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| Lent - a time for Reflection & Reconciliation; Reflections and meditations | |
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| Topic Started: Thursday, 22. February 2007, 23:45 (329 Views) | |
| KatyA | Monday, 16. March 2009, 11:01 Post #16 |
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VATICAN CITY, MARCH 15, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the first Lenten sermon Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, gave Friday at the Vatican in the presence of Benedict XVI and the Curia. "All Creation Has Been Groaning and Suffering in Labor Pains" (Romans 8:22) The Holy Spirit in the Creation and Transformation of the Cosmos 1. The world in a state of anticipation During Advent St. Paul introduced us to the knowledge and love of Christ. Now during Lent the Apostle will serve as our guide in knowing and loving the Holy Spirit. For this purpose I have chosen Chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, because it contains the most complete and profound treatise on the Holy Spirit among all the Pauline writing and the entire New Testament. We would like to reflect on the following verse: "In my estimation, all that we suffer in the present time is nothing in comparison with the glory which is destined to be disclosed for us, for the whole creation is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed. It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it -- with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God. We are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labor pains" (Romans 8:18-22). One of the exegetical topics that has long been debated with regards to this text is meaning of the Greek word for creation, ktisis. In using the work creation, ktisis, St. Paul sometimes refers to the world in its entirety, that is humanity and cosmos together; other times he is referring to God’s act of creating the world, or the new creation that comes from Christ's Passion and Resurrection. Augustine[1], and even some modern authors[2], believes that the term refers to the human world. Therefore no cosmic prospective, in reference to matter, should be attributed to the text. The distinction between "the entire creation" and "we who possess the first fruits of the Spirit," would be a distinction only made within the human world and would be the same as the distinction between humanity that is not redeemed and humanity that is redeemed by Christ. Nevertheless, the almost unanimous opinion nowadays is that the word ktisis refers to creation as a whole, which is both the material world and the world of humanity. The statement that creation is subject to vanity "through no fault of its own," would be meaningless unless it refers precisely to material creation. The Apostle sees this creation as permeated by a sense of anticipation, in a "state of internal tension." The object of this anticipation is the revelation of the glory of God's children. "In its seemingly closed and immobile existence, creation… impatiently awaits the glorified man, for whom it will be the 'world,' and therefore will it also be glorified."[3] This state of suffering anticipation is caused by the fact that creation, through no fault of its own, has been dragged into a state of godlessness that the Apostle describes in the beginning of his letter (ref. Romans 1:18 and following). There he defines this state as an "injustice" and a "lie." Here he uses the words "vanity" (mataiotes) and corruption (phthora) which mean the same thing: "a loss of meaning, unreal, lack of strength, splendor, the Spirit and life." This state is not closed or definitive. There is hope for creation! Not because creation, as such, is capable of subjectively hoping, but rather because God intends to rescue it. This hope is tied to the redeemed man, the "son of God." In an action apposed to Adam's, someday he will definitively raise up the cosmos in its own state of freedom and glory. This is the basis for Christian's deepest responsibility with regards to the world: beginning now, to display the signs of the freedom and glory to which the entire universe is called; to suffer with hope, knowing that "the sufferings of the present moment are nothing compared to the future glory that will be manifested in us." In the final verse the Apostle sets this vision of faith on a burning and dramatic image: The entire creation is compared to a woman who suffers and moans in labor pain. Within human experience, this is a suffering that is always mixed with joy, very different from the world's silent and hopeless tears, which Virgil spoke of in the Aeneid: "sunt lacrimae rerum," these are tears for things.[4] 2. The thesis of "Intelligent design." Is it "Science or Faith"? The Apostle's prophetic and faith filled vision offers us the chance to touch upon a topic that today is heavily debated regarding the presence, or lack there of, of a divine project internal to creation. At the same time we don't want to place too great of a scientific or philosophical burden on the Pauline text, which it is evident is doesn't have. The 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (Feb. 12, 1809) makes this type of reflection even more opportune and needed. In Paul's view God is at the beginning and end of the world's history. He mysteriously guides it toward a purpose, making even the excesses of human liberty serve this purpose. The material world serves man and man serves God. It is not just Paul's idea. The theme of the final liberation of matter and its participation in the glory of God's children finds a parallel in the themes of the "new heavens and new earth" of the Second Letter of Peter (3:13) and Revelation (21:1). The first great novelty of this vision is that it speaks to us about liberation of matter, not about liberation from matter, as happened among almost all the old concepts of salvation: Platonism, Gnosticism, Docetism, Manichaeism, and Catharism. St. Irenaeus spent his entire life countering the Gnostic belief according to which "matter is incapable of salvation."