golden candlesticks: 'I know of all thy doings, all thy toil and endurance; how little patience thou hast with wickedness, how thou hast made trial of such as usurp the name of Apostle, and found them false. Yes, thou endurest, and all thou hast borne for the love of My name has not made thee despair. Yet there is one charge I make against thee; of losing the charity that was thine at first. Remember the height from which thou hast fallen, and repent, and go back to the old ways; or else I will come to visit thee, and, when I find thee still unrepentant, will remove thy candlestick from its place." - Apocalypse, 2: 1-5

Yes, there is that one thing about charity; but Ephesos did not fall into the trap of disunity when multiple preachers arrived in the new, non-Jewish churches to challenge the Apostolic teaching and attempt to judaise these Christians. Probably as a result, unlike the letters to the churches of the Corinthians and the Galatians, there isn't a great deal of scolding in this letter. Only lots of... catechism! There is some wonderful material here. The very introduction presents material for a hymn:

"Blessed be that God, that Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, in Christ, with every spiritual blessing, higher than heaven itself. He has chosen us out, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, to be saints, to be blameless in His sight, for love of Him; marking us out beforehand (so His Will decreed) to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ. Thus He would manifest the splendour of that grace by which He has taken us into His favour in the person of His beloved Son. It is in Him and through His Blood that we enjoy redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. So rich is God’s grace, that has overflowed upon us in a full stream of wisdom and discernment, to make known to us the hidden purpose of His Will. It was His loving design, centred in Christ, to give history its fulfilment by resuming everything in Him, all that is in heaven, all that is on earth, summed up in Him." - Ephesians, 1: 3-10

I couldn't possibly produce a good sample of this letter for a short article. The first two chapters are alone thick with Christian doctrine. Here's another short Christian catechism: free grace and mercy unmerited!

"How rich God is in mercy, with what an excess of love He loved us! Our sins had made dead men of us, and He, in giving life to Christ, gave life to us too; it is His grace that has saved you; raised us up too, enthroned us too above the heavens, in Christ Jesus. He would have all future ages see, in that clemency which He shewed us in Christ Jesus, the surpassing richness of His grace. Yes, it was grace that saved you, with faith for its instrument; it did not come from yourselves, it was God’s gift, not from any action of yours, or there would be room for pride. No, we are His design; God has created us in Christ Jesus, pledged to such good actions as He has prepared beforehand, to be the employment of our lives." - Ephesians, 2: 4-10

This is another effort of Saint Paul's to draw the largely non-Jewish Christians into the Jewish matrix of the Church, trying to demonstrate that the outward signs of belonging to the old religion, such as circumcision, are often merely superficial. What actually matters is that their nature as outlaws (non-Jewish) has been undone by the work of God, so that they are not foreigners in the Church of Jewish Christians, but fellow citizens and members of God's household!

"So he came, and His message was of peace for you who were far off, peace for those who were near; far off or near, united in the same Spirit, we have access through Him to the Father. You are no longer exiles, then, or aliens; the saints are your fellow citizens, you belong to God’s household. Apostles and prophets are the foundation on which you were built, and the chief corner-stone of it is Jesus Christ Himself. In Him the whole fabric is bound together, as it grows into a temple, dedicated to the Lord; in Him you too are being built in with the rest, so that God may find in you a dwelling-place for His Spirit." - Ephesians, 2: 17-22

Chapter three is a long prayer of Paul's, on his knees, asking that the Ephesians grow continually in love. I could picture him actually dropping to his knees as his secretary scribbled all of this down furiously: 

"With this in mind, then, I fall on my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its title. May He, out of the rich treasury of His glory, strengthen you through His Spirit with a power that reaches your innermost being. May Christ find a dwelling-place, through faith, in your hearts; may your lives be rooted in love, founded on love. May you and all the saints be enabled to measure, in all its breadth and length and height and depth, the love of Christ, to know what passes knowledge. May you be filled with all the completion God has to give." - Ephesians, 3: 14-19

Chapter four gives us a corporate picture of the Church that is familiar from other letters of Saint Paul: we are all one, but at the same time we have different functions within that body, and we have to work together to achieve maturity, and so be able to discern truth from falsity, with a spirit of charity.

"But each of us has received his own special grace, dealt out to him by Christ’s gift... Some He has appointed to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, or pastors, or teachers. They are to order the lives of the faithful, minister to their needs, build up the frame of Christ’s body, until we all realize our common unity through faith in the Son of God, and fuller knowledge of Him. So we shall reach perfect manhood, that maturity which is proportioned to the completed growth of Christ; we are no longer to be children, no longer to be like storm-tossed sailors, driven before the wind of each new doctrine that human subtlety, human skill in fabricating lies, may propound. We are to follow the truth, in a spirit of charity, and so grow up, in everything, into a due proportion with Christ, Who is our head." - Ephesians, 4: 7, 11-15

To achieve this maturity, Christians would have to let go of their old, pre-baptismal habits, and be clothed in Christ.

"If true knowledge is to be found in Jesus, you will have learned in His school that you must be quit, now, of the old self whose way of life you remember, the self that wasted its aim on false dreams. There must be a renewal in the inner life of your minds; you must be clothed in the new self, which is created in God’s image, justified and sanctified through the truth. Away with falsehood, then; let everyone speak out the truth to his neighbour; membership of the body binds us to one another." - Ephesians, 4: 21-25

That begins a discourse on good behaviour, for our inward conversions should result in an edifying, outward manifestation. A good Christian should be well-behaved, not because he is following the dictates of a law, but because he has put on Christ and is in harmony with the Will of God, through grace. 

