September 23
Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice.
As the saying goes: Boys will be boys. Or so it seems. Our readings today are filled with expectations and contradictions.
We expect wisdom to be a product of age
We expect disciples to be accustomed to the message of the Master
We expect good things to sprout from a field cultivated carefully over a long period of time.
And yet…
The readings are in a rebuking mode today, a challenging mode, and frankly, a little bit of a disgusted mode. The “new” has definitely worn off.
The wicked say:
Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
Or perhaps we like the question from the Letter to James:
Where do the wars
and where do the conflicts among you come from?
This is nothing new.
From time immemorial, since the first club hit the first head, since Cain killed his brother, men have been in battle with one another.
The history of the world is a history of bloodshed, pain, familial strife, internecine bickering, violence in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the home.
We fight, we scream, we threaten, we destroy.
We insult people’s sensibilities, even their religion.
We bomb and kill in embassies of diplomacy and peace.
I would like to say it is not the case here. I would like to say it, but nature sometimes wins out.
The question is slyly asked after class: Em, what did you get on the paper, on the test.
We strive to make that better grade, that extra activity, that … whatever to be noticed by the rector, the vice rector, my dean.
We like this one, we dislike this other one. We shoot each other with paintballs. We talk. We gossip. We snip.
And of course we are nothing, we are rank amateurs compared to what goes on “out there”.
Competition in the business world, the romantic world, the social world, even the Church world.
Complaining, back biting, hitting below the proverbial belt, character assassination, hostile takeovers.
Even among the disciples:
They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.
Well, perhaps that is the way, the way of the world, the way of our baser instincts.
But Jesus wants to show us another way.
The way of his Truth, a truth that shatters the barrier walls of lies and human deceit
The way of his Love, a love that circumvents the permutations of the human heart, of momentary infatuation and cyber gazing
The way of his Knowledge, a knowledge that goes beyond books and sees into the soul, into the depths of each person.
The way of his Beauty a beauty beyond the ephemeral delights of commercialism and half time, a beauty found in literature and art, but also in the art of each personality, the literature of each life.
The way of children dancing to piped music, reacting intensely and instinctively to the world.
What is the life of the child?
It is a life of discovery, of miraculous unveiling
So far removed from the dreariness of expectation, of what we anticipate will be the case
It is a life of unfettered laughter
So far removed from the gross introspection and suspicion of more sophisticated minds
It is a life of play and the instinct of happiness
So far removed from the playacting and drama of adult engagement with a world so complex that it becomes convoluted, entangled, entangling, convulsive.
It is a life of joy, pure joy that casts our fear. It is a life that does not fear
It does not fear the loss of control in every unbridled scream
It does not fear the pain of discovery in every covered smile
It does not fear the agony of regret in every decision
It does not fear the death of separation in every relationship
Can it be our lives?
Can we be the children that Jesus draws to himself?
Can we believe in miracles?
The miracle of the transformation of the bread and wine
The miracle of the Body and Blood of Christ transforming us.
Taking a child, he placed it in the their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
"Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me."