[5] The problem is presented in different terms within the current dialogue between science and faith, but the substance is the same. It is about knowing whether the cosmos was thought of and willed by someone, or if it is the result of "chance and necessity"; if its path displays signs of an intelligence and moves toward a precise purpose, or if it evolves blindly, so to speak, obeying only its own laws and biological mechanisms. The thesis of believers in this respect has come to be referred to in English as Intelligent design, (it's understood that the design belongs to the Creator). In my opinion what has created so much discussion and argument about this idea has been the fact that no clear distinction is made between intelligent design as a scientific theory and intelligent design as a truth of faith. As a scientific theory, the thesis of "intelligent design" states that it is possible to prove that the world has an external author, based on the very analysis of creation, and therefore scientifically, and that it displays signs of an organizing intelligence. This is the statement that the majority of scientists intend to question (and the only one they can question!), not the statement about faith, which the believer receives from revelation and which even his intelligence feels to be intimately true and needed. If, as many scientists believe (not all!), it is pseudo-science to make "Intelligent Design" a scientific conclusion, it is just as much pseudo-science to discount the existence of "Intelligent Design" based on the results of science. Science could posit this pretext if it could explain all things by itself: thus not only the "how" of the world, but also the "what" and the "why." Science well knows that it is not within its purview to do this. Even the person that removes the idea of god from his perspective, cannot also remove the mystery at the same time. There is always an unanswered questions: Why is there being and not nothingness? Even the very nothingness is perhaps less inscrutable of a mystery to us than being, and chance an enigma that is less unexplainable than God? I've read this significant acknowledgement in a scientific book written by an nonbeliever: If we go back over the story of the world, as you would flip through a book from the last page toward the first, when we finished we would realize that the first page was missing, the "incipit." We know everything about the world, except why and how it began. The believer is convinced that the Bible provides us just this first page that is missing. Just as in every book, this is the page where the name, author and title of the book are written! An analogy can help us reconcile our faith in the existence of God's intelligent design for the world with the apparent fortuity and unpredictability highlighted by Darwin and current science. It deals with the relationship between grace and freedom. As in the spiritual field grace leaves space to the unpredictability of human freedom and even works through it, so also in the physical and biological world everything is based on the play of the second causes (the fight for survival of species according to Darwin, chance and necessity according to Monod); Even if this very play is contemplated and assumed by God's providence. In both cases, as the saying goes, God "writes straight with crooked lines." 3. The evolution and the Trinity The debate between creationism and evolutionism tends to take place in dialogue with the contrary thesis, one of a materialistic and atheistic nature. So it is necessarily a dialogue conducted in apologetic terms. In a reflection conducted between believers and for believers, as we are doing, we cannot stop at this point. Stopping here would imply remaining prisoners of a "deist" vision of the problem, and not yet Trinitarian, and therefore not specifically Christian. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is the one who opened the conversation on evolutionism to a Trinitarian dimension. This scholar's contribution to the discussion on evolution essentially consists of having introduced the person of Christ into conversation, of making it a Christological problem as well.[6] His biblical starting point is Paul's statement, according to which "all things were created through him and for him" (Colossians 1:16). Christ appears in this vision as the Omega Point, that is, as the meaning and final destination of cosmic and human evolution. We can debate the method and the arguments through which this Jesuit scholar arrives to his conclusion, but not the conclusion itself. Maurice Blondel explains the reason well in a note written in defence of Teilhard de Chardin: "Faced with the grandiose horizons of nature and humanity, without betraying Catholicism, we cannot rely on mediocre explanations and ways of seeing things that are limited, which make Christ a historic incident, which isolate him in the cosmos as a minor episode, or seem to make him an intruder or a lost soul within the overpowering and hostile immensity of the Universe.[7] What is still missing, for a completely Trinitarian vision of the problem, is an understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the creation and evolution of the cosmos. This is required by the basic principle of Trinitarian theology according to which the works ad extra of God are shared by all three of the persons of the Trinity, each of which participates in them with their own characteristics. The Pauline text we are meditating on allows us to fill this gap. The allusion to creation's labor pains is made within the context of Paul's discourse on the different workings of the Holy Spirit. He sees continuity between the creation's groaning and the Christian's which is openly placed in relationship with the Spirit: "It (the material world) is not the only one, but we also, who posses the first fruits of the Spirit, moan internally." The Holy Spirit is the mysterious strength that pushes creation toward its fulfillment. Speaking about the evolution of the social order, the Second Vatican Council states, "God's Spirit which, with admirable providence, directs the course of the times and renews the face of the earth, is present in such an evolution."[8] He who is "the beginning of the creation of things"[9], is also the beginning of its evolution in time. In fact, this is nothing other than the creation that continues on. The Holy Father Benedict XVI highlighted this concept during the address given Oct. 31, 2008, to the participants in the symposium on evolution, promoted by the Pontifical Academy of the sciences: "As I said, stating that the foundation of the cosmos and its development is the wisdom provided by the Creator is not to say that creation only deals with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. Rather, this implies that the Creator establishes these developments and sustains them, he appoints them and constantly maintains them." What specific and "personal" thing does the Spirit contribute to creation? That depends, as always, on the relationships within the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is not at the beginning, but so to say, at the end of creation, just as it is not at the beginning, but rather the end of the Trinitarian process. St. Basil writes that in creation, the Father is the principle cause, he from whom all things are; the Son is the efficient cause, he through whom all things are made; the Holy Spirit is the perfecting cause.[10] The creating action of the Spirit is, therefore, the origin of the perfection of creation. We would say that he is not so much the one who makes the world go from the nothing to being, but rather he who makes the world go from being formless to being formed and perfected. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the one who makes creation go from chaos to cosmos, who makes something beautiful, ordered and clean from creation: precisely a “mundus” (world)" according to the original meaning of the Latin word. St. Ambrose observes: "When the Spirit began to gently blow on it, creation did not yet have any beauty. Instead, when creation received the working of the Spirit, it obtained all the splendor of beauty which made it shine as 'world.'"