"Once you were all darkness; now, in the Lord, you are all daylight. You must live as men native to the light; where the light has its effect, all is goodness, and holiness, and truth; your lives must be the manifestation of God’s will. As for the thankless deeds men do in the dark, you must not take any part in them; rather, your conduct must be a rebuke to them; their secret actions are too shameful even to bear speaking of. It is the light that rebukes such things and shews them up for what they are; only light shews up. That is the meaning of the words, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.'" - Ephesians, 5: 8-14

And that brings us to the most famous part of this letter, where Paul demonstrates the equality of men and women in marriage, a message that would have sounded extremely odd in his time. Husbands love your wives!

"You who are husbands must shew love to your wives, as Christ shewed love to the Church when He gave Himself up on its behalf. He would hallow it, purify it by bathing it in the water to which His word gave life; He would summon it into His own presence, the Church in all its beauty, no stain, no wrinkle, no such disfigurement; it was to be holy, it was to be spotless. And that is how husband ought to love wife, as if she were his own body; in loving his wife, a man is but loving himself. It is unheard of, that a man should bear ill-will to his own flesh and blood; no, he keeps it fed and warmed; and so it is with Christ and His Church; we are limbs of His body; flesh and bone, we belong to Him." - Ephesians, 5: 25-30

There is a little bit following about everybody dwelling virtuously in his or her own station: children, honour your parents (be virtuous children), parents, do not rile your children (be virtuous parents), slaves, honour your masters (be virtuous slaves), masters, deal well with your slaves (be virtuous masters). All this, while remembering that all of them, all of us, have a Master up above who doesn't recognise these social structures that the Church dwelling in human society has to work with. And that's quite the end of it. The last picture is a call to arms against the cunning of the enemy of our souls, and I shall end with this:

"You must wear all the weapons in God’s armoury, if you would find strength to resist the cunning of the devil. It is not against flesh and blood that we enter the lists; we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours. Take up all God’s armour, then; so you will be able to stand your ground when the evil time comes, and be found still on your feet, when all the task is over. Stand fast, your loins girt with truth, the breastplate of justice fitted on, and your feet shod in readiness to publish the gospel of peace. With all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fire-tipped arrows of your wicked enemy; make the helmet of salvation your own, and the sword of the spirit, God’s word." - Ephesians, 6: 11-17

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church

I was trained briefly by Dominicans once, and developed a great respect for this extraordinarily intelligent scholar-priest, who mingled his powerful intellect with a saintly quest for virtue and holiness and a life of mysticism. So, for today's departure from the Scripture posts, and as part of the Doctors page, we shall have a very quick look at Saint Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, the Common Doctor, who's theology became more-or-less the theology of the Church for centuries until the confusions of the twentieth century.

Saint Thomas was born in about AD 1225 to a noble family of the Aquino region of the Campania, below Rome, not far from the great Benedictine foundation at Monte-Cassino, where he received his primary education. He then moved to Naples, capital of the kingdom of Sicily, for his secondary education. Here he discovered the philosophy of the ancient philosopher Aristotle, and he discovered his vocation to the recently born Order of Preachers, established under the leadership of Saint Dominic. His noble family refused to accept his joining a mendicant Order and he had to take leave from his community to stay at home for a while. He returned to the Order later and was sent to Paris to study under the famous German Dominican Saint Albert the Great, and they soon built a strong friendship and Albert would have liked to carry Thomas across to Cologne, where the German Dominicans wanted to build a study hall. There, as in Naples, Thomas found the fever for Aristotelianism, newly discovered by Europe centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire. At a time when Europe was pitting the new learning (mainly Aristotelianism) against the classical Christianity as represented by the Saints, such as Saint Augustine of Hippo, Thomas was to discover and demonstrate a synthesis of both philosophical traditions, and so a synthesis of faith (represented by Christian revelation) and reason (represented by pre-Christian Greek philosophy) within a single philosophical system. Thomas returned to Paris to fill a chair as professor of theology, and Scriptural exegete. He travelled widely as a Dominican friar, at one point drawing up the programme of studies for the Order, and at another composing liturgical texts for the feast of Corpus Christi, at the request of the Holy Father Urban IV. He has given us our greatest Eucharistic hymnography: the Pange Lingua Gloriosi, the Adoro Te devote, etc. From 1265 to 1268, Thomas lived in Rome and directed another hall of study for the Order, and began to write his seminal Summa Theologica. He was also a gifted preacher, able to distil his immense knowledge into a simple delivery to ordinary people. In 1273, he made it known privately that he wished to end all his work because he had realised mystically in the course of offering Mass that all his past work until that point was thoroughly worthless - probably a way of saying that God is beyond any human conception in His beauty and majesty, which we will experience only beyond this world. He died not long after at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova. 

The popes have delighted in Saint Thomas' theological system and the Holy Father Leo XIII named him patron of Catholic schools and universities in 1880. It has been that synthesis of two distinct systems, one based on pure reason (pre-Christian) and the other on the the Christian philosophy that had developed until Thomas' time, that was vital in the nineteenth century, at a time when reason and faith was increasingly seen as incompatible. We can see, thanks to Thomas, that both these sciences, those of rational philosophy and of Christian philosophy come from the one divine Wisdom, and so must at least have an inner unity and support each other, while maintaining their mutual independence. In a related story, Thomas also developed the doctrine of sanctifying grace, the action of the Holy Ghost upon our human nature that builds us up to transform us, to divinise us, to bring to life within us the various Christian virtues that enable us to live the Gospel, if we are open to this grace in our lives. For you see, with his optimism about human nature, Thomas was able to see humanity not as entirely corrupt but as weakened and salvageable, and certainly to be an increasingly perfected image of God. Among Saint Thomas' available works today stands supremely the Summa Theologica, a rather long and fairly comprehensive rational grappling with the Christian Faith, a rationalism that is at the same time accompanied by prayer. Aside from these Summae, including the also-famous Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas has left behind homilies, in which he explains the Creed, common prayers and the Ten Commandments. And lastly, to crown it all, Thomas, like every other Dominican, was a great devotee of the Blessed Virgin.

