Last updated on: August 13, 2021 at 1:54 pm By Jack Hartjes
Praying to Mary and other saints is still part of being Catholic.
The Rosary is a lovely prayer, which I loved from a distance for most of my life but have returned to recently. This post is an introduction to a series of posts that includes one for each set of Mysteries.
Table of Contents with links to each post in the series
I grew up in a family of regular Rosary pray-ers—every day in May and October. But I stopped praying this prayer regularly when I left that Catholic home to go to the seminary.
Those were days of heady change in the Church. Much needed change, but I was less concerned than I needed to be about the Church’s traditions. Devotion to Mary was one of those traditions.
There was arrogance. I knew about, but cared too little for, the importance Mary held for a large part of the Church. This included the poor and the non-white, especially the poorer South of the globe. I thought I harbored great concern for our neighbors in Latin America, but little for their piety.
There was also the ecumenical movement. I was not confused by Protestant claims that Catholics worship the saints, but I thought the Church’s prayer life exaggerated the saints and Mary. Protestants, I thought, could teach me about relating directly to God. The Rosary seemed like a relic in a bad sense of the word.
Differing theologies of the saints
My wife and I now own a house that is as close to our small downtown as you can get in Springfield, Minnesota. It was an ideal location for a public outdoor Rosary. We were praying the Rosary there with other members of St. Raphael’s Parish, and the pastor of the Lutheran Church walked by on his way to his home across the street. He greeted us cordially and then said, “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t join you.”
Another Lutheran pastor explained to me why Lutherans don’t pray to saints or Mary. He said most Lutherans feel pretty much the same as Catholic about those who have died. They imagine them up in heaven looking down on and being concerned about their loved ones on earth. He said that’s not correct Lutheran theology. Those who have died are “asleep in the Lord,” according to Lutheran teaching. Consciousness, at least wakeful consciousness, for them must wait for the fulfillment of time, when Christ comes and the dead are raised bodily.
It’s a way of stating a very Christian idea – bodies are important. Philosophically, human souls do not exist without a material embodiment. A philosophy professor explained the Catholic view. Souls do indeed need bodies, those in heaven as well as those on earth. We are not Platonists in that sense. In heaven God supplies a kind of substitute material. I suppose that would have to be true even if those souls are “asleep.” And if it is true, then they could as easily be awake, and it does make sense to pray to them.
Returning to the Rosary
I knew all the mysteries of the Rosary, Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious, by heart from childhood. I rejoiced when Pope Saint John Paul II added a fourth set. The Luminous Mysteries filled in the neglected space between Jesus’ childhood and passion. But I still didn’t say the Rosary much. I had a hard time getting through such a long prayer without suffering boredom or complete loss of focus.
In the past year two things changed that for me. They work, paradoxically, by making the prayer even longer. First, a relaxation breathing procedure adds four seconds between each prayer and makes the whole more meditative. Second, relevant Scripture verses, which I recite not just once but three times each decade keep bringing my wandering mind back into focus.
Meditative breathing for a meditative prayer
I always thought of the Rosary, with its steady repetitions, as one way Catholics connect with Eastern religions with their traditions of meditative and repetitive prayer. So a meditative breathing technique that I picked up from an online singing coach seemed a natural fit. The technique, in short, is to breathe in deep and slow and breathe out twice as slowly. It’s supposed to quiet the “fight or flight” nervous system and activate a more peaceful accepting attitude.
Applying it to the Rosary, I breathe in to a count of four before each prayer. Then I say the prayer on that one breath, quietly forming all the words with my lip.. (The Our Fathers get two breaths.) This helps me let go and after a while I hardly notice the passage of time. I’m usually surprised when the prayer nears its end.
Using Scripture to focus
I am not a visual thinker so my imagination isn’t much help when it comes to focusing on the mysteries. I like the words of Scripture, but to be useful these need to happen more than once per decade. It works for me to recite a Scripture passage after naming the mystery and after the third and seventh Hail Mary. Several “Scriptural Rosaries” with biblical texts for each of the mysteries are available, but I have made my own selections.
There’s a lot to think about in the mysteries of the Rosary, but thinking a lot doesn’t go well with a meditative prayer. I’ll do some thinking, investigating, and questioning about the mysteries in future posts. I plan on the Joyful Mysteries while it’s still Christmas Season, Luminous Mysteries during Ordinary Time, Sorrowful Mysteries in Lent, and Glorious Mysteries after Easter.
Image credit: Living Bread Radio via Google Images
Last updated on: August 13, 2021 at 2:34 pm By Jack Hartjes
The Glorious Mysteries end with the Coronation of Mary. Is this mystery a symbol of the final victory of Christ and the People of God? Will we all wear starry crowns?
Praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary on Holy Saturday was a little premature, but it seemed the right thing to do. It also reminded me to write this post.
Thinking back over the series of posts on the mysteries of the Rosary and reviewing the Scriptures these mysteries call up, I realize I have some favorites:
Joyful Mysteries. The favorite has to be Mary’s Magnificat at the Visitation.
Luminous Mysteries. Here it’s the Proclamation of the Kingdom — “This is the time of fulfillment. “
Sorrowful Mysteries. Jesus carries the cross and my crosses become so much lighter: “Come to me, all who labor and are burdened….”
For the Glorious Mysteries I have too many favorites.
The missing mystery
I do have one complaint about this set of mysteries. The traditional mysteries were missing most of Jesus’ life until Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries. But there’s still something missing, and it belongs with the Glorious Mysteries. We pray for it every time we say the Our Father: “Thy kingdom come.” It’s the object of all our hopes. It’s the prayer at the very end of the last book of the Bible: Come, Lord Jesus. That’s a pretty big omission.
My dad, as he was getting on toward the end of his life, made this confession of faith before us, his son and daughters:
When I was younger (he said), I never thought about heaven. Now I think about it practically all the time.
This was a man who never separated his faith from his life in the world. That’s an example I try to follow. So I find I can’t separate my belief in heaven from my commitment to this world. This world, after all, is the place to which Jesus will return when God has finally made all things new.
The Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary are all about making the world new. They just don’t name the final stage. I didn’t have vocabulary to name it either in my earlier days of learning about the faith. The right words have more recently come into prominence. The Second Coming of Jesus is the “Parousia” (Greek for presence). That will happen at the “Eschaton,” the end of this age of the Church. We live in hope in the age between Resurrection and Eschaton. “Eschatology” is the recently prominent branch of theology that tries to fathom this great Christian hope.
The First Glorious Mystery, The Resurrection
A young man, clothed in white, said to the three women at Jesus’ tomb, “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here; but he is going before you to Galilee.” (Mark 16:6-7)
Different Gospels tell the Resurrection story differently. Only a very literal modern age worries about conflicting details when the event itself is beyond what human minds can grasp. Here Mark seems to be using Galilee as a symbol for the work in this world Jesus expects of his followers. Galilee is where Jesus began his own work.
Other Bible texts for the Glorious Mysteries:
I am the Resurrection and the Life. (John 11:25)
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. (John 12:24)
The Second Glorious Mystery, The Ascension
Two men dressed in white garments said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
Galilee comes into the picture here too. It names what these men are, creatures of earth; and Galilee would be one of earth’s least heaven-like places. We are all from Galilee, and we have work to do.
The Galileans may be thinking of what they have lost and if they’ll ever get it back, but what was truly theirs they still have, as the next mystery will show – Jesus’ Spirit among them.
John’s account of the Last Supper pictures the apostles confused about the way to go. Jesus says they already know the way:
I am the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
The Third Glorious Mystery, the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles
Through the prophet Joel, God says, “I will pour out my spirit upon all humankind. (Joel 3:1)
Luke’s Acts of the Apostles isn’t clear about who exactly was in the room when the Holy Spirit came down in wind and fire. The twelve apostles certainly, including Matthias, chosen to replace Judas. But there were women there, too, including Jesus’ mother, and the ones called simply Jesus’ brothers. This group symbolizes all of us.
Throughout the Old Testament and in the story of Jesus, when something new happens we see the Holy Spirit or something that has come to symbolize the Holy Spirit. Wind at the creation, a dove after the Flood, wind and fire as the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt. Again, in the New Testament: the Spirit overshadowing Mary at the Annunciation, the dove at Jesus’ baptism, and now fire and wind as the Church is born.
