Category: Liturgical Year

How Would Liturgical Calendars Be Different on Other Planets?

I enjoy fielding questions on Catholic Answers Live about humanity’s forays into outer space, such as this one: “How would the Church adapt its liturgical calendar if we colonized another planet or the moon?”

Well, it’s going to depend on where the planet or moon is and how fast it rotates. Humans are biologically designed to have a wake-sleep cycle that is synced with the day-night cycle on earth. If we’re in an environment where the day-night cycle is radically different from what we’re programmed to work with, we just ignore it.

For instance, the International Space Station goes around the earth in about forty-five minutes, meaning the astronauts on board get twenty-two minutes of light and twenty-two minutes of dark. There’s no way they want to fall asleep every twenty-two minutes and then wake up twenty-two minutes later for the duration of their mission.

Thus, astronauts on space stations ignore their environment’s peculiar day-night cycle. Instead, they keep a regular Earth-based day-night cycle for their sleeping and waking periods.

The same would be true of any other planet or moon that has a radically different rotation rate. And if humans are keeping a normal terrestrial day-night cycle and ignoring the rotation of the object they’re on, then they would likely keep a terrestrial calendar. They wouldn’t modify the calendar because they’re keeping the same day-night cycle.

Now, what about other planets like Mars, which has a rotational period close to that of earth? Its day is almost the same length as earth’s. It’s a little bit different, but humans there would probably adapt to a Martian day-night cycle, and that means their days and nights would get out of sync with the days and nights on earth.

However, I don’t think that on Mars there would be a need to change the liturgical calendar, because Mars is very close to earth. It’s only a few light-minutes away, and as a result it would be very easy to stay in contact with earth and continue to use the terrestrial liturgical calendar. Even if their Sunday slides a few hours from Sunday on earth (because of the difference in the day lengths), you can still approximate that. So, they would still have the same kind of Sunday cycle, they could still celebrate Christmas and Easter at the same times, and so on.

But what if you go further afield—like out of our solar system? In that case, there’s no easy way to communicate with earth because of the light-speed limit. If you were on a planet with a similar rotation period to earth, I could see the local church in this other solar system developing its own liturgical calendar based on the local planetary rotation period.

However, I suspect that even then—even if they came up with new holidays and new liturgical seasons—they would still keep Christmas and Easter at the same time that they’re being celebrated back on earth, because that’s something you could always calculate.

So, I think that there could, in another solar system, be a different liturgical calendar with some similarities to ours; but here in our solar system, we’re so close that I don’t think we would practically develop different liturgical calendars for other planets—at least not any time in the foreseeable future.

Those *Other* Forty Days (the Ones After Easter)

We’re all familiar with the idea that Lent is forty days long, and it used to be true that Lent involved forty days excluding Sundays, though this isn’t true now, given revisions to the Church’s liturgical calendar.

The length of Lent is inspired by the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his public ministry (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).

However, there’s another forty days connected with Jesus, and we read about them at the beginning of Acts:

To them [the apostles] he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).

Jesus then instructed the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). This happened on Pentecost, fifty days after his Crucifixion on Passover.

These forty days are interesting in their own right, and many Christians have wondered about them. For example, why did Jesus only stay forty days and not the full fifty? Why leave when he did?

We aren’t told, but a likely explanation is that he was using the forty days as a parallel to his time in the wilderness. Just as he spent forty days in the desert to prepare for his ministry, he now stayed with the apostles for forty days, preparing them for their ministry.

The tradition that he remained with them forty days was not universal in the early Church, however. The second century Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons recorded that the Valentinian Gnostics claimed Jesus remained with the disciples for eighteen months (Against Heresies 1:3:2). The same view was held by another sect known as the Ophites (1:30:14).

Paulist Press’s translation of Irenaeus finds the origin of this counter tradition obscure. An editorial note on 1:30:14 says “How this strange error arose is a mystery,” and a note on 1:3:2 says, “Perhaps it was in some apocryphal work.”

Though the editors of the Paulist translation are unaware of it, this is actually the correct answer. There was an early noncanonical work that contained this tradition. The Ascension of Isaiah, which was written about the year A.D. 67, states:

And when he [Jesus] has plundered the angel of death, he will rise on the third day and will remain in that world for five hundred and forty-five days (Ascension of Isaiah 9:16).

Five hundred and forty-five days works out to just over eighteen months, and this may have been the origin of the Valentinian and Ophite believe that Jesus remained with the disciples for that amount of time.

Still, not all agreed. The third century Gnostic work called Pistis Sophia holds that Jesus remained with the disciples for an astonishing eleven years!

It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples (Pistis Sophia 1:1).

However, the canonical book of Acts is divinely inspired, and Luke was an excellent historian, so we should go with him. Forty days it was.

What was Jesus doing in this time? According to various Gnostic sects, he was imparting their secret Gnostic teachings to the apostles.

According to their idea, Jesus gave two sets of teachings. The first was an exoteric or public set of teachings that the apostles passed down to the bishops to be shared with the faithful in general, and the second was an esoteric or secret set of teachings that were to be shared only with a select few (the Gnostics themselves).

This “two sets of teachings” idea was to justify how the Gnostics could have teachings coming from Jesus that were manifestly different than those preached by the bishops.

Because books were fantastically expensive in the ancient world (with a single copy of Matthew costing the equivalent of more than $2,000), the Gnostics didn’t bother writing Gospels in our sense—that is, documents that told the full story of Jesus.

Instead, they supplemented the canonical Gospels by writing documents that zoomed in on particular moments in Jesus’ life. An example is the second century Gospel of Mary, in which—after the Resurrection—Jesus gave “Mary” (likely Mary Magdalen) secret Gnostic teachings.

However, even secular scholars acknowledge that Gnostic documents are too late to contain accurate information about Jesus’ life and teachings.

We also do not have writings from the Church Fathers that are early enough to provide reliable information about the forty days. Acts 1:3 is barely mentioned in the orthodox Christian writings of the second and third centuries, and when it is mentioned, we aren’t given any new information about the period.

So once again, we’re back to the canonical works if we wish to obtain that.

At the beginning of Acts, Luke tells us that Jesus essentially did three things during the forty days: (1) “he presented himself alive after his passion,” (2) “by many proofs,” and (3) “speaking of the kingdom of God.”

He may well have done other things, too, like spending time with the disciples, sharing table fellowship with them, and even possibly celebrating the Eucharist. But these are the three things Luke tells us he did.

When it comes to presenting himself alive, Luke mentions only two events from this period in Acts. The first is the instruction to remain in Jerusalem until the apostles receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5), and the second is the Ascension (Acts 1:6-11).

But Luke tells us more in his Gospel, indicating that Jesus appeared to the two disciples (one of whom was Cleopas) on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), that he appeared to Peter (Luke 24:34), that he appeared to the apostles “and those who were with them” (Luke 24:36-49), and that he ascended before them (Luke 24:50-53).

We can expand on these appearances by consulting other canonical texts. Matthew records that Jesus also appeared to the women who discovered the empty tomb (Matt. 28:9-10) and that he appeared to the Eleven in Galilee, where he gave them the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20).

John reports that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalen, in particular, on the morning of the Resurrection (John 20:11-17) and that he appeared to the other core disciples (less Thomas) later that day (John 20:19-23). He also appeared to the Twelve including Thomas a week later (John 20:26-29), and he later appeared to a group of seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1-22).

The longer ending of Mark confirms many of these appearances, including the one to Mary Magdalen (Mark 16:9), the one on the road to Emmaus (Mark 16:12), and another to the Eleven (Mark 16:14), as well as the giving of the Great Commission (Mark 16:15-18) and the Ascension (Mark 16:19).

We also have evidence from St. Paul, who records the same appearance to Peter that Luke mentioned (1 Cor. 15:5a) and a subsequent appearance to the Eleven (1 Cor. 15:5b).

Paul strikingly says that “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6)—that is, by the time 1 Corinthians was written around A.D. 53.

After this appearance to more than five hundred, Paul says, “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:7)—indicating first an appearance to James “the brother of the Lord” and then another appearance to the Twelve (which would have, by this time, included Judas’s replacement, Matthias; see Acts 1:12-26).

Finally, Paul says, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:8). However, Luke indicates that this occurred long after the Ascension and thus after the forty days were over (Acts 9:1-19).

When it comes to the “many proofs” that Jesus was alive, Luke records two of them in his Gospel. The first is this:

[The Eleven and those who were with them] were startled and frightened and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this he showed them his hands and his feet (Luke 24:37-40).

The second is:

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them (Luke 24:41-43).

John appears to record more detailed accounts of these same two proofs, elaborating that the first occurred when Jesus invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side (John 20:24-28) and when he appeared to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee and ate charbroiled fish with them (John 21:9-14).

When it comes to “speaking of the kingdom of God,” we are not told specifically what Jesus said.

The Gnostics obviously had their own (completely unreliable) theories. However, a more secure basis is found in the canonical works that we have.

The kingdom of God is a prominent theme in the canonical Gospels, and we are told that the disciples did not understand things that he told them before the Resurrection, including what he meant when he predicted that he would die and rise again (Mark 9:30-32), as well as other matters (John 2:21-22).

However, on the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Similarly, when he spoke to the apostles and those with them:

Then he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47).

It is thus likely that in this forty-day period, Jesus reviewed many of his previous teachings about the kingdom of God and helped the disciples understand them more fully.

Did Jesus do other things in this period? It is quite possible. Near the end of his Gospel, John tells us:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book (John 20:30).

Some of those signs may have occurred in the forty-day period he spent with the disciples after his resurrection.

However, whether he did so and what these signs may have been, we are not told. We must therefore leave them as an Easter mystery.