Reading through the book of Iosue/Joshua

I've just got to the end of the book of Iosue/Joshua, as part of my current cover-to-cover reading of the Holy Bible. This is a history of the settlement of the Holy Land by the Israelites. Following on Deuteronomy, Joshua was the new captain of the people, inheriting the job from Moses, who had died on the wrong side of the Jordan river. He began by planning the overthrow and destruction of the city of Jericho from the camp in Setim in Moab, sending out spies, who were assisted by the treachery of the prostitute Rahab, who hid them in her home while they were being searched for and later signalled the beginning of the Hebrew attack. Now, Joshua acquired the respect of the people by repeating on a smaller scale the great miracle of Egypt - the crossing of the Red Sea. Here, Joshua led the people through the river Jordan on a dry bank, as the waters piled up to the north. There was already a lot of formal ritual in this passage of the river, for the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant were to stand in mid-stream until after the people had passed over, the hundreds of thousands of them. Representatives from every tribe were to witness the majesty of this miracle and, in a further ritual element, new representatives from each tribe were to collect twelve large rocks from where the priests stood in the river, one each, to commemorate the crossing.

The crossing took place just before the Passover celebration that year, and the Israelites camped at Galgal, not far from Jericho, where the commitment to the physical circumcision of the men was renewed (it had fallen into general neglect during the wandering in the wilderness). After the Pasch, began the great ritual attack on Jericho. For six days, trumpets would sound and the army once circled the city, which was now in a state of siege. On the seventh day, they went around seven times and, with a great trumpeting and a shouting of the people, the walls of the city came down. The rest of the conquest narrative covers a series of bloodbaths. Long ago, in the book of Numbers, more than forty years ago, Moses had sent scouts into the Holy Land from Seir in the south, among other things to measure the strength of the people living there. They had come back with a discouraging message:

"Forty days had passed before they returned from their survey, after traversing the whole country, to find Moses and Aaron and all the people of Israel still in the desert of Pharan, by Cades. To these and to the whole multitude they made their report, and shewed them what fruit the land yielded. And this was the story they told: 'When we reached the land where our errand lay, we found it indeed a land all milk and honey, as this fruit will prove to you; but it is a powerful race that dwells in it, with strong walled cities; such were the sons of Enac, whom we saw there. The south is occupied by Amelec, the mountain parts by Hethites, Jebusites and Amorrhites; by the sea, and round the Jordan river, the Chanaanites are in possession.'" - Numbers, 13: 26-30

The result of this had been the great sedition against Moses that had ended with the curse of God on the people, that they should not see the Holy Land, but should die in the wilderness, only their children entering in. Moses and Joshua, receiving the command of God, had obviously realised that the Holy Land was already well-populated and that the residents would have to be properly dispossessed, in a complete replacement. To prevent recurring wars as that people attempted to recover the land, these people would have to be properly exterminated. Hence the series of horrendous bloodbaths, as cities are taken and entire populations entirely destroyed with their belongings. Only one of the local tribes, the Gabaonites, was shrewd enough to negotiate peace with Joshua. The other Canaanite kings formed alliances against him. From the ruins of Jericho, and their came at Galgal, there were new attacks on a series of cities: starting at Hai (near Bethel), which was burnt to the ground, a rescue of the Gabaonites led to the conquest of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jerimoth, Lachis and Eglon, as those kings had allied against Gabaon. Thus, as the sun and moon poetically ceased their movement in the heavens, Joshua and his army destroyed almost all resistance in the middle country and the hill-country of what would soon become Judah and Simeon. 

In quick succession, Maceda, Lebna, Lachis, Gazer, Eglon, Hebron and Dabir were emptied of people, and the Israelite army returned to their camp at Galgal. This was all in the south country. A second alliance of the Canaanite kings in the north country followed, and a great army, with cavalry and chariots, was destroyed by the Israelites at Merom, giving Joshua all that we would call Galilee and the plain of Jezreel, even the mountains around Hermon and the lower part of the Lebanon range. The book tells that thirty one kings in total were slaughtered and their domains taken. The rest of the book tells of the partitioning of this territory among the tribes, according to the desires of God and of Moses. The united army was now disassembled and the rest of the conquest would thenceforth be managed locally, for pockets of resistance remained, such as of the Philistine and Gessurite country to the south-west and Maarites and Giblites in the north-west, and the Jebusites in the hill-country of Judah. The Israelite camp had moved from Galgal to Silo for the partitioning of the land and, by the end of the book, had arrived at Sichem in the mid-country. 

The book ends with the death of Joshua at 110, the last general captain of united Israel until the monarchy was instituted with King Saul. He was buried in the city of of Thamnath-Saraa, where he had himself chose to live in for his last days. The bones of the patriarch Joseph, which had been brought from Egypt, were buried at the new religious centre (for the tabernacle was there located) at Sichem. Meanwhile, the second high-priest, Eleazar, the son of Aaron, died and was buried at a place called Gabaath in the country of Ephraim.

And that is the book of Joshua, if anything a lesson in geography, with some memorable ritual/liturgical elements, such as the one for the bringing down of city walls.

It will be Advent soon

And I got a small candle set for the Masses in church. I'm used to fat candles on wreaths, but I thought I'd give this a try, this year. I expect Advent I to burn down very quickly; but let's see...