See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers. (Isaiah 43:19)
The Fourth Glorious Mystery, the Assumption.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth. The time for singing has come, and the cooing of turtle doves is heard in our land. (Song of Songs 2:10-11)
I don’t understand why the Assumption of Mary bodily into heaven is a doctrine of the Catholic Church. It’s connected to another puzzling doctrine, the Immaculate Conception. Mary’s freedom from the stain of Original Sin makes it obvious that there could be no bodily decay for her. But Original Sin is another puzzle.
On the other hand, there could hardly be a doctrine better attested by the evidence than Original Sin. I don’t understand how sin could enter God’s entirely good world or why evil is usually easier than good and often more attractive. But it’s not because of how the world was built. Something obviously happened. And now I have to struggle with moral entropy.
For a glorified body there’s no entropy at all. The doctrine of the Assumption means at least this much: Bodies are beautiful, and God wants to share eternity with them.
The Fifth Glorious Mystery, the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Revelation 12:1)
Here is where the Parousia should be, and instead we have a coronation. It’s not even a doctrine of the Catholic Church, and not exactly in the Bible, either. It’s easy to see the woman with the crown of stars as Mary, Queen of Heaven, but John, the apocalyptic writer, more likely saw her as the People of God.
Perhaps there is no disagreement here. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls Mary “Eschatological Icon of the Church.”
In her [Mary] we contemplate what the Church already is in her [the Church’s] mystery on her own ‘pilgrimage of faith,’ and what she will be in the homeland at the end of her journey. (#972)
Mary and the Church both bring Christ to the world. Catholics call Mary and the Church their mother. The old spiritual “Down in the River to Pray” tells about the ones who will “wear the starry crown.” It’s all of us, brothers, sisters, sinners.
It’s not the Parousia by name, but just maybe the Coronation of Mary Queen of Heaven has a bit of eschatological flavor to it.
Last updated on: April 29, 2019 at 8:19 am By Jack Hartjes
This is a time of prayer for creation. (See this post on the World Day of Prayer for Creation.) Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also the time of the Fall Ember Days. Ember Days were a thing in the Church before Vatican II. Not so much anymore. We observed them on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at various times during the year. Next week is Ember Week. September 18, 20, and 21 are the Ember Days.
Note that it’s the terrestrial, not the liturgical, year that counts here. Ember Days are close to the earth. Ancient Rome celebrated three of these groups of three days to honor grain harvest (summer), vintage (Fall), and seed time (winter). The Church continued the tradition for the benefit of converts from Paganism and later added a fourth set for spring.
Ember Days and care for creation
Ember Days observance connects well with care for the earth. Traditionally one prayed, fasted (no food between meals) and half-abstained (meat allowed at one meal). The Catholic Encyclopedia says the purpose of Ember Days is
to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach [people] to make use of them in moderation, and to assist the needy.
Making use of the gifts of nature in moderation is exactly the prescription of environmentalists for the health of the planet. Imagine three days in which Catholics commit publicly to moderate their consumption of earth’s resources, especially of meat. The reduction of our collective carbon footprint would be considerable and the witness value also.
Ember Days in the 21st century will need to focus on the environment, climate change, and our stewardship of the world’s resources. They will help us connect our intercession for favourable conditions with a conversion of heart in relation to our care of the earth.
Season or days? What’s appropriate to honor creation?
Several church leaders in the past few years have called the faithful to observe a month-long Season of Creation. It would begin on September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, and end on October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron of ecologists. The Catholic Bishops of the Philippines in 2003, the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu in 2007 and the World Council of Churches in 2008 have made such proposals
Still there is little to no movement in the Church to add a “Season of Creation” to the Church’s Liturgical Year. I think that’s for good reasons. Actually, the traditional year does address the salvation of the world God made. In particular:
The season of Advent looks forward to the restoration of creation.
Christmas celebrates the joining of the divine with creation.
Easter proclaims the story of creation and the wedding of heaven and earth.
Every Sunday remembers and imitates God’s rest at the completion of the good work of creation.
The mysteries of the Liturgical Year proclaim God’s work of saving the world, not just humans out of the world. The Bible does not present creation as a work of God separate from salvation. The non-human world and humanity are not saved separately but in one saving act.
More Ember Days
Every season is a season of creation. Special days, rather than a special season, seem right for celebrating creation and evaluating our relationship to God’s earth. For that purpose, why not go with the seasons earth gives us? The traditional schedule for the four Ember Weeks is:
Spring—after the first Sunday of Lent
Summer—after Pentecost
Fall—after the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 14
Winter—after the Feast of Lucy—December 13.
Prayers for Ember Days
The Australian bishops desire Ember days to “express our solidarity with those who are disadvantaged, especially those who suffer through famine and the inequitable distribution of the world’s goods.” They recommend the Opening Prayer of the Mass for the Progress of Peoples for liturgical and private prayer:
Father, you have given all peoples one common origin,
and your will is to gather them as one family in yourself.
Fill the hearts of all with the fire of your love
and the desire to ensure justice for all their brothers and sisters.
By sharing the good things you give us
may we secure justice and equality for every human being,
an end to all division, and a human society built on love and peace.
Next week’s Ember Days are a good time for praising God, blessing creation, and assessing our relationship to our brothers and sisters and our common home. Here are some more prayers and Bible readings:
The Creation Hymn, Colossians 1:15-20
The praises of Shadrach, Misach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Daniel 3:52-90,
Last updated on: April 29, 2019 at 8:19 am By Jack Hartjes
Tomorrow is the day Christians pray for the earth. Pope Francis designated September 1 as a Day of Prayer for Creation in 2015. He was following the lead of other Christian denominations and groups. In my experience not enough Catholics know about this day.
Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of Constantinople in 1989 was first to proclaimed September 1 an annual day of prayer and action to protect the environment. Subsequently many different Christian traditions have set the month between that date and October 4 as a season of Prayer for Creation. It’s a time of celebrating, praying for, and acting on behalf of creation. October 4 is the Feast Day of St. Francis.
St. Francis’ connection to nature and his love of all living things have made him one of Christianity’s most popular saints. Catholics, by proclamation of Pope John Paul II, have added to St. Francis’ titles “patron saint of those who promote ecology.”
Promoting a Season of Prayer for Creation
This year nine leaders from different denominations in a joint letter endorsed the concept of a Season of Creation. “As the environmental crisis deepens,’ they write, “we Christians are urgently called to witness to our faith by taking bold action to preserve the gift we share.”
Cardinal Peter Turkson is one of the signers. He is Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue,” the cardinal declares. “It is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
Remembering Laudato Si
For Catholics a Day of Prayer for Creation is also a time to remember Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home.” The pope spoke to Catholics and the entire world. He called for an ecological conversion that respects the dignity of both the human and non-human worlds. Everything is connected, but especially are the health of world ecology and the well-being of the world’s poor connected.
The pope explains how Christianity can nurture a spirit of care for the earth. The incarnation of the divine into created matter makes everything sacred. “The very flowers of the field and the birds which [Jesus’] human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.” The world is a web of relationships, say ecologists. It would have to be, according to Francis. It is created “according to the divine model” of relationships within the Trinity.
The Christian leaders who signed the joint letter would agree. It’s time, they say, to “deepen our relationship with the Creator, each other, and all of creation.”
Pope Francis concluded the encyclical Laudato Si with two prayers, which I reproduce here. The first Francis intends for all believers in God; the second is specifically Christian.
A prayer for our earth
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.
A Christian joins with created things in prayer for creation
Father, we praise you with all your creatures.
They came forth from your all-powerful hand;
they are yours, filled with your presence and your tender love.
Praise be to you!
Son of God, Jesus,
through you all things were made.
You were formed in the womb of Mary our Mother,
you became part of this earth,
and you gazed upon this world with human eyes.
Today you are alive in every creature in your risen glory.
Praise be to you!
Holy Spirit, by your light
you guide this world towards the Father’s love
and accompany creation as it groans in travail.
You also dwell in our hearts
and you inspire us to do what is good.
Praise be to you!
Triune Lord, wondrous community of infinite love,
teach us to contemplate you in the beauty of the universe,
for all things speak of you.
Awaken our praise and thankfulness
for every being that you have made.
