Month: June 2012

Who Are the 24 Elders of Revelation?

The book of Revelation describes a group of people known as the twenty-four elders, who surround the throne of God in heaven and who sing his praises.

Who are they?

One clue is the number twenty-four.

A suggestion that some scholars have made is that there seem to have been twenty-four courses of Jewish priests in the first century.

This is a possibility, but the twenty-four courses of Jewish priests served one after each other, not all twenty-four at once. They also, obviously, included more than one priest each.

It’s possible that the number of courses of Jewish priests played a role in the shaping of this text (or, from a heavenly perspective, visa-versa), but it seems to me that there is an even more obvious significance to the number 24 that would suggest itself to the original readers: It’s 12+12, and the Church at this time was acutely aware of the fact that it represents a fusion of the original Israel (with its twelve tribes/tribal patriarchs) and the new Israel (with its twelve apostles).

We even see fusion imagery like that at the end of the book, where New Jerusalem is depicted as having twelve foundations, named after the twelve apostles of the Lamb, and twelve gates, named after the twelve tribes of Israel.

So I’ve always thought that, while the courses of priests might have some role here, the more natural interpretation is that the number twenty-four is based on the number of the patriarchs and apostles.

I was thus pleased when I was reading an audience of John Paul II in which he said this:

In this regard, the first passage of our Canticle is significant. It is set on the lips of the 24 elders who seem to symbolize God’s Chosen People in their two historical phases, the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 Apostles of the Church [General Audience of Jan. 12, 2005].

I always love it when I discover the pope expressing an opinion I’ve long held. I take it as a sign I’ve been on the right track.

There is also something else interesting about this passage: John Paul II said that the twenty-four elders “seem to symbolize.” That language is significant. The pope isn’t teaching that they are or that we must believe this is what they symbolize. He is proposing this view as plausible rather than imposing it as mandatory.

An awareness of the difference between these modes of language is important for correctly interpreting magisterial documents and the mind of the Church, and this passage offers a good illustration of the point. The Magisterium can invoke different levels of authority for propositions. In some cases propositions as proposed but not imposed. In other cases they are authoritatively proclaimed. And in rare cases they are even infallibly proclaimed.

The proper interpretation of magisterial documents thus involves not just recognizing what is being said but also what level of authority is being invested in it, neither understating that level (as dissidents tend to) nor exaggerating it (as a kind of reflexive infallibilism tends to), but correctly assessing and determining the level of authority that was intended by the Magisterium.

The Church Year: June 19, 2012

Today is Tuesday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 19, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Romuald, abbot. It is an optional memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Juliana Falconieri, virgin, who died in A.D. 1340. It is a Class III day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s Gervase and Protase, martyred at Milan, who died in A.D. 170. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Romuald, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Juliana Falconieri, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Gervase and Protase, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

20. From the dogmatic point of view, it is impossible to arrive at a perfect love of God if one ignores his giving of himself to us through his Incarnate Son, who was crucified and rose from the dead. In Him, under the action of the Holy Spirit, we participate, through pure grace, in the interior life of God. When Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), he does not mean just the sight and exterior knowledge of his human figure (“the flesh is of no avail”, Jn 6:63). What he means is rather a vision made possible by the grace of faith: to see, through the manifestation of Jesus perceptible by the senses, just what he, as the Word of the Father, truly wants to reveal to us of God (“It is the Spirit that gives life […]; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life”, ibid.). This “seeing” is not a matter of a purely human abstraction (“abs-tractio”) from the figure in which God has revealed himself; it is rather the grasping of the divine reality in the human figure of Jesus, his eternal divine dimension in its temporal form. As St. Ignatius says in the Spiritual Exercises, we should try to capture “the infinite perfume and the infinite sweetness of the divinity” (n. 124), going forward from that finite revealed truth from which we have begun. While he raises us up, God is free to “empty” us of all that holds us back in this world, to draw us completely into the Trinitarian life of his eternal love. However, this gift can only be granted “in Christ through the Holy Spirit,” and not through our own efforts, withdrawing ourselves from his revelation.

