bearing blog

Judging by loving.

Pope Francis's address at the Way of the Cross on Friday contained an element that was, I think, joyful enough to save for an Easter post.

The Cross is the word through which God has responded to evil in the world. Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken, he has replied, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness.

It is also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us.

Let us remember this: God judges us by loving us.

If I embrace his love then I am saved,

if I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but my own self,

because God never condemns,

he only loves and saves.

The last sentence points  to a certain dichotomy of choice.  In the constant presence of the love of God I have the choice to embrace His love, and be saved; or to refuse it, and be condemned.  

This field of love is, so to speak, a self-correcting test.

In the context of the Via Crucis,  what immediately comes to mind is the personification of this dichotomy in the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, described in Lk 23:39-43.

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." 

The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?  And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

The two thieves crucified with Jesus are literally  in the presence of the mercy of God.  One responds by "reviling" Jesus:  If you were really the Son of God, you would get down from here.   (This line parrots what the rulers say, and what the soldiers say, and it's not far from the words Luke puts in Satan's mouth in Chapter 4:  "If you be the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.")  

The other responds, first by defending Jesus, then by making what amounts to a confession ("we have been condemned justly... but this man has done nothing criminal" can certainly be read that way -- perhaps the man does not even realize quite how true it is), finally, by embracing that love:  "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And he is answered -- canonized from the cross.  

The story of the two thieves is too iconic to mean nothing more than "a story of two thieves."  It shows us two ways to respond to the "problem" of suffering in the presence of a just and merciful God -- the whole problem of pain.  One response is rejection:  God cannot be God, because if He were God, He would not allow this to go on.  The other response is acknowledgement of the debt we owe, embrace of suffering, and entering into a conversation with the acknowledged King.

I suppose either response is equally logical; but one is a response of rejection, and the other is a response of embrace.

Judging by loving is not a dereliction of duty on the part of the judge.  It does not mean "no judging," or "love instead of judgment."  It is a method of judging.

Something to think about. 

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Side note:  I find it interesting that the feast day of St. Dismas, the "Good Thief," is March 25 -- the same date as, and so usually eclipsed by, the Annunciation.  (Another feast of making an important choice to embrace God.)  But the Annunciation got booted till later because it was superseded by Holy Week, and so St. Dismas came out from behind the angel's wings this year.  More on this from Fr. Z.

The suspension of reliability.

I pray the Divine Office only sporadically, but today I managed to get away to the Perpetual Adoration chapel long enough to "do" Prime and Lauds back-to-back. The D.O. always feels to me as if it'll be a chore to get through, right up until the moment that I finish arranging the bookmarks (or in today's case, a crumpled index card and a stubby pencil) to mark the day's pages and settle in to begin. Then I am always instantly glad, fed and watered when I didn't know my own hunger and thirst. I don't know why this experience has to keep repeating itself; you would think I would have learned by now; but that "chore" feeling comes back day after day, even though it is always followed by the "refreshment" feeling -- that is, when I do manage to trudge over to the chair and open the book. I don't always make the trudge. And every time I do, I wonder why on earth not.

Because of this conversation I keep having with myself, I typically experience the Invitatory Psalm (Ps. 95, the opening psalm for each day's prayer) the same way every time I pick up the breviary: sheepishly, like a kid who's been reminded for the umpteenth time about the same fault.

"Today, listen to the voice of the Lord: Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works."

Complain, complain, complain. That's me. And surprised every day to taste water in the desert.

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It's unusual that the Invitatory sparks a new thought, but it happened to me today, so I'll share. The Invitatory psalm contains this text, excerpted by me to highlight what jumped out at me today:

Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:

Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness...

I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not know my ways."

So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest."

Today (Saturday, week IV) the antiphon repeated after each stanza is

Let us listen to the voice of God; let us enter into his rest.

I got to thinking about the cause and effect implied in these stanzas, and how we are to read them.

