The Honor Of God

Father,
we need your help.
Free us from sin and bring us to life.
Support us by your power.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Today’s Readings

 

 

The reading from Isaiah is another promise of a day of victory,
when the tables will be turned on injustice.
Today, let’s turn to our God, with all our needs.

Part of our Advent journey is about learning to hope
- learning to imagine what we can’t see.
Let’s go through our day today, desiring freedom with a growing confidence
in our God who promises to save us.

Come and set us free, Lord, God of power and might.
Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.

 

Christ is the wisdom and power of God, and his delight is to
be with the children of men.  With confidence, let us pray:
Draw near us, Lord.

Lord Jesus Christ, you have called us to your glorious kingdom,
- make us walk worthily, pleasing God in all we do.

You who stand unknown among us,
- reveal yourself to men and women.

You are nearer to us than we to ourselves,
- strengthen our faith and our hope of salvation.

You are the source of holiness,
- keep us holy and without sin now and until the day
of your coming.

 

God of strength and protection,
I turn to you because I need help.
I long to be free enough
to trust that I can lean on you.

But I become afraid.
Help me to trust in you, Lord.
Your strength and power
are a gentle place of protection.

Be a safe refuge when I am being trampled.
I long for your help, your protecting care.
Help to deliver me from the cold
loneliness of these dark nights.

May the Lord bless us,
protect us from all evil
and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.

 

 

 

Three saints: George, John of Damascus, Ephrem the Syrian. Part of a triptych, possibly from Constantinople. Early 14th century. 21.4 x 9.5 cm

 

 

 

John is generally accounted “the last of the Fathers”. He was the son of a Christian official at the court of the moslem khalif Abdul Malek, and succeeded to his father’s office.

In his time there was a dispute among Christians between the Iconoclasts (image-breakers) and the Iconodules (image-venerators or image-respectors). The Emperor, Leo III, was a vigorous upholder of the Iconoclast position. John wrote in favor of the Iconodules with great effectiveness. Ironically, he was able to do this chiefly because he had the protection of the moslem khalif (ironic because the moslems have a strong prohibition against the religious use of pictures or images).

John is also known as a hymn-writer. Two of his hymns are sung in English at Easter (”Come ye faithful, raise the strain” and “The Day of Resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad!”). Many more are sung in the Eastern Church.

His major writing is The Fount of Knowledge, of which the third part, The Orthodox Faith, is a summary of Christian doctrine as expounded by the Greek Fathers.

The dispute about icons was not a dispute between East and West as such. Both the Greek and the Latin churches accepted the final decision.

The Iconoclasts maintained that the use of religious images was a violation of the Second Commandment (”Thou shalt not make a graven image… thou shalt not bow down to them”).

The Iconodules replied that the coming of Christ had radically changed the situation, and that the commandment must now be understood in a new way, just as the commandment to “Remember the Sabbath Day” must be understood in a new way since the Resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week.

Before the Incarnation, it had indeed been improper to portray the invisible God in visible form; but God, by taking fleshly form in the person of Jesus Christ, had blessed the whole realm of matter and made it a fit instrument for manifesting the Divine Splendor. He had reclaimed everything in heaven and earth for His service, and had made water and oil, bread and wine, means of conveying His grace to men. He had made painting and sculpture and music and the spoken word, and indeed all our daily tasks and pleasures, the common round of everyday life, a means whereby man might glorify God and be made aware of Him. (Note: I always use “man” in the gender-inclusive sense unless the context plainly indicates otherwise.)

Obviously, the use of images and pictures in a religious context is open to abuse, and in the sixteenth century abuses had become so prevalent that some (not all) of the early Protestants reacted by denouncing the use of images altogether. Many years ago, I heard a sermon in my home parish (All Saints’ Church, East Lansing, Michigan) on the Commandment, “Thou shalt not make a graven image, nor the likeness of anything in the heavens above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth — thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” (Exodus 20:4-5 and Deuteronomy 5:8-9) The preacher (Gordon Jones) pointed out that, even if we refrain completely from the use of statues and paintings in representing God, we will certainly use mental or verbal images, will think of God in terms of concepts that the human mind can grasp, since the alternative is not to think of Him at all. (Here I digress to note that, if we reject the images offered in Holy Scripture of God as Father, Shepherd, King, Judge, on the grounds that they are not literally accurate, we will end up substituting other images — an endless, silent sea, a dome of white radiance, an infinitely attenuated ether permeating all space, an electromagnetic force field, or whatever, which is no more literally true than the image it replaces, and which leaves out the truths that the Scriptural images convey. (One of the best books I know on this subject is Edwyn Bevan’s Symbolism and Belief, Beacon Press, originally a Gifford Lectures series.) C S Lewis repeats what a woman of his acquaintance told him: that as a child she was taught to think of God as an infinite “perfect substance,” with the result that for years she envisioned Him as a kind of enormous tapioca pudding. To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca. Back to the sermon.) The sin of idolatry consists of giving to the image the devotion that properly belongs to God. No educated man today is in danger of confusing God with a painting or statue, but we may give to a particular concept of God the unconditional allegiance that properly belongs to God Himself. This does not, of course, mean that one concept of God is as good as another, or that it may not be our duty to reject something said about God as simply false. Images, concepts, of God matter, because it matters how we think about God. The danger is one of intellectual pride, of forgetting that the Good News is, not that we know God, but that He knows us (1 Corinthians 8:3), not that we love Him, but that He loves us (1 John 4:10).