[11] It is not that the creative action of the Father was "chaotic" and needing correction, but rather the Father himself, as St. Basil notes in the text referenced, wants to make all things exist through the Son and wants to bring all things to perfection through the Spirit. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and deserted and darkness covered the abyss and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters" (Genesis 1:1-2). The Bible itself, as can be seen, alludes to the universe's passing from a formless and chaotic state to a state on the path of progressive formation and differentiation of creatures and mentions the Spirit of God as the principle of this passage or evolution. This passage is presented in the Bible as sudden and immediate. Science has revealed that it extended over millions of years and is still in action. But this should not create any problems, once we know the purpose and literary genre of the biblical account. Based on the sense of analogous expressions presented in the Babylonian cosmological poems, today the expression "spirit of god" (ruach 'elohim) from Genesis' chapters 1 and 2 tends to be attributed a purely naturalistic sense of strong wind. It is seen as an element of the primordial chaos, on par with the abyss and darkness, thus tying it to what came earlier, not to what follows in the story of creation.[12] But the image of "God's breath" returns in the next chapter of Genesis (God "blew a breath of life into the nose of man and man became a living being") with a "theological" sense and certainly not a naturalistic sense. To exclude every reference in the text to the divine reality of the Holy Spirit, no matter how nascent, attributing the creative activity exclusively to the word of God, would mean reading the text only in light of what comes before it and not in light of what comes after it in the Bible; in the light of the influences it has undergone and not also the influence it has exercised, contrary to what the most recent biblical hermeneutics suggest. (Isn't the surest way to establish the nature of an unknown seed to see what type of plant comes from it?) Reflecting on the unfolding of the revelation, we find little by little signs that are ever more explicit of the creative activity of the breath of God, in close connection with that of his Word. "By the word (dabar) of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath (ruach) of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6; cf. also Isaiah 11:4: "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips He shall slay the wicked"). Spirit and breath certainly do not indicate, in these texts, the natural wind. Another Psalm refers to that same text, stating: "When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground" (Psalm 104:30). Hence, no matter what interpretation one wishes to give Genesis 1:2, it is a fact that the rest of the Bible attributes to the Spirit of God an active role in creation. This line of development becomes very clear in the New Testament which describes the intervention of the Holy Spirit in the new creation, making use precisely of the images of breath and wind that are read in regard to the origin of the world (cf. John 20:22 with Genesis 2:7). The idea of the creative ruach cannot be born from nothing. In the same commentary or edition of the Bible, one cannot translate Genesis 1:2 with "a wind of God breathed over the waters" and then refer to that same text to explain the dove in Jesus' baptism![13] Hence, it is not incorrect to continue to refer to Genesis 1:2 and to other subsequent testimonies, to find a biblical foundation for the creative role of the Holy Spirit, as the Fathers did. "If you adopt this explanation," said St. Basil, followed in this by Luther, "it will bring great profit."[14] And it is true: To perceive in the "Spirit of God" that moved across the waters a first embryonic reference to the creative action of the Spirit opens up the understanding to so many subsequent passages of the Bible, the origin of which otherwise could not be explained. 4. Easter, Passage from Old Age to Youth Let us now identify some practical consequences that the biblical vision of the role of the Holy Spirit can have for our theology and for our spiritual life. As regards the theological applications, I remember only one: the participation of Christians in the obligation to respect and safeguard creation. For the believing Christian, ecology is not only a practical necessity of survival or a political or economic problem; it has a theological foundation. Creation is the work of the Holy Spirit! Paul speaks to us of a creation that "groans and suffers in the pangs of birth." To this, his cry of birth, is mixed in a cry of agony and death. Nature is subjected once again "without its will," to a vanity and pollution, different from those of the spiritual order intended by Paul, but derived from the same source that is sin and man's egoism. The Pauline text that we are meditating might inspire more than one consideration on the problem of ecology: Are we, who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, hastening "the full liberation of the cosmos and its participation to the glory of the children of God," or are we retarding it, as are all the others? But lets come to a more personal application. We say that man is a microcosm; to him, therefore, as individual, is applied all that we have said in general of the cosmos. The Holy Spirit is he who makes each one of us pass from chaos to the cosmos: From disorder, from confusion and from dispersion, to order, unity and beauty, that beauty which consists of being conformed to the will of God and in the image of Christ, in passing from the old man to the new man. With a veiled autobiographic reference, the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians: "Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day" (2 Corinthians 4:16). The evolution of man's spirit does not take place in a parallel manner to that of his body, but in the opposite sense. In recent days, given the three Oscars and the fame of the actor, there has been much talk of a film entitled "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a story by writer Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. It is the story of a man who is born old, with the monstrous features of an 80-year-old and, growing, he is reinvigorated to the point of dying as a real baby. The story is of course paradoxical, but there could be an all-together more real application if transferred to the spiritual plane. We are born "old men" and we must become "new men." The whole of life, not just adolescence, is a "an evolutionary age!" According to the Gospel, one is not born a child but becomes a child! St. Maximus of Turin, a Father of the Church, describes Easter as a passage "from sins to holiness, from vices to virtues, from old age to youth: a youth understood not of age but of simplicity. We were in fact fallen by the old age of sins, but by the Resurrection of Christ we were renewed in the innocence of children."