One of the problems of interpretation of the Old Testament is how frequently it explicitly depicts God changing his mind about things, reacting in response to some action or plea of human beings. So, for instance, we have God "repenting" or "regretting" that He had made man, in Genesis 6 (the story of the flood); and we have the book of Jonah, where it says God "relented" or "repented" of His threat to destroy Nineveh. Here is another one, where God is angered -- has a change of heart, so to speak -- in response to the stubbornness of the people.

It is not philosophically straightforward to deal with these images of a God who can change His mind, at least not when you take it as an article of faith -- as Christians do -- that God is eternal, perfect, unchanged and unchangeable. Christian philosophers can and do deal with it, but it is one of those mysteries that can be approached many different ways.

The antiphon "Let us listen to the voice of God; let us enter into his rest," which is, by the way, a prayerful response to Scripture rather than Scripture itself, is not just a response we can make with our voices; it's also a suggestion for a response we can make with our intellect to the "problem" of an eternal, perfect being who nonetheless responds and reacts to mortal, imperfect ones. The antiphon voices absolute confidence that, if we listen to the voice of God, then we will enter into His rest. The one follows the other naturally -- as day follows night -- well, maybe it is really "supernaturally," but what I want to get across is this idea: that the very nature of "listening to the voice of God" is that it forms you into a being who "will enter into His rest."

If that's so, then we can look at the Psalm and perhaps perceive the opposite side of the coin, the choice. The opposite of "listen to the voice of the Lord" is "grow stubborn" like the people in the wilderness, specifically as in the episode at Meriba and Massah (see Exodus 17 to delve more deeply into the allusion). A person who fails to listen, who grows stubborn in this way, who "challenges" and "provokes" God despite having seen His works, perhaps causes himself to become the sort of person whose heart goes astray, who doesn't come to know God's ways -- note that the people have "seen all of [his] works" but "do not know [his] ways," an intriguingly deliberate distinction.

It is because of the condition of their hearts and intellects that God is said to swear in His anger that they shall not enter into His rest.

And here I think maybe the "anger" of God is, from within a more primitive concept of God as changeable, anger-able, a way of expressing a consequence that is written right into the nature of human beings and therefore into the nature of the relationship between God and human beings (because that relationship is part of our nature). If we do not listen to the voice of God, if we grow stubborn and our hearts go astray, we will not enter into His rest -- we simply will not because we cannot, because listening to Him is a prerequisite for acquiring the capability.

That the writers of the story understood this as a face of God's "anger" may have been poetic. It may have reflected the limited way that they could conceive of a divine being. But it would be consistent with a belief that God was predictable and reliable. Remember Psalm 19, where the heavens declare the glory of God? Or in Psalm 50, where the heavens proclaim his justice, for God himself is the judge? The heavens are beautiful, vast, and the source of all our light -- but I think maybe the defining characteristic of "the heavens" for ancient peoples was their regularity: the rising of the sun and its setting, the swinging of the stars through the years: the reservoir of lodestars and timepieces; of constellations that appeared exactly where people looked for them, as long as anyone could remember. If the heavens declare the righteousness of God, then surely one aspect of this righteousness is reliability, predictability; each day has its night, and each failing has its consequence.

If this is one way of interpreting the manifestation of divine anger: as the consequence that is only to be expected; well, then what can mercy be but a miracle?

"He answers all our needs."

Last Sunday, to accompany the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we heard Psalm 145. The antiphon was

The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.

Isn't that a remarkable thing to say? He answers all our needs. How, exactly, are we to understand this to be true?

Because -- I am sure there are a lot of people in the pews who could say, honestly, "No -- I am not getting all my needs addressed. I don't get what I need. Or I haven't got it yet, and don't see a way to expect it."

Accepting this strongly probable assertion makes the antiphon more than a little disturbing -- stained by association, maybe, with the heresy of the prosperity gospel. The hand of the Lord feeds us and he answers all our needs -- so if you remain hungry, needy, you aren't one of us. Something's wrong with you. Or else, it opens the singer to mockery: some Lord, eh? He didn't answer when your needs came knocking, did He now?

So let's consider some plausible alternative interpretations of the line, other than "we never perceive a need because God favors us." Because there's some serious issues with certain attitudes that go with that interpretation.