The Selection of Eastern Bishops

In this week’s podcast I dealt briefly with the fact that the current method of selecting bishops that is used in the Latin church does not apply in all of the Eastern Catholic churches.

Instead of the pope personally selecting the man who will be appointed bishop, he may–for example, under normal circumstances–pre-approve a number of men, one of whom is then elected bishop by the appropriate parties in the Eastern church in question.

By coincidence, a Vatican Information Service story that came out Monday touched on this fact. Also note that the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch is able to transfer bishops subject to him.

Here’s the story:

ACTS CONCERNING THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES

Vatican City, 16 June 2012 (VIS) – The Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, with the consent of the Synod of Bishops of the Maronite Church meeting pursuant to canon 85 paragraph 2 (2) of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, has transferred:

– Bishop Camille Zaidan, bishop of the Patriarchal Curia, to the office of archbishop of Antelias of the Maronites (Catholics 156,028, priests 162, religious 353), Lebanon. He succeeds Archbishop Youssef Bechara, who resigned from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese in accordance with canon 210 para. 1-2 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

– Bishop Francois Eid O.M.M., eparchal vicar of Cairo, Egypt, and of Sudan of the Maronites, to the office of patriarchal procurator before the Holy See, having received prior pontifical assent. Bishop Eid will receive the tile of eparchal bishop emeritus of his former eparchy, under the terms of canon 211 para. 1 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

The Synod of Bishops of the Maronite Church has elected the following archbishops and bishops, all of whom have received prior assent from the Holy Father:

– Fr. Moussa El-Hage O.A.M., superior of the convent of Sts. Sarkis and Bacchus in Edhen and Zghorta, as archbishop of Haifa and the Holy Land of the Maronites (Catholics 7,000, priests 11, religious 9), Israel, and as patriarchal exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine (Catholics 504, permanent deacons 1) and Jordan (Catholics 1,500, priests 2). The bishop-elect was born in Antoura, Lebanon in 1954 and ordained a priest in 1980. He studied in Jerusalem and in Rome and has held various offices in his religious order as well as being active in pastoral work and education. He succeeds Archbishop Paul Nabil El-Sayah, who had earlier resigned from the pastoral care of those circumscriptions to take up the office of bishop of the Patriarchal Curia.

– Fr. Paul Rouhana O.L.M., secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, as bishop of the patriarchal vicariate of Sarba, Lebanon. The bishop-elect was born in Amchit, Lebanon in 1954 and ordained a priest in 1982. He studied in Belgium and in France and been active in education at “Saint Esprit” University in Kaslik. He succeeds Bishop Guy-Paul Noujaim, who resigned from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese in accordance with canon 210 para. 1-2 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

– Fr. Maroun Ammar, rector of the major seminary of Ghazir, as bishop of the patriarchal vicariate of Joubbe, Lebanon. The bishop-elect was born in Haje, Lebanon in 1956 and ordained a priest in 1983. He has served as pastor in various parishes and is a judge at the Court of Appeal of the Maronite Tribunal of Lebanon. He succeeds Bishop Francis Baissari, who resigned from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese in accordance with canon 210 para. 1-2 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

– Fr. Joseph Mouawad, vicar general of the eparchy of Jbeil-Byblos, Lebanon, as bishop of the Patriarchal Curia. The bishop-elect was born in Mayfouq, Lebanon in 1970 and ordained a priest in 1995. He studied in Rome and has been active in pastoral work, as well as teaching theology at “La Sagesse” University in Beirut and “Saint Esprit” University in Kaslik.

– Fr. Georges Chihane, patriarchal administrator of Haifa and the Holy Land of the Maronites, Israel, and patriarchal exarch of Jerusalem, Palestine and Jordan, as eparchal vicar of Cairo, Egypt and Sudan of the Maronites (Catholics 5,500, priests 6, religious 3). The bishop-elect was born in Haret Sakhr, Lebanon in 1953 and ordained a priest in 1979. He has served as pastor in various parishes in Lebanon, France and Jordan.

Just another couple of illustrations of Catholic diversity-in-unity.

No, We Don’t Leave Time When We Die

At least that is not the common understanding in Catholic theology.

Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen that the word “eternal” can be understood in more than one way.

God is eternal in the sense of being completely beyond time.

And some have made an unsuccessful argument for human souls leaving time and becoming eternal in the same sense as God.

But the word “eternal” can also be understood to mean “everlasting”–as would apply to a being who comes into being at a certain point in time but who has no end.

That seems to be the case for us. We come into being at a certain point in time (when we are conceived), but because we are ultimately immortal, we have no end. Because of death, we may not be in our bodies for a period (of time), but eventually we will be reunited with them and experience the eternal (unending) order.

Both Scripture standard Catholic theology depict us as undergoing a sequence of states upon our death. First, we die. Then, we are judged at the particular judgment. Then, we are purified in purgatory if we need to be. Then, when our purification is finished, we have the unalloyed happiness of heaven. Then, we are reunited with our bodies. Then, we experience the general judgment, where we are judged in body and soul. Then, we experience the eternal order.

That’s a definite sequence–which begins with our death, implying a sequentiality that occurs after our deaths. For there to be a sequence, there must be something separating the elements of the sequence–something that keeps them from happening all at once.

That means that there is either time or something analogous to time in the afterlife.

The Medievals even had a word for this: They called it “aevum” or “aeveternity.”

What does the Church’s Magisterium have to say on the subject?

In one General Audience of John Paul II, the pope noted that:

Eternity [in the sense of being “beyond time”] is here the element which essentially distinguishes God from the world. While the latter is subject to change and passes away, God remains beyond the passing of the world. He is necessary and immutable: “you are the same” [General Audience of Sept. 4, 1985].

In the next week’s audience, John Paul II explained that

He [God] is Eternity, as the preceding catechesis explained, while all that is created is contingent and subject to time [General Audience of Sept. 11, 1985].

If eternity (in the beyond time sense) is distinguishes God from the world and if “all that is created” is “subject to time,” that would imply that our souls are subject to time. This would be the case even after our deaths, since our souls do not cease to be created entities.

However, we can go beyond this implicit acknowledgement of the sequentiality–and thus temporality. In 1992, the International Theological Commission (ITC) issued a document that bears on this point in a more explicit way.

The ITC is an advisory body headed by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who at the time was Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict). According to its bylaws, when the head of the ITC authorizes the publication of one of its documents, it signifies that the Magisterium does not have any difficulty with its teaching.

In this case, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authorized the publication of a document which held that:

[S]ome theologians . . . seek a solution in a so-called atemporalism: They say that after death time can in no way exist, and hold that the deaths of people are successive (viewed from the perspective of this world); whereas the resurrection of those people in the life after death, in which there would be no temporal distinctions, is (they think) simultaneous.

But this attempted atemporalism, according to which successive individual deaths would coincide with a simultaneous collective resurrection, implies recourse to a philosophy of time quite foreign to biblical thought.

The New Testament’s way of speaking about the souls of the martyrs does not seem to remove them either from all reality of succession or from all perception of succession (cf. Rev 6:9-11).

Similarly, if time should have no meaning after death, not even in some way merely analogous with its terrestrial meaning, it would be difficult to understand why Paul used formulas referring to the future (anastesontai) in speaking about their resurrection, when responding to the Thessalonians who were asking about the fate of the dead (cf. 1 Thess 4:13-18).

Moreover, a radical denial of any meaning for time in those resurrections, deemed both simultaneous and taking place in the moment of death, does not seem to take sufficiently into account the truly corporeal nature of the resurrection; for a true body cannot be said to exist devoid of all notion of temporality.

Even the souls of the blessed, since they are in communion with the Christ who has been raised in a bodily way, cannot be thought of without any connection with time [International Theological Commission, Some Current Questions on Eschatology (1992), “The Christian Hope of the Resurrection,” 2.2].

By their nature, the documents of the ITC express the common understanding of Catholic theology in accord with the teaching of the Magisterium, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s authorization of this document signals that the common understanding in Catholic theology is that some form of time “even in some way merely analogous to its terrestrial meaning” continues to apply to us in the afterlife, and that the Magisterium has no difficulty with this.