Give us the grace to feel profoundly joined
to everything that is.
God of love, show us our place in this world
as channels of your love
for all the creatures of this earth,
for not one of them is forgotten in your sight.
Enlighten those who possess power and money
that they may avoid the sin of indifference,
that they may love the common good, advance the weak,
and care for this world in which we live.
The poor and the earth are crying out.
O Lord, seize us with your power and light,
help us to protect all life,
to prepare for a better future,
for the coming of your Kingdom
of justice, peace, love and beauty.
Praise be to you!
Amen.
The Easter Triduum is a short season with one Liturgy spread over three days: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.
Tomorrow the 40 days of Lent will end. These six weeks call to our minds Jesus’ 40 days in the desert and the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering to the Promised Land. Tomorrow also begins the Church’s shortest season, the Easter Triduum, and her longest Mass. Three days, Holy Thursday night through Good Friday to Saturday night’s Easter Vigil. We go to church three times, but it’s all one Liturgy.
The Easter Triduum is the summit of the Church’s year, the purpose for which Christmas happened. Three parishioners of St. Raphael’s Parish, Springfield, Minnesota, got together to talk and write for the local newspaper about our favorite times in church. This is the result.
Holy Thursday
This night we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus and his apostles celebrated the Passover, when God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Jesus took the traditional unleavened “bread of affliction” and called it himself, his body. A cup of wine becomes his blood. That mystery is present at every Mass as we obey Jesus’ command to “do this in memory of me.”
We haven’t sung the Gloria since Ash Wednesday. But on Holy Thursday it rings out, bells accompanying, prepping us for our first Bible reading, the happy story of that first Passover meal. The mood turns, though, when we respond: “Our blessing cup is a communion with the blood of Christ.” Next St. Paul gives us the Last Supper story, which he “received from the Lord” and also “handed on,” the first to do so in writing.
In the Gospel, instead of hearing about bread and wine, body and blood, we get a lesson on putting this mystery into practice. Jesus took towel and water basin and washed his disciples’ feet. Again we obey Jesus’ command to do for others “as I have done for you.” In the church service it’s a symbolic washing of 12 volunteers’ feet, but it becomes real outside of church in Christian service to a world of affliction.
The Holy Thursday service continues like any Mass, but it stops without a real ending. After Communion there’s no final blessing. No “Thanks be to God” at the end. Everybody kneels as the Blessed Sacrament is carried to the Altar of Repose. We remember Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and betrayal into the hands of Roman soldiers. We remain kneeling for a while at Jesus’ request. “Stay here and keep watch with me.” Those who wish continue a silent watch for as long as they want. The Easter Triduum Liturgy continues tomorrow.
Good Friday
Good Friday continues the service begun the previous evening. By tradition it occurs during the three hours when Jesus was hanging on the cross. It is a Communion service, not a Mass, the only day in the year on which Catholics do not celebrate a Mass.
We enter a silent church and see a bare altar. Purple cloths cover statues and crucifixes. The Tabernacle Light is extinguished. It is a time of mourning and prayer, which the priest begins by prostrating himself before the altar, a reminder of Jesus in Gethsemane. Then the service goes straight to the Liturgy of the Word. As Holy Thursday had no real ending, this service has no real beginning.
The first Word of the Lord is the prophet Isaiah’s moving description of the Suffering Servant of the Lord. “By his stripes we are healed.” We respond with Jesus’ dying words, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” We hear from St. Paul again, now telling us that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace.” Then for the second time this week we hear the story of Jesus’ passion and death. (The first time was on Palm Sunday.) We all participate by reciting lines spoken by more than one person. It feels like being there. One is deeply aware of one’s own participation in the sin that caused Jesus to suffer.
The Prayers of the Faithful that follow are more elaborate than usual. Traditionally, each prayer includes a call to kneel and then stand — for those who are able. Every Catholic parish in the world offers the same prayers. This list of 10 prayers includes prayers for the pope, for the unity of Christians, for the Jewish people, for people who do not believe in God, and for those in public office.
There follows a uniquely Catholic and touching rite called the Veneration of the Cross, “on which hung the salvation of the world.” A touch, a kiss, a bow, or a genuflection are gestures by which we acknowledge the saving use to which the Lord puts mere wood and nails.
At the Communion Rite consecrated hosts are brought from the side altar on which the Blessed Sacrament has reposed since the previous night. There is no new consecration since this is not a Mass. Once again the faithful depart in silence without getting a real ending. The story can’t end like this. Neither can the Easter Triduum Liturgy.
Easter Vigil
“Holy Saturday” has no church services. From Friday evening through Saturday Jesus’ body remained in the tomb. Today all is quiet until the dark of night when the solemn and glorious finale of the Easter Triduum begins. This service has four parts centered on four elements: light, word, water, and the Eucharist. We’ll be in church until almost 10 o’clock!
The service of light begins with a fire, from which is lit the large Easter candle. It will burn at every Mass of the 50-day Easter Season. This Christ light also shines for baptisms and funerals.
Once lit and blessed (“Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega”), the Easter candle makes its way through the assembly, each of us holding our own candle to be lit from the Easter Candle. With only fire from the Christ Candle lighting the church, the long, ancient Easter Proclamation is sung. “Exult, heavenly powers. Let the earth be glad. This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt. This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death.” This night frees us from all our imprisonments and slaveries.
The Liturgy of the Word includes at least three out of a possible seven readings from the Old Testament. At St. Raphael’s we will hear (1) the story of creation, with which the Bible and salvation history begins; (2) the story of crossing the sea on dry land and the dramatic new beginning of God’s holy people; (3) God’s call in Isaiah’s words to “come to the water, all you thirsty ones. Receive grain and eat without paying and without cost.”
Then come the Gloria, again with bells ringing; another reading from St. Paul – “Baptized into Jesus’ death and burial, we believe that we shall also live with him”; the Alleluia, sung for the first time since Ash Wednesday; and a Gospel story about the women who went to Jesus’ tomb and found the stone that covered the entrance rolled away. From the tomb we hear the message of two men, perhaps angels: “Jesus has been raised!”
We reaffirm our belief in this astounding good news and renounce Satan and all his works as we recite our baptismal promises, first spoken for most of us by our parents and godparents. Our Baptism renewal continues. We get sprinkled with holy water as the choir sings about “living streams of water.”
The liturgy continues with the familiar Mass rites: the Eucharistic Prayer, consecrating and lifting up the Bread of Life and the Cup of Blessing and offering to God all glory and honor through Jesus, with Jesus, and in Jesus … Amen; the Communion Rite with the Our Father, Sign of Peace, Lamb of God, and “O Lord, I am not worthy,” preparing us for Holy Communion in the “Body of Christ,” uniting us with Jesus and all who belong to Jesus; and, finally, a real ending and the sending forth from this three-day Mass, with a prayer and a blessing and “Go in peace…. Thanks be to God. ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!”
Pope Francis released his message on climate change on the Feast of St. Francis., patron of ecologists. (Image credit: Maryknoll)
October 4 is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron of ecologists. On that day this month Pope Francis went back to a major theme of his acclaimed 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si: On theCare for Our Common Home. In an apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum (Praise God), the pope spoke to Catholics and the world about climate change, an issue of great concern to him.
Francis is not alone among Church leaders in that concern. Previous popes, dating back at least to Pope Paul VI in the 1970’s thought and worried and taught about the environment. Pope Benedict XVI, besides speaking particularly about climate change, had solar panels installed in the Vatican and started Vatican State on the road to carbon neutrality.
Spiritual and moral
Pope Francis’ message this month hit on all aspects of climate change, from the spiritual and moral to the scientific to the personal and political. The Bible is clear, he says, on our obligation to care for the earth. The natural world is a gift to be honored before it is resources for our benefit. The planet on which we live is not just a neutral backdrop or setting for our lives but God’s good creation and a part of us. And we are part of it. In a heart-piercing line about species whose survival is threatened by climate change, Francis says, “Other creatures of this world have stopped being our companions along the way and have become our victims. (#15)
Covid-19 demonstrated the close relation between human life and other living things. “Everything is connected” and “No one is saved alone,” Pope Francis said, quoted his own often repeated convictions. (#19) Later, in Paragraph #65, Francis sings, “There is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.”
