The light has come

A man came, sent by God.

His name was John.

He came as a witness,

as a witness to speak for the light,

so that everyone might believe through him.

He was not the light,

only a witness to speak for the light.

John 1:6 - 8

There are entire schools of thought when it comes to making meaning of one's life experiences, relationships, mortality, serious illness, death/loss, religiosity, spirituality, and just being. The reflective person will interogate their lived experiences and make connections and when these connections make sense, they give meaning. Some make meaning out of a balance of their life's experiences, but there are many who, because of a deficit or surplus in their own experience, become dependent on - for example - religious experience, literature, sport, politics, gardening. The metaphors people chose to explain what their lives mean can often be drawn from the mouths and writings of gurus, mentors, heros and stars of the human variety.

When meaning making is successful there can be resolution, healing, growth.

As we prepare for the birth of the Christ-Child and for the ultimate last days, it is opportune to make sense and make meaning of the mythic story that is the Christian story. John - who has constructed this narrative for us - has no angelic annunciation or infancy narrative, but a super-narrative creation story where the Divine Word becomes flesh. This then is immediately followed by the introduction of the divinely missioned John. John really is looking at the big picture. Jesus is the Christ before creation and after creation. He has no need to reconstruct a birth story - he may not have been aware of one, it may not have been question to be answered in his community. But he does want to make sure that from the very opening of his Gospel account that you are absolutely aware that Christ's coming, his incarnation, was a divine act, and his ministry was presaged by John Baptist.

John's introduction is deeply layered. But who is this John, and where does he come from? Is he an Essene (or a Zealot)? Is he indeed Jesus' cousin - son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, or is this another reverse prophecy? How has God sent him? How was he called? If he was to witness, how did he learn or come to know what he had to know and do? Or was he a prophet, like Isaiah whom he quotes? Answers to these questions and many more would give us a deeper understanding about why John Baptist is the central figure in the beginning of Chapter 1. Now depending on what experience we ourselves bring to this story, religious, cultural, scriptural, literary-historical, social, and whichever of these is our forté will inform us and allow us to grasp not the author's intention, but to discover who we truly are in this extraordinary story. This is how John (the Evangelist} wants to engage us in his Gospel. We are not viewers from 1900 years after the Christ-event, but participants in  an unfolding and everlasting story.

Peter Douglas

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE LAST PRIEST DIES? IT DEPENDS ON THE NATURE OF OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE

Werner G. Jeanrond

The debate – it goes back to the days of the first followers of Jesus – about the shape and governance of the Church has never lacked drama: and today we are at a moment when the anxious defence of her (real or imagined) glorious past clashes particularly sharply with prophecies of doom if she does not modernise at once. But change of some sort, almost certainly momentous, has now become inevitable.

The reason? The rapidly decreasing number of celibate male priests in most Western countries. In Ireland, for example, the average age of priests is pushing 70. What will happen when the last priest in a diocese dies or leaves? It will not be the end of the Christian faith, but it will certainly mark the end of the Church as we have known it.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the nature of our Christian hope. Do we hope for a Church that confronts the world with an alternative vision of society – a perfect society, run on Christian principles, separate and apart from the decadent, God-less world? Or do we hope for a Church that is called to be one of God’s instruments in bringing about the promised renewal of the whole of Creation? Is the celibate male priesthood – and the vision of a Church led by holy men who alone are deemed able to mediate between God and his people – closely related to the first model of the Church, as a separate society set aside from a decadent world?

Nobody denies the need for leadership and for appropriate public sacramental service in the Church. But, as Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich recently reflected, the two functions ought not to be confused. Not everybody who has the ability to lead a parish needs to be ordained. And not everybody who is ordained is thereby rendered competent to lead a Christian community.

By and large, Catholics in the West – lay and clergy alike – have not even begun to reflect on the possible ways the Church might be structured and organised in the future, beyond the closure or amalgamation of parishes. It’s impossible to tell if they might be open to embracing different forms of leadership or if they cling to the current model, in the belief that Jesus Christ himself ordained that his Church should be made up of dioceses and parishes, each with its own male celibate priest, and a curate or two if spare personnel are available. If the latter, the lack of biblical, theological and historical knowledge would be disturbing. Clericalism is never a good cover-up for the lack of hope in God.