Reading through the letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians

Dear Saint Paul, travelling miles everywhere to preach the Gospel to everybody who would listen, and there always followed in his wake other preachers who tried to get the new Christians to become judaised, taking on superficial symbols of Jewish belonging. I've just got to the end of my reading of his letter to the Galatians, who were residents of the central part of Asia Minor, around the cities of Iconium and Lystra. Paul had visited them multiple times, of course, and Saint Luke makes some narration of his adventures in that region, such as when the inhabitants of Lystra witness a miracle of Paul's and, in a comic moment, take Saint Barnabas and him to be Zeus/Jupiter and Hermes/Mercury, respectively:

"There was a lame man sitting at Lystra, crippled from birth, so that he had never walked, who listened to Paul’s preaching; and Paul, looking closely at him, and seeing that there was saving faith in him, said aloud, 'Stand upright on thy feet;' whereupon he sprang up, and began to walk. The multitudes, seeing what Paul had done, cried out in the Lycaonian dialect, 'It is the gods, who have come down to us in human shape.' They called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury, because he was the chief speaker; and the priest of Jupiter, Defender of the City, brought out bulls and wreaths to the gates, eager, like the multitude, to do sacrifice. The Apostles tore their garments when they heard of it; and both Barnabas and Paul ran out among the multitude, crying aloud: 'Sirs, why are you doing all this? We too are mortal men like yourselves; the whole burden of our preaching is that you must turn away from follies like this to the worship of the living God, who made sky and earth and sea and all that is in them.'" - Acts of the Apostles, 14: 7-14

How horrifying for Paul, a Jew and a Pharisee, to find himself being worshipped as a god. But, coming back to the theme of this letter to these recent converts in Galatia, Paul is anxious to tell his new Christians that they don't have to become Jews, that is, they don't have to embrace circumcision and so take on the full burden of the Law of Moses. He wished them to know that what he has taught them about the freedom of the Gospel from the slavery to the Law that Jews suffered was not his own teaching or that of another man or men, but had been given him by Christ Himself:

"Let me tell you this, brethren; the Gospel I preached to you is not a thing of man’s dictation; it was not from man that I inherited or learned it, it came to me by a revelation from Jesus Christ. You have been told how I bore myself in my Jewish days, how I persecuted God’s Church beyond measure and tried to destroy it, going further in my zeal as a Jew than many of my own age and race, so fierce a champion was I of the traditions handed down by my forefathers. And then, He who had set me apart from the day of my birth, and called me by His grace, saw fit to make His Son known in me, so that I could preach His Gospel among the Gentiles." - Galatians, 1: 11-16

Not only was his message from Christ, but he was a Jew and a Jew zealous for the traditions handed down by his forefathers. And, yet he had received the Christian Gospel and acquired the freedom of that Gospel. He had shared that freedom with his new Christians in Gentile lands, and now he had discovered that those same Christians were trying to become Jews, in effect abandoning the freedom he had preached to them and enslaving themselves to the Law of Moses. He had even defended the freedom of the Christian from the Law against even Saint Peter, the Prince of the Apostles!

"Afterwards, when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him openly; he stood self-condemned. He had been eating with the Gentiles, until we were visited by certain delegates from James; but when these came, he began to draw back and hold himself aloof, overawed by the supporters of circumcision. The rest of the Jews were no less false to their principles; Barnabas himself was carried away by their insincerity. So, when I found that they were not following the true path of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, Since thou, who art a born Jew, dost follow the Gentile, not the Jewish way of life, by what right dost thou bind the Gentiles to live like Jews?" - Galatians, 2: 11-14

Even Peter had succumbed to a type of insincerity, in his attempt to put on Jewish customs before the envoys of the extremely orthodox Jewish-Christian bishop of Jerusalem, Saint James, who is sometimes said to have been a Nazirite (like Saint John the Baptist). So, were they, the new Christians in Galatia, to challenge Paul in casting doubt on that freedom, by running after circumcision? He continues by demonstrating that the patriarch Abraham was justified by his personal faith, long before the advent of the Law of Moses. He enjoyed a freedom that the Hebrews lost when Moses came down from mount Horeb, and gave them the Law. Paul quotes from Deuteronomy to demonstrate the burden of attempting to observe every single piece of the Law, what the evangelists in the Gospels called 'every dot and iota of the Law.' And even that, he says, does not make us acceptable to God:

"Remember how Abraham put his faith in God, and it was reckoned virtue in him. You must recognize, then, that Abraham’s real children are the children of his faith. There is a passage in Scripture which, long beforehand, brings to Abraham the good news, 'Through thee all the nations shall be blessed;' and that passage looks forward to God’s justification of the Gentiles by faith. It is those, then, who take their stand on faith that share the blessing Abraham’s faithfulness won. Those who take their stand on observance of the law are all under a curse; 'Cursed be everyone (we read) who does not persist in carrying out all that this book of the law prescribes.' And indeed, that the law cannot make a man acceptable to God is clear enough; It is faith, we are told, that brings life to the just man;" - Galatians, 3: 6-11

So, why did the Law arrive at all? Why would God have wished a particular people to be so disciplined? That's the key. Discipline. The Law was itself not life-giving. But by clearly distinguishing right from wrong, life from death, the Law was taking up the role of a schoolmaster, preparing the people for the Offspring of Abraham, Christ, Who would indeed bring life and the promises (made to Abraham) home to the people. 

"Doubtless, if a law had been given that was capable of imparting life to us, it would have been for the Law to bring us justification. But in fact Scripture represents us as all under the bondage of sin; it was faith in Jesus Christ that was to impart the promised blessing to all those who believe in him. Until faith came, we were all being kept in bondage to the law, waiting for the faith that was one day to be revealed. So that the law was our tutor, bringing us to Christ, to find in faith our justification. When faith comes, then we are no longer under the rule of a tutor; through faith in Christ Jesus you are all now God’s sons." - Galatians, 3: 21-26

So, would the Galatians like to enter under the tutelage of the Law or be free as the sons of God in Christ? No! For God has sent His very Spirit into our hearts, crying out within us, 'Abba Father!' We are not slaves, but sons. Why should we want to take up the superficial observances of the Jews? 'Oh, my little children...,' cries Father Paul in distress:

"My little children, I am in travail over you afresh, until I can see Christ’s image formed in you! I wish I were at your side now, and could speak to you in a different tone; I am bewildered at you. Tell me, you who are so eager to have the Law for your master, have you never read the Law?" - Galatians, 4: 19-21

Paul now proceeds to tell his readers that the Law (in the book of Genesis) refers to Agar, the Egyptian maidservant of Sara Abraham's wife, as her slave and that this Agar represented the old dispensation of the Law, her children being raised in bondage. We are to avoid such spiritual bondage, which is the natural result of a Christian's embracing circumcision.