 

Are Saturday Evening Masses Based on an Ancient Jewish Practice?

According to the current Code of Canon Law:

A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass (can. 1248 §1).

Sunday is a holy day of obligation (can. 1246 §1), and as a result, you can fulfill your Sunday obligation either by going to Mass during the 24 hours of Sunday or on Saturday evening.

(The same principle applies to holy days of obligation that fall on other days of the week—though we won’t go into that here).

Masses celebrated on the evening of the preceding day are commonly called “vigil Masses,” though this isn’t their official name.

Instead, they are formally known as “anticipated” Masses since they use the same readings as the following day rather than special readings designed for a vigil service.

 

A Proposed Explanation

Many people want to know why this is permitted. Why can we fulfill our Sunday obligation by going to Mass on Saturday evening?

A common proposal is that it is because—in the Jewish timekeeping system—the day begins at sunset, and so there is a sense in which Sunday begins on Saturday evening.

Catholics are thus allowed to fulfill their Sunday obligation at this time in honor of Christianity’s Jewish heritage.

It’s a plausible explanation, but is it true?

Here are three problems with it.

 

Jewish Practice Was Inconsistent

The first problem is that Jewish reckoning of when the day begins was inconsistent.

There are four logical points during the day where it makes sense to start a new day:

    • Sunrise
    • Sunset
    • Midnight
    • Midday (i.e., noon)

Different cultures have used various points for their day divisions. In the Handbook of Biblical Chronology (2nd ed.), Jack Finegan writes:

11. In ancient Egypt the day probably began at dawn, in ancient Mesopotamia it began in the evening.

Among the Greeks the day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, while the Romans already began the day in the “modern” fashion at midnight.

Summing up the different reckonings among different people in his time Pliny [the Elder] wrote:

The Babylonians count the period between two sunrises, the Athenians that between two sunsets, the Umbrians from midday to midday, the common people everywhere from dawn to dark, the Roman priests and the authorities who fixed the official day, and also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, the period from midnight to midnight [Natural History 2.79.188].

But what about the Israelites? When did they reckon the day as starting? The answer is that it varied. Finegan continues:

12. In the Old Testament the earlier practice seems to have been to consider that the day began in the morning.

In Gen 19:34, for example, the “morrow” (asv) or “next day” (rsv) clearly begins with the morning after the preceding night.

The later practice was to count the day as beginning in the evening.

So in the Old Testament it looks like the early practice was to reckon the day as beginning at sunrise, but the later practice seems to have been to reckon it as beginning at sunset.

And since the New Testament is later than the Old Testament, that means that—in Jesus’ day—the day began at sunset, right?

Well . . .

13. In the New Testament in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts the day seems usually to be considered as beginning in the morning.

Mark 11:11 states that Jesus entered Jerusalem, went into the temple, and when he had looked at everything, since it was “now eventide” (asv) or “already late” (rsv), went out to Bethany with the twelve; verse 12 continues the narrative and tells that on the “morrow” (asv) or the “following day” (rsv) they came back to the city.

It is evident that the new day has begun with the morning following the preceding evening.

Likewise Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1f., and Luke 23:56–24:1 all picture the first day of the week beginning with the dawn following the preceding Sabbath.

And Acts 4:3, for an example in that book, tells how Peter and John were put in custody “until the morrow, for it was already evening,” thus clearly indicating that the new day would begin the next morning.

It has been suggested that this counting of the day as beginning with the morning is a continuation of the earlier Old Testament practice already described (§12), and that this usage was maintained in parts of Galilee and was followed by Jesus and the early disciples, which would account for its appearing so frequently in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts.

But is there no trace in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts of the idea of the day beginning at sunset? And what about the Gospel of John? Finegan continues:

On the other hand, even though the common reckoning in the Synoptic Gospels is from the morning, in Mark 1:32 = Luke 4:40, the later Old Testament (§12) and Jewish usage of counting the one day as ending and the next as beginning at sunset is plainly reflected in the fact that the people of Capernaum were free to bring the sick to Jesus at sunset when the Sabbath came to an end.

As for the Fourth Gospel, in John 20:1 Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark, yet it is already “on the first day of the week.”

This can be explained by supposing that the late Old Testament and Jewish usage is in view, according to which the new day had begun at the preceding sunset, or it can be explained equally well by supposing that John is giving the description in terms of the official Roman day which, as Pliny told us (§11), began at midnight.

In either case, the new day had begun already before the sunrise.

So Jewish practice about when the day began was inconsistent. The Old Testament uses both sunrise and sunset as points for beginning the day, and the New Testament isn’t consistent, either.

The Synoptic Gospels and Acts usually have the day starting with sunrise (though not always), and it isn’t clear (at least from what Finegan writes) whether John is using sunset or midnight.

This is not a strong basis for saying the modern practice of anticipated Masses is simply a continuation of a well-established Jewish practice from the days of Jesus.

However, there’s another problem.

 

The Practice Was Introduced in the 1960s

The second problem is that anticipated Masses date to the 1960s.

They aren’t something that the Church has been doing for the last 2,000 years—which is what you would expect if they were simply the continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.

Instead, what happened was that in 1964, the Vatican made an announcement (on Vatican Radio) that the faithful could fulfill their Sunday obligation on Saturday evenings in certain churches that had been designated for this purpose by the local bishop.

The permission applied only to Sundays (not other holy days of obligation), and it did not apply to all locations where Mass was being celebrated—only to specially designated churches.

Most fundamentally, it was only at the discretion of the local bishop—not part of the Church’s universal law.

That changed in 1983 with the release of the revised Code of Canon Law, which removed these restrictions and allowed the faithful to fulfill their Mass obligation on the preceding evening for Sundays and other holy days and anywhere a Mass is being celebrated, as long as it is “in a Catholic rite.”

(This means, among other things, that the Mass doesn’t have to use the next day’s readings, as these will vary between rites; e.g., the Chaldean rite uses a different lectionary than the Roman rite).

So this is not an immemorial practice. It was introduced to the universal Church—at the bishop’s discretion—in the 1960s and then broadened in 1983. It thus isn’t simply a continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.

Still, it’s possible that—in the 1960s zeal for restoring ancient liturgical uses—that the Vatican decided to restore an older practice that had fallen into disuse.

So is that what they did?

 

It’s Not What They Said

The third problem with the idea is that it’s just not what the Vatican said when they introduced the practice.

On June 12, 1964, Vatican Radio announced:

The faithful can also satisfy the Sunday precept of holy Mass by assisting at the celebration of the divine service in the afternoon of Saturday in churches specifically designated by the local ecclesiastical authority.

The Sacred Congregation of the Council, at the request of local Ordinaries [i.e., bishops], granted the faculty to celebrate holy Mass after first Vespers on Saturday together with the valid discharge of the Sunday precept.

It is left to the prudent judgment of the Ordinaries to indicate the times, localities, and churches which will enjoy this faculty as has already been done in some dioceses of Italy, Switzerland, and Argentina (n. This concession has also been recently granted to Catholics in Israel where, as is known, Sunday is considered a working day).

Among the considerations which have prompted this concession at the present time are:

        • the enormous and ever-increasing frequency of weekend trips and of skiing excursions for whose patronizers the schedules of departure and return make it at least difficult to fulfill the Sunday precept;
        • the situation in which numerous mountain villagers find themselves where, during the long periods of isolation brought about by accumulation of snow, part of the inhabitants would not be able to get to church and can at present have contact with the priest on Saturday;
        • the serious dearth of clergy in some countries in which at present the priest by being able to celebrate four Sunday Masses including that on Saturday, will meet the greater number of the faithful [Canon Law Digest 6:670-671].

So the Vatican indicated that the reasons anticipated Masses were introduced included modern weekend travel, weather conditions, and a shortage of priests in some countries.

None of these considerations were restoring an ancient Jewish practice.

However, Vatican Radio did say that the named factors were “among the considerations” leading to the decision. That doesn’t completely rule out that the decision was influenced by an older Jewish practice in some way.

But it would indicate that this either wasn’t a consideration or wasn’t a principal consideration.

 

Conclusion

In light of these factors, it wouldn’t be responsible to tell people that we can fulfill our Sunday obligations on Saturday evening based on ancient Jewish time reckoning:

    • Ancient Jewish practice was actually mixed, including in the time of Christ
    • There was no continuation of the day-begins-at-sunset practice in the Church, and anticipated Masses were only introduced in the 1960s
    • When they were introduced, all the named factors leading to the decision were modern, not ancient

 

Judas Iscariot: Man of Mystery

Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus is perplexing in several ways, and Christian thinkers have sought to make sense of it.

The largest question is: Why did Judas perform the betrayal? What was his motive?

The Gospels give us some clues. One is that Satan was working on Judas (Luke 22:3, John 13:2, 27). However, this explains the action from a superhuman point of view and does not address why—on a human level—Judas would choose to betray Jesus.

A possible human motive may have been greed. John indicates that Judas was greedy and had previously committed theft to obtain money (John 12:5-6), and Matthew portrays Judas as telling the chief priests, “‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him” (Matt. 26:15-16). Mark and Luke also mention a commitment to pay Judas (Mark 14:11, Luke 22:5).

This suggests at least that Judas wanted to be compensated for the deed, but that doesn’t mean it was his primary motive. Why would someone who had followed Jesus for three years suddenly decide to betray his master? Is the opportunity for some quick cash really a sufficient motive?

Many have thought that it is not, and they have proposed additional reasons. One is the idea that Judas was actually trying to help Jesus fulfill his messianic destiny by bringing him into contact with the Jewish authorities. This view would tend to rehabilitate Judas, as he thought he was doing a good thing.