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Let the little children come to me, do not hinder them. As all of you know we are at the very end of the construction of the new St. Bede Hall and Newman Hall. Soon new facilities will be coming. We will have new classrooms, new residential rooms, new fitness rooms, new faculty rooms. All new. St. Meinrad is a place of change. Today there is not a single space at Saint Meinrad that was as it was when I arrived here in 1988. We change. We grow. We rise to meet the needs and the signs of the times. From a theological perspective, these changes in the physical plant are mirrors of a more profound idea from our theological world, conversion. We grow and changes spiritually as well as physically. One of the important ideals expressed here is how we use our space in conjunction with the spiritual the ideal of conversion. How does the physical environment of Saint Meinrad reflect what we are about spiritually? This is part and parcel of my idea, really my maxim, that everything is formation. Certainly what we do in the classroom makes a difference. At Saint Meinrad we have the responsibility to communicate effectively the teaching of the Church, to teach others to teach the Church’s message effectively and to encourage people to live, indeed to thrive, according to that teaching. At Saint Meinrad, we have the necessity of providing a viable outlet for Church teaching. But there is more. We also need to demonstrate the efficacy of that teaching in more tangible ways, how we communicate with each other, how we live, and the environment. The environment of the seminary, like the environment of the domestic Church, should mirror the Truths of our faith, Truths taught in the classroom but lived in the dining room, the residences, the corridors and the chapel. In a word, Saint Meinrad should demonstrate the physical and spiritual integration of the Christian faith, an integration that mirrors the central truth of the Incarnation. And so we have tried to demonstrate this physical teaching throughout our halls. On the first floor, we have portraits of the popes. On the second floor we have images of the history of the Church and great leaders and teachers from the contemporary Church. On the first floor of Anselm Hall we have our Heritage corridor. On the third floor of Newman Hall we have our new Marian Corridor, images of Our Lady from around the world, representing the different cultures that study and are formed at Saint Meinrad. We have new art in the chapel. Today, I would like to talk about a project I am working on, a series of paintings for the Second Floor of Newman Hall. I have commissioned a series of paintings from local artists, depicting the 20 mysteries of the rosary. These local artists come from different backgrounds and will undoubtedly express different temperaments and different points of view. Each will view the mystery they are to illustrate in a new and fresh way. I should mention that all of the artists are under 11 years old. In this new corridor, children’s art will be displayed in a monumental way. It will be fresh. It will be colorful. It will be new and it will be theologically engaging. A question you might ask on the front end is something like this: What do the naïve ramblings of children have to do with the sublime and sophisticated musing of the graduate theological institution? I think that this question touches on a very real and significant topic for today. It is said that a problem with Catholic catechesis is that we never get beyond childhood. I don’t think that is true. In fact, I think the opposite is true. What did Jesus say? Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom. And what is the attitude of the child? It is an attitude of wonder. It is an attitude of bewilderment. It is an attitude of overwhelming insight. It is an attitude of naiveté in the best sense of not making more of a thing than we can incorporate. The problem of the adult world is not that we fail to get beyond childhood; it is that we fail to remember the good things that children experience, that they know, and that they believe. We get too far beyond childhood. I recently heard about a contest among some first graders to illustrate the nativity. All of the children showed up with beautiful pictures. Many of them had snow made from cotton balls as a prominent feature. Many of them showed the wonderful animals, including family pets. One little boy proudly displayed his picture of the Holy Family in the crib at Bethlehem with the rather unusual feature of St. Joseph with a face painted bright red. When asked about this singular feature on the person of Joseph, the little boy replied completely without guile: “Well if all of these people were making a fuss about your kid and you knew you weren’t his father wouldn’t you be embarrassed?” Out of the mouths of babes. In a single stroke our young theologian captured something that many adults would be reticent to even think, the truth that the young St. Joseph would have been hard pressed to explain what was going on in his own family, a mystery that lies that the very heart of our Christian faith. In our new display of children’s religious art, I hope to capture some of the surprise, some of the intimacy and some of the grandeur expressed in the artistic world of children. In anticipation of this, I asked my secretary to consult with her 5 and 7 year old children about making a contribution. Little Molly, contributed a wonderful painting of the nativity in which the baby Jesus is nestled in a pile of hay bales about 6 feet tall. Why? Because that is what her barn at home contains. Mary and Joseph in this singular display teeter on the edges of the bales. They are undoubtedly aliens to the farm scene capturing in essence some of the alienation of the Holy Family experienced in the Gospels. Jesus is lost in nature, a minute part of the great incarnation of Creation. There is so much there that it not only fires the mind, it truly touches the heart. Kyle Kramer’s daughters have also been among the first participants in this project, contributing beautiful images of the annunciation and the resurrection. with angels emanating from a gleaming sun and the women crouching in the insecurity of the cave. In the new hallways we hope to find a source of inspiration in the unfettered theology of children. We also hope to find perhaps something of our inner children, our love, our curiosity, our hopefulness, our joy, our cheer. It is my hope that you find that here, that you see at Saint Meinrad a safe place to be as child-like as you can. I hope that Saint Meinrad is a place of discovery, a place where you can safely glory in the expansiveness of possibility. I hope that your time at Saint Meinrad is filled with excitement, and maybe even a little childish danger. As we begin this new formation year let us listen seriously to the words of Jesus Let the children come to me Let the children be us …
