Big Read: Luke chapter three (marriage; fathers and sons)

John’s mission and preaching. Christ is baptized by him.

In the first half of the chapter, away from the centre of political and religious power, the word of God comes to the desert: verses 2-4 “Under the high priests Annas and Caiphas; the word of the Lord was made unto John, the son of Zachary, in the desert … preaching the baptism of penance for the remission of sins; As it was written in the book of the sayings of Isaias the prophet: A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths… And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.“

He preaches on a variety of subjects, but ends up in prison over a question of marriage, thrown there by Herod because he reproved the king for his adulterous relationship with his brother’s wife.

The second half of the chapter is a geneaology of Jesus, which starts off with a weird marriage/brother/surrogate father thing:
v.23 “And Jesus was… (as it was supposed) the son of Joseph, who was of Heli” (footnote reads “St Joseph, who by nature was the son of Jacob, in the account of the law, was son of Heli. For Heli and Jacob were brothers, by the same mother; and Heli, who was the elder, dying without issue, Jacob, as the law directed, married his widow: in consequence of such marriage, his son Joseph was reputed in the law the son of Heli.”)

The genealogy goes back through David, through Abraham, through to Noah and right back to ‘Seth, who was of Adam, who was of God’. Which is a bit problematic – when exactly does the geneaology cross over from historical reality to, um, not historical reality (unless you believe literally in Adam and Eve, which means the genealogy is not a problem, but all sorts of other things are!).

And framed by these two halves is something very mysterious: Jesus’ baptism by John.

verses 21,22: “Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that Jesus also being baptized and praying, heaven was opened;
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, as a dove upon him; and a voice came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”

Big Read: Luke chapter 2

The birth of Christ; his presentation in the temple; Simeon’s prophecy [and Anna the prophetess]; Christ, at twelve years of age, is found amongst the doctors.

v.7 “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” The wonderful simplicity of biblical narrative.

‘Firstborn’ took me by surprise, but there is a very helpful footnote: “The meaning is, not that she had afterward any other child; but it is a way of speech among the Hebrews, to call them also the firstborn, who are the only children.”

It’s always nice to read the nativity, I suppose it is the earliest story about Jesus that most people will remember from childhood; there is a thrill about reading the familiar elements  (no room at the inn, the manger, the angels singing to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will” v.14). Both the ordinary (the manger) and the extraordinary (the “multitude of the heavenly army” v.13) presented side-by-side in the same simple ancient narrative.

Throughout the chapter, people pay attention and meditate on what they have heard, even if they don’t understand:

v.17-19 “And seeing, [the shepherds] understood of the word that had been spoken to them by the shepherds.
And all that heard, wondered; and at those things that were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”

v.33 [after hearing Simeon's prophecy] “And his father and mother were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning him.”

[12 yr old Jesus in the temple]
v. 46,47 “they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished”
v.50,51 “And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them.
And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.”

Twice it is said, Mary ponders what is said “in her heart”.

The old and the young: the baby Jesus and the aged Simeon and Anna. They are old but worthy of great respect. Anna in particular I love; I think sometimes people within the church are disparaging of older women who often make up the majority of the congregation, but I feel in many ways they are the life of the church – and Anna’s example suggests they always have been. I hope one day I will be one of these old women!

v. 36,37 ” she was far advanced in years… who departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day.”

honour your mother and your father: v. 51 “And [Jesus] went down with [Mary and Joseph], and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.”

I think this chapter also suggests that childcare was not restricted to the immediate parents but to a wider extended family or community: v. 43,44 “when they returned, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not. And thinking that he was in the company, they came a day’s journey, and sought him among their kinsfolks and acquaintance.”

Luke and the Big Read: chapter 1, sola scriptura

The Big Read goes religious this year, with the Bishop of Durham initiating a lenten project in the Northeast, based around the Gospel of Luke. There’s some info on the Hexham & Newcastle diocesan website here, although it is mostly info for people who want to lead reading groups…  The project sounds like a wonderful idea, but am not really up for a structured group activity at the moment (I still haven’t recovered from the mini break-out discussion groups in the RCIA), so am simply going to read through Luke’s Gospel, and post  thoughts here – whatever comes to mind, rather than having any particular framework or direction.

