I wrote this for this past Sunday's edition of our parish bulletin (which, these days, probably doesn't get read by nearly as many people as it used to). Any thoughts / comments / corrections / amplifications most welcome.
Happy new (liturgical) year!
Today, as we begin the sacred season of Advent, we also inaugurate a new church year. The church’s liturgical year begins each year on the First Sunday of Advent, and takes us through Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, and 34 weeks in Ordinary Time.
The church follows a three-year cycle of scripture readings for Sundays, with each of the three years featuring one of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. The three years are designated Cycle A (Matthew’s Gospel), Cycle B (Mark’s) and Cycle C (Luke’s). At the conclusion of Cycle C, the church goes back to Cycle A again and the three-year cycle repeats itself.
The liturgical year we begin today will feature readings from Cycle B, which means that our featured Gospel this year is the Gospel according to Mark. Most scripture scholars consider Mark’s Gospel to be the oldest of the four Gospel texts, having been written down sometime in the decade between the years 60 and 70 – almost surely within the living memory of some of those who had known Jesus when he walked upon the earth. It’s quite possible that episodes of Jesus’ life recorded in Mark reflect the living memories of one or more of Jesus’ followers.
The three Synoptic Gospels have much material in common, and sometimes even use similar or identical words to recount those episodes. The mainstream scholarly view is that the authors of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels used Mark’s Gospel account as one of their sources. If that scholarly view is correct, then Mark’s Gospel has been influential indeed, not only in our day but even when it was first written down.
Throughout this year, I invite you to attend to the Gospel passages from Mark as they are proclaimed on Sundays. There is a certain immediacy and power to Mark’s Gospel which can change the lives of its listeners and readers.
Mark’s Gospel also is the shortest of the four canonical Gospels, so Cycle B is supplemented by passages from the Gospel according to John. John’s Gospel is not classified as Synoptic, which means that it mostly comes from a different set of traditions than the three Synoptic Gospels. John’s Gospel tells different episodes from Jesus’ life, features different secondary characters (Thomas, Nicodemus, Phillip) than the Synoptic Gospels (Peter, Andrew, James, John), and quite possibly wasn’t written until several decades after Mark’s. That means that, during this year of Cycle B, we will learn about the words and deeds of Jesus from two very different points of view, from two different eras, which supplement and complement one another.
Be watchful!
Today’s readings introduce several important Advent themes. Our first reading, a pastiche of verses drawn from the third main section of Isaiah, gives us a vivid sense of our separation from God, for which we must take responsibility, and which is a cause of great sorrow for us. In the midst of this sorrow, we long to be reconciled and reunited with God. These emotions surely echo how humans have felt ever since our species first was separated from God when Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. This sense of separation, and longing to be reunited, is one of the great themes of this Advent season.
That sense of loss also gives birth to hope that God will not forget us – and in fact, we know he hasn’t forgotten us; he has sent his Son to us to reconcile us to Him. That is a reason to rejoice! This great blessing of Jesus coming to us is captured in today’s second reading, which is the greeting section in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Jesus’ coming to us has bestowed grace upon us which has “enriched us in every way” – a wonderful reason to offer thanks, as Paul does in this passage. This theme of rejoicing and thanksgiving is a second great theme of Advent.
Finally, in our Gospel passage, Jesus looks ahead to the time when he will come again to us, at the end of times. We are admonished to stay alert and be ready, because we know not the hour. This is a third great Advent theme: Jesus came to us once, and he will come again, and we must be prepared. Thus, Advent is a celebration of our past when we awaited Jesus, joy when he comes to us now, and anticipation of his coming again.
I think Advent is my favorite liturgical season. I love that Isaiah reading from yesterday, "...oh that you would meet us doing right!"
ReplyDeleteThere isn't a way to share visual content in comments, but there is a good picture from Facebook of the four evangelists. They are captioned as follows; Matthew: "Before I begin, let me give you the genealogy of Jesus, so you know this is about a real person." Luke: "Before I begin, let me tell you the backstory that led up to all of this." John: "Before I begin, let me explain why it's important to believe that Jesus is the son of God." And Mark: "Let's get down to business!" Mark is depicted as a buff young man with an intense stare.
