A LESSON FROM THE CIRCUS

GUESS WHAT'S IN TOWN?

Tuesday I went for a walk. As I turned onto William Street alongside our abbey church I spotted six blocks down the hill several bales of hay neatly stacked on the sidewalk at the corner of Broad Street.
Now, bales of hay are not exactly your everyday sight in downtown Newark, but I knew right away what they meant: The circus is in town!
Each year the Ringling Brothers circus descends on the Prudential Center. Beginning a couple of days before the first performance the streets around the Prudential Center are filled with colorful circus wagons, trailers, and trucks, and a large parking lot boasts a couple of low sprawling tents and wooden pallets stacked with bales of hay. Then the day after the last performance the circus moves on and the streets suddenly return to their normal everyday humdrum appearance.
As I strolled past the trailers with license plates from Florida and Indiana and elsewhere, I stole a peek at a couple of young women in jeans and pony tails working by the tents. They seemed to be regulars for whom this business was routine. I wondered if they’d run away from home to join the circus…
I began to wonder, too, what it must be like for them to live “on the road” for several months a year, pulling up stakes (literally) every few days and moving on to somewhere new. I’d hate that, I thought, always being on the move, never settling down, a sort of perpetual pilgrim.
I’ve since walked by the circus wagons a few more times, and each time some other thoughts cross my mind. Here are a couple.

ON THE ROAD IN LENT

Each year the circus passes through during Lent. Its transitory visit seems well-timed to remind us of the Israelites who lived in tents for forty years as they moved from place to place crossing the wilderness. They’d camp for awhile in one place until the pillar of cloud started to move again and they would have to break camp and follow where it led.
The Church is like that: The Pilgrim Church is always on the road, never settling down on our way through the wilderness of this life. And like circus people we don’t travel alone but together as a group, a community.

A LESSON IN INSECURITY

The trailers and tents made me realize how much I enjoy the sense of permanence, predictability and security provided by the monastery and my Benedictine vow of Stability. Woops! That’s not a very Lent-like thought! Lent is a time for living on the road. These forty days are meant precisely as desert days, a time for traveling together through the desert, for pulling up the stakes of old habits and deadening routine, for daring to follow the pillar of cloud into new and even frightening places.
As I walk past the circus trailers I can hear the Lord of the Wilderness saying, “I love you too much to let you settle down and stay where you are. Come, follow me across the trackless waste.”

AFTER THE CIRCUS

I look at the circus wagons differently now. They’ve become reminders challenging me to let go of the secure predictability of my comfortable existence and accept the Lord’s challenge to enter the wilderness and travel with my brothers and sisters as we follow trustingly the Lord who promises to bring us to the Promised Land.
The circus finishes tomorrow and moves on to another place. Hen I walk down the hill on Monday afternoon the only trace of the circus will be a few stray wisps of yellow straw blowing along the gutter. But I’ll still be here trying to be a perpetual pilgrim with my brothers in Newark Abbey. We’re on the road, too.

A VISION FOR LENT

FORTY DAYS IN THE DESERT

The gospel for the First Sunday of Lent this year is Mark’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The entire passage is only two verses long:

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mk 1:12-13)

Compared to the much more detailed versions of Matthew and Luke, Mark’s account seems disappointingly short on details. But if we concentrate on what he does tell us, we find some wonderful food for meditation.

First we should look at what Mark is saying. He surely intends (as do Matthew and Luke in their much longer accounts) that we should make the connection between the People of God who spent forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus “the New Israel,” who spent forty days there fasting and being tested. And perhaps more likely the gospel writers want us to recall the fast of Moses (Deut. 9:18) in the wilderness of Sinai, and that of Elijah near mount Horeb (cf. I Kgs 19:8).

I would like, however, to look at two interesting details in the second and final sentence in Mark: “He was with the wild beasts” and “angels came and ministered to him.”

THE BEASTS AND THE ANGELS

In the Old Testament wild beasts are associated with evil powers:

Many bulls encircle me,
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion. …
For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me.
(Ps 22:12,13,16)

Psalm 91 has angels protecting the psalmist from wild beasts.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. (Ps 91:11-13)

Finally, in the account of creation in Genesis the first humans coexisted peacefully with animals:
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Gen. 1:28)

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field. (Gen. 2:19-20)

This kind of peaceful coexistence is also part of the hope of the renewed creation in Isaiah

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6-9, cp. 65:24-25).

THE VISION OF PEACE
We can see in Mark's account of Jesus in the desert, then, a hint or a hope of the new creation of harmony and peace that will one day be brought about by Him.

The season of Lent is a good time for me to work at my part of bringing the “Peaceable Kingdom” into existence in my world and in my heart. During this holy season I can strive consciously to treat a certain person with more patience or compassion, I can take a step toward reconciliation with someone from whom I’ve become distanced. The ideas for “Lenten resolutions” in this area are countless.