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This feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross places me in a dilemma, a crucis, a cross-roads. Which way should I go? How should I proceed? As a historian it is certainly tempting to speak about the origins of this feast, the discovery of the Holy Cross by St. Helena, the way in which the relic of the cross has been venerated, the glory of the True Cross in light of the world’s triumphs. As a theologian, it is tempting to speak of the importance of the signum crucis, its place in the history of humanity, its significance in baptism, in the Eucharist. As a biblical thinker I might preach about the wonder of the cross in the language of the Old Testament. What do we read? "Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live." As an individual, I might recall how this day is the anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest priests I have ever known, a priest whose life was certainly configured in the image of Christ, and Christ crucified. Any one of these approaches might be profitable, but I keep coming back to the words of St. Paul in the letter to the Philippians. Brothers and sisters: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, This is what Jesus did. He emptied himself. He took the form of a slave. How can it not be so with us? The cross for us today is something to be considered and reconsidered in a theoretical way. The cross for the folks of Jesus time was a scandal and a symbol of shame. We are asked to conform our lives to the cross. Can we place our own needs, our own preferences, our own ideas aside, casting them down in the dust of Golgotha? Can we risk the embarrassment of nakedness, the vulnerability of crucifixion of the spirit, the mood that unites us daily to Christ? Can we move beyond judgment, suspicion, doubt and truly turn our lives over in obedience to our superiors, our bishops and see in their words and actions the words and actions of Jesus? Will we bring ourselves to the brink of alienation in order to be close to the God who took our sins all the way to the shame of the cross? Will we follow him unquestionably, removing from our lives all bitterness and resentment, all sense of failure and hopelessness? Will we walk the way of Christ, or will continue to be immured beyond hope in the folly of our own egos, our own deceitfulness, our own lies, chasing the phantasms of our own “owness”? Brothers and sisters: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, How can we not only imitate but become slaves of God today? How can we empty ourselves in order to be filled with the life of Christ? Whether we are historians, or theologians, or Biblical scholars, or just … us… All are called to the same reality. Jesus did not come among us as one who was served but one who served others. What does St. John tell us? For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. How can we not have that same love in us if we dare to be called sons and daughters of God? Brothers and sisters we have been given a great prize, the prize of everlasting life, won for us at a great price, the price of the humiliation of the cross. Come now, let us fortify ourselves for the passion by uniting our bodies with his in this celebration of the Eucharist. Blessed are those called to the cross of Christ. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.
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Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means "God is with us." It would have been nice if there had been a parade. It would have been appropriate if there had been a little fanfare. There was not … In an obscure place, among a conquered people, to poor parents, outside of the observance of kings, within the walls of a darkened house teetering on the edge of civilization, a little girl was born. A girl, not to be noticed. A girl, not to be valued. A girl, a child not to be heeded. And yet, in the fullness of time she was heeded. Why? Why did this obscure birth celebrated today throughout the world, written on the hearts of kings, tied to the fate of nations, practiced in the minds of scholars, inscribed on the tablets of history, smeared upon the pallets of cultures, why did this birth resonate forever with the timbre of meaning? Because God chose her. God chose the lowly Mary to be his instrument, to bring the glad tidings of God’s beneficence into the world, a beatitude also tied to the form of a screaming baby. The world may have counted her as nothing, but we count her as the greatest woman who ever lived, greater than the queens of nations, greater than the first parent. We count her as the source of our salvation, the instrument of God’s audacious plan. We count her as the source of a question, equally audacious, perpetually inviting. Can it be so with us? Can we sublimate our own designs in order to be the willing participants in God’s design, the threads of his majestic tapestry? Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means "God is with us." God is with us, He truly is. He guides our works and days. He challenges us to be what we are truly called to be, his servants, his willing evangelists, his only. Brothers and sisters, let it be so, let it be true for us as it was true for her in the mists of history, in the obscurity of time and place Let it be so here and now.
