Everyone’s life of faith has times of light, but also times of darkness. If you want to walk in the light, let the word of God be your guide @pontifex, 19 December 2012
We do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us. Christ, who is the truth, takes us by the hand. @pontifex, 19 December 2012
When you deny God, you deny human dignity. Whoever defends God is defending the human person. @pontifex, 21 December 2012
We do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us. Christ, who is the truth, takes us by the hand. @pontifex, 21 December 2012
At the end of the year, we pray that the Church, despite her shortcomings, may be increasingly recognizable as Christ’s dwelling place @pontifex, 21 December 2012
Note 1: The link to this page on the Vatican’s site is missing.
This is the actual Grotto of the Nativity under the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Why is there so much confusion today about Christmas and what it means?
There’s a lot of confusion about Christmas.
Is it a day? Is it a season? Is it based on a pagan holiday? What is its real meaning?
Here are 9 things you should know about Christmas . . .
1. What is “the real meaning of Christmas”?
Although many voices in pop culture suggest that the true meaning of Christmas is being kind to each other, or being with our families, or something like that, the real meaning of the day–and the season it begins–is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
525 Jesus was born in a humble stable, into a poor family. Simple shepherds were the first witnesses to this event. In this poverty heaven’s glory was made manifest. The Church never tires of singing the glory of this night:
The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal
and the earth offers a cave to the Inaccessible.
The angels and shepherds praise him
and the magi advance with the star,
For you are born for us,
Little Child, God eternal!
2. Christmas is not based on a pagan holiday.
No matter how many times you hear Sheldon Cooper (or anyone else) say Christmas is based on a pagan holiday (whether Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, or anything else), we simply have no evidence of this.
If you read the writings of the Church Fathers, you do not find those who assign Christmas to December 25th saying things like, “Let’s put Jesus’ birthday here so we can subvert a pagan holiday.” (Not that subverting pagan holidays is a bad thing.)
They simply don’t do that. The ones who say Jesus was born on December 25th do so because that is when they think he was born.
In his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict comments:
Does the Mayan calendar prove that something momentous will happen in December 2012?
Well, the Mayan apocalypse is almost here. We’re right up to 12/21/12, the day that New Agers across the planet have been waiting for.
Perhaps you know someone who is into the “2012 phenomenon”–or perhaps you’re curious what all the hubbub is about.
Here’s a story that will put things in perspective. . . .
The End Is Here?
On December 21, 2012, something momentous is going to happen.
The Mayan calendar says so.
Everybody knows it.
They’ve been talking about it on the late-night airwaves and on the Internet and in books for years.
But what’s going to happen?
Good question. . . .
You Can’t Hide Your Mayan Lies
The answer seems to depend on whom you ask.
According to some “experts” on the “2012 Phenomenon,” it will be a really good thing, the dawning of a new age in human consciousness and the next step in human evolution. Some say the planet Earth will cross the plane of the galaxy or align with the galactic core and new energies will be unleashed, transforming human consciousness. Also, aliens may show up and invite us to join a galactic brotherhood.
According to other 2012 “experts,” what will happen will be a really bad thing, such as the planet Earth colliding with a black hole and bringing about the end of the world. Or maybe it will be a comet we collide with. Or an asteroid. Or the lost planet Nibiru. Or, even without a collision, Earth’s poles will shift. Or there will be a devastating war. Any way you go, things will be bad.
Other “experts” think that it may be a mixture of good and bad, or that it has the potential to be one or the two, depending on how we respond.
Still others aren’t predicting exactly what will happen, just that it will be big. Really big. They’re sure.
So what’s at the root of all these claims? Who were the Maya? What is their calendar? And what’s the truth about all this?
Let’s take a look . . . because the truth is out there.
Originally, before he was elected pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wanted to retire and write a book about his own personal views on Jesus Christ, as he is presented in the gospels. He read many books like this when he was younger, and now he wanted to write his own to help people grow closer to Jesus.
He had even begun working on it in the summer holidays he had in 2003 and 2004, before John Paul II passed on in 2005.
But then he was elected pope and all his free time vanished. He still cared enough about the project, though, to make time for it.