The version I’m reading is the Douay-Rheims translation, as I’ve just treated myself to a copy of the The Psalms and New Testament (ISBN 978-0-9545631-9-6, baronius press, aprox. £14).

I read chapter one yesterday:

verses 3,4: “It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.” This was interesting because it’s hard to imagine (or hard for me to imagine) christianity before the new testament, but clearly the early church preceded the existence of these scriptures. I think this is one of the great strengths of catholicism, incidentally, the fact that it is not sola scriptura.

verses 5-25 the angel Gabriel reveals to Zachary that he and Elizabeth will have a child who is to be named John. v. 15 “For he shall be great before the Lord; and shall drink no wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb”. There’s nothing sinful about drinking wine or strong drink; but part of John’s holiness was his abstinence.

v.22 “when [Zachary] came out, he could not speak to [the people]; and they understood that he had seen a vision in the temple.”  This is very impressive. If a priest came from the tabernacle unable to speak, I’m not sure my first thought would be, “ah, he must have had a vision”. I love that they understood what it meant.

verses 26-38 the annunciation, verses 39-56 the visitation
It’s nice to read them in this particular translation,  the traditional wordings of ‘Hail Mary’ and the magnificat.

What also struck me was that Zachary and Elizabeth were associated with the temple while Mary was located further away from the centre of worship “a city of Galilee, called Nazareth”.

verses 57-80 all about what John will become; he is one of my favourite saints so it is lovely to read. v. 80 “And the child grew, and was strengthened in spirit; and was in the deserts until the day of his manifestation to Israel.”

The origin of all true love

From the New St Joseph People’s Prayer Book (ISBN 978-0-89942-901-4):

“Most loving Father,
You command me to love You
with all my heart and soul, mind and strength.
But I am sure that I do not do so.
I know this by reflecting on how I loved others:
I loved them to the point of rarely forgetting them.
They were constantly present to my memory,
my heart dwelt on them almost all the time,
and their image ran through my head
in their presence as well as in their absence.

O loving Father,
I regret to say that I do not act this way toward You.
I do not keep You in my memory,
nor do I have You present in my thoughts,
nor is my heart sufficiently occupied with You.
As soon as the merest trifle enters my head,
I drop You and lose sight of You.
As soon as the slightest whim enters my heart,
I discard You and quickly forget You…

So with all the fervour of my being
I ask You to grant me Your Holy Spirit
Who will deliver me from this weakness of mine.
Your Holy Spirit will enable me to love You
with all my heart and soul, mind and strength,
for He is the origin of all true love.”

St John Fisher (1469-1535)

Blessing of a Typewriter

I’m in London at the moment and yesterday I was in the Catholic Truth Society bookshop by Westminster Cathedral, where I found a nice prayer book called New Saint Joseph People’s Prayer Book (ISBN 978-0-89942-901-4).  The printing date is 2007, but the original publication date is 1980 and the illustrations and some of the prayer concerns/language does reflect that. The content is abundant, but variable in quality. It ranges from patristic prayers of the early church, prayers from the liturgy, appropriate prayers from other religions, to some mundane modern prayers (c.1980 I guess) for patron saints and the blessings of things. The very last prayer in the book is ‘Blessing of a Typewriter/Computer’. I laughed when I saw that, but on reflection perhaps it’s not so ridiculous after all:

Father in heaven,
you have given human beings some of Your wisdom
so that by their proper use of it
you can renew the face of the earth.
Bless this [computer],
which is a product of human ingenuity,
that it may always be used for good
and not for evil,
to give life rather than death.
Let it be a wonderful source of communication between people,
a conveyor of truth not falsehood,
a promoter of the common good,
an aid to the betterment of life,
and a mark of Your Spirit in us.
We ask this in the Name of Jesus our Lord.

Art or pornography?