In favor of such a view, Judas could be seen as not aware of the fact he’s betraying Jesus, for when Jesus predicts at the Last Supper that one of the Twelve will betray him, Judas—along with the others—asks, “Is it I, Master?” (Matt. 26:25; cf. 26:22). Also, “when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood’” (Matt. 27:3-4). So maybe Judas just meant to put Jesus in contact with the chief priests and didn’t realize they would condemn him.

Against this view is the fact that Judas “had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely’” (Mark 14:44). The use of a covert sign—as opposed to making a simple introduction—and the instruction to seize Jesus indicates consciousness of betrayal.

However, another messianic motive is possible. No doubt, Judas—like the other disciples—expected Jesus to be a political Messiah who would kick out the Romans and restore national sovereignty to Israel (cf. John 6:15, 11:48-50; Acts 1:6). However, Jesus did not intend to be this type of Messiah. Perhaps Judas disagreed, and by forcing him into a confrontation with the chief priests, Judas was hoping to force him back onto what he regarded as the proper path for the Messiah—only to see Jesus condemned instead.

Another possible motive is anger and resentment. It is clear from various passages in the New Testament that some disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) were closer to Jesus than others, and Judas is always listed last among the Twelve (Matt. 10:1-4, Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:12-16). Perhaps Judas’s lower status had come to grate on him after three years, and—under the influence of Satanically inspired envy and resentment—he decided to prove that he was a person of importance after all.

What we can say with confidence is that on the superhuman level Satan was involved and on the human level greed was involved, but beyond that, all we can do is speculate.

Whatever Judas’s exact motive, a careful reading of the Gospels reveals that the betrayal involved an intricate, time-sensitive plan.

“It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people’” (Mark 14:1-2).

Given the Jewish way of reckoning time, and the fact Passover began at sundown on Thursday, “two days before the Passover” points to sometime during the daytime on Wednesday.

The Jewish authorities thus had a window of opportunity to arrest Jesus between Wednesday and Thursday. Beginning Friday morning, the feast of Unleavened Bread would be in full swing, and Jesus could be expected to be with the crowds during the daytime in the week-long festival.

It apparently was on this Wednesday that Judas went to the chief priests and agreed to betray him, so he “sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude” (Luke 22:6). Since Judas was now serving as their spy, the Wednesday of Holy Week is often called Spy Wednesday.

Jesus being away from the crowds was important. Jesus noted that they could have arrested him any day they wanted as he taught in the temple (Matt. 26:55, Mark 14:49, Luke 22:53). By waiting until he was in a private setting, they could avoid the people rioting.

Judas did not find an opportunity to betray Jesus Wednesday night or Thursday during the daytime when Jesus was with the crowds. The next opportunity would be when he was alone with the disciples on Thursday night at the Passover meal, which would be in private.

However, there was a new complication. Jesus kept the location of the Passover meal secret until the last moment, forcing the disciples to ask, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” (Mark 14:16).

Instead of simply telling them the location, Jesus sent two of the disciples (Luke reveals it was Peter and John; Luke 22:8) to look for a man unusually carrying a water jar, which was normally women’s work. They were then to follow this man back to a house, and there the householder would have a room prepared for them to eat the Passover meal (Mark 14:13-15).

The apparent purpose of this subterfuge was to keep the Twelve—including Judas—from knowing the location of the meal until the last moment. That way, Judas could not bring the authorities there to arrest Jesus, for he greatly desired to eat this Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:15).

At the Last Supper, Jesus announced that one of the Twelve would betray him, prompting the disciples to ask who it would be.

Jesus indicated it would be someone who dipped food in the same dish as him, which would make it obvious to anyone who was in-the-know that Judas would be the betrayer. But John’s Gospel indicates that this was a rather restricted audience. It may have only been Peter and the beloved disciple who knew.

“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.’ So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the feast,’ or that he should give something to the poor” (John 13:23-29) since giving to the poor was a custom on the first night of Passover.

By this point, Judas had learned what he needed to know to betray Jesus, for he had learned their plans for the remainder of the evening.

Jesus “went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples” (John 18:1-2).

Judas thus brought a band of soldiers and officers from the Jewish authorities to arrest him.

It was at this point that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Even though Jesus was a public figure, the guards might not know him by sight.

Also, it was dark, and they would be viewing the scene in the garden by torchlight. Even Judas himself might not recognize Jesus until getting up close to him.

By arranging the kiss, Judas apparently wanted a degree of protection. If he suddenly yelled, “This is Jesus! Grab him!” that would make it obvious to everyone that Judas had betrayed him. A melee might ensue, and Judas might be injured or killed by one of the other disciples.

But by coming up and giving the ordinary greeting gesture of a kiss, it would make the act of betrayal non-obvious. From Judas’s perspective, he might get away scot-free, with nobody realizing what he had done.

However, Jesus knew what Judas was up to. “Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48).

From Jesus’ perspective—as tragic as it was—everything was proceeding according to plan.

Christmas Myths

Every year at Christmastime, you hear people trying to debunk aspects of the holiday and the biblical accounts behind it.

One of the most common allegations is that Christmas is based on a pagan holiday, and so it is really “pagan” in origin.

Not only is this particular claim made by secularists who don’t like Christianity in general, it’s also made by some in the Protestant community. Before I was Catholic, some members of my Protestant congregation didn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “unbiblical,” pagan origins.

Other allegations charge the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth with contradictions, and almost every aspect of the Christmas story and the Christmas celebration has been challenged.

So let’s take an objective look and see what the historical evidence has to say.

 

Not a Matter of Faith

First, we should point out that Jesus being born on December 25th is not a matter of faith.

Those who delight in saying that he wasn’t sometimes seem to take pleasure in the idea that they’re somehow undermining Christianity, but they’re not.

The Church may celebrate Jesus’ birth on this day, but it’s not a matter of Catholic doctrine. It’s not a teaching of the Faith but a matter of custom.

In fact, as we’ll see, there were a number of dates for Jesus’ birth proposed in the early Church, and it is still celebrated on other days in some parts of the Christian world.

For example, some Eastern Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6th.

 

December 25th?

One of the most commonly repeated claims is that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, and that this date was chosen to subvert a pagan holiday.

Further, it’s claimed that Jesus couldn’t have been born on this date because the Gospel of Luke reports that shepherds were out tending their flocks on the night Jesus was born (2:8). It would have been too cold for that in December, so Jesus must have been born in a warmer time of year.

This latter claim is absolute nonsense. First, winters are quite mild in Israel. Bethlehem is just six miles from Jerusalem, and the temperature in Jerusalem on December 25th ranges from an average of 55 degrees in the day to 43 degrees at night. It’s still well above freezing, even in the coldest part of the night.

Second, sheep do just fine in the cold. That’s why they’re covered in wool! As a species, sheep grew up outdoors, and they haven’t lost their cold resistance due to domestication. (If anything, humans have bred them to have even thicker wool.)

If you google “winter sheep care,” you’ll find websites advising you not to keep your sheep indoors all day (they will go crazy if they’re locked up all the time) and not to be afraid of having them outside (they’re covered in warm, water-resistant wool). You’ll also find lots of pictures of domesticated sheep casually strolling around in the snow.

Another charge I’ve seen is that Jesus couldn’t have been born in December because the shepherds had lambs in their flocks, but lambing season is in the springtime.

There are multiple problems with this. First, while some breeds of sheep lamb in the spring, other sheep breed all year round and do not have a consistent lambing season.

Second, at least in English, a sheep is still considered a lamb until it is one year old, meaning lambs could be present any time of the year, even for breeds that have a lambing season.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Luke nowhere mentions lambs. They’re just not in the text. This idea is simply a product of people’s imaginations.

Finally, the shepherds around Bethlehem do keep sheep outdoors, even on December 25th. “William Hendricksen quotes a letter dated Jan. 16, 1967, received from New Testament scholar Harry Mulder, then teaching in Beirut, in which the latter tells of being in Shepherd Field at Bethlehem on the just-passed Christmas Eve, and says: ‘Right near us a few flocks of sheep were nestled. Even the lambs were not lacking. . . . It is therefore definitely not impossible that the Lord Jesus was born in December’” (Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., §569).

 

A Pagan Holiday?

What about the claim that the celebration of Christmas on December 25th is based on a pagan holiday?

My first reaction to this charge would be, “Well, supposing that’s true, so what?”

In the face of a popular holiday that people find objectionable, it is common to create an alternative, wholesome celebration.

For example, some Protestant churches hold “Reformation Day” or “harvest festival” celebrations as alternatives to Halloween, and some Catholics have their children dress up as saints rather than ghosts and monsters.

If early Christians decided to place the celebration of Christ’s birth in opposition to a popular pagan holiday as a way of subverting it and giving Christians an alternative, wholesome thing to celebrate, then that would be a good thing.

Subverting paganism is good, and so is providing wholesome alternatives.

Further, if Christmas was timed to oppose a pagan holiday, that would not mean that Christmas is “really” pagan. It would mean that Christmas is really anti-pagan.

When a Protestant church celebrates Reformation Day to commemorate the publication of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517, they are not “really” celebrating ghosts and monsters. They’re really celebrating the Reformation; they’re just doing it in opposition to a pop culture ghosts-and-monsters festival.

The same thing goes for those who celebrate harvest festivals. What they’re “really” celebrating is the harvest season—as an alternative to celebrating the pop culture version of Halloween.

In the same way, if Christians timed Christmas to compete with a pagan holiday, they weren’t celebrating a pagan deity. They were celebrating Christ’s birth! And by competing with a pagan holiday, they would be doing something anti-pagan.

So Christmas is just not pagan, no matter what pagans were doing on December 25th.

 

Which Pagan Holiday?

If Christmas was timed to compete with a pagan holiday, which would it have been?