Thomas Aquinas invited us to rethink the divinely given virtues of faith, love and hope. Unlike the ordinary human virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude, the three theological virtues can only flourish in women, men and children when God’s grace is actively embraced. They presuppose an intimate and dynamic relationship with God in prayer and action. Hope, which concerns us here, is more radical than optimism. It involves a pilgrimage not to God, but with God and with fellow pilgrims along the path of God’s creative and reconciling project. The sacramental life of the Church is to facilitate this pilgrimage in and for the world; for this world is God’s Creation and God will never abandon it. God has invited us in Jesus Christ to participate in this pilgrimage of renewal, of healing and of reconciliation, and God has opened up the perspective of eternity for this project.

Eternity is not unending time, nor does it imply immortality for Jesus or for us. Rather, eternity means God’s presence has entered into our time, place and language. Eternity opens the horizon for our hope and for any meaningful conversation on the Church, her vocation and her future structures and organisation. Christians hope that God’s will be done in love and that God’s joy can be shared by all human beings – past, present and coming generations, the entire community of saints.

Fear that the contours of our Church are changing causes despair; trust that God’s Spirit will guide us on our worldly pilgrimage strengthens our hope. I would like to see the Church become an institution of hope: at once preserving our common vocation to transform our world through love, and encouraging the dynamics of hope that will guide us to explore and discover ever more adequate forms of vibrant community life and non-clericalist leadership. A great and hopeful example for the latter is the Parish Catalyst movement in the United States, of which William E. Simon Jr’s recent book Great Catholic Parishes (2016) gives an inspiring account.

All of us, bishops, priests and people together, are challenged to make our Church fit again to respond more appropriately to the manifestation of God’s eternity in our lives and aspirations. God has not called us to worship our customs and traditions. Rather, God has given us hope and invited us to share our hope with all people of good will. Ultimately, we shall have to account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15).

Werner G. Jeanrond is the master of St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford.

    

Be prepared

 

The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah:

Look, I am going to send my messenger before you;

he will prepare your way.

A voice cries in the wilderness:

Prepare a way for the Lord,

make his paths straight,

Mark 1:1ff

Some years ago our family made its first European trip together via Tokyo. We were heading for Italy: Rome and Florence. Preparations began a year before, booking travel and accommodation for five, organising leave, replacements (for those of us who were working), booking our Italian classes, making arrangements for pets, our children had to save their spending money. The experience was everything and more than we expected. There were so many incredible moments but I will spare you from the travelogue. After our holiday, my family returned to Australia while I travelled on to Leuven, Belgium, where I completed the (now closed) American College’s Sedes Sapientiae course.

That essential wedding preparation tool, Bride to Be magazine suggests that the average cost of a wedding in 2016 was - hold your breath, $65,000. On the other hand the moneysmart.gov.au website proposes an average of $36,200. It's broken down as:

• $18,683 – Food, alcohol & venue.
• $4,271 – Wedding clothes and accessories.
• $3,983 – Photography.
• $2,896 – Entertainment.
• $2,896 – Flowers and decorations.
• $941 – Ceremony.
• $2,534 – Other (cars, hair, makeup, accommodation, stationary)
• $36,200 – Total cost

Just a cursory glance at this list tells you the size of the wedding, the number of guests, the calls that needed to be made, the infinitesimal detail of invitations, menus and thank yous. A great many of us have endured, I mean, experienced such preparations. Having everything fall into place, having the right weather, having the wedding party in one place at the right time, perfect photographs, well-behaved little nephews and nieces (and parents, uncles and aunts). Good preparation doesn’t necessarily mean a perfect outcome (given the incredible number of variables), but it certainly contributes to a sense of satisfaction, achievement and of a job well done. (We, for example, had a Lebanese banquet for our wedding breakfast - and yes, we knew we weren't Lebanese. My great-great aunt had never eaten Lebanese in her life and asked me if I could find her a meat pie!). But prepared you must be.

In Advent we parallel the stories of a) our salvation history leading up to birth of the Christ, b) John’s preparatory ministry leading to the public ministry of Jesus, c) the apostolic communities’ expectation of the second coming of the Lord, and finally, d) the stories of our own lives as we await the fullness of God’s presence with us. That fullness comes from lives lived well, lives lived with faithfulness to the Gospel, and lives given generously and liberally to and for others, lives well prepared and grounded in love.

May each of be open to the Advent possibilities.