(Incidentally, it was customary in my parish in those days for the preacher to preach a short “Children’s Sermon,” after which the children were dismissed for Sunday School, and the regular sermon and the rest of the service followed. What I have described above was the Children’s Sermon. I remained for the regular sermon, but found it a bit over my head — a salutary correction to my intellectual snobbery.)

In the East Orthodox tradition, three-dimensional representations are seldom used. The standard icon is a painting, highly stylized, and thought of as a window through which the worshipper is looking into Heaven. (Hence, the background of the picture is almost always gold leaf.) In an Eastern church, an iconostasis (icon screen) flanks the altar on each side, with images of angels and saints (including Old Testament persons) as a sign that the whole church in Heaven and earth is one body in Christ, and unites in one voice of praise and thanksgiving in the Holy Liturgy. At one point in the service, the minister takes a censer and goes to each icon in turn, bows and swings the censer at the icon. He then does the same thing to the congregation — ideally, if time permits, to each worshipper separately, as a sign that every Christian is an icon, made in the image and likeness of God, an organ in the body of Christ, a window through whom the splendor of Heaven shines forth.

Prayer (traditional language)

Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by thy servant John of Damscus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

Prayer (contemporary language)

Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by your servant John of Damscus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

 

 

 

“Puissance miraculeuse de Saint François Xavier” in St Sulpice church - Paris 6e - France. St François Xavier’s chapel. Painted by Jacques-Emile Lafon in 1859.

Our Lord had compassion for the crowds of sick and disabled who people brought and laid at his feet.

He cured them and spoke to the people who had been following him for three days and would have been hungry. The apostles, very practical men, wanted him to send them away. They themselves had only seven loaves and a few small fish. Taking these, Jesus worked the great miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, feeding four thousand men, as well as women and children.

Our Lord cares very much about human need. He wants us to care too. He gives us himself in the Eucharist to encourage us to share with others.

Lord our God,
grant that we may be ready
to receive Christ when he comes in glory
and to share in the banquet of heaven,
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Today’s Readings

After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” The disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.

There’s this account of the feeding of 4,000, and in the previous chapter there’s an account of the feeding of 5,000. Were there two separate events, or have we two separate accounts of a single event? This question has been asked times out of number.

Both Matthew and Mark report two miracles of the loaves: Matthew 14 = Mark 6; and Matthew 15 = Mark 8. They seem to want to distinguish them, mentioning that in the first case there were “five loaves and two fish,” but in the second case “seven loaves and a few fish.” The first meal came at the end of his ministry in Galilee, and the second at the end of his brief ministry to the Gentiles. The third meal, the Last Supper, was at the end of his entire ministry.

St Augustine thought there must have been two separate events, “Wherever anything is done by the Lord, and the accounts of it by any two Evangelists seem irreconcilable, we may understand them as two distinct occurrences, of which one is related by one Evangelist, and one by another.”

But a modern scholar (McKenzie), noting that the same doublet is found in the earliest gospel, Mark’s, and that in all cases the accounts have Eucharistic overtones, writes, “That this story should have given rise to variant forms so early may indicate that it was very often told; and this in turn suggests that the connection of the story with the Eucharistic rite was present from the beginning.”

It’s easy to imagine this story being told over and over again to a great variety of congregations from the earliest times, as they celebrated the Eucharist. They are our ancestors in the faith. Each time they heard the story (in the version we are reading today) they heard also that the disciples came bringing “the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others.” Those early Mass-goers could identify themselves with that. We are one with them in that, because in different ways we are all blind and deaf and maimed….

Francis Xavier was born on April 7th, 1506, in the Spanish kingdom of Navarre; and his native language, like that of Ignatius Loyola, whose devoted disciple he was to become, was Basque. He inherited the proud and passionate temperament of his race and could show himself both fiery and autocratic even to the end of his life. As a boy he was ambitious and fond of sport, but he had a largeness of heart and generosity of nature which made him capable, once he had been converted, of heroic love and endurance.