Personal and political
Francis invites us all individually and as families to “accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world.” That commitment is a matter of personal dignity and values. But it can’t be just personal. “It is necessary to be honest,” the pope insists, “and recognize that the most effective solutions will not come from individual efforts alone, but above all from major political decisions on the national and international level.” (#69)
Needed changes in the political realm won’t happen without cultural change, Francis says. Efforts by individuals and families “to reduce pollution and waste, and to consume with prudence, are creating a new culture.” In small ways they are “helping to bring about large processes of transformation rising from deep within society.” (#71) The pope seems to aim that call for cultural change primarily at rich countries. He notes that an average individual in the U.S. has twice the negative impact on climate as a typical person living in China. Compared to persons in the poorest countries (those who will suffer most from climate change), we do seven times as much damage. (#72)
The scientific evidence
The pope shows an acute awareness of the science of climate change. He also thinks about the resistance to scientific evidence, evidence, he says, that no one can ignore any longer. At 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, “which we are approaching,” heat waves, flooding in some areas, droughts in others, and destructive storms will be more frequent and more intense than we’ve seen in the past years. Add to these effects warming oceans, melting polar ice, and rising sea levels and our so far inadequate responses. We’re looking at “grave consequences for everyone,” including mass migrations of people. (##5 and 6)
Pope Francis answers the global warming skeptics and ridiculers. “They bring up … the fact that the planet has always had periods of cooling and warming.” But, he says, “They leave out another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming.” (#6) It’s now noticeable on a timescale of a single generation, not centuries or millennia. (#6) (I think of our shortened Minnesota winters and earlier disappearance of lake ice.)
There are natural factors that affect global temperatures, including gases emitted by volcanoes. But, the pope says, nothing except human-produced greenhouse gases explains the recent geologically rapid rise in temperature. “It is no longer possible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origin of climate change.” (#11)
The pope analyzes the main cause of global warming. Before the 19th century the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was stable, below 300 parts per million. With the industrial revolution human emission of these gases rose and, in recent years accelerated greatly. “More than 42 percent of the total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990.” While he was writing Laudato Si, Francis says, greenhouse gases hit 400 parts per million. They reached 423 ppm, in June of this year. (#11) In consequence, “in the last fifty years the [global] temperature has risen at an unprecedented speed.” (#12)
International action and inaction
The pope has words of praise for the efforts of the multinational community to address climate change. But he says the world is not doing nearly enough. He pays special attention to the series of meetings called “Conference of the Parties (COP).” Some have failed to bring results. Some have been notable successes, like the 2015 conference (COP 21), held when Francis’ words in Laudato Si were still fresh. Then nations agreed to hold global warming to a 2 degrees Celsius maximum with a preferred goal of 1.5 degrees. Since then, though, while nations have invested heavily in green energy, emissions of greenhouse gases have continued to rise. “The principles which [the more successful conferences] proclaimed still await an efficient and flexible means of practical implementation,” Francis laments. (#52)
Francis praises the efforts of people on the margins of political life, including the often derided activists. These groups “negatively portrayed as ‘radicalized’ … are filling a space left empty by society as a whole.” The pope adds, “The demands that rise up from below throughout the world, where activists from very different countries help and support one another, can end up pressuring the sources of power…. I reiterate that ‘unless citizens control political power – national, regional and municipal – it will not be possible to control damage to the environment.’” (#31. Francis quotes Laudato Si.)
In a line that stirs my deepest fears and hopes, Francis says: “Every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake.” (#58) Francis prays that participants in this November’s COP 28 will consider “the common good and the future of their children more than the short-term interests of certain countries of businesses. In this way, may they demonstrate the nobility of politics and not its shame.” (#60)
My parish makes a big deal out of what to call the two forms under which we receive Communion. When the bread and wine have been consecrated, can we still call them bread and wine? The consensus among parish leaders and teachers is that we cannot. Transubstantiation means that the bread is no longer bread, and the wine is no longer wine. In my parish we can say “form of bread” and “form of wine.” Without that technical language, we are told to say “body” for what was bread and “blood” for what was wine. But the Liturgy itself says, “When we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”
What gives? How can the Liturgy say the consecrated host is bread when the Church says it is no longer bread? On other hand, why can’t we use the words that the Liturgy does?
Then again, how is it right to call the host “body” and the contents of the cup “blood” when we know the whole Jesus is present under both forms?
The Bible helps.
The American Church started a three-year Eucharistic Revival after receiving a theological scare. Polls revealed that perhaps a majority of Catholics no longer believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. There was bound to be some over-reacting, and my parish’s fixation on names may be a case of it. What do Jesus and the Bible say about names?
Jesus calls himself bread. He is the “Bread of Life.” (John 6:35 and 48) In the same context we hear “true bread of heaven” and, “The bread of God is that which (or he who) comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6:32-33) And Jesus, or the Gospel writer, surely meant Eucharist because a little later we read:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (6:51)
Then there’s the earlier theologian Paul:
The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16)
And,
Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (10:17
Jesus does not refer to himself as wine. We have no biblical warrant for calling the contents of the cup wine. But,
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ…. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” (10:16, 21)
And,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (11:25)
“Eat the bread” and “drink the cup” – naming the elements biblically
We say “host” for the consecrated Eucharistic bread. “Host” comes from the Latin hostia, meaning sacrifice. That’s a valuable connection lost to most English speakers. Missing, though, is another Eucharistic connection. Jesus clearly intended the Eucharist to be not only sacrifice but also meal. For the latter we have the word “bread.” It’s legitimate because Jesus is “bread from heaven.” That sounds like a metaphor. But Jesus also calls his Eucharistic self “bread,” sounding very literal.
“Cup” is a figure of speech, a synecdoche, to get technical. The cup stands for itself and what it contains, and that’s a lot:
As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:26-28)
“Cup” may be the best way to refer to Christ present under the form of wine. It does double duty, representing—making present—both meal and sacrifice. To drink the cup is to participate in a meal, and the resemblance to blood brings Jesus’ sacrifice to the center of attention. Jesus made drinking the cup “that I shall drink” a symbol of supreme sacrifice. (Matthew 20:23)
“Bread” also can do double duty. It’s food of course. But think about the first time Jesus offered himself as bread – at the Last Supper. To Jews celebrating the Passover, that bread was the “bread of affliction,” the affliction of Hebrew slaves. (See this post.) Jesus must have united his own coming affliction with theirs as he called the bread his body “given for you.” (Luke 22:19)
The body and the blood
Eucharistic ministers say to the communicants, “The Body of Christ.” And again, “The Blood of Christ.” It may seem as if we’re receiving one part of Jesus and then another, rather than the whole in each form.
But those liturgical words are not sentences. It’s not like: “this is the body” and “that is the blood.” The ministers’ words are noun phrases. They name something for us to respond to without telling us what to think, as a sentence could. Surely that’s a deliberate choice by those who gave us this liturgical text, and – I’d say – a good one. As nouns, not sentences, they don’t give us doctrine: This is Jesus. They don’t limit Jesus, or his body or his blood, that way. They let us participate in the mystery of everything body and blood can be for us.
The body is the thing about a person we can touch. In this case “Body” can mean Jesus present as the bread that we touch and consume. But it can also be the whole body of believers coming forward to touch and consume. It can mean the body of Christ throughout the world, whose members all touch Jesus’ body and are touched by others, stretching back in time in a line of sacred touches, to the ones who touched and were touched by the One from Nazareth.
Blood makes us think of life. A life freely given with the outpouring of blood, but also life received. This life enlivens the members of the body of Christ and reaches from these to the world all around.
The cup or the chalice?
The conclusion of these thoughts is that, when speaking of the consecrated Eucharistic elements, it is proper – and probably best – to say “bread” and “cup.” One can surely expand with phrases like “bread of heaven” and “cup of salvation” or “cup of blessing.” One might wonder, Why not “chalice,” since that is the word the new translation of the Liturgy uses?
Having praised one choice by the authors of our liturgical text three paragraphs ago, I now offer a critique. “Chalice” seems simply wrong to me. With this word one thinks too much of the vessel. “Drink the cup” sends the mind immediately to the contents of the cup. It sounds perfectly natural. “Drink the chalice” sounds as if I’m more concerned than I need to be that the vessel be appropriate to the mystery it contains. I don’t know if the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper was fancy enough to be a chalice or if it was just a cup; and I don’t think it matters.