I like the idea of "hunky Mark" :-) Maybe that arises from the common supposition that he was the young man who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested (which doesn't actually preclude the possibility of his being tubby ...) It sort of fits the traditional idea of his being a disciple of Peter and/or Paul (lots of speculation that he is the "John Mark" mentioned in Acts and elsewhere) and acted as Peter's scribe.
DeleteAnd today is the feast of St. Andrew, an apostle but not one of the four evangelists. Also the middle name of one of my sons.
DeleteI like Advent. In Lent we have to feel bad about how awful we are. But in Advent, we are invited to imagine what life might be like if we were actually good enough to meet God. It calls us to be better, and it ends with the birth of a baby, something that resonates as joyful especially in this bad year of so much sickness and death.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, there are a couple of Anglo-Saxon vernacular rendering of all four Gospels. I have not poked around in them for ages, but when Katherine mentioned Mark as a young hunk, I recalled that that Gospel is the one that really rips along like a Saxon epic.
Some examples:
In Chapter 3, Jesus encounters the man with the "scrunched" hand and is angered over the "heart-blindness" of the pharisees. Later, Jesus takes his "learning knights" on his travels and he drives out the "devil sickness." When his mother and brothers try to get him to settle down Jesus dismisses their fears with the blunt response of a hero with no time to waste: "He said beholding those seated about, 'Here is my mother and brothers. Truly, those who do God's will are my mother and my brother and my sister."
When Jesus appears at the end of the Gospel (in 16:9-20), he gives his "learning knights" a quest to travel throughout "Middle Earth" and to tell the "God spell." "In my name you will drive out devil-sickness, you will speak with new tongues, you will not fear vipers, he will not die who drinks death-potions, over the sick he will set his hands and they will be well."
It's an exciting story tailor-made for a warrior culture looking for a way to channel their old values of bravery and loyalty into a new world that was being transformed by widespread conversion to a new religion.
John: why it’s important that you believe. I’m not sure that belief comes just because someone tells you it’s important that you believe.
ReplyDeleteCan one choose to believe even when there is no evidence that supports the validity of the belief? What does it really mean to believe when there is no supporting evidence other than the belief of others? My brother in law, an evangelical, tells me that he chooses to believe - just in case it’s true. Because he doesn’t want to go to hell if it is true. As an evangelical, only “right belief” counts. If you believe that Jesus is your personal savior, then you are safe. Is that real belief?
I might believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe in addition to on the earth, but that doesn’t make it true.
So many Christians, including Catholics, seem to be like the evangelicals - they believe because they hope to get something out of it, primarily to save themselves from some kind of horror after they die. This seems to be a very self- centered kind of belief system.
What does it mean to all of you to believe? If you had been born in India, to a Hindu family. do you really think that your religious beliefs would focus on Jesus or would they focus on the Hindu pantheon? What makes what is taught about Jesus and Christianity any more believable than what is taught about Allah or Krishna?
I think Fundamentalists are overly concerned about "correct belief" and not enough with how that belief leads them to treat others. And I think that Evangelicals are sometimes so preoccupied with the Second Coming and its rewards and punishments that it stunts their sense of what we need to do in this life.
DeleteBut I want to generalize less as I get older.
I am less concerned with "belief" in everything in the Bible than in the slog of trying to follow some of Jesus's basic ideas--treat others as yourself, love God by respecting his creation and creatures, and hope that it all makes you a person better able to live with herself and others.
For me, that's the lesson of the saints. They "saw Heaven" and tried to live it out here. I'm sure they carried frustrations and doubts, but a lot of that gets washed away in the hagiography.
I might have followed a different faith had I been born elsewhere. This was a question that we were asked in RCIA, I suppose to try to get us to explain why Catholicism and not Zoroastrianism.