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In my rector’s conferences this semester and in anticipation of the Year of Faith promulgated by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, I am focusing on the major documents of the Second Vatican Council. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the convocation of the Council by Blessed John XXIII. It is a momentous event and one that warrants some careful attention given to the documents that comprise the Council’s teaching. In the further conferences for this semester, I will consider the other three major documents of Vatican II. Today I will begin with a biblical observation: “The Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword.” These words from the Book of Hebrews are a source of revelation for us at every level. They tell us something significant about the Word of God, a topic that is considered dogmatically in the document of the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum. Dei Verbum, the Word of God, has a double meaning in a Christian context. On the one hand, it refers to something very particular, the revelation received by the holy Church in sacred Scripture and Tradition. On the other hand, it refers to the Word made Flesh, the One who has dwelt among us, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. The Word of God, received through the ages in the formal transmission of revelation, is sharper than any two-edged sword, and so is the reality of the Divine Master whom we receive daily in the Holy Eucharist and whose life we are called to be participants in, in an intimate way. The dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation reveals to us the intimacy of the connection, the concomitancy, between the received Word and the living Word. Our consideration of this intimacy must begin with an assertion. St. Paul tells us in the First Letter to Timothy, “God desires that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the Truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4). This is a dramatic assertion, particularly in a time in which the anthropology of religion informs us of the shrouded nature of deities among peoples of an earlier time. Even Judaism maintained, in a very focused way, the distance of God, a God who was considered only within the context of the cloud, only known by an unspeakable name, the Tetragrammaton. The nature of our engagement with the Word of God in the new dispensation then comes with a movement, a desire on the part of God, a desire to be known and known intimately. God’s desire is that all things should be revealed and remain “in their entirety.” In His gracious goodness, God has seen to it that what He had revealed for the salvation of all nations would abide perpetually in its full integrity and be handed on to all generations. Therefore Christ the Lord in whom the full revelation of the supreme God is brought to completion (see Cor. 1:20; 3:13; 4:6), commissioned the Apostles to preach to all men that Gospel which is the source of all saving truth and moral teaching. God’s gracious revelation is therefore in a person, the person of Jesus, and our encounter with that person is transmitted through the evidence of the apostolic preaching. The content of this preaching, the Good News, the Gospel, was given first orally, This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. This oral message came through the living witness of its postulators, a witness often sealed in the covenant of blood. The Word was believed because its harbingers were willing to die on its behalf. The oral message of the apostles existed for almost a generation when this same Word and its divine content were committed to writing. From these earliest days of the Church, the Word went forth, not only in preaching and writing, but also in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, bringing men and women of the early Church into intimate contact with the Word about which they were hearing. Apostolic succession assured that: [T]he apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thess. 2:15), and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all (Jude 1:3) Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes. The communication between Scripture and Tradition becomes an essential element in learning the way in which God intends to show Himself to us through history. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the Word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. The living complement to Scripture and Tradition is the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church that gives authentic witness to the Word of God, and, in the context of that authentic witness, gives authentic interpretation. [And yet,] this teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed. Therefore, the document presents to us three distinct realties in the context of the Divine Plan: God intends to communicate to us, He uses the dual and interpenetrating means of Tradition and Scripture, and He provides for an authentic interpretation in the body of the Magisterium. What these dogmatic assertions teach us, ultimately, is something, again, about God’s love for us, His desire to draw us to Himself in a way that transcends the Old Covenant and its perceived intimacy. God intends to know us in a dynamic way, a way that involves us, that invites us through the means of Tradition and Scripture, in the living reality of the Magisterium of the Church. The teachings of the Second Vatican Council found in Dei Verbum are not new teachings; they are teachings interpreted in a new way, revealing the dynamic nature