Some sources try to link it with the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which was a festival in honor of the god Saturn.

For Saturnalia people would shut their businesses, wear festive clothing, have a banquet, get drunk, gamble, reverse roles (such as having masters serve slaves), give each other gifts (often inexpensive gag gifts), and elect a mock “king of Saturnalia” to preside over the festivities.

But there is a major problem claiming that Christmas is an alternative to Saturnalia. This Roman festival was originally celebrated on December 17, though by the time of the Republic it extended through December 23.

Christmas wasn’t held until after Saturnalia was over, making it a poor alternative. To be a true alternative, it would need to be taking place at the same time.

 

Sol Invictus?

Many sources link Christmas with a different holiday—the birth of Sol Invictus—that is, the sun god Sol, who was nicknamed Invictus or “the Unconquerable.” This was celebrated on December 25th.

The first thing to say is that we have no early Christian sources saying, “We decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25th in order to compete with Sol Invictus.” That means that the idea is sheer speculation, not something that we have evidence for.

It’s not even particularly good speculation, because the only thing the two celebrations have in common is the date December 25th, but just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one is based on the other.

For Christians to want to compete with Sol Invictus, the latter holiday would have to be something worth competing with.

That might be the case if Sol Invictus was a major Roman god, if the December 25th celebration was a popular one, and if it was longstanding and deeply entrenched in Roman culture—thus creating social pressure for Christians to find an alternative to it.

But none of those things are true. In the first place, Sol Invictus was not a major Roman deity. The Sol wasn’t even the most popular solar deity (that would be Apollo), and scholars today don’t know a great deal about the worship of Sol because the Romans didn’t talk about him that much. He simply wasn’t that important.

Furthermore, December 25th wasn’t a major festival of the god Sol. It was a single-day celebration, but Sol had multi-day celebrations in August and October.

Neither was December 25th a longstanding festival of Sol. His oldest celebration was in August, and we have no evidence of December 25th being celebrated as the birth of Sol Invictus before A.D. 274. In fact, some scholars have argued that the celebration was instituted by the Emperor Aurelian when he dedicated a temple to Sol in that year.

Sol Invictus thus appears to be a recent holiday. It was one of Sol’s lesser holidays. And Sol was not a major deity. Christians would not have felt the need to compete with it by placing Jesus’ birth on it.

 

Christmas First?

If it is correct that Sol Invictus was not instituted until A.D. 274, then we have evidence that the timing of Christmas could not have been based on it.

The reason is that we know Christians were already celebrating on December 25th at this time.

Around A.D. 204, St. Hippolytus of Rome wrote a commentary on the book of Daniel, and in it he states: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th” (Commentary on Daniel 4:23:3).

We also have an ancient statue of Hippolytus—rediscovered in 1551—that has inscriptions of calendrical calculations, and this also mentions Christ’s birth as being on December 25th.

These pieces of evidence indicate that some Christians were already commemorating Christ’s birth decades before the institution of Sol Invictus.

Could the causal arrow be pointing the other way, then? Could Romans have based Sol Invictus on the date of Christmas?

 

Why December 25th?

Probably not. There was another, every obvious reason why Romans would dedicate a temple to Sol or celebrate his birth on December 25th—it was the day of the winter solstice.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, after which the days begin growing longer, and that makes it an important day for worshippers of the sun all over the world. The same would have been true for the Romans.

Technically, because the Julian calendar is slightly off in reckoning the length of the year, the astronomical winter solstice had drifted slightly from December 25th, but the latter date was the conventionally recognized date by tradition, so it was the ritually important one in Rome.

What about Christians? Could the fact that December 25th was the winter solstice have played a role in their celebrating it as Jesus’ birth?

Malachi 4:2 says that for those who fear God, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings,” and early Christian authors saw this as a symbol of Jesus Christ.

One might thus speculate that, understanding Jesus as “the sun of righteousness,” they chose to place his birthday on the winter solstice for the same reason Romans did.

However, another view has been proposed in scholarly circles.

 

The Calculation Theory

The easiest date in Jesus’ life to calculate is actually the date of his death, because the Crucifixion occurred on a Friday in conjunction with Passover.

Scholars have calculated that the most likely date for it is April 3, A.D. 33, though some have argued for April 7, A.D. 30.

However, in the ancient world, many early Christian sources reckoned that it was March 25th.

One reason for this is clear: Just as December 25th was the winter solstice, March 25th—3 months later—was the spring equinox, and the timing of Passover was determined by the spring equinox.

Even if you didn’t have other knowledge to calculate with besides Jesus being crucified at Passover, it would be easy for ancients to conclude he died around March 25th, and that became the standard date.

Easter was a much more important holiday for early Christians than Christmas, and so many scholars have proposed that it was actually the date of Jesus’ death that was used to calculate the date of his birth.

How would they have done that?

 

Integral Age Theory?

We have evidence that—at least in certain periods of history—various Jewish and Christian sources held to what is sometimes called the “integral age” theory.

This is the belief that important figures like prophets and saints lived “perfect” lives—perfect in the sense of being made of complete years.

If you were such a figure, you would die on the same date that you were born on, so you lived to be exactly so many years old, with no overage or underage.

For integral age advocates, Jesus would have been born—or perhaps conceived—on the same day that he died.

This may well be why we celebrate March 25th as the Annunciation, which is commonly taken to be not only when Gabriel appeared to Mary but also the date of Jesus’ conception.

Add 9 months to March 25th, and what do you get? December 25th.

Some scholars have thus proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated from what was regarded as the day of Jesus’ death.

 

The Tradition Theory

It should be pointed out that the calculation theory is speculative, and it depends on a number of unprovable assumptions.

Just like we don’t have Christian records saying, “We set Christmas on December 25th to compete with a pagan holiday,” we also don’t have ones that say, “We calculated the date of Christmas using the date of Christ’s death.”

Further, we don’t have evidence of Christians holding to the integral age theory before the celebration of December 25th started—only afterwards. And one would have to reckon Christ’s integral age not from birth but from conception.

The calculation theory is possible, but so is another view—that early Christians simply had a tradition that this was the day on which Jesus was born.

If so, it was not the only tradition. From the late second century, we have other dates that were proposed as well, including January 6 and 10, April 19 and 20, May 20, and November 18.

The two dates that attracted the most support, though, were December 25th and January 6th, which was another date sometimes reckoned as the winter solstice, and both went on to be celebrated as Christmas in different parts of the world. (Note that January 6th is still celebrated as the feast of the Epiphany, or visit of the Magi, on the Roman calendar.)

We thus do not have a definitive way of establishing the day on which Christ was born.

However, what we can say is that it certainly could have been December 25th (the sheep do not rule that out), that we have early Christian sources supporting this date, and that it was definitely not based on a pagan holiday.

The early Christians who support December 25th do so because that is when they sincerely believed Christ was born.

 

Looking at the Gospels

While the calendar date of Jesus’ birth is something that we cannot know definitively, the Gospels present us with solid information about Jesus’ birth.

Matthew and Luke inform us that it took place in Bethlehem, and Luke states that, when the time came, Mary “gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (2:7).

This statement has given rise to popular images of the birth, such as Christmas cards depicting Jesus being born in a barn (because of the manger) and Joseph and Mary being turned away from the ancient equivalent of motels (because of the mention of the inn)—often in a cold, snowy environment.

However, all of these images are probably wrong.

As we mentioned earlier, the average temperature in the Jerusalem area on December 25th is well above freezing, and so although snow is possible, it is unlikely.

Further, the Greek term that is translated “inn” is kataluma, and it refers to a place where people live. It’s a general term that can refer to any such place and does not mean an inn, specifically.

There is a more definite term for inn—pandocheion—and Luke uses that term in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:34).

What most people don’t know is that a kataluma could refer to a place where people stayed within a home—a living room or guest room. Thus the “upper room” where Jesus eats the Last Supper is referred to as a kataluma (Mark 17:14, Luke 22:11).

Since Joseph’s family was from Bethlehem (Luke 2:3-4), he and Mary were likely staying with family. But there were so many family members there for Caesar’s enrollment (2:1) that the living area was full, and so Mary chose to give birth in another part of the house.

Family rooms tended to be on the upper floor of a house, so Mary would have gone to the lower part of the house, which is where animals were kept, as indicated by the presence of the manger.

What kind of animals were they? We cannot say, though cows, sheep, and goats were commonly kept.

In any event, the image of Jesus being born in a barn is probably wrong. It was likely the lower part of a house, and—specially—it was likely in a cave.

In regions with caves, Israelites often would take advantage of them by building their homes over them, and we have sources from the second century indicating that Jesus was born in a cave. Thus, the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem is celebrated as Jesus’ birthplace to this day.

 

The Visit of the Magi

Our Christmas cards often depict the magi as showing up on the night of Jesus’ birth—just like the shepherds did (Luke 2:8-10). However, they did not.

We also should mention that—despite them being referred to as “three kings”—the magi were not kings. “Wise men” comes closer, but Matthew uses the specific term magoi for them (2:1).

The magi were originally a Persian tribe with priestly duties (like the Jewish tribe of Levi), but over time the term had broadened and was used for anyone who performed ritual activities that were thought to be in some way similar to those of the magi. Thus we read about Jewish magi like Elymas bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6-8).

The magi who visited Jesus came from a country in “the East” (2:2, 9)—perhaps Babylonia or Persia—and they arrived as much as two years after Jesus’ birth.

We know this because, when they failed to report back to Herod the Great, he killed “all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi” (2:16).

The magi had told Herod when they had first seen Jesus’ star (2:7), and this would have been between one and two years earlier. (Herod likely rounded the figure up to two years in an attempt to ensure that his effort would result in the death of the correct child.)