Peter Douglas

 

BROKEN ENGLISH: CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND AND WALES WOULD CONTINUE TO BE RESTRICTED TO THE USE OF THE CURRENT, MUCH CRITICISED, MISSAL

29 November 2017  

 Eamon Duffy

Last week, the Bishops’ Conference announced that in spite of Pope Francis’ instruction that they should have more authority over liturgical translations, Catholics in England and Wales would continue to be restricted to the use of the current, much criticised, Missal

Since 2011 English-speaking Catholics have endured a translation of the Mass whose language is, by general consensus, archaic, verbose and in places frankly unintelligible. Characterised by cringing modes of address to God inherited from ancient court etiquette but jarringly obsequious in English, it is larded with latinate technical terms – “compunction”, “conciliation”, “participation”, “supplication”, “consubstantial”, “prevenient”, “sustenance”, “oblation”, “laud” – for all of which there are far more user-friendly English equivalents.

The translation bizarrely attempts to replicate the complex grammatical structures of Latin. The result is protracted sentences with multiple subordinate clauses, hard for priests to proclaim and for congregations to follow. It is also profoundly anti- ecumenical. It abandons familiar versions of the Creed and Gloria shared with Anglicans and Protestants, while its insensitive and repeated use of the language of “merit” plays to Protestant suspicions that Catholics rely for salvation on their own works rather than on the grace of God. Even to Catholic ears, “merit” now carries misleading Pelagian resonances, doubtless capable of orthodox interpretation, but which have no place in the language of vernacular prayer.

The current missal embodies the theories on translation set out in Liturgiam Authenticam, a directive issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2001. This document rejected the principle of “dynamic equivalence”, which held that translators should not attempt slavish replication of the syntax, vocabulary and word order of the Latin originals, but aim instead to communicate their substance as fully as possible in an authentically vernacular idiom. This principle had guided all Catholic liturgical translation since Vatican II, and rejected the common-sense norms employed in literary translation more generally.

In rejecting it, the authors of Liturgiam Authenticam purported to be defending the Church’s tradition. In fact, the directive was a profoundly untraditional text. It not only represented a rupture with world-wide post-conciliar developments in the liturgy, but in the interests of a tendentious argument it oversimpliffed the untidy plurality of the liturgical past. Revealingly, its 86 footnotes contain only two references to anything written before 1947, one of those a citation from Aquinas which distorted his meaning by taking it out of context. Liturgiam Authenticam was a crass and ill-informed document, whose inadequacies were subjected to a withering analysis by the conservative American liturgist and chant historian, Peter Jeffery, in Translating Tradition, which should be required reading in every seminary.

But Liturgiam Authenticam was nevertheless used to legitimise the suppression of a far superior translation of the Missal which had been approved by all 11 English-speaking bishops’ conferences in 1998. With great pastoral sensitivity, that book retained what was best in the texts in use since the 1970s, while providing dignified and accurate versions of prayers which had earlier been paraphrased or shoddily rendered. But it also succeeded in producing texts that sounded natural in English, rather than slavishly replicating the verbal patterns peculiar to Latin. That cut no ice in Benedict XVI’s Rome: the bishops were browbeaten into accepting the suppression of their own admirable Missal.

In addition to clearing the way for the current translation, which many find a barrier to prayer rather than a channel for it, the suppression of the 1998 book was an act of naked power. It undermined Vatican II’s recognition that the local episcopates rather than the Curia held primary responsibility for the sacramental life of the churches. In September this year, Pope Francis set about rectifying this situation and reasserting the Council’s teaching. His motu proprio, Magnum Principium, restated the fundamental principle of dynamic equivalence, that fidelity in translation “cannot always be judged by individual words but must be sought in the context of the whole communicative act”. More importantly, the Pope insisted that responsibility for liturgical translations lay first and foremost with bishops’ conferences. Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, immediately attempted a Curial damage limitation exercise, insisting that, in fact, nothing whatever had changed, Liturgiam Authenticam was still in force, and his Congregation retained primary authority over all translations. Pointedly, the Pope took the unusual step of publicly correcting him.