I find such questions impossible to answer. I was born here, I am a product of my time and place. To me, the supernatural aspects of all religions sound equally far-fetched. God's ways (or the ways of the gods) are not our ways. Millennia of human religion has certainly underscored that idea.
So I make the best of of the wisdom of Catholicism, which is what I have to hand.
None of this is to say that I am any good at it. But I do try within my limited scope. And whatever happens after I croak is up to God. If it wasn't good enough, I had a good run here.
"I might believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe in addition to on the earth, but that doesn’t make it true."
DeleteRight, although I am not sure you are using "believe" in the same sense that John uses the word. I would guess that you might believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere because the astrophysicists tell us that the arrangement of our solar system isn't unique, and the possibility of similar conditions existing elsewhere in the galaxy or other galaxies doesn't seem far-fetched. So it's a reasonable extrapolation. It's an act of rationality.
I think John's community, and other early Christians, came to belief through a very different approach - one that may make more sense to today's Pentecostals than to lukewarm cultural Catholics: they came to believe because they experienced the transforming joy of Christ's mystical or sacramental presence. The Risen Lord was real to them, and it was a reality which wasn't discerned rationally. It was experiential and subjective.
"So many Christians, including Catholics, seem to be like the evangelicals - they believe because they hope to get something out of it, primarily to save themselves from some kind of horror after they die. This seems to be a very self- centered kind of belief system."
I can only speak for myself. For me, it's not the sort of transactional, what's-in-it-for-me thing you describe. For me, it's grounded, at least in part, in subjective religious experiences I've had, which I believe were real - were based on what really is. When I really accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior - and for me, that acceptance is at least as much journey as event - then the implications of that acceptance start to unfold. Being a follower of Jesus means I need to be his hands and eyes and ears. It means I need to look for him in the faces of the poorest and the least. It means I need to serve, and forgive, and repent, and love enemies, and all the rest of the unintuitive Christian model of holy living.
I like what Jim says about being a follower of Jesus.
DeleteAny transformative religious experiences would have been wasted on me as a kid. Bolts from the blue tended to come in the form of 911 calls and figuring out who was going to get Dad from job to jail under the terms of his DUI work release.
I wanted to live in way that did not make me or others miserable.
The notion that I could be a follower of Jesus was a very gradual process, and I resisted it (probably still do) because I'm not a rule follower and have problems with authority.
The reason I believe Jesus is the Son of God is because he said so himself. And what Jim said about it not being transactional, and grounded in subjective experiences, and being as much of a journey as an event, also holds true for me.
DeleteI'm sure if I had been born into a Hindu or Buddhist culture, that is probably what I would be also, unless I had had some sort of meaningful encounter that would have convinced me to convert to Christianity. The church does recognize virtue and truth in other religions, and does say that those who do right according to the light that they have are still saved, through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Jim: Being a follower of Jesus means I need to be his hands and eyes and ears. ..look for him in the faces of the poorest and the least. It means .. to serve, and forgive, and repent, and love enemies, and all the rest of the un-intuitive Christian model of holy living.
ReplyDeleteI really don't understand the joy you speak of - for the people of John's community or now. I see little joy in christians I know.
This may be true of you, Jim. But, after more than 70 years living in proximity primarily with church-going christians, mostly Catholic, it doesn't seem that many share your understanding. So many are either afraid to go to hell so they toe the lines, or, if RC, run to confession every week or two to get their fill-up of "grace" but are never "transformed" in how they live. This is why so many young adults want nothing to do with organized religion - they know what the religion teaches, but they don't see the people actually following Jesus' example and they dismiss it all as hypocrisy. I think that the massive support given to Trump by evangelical christians and white Catholics is ample evidence of this - they don't follow the gospels, they don't seem to care much about what Jesus taught through words and by how he lived - the parable of the sheep and the goats! Just keep filling up with sacramental grace (for the RCs)and say that you have accepted Jesus as your lord and savior and that's enough. I think for the vast majority of christians, agreeing to be part of a christian church IS transactional. And has nothing at all to do with either joy or transformation. I have a few friends who are very good at following Jesus - to be the hands and hearts on earth. But I can't say that in knowing them for decades now I have ever seen any kind of experience of interior joy in their lives arising from being devout believers and followers.