of dogma seen in the teaching of the Council itself. The teachings of Dei Verbum offer a new perspective on our engagement with the particular modes of revelation considered in the document. They are not, however, exclusive. They represent a time of change in the Church. A charge that has frequently been leveled at the Catholic Church is that, historically, it tried to keep the Holy Word in the sacred Scriptures from the people. The claim, of course, is not only false, it is non-historical. It makes no sense to talk about access to the Bible in generations upon generations of people who could not read. Widespread illiteracy in the early Church, and the Medieval Church in particular, meant that most men and women were deprived of a direct experience of the Biblical texts. Of course, because of the nature of textual production, there were no readily available texts for them to read anyway. It is wrong, however, to think that the early Church and the Medieval Church had no access to the Bible. The Bible was read in the liturgical assembly, and explained in preaching. The stories of the Bible were told in the living texts of architecture and stained glass. If the average man or woman could not read, then the essence of Scripture was conveyed to them by other means. Christianity is not a religion of the Book; it is a religion of the living Word. If Catholics, historically, were not given access to the Book, they were given access to the Living Word in the Holy Mass, in communion, in the intimate encounters of a community built upon the Word. Reading the Bible becomes a much more important way of gaining access to the Word when there is not liturgical presence, when the community of faith has been divided between the Sacred and the secular. It is true that, during the renaissance and reformation periods, the Church strictly curtailed access to the Bible for the average layman. This happened within a context, the context of the misinterpretation of the centrality of Scripture (sola scriptura) and the removal of the order of Christianity found in the liturgy. In other words, people during that time of Catholic prohibition were reading the Bible for the wrong reasons and in the wrong context. Never was the Catholic without access to the Word of God, understood in a particular way in the Mass. If there was a tension between the body of Catholics reading the Scriptures and the prescriptions of the Magisterium, it came by way of false interpretive methodologies inherent in some renaissance and reformation views. One of these views is fundamentalism. Biblical fundamentalism sees the Bible rightly as inerrant. It sees it wrongly as self-sufficient. While we know that all of revelation is contained in the Bible, the Bible must stand in the living tradition of the Church. It must breathe through the lungs of the Church’s authentic teaching office. Various fundamentalist views hold that the Bible is self-interpreting, that its texts are self-evident. Yet, how many divisions within fundamentalism do we observe based on false readings of a self-evident text? Fundamentalism and its historical manifestations strip the Bible of its richness. As a divinely inspired text, the Bible is necessarily open to generative interpretation. Fundamentalism ultimately and ironically strips the Bible of its authority by making it the cognitive playground of useless speculators. The opposite extreme of fundamentalism is liberalism. Liberal forms of Christianity seek to strip the Bible of its power by making it merely the written expression of an historical cultural environment. From this perspective, the Bible tells us a great deal about ancient religious practices but nothing substantial about the world in which we live, the world we seek to interpret through its pages. Dei Verbum stands at the end of a cautious trajectory of Biblical interpretation. In Divino Afflante Spiritu, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical letter of 1943, the area of Biblical scholarship is opened in the Church. The letter comes as a response to that written by Pope Leo XIII 50 years earlier, Providentissimus Deus. In the earlier letter, Pope Leo condemns many of the modernist interpretations of the Bible and generally holds fast to the Church’s traditional stance, while nevertheless providing some means for Catholics gaining a greater access to Biblical texts. In the anniversary work, Pope Pius offers a more nuanced view, a view which comes in light of 50 crucial years in Catholic biblical scholarship. Pope Pius is open to new interpretive methodologies and new translations. He also promotes studying the text within its original linguistic context. He writes: We ought to explain the original text which was written by the inspired author Himself and has more authority and greater weight than any, even the very best, translation whether ancient or modern. This can be done all the more easily and fruitfully if to the knowledge of languages be joined a real skill in literary criticism of the same text. All of this advancement led to the teaching found in Dei Verbum. The core of the teaching found in the document is the assertion that stands at the center of Catholic thought about the Bible: Christ is the center of the Scriptures. The Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are predicated on a single revelation, the Revelation of Christ Jesus. Dei Verbum offers this insight: [T]he words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men. The intimate link between Word and Word is reiterated. We come to know the Bible as Word precisely through our engagement with the Word, which is Christ. Here