In Latin class I learned that “calix” means cup. In English Bible translations, including the one we use for the Gospels, “calix” is always “cup.” And previous translations of the Eucharistic Prayer also gave us “cup.” The change to “chalice” seems to me to be a pointless attempt to add reverence to what always felt as awesome as anything could be.
The cup from which we drink at the altar should be beautiful, as far as the financial means of the celebrating community permit. That way it gives reverence to the mystery it holds. But it offers that reverence without our puttng a name on it, just by being what it is.
At the Last Supper Jesus shares the “bread” of Jesus’ body, which is also Passover’s “bread of affliction.” (Image credit: Gettty Center)
Two books by William R. Herzog II have been the subjects of several posts here. At the end of this study I am more convinced than ever of the importance of historical Jesus research. If God became incarnate in particular flesh at a particular time, then we should know about that history. Jesus’ death is a central event for Christians; therefore what Jesus did that led to his crucifixion must be near that center. And if the Resurrection shows God’s approval of Jesus’ life, then we should, as Herzog does, investigate the history of that life. But these reasons skip over Good Friday and its introduction, Holy Thursday, too quickly. Herzog’s two historical studies ignored Holy Thursday completely.
Before this series I posted on Herzog’s earlier book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. That series’ conclusion, with links to other posts in that series is here.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed – a question
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Herzog listens to Jesus’ parables the way a first-century Palestinian peasant, handyman, or day laborer would. This tactic became possible near the end of the last century because of a growing body of research into ancient Mediterranean societies. Not only possible; I’d say it’s the correct way to discover what Jesus meant his parables to say. He knew his audience and how they would understand his words. What people would understand must be what he meant to say. The so-called “Markan secret” can’t mean that Jesus deliberately kept the truth from his favorite people, the crowds of poor that came to him.
But there was a kind of secrecy and hiding of the truth that Jesus practiced. It was the dissembling speech that oppressed people worldwide have learned to use in the presence of their oppressors. Jesus coded dangerous ideas into innocent-seeming tales and aphorisms. Two examples from Herzog show Jesus doing that:
Seed Growing Quietly
Jesus told a simple story about seed growing – so simple that one would wonder why he told it or what to make of it. Pretty hard to make anything treasonable out of it, anyway. The seed just grows. The earth produces “of itself.” But religious powers have been telling peasants that the earth doesn’t produce “of itself.” It requires the blessing of the temple, which comes at the price of dues, tithes, and sacrificial animals. Jesus noticeably left that part out. The only blessing peasants’ crops need is the virtue that a generous God put into the soil to begin with. (See this post) A later generation, most likely not farmers, would make of this short story a metaphor for the quiet growth of the Church.
The Laborers in the Vineyard
Jesus told a more complex story about a rich vineyard owner who sent laborers out into his fields. Though they went out at several different times of the day, he paid them all the same daily wage. Adding insult to injury, he had the first arrivals watch while he paid the late comers. Then he browbeat one of the first crew, all of whom complained that they should have gotten more. A later generation would see in the landowner’s action the freedom with which God bestows grace. Day laborers in Jesus’ audience would have seen not God’s dealings but their own oppression in the insulting behavior of this aristocrat. (See this post.)
With several more of Herzog’s readings of Jesus’ parables, one sees Jesus as calling for justice for the poor. Church doctrine doesn’t say Jesus was a social justice activist in a small land east of the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, Christians say Jesus reconciled a whole fallen world to God. He initiated a new covenant in his blood. He made actual in his body what the temple prefigured. With a sacred meal, first celebrated on Holy Thursday, he gave us a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God. Does Herzog’s view of the historical Jesus leave out the most important part? Herzog’s later book, Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God, intended to answer that suspicion.
Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God – Herzog’s answer
In Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God, Herzog sets out to answer criticisms of his earlier work. The former book showed Jesus in parables throwing light on and offering hope in Palestine’s “dark world of oppression.” (Jesus, Justice p. 47) The newer book focused on Jesus’ actions and controversies with authorities. It showed more clearly Jesus’ theological stance, his faithful understanding of the God of Jewish Scripture. Jesus calls Israel back to Yahweh’s justice.
This stand still meant attacking the social, political, and religious structures that weighed heavily against the poor. But Herzog now places this social activism clearly in the service of God, as the prophets and the Law demanded. That is the second book’s advance over the first. Jesus is not just “pedagogue of the oppressed” but also “prophet of the justice of the reign of God.” That prophetic work led to Jesus’ death, as advocacy for the poor makes martyrs today.
Herzog finds an irony in the official proceedings leading to Jesus’ execution, and the history is convincing. It seems that two of the charges brought against Jesus were correct, or close to the mark. Jesus cast doubt on the obligation to pay the Roman tax. And if he didn’t threaten to destroy the temple, much of his work and teaching was a direct threat to the temple’s current mode of existence. A third charge was not true, and that’s the charge on which Jesus was convicted in the end. Jesus did not claim to be king of the Judeans. (p. 245) Jesus’ work was not about owning the kingdoms of this world.
The risen Christ and the historical Jesus
Of the resurrection Herzog says it is God’s “validation of Jesus’ work and the confirmation of Jesus’ way.” (p. 250) If that’s true, then no spiritualizing of the resurrection will do. The resurrection didn’t happen only in the experience of the early Church or to the Church’s “Christ of faith.” It must have happened to the flesh and blood Jesus of history.
Herzog continues:
[B]ecause of that, the historical Jesus has no less relevance for the life of faith than the Risen Christ. (p. 250)
The resurrection validates the “prophet of the justice of the reign of God.” But I wonder. Perhaps it’s Herzog’s prior interest in getting history right that moves Herzog to see the resurrection this way. At any rate, what the resurrection validates could be more than a prophet of justice. Whatever that more is, it wouldn’t leave behind the prophet of and agitator for justice.
More than a prophet
From early on the Church has seen more than a prophet in Jesus. Herzog says Jesus “came to be seen as a figure who mediated God’s covenant love, God’s justice, and God’s healing power.” (253) That figure shows clearly in Herzog’s analysis of Jesus’ words and powerful signs in first-century Palestine. But does Jesus’ mediation continue beyond his short career in the flesh on earth? That, of course, is a basic theme of the Church’s developing Christology.
Jesus’ time on earth, Herzog says, became “the foundation for a fuller christological elaboration of Jesus as exclusive mediator of God’s beneficence.” (p. 253, my emphasis) We see that exclusive mediator, Herzog says, in the letters of 1 Timothy, and Hebrews. In Ephesians and Colossians there’s a universalization of Jesus’ particular acts of forgiveness of sin and debt. In a tendency to spiritualize, though, debt mostly falls out, except where its echo persists in the Lord’s Prayer. (p. 254)
More movements characterized the developing Church theology:
The “something greater than the temple” became the Body of Christ and its extension in believers. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and John 2:21))
“Jesus, the interpreter of God’s Word, became Jesus the embodiment of God’s Word.” (John 1:14)
“The renewal of the covenant … became the new covenant found in Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 11:25)
The reign of God became the final coming kingdom: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)
I can almost see two laments in Herzog’s analysis: “None of these developments was necessarily misguided,” he says. But (one): “[T]he message of the justice of the reign of God was subordinated to other [more spiritual] concerns.” And (two): “[N]either were these developments conducive to the recovery of the historical Jesus.” (p.255)
Church theology and the historical Jesus
Among Bible scholars one easily finds agreement with Herzog’s first lament. There is a turn in New Testament writings from material to spiritual concerns, e.g., from debt to sins. But I question the second. Perhaps this developing Church theology isn’t so far from the mind of Jesus. Why wouldn’t an early Christian interpretation of Jesus’ work be something like Jesus’ own?
Church interpretation leaned on Jesus’ “work” on Good Friday more than on his advocacy for the oppressed poor. But Jesus also may have learned gradually to put his increasingly likely fate at the center of his thoughts. That would be, however, without forgetting the lot of the poor.
I’ll be looking for that thought of the poor as Jesus, on Holy Thursday, interprets his anticipated death. His “Last Supper” with his disciples, that Paschal, or Paschal-like, meal is strangely missing in both books of Herzog’s I’ve been studying.