Joseph Ratzinger said the same in his own writings, such as his book Eschatology, when he was still a theology professor.

Catholic theology thus does not hold that we leave time upon our deaths. In fact, it would be difficult to hold that we do so, given the reasons that the ITC cites.

So while we do indeed have eternal souls, and while God is eternal in the sense of being completely beyond time, the Church does not understand our souls to be eternal or atemporal in the way that God is.

The Church Year: June 18, 2012

Today is Monday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 18, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Ephrem, deacon, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 379. It is a Class III day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s Mark and Marcellian, martyrs, who died in A.D. 286. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Ephrem, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Mark and Marcellian, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

19. Therefore, one has to interpret correctly the teaching of those masters who recommend “emptying” the spirit of all sensible representations and of every concept, while remaining lovingly attentive to God. In this way, the person praying creates an empty space which can then be filled by the richness of God. However, the emptiness which God requires is that of the renunciation of personal selfishness, not necessarily that of the renunciation of those created things which he has given us and among which he has placed us. There is no doubt that in prayer one should concentrate entirely on God and as far as possible exclude the things of this world which bind us to our selfishness. On this topic St. Augustine is an excellent teacher: if you want to find God, he says, abandon the exterior world and re-enter into yourself. However, he continues, do not remain in yourself, but go beyond yourself because you are not God: He is deeper and greater than you. “I look for his substance in my soul and I do not find it; I have however meditated on the search for God and, reaching out to him, through created things, I have sought to know ‘the invisible perfections of God’ (Rom 1:20).”21 “To remain in oneself”: this is the real danger. The great Doctor of the Church recommends concentrating on oneself, but also transcending the self which is not God, but only a creature. God is “deeper than my inmost being and higher than my greatest height.”22 In fact God is in us and with us, but he transcends us in his mystery.23

Wham!

Did You Know? Five monks from Canterbury reported to the abbey’s chronicler, Gervase, that shortly after sunset on June 18, 1178, they saw “two horns of light” on the shaded part of the Moon. In 1976 the geologist Jack B. Hartung proposed that this described the formation of the crater Giordano Bruno. Modern theories predict that there would be a plume of molten matter rising up from the surface of the Moon, which is consistent with the monks’ description. In addition, the location they recorded fits in well with the crater’s location. Additional evidence of Giordano Bruno’s youth is its spectacular ray system: because micrometeoritesconstantly rain down, they kick up enough dust to quickly (in geological terms) erode a ray system. So there is probably enough circumstantial evidence to hold that Giordano Bruno was formed during human history. LEARN MORE.

The Weekly Benedict: 17 Jun, 2012

This  version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 19 May – 11 June 2012  (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):

Angelus

General Audience

Speeches

The Church Year: June 17, 2012

Today is the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 17, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Gregory Barbarigo, bishop and confessor, who died in A.D. 1697. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Gregory Barbarigo, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

18. The seeking of God through prayer has to be preceded and accompanied by an ascetical struggle and a purification from one’s own sins and errors, since Jesus has said that only “the pure of heart shall see God” (Mt 5:8). The Gospel aims above all at a moral purification from the lack of truth and love and, on a deeper level, from all the selfish instincts which impede man from recognizing and accepting the Will of God in its purity. The passions are not negative in themselves (as the Stoics and Neoplatonists thought), but their tendency is to selfishness. It is from this that the Christian has to free himself in order to arrive at that state of positive freedom which in classical Christian times was called “apatheia,” in the Middle Ages “Impassibilitas” and in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises “indiferencia.”19 This is impossible without a radical self-denial, as can also be seen in St. Paul who openly uses the word “mortification” (of sinful tendencies).20 Only this self-denial renders man free to carry out the will of God and to share in the freedom of the Holy Spirit.

A Black Bag Job Gone Bad

Did You Know? Five men, one of whom said he used to work for the CIA, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972 while trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex. Thus the infamous Watergate Scandal that destroyed the presidency of Richard Nixon began. It was a slow-burn, though. Nixon went on to win re-election later in 1972, and the scandal did not topple him from power until 1974. I remember watching all this on television as a child. LEARN MORE.