As of this morning, I have now joined the ranks of  ‘people who get apoplectic about rubbish art in churches’. Today is the feast of St Agatha, and looking up information about her this morning, have come across some seriously dodgy images. Admittedly the source material is not exactly cheerful, but I can’t believe this slimy piece of prurience is in a church! There are so many things wrong here, I don’t even know where to begin… of course, in the great tradition of giving free publicity to the things that outrage  us, I post it here.

“Trotzig” & other pope oddments

Well. What an interesting week. Quite apart from ‘pope teaches catholic doctrine’ shocker, I was rather astonished at the Pope’s words regarding dissent in his speech to the English & Welsh bishops, and was left wondering what exactly a mature contribution to debate could be, if no-one is allowed to disagree. He appeared to be using some new meaning of the word debate that I hadn’t come across before.

However, somebody made an interesting point in the comments of the Guardian editorial on the Pope’s speech:

Pope Benedict’s extraordinary opinion on “dissent” (which he insists can never be a “mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate”) must be the result of a mistranslation. I suspect the German word he had in mind was “trotzig” which is “expressing belligerent opinions and arguing against a notion just for the hell of it”.

I like to think this is correct, as it certainly makes more sense.

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It is very tempting to make spiteful comments. I admit to having had all sorts of bitchy thoughts when reading some of the responses, on both sides of the debate. On the other hand, I’ve also been a bit surprised at what people take offense at. Somebody took offense that a newspaper refered to the pope as ‘Ratzinger’! Martin Salter’s description of the pope as a ‘bloke in a dress’ seemed fairly mundane to me (it may be irreverent, but I don’t think you can say it’s wildly inaccurate), but from the comments  it appeared to be the phrase that raised the most ire in his dismal piece. Alas the comments, from fine upstanding Christians, were almost all dripping with hate, much more venomous than Salter’s article itself. This is not a good thing.

I have been sifting through the various spiteful thoughts in my head and trying to hold my tongue, but here’s one I will let loose because I think apart from the bitchiness it does raise an important point:

One blogger, who I think is normally fairly restrained and writes a nice blog, expressed the fervent wish that when the Pope visits next year he will excommunicate every dissenter from Land’s End to John O’Groats. And I thought, “yes, why not?” Imagine how many catholics would be left – there would certainly be no need to merge parishes as the ratio of priest to parishioner would then be far more favourable. Assuming that priests weren’t among those excommunicated, of course. And then, there would be all those empty buildings to be disposed of, both schools and churches with no-one to fill them.

It is a spiteful thought. And perhaps inaccurate – for all I know the majority catholic population does indeed practice and hold true to Humanae Vitae, for example.  That doesn’t appear to be the case, but obviously I can’t know for certain. But it is still an interesting point. Who is faithful? And who can be saved? It’s not a question of majority rule – I’ve never believed that truth is dependent on how many people believe in something.

I don’t think it’s a case of letting everyone just do what they want, but from the last few days I am forming a sad impression that there is a broad division between those catholics who want as many people as possible to be saved, and those whose joy in salvation is somewhat enhanced at the thought of all the miserable sinners who won’t be joining them – and are resentful at having to share parish space with them (the older brother in the prodigal son springs to mind here, and the workers in the vineyard who were incensed at the latecomers receiving the same wage).

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I don’t read the Tablet and have to rely on learning about its latest contents from conservative bloggers, so I was interested to note that one of the editorials standing up for the pope came from Catherine Pepinster.

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Jaw-drop award: I thought I was ‘conflicted’ but the most bizarre reaction I’ve come across so far is on facebook, where one of my ‘friends’ (in the fb way of things have only met him twice and I doubt he’d remember), who is, I think, a devout anglican, joined a group called something like ‘Ban the Pope’s UK visit’ and then posted a comment about how he had overcome prejudice to send his son to a catholic school. Human beings are odd contradictory creatures indeed.

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The very bestest contribution comes from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, by far the most sensible and intelligent thing I’ve read in the wake of the Pope’s speech.

Small Gods (again)

Terry Pratchett is in the news because he wants the laws on assisted suicide to change. I was thinking about him today in another context, remembering his discworld novel Small Gods, which is still my favourite book on religion. I may have mentioned this before on my old blog.