With a great deal of skill, Jesus avoided the grasp of his opponents for most of the week that we call “Holy Week.” At the same time he was secretly getting things ready for his final meal. It must have been very important to him. Jesus’ words on Holy Thursday certainly were important – perhaps too important – to the Church’s theology of Eucharistic real presence.
What Jesus may have imagined on Holy Thursday
The Church has read “real presence” into Jesus’ words at Holy Thursday’s Last Supper. Paul wrote thus to the Corinthians:
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
The repeated phrase “This is….” seems clear enough to us from a distance. Did Jesus himself imagine something like his own real presence as bread and cup?
Perhaps not. Does the Church even need to rest its theology on these words of Jesus? The Church’s own experience, guided by the Spirit, is also a source of her theology? Think of John’s Gospel and its Eucharistic controversy. There John has Jesus in graphic terms insisting to a skeptical crowd that one must eat, even chew, his flesh. (John, Chapter 6) That was an example of Church theology developing.
I’m taking another look at Jesus’ words in the Passover celebration on Holy Thursday. When I look at the words and imagine the feeling underlying them, I find something besides real presence. It adds to, doesn’t detract from, what we’ve always believed about the Eucharist.
Another look at Holy Thursday
I’m going to take some words from a modern celebration of Passover, called the Haggadah, and insert them into the Last Supper. I’ll imagine a first-century Palestinian take on them. (From “English Haggadah Text with Instructional Guide,” online at Chabad.org):
This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.
And:
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. (Italics mine in both quotes)
Notice how similar to Jesus’ words are the words I put in italics: “This is” and “We were.” Would these words have spoken to Jesus and the apostles of their really being with slaves in Egypt? Or that the bread is really the same as what the “fathers” ate. I can only summon up the feelings these words might have conveyed. They would be feelings of identification with oppressed Hebrew slaves in a strange land. That was the point and, I imagine, the feeling of Passover. That and the obligations God imposed on a people rescued from slavery:
You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. (Exodus 22:20)
We can imagine the feelings. We can also pretty certainly not tell for sure what the substance of the Last Supper’s bread and cup would have been in Jesus’ or the apostles’ theological imaginations. Safest, I think, would be to stay with the feelings from the words — “This is my body … a new covenant … in my blood.” These words may have worked for Jesus and the Twelve much like the way the Haggadah’s — and the Jewish Scriptures’ — “This is the bread of affliction” and “We were slaves in Egypt” work. The traditional Passover meal always was bread for the afflicted. Now Jesus adds his own body to that metaphor. This body, through years (but maybe there was only one year) of public service, was metaphorical bread for the afflicted of Palestine.
A new covenant
That first Holy Thursday Jesus was turning toward his own affliction shortly to come. It couldn’t have felt like turning away from his work, up to then. He didn’t stop being “pedagogue of the poor” and “prophet of the justice of the reign of God.” The resonance of Passover and Yahweh’s preference for the poor would have been too strong for that. So would the memory, palpable around that Last Supper table, of all that Jesus previously had been up to and through.
Jesus’ storytelling and preaching, his healings and exorcisms stood in opposition to the reigning status quo and its political and religious powers. In all of these ways he stood with Palestine’s oppressed poor. That’s how he interpreted and lived out the covenant of the Jewish Scriptures. On every Passover Jesus recalled and celebrated that covenant, which he taught us to call “good news,” gospel. On Holy Thursday he brought that good news, into a new covenant, which would begin with his final act of obedience to God on Good Friday.
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
“In my blood,” that is, at the cost of my life. Jesus wouldn’t, at this crucial moment, have forgotten his former opposition to self-serving political and religious powers or his advocacy for the poor. It’s for that activism that these powers, guarding their own interests, criminalized and executed him.
And Eucharistic Revival
The Church in America is far from the perilous situation of Jesus and his followers at that first Eucharist. But we are undertaking a Eucharistic Revival because of a peril of our own making. Apparently, a large percentage of U.S. Catholics no longer believe – or understand – what the Church says about the Eucharist. Jesus is really present, “body, mind, soul, and divinity,” under the forms of bread and wine. Naturally the revival will stress that doctrine. We will be told that Jesus didn’t say, “This represents, or symbolizes, my body … my blood” but “This IS….” As if that settles the matter.
I fear that what Catholics will get out of such teaching is a poor version of Church. That would be a version that depends too much on biblical literalism and too little on the Spirit’s guiding the Church in, for example, John’s Gospel. More, I fear that the “real presence” in the mind of the faithful will be philosophically sound, with the verbal gloss of “substance” and “accident” and “transubstantiation,” but fail to inspire or challenge. It may give us an intellectual or faith challenge: How can I believe that! Or it may give us necessary support: I have Jesus, really. But it could fall short of the real challenge – to take part as Christians today in the dynamism and danger of Jesus’ public career from beginning to end. That would be a sad reflection on Holy Thursday, the day when the threat hanging over Jesus was about to become real.
What Herzog accomplished: an evaluation
William Herzog shows us the danger that Jesus courted throughout his ministry. He places us with peasants, debt slaves, struggling artisans, and desperate day laborers. There we see Jesus challenging economics that transferred wealth from the poor to the rich. (Like today’s economy) He challenged purity laws and temple fees laying impossible burdens of the poor and justifying their low social status when they couldn’t comply. (Like blaming the poor for their poverty today) Jesus threatened political and religious powers. He was a genius at hiding the lower classes’ subversive thoughts in parables, and he excelled in confrontations with his opponents. Jesus engaged the pressing issues of his day. And he made enemies. (As Christians ought to do today)
This picture of Jesus Herzog finds in the literature that grew up among Jesus’ followers, especially the Gospels. But another picture, a more spiritual Jesus, develops at the same time and tends to take over.
If the Last Supper was a Paschal meal as well as the first Eucharist, then the picture Herzog developed remains true to Jesus through Holy Thursday and beyond. Jesus and the apostles at the Last Supper are, in some way, among the slaves in Egypt and the poor of all time. So are we at every Eucharist. The bread that Jesus called his body is also the bread of affliction, the food of slaves and the poor.
On Holy Thursday Jesus spoke of a new covenant in his blood, of remembrance of him, and “until he comes.” Holy Thursday transferred all that Jesus had been into a new key that Church theology developed. A positive development, this Catholic believes, but one that shorted or obscured some of what Jesus was, handing on to us a too-spiritual Jesus. Herzog and other Jesus historians restore important parts of the picture. They keep the historical Jesus, the subject of continuing in-depth historical inquiry, relevant to the Church’s belief and practice.
Last updated on: February 20, 2025 at 10:58 am By Jack Hartjes
Step by step one ascends from the less holy to the more holy, and less to more exclusive, spaces of the temple in Jerusalem. (Image credit: Israel, my Glory)
“Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” (John 2:19) Could Jesus, once a village handyman, have meant that literally? What would the temple that he built in three days be like?
Jesus claimed to be able to rebuild the temple in three days.
He was not referring to the “temple of his body” (as in John 2:21) or to his resurrection after three days.
He meant a literal temple, one that could be built in three days.
There is a setting in Jesus’ life where all the above makes sense.
I’m getting help from William Herzog and others as I explore these suggestions.
The charges against Jesus – true and false
Jesus’ trial featured three charges against him, and the charge that led to his execution was not true, Herzog says. Jesus did not claim to be “king of the Jews” as Pilate’s inscription on the cross read. But Herzog thinks two other charges – forbidding payment of tribute to Caesar and threatening to destroy the temple – were accurate enough. The last of these is of interest here.
If Jesus didn’t exactly threaten to destroy the temple, he came close to it. He declared the temple superfluous when he announced forgiveness of the paralytic’s sins. (See previous post.) Jesus attacked the temple again with his line about faith moving mountains. It wasn’t just any mountain that Jesus meant:
Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea,” and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. (Mark 11:23, my emphasis)
Ched Myers in Binding the Strong Man (p. 305) says Jesus meant one particular mountain – the nearby Temple Mount. The threat to the temple was subtle but easy enough to read.