His first encounter with Ignatius took place at the University of Paris, where Francis went at the age of nineteen. Ignatius was much the elder man, and it took him some time to win Francis from his worldly ambitions. But eventually Francis capitulated and gave himself with his whole soul to the new life which the Exercises of Ignatius opened up to him. He became one of the first members of the Society of Jesus and made his vows with Ignatius and five others on August 15th, 1534, and was finally ordained priest on June 24th, 1537.

The first object of Ignatius and his companions had been to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but events turned out otherwise. Ignatius was asked by King John of Portugal to send priests to the new missions in India, and his choice fell eventually on Francis. Francis, it must be said, had no particular qualifications for this task. Though he took his degree at the University, he was possessed of no great learning, and the only books he took with him on all his missionary journeys were his breviary and a book of meditations. His ignorance of the religion of the people to whom he went to preach the gospel was complete. He regarded all ‘moors’ and ‘pagans’ as enemies of God and slaves of the devil, to be rescued at all costs from his power. His attitude never changed, and the devout Muslim, the learned Brahmin and the Buddhist monk made equally little impression on him.

In this respect his mind remained essentially medieval. He saw a vast new world opening before him and his one desire was to win it to Christ. He brought with him nothing but his consuming love for God and for the souls of his fellow men. It is noticeable that he never criticized the social, political or ecclesiastical institutions of his time. He accepted the slave trade and the Inquisition alike apparently without question and, although he complained bitterly of the abuse of power, he never questioned the right of the Portuguese power in India and was prepared at all times to make use of it in the interests of the gospel.

Yet though he might accept the external circumstances of life as he knew it, he preserved an absolute detachment of heart. He deliberately chose to live in the most complete poverty and refused to accept any of the material conveniences which were offered to him. His food was reduced to so small a quantity that it was a miracle that he kept alive. The only concession he would make in clothing for his long missionary journeys under a tropical sun was a pair of boots. He could put up with the most appalling conditions on his long sea voyages and endure the most agonizing extremes of heat and cold. Wherever he went he would seek out the poor and the sick and spend his time in ministering to their needs. Yet while he was occupied all day with these incessant labours, he would spend the greater part of the night in prayer. And all this was done with a gaiety and lightness of heart, which remind one of the other Francis-of Assisi.

The story of his journeys is an epic of adventure. He arrived in Goa in May 1542 and went on from there to Cape Comorin in the south of India. Here he spent three years working among the pearl-fishers, or Paravas, of the Fishery Coast. From there he went on to the East

Indies, to Malacca and the Moluccas, and, finally, in 1549 he set out for Japan. He died on December 3rd, 1552, on a lonely island, vainly seeking to obtain entrance into China. Thus in ten years he traversed the greater part of the Far East. When one considers the conditions of travel, the means of transport, the delays and difflculties which beset him at every stage, it is, even physically an astounding achievement. It is even more remarkable when one considers that he left behind him a flourishing church wherever he went and that the effects of his labours remain to the present day.

Many miracles have been attributed to St Francis. He was said to have possessed the gift of tongues, to have healed the sick and even to have raised the dead; but for the last, at least, there is no real evidence. That he possessed the gift of prophecy seems to be certain, but he can hardly have possessed the gift of tongues. The evidence is, on the contrary, that he had to rely throughout on interpreters to translate his message into the different languages he required, and was often sadly misled. The real miracle of his life, as has been said, was the miracle of his personality, by which he was able to convert thousands to the faith wherever he went and to win their passionate devotion.

He died abandoned with but one companion, without the sacraments or Christian burial. But within a few weeks his body was recovered and found to be perfectly incorrupt. It was brought to Goa and received there with a devotion and an enthusiasm which showed that the people had already recognized him as a saint. He was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1619 and canonized together with St Ignatius by Pope Gregory XV, on March 12th, 1622. He is now the patron of all the missions of the Catholic Church.

(Hat tip: Dave Hartline at The Catholic Report)

Rocco Palmo writes about the USCCB meetings in Baltimore at Whispers in the Loggia:

In the public session, this past campaign cycle’s most-forthright hierarchical voice said that his confreres would one day have to deal with their collective “reticence” on the question of Catholic politicians who support abortion rights in defiance of church teaching.

The history of the church’s response to racism, Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton noted in a debate intervention (his second so far), would not be seen in the light it were today had Archbishops Joseph Rummel of New Orleans and Joseph Ritter of St Louis (later a cardinal) not imposed ecclesiastical sanctions on defiant public officials during the civil rights movement.

In this meeting’s first public reference to Joe Biden, Martino said that he “cannot have a Vice President-elect coming to Scranton, saying he learned his values there, when those values are utterly opposed to the teaching of the church.”

At the outset, Martino acknowledged that his comments might not be the most desired in the room… but even so, they came in his usual fluid, quick, forceful cadence.

Asked after the debate how the morning’s executive session went, one prelate from the big center said “You just heard it.” Several others later confirmed the impression.