[15] Lent is the ideal time to apply oneself to this reinvigoration. A preface of this time states: "You have established for your children a time of spiritual renewal, so that they may convert to you with their whole heart, and free from the ferment of sin live the vicissitudes of this world, always oriented toward eternal goods." A prayer, stemming from the Gelasian Sacramentary of the 7th century is still in use in the Easter Vigil; it proclaims solemnly: "Let the whole world see and recognize that all that is destroyed is reconstructed, all that is old is renewed, and everything returns to its integrity, through Christ who is the principle of all things." The Holy Spirit is the soul of this renewal and rejuvenation. Let us begin our day by saying, with the first verse of the hymn in his honor: Come Creator Spirit, renew in my life the prodigy of the first creation, blow over the void, the darkness and the chaos of my heart, and guide me toward the full realization of the "intelligent design" of God on my life. http://www.zenit.org/article-25366?l=english |
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| Derekap | Monday, 16. March 2009, 11:15 Post #17 |
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I tried hard to follow it but frankly I had to give-up half-way through. Admittedly it may well be accepable to many intellectual minds but not my humble mind. |
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| KatyA | Monday, 16. March 2009, 11:43 Post #18 |
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I'm inclined to agree - it's not for skimming through. The address was given to the Pope and Cardinals, so at least it provides an opportunity to see how they are spending Lent. The sermon certainly covers a lot of ground. Katy |
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| KatyA | Monday, 23. March 2009, 19:42 Post #19 |
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VATICAN CITY, MARCH 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the second Lenten sermon Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, gave Friday at the Vatican in the presence of the Curia. 1. The law of the Spirit and Pentecost The way in which the Apostle begins his discussion of the Holy Spirit in Chapter 8 of the letter to the Romans is truly surprising: "Thus, condemnation will never come to those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit which gives life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death." He spent the entire preceding chapter using positive and uplifting words in describing the law. "The law of the Spirit" means the law that is the Spirit; the term is a genitive of apposition, or of definition; such as the phrase the flower of the rose refers to the flower that is itself a rose. In order to understand what Paul means through this brief expression we need to refer to the event of Pentecost. In the Acts of the Apostles the story about the coming of the Holy Spirit begins with the words: "When Pentecost day came round, they had all met together" (Acts 2: 1). We deduce from these words that Pentecost predated... Pentecost. In other words, there already was a Pentecost feast day within Judaism and that was the feast day when the Holy Spirit descended. There were fundamentally two different interpretations of the feast of Pentecost in the Old Testament. In the beginning Pentecost was the feast of the seven weeks (ref. Tobit 2:1), the feast of the harvest (ref. Numbers 28:26), when the first fruits were offered to God (ref. Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 16:9). Then afterward, in the time of Jesus, the feast was enriched with a new meaning: it was the feast of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai and of the covenant; in essence, the feast that celebrated the events described in Exodus chapters 19 and 20. (In fact, according to calculations based on the bible text, the law as given on Sinai fifty days after Passover). Pentecost was transformed from being a feast tied to nature's cycles (the harvest) into a feast tied to salvation history: "This day of the feast of the weeks is the time of the gift of our Torah" says a text from the current Jewish liturgy. When they left Egypt the people walked for fifty days in the desert and, at the end of these, God gave Moses the law. Based on the law he established a covenant with the people and made them "a kingdom of priests and a holy people." (Ref. Exodus 19:4-6) It seems like Luke purposefully described the descent of the Holy Spirit using terms that characterized the theophany of Sinai. In fact he used images that call to mind earthquakes and fire. The Church's liturgy confirms this interpretation by putting Exodus 19 among the readings of the Pentecost vigil. What does this juxtaposition tell us about our Pentecost? In other words, what is meant by the fact that the Holy Spirit descends on the Church on the very day when Israel commemorated the gift of the law and the covenant? Even St. Augustine asked himself this question: "Why do even the Jews celebrate Pentecost? This is a great and marvelous mystery brothers: if you realize, on the day of Pentecost they received the law written by God's hand and on the same day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came."[1] Another Father of the Church, this time from the East, helps us see that this interpretation of Pentecost was a common patrimony of the whole Church during the first centuries: "The law was given on the day of Pentecost; it was appropriate then that on the day when the old law was given, the same day the grace of the Spirit be also given."[2] The answer to our question is clear at this point, that is because the Spirit descends on the apostles precisely on the day of Pentecost: to point out that he is the new law, the spiritual law that seals the new and eternal covenant and that consecrates the royal and priestly people that are the Church. What a great revelation on the meaning of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit himself! St. Augustine exclaims: "Who would not be struck by both this coincidence and also this difference?" There are fifty days between the celebration of Passover and the day when Moses received the law written by God's hands on tablets. So also, fifty days after the death and resurrection of him who was led like a lamb to the slaughter, God's hand, that is the Holy Spirit, poured himself into the faithful gathered all together.[3] All of a sudden this sheds light on Jeremiah and Ezekiel's prophecies about the new covenant: "this is the covenant I shall make with the House of Israel when those days have come, Yahweh declares. Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33) It is no longer written on stone tablets, but rather on their hearts; it is no longer and external law, but rather an interior law. Ezekiel takes ups and completes Jeremiah's prophecy, better explaining what this interior law is: "I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments." (Ezekiel 36:26-27) In using the expression "the law of the Spirit" St. Paul refers to this whole group of prophecies linked to the theme of the new covenant. This appears clearly in the passage in which he calls the community of the new covenant a "letter from Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets, but rather on the tablets of our hearts" and in it he defines the apostles as "Ministers suitable to a new covenant, not of letter, but of the Spirit; because the letter kills, the Spirit gives life" (ref. Corinthians 3:3-6). 