Katherine, a whole lot of people have claimed to be either God or God's son. I doubt that you believe ALL of them just because they said so! ;)
ReplyDeleteTrue. But if Jesus claimed to be the son of God, and wasn't, that would make him either a liar, or a lunatic. Which isn't the portrayal we see of him in the gospels. Of course that is assuming that the gospels are at least a good faith attempt to record an account of his life, and not works of fiction.
DeleteAs far as who exhibits joy, is joy an emotion or an attitude? Maybe both at times. Do joyful people always go around with a smile on their face, and act like they haven't got any problems? Probably it's more a confidence that "all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well" in the end.
I have read in several sources that Jesus did not directly say that he was the son of God. He did call himself the son of man - many times. I don’t remember all of the articles I’ve read that make this point. But I found an interview with Bart Ehrman who mentions it in a lead up to discussing the evolution of the concept of trinity. He makes the point that the concept was introduced in John and was nor part of the other gospels.
DeleteP.S. There have been countless skilled liars throughout history- people others may have never suspected were liars. Many rulers in ancient times claimed to be god - and they may have believed it themselves because that’s what people believed then. So they would have made the claim even though not being either liars nor lunatics.
https://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300246095/if-jesus-never-called-himself-god-how-did-he-become-one
I was intrigued by an interview I read with Pauline scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. He explains more about how the term Son of God was understood in the first century CE, and also that Paul did not understand Jesus to be divine, it’s an interesting article, at least for me since I’m not a biblical scholar.
https://uscatholic.org/articles/201101/road-scholar-3/
I'm not insisting that anyone else has to believe that Jesus is the son of God and God. But I do.
DeleteIt’s just a bit surprising to me that a scientist would say that she believes he’s the son of God because he said he was.
DeleteI’ve never been able to stop all the questions in my mind. I started getting in trouble with my teachers in parochial school ( I went to one from 1st through 4th) because the nuns didn’t like the questions I asked about the religious teachings. The two I remember clearly were about papal infallibility and “ only Catholics can go to heaven”. But I am not a fighter - at least not very often. I learned to keep my head down and regurgitate the acceptable thoughts. I then went to a small, k-8 public school in the mountains. In 8th grade the teacher made me stand in the corner - literally. ( I was the top student in the class and never a disciplinary problem.) My mother was furious and went in to see the teacher. She asked him what I had done and he said that I asked too many questions - that he couldn’t answer. Again, I learned to keep my mouth shut, not ask questions, and make like a parrot. On another occasion I slipped up in college - in my required Thomistic Synthesis class. The professor didn’t make me stand in a corner but he finally got all riled up and told me that my problem was being a positivist ( the class discussion had been about essence - and I never forgot his explanation of essence + that when cows eat hay, the hay- ness becomes Cow- ness). I didn’t know what a positivist was. Maybe he was right, even though my least favorite subjects were math and science. In grad school it was the microeconomics professor who was frustrated by my questions.
So, I have lived with questions my whole life. When religion has been the subject, I have never been able to get anything but the same old canned answers that don’t answer the questions I ask - at least from most professional religious types - catholic teachers, priests, etc. - the people who are supposed to be able to answer the questions. I guess that is why I started reading so intensively, seeking out non-orthodox writers from different religious backgrounds. It’s much easier to do these days than years ago.
The young adults of today have usually received a much broader education than did the older generations (Not deeper though). They have known people from a much broader range of cultures and religions than did their parents and grandparents. They have been able to access an entire range of questions and an equally wide range of responses to questions at the touch of a keyboard, something the older generations could not do. If they are religious seekers, they are surely frustrated by the responses they get in conventional religious education or from parents and grandparents. It is no wonder 40% of the younger generations are “nones” . They know what their churches teach, what Jesus taught, and they see little but hypocrisy in how the people in church actually live. They know that the churches in Germany were filled every Sunday while Hitler persecuted Jews - they looked the other way and then stood in line to buy some of the fine possessions that Hitler stole from their neighbors and sold after herding the Jews into ghettos. They have access to so much knowledge but too few answers to the hard questions.
