catholicism 101 -- part 1 of 8

The following is the outline of the first session of our current Sunday School series at Holy Cross.  The subject of the series is Catholic Christianity, what it means to be a catholic Christian, to believe catholic beliefs, and to worship as a catholic.  The following is the outline of the discussion from Sunday January 20.  The series runs until Palm Sunday (through - and including - Sunday, March 9).  We meet between the Sunday masses, beginning at 9:30 am.

CATHOLICISM 101

Church of the Holy Cross

January 20, 2008

Part 1

God’s Covenant / God’s People

I. God created the world out of love.
a. He endowed man with a free will, because he wanted to relate to man in love, not servility.
i. Therefore man was endowed with the ability to reject God.
b. Man rejected God. This rejection poisoned the world. (Cf. Gen. 3.9ff)
c. God was not willing that sin should be a definitive ruining of the world.
d. This history of the human race is a history of God’s patient love following humanity, despite our rebellion (cf. Gen. 3.21) – God from the beginning pursued us with love, encouraged us to return to him, and promised a definitive restoration.

II. Early on God deals with individuals and families – the Patriarchs.
a. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.

III. With Abraham things change somewhat:
a. Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by him… (Gen. 18.18.)
b. This is the people of Israel. you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. (Deut. 14.2.)
c. Israel is God’s “ecclesia” (Greek), or “Church”. (cf. Acts 7.38.)
d. To Israel God revealed the moral law (Exodus 31.18),
e. the right to approach God by sacrifice (Leviticus),
f. the divine blessing (Exodus 6.7), and most importantly:

IV. The promise that God himself would bring about a definitive restoration for the whole world from the midst of Israel – that God himself would come from among them as a vindicator, to undo the brokenness of the very creation by the power of mankind’s sin in the beginning. This promise is not just for Israel, but for “all nations” – the “gentiles”. (Psalm 96 vv. 3 & 10, Is. 11.10, Is. 49.6, Is. 66.19, Jer. 16.19, Zechariah 8.22, Mal. 1.11).
a. Malachi 3.1 et seq: "Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? "For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver…”
b. And Malachi 4 ***
i. Note the promise of Elijah. And see what Jesus says about John the Baptist (Matthew 11.14 passim): …if you are willing to accept it, he is Eli'jah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

V. Then there is the advent of the promised Salvation, the birth of Jesus: But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. (Gal. 4.4)
a. We are made heirs of what God promised to the descendents of Abraham:
i. And I will dwell among the people of Israel, and will be their God. (Exodus 29.45)
ii. I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. (Jeremiah 24.7)
iii. Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant [“new testament”] with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31.31ff)
iv. Jesus said: Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Mat. 5.17)
v. And St. Paul writes: I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin…. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles…. if the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11 passim)
b. The whole purpose of God’s choice of Israel, and their receiving of his self-disclosure (his word, his law, his commandments), was to prepare the way for Jesus – the eternal Word made flesh, and his work – the work that saves us from the world’s brokenness-through-sin.
i. the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3.24)
ii. The revelation of the Old Testament is completed and fulfilled in the New Testament.
iii. The old sacrifices are completed and fulfilled in the sacrifice of “Christ our Passover” – the Lamb of God. (cf. Jn. 19.14)
iv. The moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments is completed and fulfilled in the “Beatitudes” – the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5, and Luke 6)
v. The Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, descended from Aaron, is completed and fulfilled in Jesus, our “Great High Priest” (Heb. 4.14) and the spiritual descent of Christian priests of the “apostolic succession”.
vi. Israel as a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19.6) is completed and fulfilled in the “royal priesthood” of the whole Christian Church: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2.9)
vii. The old sign of circumcision, as the means of incorporation into the old covenant, is completed and fulfilled in the sacrament of Holy Baptism by which we are made members of the new Covenant in the flesh of Jesus, members of the “one Body” of Christ (1 Cor. 12.13, Col. 2.11-12).
viii. In short: All of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, are fulfilled in the Body of Christ, and in his work: the reconciliation of humanity with God, who had desired us and sought to be with us since our initial rejection of Him and the ensuing brokenness of the world and of human relationships. It all comes to a head and a fulfillment in Jesus – his proclamation, his action, and his person. And this proclamation, action, and the very person of Jesus, is perpetuated in the world down to the present in the Catholic Church.

the baptism of our lord -- january 13 2007

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

 

Have you ever wondered WHY Jesus was baptized?  After all, we say in the creed “we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”.  If baptism is FOR the forgiveness of sins, then why was Jesus baptized?  The Bible says that he was without sin (Heb. 4.15).  And John appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1.4).  So what is Jesus doing being baptized?  WE are the ones who need to be cleansed by HIM, and yet here he is presenting himself among the crowds of people conscious of their own guilt, seeking to be cleansed from sin.

 

People down through the centuries have come up with a number of ideas about this question.  Most of them are wrong.  When this question first occurred to me, I asked a priest about it and he said he suspected that Jesus really didn’t know what he was doing, but that his identification with us – confused earthlings that we are – meant that he shared our confusion:  confusion about our calling, about what the right thing to do might be in a given situation, and so forth.

 

But this way of answering the question of why Jesus was baptized does not do justice to the depth and profundity of what is being revealed in this passage.  This passage isn’t supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy because a really important guy was once just as confused as we are.  What it shows, rather, is the renewal of creation:  it shows the way OUT of the confusion and chaos and fear that stand at the center of human life.

