Just wanted to point out last week's Catholic Carnival is up. It's great - as usual.
God bless,
Jay
August 2006 Archives
I'm always fascinated by the question of how many people would ever really believe in Christianity in general. And I think you can touch upon it by asking the question: what if Jesus appeared in the sky every night at 7:00 PM and explained why you should believe in Him. This would be the most blatant exposition of truth available. How many would believe?
The tendency is to say "almost everyone," but unfortunately this is not true. A segment of the population would suggest this nightly occurance was simply gas in space that seemed to look like Christ. Or another would suggest that it was mass hypnosis and we weren't really seeing Jesus. But the worst - the saddest - of God's creatures would admit that this was Jesus and proceed to twist His words in a way to suit their lifestyle. So that they do not have to change for any reason.
I think God believes (and knows) He has given us exactly the proofs we need to believe. He has appeared over time to His people culminating in an actual visit to earth in the flesh where He was killed for our sins. He left behind a Church which wrote a book explaining exactly what happened while Jesus was on earth. How much more should He do? God of course could make us believe, but we would then be robots incapable of truly and freely loving Him. And frankly, how many more would believe with anything short of making us robots? In our day and age faith is no longer a function of knowledge. You can read history, science, or philosophy and get to God. The information is available that will help you believe.
But ultimately faith is a function of morality: we don't want to believe because it would curtail our sins in an unacceptable way. We would rather not believe and keep on doing what we prefer, than to believe and be forced to change. Even among those who attend church and say they believe, so few are willing to actually make a sacrifice for God. To live a better, more holy existence because of their belief. Would an apparation in the sky help? I don't believe so, but if it would it has happened. Repeatedly. And been studied scientifically (many of the scientists studying the apparations have converted). So if that's what it takes for you, go look into it. Otherwise ask yourself: why do I expect so much from God and so little from myself?
God bless,
Jay
Just wanted to point out this week's Catholic Carnival. It's full of great Catholic thought and worth a few minutes of your time!
God bless,
Jay
On the eve of a Marian Feast Day (the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven), I wanted to point out one particular difference between Catholics and protestants: our multiple views of Mary. As Catholics we have the Blessed Virgin Mary in many different devotions from Our Lady of Sorrows to Our Lady of Lourdes and including Our Lady of Grace. Why the many versions? After all, the Saints are generally seen in only one form.
The Faces of Mary
Each devotion of the Blessed Virgin Mary points to and emphasizes one or two of her particular traits. But it is more than that: everything about Mary leads us closer to Jesus Christ. We have her words recorded in the Gospels: Do whatever He tells you to. And these words echo to us through the revelations of Mary in different forms.
An example is Our Lady of Grace. It originated as a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary from an icon painted with Mary holding the baby Jesus. Mary, by giving her acceptance to have the Christ Child brought the source of all Grace into the world. In other words, Jesus, who is the source of all Grace, came into the world through Mary, so she introduced Grace (in human form) into our world. It not only illuminates our knowledge of Mary, it also underlines the reality of who Christ is.
As Pope John Paul II wrote in Theotokos: Woman, Mother, Disciple:
The People of God, under the guidance of their pastors, are called to discern in this fact the action of the Holy Spirit who has spurred the Christian faith onward in its discovery of Mary’s face. It is he who works marvels in the centers of Marian piety. It is he who, by encouraging the knowledge of and love for Mary, leads the faithful to learn from the Virgin of the Magnificat how to read the signs of God in history and to acquire a wisdom that makes every man and every woman the architects of a new humanity.
Mary underlines Her Son
Throughout history, Mary has called us to follow her Son. Even in the various names and devotions we give her, she underlines her Son’s traits and calls us to “do whatever He tells you.” And if you examine the apparitions of Mary (like Fatima and Lourdes) they again call us to Jesus.
Don’t be afraid of Mary: her love calls you to worship her Son more fully.
God bless,
Jay
This week's Catholic Carnival is up. Go and enjoy it - the title is "St. Dominic and the Queen of the Holy Rosary," but don't let that scare you off (if you're protestant)! The posts are excellent as always.
God bless
Jay
From the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen:
[People] have heard preachers without end preaching, "Go to Christ!" But what does that mean? Go back two thousand years? If so, then have they not a right to doubt the divinity of Him who could not project Himself through time?
Look up to Heaven? If so, then what has become of His blessing, His forgiveness of sinners, His Truth that He said would endure unto the end of time? Where is His authority? His power? His life now? If it is not someplace on earth, then why did He come to earth? To leave only the echo of His words, the record of His deeds, and then to slip away leaving us only a history and its teachers?
Somewhere on earth today is His truth: "He that heareth you, heareth me." Somewhere on earth is His power: "Behold, I have given you power . . ." Somewhere on earth is His life: "The bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world." Where to find it?
There is an institution on the face of the earth that claims to posess all these things, and to those who have knocked at its portals and have asked for a drink has come the elixir of divine life and, with it, the peace that comes to those who drink and never thirst again, and eat and never hunger again.
To each and every one of us, inside and outside the Church, our Lord asks, "Will you accept the cup of my love?"
Thanks be to God that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and promised that it will never perish or err. And thanks even more that He has given us His flesh in the Eucharist. You are, after all, what you eat.
For more read Victory over Vice, which is an excellent book by Archbishop Fulton Sheen (it's even on sale at the time of this post).
God bless,
Jay
It's it a sad critique on modern culture that pop singer Madonna can stage a mock crucifixion of herself for money. And somehow people still turn out.