"The word of Paul is your warrant for this; if you are for being circumcised, Christ is of no value to you at all. Once again I would warn anyone who is accepting circumcision that he thereby engages himself to keep all the precepts of the Law. You who look to the Law for your justification have cancelled your bond with Christ, you have forfeited grace. All our hope of justification lies in the spirit; it rests on our faith; once we are in Christ, circumcision means nothing, and the want of it means nothing; the faith that finds its expression in love is all that matters." - Galatians, 5: 2-6

At the same time, the freedom of the Christian gospel cannot give Christians a licence for behaving immorally. That's the last warning. Paul doesn't mean that the Christian's freedom from the observances of the Law mean an absolute freedom from the Law. Rather, the Christian Gospel presents the heart of the Law - charity - which rules moral behaviour:

"Only, do not let this freedom give a foothold to corrupt nature; you must be servants still, serving one another in a spirit of charity. After all, the whole of the law is summed up in one phrase, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;' if you are always backbiting and worrying each other, it is to be feared you will wear each other out in the end. Let me say this; learn to live and move in the spirit; then there is no danger of your giving way to the impulses of corrupt nature. The impulses of nature and the impulses of the spirit are at war with one another; either is clean contrary to the other, and that is why you cannot do all that your will approves. It is by letting the spirit lead you that you free yourselves from the yoke of the Law. It is easy to see what effects proceed from corrupt nature; they are such things as adultery, impurity, incontinence, luxury, idolatry, witchcraft, feuds, quarrels, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, dissensions, factions, spite, murder, drunkenness, and debauchery. I warn you, as I have warned you before, that those who live in such a way will not inherit God’s kingdom." - Galatians, 5: 13-21

And that's it! Peace to all and don't worry Father Paul so much again:

"Peace and pardon to all those who follow this rule, to God’s true Israel. Spare me, all of you, any further anxieties; already I bear the scars of the Lord Jesus printed on my body. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen." Galatians, 6: 16-18

Soundtrack of the Prince of Egypt: Deliver Us

Having read through from Exodus to Deuteronomy in quick succession, this video from the rather underestimated animated film is more powerful yet. It has a simple narration of the infancy and the vocation of the Lawgiver and Prophet, Moses. I really must get the parish a DVD of this film.

Saint John of Damascus, Doctor of the Church

Continuing with my reading on the Doctors of the Church, in Pope Benedict's sermons about them, I have arrived at Saint John the Damascene, an Eastern Father of the Church, probably the last of the line of the ancient Fathers. John lived during the period of the Arab invasions that destroyed the Christian cultures of such places as Egypt and Libya, and also large parts of Syria and Palestine. John inherited the job of treasurer to the caliphate in Syria, but later abandoned it for the monastic life, entering the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem in about AD 700, spending the rest of his life there, a scholar and a priest. He was a great defender of religious iconography, at a time when the new Islamic ascendancy led even Christians down the road of iconoclasm. Although his defence was rejected and even condemned by some Catholics, it was redeemed and he vindicated at the second Council of Nicaea in AD 787, which was also the seventh ecumenical council. John distinguished true worship (latria) due only to God Almighty from the veneration given to images (proskinesis), paid to the representations of the Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the others Saints of the Church. Think of a photograph of a loved one and you get the idea of separating the material of the image (paper, in this case) from the person that image represents. Saint John even defended images of God Himself (in images of Christ), by asserting that in the Incarnation of Christ, God had made Himself visible. The Christian therefore venerates not the created material, but the God Who created it and deemed it worthy enough for He Himself to enter into Creation. If we cannot venerate sacred items, he thought, we must suppress the sacred nature of such items. When that means the Blessed Sacrament itself, we counter the wishes of God Himself. The Incarnation gives matter a dignity it may not have enjoyed before, creating a sacramental economy (visible signs of invisible grace) in the relationship between God and mankind. Similarly, Saint John defended the veneration of relics of the Saints, who have joined in the Resurrection of Christ. Pope Benedict speaks of the wonder at Creation in Saint John's writing, John's optimism in the contemplation of nature, praising the beauty, the true, all of which is to be renewed in the Incarnation of Christ, drawn from corruption on account of our sinfulness to eternal life. 

Reading through the book of Deuteronomy

That's an old friend of mine, Father Seward of the York Oratory, reading through Deuteronomy, chapter 8. I just found it on YouTube, and remembered that I had myself finished my cover-to-cover read of that book, as part of my march through the Bible. I do recommend that you follow that series of commentaries from York, entitled Talking Heads. Meanwhile, here's my own summary of Deuteronomy, following my quick read.

The Greek term deutero-nomos is literally 'the second law.' We may be aware that God gave the prophet Moses a law on Mount Horeb/Sinai after the dramatic escape from Egypt; this is outlined at the end of the book of Exodus, and throughout the book of Numbers, and is a first Law for the observance of the people, to train them in the mind of God as they passed through the wilderness of Sinai and wandered for forty years through the wilderness of Seir. But, at the end of the book of Numbers, the people had arrived in the plains of Moab, which were directly opposite the Holy Land, across the Jordan on the East. They had already taken much of Moab by storm and the land there had been partitioned among three of the tribes of the people: Ruben, Gad and part of Manasses. Now they have prepared an invasion force, which Moses will not lead, since he is to be punished for his bad faith (in the desert of Seir, when the people suffered great thirst, and he joined them in complaining to God) with death in Moab, on mount Nebo. Before he left them, Moses appointed a new captain for them, his disciple Joshua/Iosue, the son of Nun. And he gave them the second law, the deutero-nomos, which would guide their lives no longer wandering in the desert, but settled in the Holy Land that they would soon conquer and distribute to the nine and a half remaining of the tribes. Thus Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah, that has governed the lives of the Hebrews since then, and the lives of the Jews (and in a different way, the Christians) until now.