again, the Eucharistic celebration provides an essential link, the Word comes hard upon the Word in the celebration, unfolding as it does in every celebration the essence of the Divine Plan and the dogmatic assertion about both realities. The Church finds nourishment in sacred Scripture, which it welcomes as the Word of God Himself. God is the author of all Scripture, and yet these writings are presented in the languages of human authors, again providing a replication of the fullness of time, in the Incarnation of the Son of God. The inspired books teach the Truth and thereby unveil the Truth broken and received on the altar. These books undoubtedly have a context, unveiled for us in authentic historical scholarship. However: Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God. Dei Verbum unfolds three principles, presented first in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit. These principles are essential to a Catholic reading of the Bible. The first is the principle of unity. All Scriptures speak of the same reality, the unity of the ultimate reality of God’s plan. The center of that plan is Christ Himself. St. Thomas tells us that the Bible makes known the Heart of Christ. In St. Thomas’s estimation, the teachings of the Bible, here he is referring to the Old Testament, were obscured until the Passion of Christ provided a fundamental key to interpreting them. Second, Dei Verbum reiterates the essential connection between Tradition and Scripture. Sacred Scripture is written in the heart of the Church, for the Church. It illuminates the Church and all attempts to understand it outside of this concept lead to futile judgments of false meaning. Finally, there is a need to be attentive to the analogy of faith, that is, the coherence of truths about the faith among themselves, interpreted not narrowly but with the whole plan of salvation. The complexity of Scripture is also reiterated in Dei Verbum’s canonization of the ancient model of the four senses of Scripture, that is, understanding all of Scripture in the literal, the spiritual, the tropological and the anagogical senses. Dei Verbum states: In Sacred Scripture, therefore, while the truth and holiness of God always remains intact, the marvelous “condescension” of eternal wisdom is clearly shown, “that we may learn the gentle kindness of God, which words cannot express, and how far He has gone in adapting His language with thoughtful concern for our weak human nature.” (11) For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men. Dei Verbum goes on to look at the means by which the Church has interpreted the Old Testament and the New Testament. The teaching here is clear. All Scripture is Christ, and in Christ there is a unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This kind of reading is called typology, a major interpretive theme in the Catholic schema of Biblical exegesis. Typology indicates the dynamic movement toward the fulfillment of the divine plan when “God [will] be everything to everyone.” Dei Verbum draws to a close with the opening of a new and dynamic chapter in the Church’s relationship with the Bible. And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting font of spiritual life. Hence “access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful.” “Therefore, the ‘study of the sacred page' should be the very soul of sacred theology. The ministry of the Word, too—pastoral preaching, catechetics, and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place—is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture.” The Church “forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful…to learn ‘the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ,’ by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. ‘Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.’” As a dogmatic constitution, Dei Verbum has opened for the Church a new chapter in its long relationship with sacred Scripture. While other documents of the Second Vatican Council have had a more prominent impact, perhaps Dei Verbum represents the greatest advancement in Church life in opening the pages of Sacred Writ for us in a new way. Since Vatican II, we have had new and greater opportunities of studying the Bible. We do so now in our parishes and religious communities in ways that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. Our authentic study of the Sacred Scripture has opened for us avenues of communication with other Christian groups. Today thousands of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures are at our disposal, written at every level of understanding. Today we have access to the Bible in ways our ancestors in faith would have never predicted. We are not, however, without some cautions still. We must still be wary of the need to read the Scriptures authentically, using the time-honored methods of the holy Church, employing various senses and seeing the Bible within the living Tradition of the Church. Within the Catholic Church, we must continually read the Bible in light of the teachings of the Magisterium, seeing in the body of bishops the authentic interpreters and teachers of the faith. In the Catholic Church, we must remain cognizant of any attempt at proof-texting or reading the Scriptures in a reductive way, even when it suits laudable, apologetic purposes. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It must remain so throughout our meanderings and musings, realizing at all times that its sole purpose is to bring us into contact, viable contact, with the living source of revelation itself, Jesus Christ, who is Lord of the world, now and forever.