The shabby process by which the English-speaking bishops’ conferences were bulldozed into submission and the present Missal was imposed is traced by John Wilkins in a powerful new book. Lost in Translation: The English Language and the Catholic Mass is a pungent Tract for the Times, in which Gerald O’Collins – an Australian Jesuit who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for 33 years, in association with Wilkins – a former editor of The Tablet, call on the bishops to reinstate the suppressed 1998 Missal. By close comparison of the two translations, O’Collins amply establishes the general superiority of the suppressed translation over the current version, and highlights the beauty and effectiveness of the original English opening prayers, which the 1998 book provided for use alongside the traditional collects. O’Collins’ argument can occasionally be over-insistent, as when he dismisses the three-fold “mea culpa” with the somewhat peremptory diktat that, “Everyone today can and should express repentance by simply confessing, ‘I have sinned through my own fault.’” Nor will everyone agree that “Dominus Deus Sabaoth” in the Sanctus is better translated “God of Power and Might” (which to some ears has about it a faint whiff of the jackboot), in preference to the more concretely biblical “Lord God of Hosts”. But few objective readers are likely to dissent from the overall case made here for the inadequacies of the current Missal, and the superiority of the suppressed 1998 version.

All the more baffling, therefore, that the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales last week declared its intention to continue the exclusive use of the current Missal. In response to widespread representations, they explained, they had sought advice on the implications of the Pope’s initiative from the CDW. That is, they had applied for interpretation of Francis’ intentions to the very body whose prefect had recently attempted to subvert the Pope’s return of liturgical responsibility to the bishops. Not very surprisingly, they were told that Magnum Principium was not retrospective, and they were consequently not at liberty to replace the present Missal. This direction, it appears, they have meekly accepted.

I know nothing about the negotiations which led to this dismaying outcome. Unanimity among bishops on the need for change is doubtless hard to achieve. An ingrained instinct of deference, practical concerns about cost and possible disruption, and a natural inclination to let sleeping dogs lie, possibly played their part. But this dog is not sleeping, and it is no secret that many of the bishops are as unhappy with the present Missal as anyone else.

Nothing in the Christian life is more important than prayer, and the Mass is the heart of prayer. The Missal we have suffered since 2011 was a disastrously misconceived project, imposed on a reluctant episcopate. By retaining it, the bishops are saddling us for the foreseeable future with an ugly and alienating version of what should be the Church’s most fundamental school of prayer, and generations of Catholics will learn from it that the liturgy is not for the likes of them. It is urgently to be hoped that even now the bishops can be persuaded to discharge the duty Pope Francis has reminded us belongs first and foremost to them, and give their flocks the wholesome food already to hand, their own 1998 Missal.

‘Lost in Translation: The English Language and the Catholic Mass’, by Gerald O’Collins with John Wilkins, is published by Liturgical Press.

Eamon Duffy is Emeritus Professor of Christian History at the University of Cambridge and a past president of Magdalene College. This article first appeared in The Tablet.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/11794/broken-english-catholics-in-england-and-wales-would-continue-to-be-restricted-to-the-use-of-the-current-much-criticised... 2/6

01/12/2017 Broken English: Catholics in England and Wales would continue to be restricted to the use of the current, much criticised, Missal

 

Kairos

 

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening, or at midnight,
or at cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!'"

Mark 13:33 – 37

Several weeks ago our 5 year old grandson asked us to take him shopping to buy High Tide, a Transformer Rescue Bot! He was more than happy when we explained we'd buy him one for Christmas. Well, we began looking and none was to be found at the local, Launceston or Hobart toyshops.  As it began to look as if finding a High Tide would not be possible with the Christmas deadline, we began searching the net. Occasionally he would remind us of the sacred duty he had set for us. So, it was with some satisfaction and relief that we found High Tide online and at a price slightly less than retail and ordered it immediately. I have already received an acknowledgement of our order and today advice that High Tide will arrive on 1 December - and I am able to follow its journey from the online retailer to our doorstep.

What is astonishing about this scenario is not the technology that enabled me to buy and arrange the delivery of this toy, but of the sensibilities of our grandson, who, eight weeks before Christmas, was able to organise his grandparents, check progress and patiently wait for the payoff.

In the last few weeks of Ordinary Time, the waiting, being prepared, being awake and attentive and patient theme provoked by Matthew's parables of the Ten Bridesmaids and the Talents comes to fruition as the season of Advent commences.

When Jesus tells his disciples that they will not know when the time will come, he is using the word kairos. Kairos means the right, critical or opportune time. We sometimes speak about the 'fullness of time' and in this instance it refers to the second coming, when he will indeed come again. This is what we ultimately await - so be prepared and be ready! The Greek word for this second coming is parousia. In Latin this is translated as adventus, hence our season of Advent. But Advent also marks yet another coming, and that is birth of the Christ-child, an extraordinary divine intervention into human history. And that event is not just a chronological event, but an eschatological event in which the presence of God is made flesh, in which the potential of humanity is realised and revealed, in which the most complex of truths is revealed in the innocence of a newborn child.