I'll restrict myself to the English antiphon as it appeared in Sunday's psalm, and not fiddle with translation issues here. In other words, I am just going to assume good faith and accuracy on the part of the translator.

Possibility #1: the psalmist is confined to a particular community at a particular time of spiritual fruitfulness and material prosperity. When it was written, it could truly be said "He answers all our needs," even if it is not so here and now.

This might make the reader wonder, "If that's so, then why sing it here and now?" but I think this possibility seems stronger the more experience one has praying the psalms in regular rotation as one does with the Liturgy of the Hours (or, indeed, with the Mass). It is said that whatever your situation, there is a psalm to fit it, but the corollary to this is that at any given time there are many psalms that don't fit at all. You may be feeling on top of the world and wanting to express gratefulness to God for His abundant blessings, but if it's Friday of Week III, you're stuck with "Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest, over the great destruction," and so on. At first it is jarring, but eventually you figure out how to go with the flow, remembering always that this is the prayer of the Church, not the prayer of me, and someone's life somewhere is intimately fed by this psalm, and we can all join in it whatever our situation.

So we can understand this as: God answers someone's needs somewhere, and we can join in acknowledging it.

Possibility #2: We are to understand "needs" more restrictively here; not everything we might think is a "need" really is.

In this case, the antiphon could even be turned around: it isn't really a need unless God meets it. I am not particularly fond of this interpretation because I fear that it could be abused to minimize others' real suffering. But there is some precedent for this, if you allow (first of all) that securing our salvation is the sole true goal in life, and (second) that the people of God who sing this song are aware of, and accept, the primacy of that salvation. Food, clothing, shelter, security, human kindness, can certainly help us along the path to salvation, but the Christian knows that they are not actually prerequisites. The martyrs had none of these at the point of the blade. You could say that the antiphon, interpreted this way, reminds us that the only true need is grace, and that God grants it abundantly.

Caution, though: we should never assume that other people have no true need for food, clothing, shelter, security. The song says God answers all "our" needs. Quite possibly we can serve as the channel of grace to others in need of compassion, by helping to meet others' physical needs. It is much easier to realize that salvation is more important than food when you are not hungry all the time.

Possibility #3: The emphasis is on the word "He." "It's the hand of the Lord who feeds us; it's He who answers all our needs."

I think this is the strongest candidate of all the interpretation. When our needs are met, it is God to whom we owe our thanks and praise. Whatever food we eat, our clothing, our homes, the people who care for us, the powers of our own and others that keep us safe -- all of that is ultimately a gift from God. Sometimes it comes with the cooperation of others, other times without it; sometimes we ought to thank other people, too; but ultimately we owe God thanks for every good gift in our lives.

Imperceptible change.

From today's Office of Readings (Prime).  I arranged the paragraph breaks and indentations to highlight the parallelism.

We are afflicted...

but we are not crushed;

full of doubts, 

we never despair.

We are persecuted 

but never abandoned; 

we are struck down

but never destroyed....

While we live we are constantly being delivered to death for Jesus' sake,

so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh.

 

This is, of course, part of the "earthen vessels" discourse in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 4).

 I am particularly taken, this morning, with 

[F]ull of doubts, we never despair.

The common conception of faith is that it is the opposite of doubt -- that we have faith in just exactly the measure that enjoy freedom from doubt.  Not so.  

It's true that "never despairing" is technically the flowering of the virtue of hope, but it's in the face of doubt that hope does all its work -- and you can't tell me that hope only blooms where faith fails.  Doubt, therefore, cannot be a failure of faith.  

Like the afflictions, persecutions, and blows with which it is made parallel in the passage, doubts are, I think, something that happens to us.  

Faith and hope are among the possible responses to such doubts, those responses being something that is  engendered by us -- that  comes from us -- in cooperation with grace.   

I maintain that it's quite unfortunate that fides -- faith -- has come in English to connote mostly "belief" or "lack of doubt."  Much better to think of it via its cognates fidelity and faithfulness.  These carry a connotation of action, of a series of decisions.  "Faith" in English has come to mean something that happens to you.  "Fidelity" and "faithfulness" still mean something you choose daily -- like hope and charity.