The book begins with Moses recapping the history of the people from the time they left mount Horeb in Sinai until their then current location on the plains of Moab. He describes their acclamation of the first Law and their consequent prosperity in numbers, their procession to Cades-Barnea and the first discouragement given by the scouts the tribes had sent into the Holy Land to take a measure of the crops, the defences of the Canaanite tribes and the chances of conquest there. This had occasioned the great revolt against Moses' leadership that resulted in the destruction of significant portions of the tribe of Ruben, among other rebels:

"Faction raised its head in the camp against Moses, against Aaron, the Lord’s chosen priest; and now earth gaped, swallowing up Dathan, overwhelming Abiron and his conspiracy; fire broke out in their company, and the rebels perished by its flames." - Psalm 105(106): 16-18

Another result of these factions among the people was the punishment of the forty-years wandering through the desert before they could finally make progress towards the lands of Moab (which are across the river Jordan from the Holy Land). By then, the first generation of the people had perished in the wilderness and those who had been children at the Exodus found themselves easily overcoming and exterminating powerful Syrian tribes, led by the Amorrhite kings Sehon of Hesebon and Og of Basan. This resulted in the settlement of vast Amorrhite country to the east of the Dead Sea, and the country also of Basan to the east of Sea of Kinereth (later Galilee), all rebuilt and given over to those three tribes, Ruben, Gad and Manasses. This history of Moses ends with his exhortation to the people to keep the terms of the second Law, in order to avoid losing the plot and ending in their own destruction as a people. Thus begins the law book, in chapter five of Deuteronomy, lasting until chapter twenty-five. It begins with the Ten Commandments, which are thereafter expanded in content and applied directly to diverse situations. This begins with the famous Shemaa of the Hebrew and the Jewish people, beloved of Christ and the Apostles, and still recited/sung by Jewish communities today in synagogue:

"Listen then, Israel; there is no Lord but the Lord our God, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with the love of thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and thy whole strength. The commands I give thee this day must be written on thy heart, so that thou canst teach them to thy sons, and keep them in mind continually, at home and on thy travels, sleeping and waking; bound close to thy hand for a remembrancer, ever moving up and down before thy eyes; the legend thou dost inscribe on door and gate-post." - Deuteronomy, 6: 4-9

The Jewish people still follow these rules literally, binding portions of the Law upon their foreheads, and upon their doors and gate-posts. The very soul of the Law is complete dedication and devotion to the Lord, the God of Israel, to the exclusion of every other deity that the people would find during the course of their stay in the Holy Land. Obedience of the Law was to be a sign of that devotion and their love for the God Who had claimed them as His own. The Hebrews had not earned the land in any way; it was a promise made to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Canaanites are given to have forfeited the land themselves at the command of God, because of their own idolatry and moral perversion. 

"But do not flatter thyself, when the Lord thy God destroys them thus at thy onslaught, do not flatter thyself it was for any merit of thine He gave thee possession of this land thou hast invaded, when in truth it was the wickedness of those other nations that brought them to ruin. No, if thou dost invade and conquer their lands, it is for no merit of thine, no right dispositions of thine; they are to perish at thy onslaught in punishment of their own ill-deeds, and because the Lord must needs fulfil the promise which He made on oath to thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Be well assured thou hadst no claim to the possession of this fair land the Lord thy God is bestowing on thee, a stiff-necked nation as thou art." - Deuteronomy 9, 4-6

Avoidance of idolatry (and of the related superstitious practices of soothsaying and divination, in chapter eighteen) was to be the condition of their continued possession of this gift of land, and idolatry was to be utterly condemned and exterminated from their society, to the extent that any idolater would be put to death by an act of the whole people: 

"Somewhere, unworthy sons of Israel are seducing their fellow-citizens, bidding them follow the worship of alien gods untried. Careful and anxious be thy search, to find out the truth of the matter; and if it proves that the report was true, and the foul deed has been done, then, without delay, put all the inhabitants of that city to the sword, and destroy it, with all that is in it, even the cattle in its byres. Make a pile in the streets of all its household store, and burn that with the city itself, as forfeit to the Lord thy God. Let it be a ruin for all time, never to be rebuilt." - Deuteronomy, 13: 13-16

The law book begins with a command to the people as a whole to support the tribe of the Levites (such as through the tithing system in chapter fourteen), which was to receive no inheritance of property, since God Himself was to be their inheritance - they had been appointed for sacred duty, and as a symbol of holiness among the people. Holiness of the people as a whole was to be another result of the second Law, which reiterated the purity conditions of the first Law, which included the dietary regulations. The jubilee year regulations and the great calendar festivals are reproduced in chapters fifteen and sixteen, and a government of judges and magistrates was required to settle disputes; this local government system in the various regions would still be subordinate to a higher court of the priests and Levites at the religious centre of the people (eventually Jerusalem) - a hierarchical system that was erected by Christ in the Christian Church as well. Severe rules are presented against homicide in chapter nineteen and various other offences in chapters twenty-one through twenty-five, including the stoning of unruly children!