2. What is the law of the Spirit and how does it act So the new law, the law of the Spirit, strictly speaking is not the law Jesus proclaimed during the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, it is the law that he inscribes in hearts on Pentecost. Certainly the gospel precepts are more elevated and perfect that the mosaic precepts. Nevertheless, even these would have been inefficient in and of themselves. If it was enough to just proclaim the new will of God through the Gospel, it wouldn't explain what need there was for Jesus to die and the Holy Spirit to come. But the apostles themselves demonstrated that it was not enough; even though they heard everything, for example that we need to turn the check to those who strike us, during the passion they did not have the strength to follow any of Jesus' commandments. If Jesus had limited himself to promulgate the new commandment, saying: "I give you a new commandment: that you love on another" (John 13:34), this would have been "letters" as the old law was. It was at Pentecost, when he infused that love in the hearts of his disciples through the Holy Spirit, that this commandment became a new law in the full sense, a law of the Spirit that gives life. It is because of the Spirit that the commandment is "new", not because of the letter. Based on the letter, this was an old law since it was already found in the Old Testament (ref. Leviticus 19:18). Without the interior grace of the Spirit, even the Gospel, and so also the new commandment would have remained old law, letter. St. Thomas takes a bold idea from St. Augustine. He writes: "he letter denotes any writing external to man, even that of the moral precepts such as are contained in the Gospel. Wherefore the letter, even of the Gospel would kill, unless there were the inward presence of the healing grace of faith."[4] What he wrote a bit before that is even more explicit: "The new law is principally the same grace of the Holy Spirit that is given to the believers."[5] But this new law that is the Spirit, how exactly does it work and in what send can it be called ‘law'? It works through love! The new law is nothing other than what Jesus calls the "new commandment." The Holy Spirit has written the new law in our hearts, infusing love in them: "the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." (Romans 5:5) This love is the love with which God loves us and by which, at the same time, we are made capable of loving him and our neighbor: amor quo Deus nos diligit et quo ipse nos dilectores sui facit.[6] It is a new capacity for love. The person who approaches the Gospel with a human mentality finds it absurd that love is turned into a "commandment"; what love is there, they object, if it is not free, but commanded? The answer is that there are two ways through which people can be led to do something or not do something: by constriction or by attraction. Positive law leads to action by the first means, constriction, through the threat of punishment; love leads to action by the second means, through attraction. In fact, everyone is attracted by what they love, without suffering an external constriction. Show a child nuts and you will see him reach out to grab them. Who is pushing him? No one, he is attracted by the object of his desire. Show the Good to a soul that thirsts for truth and he will pursue it. Who is pushing him? No one, he is attracted by his desire. Love is like a "weight" on the soul that attracts us toward the object of our desire, in which we know we will find our rest.[7] It is in this sense that the Holy Spirit, specifically love, is a "law", a "commandment": this creates a dynamism within the Christian which bring him to do everything God wants, spontaneously, without even needing to think about it, because he has made God's will his own and he loves everything that God loves. We can say that living in grace, governed by the new law of the Spirit, is a way of living "in love", that is transported by love. The same change that falling in love creates in the rhythm of human life and in the relationship between two creatures, the coming of the Holy Spirit creates within the relationship between man and God. 3. Love preserves the law... What place does following the commandments have within this new economy of the Spirit? This is a neuralgic point that should be clarified. Even after Pentecost the written law continues to exist: there are God's Ten Commandments, and the evangelical precepts; the church laws were added to these immediately thereafter. What meaning do the codices of cannon law have, monastic rules, religious vows, in short, everything that is an objective will that is imposed on me from the outside? Are things such as these external to the Christian organism? We know that over the history of the Church there have been movements that have thought like this and have refused all laws in the name of the freedom of the Spirit, so much so that they have even called themselves "anonymous" movements. But these have always been denounced by the authority of the Church and by the very Christian conscience. Even in our day, in a cultural context characterized by atheistic existentialism, the law is no longer refused in the name of the name of freedom of the Spirit, but rather in the name of pure human liberty. One of the characters in J. P. Sarte's works says: "There is no longer anything in heaven, neither good nor evil, nor any person that can give me orders. I am a man, and every man must invent his own path."[8] The Christian response to this problem comes to us from the Gospel. Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the law, but to "bring it to fulfillment". (Ref. Matthew 5:17) And what is the "fulfillment" of the law? "Complete fulfillment of the law, responds the Apostle, is love! (Romans 13:10) Jesus says that all the law and the prophets depend on the commandment of love (Ref. Matthew 22:40). Love, therefore, cannot substitute the law, but it observes the way, it "observes" it, it "fulfills" it. In fact, it is the only force that makes it be observed. In Ezekiel's prophecy the new possibilities for observing God's law are attributed to the future gift of the Holy Spirit and the new heart: "I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments." (Ezekiel 36:27) And Jesus says in the same sense: "Anyone who loves me will keep my word" (John 14:23), that is he will capable of observing it. There isn't opposition or incompatibility within the new economy between the internal law of the Spirit and the external written law. On the contrary, rather, there is full collaboration: the former is provided in order to protect the later: "The law was given because grace was being sought, and grace was given so that the law would be observed."