I'm also taken, today, by

While we live we are constantly being delivered to death...

and, along with it, the line a few paragraphs later that goes

We do not lose heart, because our inner being is renewed each day even though our body is being destroyed at the same time.

Probably those lines were originally meant to encourage and strengthen people who are looking death right in the face.  I come at it from another point of view, at least now.  If we are healthy and feeling pretty good, it is possible to forget that "while we live we are constantly being delivered to death."  

It's true, though.  The cells die every moment.   The collapse has been going on for a long time.

If only my inner being could be renewed each day, as imperceptibly but steadily as my body is being destroyed.    Hope is, I think, believing that it can be so; faith is deciding to live as if we are certain.

Misremembering beholding.

Have you ever gotten a meditation wrong?  

We have a number of decisions to make right now; some discernment is called for.  I have a busy nature, am always doing something, and so one of the few times that I have for my mind to wander freely is in the pool while I swim; can't listen to music, can't write, so I think.  I was there, swimming, thinking, and casting about for images to meditate on in an effort to bring some insight to my mental processes, and I settled on the Annunciation, and "I am the handmaid of the Lord."

I spent several laps considering "I am the handmaid of the Lord."  I was thinking about how the first response to the angel's greeting is "How can this be?" and then, after a certain explanation, the self-identification, followed  by the assent.   I found it intriguing, the one piece of information that, to the betrothed virgin, is apparently both necessary and sufficient for the identification, the assent.  It was interesting to think about, and then, as I passed from the English to the Latin (Ecce ancilla domini) I realized -- wait, that isn't quite right -- it's not "I am," but "Behold."  

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord."  I knew that, of course, but I misremembered.  

Anyway, Ecce is translated to "Behold" rather idiomatically -- it isn't precisely a command to look upon something, as far as I can tell, and can also mean "Here is..." or something along those lines.

I had to laugh at myself, because I rather think it would have made a difference to us -- perhaps disastrously -- had it come out as "I AM."

The difference between faith and belief.

"I do believe; help my unbelief!" -- Mark 9:24

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Darwin excerpts a cordial discussion between some theists and some atheists about the meaning of the word "faith."

 It's worth reading on its own, and I am not going to respond to the entire excerpt, but just make my own comment and expand on it here.

Some proposed definitions from the excerpt:

• "Faith is knowing by testimony rather than by experience. I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the scientists tell me so, and I believe them. "
• "[F]aith is what fills in the gaps of the probabilities. If, say there is a 70 % probability something is the case then to conclude more than that 70% probability is faith..."

Darwin chimes in to make two points.  First, what "faith" originally means:  

The old Catholic Encyclopedia in its article on faith describes the Old Testament use of the term to be essentially "trustfulness" or "steadfastness".... This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Second, 

faith is an act of the will.

Darwin's points are both correct, but he does not go as far as I do.  He classifies "faith" as being an act, and this is correct; but it seems that he identifies it too much with "belief," or with being convinced "enough" of something.  Here is the statement of Darwin's that I disagree with:

This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Obviously, in this sense one can have faith in any number of things or people, and as it notes, faith in this sense necessarily presupposes belief. I can hardly have faith in my wife's love (as in, trust in its existence and steadfastness) if I don't really believe that I have a wife or don't really believe that she loves me. When Christians talk about "having faith" however, they're pretty specifically talking about "having faith in God" -- that combination of believing in God's existence and of trusting in God to remain steadfast and trustworthy in His love for us.

Darwin is failing -- at least clearly -- to make a distinction between "I am faithful to my wife" and "I have faith in my wife."

The first is concrete.  The second is the metaphor.

The faith that Christians are supposed to have is not the same thing as trust that God's love exists and is steadfast to us.  The faith that we are supposed to have, I am certain, is faithfulness *to* God -- fidelity to the laws and precepts that He sets out for us insofar as we are aware of them.  When we are told to have faith,  this is not at all a command to believe something.  (How can you be commanded to be convinced of a truth?) It is a command to do  something:  to live your life, in your body, in your mind, in accord with the will of a God.