Because he was elected pope at an elderly age, he wasn’t sure how long he would live and if he would have the time and energy to complete the project, so instead of writing one book covering all of the gospels, he wrote three, covering different parts.
Volume 1 of the series covered the first part of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Volume 2 covered Jesus’ passion and resurrection. And now in Volume 3 he is going back to finish the series by covering the “infancy narratives.”
2. What are the “infancy narratives”?
The infancy narratives are the parts of the gospels that deal with Jesus’ life before his adult ministry–that is, the parts when he was an “infant.”
That’s an approximate term, though, because they actually cover the period before he was born (in fact, before he was even conceived) and also an incident later in his childhood, when he was about twelve years old.
Only two of the four gospels–Matthew and Luke–cover this period, and they each devote the first two chapters of their gospels to it.
Properly speaking, the infancy narratives are Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2.
3. Does Pope Benedict think that these parts of the gospels are historical?
Early Christian writers speak of a mysterious, 1st century figure called “John the Presbyter.” Who was he, and why is he significant?
Recently we looked at the claim that Mark derived the information in his Gospel from St. Peter.
This claim dates to a first century source: a figure called “John the Presbyter,” who was a disciple of Jesus.
According to some in the early Church–and according to Pope Benedict–we may have already met this mysterious figure in a surprising way.
Here’s the story . . .
A John By Any Other Name
As we saw previously (CLICK HERE TO READ PART 1), John the Presbyter was a figure apparently distinct from John the Apostle.
He also goes by different names in English, since the Greek word for “presbyter”–presbuteros–can be translated “elder.”
Thus sometimes we read of him as “John the Elder” or “the Presbyter John” or “the Elder John.” It’s all the same in Greek.
He has often been conflated with John the Apostle, for several reasons.
One is that they were both, apparently, disciples of Jesus, though the presbyter was not an apostle.
Another is that, in later years, they both apparently lived at Ephesus.
But they may be related in another way . . .
John the Presbyter and Scripture
There is some reason to think that John the Presbyter–like St. Mark–may have been one of those companions of the apostles who ended up playing a role in writing the New Testament.
You’ll note that 2 John and 3 John are both addressed as being from “the Presbyter”/”the Elder”:
2 John 1: ” The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth . . . “
3 John 1: “The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.”
Thus St. Jerome reports:
He [John the Apostle] wrote also one Epistle which begins as follows That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes and our hands handled concerning the word of life [i.e., 1 John] which is esteemed of by all men who are interested in the church or in learning.
The other two of which the first is The elder to the elect lady and her children [i.e., 2 John] and the other The elder unto Gaius the beloved whom I love in truth, [i.e., 3 John] are said to be the work of John the presbyter to the memory of whom another sepulchre is shown at Ephesus to the present day, though some think that there are two memorials of this same John the evangelist [Lives of Illustrious Men 9].
Commening on the list of people Papias did research on, St. Jerome remarks:
It appears through this catalogue of names that the John who is placed among the disciples is not the same as the elder John whom he places after Aristion in his enumeration. This we say moreover because of the opinion mentioned above, where we record that it is declared by many that the last two epistles of John are the work not of the apostle but of the presbyter [ibid. 18]
Pope Benedict Weighs In
Over the centuries, the distinction between John the Apostle and John the Presbyter was obscured, but it has received new attention in recent years.
In Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, Pope Benedict writes:
This information is very remarkable indeed: When combined with related pieces of evidence, it suggests that in Ephesus there was something like a Johannine school, which traced its origins to Jesus’ favorite disciple himself, but in which a certain “Presbyter John” presided as the ultimate authority.
This “presbyter” John appears as the sender and author of the Second and Third Letters of John (in each case in the first verse of the first chapter) simply under the title “the presbyter” (without reference to the name John).
He is evidently not the same as the Apostle, which means that here in the canonical text we encounter expressly the mysterious figure of the presbyter.
He must have been closely connected with the Apostle; perhaps he had even been acquainted with Jesus himself.
After the death of the Apostle, he was identified wholly as the bearer of the latter’s heritage, and in the collective memory, the two figures were increasingly fused.