Maybe no one told her she isn't god. And she's much too old for this crap - as Led Zeppelin pointed out "there's still time to change the road you're on." I'm not sure Madonna realizes there's another road. Or that at 47 it's going to be tough to change the one you're on. We can only pray for her - and not buy what has become crummy music anyway ;-)
God bless,
Jay
This is actually an interesting apologetics question, since there is a clear difference of opinion between Catholics and most protestants (a few prominent protestant exegetes do adhere to the Catholic position). The “Woman” in Revelation 12 is important because of the position she is given in the book and in heaven by St. John (she is depicted as the “Queen of Heaven”). Here is the text:
Revelation 12:1-6. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
Agreeing on the Basics
Let’s start with a few things we can agree on: the Woman is giving birth to Jesus and the dragon is the devil. Virtually all will agree on that. We can also agree that in some respects the woman represents the Church, which gives birth to faith and children of God. However, the question here is: who does John intend the woman to be? And at this, the question becomes very complex. As Stefano Manelli points out in All Generations Shall Call Me Blessed:
According to one scholar, “not two exegetes are in perfect agreement about the twelfth chapter of Revelation.” The interpretation of this splendid, dramatic page of the Book of Revelation, in fact, has been and remains difficult because of the complexity of elements composing it, because of the variety of its literary genres (prophetical, apocalyptical, Johannine), and because of the multiple references to the Old and New Testament.
So we can all agree that it is complex and we probably will not completely understand the text until we are in heaven with the writer! There are, as pointed out, multiple references to the Old Testament here: Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7:14, Song of Songs 6:9, Psalms 2:9, and Micah 5:2, for example. And these must all be considered in a full analysis.
The Logical Conclusion
Now with those basics set, we can agree on two of the three players. It seems almost too obvious to stick the Virgin Mary as the third player, but frankly she fits. Remember, she gave birth to Christ and then fled through the desert (three and a half years) during Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, which can be interpreted as the devil throwing down the “stars.” It is, I concede, an imperfect fit, but clearly one of the two best fits for the passage. As Manelli also states:
A more critical analysis of the theories [concerning this passage], however, shows that as in yesteryear, so today there are but two basic interpretations of the “woman” of Revelation 12, namely: Mary and the Church. Traditionally, there has been “a pendulum movement between the two interpretations,” writes I. de La Potterie, “and neither of the two aspects can be totally excluded in the interpretation of this mysterious symbol.”
And, as Cardinal Newman points out:
The image of the woman, according to general Scripture usage, is too bold and prominent for a mere personification. Scripture is not fond of allegories. We have indeed frequent figures there, as when the sacred writers speak of the arm or sword of the Lord. So, too, when they speak of Jerusalem or Samaria in the feminine, or of the Church as a bride or as a vine. But they are not much given to dressing up abstract ideas or generalizations in personal attributes. This is the classical rather than the scriptural style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and Vice, represented as women.
This does not remove the value of interpreting the woman as the Church, however I think there is enough evidence available to say that one interpretation of Revelation 12 must be the woman as Mary, Queen of Heaven.
Why Must Mary be Accepted?
There are numerous reasons why Mary the Mother of God must be seen in this passage, but I’ll point out the key ones:
- She was the Mother of Jesus and the Protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15) puts her as the devil’s adversary.
- The term “Woman” is used throughout Scripture to refer to Mary: Genesis 3:15, Galatians 4:4, John 2:1-11, and John 19:25-27 (note the last two, along with Revelation, were written by the Apostle John)
- She fled after the birth into the desert wilderness.
Again, this isn’t a perfect interpretation, just as putting the church as the woman is not a perfect interpretation. The best answer is seeing the woman as primarily Mary and a model of the Church. In Christian history Mary was always seen as representative of the Church, so this fits perfectly. As Scott Hahn points out in Hail, Holy Queen:
The woman of the Apocalypse is the ark of the covenant in the heavenly temple; and that woman is the Virgin Mary. This does not, however, preclude other readings of Revelation 12. Scripture, after all, is not a code to be cracked, but a mystery we could never plumb in a lifetime.
In the fourth centry, for example, Saint Ambrose saw the woman clearly as the Virgin Mary, “because she is mother of the Church, for she brought forth Him who is the Head of the Church”; Yet Ambrose also saw Revelation’s woman as an allegory of the Church herself. Saint Ephrem of Syria reached the same conclusion, fearing no contradiction: “The Virgin Mary is, again, the figure of the Church . . . Let us call the Church by the name of Mary; for she is worth of the double name.”
The Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God
In the end, we must say that the woman in Revelation was intended to represent Mary – at least as one of two symbols. I believe the evidence strongly suggests she is the primary symbol and her motherhood of the Church is the secondary symbol. It is silly to try and say she has no part of the passage, especially once you concede the other two participants: Jesus and the Devil.
God bless,
Jay
Where did the phrase "knock on wood" come from? I always assumed superstition, but maybe not:
The phrase "knock on wood" is believed by many to have come from the Catholic Church, when old-time rosaries and crucifixes were made from wood and were used frequently during times of stress and trouble.
Therefore, holding onto or rubbing the wooden rosary became a common way for Christians to deal with hardships and the term eventually evolved into "knock on wood" for good luck.
If only we would "knock on wood" a little more as a society!
God bless,
Jay
Be sure to check out this week's Catholic Carnival. It really has an amazing array of subjects and articles for your enjoyment.
God bless,
Jay