In any event, the magi did not arrive on the night of Jesus’ birth but considerably afterward, and the Holy Family was either still in Bethlehem or had returned for another visit. Likely they were staying with the same family members, and Matthew does indicate that the magi found the baby Jesus with his mother in a “house” (2:11).

 

Conclusion

There are a large number of myths about Christmas. Some come from skeptics, such as those who say Jesus couldn’t possibly have been born on December 25th and that this date was chosen to compete with a pagan holiday.

Other myths come from Christians themselves, such as in artistic representations that tend to compress everything about Jesus’ birth into one scene, with the shepherds and the magi present together, in a barn, on a snowy evening.

Of course, it’s natural for Christians to represent the birth of our Savior in art, but we should be aware of the difference between what the Gospels actually say and when artistic license is being taken.

Myths aside, it remains true that our Savior really was born into the world, and on Christmas we honor the truth of this event.

Mary Magdalene and Mary the Sister of Lazarus

Recently, Pope Francis added a memorial for the Bethany family—Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—to the General Roman Calendar.

The General Roman Calendar is the international liturgical calendar used in the Latin Church, and it is the basis of the particular calendars used in different countries.

A memorial is a liturgical commemoration ranking below a solemnity and a feast but above an optional memorial.

Given the prominence of the Bethany family in the Gospels—they are mentioned as friends of Jesus in both Luke and John—it may come as a bit of a surprise that they didn’t already have a place on the calendar.

And there’s a reason for that.

 

Which Mary?

The decree announcing the new memorial indicates that the reason the Bethany family didn’t have a common spot on the calendar up to now was due to uncertainty about how three biblical women should be identified:

The traditional uncertainty of the Latin Church about the identity of Mary—the Magdalene to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection, the sister of Martha, the sinner whose sins the Lord had forgiven—which resulted in the inclusion of Martha alone on 29 July in the Roman Calendar, has been resolved in recent studies and times, as attested by the current Roman Martyrology, which also commemorates Mary and Lazarus on that day.

The three women were thus:

  1. Mary Magdalene (John 20:1-18)
  2. Mary the sister of Martha (Luke 10:39, John 11:1-12:7)
  3. And the woman whose sins Jesus forgave (Luke 7:36-50)

In the Latin Catholic Church, there has historically been a question of whether these three figures are actually one person, with various authors holding that they were.

 

Why Would This Cause a Problem?

The reason this would cause a problem for giving the Bethany family a common slot on the calendar is that Mary Magdalene already had one.

Mary Magdalene is mentioned in all four Gospels as one of the witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, and her liturgical day is July 22. What’s more, it’s a feast, which outranks a memorial.

So, it would be odd to have a second liturgical day dedicated to the Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, since Mary would be appearing on the calendar twice.

As a result, Martha alone had a day on the liturgical calendar—July 29—though in the current Roman Martyrology (the Latin Church’s official list of saints and martyrs) also lists Mary and Lazarus on that day.

 

Why the Question?

Why has there been a question about the identification of the three women?

Part of the reason is that the sinful woman that Luke mentions wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair is unnamed (Luke 7:36-50).

However, John says that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair (John 11:2), and that could mean that they are the same person.

On the other hand, it may not, because in the very next chapter, John tells us the story of Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair (John 12:3), and he does not present her as a sinner. Luke also mentions the woman weeping over Jesus’ feet, but John doesn’t mention Mary doing this.

Also, since Luke does mention Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus in his Gospel (Luke 10:39), you’d think that he’d mention her by name if she was the sinful woman.

Further, Luke presents the hair wiping incident as occurring at a very different point in Jesus’ ministry. In Luke, it’s early on—before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for Passion week, while in John, Mary wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair the day before the Triumphal Entry.

That could be because the Evangelists aren’t required to keep events in a strict chronological order, but it also could be that two different women performed similar actions to honor Jesus.

As a result, this matter is still ambiguous. There is evidence that points both ways.

 

One Mary or Two?

The identity of the sinful woman has not been the key obstacle to giving the Bethany family a spot on the calendar, though. Instead, it’s been the question of whether Mary Magdalene and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus are the same person.

There are, after all, multiple women named “Mary” in the New Testament.

In fact, more than one in five Jewish women in first century Palestine were named Mary (see Richard Bauckham’s outstanding book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, ch. 4).

With a name that common, people in the first century Jewish community needed ways to tell them apart, and since they didn’t have last names like we do, they needed to use something else.

 

How They Did It

One of the most common ways of telling one person from another was to use a patronym—that is, to refer to them in connection with their father.

This is why Peter’s birth name is Simon bar-Jona, or “Simon the son of John.” It would distinguish him from other Simons, since most of their fathers wouldn’t also be named John.

But, if you didn’t know someone’s father, you might refer to them by a different relative—say, a brother. Thus, Peter’s brother Andrew can be referred to as “Andrew the brother of Simon” (Mark 1:16).

Uniquely, in Jesus’ case, he is referred to as “the son of Mary” (Mark 6:3).

In the case of women, you might refer to them by the names of their husbands. Thus, Luke refers to “Joanna the wife of Chuza” (Luke 8:3) and John refers to “Mary the wife of Clopas” (John 19:25).

But what do you do if you aren’t acquainted with a person’s relatives?

In that case, they were probably from somewhere else—since you’d know everybody in your own village—and so you could use their place of origin as a substitute.

This is why Jesus is known as “Jesus of Nazareth,” because outside of Nazareth, people didn’t know his family and so used the town in which he grew up. (Inside of Nazareth, they wouldn’t have called him this and would have used his family instead.)

This gives us the information we need to figure out the puzzle.

 

Mary the Sister of Martha and Lazarus

Both Luke and John refer to Mary as the sister of Martha, and John adds that she was the sister of Lazarus also.

They thus follow the standard naming conventions of the time.

Modern scholars often refer to them as “the Bethany family,” because that’s where they lived.

Bethany was a small village just outside Jerusalem, on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives.

And this was their stable place of residence. In fact, John introduces Lazarus by referring to him as “Lazarus of Bethany” and follows up by saying Bethany was “the village of Mary and her sister Martha” (John 11:1).

So, they were all identified with Bethany in Judaea. If you were from somewhere else and knew only one of the siblings, you would have used “of Bethany” as their identifier.

In fact, modern scholars often refer to Mary as “Mary of Bethany” to avoid the lengthier “Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus.”

 

Mary Magdalene

This means that, when Luke and John refer to “Mary Magdalene,” they are referring to a different person.

They already have a way of referring to the Mary who was related to Martha and Lazarus.

They’ve already introduced her to their audience using the sibling-identifier, and so they would be misleading their audience if they suddenly switched the identifier to something else and didn’t mention to their readers that they’re still talking about the same person.

In this case, the identifier—“Magdalene”—is a place name. “Mary Magdalene” means “Mary of Magdala.”

Magdala was a major fishing port on the Sea of Galilee, which is—of course, located up north in Galilee, way far away from Bethany down by Jerusalem.

That tells us several things:

  • Mary Magdalene was a Galilean, being associated with a city in Galilee.
  • She had no relatives who were well known to the Christian community (in particular, she had no husband, which fits with the fact she was free to follow the itinerant prophet Jesus).
  • She was a different person than Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who was associated with a village in Judaea.

 

Putting It All Together

And so, the puzzle is resolved. Despite earlier identifications of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany, they are really two different people.

This has become clear—as the Congregation for Divine Worship notes—“in recent studies” that have carefully examined the way first century Jewish names worked.

This growing awareness of the fact the two women are distinct resulted, first, in giving the Bethany family a common day in the Roman Martyrology, and now, in giving them a common day on the General Calendar.

“Changing the Sabbath” and the Antichrist

Recently I was contacted by someone who seems quite openminded and who asked me some questions about why we worship on Sunday rather than the Sabbath.

In particular, this person was wondering why that should be the case if the only person in the Bible who seeks to change the Sabbath is the Antichrist.

I responded as follows . . .

When you refer to the Antichrist changing the Sabbath, I assume that you’re referring to Daniel 7:25, where a coming king will “think to change times and seasons.”

Concerning this prophecy specifically, I’d make several points:

1) It does not specifically mention the Sabbath, but this is almost certainly included in the meaning of changing times and seasons, for reasons we will see below.

2) Prophecy can refer to more than one thing (i.e., have more than one fulfillment). Thus in Revelation the Beast from the Sea’s seven heads are both seven mountains and seven kings (Rev. 17:9-10).

We see the same thing in other prophecies, which can have more than one fulfillment. For example, Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel had a near-term fulfillment in the birth of a child in the time of King Ahaz–something that is obvious because the sign was given to him as a sign that the alliance of kings against him would not succeed in toppling him from his throne (see Isaiah 7:1-16).

For Ahaz, the child Emmanuel would be a sign that God was with his people against this alliance of kings. But the prophecy also has a later fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who was God with us in an even more literal sense.

3) Because prophecies can have more than one fulfillment in history, it is important to identify the original historical fulfillment before exploring possible later fulfillments.

4) In the case of Daniel 7, scholars of multiple persuasions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other) hold that the most likely original fulfillment of this vision is to be found in the kingdoms leading up to the triumph of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. (who is also clearly in focus in chapter 8 of the book) and the kingdoms that came about in the wake of his empire. This does not mean that it does not also have one or more later fulfillments, but this is what the original fulfillment involves.

5) In particular, Daniel 7:25–and other passages in Daniel–appear to be referring originally to the post-Alexander king Antiochus IV (i.e., Antiochus Epiphanes). He was king of the Seleucid Empire, which was one of the kingdoms that grew out of Alexander the Great’s conquests, and he persecuted the Jewish people in the 160s B.C.