At any rate, there seem to be grounds for ascribing to “Presbyter John” an essential role in the definitive shaping of the Gospel [of John], though he must always have regarded himself as the trustee of the tradition he had received from the son of Zebedee.
I entirely concur with the conclusion that Peter Stuhlmacher has drawn from the above data. He holds “that the contents of the Gospel go back to the disciple whom Jesus (especially) loved. The presbyter understood himself as his transmitter and mouthpiece” (Biblische Theologie, II, p. 206). In a similar vein Stuhlmacher cites E. Ruckstuhl and P. Dschullnigg to the effect that “the author of the Gospel of John is, as it were, the literary executor of the favorite disciple” (ibid., p. 207) [Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, pp. 226-227].
Pope Benedict thus sees John the Presbyter as the author of 2 and 3 John and as having helped with the writing of the Gospel of John, based on the memories of John the Apostle.
Not an Act of the Magisterium
As Pope Benedict famously said in the preface to Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, the work is not an act of the Magisterium, and “everyone is free, then, to contradict me.”
One might thus hold that John the Presbyter had no hand in writing the New Testament.
Or one might hold that the early Church writers are confused and that John the Presbyter is identical with John the Apostle.
New Testament Author Describes History of New Testament?
But what we have read raises the intriguing possibility that we have more than just a first century tradition regarding how Mark’s Gospel was written.
We may, in fact, have a case of another New Testament author telling us about the origin of Mark’s Gospel.
That wouldn’t be the case if John the Presbyter had no hand in writing the New Testament. In that case, he would be merely a first century voice telling us about the origin of Mark’s Gospel (which is exciting enough).
But it would be the case if Pope Benedict (and St. Jerome, and others) is correct that John the Presbyter is a distinct figure who had a hand in writing the New Testament.
And it also would be the case if John the Presbyter is identical with John the Apostle.
Either way, we would have the origin of St. Mark’s Gospel revealed by one of the other authors of the New Testament.
St. Mark is thought to have based his Gospel on what he learned as the companion of St. Peter. Would it surprise you to know that there is a 1st century source that says exactly this?
It is traditionally held that Mark wrote his gospel based on information he learned from St. Peter, after having been his travelling companion.
Where does this claim come from?
And would it surprise you to know that we have a first century source that claims precisely this?
Here’s the story . . .
What We Know About Mark
We know that Mark was a travelling companion of Peter, because Peter mentions the fact in his First Epistle (1 Peter 5:13).
We also know that Mark was a travelling companion of other apostles, including Paul and Barnabas, which Luke discussed in Acts.
Mark may have even been an eyewitness of part of Jesus’ earthly ministry. It is often thought that he refers to himself, anonymously, in his own gospel, as the man carrying a jug of water on his head or as the man who slips out of his clothes and runs away naked on the night Jesus is arrested.
Also, as Luke mentions in Acts, Mark’s mother was prominent in the early Christian community, which at times met at their house in Jerusalem.
So why would we suppose that Mark got the information from St. Peter in particular?
The Origin of the Claim
The claim is found today in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea, the so-called “father of Church history.” Specifically, it’s found in his multi-book set Church History (a.k.a. Ecclesiastical History).
Eusebius wrote this work just before the First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). He finished it about A.D. 324.
The claim concerning Mark’s Gospel is earlier than that, though, because in the relevant passage of Church History, Eusebius is quoting an earlier writer, named Papias.
Who?
We don’t know as much about Papias as we’d like. He was a second century figure who served as the bishop of Hierapolis. This was a town in modern Turkey that is near Laodicea and–a bit more distantly–Ephesus and the other “seven churches of Asia” mentioned in Revelation.
Papias is known for having conducted a series of interviews with people who knew Jesus and his immediate disciples, thinking he could learn more by doing so than just by reading books alone.
He recorded his thoughts in a multi-volume work called Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord.
This work is now lost, but parts of it survive in quotations in other authors, including Eusebius.
For our purposes, a key point is when he wrote: He is thought to have written the Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord around A.D. 120-130 (or even earlier).