[9] The observance of the commandments and, in practice, obedience are the sounding board of love, the sign to recognize whether one is living "by the Spirit" or "by the flesh." So what is the difference, if we are still supposed to observe the law? The difference is that before we observed the law to get life from it which it could not give, and so it became an instrument of death. Now we observe the law to live in coherence with the life received. The observance of the law is no longer the cause of justification, but rather the effect. In this sense the Apostle is right to say that his words do not annul the law, but rather confirm it and ennoble it: "Are we saying that the Law has been made pointless by faith? Out of the question; we are placing the Law on its true footing." (Romans 3:31) 4. And the law protects love A type of circularity and circumincession is created between the law and love. If it is in fact true that love takes care of the law, it is also true that the law take care of love. In different ways the law is at the service of love and defends it. We know that "the law is given for sinners" and we are still now sinners (ref. 1 Timothy 1:9). Yes, we have received the Spirit, but only the first fruits of the spirit; the old man still lives with the new man as long as there is concupiscence in us, and providentially that there are commandments which can help us recognize and combat him, even if only with the threat of punishment. The law is a support for our liberty which is still uncertain and unsteady in good. The law is for and not against liberty. It's necessary to say that those who have believed they could reject every law, in the name of human liberty, are mistaken. They misunderstand the real and historic situation in which that liberty operates. In addition to this function, which we can call negative, the law performs another positive action of discernment. With the grace of the Holy Spirit, we adhere globally to God's will, we make it our own and we desire to do it, but we do not yet know it in all its implications. These are revealed to us, by the law in addition to from the happenings of life. There is a deeper sense in which you could say that the law watches over love: "Only when there is the duty to love," wrote Kierkegaard "is love then guaranteed against every change; eternally freed in blessed independence; protected by eternal happiness against all despair."[10] The meaning of these words is as follows: the man that loves, the more intensely he loves, the more he can see the dangers that this his love is in; It is danger that does not come from others but from within himself. If fact, he knows well that he is changeable and that tomorrow, alas, he could grow tired and not love anymore. And since now that he is in love he sees clearly what an irreparable loss this would be, he guards against it by "tying himself" to love with the law. In this way he anchors his act of love, which happen in time, to eternity. This supposes that we are dealing with true love and not, as the Philosopher says, a game and a mutual teasing. True love, explains the Pope, in the encyclical Deus caritas est, "it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being "for ever". Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal."[11] Man today asks himself with increasing frequency what relationship there can ever be between the love between two young people and the law of marriage and what need there is for love to "bind itself" since it is by its nature free and spontaneous. Because of this, there are ever more people who come to refute, in theory or in practice, the institution of marriage and choose the so called free love or simply living together. Only if we discover the deep and vital relationship that there is between law and love, between decision and institution, can we respond correctly to those questions and give young people a convincing reason to "bind themselves" to love forever and not to be afraid of making love a "duty." The duty to love protects love from "desperation" and makes it "happy and independent" in the sense that it protects it from the despair of not being able to love forever. Kierkegaard says, give me a person that is truly in love and you will see whether the thought of having to love forever is a weight for him or rather the highest bliss. This consideration is not only true for human love, but even more so, for divine love. Why, we could be asked, should we bind ourselves to loving God, submitting ourselves to a religious rule, why make "vows" that "restrict" us to be poor, chaste and obedient, since we have a internal and spiritual law that can obtain all of that through "attraction?" It is because, in a moment of grace, you have felt attracted to God, you loved him and wanted to possess him forever, totally, and fearing losing him because of your instability, you have "bound" yourself to him to protect your lover from every "alteration." We bind ourselves for the same reason that Ulysses tied himself to the mast of the ship. Ulysses wanted at all costs to return to see his homeland and the wife he loved. She knew he had to pass through the place of the Sirens and fearing that he would be shipwrecked like so many others before him, he had himself tied to the mast of the ship after having his companions ears plugged. When they arrived to where the sirens were he was bewitched, he wanted to reach out to them and he screamed to be freed, but his sailors did not hear him and thus the danger passed and he was able to reach his goal. 5. There is no condemnation! Before concluding, let us turn to the initial statement where we began: "There is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because the law of the Spirit that gives life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death." The world at the time of the Apostle lived oppressed by a sense of condemnation and separation from the divine, which they tried to overcome through various mystical cults. A great scholar of antiquity has defined it as an "epoch of anguish" (E.R. Dodds). To have an idea of the effect St. Paul's words must have had on the intellectuals of his time, we should think of a man that is condemned to death who lives awaiting the execution and one day he hears a friendly voice cry out: "Clemency! You've been granted clemency! All the sentences have been lifted. You're free!" It is like feeling born again. This charge of freedom is still intact because the Holy Spirit is not subject to the laws of entropy as all the sources of physical energy are. All of us have the duty to open our hearts to receive it and the ministers of the Word even today should make it ring out vibrantly throughout the world. Zenit |
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| KatyA | Friday, 27. March 2009, 22:55 Post #20 |