"Is there a son so rebellious and unmanageable that he defies his parents’ bidding, and will not brook restraint? Such a son they must bring by force to the city gate, where the elders are assembled, and make complaint to them, 'This son of ours is rebellious and unmanageable; he pays no heed to our remonstrances, but must ever be carousing, ever at his wantonness and his cups.' Thereupon the citizens shall stone him to death, so that you may be rid of this plague, and every Israelite that hears of it may be afraid to do the like." - Deuteronomy, 21: 18-21

Now that is an extreme result of the fourth commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother, etc. This is quickly followed by the curse which Christ accepted upon Himself on our behalf:

"When a man is guilty of a capital crime, and his sentence is to hang on a gallows, his body must not be left to hang there on the gibbet, it must be buried the same day. God’s curse lies on the man who hangs on a gibbet, and the land which the Lord thy God gives thee for thy own must not suffer pollution." - Deuteronomy, 21: 22-23

There follows, in conclusion to the book of the Law, the command that the people are to surrender the first-fruits of their labour to God, in addition to the tithing system outlined earlier, for the support of the Levites and of foreigners, orphans and widows, with the following prayer:

"I have stripped my house, thou wilt tell Him, of all that I had vowed away, given it to Levite or to wanderer, to orphan or to widow, as Thou badest me; I have not neglected Thy will, or forgotten Thy commands. None of it has been eaten when I was in mourning, or set apart when I was defiled, or devoted to the dead; no, I have obeyed the Lord my God, and done all Thy bidding. Look down, then, from that sanctuary of Thine, that dwelling-place high in heaven, and bless Thy people Israel; bless the land Thou hast given us, that land, all milk and honey, which Thou didst promise to our fathers before us." - Deuteronomy, 26: 13-15

Once the Holy Land had been settled, a rite of blessing and cursing was to take place in the ancient sanctuary of Shechem, north of Jerusalem. This is described in detail in chapter twenty-seven and is comparable to the anathemas proclaimed against grave sin by the Church. The following description of blessings associated with the fulfilment of the Law and accompanying curses in chapter twenty-eight illustrate well what Saint "Paul called the burden of the Law in the letter to the Galatians and elsewhere:

"There is a passage in Scripture which, long beforehand, brings to Abraham the good news, 'Through thee all the nations shall be blessed;' and that passage looks forward to God’s justification of the Gentiles by faith. It is those, then, who take their stand on faith that share the blessing Abraham’s faithfulness won. Those who take their stand on observance of the Law are all under a curse; 'Cursed be everyone (we read) who does not persist in carrying out all that this book of the law prescribes.'" - Galatians, 3: 8-10

That last is Saint Paul actually quoting this part of Deuteronomy. Chapter twenty-eight actually describes in detail the almost total destruction of the people that would follow a general apostasy from God among them. The remainder of the book deals with the solemn appointment of Joshua/Iosue as captain of the people in the Conquest, the great song of Moses predicting the destruction of the people and their later restoration, and then a final blessing on the tribes by Moses and his death on mount Nebo. The scene is now set for the crossing of the Jordan and the conquest of the Holy Land.

Cemetery visits continue this month

Just ending the rosary at the Uttoxeter Road cemetery, a quiet place for a walk, once just outside the town. For the faithful departed, I ask peace, and life everlasting.

Churches in the East

I was looking through some old papers today and found this crib-sheet which I used to prepare for an exam on the Syrian churches of the East, while at seminary. We have a vague idea in the Latin church that there is another type of Christianity out in the East. Some of us know that there are Catholic Eastern-rite churches, such as the Ukrainian Catholic church and the Coptic Catholic church, but history has made things even more complicated. Apart from the group of Orthodox churches that are related either directly or indirectly to Greece and Constantinople, there is another loosely-associated group of churches called oriental churches. These oriental churches include the Egyptian Coptic church, and several Syrian churches, which use for a liturgical language something that is very like (although not precisely the same as) the language which Christ would have used commonly - Aramaic/Syriac. Classical Syriac developed during the heydays of the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, and has influences of both Greek and Hebrew.

I don't imagine that it's easy to squint at the picture in this blog post, so I'm going to very quickly go through some of it. Like every other church, but more directly in this case, the Syriac church has Jewish origins, and had an immense reach, going past Mesopotamia and Persia down to the southern tip of India and further East to China. It had immediate Jewish origins. When you hear Saint Luke's account of Saint Paul's adventures among the churches of the Holy Land and Damascus, we're already hearing of the most ancient Syrian Christian societies. Antioch-in-Syria, the great capital of the Seleucian kings of the past, and a seat of the Roman governor in the time of Christ, was the place where the pagans first distinguished us from the Jewish communities, calling us 'Christians':

"For a whole year after this they were made welcome in the Church there, teaching a great multitude. And Antioch was the first place in which the disciples were called Christians." - Acts of the Apostles, 11: 26

Syriac-speaking Christians were also called 'Nazarenes.' This has persisted, for they are still today called Nazerani, as we learned when they were marked out for extermination a few years ago by Islamists. Christianity arrived in Edessa (upper Mesopotamia) very early, and advanced in the second century, when the Arab Abgarid dynasty ruled that city and its dependencies. Edessa was the cradle of Syriac literature, and became a centre for the Syriac church, alongside Adiabene and Nisibis. The Greek Old Testament, commonly called the Septuagint, was used in about AD 150 to produce the Peshitta, a Syriac translation of Scripture that remains a standard in churches like the Maronite, Chaldean and other Syriac churches, even those in south India. Most of the Syriac churches and other Eastern Oriental churches remained in communion with Rome until the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when several of them separated away. Those who remained were called chalcedonian, and included the Melchite and the Greek Orthodox churches; those who separated became known as non-chalcedonian, and included the Syriac Orthodox and the Coptic churches. The separation was not merely theological, but political, especially after the Arab conquests and the invasions from the far East; the Byzantine Empire of the East was increasingly shored against the changing fortunes in the Holy Land, and lines of communication between Rome and Constantinople on the one hand and the Eastern centres of the Church began to close, to the point where European sailors in the fifteenth century found a Syriac church in south India that were in Catholic communion, but had heard little from Rome for centuries.