Our grandson has a greater sense of this mystery than I. He has made his preparation. He is patient. He waits expectantly. There is a marvellous joy in the way he knows things will work out fine, and that joy pervades the present as well as anticipating the gift he will receive on Christmas day. Now that's an Advent.

Peter Douglas

GOD’S CLOSENESS

by ron rolheiser OMI

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

There’s a growing body of literature today that chronicles the experience of persons who were clinically dead for a period of time (minutes or hours) and were medically resuscitated and brought back to life.  Many of us, for example, are familiar with Dr. Eben Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. More recently Hollywood produced a movie, Miracles from Heaven, which portrays the true story of a young Texas girl who was clinically dead, medically revived, and who shares what she experienced in the afterlife.

There are now hundreds of stories like this, gathered through dozens of years, published or simply shared with loved ones. What’s interesting (and consoling) is that virtually all these stories are wonderfully positive, irrespective of the person’s faith or religious background. In virtually every case their experience, while partially indescribable, was one in which they felt a warm, personal, overwhelming sense of love, light, and welcome, and not a few of them found themselves meeting relatives of theirs that had passed on before them, sometimes even relatives that they didn’t know they had. As well, in virtually every case, they did not want to return to life here but, like Peter on the Mountain of the Transfiguration, wanted to stay there.

Recently while speaking at conference, I referenced this literature and pointed out that, among other things, it seems everyone goes to heaven when they die. This, of course, immediately sparked a spirited discussion: “What about hell? Aren’t we judged when we die? Doesn’t anyone go to hell?” My answer to those questions, which need far more nuance than are contained in a short soundbite, was that while we all go to heaven when we die, depending upon our moral and spiritual disposition, we might not want to stay there. Hell, as Jesus assures us, is a real option; though, as Jesus also assures us, we judge ourselves. God puts no one to hell. Hell is our choice.

However it was what happened after this discussion that I want to share here: A woman approached me as I was leaving and told me that she had had this exact experience. She had been clinically dead for some minutes and then revived through medical resuscitation. And, just like the experience of all the others in the literature around this issue, she too experienced a wonderful warmth, light, and welcome, and did not want to return to life here on earth. Inside of all of this warmth and love however what she remembers most and most wants to share with others is this: I learned that God is very close. We have no idea how close God is to us. God is closer to us than we ever imagine! Her experience has left her forever branded with a sense of God’s warmth, love, and welcome, but what’s left the deepest brand of all inside her is the sense of God’s closeness.

I was struck by this because, like millions of others, I generally don’t feel that closeness, or at least don’t feel it very affectively or imaginatively. God can seem pretty far away, abstract and impersonal, a Deity with millions of things to worry about without having to worry about the minutiae of my small life.

Moreover, as Christians, we believe that God is infinite and ineffable. This means that while we can know God, we can never imagine God. Given that truth, it makes it even harder for us to imagine that the infinite Creator and Sustainer of all things is intimately and personally present inside us, worrying with, sharing our heartaches, and knowing our most guarded feelings.

Compounding this is the fact that whenever we do try to imagine God’s person our imaginations come up against the unimaginable. For example, try to imagine this: There are billions of persons on this earth and billions more have lived on this earth before us. At this very minute, thousands of people are being born, thousands are dying, thousands are sinning, thousands are doing virtuous acts, thousands are making love, thousands are experiencing violence, thousands are feeling their hearts swelling with joy, all of this part of trillions upon trillions of phenomena. How can one heart, one mind, one person be consciously on top of all of this and so fully aware and empathetic that no hair falls from our heads or sparrow from the sky without this person taking notice? It’s impossible to imagine, pure and simple, and that’s part of the very definition of God.

How can God be as close to us as we are to ourselves?  Partly this is mystery, and wisdom bids us befriend mystery because anything we can understand is not very deep! The mystery of God’s intimate, personal presence inside us is beyond our imaginations. But everything within our faith tradition and now most everything in the testimony of hundreds of people who have experienced the afterlife assure us that, while God may be infinite and ineffable, God is very close to us, closer than we imagine.

http://ronrolheiser.com/en/#.WhqmSLSKbOQ