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Biblical Reflection for 5th Sunday of Lent B By Father Thomas Rosica, CSB TORONTO, MARCH 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year B) invites us to fix our gaze upon Jesus, the model priest of suffering, compassion and human solidarity. First, let us consider John’s Gospel story from Chapter 12 -- a fitting climax to Jesus' public ministry. It is the last official act before the events of his passion next Sunday. There are Gentiles, non-Jews, who seek Jesus out for the first time. They do not come simply to catch a glimpse of him, to have some general audience with him, but rather to "see" him. In John's Gospel, "seeing" Jesus is believing in him. How simple yet how stunning a request: "Sir, we would like to see Jesus" [John 12:21]! Throughout the entire Scriptures, men and women have longed to see God, to gaze upon God's countenance, beauty and glory. How many times in the psalms do we ask to see the face of God? "Shine your face on your servant" (Psalm 119:135). Not only do we beg to see God's face, but we are told to look for it. "Seek my face," says the Lord (Psalm 27:8). But we cannot seem to find the face we are told to look for. Then the laments begin: "Do not hide your face from me" (Psalm 102:2). "Why do you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 88:14). "How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:2). We beg, we seek, but we cannot find God's face. Then we are distraught. Moses, speaking as friend-to-friend, asked to see God's face. But God said to him, "You cannot see my face; for no one shall see my face and live" (Exodus 33:20). When we ask in the Psalms to see God's face, we are really asking to see God as God truly is, to gaze into the depths of God. In the last chapter of the last book of the Scriptures, it is written: "They will see his face" (Revelation 22:4). We see God's face revealed to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. How often do we long to “see” the face of Jesus? Where are we seeking his face today? What do we do when we finally “see” the face of Jesus? Garden of suffering The author of the Letter to the Hebrews is filled with the thoughts and theology of Paul and John, but he also contemplates Jesus' agony in the garden in relation to temple sacrifices and the priesthood according to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Old Testament never dreamed of requiring the high priest to make himself like his brothers and sisters, but was preoccupied on the contrary with separating him from them. An attitude of compassion toward sinners appeared to be incompatible with the priesthood of the Old Covenant. Furthermore, no text ever required that the high priest should be free from all sin. Hebrews 5:7-9 presents us with a different type of priesthood -- one of extraordinary compassion and solidarity. In his days on earth, Jesus shared our flesh and blood, crying out with prayers and silent tears. Jesus has been tested in all respects like us -- he knows all of our difficulties; he is a tried man; he knows our condition from the inside and from the outside -- only by this did he acquire a profound capacity for compassion. That is the only kind of priesthood that makes a difference, and that matters, then and now. What does this image of Jesus teach us today? Far from creating an abyss between Jesus Christ and ourselves, our own daily trials and weaknesses have become the privileged place of our encounter with him, and not only with him, but with God himself. The consequence is that from now on, not one of us can be bowed down under a painful situation without finding that Christ is, by that very fact, at our side. Jesus was "heard because of his 'reverence' or his 'pious submission.'" And we are given the consolation that we, too, will be heard because of our own persistence in prayer, our reverence before God and our pious submission to his will for us. John Paul II's agony We read in today’s Gospel passage that the Greeks address themselves first to Philip, who is from the village of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee: "Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus" (John 12:22). To see Jesus, one must be led to him by an apostle. The testimony of those who lived with him, at his side, shows him to us and we cannot do without this testimony. We need the apostolic writings, especially the Gospels, handed down to us by tradition, of which our parents, priests, deacons, teachers, catechists, preachers and other believers are witnesses and bearers of the Good News. How important and necessary it is to recognize those key people in our lives who are living witnesses and links to the tradition and the Good News about Jesus Christ! One such person for millions of people throughout the world was Karol Wojtyla, the man we know as Pope John Paul II. Four years ago this week, the world witnessed the agony and passion of this Successor of Peter in a most public way. As we commemorate the fourth anniversary of the John Paul II's death on April 2, I cannot help but recall those moving days and see how much he revealed to us the face of God and the image of Jesus crucified. One of the most powerful lessons he taught us in the twilight of his Pontificate was that everyone must suffer, even the Vicar of Christ. Rather than hide his infirmities, as most public figures do, he let the whole world see what he went through. In the final act of his life, the athlete was immobilized, the distinctive, booming voice silenced, and the hand that produced voluminous encyclicals no longer able to write. Yet nothing made John Paul II waver, even the debilitating sickness hidden under the glazed Parkinsonian mask, and ultimately his inability to speak and move. Many believe that the most powerful message he preached was when the words and actions failed. One of the unforgettable, silent, teaching moments of those final days took place on Good Friday night 2005, while the Pope, seated in his private chapel in the Vatican, viewed the television coverage of the Via Crucis from Rome’s Colosseum. At the station commemorating the death of the Lord, a television camera in the papal chapel showed the Pope embracing a cross in his hands with his cheek resting against the wood. His accepting of suffering and death needed no words. The image spoke for itself. Several hours before his death, Pope John Paul's last audible words were: "Let me go to the house of the Father." In the intimate setting of prayer, as Mass was celebrated at the foot of his bed and the throngs of faithful sang below in St. Peter's Square, he died at 9:37 p.m. on April 2. Through his public passion, suffering and death, this holy priest, Successor of the Apostles, and Servant of God, showed us the face of Jesus in a remarkable way. [The readings for this Sunday are Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrew 5:7-9; John 12:20-33. For use with RCIA, Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45 or 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45] Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network in Canada, is a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He can be reached at: rosica@saltandlighttv.org. For those using Year A Readings for the Catechumenate (RCIA) "If Only You Had Been There": www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ5BtFPSttY Salt and Light Catholic Television Network Web site: www.saltandlighttv.org Zenit |