Specifically, Antiochus tried to compel them to give up the Jewish faith and adopt the Hellenistic (Greek) religion. This meant compelling them to give up celebrating Jewish feasts, including the Sabbath, and this is what Daniel 7:25 apparently is referring to when it says this king will “think to change times and seasons.”

The “think” is important, because Antiochus did not succeed. The Jewish people resisted him, won their freedom, and retained their ancestral faith and its practices–as chronicled in the books 1 and 2 Maccabees.

6) It is possible that a future dictator may also try to compel the Jewish people to give up their faith–including its holy days–and this future dictator may be the same as the final Antichrist, but we must be careful about such speculation as the prophecy is not repeated in the New Testament and not every prophecy has a later fulfillment.

At least, I couldn’t prove that they all will have a fulfillment at the end of the world, so I have to leave this proposal as a possible speculation but only a speculation.

So, you may well be right that the final Antichrist will attempt to force the Jewish people to drop the Sabbath, but I can’t say this for certain, myself.

However, this is an independent issue of what liturgical calendar Christians, and especially Gentile Christians, should follow.

The Sabbath–along with the monthly New Moons and the annual feasts (e.g., Passover, Tabernacles)–was part of the liturgical calendar that God gave to the Jewish people before the time of Christ.

It was never binding and was never meant to be binding on Gentiles, as Jewish scholars have always held. (In fact, Gentiles were even positively prohibited by Jewish law from being able to do things like keep Passover, as circumcision was required for eating the Passover lamb.)

The uniqueness of the Sabbath to the Jewish people is due to the fact there is nothing in natural law/human nature that demands that one day in seven (as opposed to one day in five or one day in ten) be set aside for rest and worship or that it must be the seventh day in particular (rather than the first or the third). Since God did not build this into human nature/natural law, such a law could only come from a divine mandate, and God only mandated this for the Jewish people, not for all peoples.

When the early Church began making significant numbers of Gentile converts, one of the questions that arose was whether they needed to be circumcised and become Jews in order to be saved (cf. Acts 10-11, 15, Gal. 1-2). The answer was that they did not.

The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) ruled on this question, and even though it involved a few points to help Jewish and Gentile Christians live together (Acts 15:29), you’ll note that keeping the Sabbath was not one of these. The Jerusalem Council thus recognized that Gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised and adopt Jewish practices. Though a few points were asked of Gentiles for the sake of harmony with Jewish Christians, observing the Jewish ceremonial calendar was not among them.

St. Paul sheds even more light on the subject, indicating in his letters that–even though he is a Jew–he is not bound by the Jewish Law (1 Cor. 9:19-23), because Christ has fulfilled the Jewish Law and so put an end to it. He indicates this in various passages, such as Romans 14:1-6, where he writes:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Here Paul takes up two examples of practices that could affect different groups of Christians: keeping kosher laws (not eating unclean foods) and observing the Jewish calendar (honoring certain days). He characterizes some–who believe that they cannot eat certain things and must observe certain days–as “weak in faith,” and others–who recognize they are not bound by these laws–as strong in faith, by implication (for they recognize Christ has eliminated the need for such things by his fulfillment of the Jewish Law).

Rather than trying to get people to abandon their positions, Paul urges peace among Christians by letting everyone do what their conscience says they need to do to honor God.

Paul could not argue in this way if the “weak in faith” position was correct and it was mandated that Christians keep kosher and observe Jewish holy days. It is only because we are not bound by these things that he can allow those who are “weak in faith”–i.e., who have scrupulous fears that Jesus might not have freed us from these things–to continue to practice them rather than violate their consciences.

If everybody was bound to avoid certain foods and keep certain days as a matter of divine law, Paul would have said so–as he does with other things that are matters of divine law. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he warns that people who practice a variety of sins will not inherit the kingdom. He doesn’t say, “You get to do these sins if your conscience tells you it’s okay.” He says “This is a sin; don’t do it!”

Therefore, in Romans 14 the allowance of both positions–eating and not eating certain foods, observing and not observing certain days–is because neither is a violation of divine law. We have the liberty of eating all foods and treating every day alike because God has not mandated that we do otherwise.

Paul is even more explicit in Colossians 2:14-17, where he writes that God has “canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

He thus indicates that the various regulations of the Mosaic Law concerning food and liturgical days (the annual feasts, monthly New Moons, and weekly Sabbaths being the three kinds of days on the Jewish liturgical calendar) were shadows that pointed forward to Christ, but now that Christ has come and fulfilled the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the Cross,” even Jewish Christians–such as himself–are no longer bound by these, for God has “cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands.”

Consequently, he says “let no one pass judgment on you . . . with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath.”

The Sabbath thus is not binding, even on Jewish Christians, because of what Christ did on the cross.

In the first century and for a time thereafter, many Jewish Christians did continue to observe the Sabbath, as Paul indicated was possible for them in Romans 14. However, this was not the day that Christians held their religious gatherings on.

Instead, they observed the first day of the week, because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see Paul recommending that collections be taken up in the church of Corinth on this day:

Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come (1 Cor. 16:1-2).

This day soon came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see St. John writing:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet (Rev. 1:10).

And from the first century forward we see the early Christians continuing to celebrate the first day of the week–the Lord’s Day–rather than the Sabbath, as illustrated by the quotations from early Church documents listed here:

https://www.catholic.com/tract/sabbath-or-sunday

In time, the Church used the power of the keys that Christ had given to Peter to “bind and loose” (Matt. 16:18) to institute a new Christian liturgical calendar, built around the weekly observance of the Lord’s Day.

It is this exercise of the keys that is the reasons Christians today are bound to observe the Lord’s Day–not because one day intrinsically requires observance compared to other days.

However, the Church did not “change” the Sabbath. The Sabbath is when it always was: the seventh day of the week. It’s just that Christians are not required to observe it, as it was something that pertained to the Jewish people prior to the time of Christ. Instead of celebrating the Sabbath, Christians celebrate the first day of the week in honor of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

For more on the Church’s official teaching, see here:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/did-the-catholic-church-change-the-sabbath

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

The Mathematics of the 12 Days of Christmas

This year, I went to a Christmas Eve Mass for families with children, and the priest gave a homily based on the song The 12 Days of Christmas.

He used it as a way of helping children think about different aspects of the Faith, based on the (baseless) idea that it was composed as a crypto-catechism for Catholic children when it was illegal to practice (or fully practice) Catholicism in Britain (1558-1829).

He wisely threaded the needle by calling the truth of this claim into question, without definitively saying that it’s false.

The truth is that there is no basis for this claim. It was apparently first proposed in 1979 as a speculative idea by a Canadian hymnologist, who offered no evidence for it.

Given (1) the gap of time involved, (2) the known history of the song, (3) the implausibility of many of the identifications involved, and (4) the fact you don’t need a code to teach children about the Faith when they won’t understand the code unless you first teach them about the Faith in plaintext, the proposal is almost certainly false (yes, I know the link is to Snopes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong in this case).

The truth is that it’s a cute, nonsense song that was likely used as a children’s forfeit game (i.e., if you make a mistake, you forfeit the game).

But, given that it’s a popular Christmas song and kids like it, one can certainly use it as a means of reminding kids about elements of the Faith.

You just don’t want to imply that the catechism story is true.

You also probably don’t want to come out on Christmas Eve and simply say that the catechism story is certainly false–not when some of the parents in attendance may have told it to their kids. Saying, “Your parents are flat wrong, kids,” is not going to foster attachment to the Church, particularly among the Christmas and Easter Catholics who are present for one of the two times a year they actually show up and bring the kids.

As the priest proceeded through his homily, I couldn’t help thinking about something else, though: the mathematics of the song.

I mean, if your true love gives you a partridge in a pear tree on each of the 12 days, then you’ll have 12 partridges and 12 pear trees by the end of the days.

Similarly, if you get 2 turtle doves on each of the 11 days that begin after the 1st day, then you’ll have 22 turtle doves by the end.

I quickly realized the mathematical formula you’d need to calculate the total number of items your true love gives you (i.e., [1 x 12] + [2 x 11] + [3 x 10] + [4 x 9] + [5 x 8]+ [6 x 7]+ [7 x 6]+ [8 x 5]+ [9 x 4] + [10 x 3] + [11 x 2] + [12 x 1]).

But, since the purpose of listening to a homily isn’t working out math problems in your head, I tabled the matter until I got home and dumped it into a spreadsheet.

Here are the results:

A few items of note:

  • You get the fewest of the items that are introduced at the beginning and end of the days (12 partridges in pear trees and 12 drummers drumming), with the interim forming a smoothly rising and falling curve.
  • The peak of the curve is for the items introduced on days 6 and 7, so you get more geese a-laying and swans a-swimming than any other items (42 of each).
  • You get a total of 364 items over the course of the 12 days, which is a fascinating number since it’s just 1 short of the number of days in a year. However, that’s almost certainly a coincidence, and not something intended by the people (likely children) who first came up with the original, 12-based version of the song.

Here’s what the curve of how many items you receive looks like:

And here’s what the total accumulation of items your true love gives you looks like:

What I want to know is why the true love (or the gift-receiver) is so ornithologically obsessed. I mean, 6 of the days involve giving birds! (By contrast 5 days involve people performing various activities/services, and only 1 involves an inanimate object–the golden rings.)

I thought about doing a price estimation of how much all these gifts would cost, but it turns out that people are already doing that.

Every year, there’s a tongue-in-cheek Christmas Price Index and True Cost of Christmas estimate based on current market prices.

Turns out, for Christmas 2019, it would take and estimated $170,298.03 to provide these gifts–given certain assumptions. I guess that’s true love!