Again Jesus’ enemies could have read a criticism of the temple into Jesus’ comment about the “widow’s mite.” (See Myers, Binding, p. 321-22) Its placement in Mark’s Gospel just before Jesus’ prediction of the temple’s destruction, suggests that was probably Mark’s interpretation, too. The Temple took a poor widow’s last two coins – “all she had to live on,” in Jesus’ angry words. (Mark 12:44)
The prosecutor in Jesus’ court case couldn’t get his witnesses to agree. Other than that, he had a strong case. Jesus’ words and actions concerning the temple were indeed threatening. Even without the most provocative episode, which is:
The demonstration in the temple
Herzog interprets Jesus’ violent action in the temple in the light of the huge role the temple played in the Palestinian economy. The temple controlled vast amounts of money and continued to accumulate more. All that money didn’t come just from the shekels that tithing brought in, although that was considerable. The temple was also a bank for the Judean elite. Excavations near the Temple Mount “have revealed the great luxury in which these rich folks lived.” (p. 137)
First-century economies didn’t grow as a modern economy can. In a no-growth economy riches came only with the impoverishment of the lower classes. Upward transfer of wealth begins with interest-bearing loans, especially, but not only, to peasant farmers. Both the aristocrats themselves and the temple bank on their behalf used money to rake in more money. Debt was a constant in the life of the poor. That was “as much because the rich landowners needed to invest surplus income profitably as because the poor needed loans to survive.” Almost inevitably, for farmers, piling up debt meant eventual confiscation of their land. For
… the only logical reason to lend was … the hope of winning the peasant’s land by foreclosing on it when the debt was not paid off as agreed.
That agreement included a provision that nullified the Scripture’s Sabbath and Jubilee Years, when loans should have been forgiven. This provision, the “prosbul,” Herzog comments, “testified to the breakdown in social ties between debtor and creditor….” (p. 137) No wonder, he adds, that the rebels in the Jewish revolt of the 60’s burnt all the debt records the temple kept.
The temple’s visual representation of a stratified society
Jewish society separated people according to degrees of holiness, or purity. The temple complex represented this separation with “increasingly inaccessible courtyards.” These separated “Gentiles from Judeans, women from men, Levites and laity from priests, and the high priest from ordinary priests.” (p. 116) Each degree of holiness found its place in a physical hierarchy of ascending spaces.
Imagine Jesus approaching the temple on the day he planned for his symbolic attack. He starts outside Jerusalem in a nearby Judean town. Like all Judea, Bethany was a holy place compared to the lands of the Gentiles. Jesus travels uphill to the holier city of Jerusalem. Within Jerusalem is the Temple Mount, still more holy. He passes a rampart into the temple’s outer court, the Court of the Gentiles. If Jesus were to go on and up, he would ascend to the Court of the Women, then to the Court of the (men) Israelites, which includes the Levites. Beyond and above this, to higher and holier levels, Jesus would never go because he is not a priest. (p. 119)
This day Jesus stops within the Court of the Gentiles. There he sees a warning sign in three languages
… announcing the death penalty for any person, except a ritually clean Judean, who attempted to [continue on]. (p. 117)
And Jesus is ritually unclean, having been in close contact with lepers recently. (He’s been staying at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany. His temple enemies wouldn’t follow him there.) Along with Jesus, other ritually unclean individuals could gather in the outer court—bastards, eunuchs, and anyone lame or not whole in body. And Gentiles, of course, and anyone too poor to pay the temple tithe. The bearers of the paralytic, before Jesus cured him, would have to leave him here.
The right place for Jesus’ demonstration
You might think that Jesus’ symbolic attack on the temple would be more meaningful in the temple proper rather than in the outer court. Because of impurity Jesus isn’t allowed in that more sacred space, but that needn’t stop him. After all, Jesus did tell a story about a repentant publican who dared to enter where he didn’t belong. (See this post.) Jesus has a better reason for conducting his demonstration where he did.
The outer court is where all sorts of temple business goes on. There you buy animals for sacrifice. And there you change impure foreign money to temple coins for purchasing sacrificial animals. I’ve heard that it was all this busy work, and perhaps shady dealings, that offends Jesus. The sight of it stirs Jesus to righteous anger and motivates his attack. Far from it! Jesus has all along known what goes on in this court. It’s no surprise to him. It isn’t even particularly offensive. We have no evidence that the sellers and money changers were cheating anyone. The economic business that takes place there was necessary for the sacrifices, the temple’s religious service to God.
The reason for Jesus’ attack on the temple in the place where Jesus staged it lies, rather, in this quote from prophetic literature, which Mark attributes to Jesus:
Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:17, a combination of lines from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah)
The temple’s offenses consist in exclusivity inside its limits and robbery outside.
The inclusive “house of prayer”
In this “den of robbers,” (Jeremiah 7:11), Herzog sees not a place where thievery takes place but a “hideout.” (p. 139) The temple’s and all Judea’s aristocracy commit their theft of peasant lands and poor people’s wealth. Then they hightail it to the temple imagining they’re safe from God’s wrath because they pay their dues there.
Jesus insists the temple is not a refuge for robber barons but, (Isaiah 56:7), “a house of prayer for all the nations.” That’s Mark’s version. In Matthew it’s just “house of prayer.” Matthew goes on to name the people whom Jesus welcomes there: the blind, the lame, even children. Besides foreigners and Matthew’s list, Isaiah in Chapter 56 names eunuchs among the forbidden ones whom God, contradicting his own law, gathers. Jesus probably knew he was quoting, in Herzog’s words, “perhaps the fullest Old Testament vision of an inclusive Israel.” (p. 141)
The problem with the temple isn’t just its role in oppressing the poor. Even in its architecture it says “Keep your distance” to people God loves. Jesus isn’t just cleansing the temple. No cleansing, no reform of scribal behavior, can solve that problem. Jesus’ anti-temple works and words aimed, symbolically and mostly implicitly, at destruction. But Jesus may even have said explicitly something like, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it.” (John 2:19) Not that he thought he’d ever get that opportunity.
What kind of temple could Jesus build in three days?
Jesus grew to maturity in a family that, probably sometime past, had lost its ancestral land. Joseph was an artisan, a little better off than a day laborer. He made a meager living selling what he could make with his hands. Jesus followed in the handyman’s trade so he knew something about building. He could have gotten a crew together and erected some kind of structure in three days.
It wouldn’t have looked much like the temple that Herod built. But Jesus wouldn’t have wanted it to. That was the style of the grand tradition of the wealthy, aristocratic, elite portion of society, the portion that holds itself higher than the rest. Jesus preferred the alternative, little traditions of the villages. Jesus’ temple would have been all on one level, like the places where villagers met. There leaders and followers met face to face, to adjudicate internal problems or deal with impositions by the great tradition. There they also planned village celebrations and worshiped Yahweh.
If a village had an actual synagogue (they may not have), it probably would not have been a building set aside for just that purpose. Herzog thinks it may have been like the house churches of the early Christians. (p. 145-46) Jesus’ Jerusalem temple would have been bigger. Otherwise it wouldn’t take three days to build it! Or maybe Jesus picked that number because it sounds good and gets a lot of use in popular stories. At any rate, the number wouldn’t have had anything to do with Jesus’ three days in the tomb.
What about the “temple of Jesus’ body” raised in three days (John 2:21)
There is a tendency in the Gospels to defend Jesus against the charges officials and other witnesses brought against him. The synoptic Gospels tell us that the witnesses did not agree with each other. So maybe he didn’t actually talk about destroying and rebuilding the temple, these gospels imply. Or, if Jesus did so speak, the author of the Gospel of John reinterprets: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” referred to the temple of Jesus’ body, says John. The raising up, then really meant the bodily resurrection. Jesus wasn’t attacking the temple, says John, but making a prediction.
I see a problem with the temple as Jesus’ body and the raising up as the resurrection. First, Jesus speaks of raising the “temple” as if it’s something he is going to do. But practically everywhere that the Gospels mention the resurrection it’s in the passive voice. Jesus doesn’t raise himself. It’s the Father’s act.
Raymond Brown in An Introduction to New Testament Christology (p. 151) finds another problem. He thinks Jesus must not have predicted the resurrection ever. Jesus was human, like us, in all things but sin. But a Jesus who knows in advance that he would rise soon after he died doesn’t die a truly human death. Here’s Brown:
He would be a Jesus far from a humankind that can only hope in the future and believe in God’s goodness, far from a humankind that must face the supreme uncertainty of death with faith but without knowledge of what is beyond.