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| KatyA | Thursday, 2. April 2009, 11:58 Post #21 |
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Biblical Reflection for Palm Sunday Father Thomas Rosica, CSB TORONTO, APRIL 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The Passion, suffering, death and resurrection of the Lord are the very themes that unite us as a Christian people and a Church during Holy Week. This year on Palm Sunday, we listen attentively to Mark's Passion story of Jesus' final days and hours on earth. It is a story of striking contrasts. As we hear anew this moving story, Jesus' passion penetrates the numbness of our lives. This week in particular, we have a privileged opportunity to learn from what happened to Jesus and discover not only the identity of those who tried, condemned and killed him long ago, but also what killed Jesus and what vicious circles of violence, brutality, hatred and jealousy continue to crucify him today in his brothers and sisters of the human family. Zooming in on Mark's Passion narrative Mark's account (Mark 11:1-10) of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is the most subdued version of the event in the New Testament. For some reason the evangelist places much emphasis on the donkey in this account. It was the custom for pilgrims to enter Jerusalem on foot. Only kings and rulers would "ride" into the city -- most often on great steeds and horses and in ostentatious processions, in order to make their presence known. Jesus, a different kind of king, chooses to ride into the city, not on a majestic stallion but on the back of a young beast of burden. By being led through the city on the back of a lowly donkey, Jesus comes as a king whose rule is not about being served but serving. His kingdom is not built on might but on compassion and generous service. The donkey Jesus mounts sends us back to the words of the ancient prophet, Zechariah, who foretold this scene five centuries before: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey . . . " In Mark's jarring Passion story, we witness the anguish of Jesus who has been totally abandoned by friends and disciples. Jesus is resigned to his fate. He makes no response to Judas when he betrays him nor to Pilate during his interrogation. In Mark, Pilate makes no effort to save him, as the Roman procurator does in the other three Gospels. As he does throughout his Gospel, Mark depicts the utter of failure of the disciples to provide any support to Jesus or to even understand what is happening. The enigmatic, young male disciple who flees naked into the night when Jesus is arrested is a powerful symbol in Mark's Gospel of his followers who initially left family and friends behind to follow Jesus. Now that the heat is on, they leave everything behind to flee from him. When we remember the events of that first Holy Week - from the upper room to Gethsemane, from Pilate's judgment seat to Golgotha, from the cross to the empty tomb, Jesus turns our world and its value system upside down. He teaches us that true authority is found in dedicated service and generosity to others; greatness is centered in humility; the just and loving will be exalted by God in God's good time. Viewing Mark's Passion through the lenses of fidelity In the midst of Mark's stories of betrayal and violence, the evangelist inserts a dramatic story of exquisite fidelity. While Jesus visits Simon the Leper in Bethany on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, an anonymous woman breaks, open her alabaster jar of costly perfumed oil, and anoints Jesus' head in good, royal, biblical fashion (14:3-9). As the fragrance of the oil fills the room, those with Jesus are shocked at the woman's extravagant gesture. But Jesus defends her. She had performed an act of true fidelity and love, he tells them, "for she has anticipated anointing my body for burial" (14:8). For this, Jesus promises, she would be remembered wherever the Gospel would be preached (14:9). This woman is the only one in all of the New Testament to be so greatly honoured. While his male disciples and apostles clearly manifest a bold track record of failure, betrayal and abandonment, this anonymous woman embodies boldness, courage, love and fidelity. What an example! Though she may not fully understand the significance of her symbolic and prophetic act of anointing him, nor the timeliness of her action, she only desires simply to be with him and to express to him lavish love and attention. Is this not what each of us is called to do during Holy Week in particular? Is it not to love Jesus and to be attentive to him throughout the final tragic movements of the symphony of his earthly life, and in the midst of all of the setbacks, failures and betrayals of our own lives? Our lives must be like the woman's jar of expensive ointment poured out so lavishly on the Lord in the final moments of his life on earth. Who, if not the condemned Saviour? At the conclusion of the Stations of the Cross at Rome's Colosseum on Good Friday night in the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II spoke these moving and powerful words: "Who, if not the condemned Savior, can fully understand the pain of those unjustly condemned? Who, if not the King scorned and humiliated, can meet the expectations of the countless men and women who live without hope or dignity? Who, if not the crucified Son of God, can know the sorrow and loneliness of so many lives shattered and without a future?" What a Saviour we have! He truly understands our human condition. He walks with us and shares our sorrows, loneliness and suffering. How do we respond to such outlandish love and genuine solidarity? Passion Sunday invites us to put on what Paul calls the "attitude of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:6-11) in his passion and death: to "empty" ourselves of our own interests, fears and needs for the sake of others. May we reach out to heal those who are hurting and comfort the despairing around us despite our own denials and betrayals. During the moving liturgies of Holy Week, we are given the special grace to carry on, with joy and in hope, despite rejection, humiliation and suffering. In this way, the Passion of Jesus becomes a reason for hope and a moment of grace for all us as we seek the reign of God in our own lives -- however lonely and painful that search may be. Holy Week gives us the consolation and the conviction that we are not alone. [The readings for this Sunday are Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47 or 15:1-39. For use with RCIA, Mark 11:1-10 or John 12:12-16] Salt and Light Catholic Television Network Web site: http://www.saltandlighttv.org/ You Tube Zenit |
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| KatyA | Sunday, 5. April 2009, 13:49 Post #22 |
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I thought this was an excellent reminder for Holy Week KatyA
Greg Kandra - Deacon's Bench |
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8:15 AM Nov 8