Of course, there has been criticism of the assumptions made in the Christmas Price Index–and yes, the criticisms are valid. However, a variant of the MST3K Mantra applies: “It’s just a song, I should really just relax.”

I mean, whimsical curiosity about things in a Christmas song is in keeping with the Christmas spirit, but relentless nitpicking . . . is less so.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Mysteries of the Magi

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:1).

“Wise men” is a common translation in English Bibles, but it doesn’t give us a good idea who they were.

The Greek word used here is magoi—the plural of magos. These terms may be more familiar from their Latin equivalents: In St. Jerome’s Vulgate, we read that magi came from the east, and an individual member of the group would thus be a magus.

 

Who Were the Magi?

Originally, the term magi referred to a group of people in Persia (modern Iran). Around 440 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus listed the Magi as one of the six tribes of the Medes (Histories 1:101:1).

Apparently, they were like the Jewish tribe of Levi, for they exercised priestly functions. Herodotus says that, whenever a Persian wanted to sacrifice an animal to the gods, he would cut it up and then “a magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a magus” (Histories 1:132:3).

In the book of Daniel, magi are also called upon to interpret dreams (1:20; 2:2, 10, 27).

Magi were also called upon to interpret heavenly omens. Consider the case of the Persian king Xerxes I (also known as Ahasuerus, who married the biblical Esther). In 480 B.C., he asked the magi to tell him the meaning of a solar eclipse that occurred as he was about to do battle with Greeks.

They said that the sun was special to Greeks, so when it abandoned its place in the daytime, the god was showing the Greeks that they would have to abandon their cities. This greatly encouraged Xerxes (Histories 7:37:4).

However, things didn’t work out well. His expedition against Greece ended up failing, but this does show the original magi were interpreters of portents in the sky—as later magi would be for the star of Bethlehem.

With time, the term magi ceased to refer exclusively to members of the Persian priestly caste. The skills they practiced became known as mageia, from which we get “magic” in English, and by the first century, anybody who practiced magic could be called a magos.

Thus in Acts 8, we meet a man named Simon, who was a Samaritan—meaning he had mixed Jewish ancestry. Simon practiced mageia (8:9, 11), and so he became known as Simon Magus.

Full Jews also could be magi, and in Acts 13 we meet a Jewish man named Bar-Jesus, who is described both as a magus and a false prophet (13:6).

This means that, in Jesus’ day, the term magus was flexible, so we need to ask another question.

 

Who Were These Magi?

Matthew’s magi were clearly dignitaries of some kind, as shown by the facts that they (1) saw themselves as worthy to congratulate a distant royal house on a new birth, (2) had the resources and leisure to undertake such a lengthy journey, (3) could offer costly gifts, and (4) received a royal audience with King Herod the Great.

Matthew says that they came “from the East,” which from the perspective of Jerusalem would point to locations like Arabia, Babylonia, and Persia.

There were Jews in all of these regions. Consequently, some interpreters have proposed that the magi who visited Jesus were Jews, who would naturally be interested in the newborn king of the Jews.

However, most scholars have concluded this is unlikely. If they were visiting Jewish dignitaries, Matthew would have identified them as co-religionists. The fact he merely describes them as being “from the East,” suggests that they were Gentiles who came from a distant, eastern land.

Matthew also says that they went back “to their own country” (2:12), suggesting they were among its native inhabitants rather than Jews living in exile.

In fact, there is a pattern in Matthew’s Gospel of Gentiles who respond to the true God. Matthew uses it to show his Jewish readers that Gentiles can be Christians. The pattern culminates in the Great Commission, when Jesus tells the apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (alternate translation: “make disciples of all the Gentiles”; 28:19).

The magi are part of this pattern: They are Gentile dignitaries who represent an early response to God’s Messiah, in contrast to the Jewish king, Herod, who seeks to kill him. This prefigures how the Jewish authorities will later kill Jesus, but Gentiles will embrace his gospel.

Scholars have thus concluded that Matthew’s magi were Gentile astrologers from an eastern land, though we can’t be sure which one (see Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 168-170).

The earliest discussion we have is found in St. Justin Martyr, who around A.D. 160 said that they came from Arabia (Dialogue with Trypho 78:1), and around A.D. 210 Tertullian deduced that this is where they came from based on the gifts they offered (Against Marcion 3:13). In the ancient world, gold and frankincense were associated with Arabia, though this isn’t conclusive since they were widely traded in the region.

Many scholars have seen Babylon as a possibility, and the Jewish readers of Matthew would have been familiar with the book of Daniel, which associates magi with Babylonia. It’s also been argued that the major Jewish colony there could have given the magi a special interest in the Jewish Messiah, though this was also a common expectation of Jews in other lands.

Most Church Fathers concluded that the magi were from Persia. Just after A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria identified them as coming from there (Stromata 1:15), and they were commonly depicted in early Christian art wearing Persian clothing. They thus may have been members of the original class of magi.

 

How Did They Know?

In popular accounts, the magi are depicted as following the star, which led them to Bethlehem. That has led many to see the star as a supernatural manifestation that moved around in the sky in a way stars don’t.

However, this isn’t what Matthew says. He never claims they were following the star, only that it was ahead of them as they went to Bethlehem and that it stood over the house (2:9). This was a providential coincidence.

They weren’t being led by the star for, as Benedict XVI points out, they initially went to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem—the natural place to find a newborn prince (Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, ch. 4). They assumed that Herod the Great or one of his sons had just had a baby boy who would grow up to be king.

When they learned there was no new prince at the palace, a consultation had to be held with the chief priests and scribes to learn where the magi really needed to go: Bethlehem (2:4).

The fact that the chief priests and scribes looked to a well-known prophecy of the birth of the Messiah (Micah 5:2; cf. Matt. 2:6) suggests the magi could have seen the appearance of the star as signaling not just the birth of an ordinary king but of a particularly great one—the predicted Messiah.

While magi weren’t following the star, it did tell them when he was born, for they said, “We have seen his star in the East” (2:2).

Recently, scholars have argued that this is a mistranslation and that the Greek phrase rendered “in the East” (en tê anatolê) should instead be “at its rising”—that is, when it rose over the eastern horizon as the Earth turns. Some have argued that this is a technical term for what is known as a star’s “heliacal” rising, which occurs when it briefly rises above the horizon just before sunrise.

The real question is what told them the star was significant and why they linked it to a king of the Jews. Here we can only speculate.

The system of constellations in use at the time, which includes our own zodiac, was developed in northern Mesopotamia around 1130 B.C, and it was used by Babylonian and Persian astrologers.

It’s not surprising that they would associate a particular star with the birth of a king, because at this time astrology was used to forecast national affairs. Horoscopes weren’t normally done for ordinary people.

Heavenly signs were interpreted as having to do with things of national importance, like relations between nations, wars and rebellions, whether the crops would be good or bad, epidemics, and kings.

It’s thus not a surprise that the magi would be looking for signs dealing with the births of kings.

What the star they saw might have been is difficult to determine, but one possibility is Jupiter. At this time Jupiter and the other planets were considered “wandering” stars since they moved against the background of “fixed” stars.

Unlike some later Greeks, Mesopotamian astrologers didn’t see the stars as controlling events on Earth. Instead, they thought the gods made their wills known through celestial phenomena—so it was a form of divine revelation.

Jupiter was associated with Marduk, the king of the Babylonian pantheon, and it was often involved in signs associated with kings.

For example, one Babylonian text says that if Jupiter remains in the sky in the morning, enemy kings will be reconciled with each other.

An Assyrian text indicates that if a lunar eclipse takes place and Jupiter is not in the sky then the king will die. To protect the king, the Assyrians came up with an ingenious solution: They took a condemned criminal and made him a temporary, substitute “king” who could then be executed to save the life of the real king!

Whether Jupiter was the star the magi saw will depend on when Jesus was born, and that’s something scholars debate.

 

When Was Jesus Born?

According to the most common account you hear today, Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., so Jesus would have to have been born before this.

In Matthew 2:7, Herod secretly learns from the magi when the star appeared, and in 2:16, he kills “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.”

This indicates the star was understood as appearing at Jesus’ birth, which is to be expected since such portents were associated with births (as opposed to conceptions).

It also indicates Jesus was born up to two years before the magi arrived, though it may not have been a full two years, since Herod may have added a “safety” margin to his execution order.

Many scholars have thus proposed that Jesus was born around 7-6 B.C., and this is the date you commonly hear.

However, other scholars have argued that this calculation is wrong. A better case can be made that Herod died in 1 B.C. (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul).

This likely would put Jesus’ birth in 3/2 B.C., which is the year identified by the Church Fathers as the correct one.

It also fits with Luke’s statement that Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he began his ministry (3:23), shortly after John the Baptist began his in “the fifteenth year of the reign Tiberius Caesar” (3:1)—i.e., A.D. 29. Subtracting 30 from A.D. 29, we land in the year 2 B.C. (bearing in mind that there is no “Year 0” between 1 B.C. and A.D. 1).

 

What Was in the Sky?

Regardless of which view of Jesus’ birth is correct, it occurred in the first decade B.C. So what notable astronomical events took place then that could have served as the star of Bethlehem?

A large number have been proposed. The following list contains only some:

7 B.C.

  • 1: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

6 B.C.

  • April 17: Jupiter has its heliacal rising in Ares (a constellation associated with Judaea), with several other significant features in the sky
  • May 27: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction
  • 6: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

5 B.C.

  • March: A comet in Capricorn

4 B.C.

  • April: A comet or nova (which one is unclear) in Aquilea

3 B.C.

  • August 12: Jupiter and Venus rise in the east, in conjunction with each other, in Leo, near Regulus
  • 11: The sun in mid-Virgo, with the moon at the feet of Virgo
  • 14: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus

2 B.C.

  • 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • May 8: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • June 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Venus

One of the most interesting of these events is the rising of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, 3 B.C. Since Babylonian times, Jupiter was seen as a heavenly king, and Venus was seen as a heavenly queen, suggesting a birth. Further, the Babylonians named Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) “the king,” and the lion was a traditional symbol of the tribe of Judah (cf. Gen. 49:9).