I am getting old. And not as confident as Rilke that I will “ live into the answers” one day.
I envy those who aren’t hounded by doubts and questions.
"Because he said so" is a bit of an oversimplification. What Jim said previously about subjective experience has a lot to do with it. But we believe a lot of things because "someone said so", if we trust that someone.
DeleteAnd in nearly seven decades of life of course I have been through my share of doubts and questions, as we all have.
DeleteAnne, I am not surprised that you have been a troublemaker for years :-). Although I don't care for teachers who punish students for asking difficult questions. It is one thing to say, "I wish we could pursue your question, but we have limited time to cover the lesson plan today, but perhaps we'll get a chance some other day to pick up that topic", and quite another to say, "Shut up and go stand in the corner!"
DeleteI think you've been searching for someone who is skilled in apologetics. I am not very good at that sort of thing. Some people are much better at it. Tom is one here who seems to have more of that knack than I do.
Katherine, I do agree with you that "we believe a lot of things because 'someone said s', if we trust that someone." When it comes to faith and belief, your observation highlights the critical importance of our being authentic and trustworthy (and honest, and humble, and, hopefully, knowledgeable); if we are those things, then people are more likely to find us credible. Or so it seems to me.
A caveat about apologetics. In spite of all the media "experts" in that field, qualified and not, I think it often comes across as a "gotcha" game, in which the person feels attacked rather than convinced.
DeleteI went to a Scripture study retreat one time, and we all had to go around and tell why we were there. One guy said he was into apologetics because he wanted to argue with fundamentalists at work. Glad I did not work in his office.
DeleteLol! Apologetics is the absolute worst approach to take with serious doubters ( like me)!
DeleteJean: I am less concerned with "belief" in everything in the Bible than in the slog of trying to follow some of Jesus's basic ideas--treat others as yourself, love God by respecting his creation and creatures, and hope that it all makes you a person better able to live with herself and others...
ReplyDeleteI might have followed a different faith had I been born elsewhere. ... I was born here, I am a product of my time and place. To me, the supernatural aspects of all religions sound equally far-fetched.
About 20 years ago I did a very superficial survey of the world's great religions/philosophies. Since all teach things that are very far-fetched, and cannot be proven, I figured I would stick with christianity as far as looking to it for guidance, since like you, this is where I was rooted - western culture and western christian religion. I do believe in God, one God, but not so sure about the three persons. I do have experiences of God, especially when I sit in silence - and in nature. But they might just be my mind creating certain emotions that I seek. The experiences of God may just be all in my own imagination. I have never had any kind of experience of God in church though - not even imagined!. Besides seeking out christian spiritual guides, I also like Thich Nhat Hahn - a Buddhist teacher.
Hinduism is confusing to me, but a former colleague of mine converted from christianity to Hinduism. He goes to India every year on retreat. He says that (outside the cities - which have become too rich and westernized) you literally feel spirituality in the air, breathe it, recognize it in everyone you meet. He says that many Hindus in India have statues of Jesus on their home altars, along with their favorite Hindu deities. Many think that Jesus taught a lot of good things and admire him - but they don't understand why christians who come there are always trying to "convert" them and ask them to get rid of the statues of their other favorite deities.
I do think that God comes to everyone in some way, although many aren't aware of it. I think God established a longing for the divine and created many different paths - including the many religions of the world. Not just one religious path for all.
But sometimes I think that it's all wishful thinking on the part of people, including myself. As we all know, life is hard for everyone, some more than others. All seek some kind of help - something to hold on to as they navigate life. Religion appeals because it offers promises - hope during our lives, and for some, hope of something better after we die. But, it's equally likely that there is nothing after we die, that there is no God who loves humanity. Just a God who created, and then let everything evolve without interference or guidance. Like most who practice some kind of religion, I want it to be true - a loving God. But, wanting it to be true doesn't mean it is true.