Faith is not trust in God's steadfastness; it is a firm determination to remain steadfast to God.  It is as the original Hebrew meant.

And the point that I want to make, the point where I disagree with Darwin, is that faith understood in this way does not presuppose belief.  

Faith understood the way (I think) Darwin is trying to understand this would presuppose belief, because he is identifying faith with belief.  "I can hardly have faith in my wife's love if I don't really believe that she loves me."  Well, of course, if "faith in my wife's love" == "belief that my wife loves me."  

But my understanding of faith does not presuppose belief.  Darwin could choose to remain faithful to his wife -- by which I mean nothing more nor less than the earthy sort of "faithful," i.e., he could remain sexually faithful to his wife, forsaking all others, and not abandoning her or their children -- even if he lost all confidence in her love for him.  Indeed, he could (and should) choose to remain sexually faithful if Darwin became thoroughly convinced that MrsDarwin did not love him at all.

And what if he did not believe that he even had a wife?  Well, millions of still-single people find themselves in that situation every day, not having promised marriage to anyone, and yet they can still be "faithful" to the future spouse they might or might not have by living a chaste life.  Such is faith:  steadfastness.

One may be "faithful" while having severely impaired belief, even no belief at all. (Which raises the question:  Why would someone who did not believe in God ever strive to live according to God's laws?  I will not answer the question here, and maybe will bat that question back to Darwin, but I will simply note that it is not logically impossible to be faithful in this way without belief; whereas if faith == belief, it does become logically impossible to have faith without belief.)

The idea of "faith" as a purely mental or spiritual assent to a theological statement is, I suspect, a highly Protestant innovation.  Because if you understand "faith" to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity," then there is no distinction, none at all, between faith and works.  The whole concept of "faith vs. works" presupposes that it is even possible to segregate a thing called "faith" away from the daily acts of living and interacting with other human beings and with our God.  I say, it is not possible.

Here is the second chapter of James:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?ⁱ 15If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?^j 17So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. 19You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. 20Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?^k 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.”^l 24See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?^m 26For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

 

The Greek word for "faith" in James 2 (the faith and works discourse) is the same Greek word (pistis) translated as "belief" in the passage from Mark that I quoted above.   Does pistis mean "steadfastness" in any way?  Or does it only mean an intellectual assent?  It goes on to use pisteuis in the next verse to mean "believe" as in "You believe that God is one" and then "pisteuousin" in "Even the demons believe, and shudder."   The "faith" mentioned in James is then the same as the "belief" which even demons can have.  

I don't really think of demons as "steadfast."

Anyway, as I said in my comment to Darwin's post, the image of a faithful spouse is apt.  Faith in, and faithfulness to, a spouse are very precisely designed to be an image of faith in, and faithfulness to, God. They are so bound up in each other as to not be separable; but at the same time, it is possible to "be faithful," to "do faithfulness," even in times of doubt or -- God forbid -- abandonment.  

This is what I would like to get across to anyone who says they wishes they could have faith but that it has never come to them. Anyone can, without committing a single act of intellectual dishonesty. It is simply a matter of becoming a faithful servant, or spouse, or child of God. To act faithfully -- the precise nature of the "acts of faith" depends on our state in life and our circumstances -- is to have faith. The ability to act faithfully, the possession of faith, both come from grace, the only thing by which we are saved.

Fasting in Paradise.

Melanie has dug up a quote that suggests the Genesis "don't eat that fruit" rule amounted to a prescribed fast:

"Fasting restores to those who practice it the father’s house from which Adam was cast out… God himself, the friend of man (Wsd 1,6), first entrusted to fasting the man he had created, as to a loving mother, as to a teacher. He had forbidden him to taste of one tree only (Gn 2,17) and if the man had observed this fast he would have dwelt with angels. But he rejected it and so found anguish and death, the sharpness of thorns and thistles and the sorrow of a miserable life (Gn 3,17f.) Now, if fasting is shown to be of value in Paradise, how much more must it be so here below to win us life eternal!". 