Also very interesting is what happened on September 11th, 3 B.C. In Revelation, John says, “A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). This woman then gives birth to Jesus (12:5). Some have proposed that this encodes information about when he was born: When the sun was in the middle of Virgo (“the virgin”) and thus “clothing” it, with the moon at her feet.

Unfortunately, we can’t say which—if any—of these events corresponds to the star of Bethlehem without knowing precisely when Jesus was born. That’s something the Bible never tells us, and the Church Fathers had different opinions, with only some proposing December 25th.

 

What Was the Role of Jewish Thought?

Thus far we’ve looked at how the magi would have interpreted celestial events largely in terms of establish, Mesopotamian astrology.

This association with paganism gives rise to questions, such as, “Would God really use pagan astrology to signal the birth of his Son?”

That’s a matter for God to decide. Scripture indicates God cares for all people and makes himself known to them in various ways (cf. Rom. 1:19-20). It wouldn’t be so much God using pagan astrology to mark the birth of his Son as choosing to preserve certain true ideas among Gentiles to point to this event.

Also, if the magi were Persians, they wouldn’t have been polytheists. By this period, the Persians did not believe in the old gods, and their dominant religion was Zoroastrianism.

This faith teaches the existence of a single, great, all-good Creator God who they refer to as “the Wise Lord” and who will vanquish evil in the end. They believe in the renovation of the world, the final judgment, and the resurrection of the dead.

If the magi were Persians, they could have seen themselves as spiritual kin to the Jews and as worshipping the same God—the only true God—using their own term for him.

Finally, they may well have had contact with Jews living in their own land, and thus come into contact with biblical revelation that could have influenced their perception of the star.

They could have learned, for example, of the lion as a symbol of Judah, and they could have associated the coming Jewish Messiah with a star.

One of the most famous messianic prophecies is “a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:17).

This prophecy was already associated with the Messiah, which is why in the A.D. 130s the messianic pretender Simon bar Kosiba was hailed as “Simon bar Kokhba” (Aramaic, “Simon, son of the Star”).

 

What About Astrology?

What about the role of astrology itself in this account? While astrology was popular among Gentiles, it wasn’t as popular among Jews, who often looked down on it.

This is itself a sign that Matthew’s tradition about the magi is historically accurate. It’s not the kind of thing that Jewish Christians would tend to make up.

However, while astrology wasn’t as popular among Jews as among Gentiles, it did exist.

Genesis says that God made the sun, moon, and stars “to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (1:14). This could mean that they are simply to be time keeping markers.

But some Jews thought that their function as “signs” went beyond this and included information about future events. Thus, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain astrological texts.

In the ancient world, there was no rigid distinction between astronomy and astrology. It’s only in the last few centuries that the two have been disentangled. This happened as scientists learned more about the effects the sun, moon, and stars do and don’t have on life here on Earth.

Even Thomas Aquinas, based on the science of his day, thought that the heavenly bodies had an influence on the passions and could, for example, make a man prone to anger—but not in such a way that it would overwhelm his free will (Commentary on Matthew 2:1-2, ST I:115:4, II-II:95:5).

Subsequent scientific research showed they don’t have this kind of effect, and consulting the stars for these purposes is superstition. Thus the Catechism today warns against consulting horoscopes (CCC 2116).

While the stars don’t have the kind of influence many once thought, that doesn’t mean God can’t use them to signal major events in his plan of the ages. The fact he signaled the birth of his Son with a star shows he can. This isn’t what people think of as astrology, but it’s part of divine providence.

In fact, this doesn’t appear to be the only time God did something like that. On the day of Pentecost, Peter cited the prophet Joel’s prediction that the moon would be turned to blood as fulfilled in their own day (Joel 2:31-32; Acts 2:20-21).

It so happens, on the night of the Crucifixion (April 3, A.D. 33), there was a lunar eclipse visible from Jerusalem. The moon did turn to blood.

Pope Francis Institutes Annual Sunday Devoted to God’s Word

On September 30th, Pope Francis decreed that the third Sunday of Ordinary Time henceforth will be celebrated as the Sunday of God’s Word.

He did this in a document titled Aperuit Illis (Latin, “He opened them”), referring to how Christ opened the minds of the disciples so they could understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45).

Pope Francis had proposed this idea in 2016 (see Misericordia et Misera 7).

Every day of the Church’s liturgical year involves reading Scripture at Mass and in the liturgy of the hours.

Precisely because Scripture is a regular part of the Church’s life, some can treat it as routine and unexceptional.

The new Sunday celebration is meant to provide an annual reminder of just how precious God’s word is and to encourage us to appreciate that fact.

Pope Francis points out a number of ways the Sunday will be celebrated:

The various communities will find their own ways to mark this Sunday with a certain solemnity.

It is important, however, that in the Eucharistic celebration the sacred text be enthroned, in order to focus the attention of the assembly on the normative value of God’s word.

On this Sunday, it would be particularly appropriate to highlight the proclamation of the word of the Lord and to emphasize in the homily the honor that it is due.

Bishops could celebrate the Rite of Installation of Lectors or a similar commissioning of readers, in order to bring out the importance of the proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy.

In this regard, renewed efforts should be made to provide members of the faithful with the training needed to be genuine proclaimers of the word, as is already the practice in the case of acolytes or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

Pastors can also find ways of giving a Bible, or one of its books, to the entire assembly as a way of showing the importance of learning how to read, appreciate and pray daily with sacred Scripture, especially through the practice of lectio divina (n. 3).

Some groups may see the Bible as something that is exclusively theirs. Biblical scholars, members of the clergy, and Protestants sometimes fall into this trap. However, Pope Francis emphasizes that this is not the case:

The Bible cannot be just the heritage of some, much less a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words. At times, there can be a tendency to monopolize the sacred text by restricting it to certain circles or to select groups. It cannot be that way. The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity (n. 4).

A key way the Church helps people appreciate Scripture is through the homily, in which a priest or deacon explains the readings and helps the faithful apply them to their lives. Pope Francis indicates that this “is a pastoral opportunity that should not be wasted!” He writes:

Sufficient time must be devoted to the preparation of the homily. A commentary on the sacred readings cannot be improvised. Those of us who are preachers should not give long, pedantic homilies or wander off into unrelated topics. When we take time to pray and meditate on the sacred text, we can speak from the heart and thus reach the hearts of those who hear us, conveying what is essential and capable of bearing fruit (n. 5).

In recent years, skeptical biblical scholars have cast doubt on the historical reliability of Scripture—including its accounts of Jesus’ resurrection—but Pope Francis rejects this:

Since the Scriptures everywhere speak of Christ, they enable us to believe that his death and resurrection are not myth but history, and are central to the faith of his disciples (n. 7).

He goes on to repeat the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the inerrancy of Scripture:

Dei Verbum stresses that “we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (Dei Verbum 11).

Since the Scriptures teach with a view to salvation through faith in Christ (cf. 2 Tim. 3:15), the truths contained therein are profitable for our salvation. The Bible is not a collection of history books or a chronicle, but is aimed entirely at the integral [i.e., complete] salvation of the person. The evident historical setting of the books of the Bible should not make us overlook their primary goal, which is our salvation. Everything is directed to this purpose and essential to the very nature of the Bible, which takes shape as a history of salvation in which God speaks and acts in order to encounter all men and women and to save them from evil and death (n. 9).

He also cautions against neglecting the Old Testament and regarding it as something that does not apply to us:

The Old Testament is never old once it is part of the New, since all has been transformed thanks to the one Spirit who inspired it (n. 12).

Pope Francis stresses the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us understand and apply the Scriptures, which helps avoid a restrictive, fundamentalist reading:

Without the work of the Spirit, there would always be a risk of remaining limited to the written text alone. This would open the way to a fundamentalist reading, which needs to be avoided, lest we betray the inspired, dynamic and spiritual character of the sacred text. As the Apostle reminds us: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). The Holy Spirit, then, makes sacred Scripture the living word of God, experienced and handed down in the faith of his holy people (n. 9).

While Scripture is inspired by God in a unique sense, Pope Francis sees the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit as providing a form of “inspiration” today (note his quotation marks):

God’s revelation attains its completion and fullness in Jesus Christ; nonetheless, the Holy Spirit does not cease to act. It would be reductive indeed to restrict the working of the Spirit to the divine inspiration of sacred Scripture and its various human authors. We need to have confidence in the working of the Holy Spirit as he continues in his own way to provide “inspiration” whenever the Church teaches the sacred Scriptures, whenever the Magisterium authentically [i.e., authoritatively] interprets them, and whenever each believer makes them the norm of his or her spiritual life (n. 10).

As I discuss in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book, Catholics rely on the triad of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Pope Francis has already mentioned Scripture and the Magisterium, and he stresses that Tradition “is also God’s word,” stating:

We frequently risk separating sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition, without understanding that together they are the one source of revelation. The written character of the former takes nothing away from its being fully a living word; in the same way, the Church’s living Tradition, which continually hands that word down over the centuries from one generation to the next, possesses that sacred book as the supreme rule of her faith (n. 11).

He also exhorts us:

The sweetness of God’s word leads us to share it with all those whom we encounter in this life and to proclaim the sure hope that it contains (n. 12).

The first celebration of the Sunday of God’s Word will be in 2020, when the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time will be January 26th.