That course I attended at seminary pumped a lot of history into my head and its' practically all gone now. I remember being very sympathetic to the plight of these Syriac churches in the East, which have suffered very high levels of persecution for almost all of their existence. In fact, they are some of the most persecuted in the world today. To summarise the situation better than I ever could, here's a talk by Doctor Sebastian Brock at the Jesuit Heythrop College, which has always been friendly to the Eastern churches:

An historical timeline

Timelines can be useful in putting the Bible in perspective. The books of the Bible are not arranged in a chronological manner, so have a handy timeline at your side, reading through Scripture makes more sense. My favourite timeline, commercially available, is Jeff Cavin's colourful version. There's a short introduction to that in the video below. Meanwhile, I've installed a very simple timeline in the sidebar of this blog, at the very bottom, and I've drawn it down past the two thousand years of Christian history, placing my own favourite Saints into it. It's interesting to think that we're just about at the same distance from the time of Christ as were the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on the other side of history.

Daily Mass intentions

This is the usual weekend summary of the Mass intentions during the week. Mass was offered on Sunday for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+). Tuesday's and Thursday's intentions were both for the Holy Souls. Wednesday's Mass was for the repose of the soul of Kathleen McCormack (+), and Mass was offered today for the repose of the soul of Rosaleen Farrell (+). Today was also the anniversary of the death of the first bishop of the Diocese, Monsignor J. W. Hendren, who died in 1866. May eternal rest be granted them all, and may they rest in peace.

Some memories from Sunday's cemetery visit

I have thought to visit one of our cemeteries every Sunday afternoon in November. This week was Nottingham Road cemeteries, again. My third visit in a week, since we've been quite busy with funerals recently. One of the features of the Catholic sections of cemeteries in general is our delight in icons of the Saints. Here's a small selection of memorable ones:

First, here's our Lady of Mount Carmel. Notice the brown scapular in the hand of the Christ child.

Here's a Saint Francis of Assisi, with only two of his usual complement of animal friends.

Padre Pio accompanies most of the Italian graves, and a handful of the others.

Here's a Good Shepherd and a complete Pietà.

This is well-dressed. But notice the Saint Anthony rising up from among the flowers. It's rather rare to see one of him here.

And, finally, here's our Lady of Lourdes, stunning as always...

Daily Mass intentions

A recap of the Mass intentions this last week. Mass was offered on Sunday for the repose of the soul of Joan Spencer (+), and of Ben Keown (+), Patrick Higgins (+) and Lilly Yore (+) later in the week. And Mass was offered for the Holy Souls (++) on Monday. Eternal rest grant unto them all, and may eternal light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.

Saint Gregory the Great, Doctor of the Church

One of four Doctors of the Western Church, this great pope is closely linked to the English Church, for it was he that sent the monk Saint Augustine from the monastery Gregory himself had built on the Coelian hill in Rome to England. Augustine landed in Kent as abbot of a new monastic community and very soon with episcopal orders, being named by Gregory as first archbishop of Canterbury. Gregory had envisioned two metropolitan archbishoprics in England, but York was only to be lastingly established long afterwards. 

But what of the Holy Father Gregory? I'm indebted again to the Holy Father Benedict's summary in the collection of his sermons called Doctors of the Church. He was the bishop of Rome at the turn of the seventh century, sixty-fourth in the line of the Apostle Saint Peter, and patriarch of the Latin church, a member of a leading Roman family called Anicia, well-known as Christians and Catholics. Two other popes were Anicians, including Gregory's own great-great-grandfather, the Holy Father Felix III, in the fifth century. Both Gregory's parents, Gordian and Sylvia, are Saints of the Church, and his devout aunts Aemiliana and Tharsilla, contributed to his sure foundation as a Catholic. After a brief career in the civil service in the Holy City, he transformed the family home into the monastery of Saint Andrew on the Coelian hill and retreated there, but was called out of seclusion because of his reputation as an administrator and diplomat. The Holy Father Pelagius ordained him deacon and sent him as legate to Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, in order to deal with the monophysite heresy and to acquire assistance for Rome against the Germanic invaders called Lombards. Recalled to Rome, Gregory became secretary to the Holy Father. At a time of general turmoil, including terrible flooding and outbreak of disease, Pelagius died and Gregory was elected in AD 590 to the See of Saint Peter. He became a firm rock at a time when Europe was changing rapidly, as the old Empire continued to die and several Germanic tribes established a new order: Visigoths in Iberia, Franks in Gaul, Angles and Saxons in Britain, and the Lombards in north and central Italy. Gregory personally worked for peace in Italy, through dialogue with the Lombard king Agilulf and his Bavarian queen, Theodolinda, she a Catholic. Thus cultivating the Catholic faith among the Lombards, Gregory also established peace between them and the Byzantine power in Constantinople. Meanwhile, he established works of charity, helping the poor with food and ransoming the captives of the Lombards. And this he managed while himself in bad health, brought on apparently through his severely ascetic lifestyle. He died in AD 604, a father to his people, a foundation of peace and a source of hope in desperate times.

Saint Gregory leaves us much to profit from, including a registry of more than eight hundred letters (including to our Saint Augustine) and his homilies on Holy Scripture, we have his Dialogues, which were composed for Queen Theodolinda and demonstrated the importance of personal holiness, open to being acquired by all Christians, even in difficult times. There is also his Pastoral Rule, his original programme for the Church, written at the beginning of his pontificate, which calls the care of souls 'the art of all arts.' Like the other Fathers, Gregory was not very innovative in his thought but reproduced the traditional teaching of the Church. The Holy Father Benedict XVI calls this intellectual humility, which Gregory thought was primary to being able to understand theology, and that beginning from Holy Scripture. Only what is deeply understood by the Christian can then reach the ear of those he is preaching to, and Gregory thought all Christians should be preachers. Gregory emphasised the moral sense of Scripture - bringing action forth from the understanding of the written word. He left a strong record on ecumenical relations between the various churches, coining the term 'servant of the servants of God,' the touchstone of episcopal humility, which the popes still use as a title. And that's a good place to end this essay.