(Link: http://thewinedarksea.com/index.php/weblog/on_fasting/ )

It is a fruitful meditation. I wrote about a similar theme some time ago, only I identified the forbidding of the Edenic fruit as a "dietary law" rather than a fast:

"Which takes me to the Garden of Eden. How many times have you read or heard a non-Christian, non-Jewish person complaining of the arbitrariness of that whole "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" nonsense? Why would God care if they ate this one fruit? There's no good reason for it -- whoever wrote it down even made a point of mentioning that the stuff was good to eat, so what's the big deal? Alternatively, you'll occasionally see a well-meaning believer defending the don't-eat-that rule on some practical ground of healthfulness or learning obedience or some such thing.
I think it's easier to understand the story -- and this works both if you take the story as something that really happened, or if you take it as a useful teaching story passed down by one of the world's most influential cultures -- as the story of the first dietary law. The first "We eat this, not that. Just because."Pointing at the fruit of the tree while uttering "In the day you eat of it you shall surely die" is not, inherently, any nuttier than pointing at your tablemate's cheeseburger while muttering, "That shit'll kill you." It doesn't matter that the modern health nut thinks that science is on his side -- it's still a prediction of religious significance -- because in reality the connection between any given cheeseburger and the untimely death of the cheeseburger-eater is practically zero, unless the eater chokes on it, I suppose. And even if a lifetime diet of cheeseburgers will shorten your life, who's to say that's not a reasonable choice for someone who likes cheeseburgers?But let's go back to dietary laws for a minute. It's significant that the breaking of a dietary law should play such a crucial role in the stories I'm speaking of. And it's not something that's alien to human nature either. There are many layers to the story, but I can't help but think that it's in part a lesson that there are limits to our natural inclinations. The tree's fruit was "good to eat," and there is no reason to assume the senses of the man and woman couldn't be trusted. Yet, as the story goes, it was better, in that place and in that time, to choose not to eat it. Resisting, if only on occasion, what we naturally want and can see is a good thing, must itself be something good. And doesn't that fit with our ordinary experience?"

(link: http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/dietary-laws.html )

One difference between a dietary law and a fast is that a dietary law is generally lifelong -- see the regulations of keeping kosher or halal, or the philosophy of an ethically committed vegetarian. Fasts, on the other hand, are generally temporary. In Jewish history, the permanence and complexity of the dietary law served many purposes -- among other things, to provide a concrete manifestation of identity among the chosen people, to clearly demarcate them from the peoples that surrounded them.  

Another difference is that fasting can be regarded as a positive act, and when prescribed, as a positive duty similar to the duties of prayer and almsgiving. To adhere to a dietary law is more like a negative duty, a "thou shalt not." Negative duties are by their nature more binding than positive ones.

Does it matter whether we identify the forbidding of the fruit as a dietary law or as a fast? Or is it simply a third example of the same sort of class of commandments? Either way it is instructive to meditate upon the words, "for in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death."

   

Translation matters.

Interesting comparison of the translation of certain terms in the KJV and the NIV.  Everybody's got an agenda.

It sort of reminds me of how, in Story of the World, which is mostly a good history book, Catholics are "Christians" when they behave or display intelligence, and "Catholics" when they don't.

And, by the way, is not the masthead/title combo of that blog one of the best you've seen in a while?

h/t Riparians at the Gate

Taking liberties with Jeremiah on St. John's Day: For the mothers.

Do you ever feel like you are fighting your children, and your children are fighting you, all day long?

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From the Office of Readings for today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist:

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 17-19

The word of the Lord came to me thus:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you,a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

"Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young."

Too young, too old, too tired, too busy, too faltering, too selfish, too confused, too inexperienced, too unprepared, too overwhelmed.

But the Lord answered me,

Say not, "I am too young."

Or whatever. 

To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.  Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

"To whomever I send you, you shall go." 

Because they come after us, we often think of the children as being sent to us.

But John turns this time-sequence on its head.  John testified:  He who is to come after me existed before me.