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I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth. The words of St. Paul are difficult for us to hear, perhaps especially difficult in the culture in which we live. We are used to being told by our parents how special we are, how remarkable, how talented. I know that’s what my mother says to me. We are accustomed in our social order to promote such self-reflection, self-reinforcement as a matter of course. And yet. St. Paul had the power to boast. So did Apollos, I guess. But they did not. They realized something quite remarkable. They realized that whatever they had, however eloquent they were, whatever gifts they possessed they had it, they did so because of Christ, because God had given them those things. What was true of those apostles is true of us even here. Here we can come to know the Lord more profoundly and intimately realizing that --- Christ is the giver of every good thing we can possess. Here we can become men of knowledge and eloquence realizing that --- Christ is the source of all wisdom and the culmination of all knowledge Here we can come to a greater love for our brothers and sisters in this strange isolated place realizing that --- Christ is the source of all of their personalities, their endearments, and perhaps their little quirks Here we do perhaps come to a greater understanding of the world we inhabit, a world not filled with the plentitude of so much sin, so much vanity, so much empty Glory but realizing, finally, that --- Christ is the Lord of that world, the triumph of that world, the creator of that world and the governor of that world. Christ gives it all. He gives us life, He gives us strength, He gives us a reason for being. Without Christ we struggle in the quagmire of self-doubt, loathing and pain Without Christ we seek but never find, knock but are never admitted, ask but never receive Without Christ we are nothing, brothers and sisters, nothing at all With Christ we are new, we are whole, we are complete, we are triumphant With Christ we overcome, we sing, we are strong, we are who we are. With Christ we are men and women of love, of compassion, of peace, of justice, of hope, of striving, of care, of wonder, of beatitude. With Christ we are truly, complete human, very human, all too human and therefore, leaning into glory, tripping into beatitude, stumbling on the doxos of life’s magnificence. In the Gospel today we encounter Peter’s mother in law. Who was she? I’m sure she was a nice lady, after all she was St. Peter’s mother in law. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. We know nothing about her except --- She was healed by Christ and she waited on him. How can it not be so with us?
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Ora et Labora, prayer and work is the motto of the Order of Saint Benedict. Prayer and work. It may rightly be claimed that St. Gregory the Great, whose memory we celebrate today fully exemplified this ideal. Prayer and work. St. Gregory the Great claims a rightful pride of place in the foundation of the Benedictines, providing us with the only near contemporary account of the life of our founder. As Pope, St. Gregory prayed and wrote, taught and ruled with integrity of purpose. His prayer and his work also found unity, unity in the virtue of humility, such that it seems clear to me that the words of St. Paul in our first reading today are quite appropriate to place in the mouth of St. Gregory the Great: When I came to you, brothers and sisters, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. How can it not be so? How can we not be moved by the words of St. Paul, by the life of St. Gregory? They had wisdom, they had knowledge, they had skill, they had native abilities, but both of these men counted everything they had as rubbish in light of the surpassing knowledge of Christ. They wanted to offer nothing to the world but Christ. That is our mission as well. When Jesus went to his native place to preach, he was not accepted. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away. He went away. Where did he go? He came here. Brothers and sisters we gather today to do what St. Gregory the Great did. We meet here today to do what St. Paul did. We come here today to meet Christ and meet him face to face. If we know what we are doing, if we know the one whom we meet here, our lives will be changed. We are transformed as surely as the bread and wine are transformed. We will become consumed by Christ even as we consume Him. To me there can be no doubt, the evidence of the saints, their heroic qualities come not from what they do but from what they allow Jesus to do through them. His own would not accept him but we accept him and we are converted, changed in that acceptance. Come now, let us meet God face to face and be forever new.