 

To the ancients, water, particularly large bodies of water, were a dark and mysterious force, a symbol of danger and death – though always charged with the possibility of deliverance and life.  The Holy Spirit had brooded over the waters of the primordial chaos, and out of it God had spoken order.  The world had been destroyed in the waters of the flood, and Noah and his family had been delivered through their obedience to God’s command to build the ark.  The children of Israel had passed through the waters of the Red Sea and been delivered from the armies of Pharaoh, who was seeking to perpetuate their bondage and slavery.  Through the agency of Moses, God had divided the waters of the Jordan which stood in the way of Israel’s entry into the land of promise, and the children of Israel passed into their inheritance on dry land.

 

Up until the baptism of Jesus, God had delivered his people FROM the waters of the deep.  It is as though God rebuked the disorder of the primordial waters when he spoke the dry land into existence.  It was a divine action of separation and division.  So too was God’s dealing with the waters of the Red Sea.  Israel was delivered precisely because they DID NOT go into the waters, but passed over miraculously on dry land (Exodus 15.19).  And at the end of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, when they are poised on the very edge of the land of promise, the waters of the river Jordan stand in their path not as an efficacious sign of God’s boundless mercy, but as a hindrance, as the final obstacle to their taking possession of their inheritance – and again God must intervene; pushing the water back so that the children of Israel do NOT pass through the water, but enter the land ON DRY GROUND (Joshua 3.17).  Going down into the depths of the waters meant death.

 

But with Jesus’ baptism, God does something new.  John has the same reaction that many Christians have to Jesus’ presentation of himself for Baptism:  “I need to be baptized by YOU, and do you come to ME?” (Matthew 3.14).  Jesus’ response seems a little mysterious: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” then he consented (Matthew 3.15).  The key to understanding Jesus’ answer is in the word “righteousness”.  In the Jesus’ world, RIGHTEOUSNESS is man’s response to the Torah.  To be righteous is to accept God’s will, and so to “fulfill all righteousness” is to accept God’s will TOTALLY.  (Cf. Benedict XVI in “Jesus of Nazareth”)

 

When we think of Jesus accepting the will of the Father, our thoughts inevitably turn to the night before he suffered, when he is at prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.  His prayer that night is “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, NOT AS I WILL, BUT AS THOU WILT” (Matthew 26.39).  Jesus fulfills all righteous by doing the will of the Father, and the Father’s will is done, and all righteousness is fulfilled, with the death of Jesus on the cross.  Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan therefore prefigures his crucifixion – where he does the will of the Father, and so fulfills all righteousness.  That’s why Jesus refers to his death as his “baptism” when he asks the sons of Zebedee: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

 

Jesus stands on the banks of the Jordan, accepting the will of the Father, for our redemption.  At his baptism, our Lord shoulders the weight of chaos – of the darkness and rebellion and fear at the center of human life – the Lord of life plunges into the depths of it, and he rises up from it victorious.  “And behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3.16-17).

 

Jesus is the true Jonah, the servant of God who is NOT delivered from the depths, but who plunges in, who stands on the deck of the storm-tossed ship and says “Take me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you” (Jonah 1.12).  The Lord was not baptized in order that he might be cleansed from sin, but that he might renew creation, that by descending into the dark waters of chaos and fear and rebellion against God, he might sanctify the water itself, and make it efficacious for our cleansing.  Whereas the ancients saw in the seas the dark and powerful forces of chaos, we who are in Christ now see in the water the sign of our redemption.  We see that the power of fear and darkness and rebellion has been broken for us – that because Jesus entered into the depths, the depths have now been sanctified (cf. Remigius and Augustine).  We may now rise cleansed from the same water that Jesus entered, burdened with our sin.  And we may now rise to life victorious from the same death which Jesus suffered for our sake.

 

Jesus was baptized not because he was unsure of himself, but because he was quite sure.  He came to do the will of the Father – and the Father’s will was that we should be delivered from all that burdens our souls:  from all the confusion and darkness and sin and chaos of life in this world.

 

Therefore let us pray.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

…and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.

Its too bad we no longer have the great antiphons from the old Daily Office.  They are available in various places (the English Office, the Breviary), but they aren't a standard part of the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer.  They were "reformed" away.  Here, for example, is the old antiphon on the morning canticle "Benedictus" (Luke 1.68-79) aka "the song of Zechariah" for the Epiphany --

"Hodie caelesti sponso juncta est Ecclesia, quoniam in Jordane lavit Christus ejus crimina : currunt cum muneribus Magi ad regales nuptias, et ex aqua facto vino laetantur convivae, alleluja."

or rather:

"Today the Church has been joined to her heavenly Spouse, for Christ has washed away her sins in the Jordan; the Magi hasten with gifts to the royal nuptials, and the guests are gladdened with wine made from water, alleluia."

What a beautiful expression of the mystery of the Epiphany!  You could spend years unpacking the mystical content of that antiphon.  Note, for example, the references to the nuptial aspect of the Incarnation: that in Christ, divine nature and human nature become "one flesh" in the person of Jesus; that we are guests at the banquet.  Note too the oblique reference to Ephesians 5.25 et seq:  "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word..."

What sublime mystery!  We should bring back the antiphons to our office, at least as readily available options.