I ran across this passage in an essay by Mary Harrington in First Things. It's not the main point of her essay but sort of an elaboration of her main point (which is about using Aquinas as a philosophical starting point to stand against what she sees as some of the technocratic excesses of our present age). But I offer this passage as a standalone occasion for contemplation:
I am indebted to the classical scholar Spencer Klavan for explaining to me that ancient Hebrew does not uses tenses as does modern English. So where the English version says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," Klavan offers as an English approximation: "At the origin: God, creating heaven and earth." In other words, a work of creation brings things into being, but it is also always active, and always complete. Just so! I look around me at the world springing back to life after winter, and it is easy to see at the origin God, creating heaven and creating earth. Creating form and creating matter.
Every spring, the Resurrection, a historical event which happened many hundreds of years ago, becomes more manifest to me when I see the tulips thrusting through the greening earth, and the lilacs blossoming on the bush in our backyard. Even the "helicopters" gyrating from the heights of our maple tree.
I think people think of things being created and then persisting on their own. I do not. Everything that is still is through that power from attosecond to attosecond. When not distracted by the chaos of modern life, not often, my contemplation of this restores some of the wonder of it all that I felt in my youth.
ReplyDeleteToday is the last of the three Minor Rogation days that came before Ascension Thursday. They were days of fasting and prayer, especially outdoor processions with the Litany of the Saints, that asked God's blessing upon the crops for the year. The Major Rogation Day was observed on April 25, the Feast of Saint Mark.
ReplyDeleteThese were all Christenings of ancient Roman Customs.
They were abolished with the liturgical reforms for the obvious reason that with African, Asia, and Latin America becoming so important their crop seasons may be very different than ours. Bishops' Conferences have the authority to establish "rogation days" for their country. Ours did not do so.
In this as in many other things the Anglican's have kept our medieval customs, e.g.
"Beating the Bounds": A traditional, often still-practiced ceremony where parishioners walk around the boundaries of their parish, praying for the community's protection.
Reminds me of the New England custom of repairing the fences in the Spring which might have been related to the Anglican custom.
We have our tomato and pepper plants all ready but are waiting for Memorial day. Our last average last frost day was once May 10, and I would begin putting things in then. Now our last frost is usually in late April. However, this year we have these polar vortex plunges that have brought frost warnings to us several times already in the last few weeks; looks like we might get another one or two before Memorial Day.
Perhaps we should reintroduce Rogation Days to pray for the harm we are causing to our climate.
I remember Rogation days. I didn't know why they quit having them, but it makes sense that crop seasons fall differently in different parts of the world.
DeleteWe're always praying for rain here, but the drought is worse than usual this year. Maybe we should have Rogation days again.
I love spring, even though here it can be a bit chaotic and unpredictable. It's when you can run the heat and the AC on the same day.
ReplyDeleteThe birds have returned, and we can hear the doves and the cardinals again. I do miss hearing the meadowlarks that we had back home.
Perhaps my favorite of the blooming things is the redbud. It's a small tree with airy magenta blossoms that last for maybe a week and a half. It's even a native species, along with the wild plums, and choke cherries, with their clusters of anise scented white blossoms.
But maybe my favorite thing about spring is the return of light. In this latitude it's not like northern Scotland, or Canada, or the Scandinavian countries. But light is a limited commodity in the dead of winter. Some people like blackout curtains to keep light out. But we have sheer ones, the bare minimum of coverage for privacy. And this time of year sunbeams on the wall are the first thing I see when I open the bedroom door at 6:30 or so. I don't like total darkness even at night. I like to see the shadows from the street lights through the trees..
I looked up that John Milton poem, Hail Holy Light, this morning. I remembered liking the first stanzas that we studied in English lit in high school. But the whole thing goes on ForEver. I quit scrolling when I got to 650 stanzas.
I remember our elementary school processions around the church, school, and parking lot. The equivalent of a full city block. The responses I remember were "Ora pro nobis" and "Orate pro nobis." I always liked the occasional shift from one to the other, since it was a break in what otherwise would have been a totally monotonous rhythm. And then there was "Te rogamus audi nos." These responses seemed to me somewhat akin mantras in meditation.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Litany of the Saints. Was that procession in honor of a feast day?
DeleteThe English translation of one of the lines was "graciously spare us". My dad used to roll his eyes and say that sometimes when something was getting on his nerves.
DeleteMy memory isn't that good, but Google has the following:
Key Components of the Rogation Procession:
The Litany of the Saints: The main chant, invoking saints to pray for the community (e.g., "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis").
Rogation Versicles:Specific petitions, such as "From famine, disease, and plague, Deliver us, O Lord".
So I guess both the Litany of the Saints and the Rogation Versicles were used on Rogation Days. This would have been in the 1950s.
I don’t remember anything like that when I was in Parochial school at a parish in the San Fernando Valley. No farms anywhere close!
DeleteThe NAB2e for Genesis 1:1-2 has
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth—
and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters . . .
There is the following note:
Until modern times the first line was always translated, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Several comparable ancient cosmogonies, discovered in recent times, have a “when…then” construction, confirming the translation “when…then” here as well. “When” introduces the pre-creation state and “then” introduces the creative act affecting that state. The traditional translation, “In the beginning,” does not reflect the Hebrew syntax of the clause.
I don't care for, "At the origin: God, creating heaven and earth."
However, I think it is standard Catholic teaching that God didn't just create and be done with it. The material world is, as long as it exists, dependent on God. So thinking of creation as a continuing process seems justified to me.