That carries our tradition about Mark’s connection to Peter back to the early second century.
But we can carry it back further than that, because Papias was basing his book on earlier traditions, and in this case he names his source for this tradition.
The Presbyter?
Here is the relevant passage from Eusebius’s Church History. I’ve labelled who is speaking to make the source of particular words more obvious.
[Eusebius:] But now we must add to the words of his which we have already quoted the tradition which he [that is, Papias] gives in regard to Mark, the author of the Gospel.
[Papias:] “This also the presbyter said:
[The Presbyter:] ‘Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.'”
So Eusebius is quoting Papias, and Papias is quoting a figure called “the Presbyter.”
Who is that?
Meet the Presbyter
“The Presbyter” is identified by Eusebius in the sentence immediately before the ones we quoted, where Eusebius writes:
Papias gives also in his own work other accounts of the words of the Lord on the authority of Aristion, who was mentioned above, and traditions as handed down by the presbyter John, to which we refer those who are fond of learning.
This individual–known as “John the Presbyter” or “John the Elder” (the Greek word presbuteros can be translated both ways)–is identified by Papias as a disciple of Jesus who was apparently distinct from John the Apostle.
A bit earlier, Eusebius quoted another passage from Papias, in which the second century author explained his interview method:
If, then, any one came, who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders—what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice [Church History 3:39:4].
Here Papias identifies John the Presbyter as a disciple of the Lord distinct from the previously-mentioned apostles, including John the Apostle.
Into the First Century
As we noted, Papias is writing c. A.D. 120-130 (or earlier), but he’s quoting the earlier source John the Presbyter.
That pushes the date of the tradition regarding the origin of Mark’s Gospel into the first century.
Remember: John the Presbyter is identified by Papias as one of “the disciples of the Lord,” which is why he was interested in interviewing him to find out what he said about Jesus’ teachings.
He and Aristion were, apparently, people who knew Jesus but who didn’t end up being appointed as apostles. They were, however, companions of apostles, just as Mark and Luke were.
And so it’s not surprising that John the Presbyter–a contemporary of St. Mark, one who lived at the same time Mark wrote his gospel–would have information about how Mark’s Gospel came to be.
In any event, we’re dealing with a first century tradition regarding the origin of Mark’s Gospel.
God sent an angel to convince St. Joseph not to divorce Mary. But why was he planning to divorce her in the first place?
Matthew tells us that when “Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.”
Why did Joseph intend to divorce Mary?
The view that suggests itself to most people is that Joseph thought Mary had been unfaithful to him.
But there is another theory: that Joseph knew the Child had been conceived “of the Holy Spirit” and so Joseph was afraid to take Mary as his wife.
The idea that Joseph did not think Mary had been unfaithful to him may be suggested by the fact that Matthew mentions the miraculous conception of Jesus before he introduces Joseph’s idea of divorce.
He says: “before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.”
Found by whom? Who knew that the Holy Spirit was responsible for the pregnancy?
Presumably, Joseph would have been one of the first to be told.
If he believed this then one could understand why he would be afraid to take Mary as his wife.
Who wouldn’t hesitate to take to wife someone who, in later centuries, would be called “the spouse of the Holy Spirit”?
Thus, as a “just man” he might seek to quietly sever the legal bond between them and would need the assurance of the angel telling him “do not fear to take Mary your wife.”
Dec. 8th is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. What is the Immaculate Conception and how do we celebrate it?
This Saturday, December 8th, is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates an important point of Catholic teaching, and it is a holy day of obligation.
Here are 8 things you need to know about the teaching and the way we celebrate it.
1. Who does the Immaculate Conception refer to?
There’s a popular idea that it refers to Jesus’ conception by the Virgin Mary.
It doesn’t.
Instead, it refers to the special way in which the Virgin Mary herself was conceived.
This conception was not virginal. (That is, she had a human father as well as a human mother.) But it was special and unique in another way. . . .
This version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 13 December 2012 – 21 December 2012 (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):
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of the series covered the first part of Jesus’ earthly ministry. 
covered Jesus’ passion and resurrection. And now in 
