+Religion – Page 78

The Church Year: June 23, 2012

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

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

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 23, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. It is a Class II day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John the Baptist, you can click here.

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

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

24. There are certain mystical graces, conferred on the founders of ecclesial institutes to benefit their foundation, and on other saints, too, which characterize their personal experience of prayer and which cannot, as such, be the object of imitation and aspiration for other members of the faithful, even those who belong to the same institutes and those who seek an ever more perfect way of prayer.28 There can be different levels and different ways of sharing in a founder’s experience of prayer, without everything having to be exactly the same. Besides, the prayer experience that is given a privileged position in all genuinely ecclesial institutes, ancient and modern, is always in the last analysis something personal. And it is to the individual person that God gives his graces for prayer.

The Church Year: June 22, 2012

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

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

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Paulinus of Nola, bishop of Nola and confessor, who died in A.D. 432. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

In the Ordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, both martyrs. It is an optional memorial.

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

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

If you’d like to learn more about Thomas More, you can click here.

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

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

23. Without doubt, a Christian needs certain periods of retreat into solitude to be recollected and, in God’s presence, rediscover his path. Nevertheless, given his character as a creature, and as a creature who knows that only in grace is he secure, his method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. Genuine Christian mysticism has nothing to do with technique: it is always a gift of God, and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.27

The Church Year: July 22, 2012

Today is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 8th Sunday after Pentecost.

Saints & Celebrations:

On July 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Mary Magdalene, penitent, who died in the 1st century. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

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

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Why Are the Psalms Numbered Differently?

While the Bible is divided into chapter and verse today, these divisions developed over time and were not in the original manuscripts, with few exceptions.

One exception is the book of Psalms, which is divided into 150 different chapters, each of which is a different psalm. Those divisions are original, because this was the hymnbook for the Jewish Temple, and the different psalms were different hymns.

So it’s ironic that different editions of the book of Psalms today do not have the same chapter numbers.

You may have had the experience of seeing a reference to a quotation from one of the Psalms, going to your Bible to look it up, and finding that the quotation is not there!

What’s going on?

It may be that the quotation actually is there, but one psalm before or after the one you looked up.

For example, suppose you wanted to look up the famous line:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

This is famed as the first verse of Psalm 23. But if you look it up in certain Bibles–like the Douay-Rheims–you won’t find it there. Instead, it’s the first verse of Psalm 22.

The explanation is that there are different ways of numbering the Psalms, and different Bible (and other documents) follow different numbering system.

One numbering system is that used by the Hebrew Masoretic text. This is the version used by most modern Bible translations.

Another is that used by the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. This version was inherited by the Vulgate and thus by the Douay-Rheims.

Because both numbering systems are in circulation, Catholic sources often use both systems, which is why you’ll see references like “Ps 23[22]:1” (or “Ps 22[23]:1”, depending on which numbering system they’re treating as primary).

Okay, fine. There are different numbering systems for the Psalms. But what makes them different?

The answer is that the Hebrew numbering sometimes combines (splices, joins) a psalm that is reckoned as two psalms in the Greek numbering–and visa versa.

Let’s take a look at how that happens.

(Note: I’m not assuming anything about whether one version is joining two psalms that were originally separate or whether it is dividing a psalm that was originally one. Simply for the sake of clarity, I’ll describe what you’d see in the Hebrew version first and then what how things would appear if you looked for the equivalent passage in the Greek version.)

The first time the numbering varies is when the Hebrew psalms 9 and 10 are joined as the Greek psalm 9. That causes the Greek numbers to be one less than the Hebrew numbers for most of the book, which is why the Hebrew 23rd psalm gets reckoned as the Greek 22nd psalm.

The same thing happens when the Hebrew psalms 114 and 115 are joined as the Greek psalm 113.

“Oh, no!” you may be saying to yourself. “Now they’re going to be off by two numbers!”

Well, they would be, except the very next Hebrew psalm–116–is divided into two in the Greek numbering, resulting in Greek psalms 114 and 115. So now the Greek numbering is only one psalm behind the Hebrew numbering again.

Whew!

Since both the Hebrew and Greek editions of the book of Psalms both have 150 entries, though, how do they get joined back up again?

That happens when we hit Hebrew psalm 147, which also is divided into the Greek psalms numbered 146 and 147.