And though they didn't exist before us, this paradox recalls that, rather than them being sent to us, it's more true that we are sent -- to each child in turn, and at the same time.

"To whomever I send you you shall go."  

Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying,

See, I place my words in your mouth!

This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms,

(Or perhaps only over one family of children),

To root up and tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.

But do you gird your loins; 

Get out of your pajamas.  Put on your shoes and tie back your hair.  Wash your face.  Chin up.

stand up and tell them all that I command you.   

Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; 

And boy, don't I feel that way sometimes.

For it is I this day who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land; Against Judah's kings and princes, against its priests and its people.  

The Lord fortified Jeremiah against Judah.  He expected conflict.  (And got it.)  Conflict, however, was not the purpose of their relationship.  The purpose was guidance, correction, reconciliation, love.  

In Jeremiah on St. John's birthday we are to see the purpose of "preparing a way for Christ" as well.  A road into the heart.

They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

If you had told me a few years ago, when my children were fewer and smaller, that I would read this and immediately identify with Jeremiah (knowing to whom I am sent), I probably would be horrified at the language of antagonism and conflict and power struggle.  Isn't our ideal a little bit more... collaborative?   Shouldn't we turn to language that sounds a bit more... encouraging?  Warm nurturing welcoming nourishing protecting cuddling sheltering blah blah blah?

<ringing sound of sword being unsheathed>

The Lord made my tongue a sharp sword; he hid me in the shadow of his hand.

Both, perhaps?

I am the voice.  The voice of one crying.  The voice of one crying out.

I have placed my words in your mouth.

Do you gird your loins.

It is I who have made you a pillar.

"Make me, I pray you, sweet to my friends and sour to my foes, to these a man reverend to behold, to those a man terrible."

Solon, among a selection of passages from Greek authors at Laudator Temporis Acti on the subject of loving one's friends and hating one's enemies.

The reason for the highlight is, of course, the Sermon on the Mount, which we've been getting in installments in our Sunday readings.  It's hard to keep the Sermon in context, isn't it?  After two thousand years of repeating things like "Pray for those who persecute you," such uterances start to sound like they make sense.   It's really only familiarity that makes us say "Oh, yes, that's nice."    

But it doesn't make sense in any human, natural way, and we all know this.  Check any newspaper for examples of Christians eager for revenge of one kind or another (sure, it may go by the names of "closure" or "justice" or "teach him a lesson.")  Jesus was a man who said a lot of extremely surprising things, and this is one of them.  

Actually, surprising perhaps puts it too mildly.  "Pray for those who persecute you" is downright offensive.   Traumatic.  Triggering, even.  

The Greeks were wise in the ways of man, if not of God.  Here's an interesting tidbit:

Polybius 1.14.4-5 (tr. W. R. Paton) allows an exception to the rule only in the person of the historian who is bound to be impartial:

"...a good man should love his friends and his country, he should share the hatreds and attachments of his friends; but he who assumes the character of a historian must ignore everything of the sort, and often, if their actions demand this, speak good of his enemies and honour them with the highest praises while criticizing and even reproaching roundly his closest friends, should the errors of their conduct impose this duty on him."

The historian's duty is to truth, and truth requires impartiality.   People naturally seek comradeship and deal out retribution, but accuracy -- truth --  is something different and yet worth seeking, and it's simply common sense that, to find it, the historian must squelch his unhelpful (if natural, universal, understandable, and ordinarily even desirable) favoritism.  Everybody knows that, right?  Today we would mention other professions bound by this standard:  reporters, research scientists, judges, and teachers.  The Greeks knew, as we naturally know, that truth is a good that supersedes natural human desires to divide the world into "us" and "them."  Still, the Greeks indulged those desires in everyday life, and most of the time, so do we.  If it's not our job to be impartial, we don't expect it of ourselves.

The really radical aspect of the Sermon on the Mount isn't so much the call for impartiality:  "love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust."  As Polybius wrote, as we know, there are purposes and duties that call for impartiality -- that's obvious!  

The radical part is the suggestion that all times and all purposes call for "serving Truth."