I don’t have a copy to hand as I’m away from home at present, but one passage that often comes to mind is one regarding the superstructure of religion (in his novel). In the discworld universe, small gods are bodiless entities wandering the desert in search of belief. It is the belief of humans that gives them form. When a god becomes A God through belief, it takes form and becomes strong and powerful and worship begets worship. Religious structures develop, and they grow and grow and get harder and more solid until the god inside eventually dies and all that is left is the empty structure, functioning on its own.

Perhaps this is what happened to the Pharisees. I do often think about them, following their 600-odd laws. It sometimes strikes me as a bit unfair: they ended up following all those restrictions because they truly wanted to serve God, and they loved their religion and their traditions. All honourable things.  But they were wrong because ultimately they were unable to see the truth when He appeared before them.

It’s hard to know what’s right and wrong sometimes. I have been wrong many many times and on my past record will no doubt continue to make serious mistakes and errors of judgement in the future. But there are some things I just know, deep down in the pit of my stomach, or written on my heart, or wherever this natural moral law is meant to reside. And I know, with no authority or tradition or revelation to back me up, that God does not think gay people are ‘instrinsically disordered’ or should not form stable relationships and families.

But, the thing that people find hard to credit, I also believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

I don’t believe it’s a case of the church moving with the times, or going with the secular flow. I think Christians should be ashamed that people who do not serve God are taking the lead in trying to end this discrimination. I think in the future they will be ashamed. I’m no history expert but as a general rule-of-thumb, I’ve noticed that conservatives are rarely the stimulants of change regarding other issues of discrimination, such as slavery, racial segregation and civil rights. Where Christians take the lead, they tend mostly to be quakers and other non-conformists. Sweeping generalisations – I would be very happy to stand corrected.

I’m leaving the comments box open just in case anyone wants to disagree/agree/chastise me roundly; forgive me in advance for not responding though, I’ve said what I want to say and am too weary for debate at present, whether of the mature or immature kind.

I am generally pro-BXVI. It doesn’t come naturally but I’m trying very very hard. I have defended him many times in conversation against jokes/insults regarding nazis and pederasts. So I will pray for him and the church. It may be that the church and the papacy doesn’t want or appreciate my prayers. But I’ll do it anyway. Please pray for me too, if so inclined, I’m not proud… The only thing that matters is God.

Oh, and just for the record, I disagree with Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide.

Holy Trinity Monastery: D. Teresa Rodrigues

One of my favourite catholic blogs is Colophon, a monastery blog of a small community of Benedictine nuns in Portsmouth diocese. It is an exemplar of how new media might be used by the church. Yesterday they announced some sad news: please pray for the repose of the soul of D. Teresa Rodrigues OSB who died yesterday, and also for the remaining community.

I have an impression that they are a very small community indeed, so please also pray for vocations for their monastery, and for any material assistance they might need.

music monday

Does God change?

It’s been an odd week, time away, funeral arrangements etc but still, cannot stop my mind picking over thoughts of God, the universe and everything; suspect it happens unconsciously, when I’m not looking. So random heretical thought for the week, does God change?

Normally I would have said no; God is always the same, it is our understanding that changes. But two things occurred to me this week:

a) prayer. Always it is “your will, not mine” but at the same time, prayer is not just about orienting ourselves to God, it is also supplication. God can change His mind – am thinking of Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah, where he pleads for Lot’s life. Does mercy imply change of action?

b) the Incarnation. God became man to redeem us from sin. Does that mean we changed the nature of God?

I read on a blog some weeks ago that some believe the Incarnation would have happened anyway, even if humans had not sinned. Still haven’t got my head round that. I think of the Incarnation as a means of bridging the gap between God and fallen humans; the fact of Incarnation in some ways emphasises our separation from God because He had to come down to us. Incarnation without the need to redeem us from sin seems to suggest we would always have been separate from God, at least during the earthly part of life.

I think the idea of the Incarnation taking place anyway is something to do with privileging the human in creation, which perhaps I still haven’t really understood; largely to do with my understanding, such as it is, of evolution.

Summertime