With that resolved, the two numbering systems can now march arm-in-arm through the final three psalms: 148, 149, and 150.

Here’s a handy chart to keep it straight:

The Church Year: June 21, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

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

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 21, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Aloysius Gonzaga, SJ, confessor, who died in A.D. 1591, religious. In the Ordinary Form, it is a memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

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

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

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

22. Finally, the Christian who prays can, if God so wishes, come to a particular experience of union. The Sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist,26 are the objective beginning of the union of the Christian with God. Upon this foundation, the person who prays can be called, by a special grace of the Spirit, to that specific type of union with God which in Christian terms is called mystical.

What Does “Amen” Mean?

Many of us grew up saying prayers and, in imitation of the adults around us, we learned to end them by saying “amen.”

But this is a word most of us never used in any other context, and for many of us, we had no idea what it meant. It was just that think you say at the end of prayers.

I confess that when I was growing up, I thought it meant something like “over and out.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a brief explanation of the meaning of the word at the end of its section on the Lord’s Prayer, where it quotes Cyril of Jerusalem:

“Then, after the prayer is over you say ‘Amen,’ which means ‘So be it,’ thus ratifying with our ‘Amen’ what is contained in the prayer that God has taught us” [CCC 2856].

It also says:

By the final “Amen,” we express our “fiat” [Latin, “so be it” or “may it be”] concerning the seven petitions: “So be it” [CCC 2865].

The Catechism also has a longer discussion of the meaning of “Amen” at the end of its section on the Creed:

1062 In Hebrew, amen comes from the same root as the word “believe.” This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, faithfulness. and so we can understand why “Amen” may express both God’s faithfulness towards us and our trust in him.

1063 In the book of the prophet Isaiah, we find the expression “God of truth” (literally “God of the Amen”), that is, the God who is faithful to his promises: “He who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth [amen].” Our Lord often used the word “Amen,” sometimes repeated, to emphasize the trustworthiness of his teaching, his authority founded on God’s truth.

1064 Thus the Creed’s final “Amen” repeats and confirms its first words: “I believe.” To believe is to say “Amen” to God’s words, promises and commandments; to entrust oneself completely to him who is the “Amen” of infinite love and perfect faithfulness. the Christian’s everyday life will then be the “Amen” to the “I believe” of our baptismal profession of faith:

May your Creed be for you as a mirror. Look at yourself in it, to see if you believe everything you say you believe. and rejoice in your faith each day.

1065 Jesus Christ himself is the “Amen.” He is the definitive “Amen” of the Father’s love for us. He takes up and completes our “Amen” to the Father: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God”:

Through him, with him, in him,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor is yours,
almighty Father,
God, for ever and ever.
AMEN.

One of the things the Catechism mentions is that Our Lord sometimes repeated the word “Amen.” In some versions of the Bible this is translated “Verily, verily” or “Truly, truly,” but what he actually said was “Amen, amen.”

This was something characteristic of Jesus’ own personal manner of speech.

In any event, the word means more than just “over and out.”

The Church Year: June 20, 2012

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

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

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 20, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Silverius, pope and martyr, who died in A.D. 538. It is a commemoration.

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

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

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

21. On the path of the Christian life, illumination follows on from purification, through the love which the Father bestows on us in the Son and the anointing which we receive from him in the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Jn 2:20). Ever since the early Christian period, writers have referred to the “illumination” received in Baptism. After their initiation into the divine mysteries, this illumination brings the faithful to know Christ by means of the faith which works through love. Some ecclesiastical writers even speak explicitly of the illumination received in Baptism as the basis of that sublime knowledge of Christ Jesus (cf. Phil 3:8), which is defined as “theoria” or contemplation.24 The faithful, with the grace of Baptism, are called to progress in the knowledge and witness of the mysteries of the faith by “the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience.”25 No light from God can render the truths of the faith redundant. Any subsequent graces of illumination which God may grant rather help to make clearer the depth of the mysteries confessed and celebrated by the Church, as we wait for the day when the Christian can contemplate God as He is in glory (cf. 1 Jn 3:2).

Who Are the 24 Elders of Revelation?

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

Who are they?

One clue is the number twenty-four.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Church Year: June 19, 2012

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

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

Saints & Celebrations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readings:

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

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

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

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

The Selection of Eastern Bishops

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

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

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

Here’s the story:

ACTS CONCERNING THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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