When I visited the very poor in the Dominican Republic 20 years ago I was moved by the depth of their belief in God, in christian teachings about Jesus. They had so little - nothing in material goods, poor health and many babies who died. Hunger and disease. Believing gave them hope, so they believed. And I'm glad that they do - because it gives them hope, even if none of it is actually true.
Modern people have very literal and scientific standards of proof that they try to apply to spiritual matters. If we live as followers of Jesus (not just fearful people giving lip service), and life is more bearable for oneself and others as a result, then it seems to me that the promises of Christianity insofar as they apply to this world are true.
DeleteJean: s If we live as followers of Jesus ...and life is more bearable for oneself and others as a result, then it seems to me that the promises of Christianity insofar as they apply to this world are true.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds about right.
Btw, I just figured out that a word I used in the article doesn't mean what I thought it meant. I wrote, "Our first reading, a pastiche of verses drawn from the third main section of Isaiah ...". By "pastiche", I meant to say that the first reading was sort of cobbled together from verses which are not continuous (Is 63:16B-17, 19B; 64:2-7). This practice of conjoining discontinuous verses happens in the lectionary, pretty frequently with the Responsorial Psalm but also from time to time in the first and second readings. It may strike some people as problematic, because unless the listener is really attentive (or has a great deal of biblical familiarity), s/he may not realize that some verses are being skipped over. What we hear proclaimed at mass is no always truly "a passage" from a biblical book; the bits which are omitted may complicate the message which the lectionary composers are trying to convey from the selection.
ReplyDeleteBut it seems "pastiche" isn't the word to describe this sort of thing.
When I Googled "dictionary pastiche" just now, the definition which came up was as follows:
"an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
"the operetta is a pastiche of 18th century styles""
So if "pastiche" isn't the right word to describe this cobbled-together-ness, is there a better word for it?
What we have when verses from the same book are read are "excerpts" or "extracts."
Delete"Patchwork" works for me, as I've been in a Germanic mood since re-reading that Anglo-Saxon book of Mark and finishing "Dark" as recommended by Stanley.
I patchworked the Psalm at my mom's memorial service. My cousin is a Presbyterian minister and noticed verses were left out. "Mom didn't like those parts," I told her. Fortunately Tina has a good sense of humor.
Patchwork works for me, too. I knew what Jim meant by "pastiche". I would have said "precis" also, except that is more of a summary.
DeleteSometimes in a liturgy setting it just works better not to have the whole thing. I am always grateful when the 149th Psalm comes up for a responsorial that they quit before they get to verse 6: "May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples..."
Ps. 149 is always in Morning Prayer, Sunday, week 1. And when reading it privately I always stop at verse 5. I'm a cafeteria pray-er.
The word that I have seen applied to this is:
DeleteCentonization: Composing by patchwork (Lat.: cento), using pre-existent material. The term cento has been used in literature since classical times to describe a poem built of received matter.
It is often used in constructing Latin antiphons, i.e. putting several phrases from different verses of the Bible, and responsories, in which verses and responses come from different verses of the Bible
Interesting. This term has never appeared in the hundreds of literary and rhetorical terms I ever knew or taught. One of the pitfalls of an Anglo-centric literary background, though I do read Spanish and Scandinavian lot occasionally. occasionally
DeleteMy online book club has a few members from other European countries, and it was interesting to compare the differences in our high school reading lists of "classics." Every country also has its own literary aesthetics that may or may not become worldwide trends.
All the time so many new things to learn!
I encountered the word primarily among the Orthodox, though I also think I saw it occasionally among liturgists of the Latin Rite.
DeleteWhen I looked it up on the internet, I found the word is extensively used about musical phrases. I had not known that. However I did find the quote that referred to classic literature. I guess that usage migrated to its literary use in liturgical compositions, then to its use for musical chant phrases (yes there are stock chant phrases that are reused) and then to its greater use in music. Looks like it did not migrate as a literary term into the Anglo world.