Catholics, Brown goes on, believe in a truly human Jesus,
… for whom the detailed future had elements of mystery, dread, and hope as it has for us and yet, at the same time, a Jesus who would say, “Not my will but yours”….
What about the three days in the belly of the whale?
John, the last Gospel writer, had 60-some years for Christians to develop a theology of Jesus’ body. One could expect that theology to influence the interpretation of words that in Jesus’ mouth may have been about only the temple. In other words, John was taking Jesus’ words but saying something else that his later community needed to hear.
But we have much earlier writings, from a community scholars call Q, that show up in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In one saying that this community transmitted, Jesus refuses to give a sign to “this generation.” Except for one sign, the Sign of Jonah. (Luke 11:29-32 and Matthew 12:38-42) In this early text Jesus also seems to be predicting his death and rising after three days. Jonah, for refusing to preach to the Ninevites, was three days in the belly of the sea serpent. So Jesus will be three days in the “belly” of the earth. Well, that’s Matthew’s version of the story. Luke has the same Sign of Jonah but without the three days inside either sea serpent or earth.
Richard A. Edwards (The Sign of Jonah, p. 80ff) argues that Q got its material from even earlier traditions, where Jesus refuses to give any sign. The Q community itself added the Sign of Jonah, and the sign was that people, just like the chastened Jonah’s Ninevites, were accepting a prophet’s preaching. In this case a Christian prophet. They were joining the Q community. Later Matthew, but not Luke, added the part about Jonah in the belly of the fish and Jesus’ three days in the earth. (For a fuller treatment of the Sign of Jonah, see this post.)
This very early traditions also gives us no prediction of Jesus’ resurrection in three days and no reason think that that’s what the temple saying was about.
Questions about this proposal and for today’s Church
Could Jesus have claimed to be able to rebuild the temple? I doubt that Jesus said he could destroy the temple as the charge in the synoptic Gospels goes. That would have taken a much bigger crew than Jesus could muster. But a smallish crew could have built a temple that Jesus might like, even in three days. I’m imagining Jesus voicing some desire like: “If only this temple would just fall down. (Not one stone left on another!) Give me three days and I could build an appropriate temple, where everybody belongs.”
Imagining the kind of temple that Jesus might have liked—where people’s differences don’t matter—raises some questions for the Church:
Are there more and less holy spaces in our church buildings? For example, is the sanctuary holier than the nave? I like to imagine a church where the sanctuary lamp honors the altar of sacrifice, the sacrament’s repose in the tabernacle, and the space where God’s people gather. Call the whole space a sanctuary, as Protestants do!
Are there dividing lines which you need special faculties to cross? Must the priest meet the procession with the gifts in front of the altar, as if to say “Thanks, but I’ll take it from here.” Why can’t ordinary people go straight to the altar with the bread and wine?
Speaking of “ordinary people” – is there any other kind? Is there really an ontological difference between baptized people and everybody else? Between a priest and a lay person? I wonder if one cause of clericalism and abuse in the Church is the theory, the old theological opinion, about sacramental “marks on the soul.”
Concluding note: Please, don’t take these thoughts about a simple temple that Jesus could build to mean Jesus wouldn’t like elegant churches and impressive cathedrals. Obviously, Jesus wasn’t going to build one of these. That doesn’t mean he would be against architects using their skills to inspire awe in the presence of God.
Last updated on: August 16, 2022 at 3:10 pm By Jack Hartjes
Hiroshima before the atomic bomb blast.Hiroshima after the bomb.
It’s been 77 years since the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United states dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m returning to a subject I treated previously. This post will begin a series on “Nuclear Weapons, the World, and the Church.” Four posts in this series will cover these topics:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the conscience of World War II victors
The pragmatic case for the bomb falls apart
Nuclear Weapons Today: The Moral Issue
Moving away from Armageddon: one reasonable step
Dedication: In 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, Marking the first use of a nuclear weapon against people. As we remember the transfiguration of Christ in the mysterious light of glory, we also remember all those who were tragically and senselessly transfigured by the first nuclear blast. May their memory help us to see a way toward peace in our time. (From Common Prayer for Ordinary Radicals)
From global warming to the pandemic to the health of democracy around the world, many issues crowd thoughts of nuclear peril into the backgrounds of our minds. Yet that peril hasn’t gone away.
Major nuclear powers, especially the U.S. and Russia have backed away from previous agreements limiting and reducing nuclear stockpiles. Plans are moving forward to spend trillions upgrading and even replacing nuclear weapons delivery systems. In the midst of his war in Ukraine, Russian President Putin hints at possible use of nuclear weapons.
The Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock began as a project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. They had worked on the Manhattan Project and knew what a terrible force they could be unleashing on the world. They tried but failed to convince the U.S. secretary of war not to use the bomb against inhabitants of a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki. Instead they had proposed a demonstration in an uninhabited area. After the war they worked to inform the public about science and “its implications for humanity.”
The initial setting of the clock, in 1947, was seven minutes to midnight. Not claiming that seven minutes was all the time left before nuclear Armageddon, but using a metaphor to depict existential threats to humanity. That seven minutes becomes a basis for comparing how imminent these threats are compared to 1947.
Immediately after World War II, the threat was nuclear war. Since then climate change and disruptive technologies like ”bio- and cybersecurity” have become existential concerns as well.
Seventeen minutes is the furthest from midnight the clock ever got. That was in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed and after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The closest to midnight was 100 seconds in 2020. That setting hasn’t changed since.
Early Catholic opposition to the Bomb
Searching for information on early Catholic response to the use of the atomic bomb in World War II, I encountered an authority I have known personally. Msgr. John K. Ryan taught one of my philosophy classes at The Catholic University of America in the mid 1960’s. A much younger Fr. Ryan, three days after the second use of an atomic bomb, wrote in the Arkansas Catholic:
The story of the atomic bomb should fill us with dismay. (“Emma Catherine Scally, “Between Piety and Polity: The American Catholic Response to the First Atomic Bombs”)
While the bomb was in development, Pope Pius XII showed he well understood the power hidden inside the atom. The New York Times quoted the pope in 1943:
Above all, therefore it should be of utmost importance that the energy originated by such a machine should not be let loose to explode—but a way found to control such power…. Otherwise there could result not only in a single place but also for our entire planet a dangerous catastrophe.
In 1948 this pope called for a ban on the atomic bomb, “the most terrible arm which the human mind has thus far conceived.” (New York Times article) The Pope reviewed the ancient teaching of the Church, including this provision:
The use of force must distinguish between the militia and civilians. Innocent citizens must never be the target of war; soldiers should always avoid killing civilians. (From “Just-War Theory,” article on the Mount Holyoke College web site)
The pope continued:
If the wars of those days already justified such a severe sentence, with what words should we today judge those which have struck our generations and placed at the service of their work of destruction and extermination a technique incomparably more advanced?”
More than one Catholic position
But in the early years after the war the American Catholic response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not one-sided. The U.S. Army’s Catholic chaplain Fr. George Zabelka, blessed the weapon which would fall on hundreds of thousands of Japanese, Catholics included. A Catholic pilot flew the bomber that carried the bomb to its destiny. American Catholics divided on the subject of the bomb.
That division nearly disappeared after 1949, when the USSR tested its first nuclear weapon. Catholic ambivalence turned to majority Catholic support, as people believed the bomb protected us against the Communist enemy. Prominent Catholics seriously debated the possibility of moral use of nuclear weapons, contingent upon the accomplishment of a greater good relative to the harm done.
Even the pope tailored his views on nuclear weapons to his audience, preferring not to offend.
Although the L’Osservatore Romano, Rome’s official newspaper, had published an editorial that harshly criticized President Truman’s decision to use the bomb, the Pontiff retracted similar statements that were published in the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for soldiers, and classified them as “not authorized.” (From Emma Catherine Scally, “Between Piety and Polity.” Her article is the source for this section.)
The morality of the bomb was never a matter of pure ethical theory but depended on conditions “on the ground.” Was the nuclear strike necessary? How much damage to human life occurred, and was that proportional to the just goal of the war? Catholic ethics can be very pragmatic.
The next post in in this series will show how attempts to justify the bomb pragmatically fail.
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