What about bringing about the “peaceable kingdom” inside my own heart? Well, the idea of fasting is to lessen the hold that “the tempter” has on me precisely by taming, with God’s help, the unruly passions in me that try to run my life. Sort of like calling on the angels to help me with the “beasts” that threaten me. This is not about body-hating; in fact it’s just the opposite. The goal of my Lenten fast is that the world of instincts and the world of the spirit can come together in harmony so that I can live in tranquility with myself and with others, and so help bring about “that peace which the world cannot give.”

So, what about you? What specific things will you do during these forty days in the wilderness to help bring about Jesus’s dream of a “peaceable kingdom” in your heart and in your world?

"The Peaceable Kingdom" Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849)

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A PSALM FOR WHITNEY

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MOURNING A LOCAL GIRL

I stepped out of the front door of the monastery this afternoon onto King Boulevard. I turned left and walked up the street half a block until I came to the yellow police tape stretching across the entire street. On the other side of the tape were the cameras and newscasters in front of Whigham’s funeral parlor where Whitney Houston’s remains are being kept until tomorrow morning’s funeral. Being a local boy I knew a little alley that brought me around the police barricade and out onto Court Street where about forty people were standing around a metal crowd control barrier that blocked the street just a few feet from Whigham’s. I made a little detour to avoid appearing in the background of a Spanish language newscast.

Except for the subdued Spanish voice there was barely a sound from the people. The hush was eerie. It reminded me of the quiet you experience, say, the morning after a terrible house fire when curious people show up to stand and gaze in sober silence at the charred ruins.

Whitney Houston, like me, was born in Newark, and like me grew up in East Orange (though many years after me) and hung out in Elmwood Park where I used to hang out, so I feel some connection with her. I’d like to dedicate this meditation on Psalm 68 to her in thanks for the way she made her great talents into a gift that she shared with millions of people. I've been reflecting on this psalm for a few days, and it seems an appropriate meditation to honor someone whose life was filled with so much beauty and so much struggle and tragedy.

FROM SINAI TO SION

(I’m indebted to Padre Carlos Valles, S.J. for the following meditation which I’ve loosely translated from his reflection on Psalm 68 in Busco Tu Rostro, Orar los Salmos.)

My life is like a long journey, Lord. You invite me to walk from Sinai to Sion with you as my guide. Sinai is where I hear your voice, your commandments, and your promise to lead your Holy People into the Promised Land.

Sion on the other hand is the city strongly compact, the impregnable fortress, your holy temple.

My life is a journey like the one your Chosen People took
from the mountain in the wilderness to the temple in your holy city,
from the promise to the reality,
from hope to glory
across the wide and uncharted desert of my earthly existence.
You accompany me on this march, Lord,
with your presence, your help,
and your direction through the desert sands.
I feel safe in your company.

O God, when you went out before your people,
when you marched through the wilderness,
the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain
at the presence of God, the God of Sinai,
at the presence of God, the God of Israel. (Ps.68:7-8)

Sometimes the wandering is hard.
there are dangers and enemies (ask Whitney Houston).
There’s the fatigue that comes from walking,
there's discouragement often enough, and sometimes
there’s even the doubt that the journey will ever get to its promised goal. There are strange places along the route,
and kings and armies that threaten at every turn in the road. But we travel with the Ark of your presence in our midst, And it’s this presence that gives us protection
and victory in our daily battles during this faith journey.


Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered;
let those who hate him flee before him.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away;
as wax melts before the fire,
let the wicked perish before God.
But let the righteous be joyful;
let them exult before God;
let them be jubilant with joy.
Sing to God, sing praises to his name;
lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds—
his name is the LORD—
be exultant before him.
Father of orphans and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
God gives the desolate a home to live in;
he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
but the rebellious live in a parched land. (Ps. 68:1-6)

My pilgrim journey is made easier by the knowledge that it is your journey, too.
You come with me. You are the God of the wilderness just as you are the God of my life.
You lead your holy people with you and me along with them.
I rejoice as the last and least in the sacred procession,
the Benjamin among the tribes of Israel.

Your solemn processions are seen, O God,
the processions of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—
the singers in front, the musicians last,
between them girls playing tambourines:
‘Bless God in the great congregation,
the LORD, O you who are of Israel’s fountain!’
There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead,
the princes of Judah in a body,
the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali (vv 24-27)

This is my joy, Lord, this is my protection in the desert:
to walk in company with your people. To feel myself one with your people,
to fight in its battles, to weep at its defeats,
and to rejoice in its victories.
I’m no solitary traveler, no lonely pilgrim.
I am part of God’s people that marches as one,
united by one faith, one Leader, and one destiny.
I know its history and its songs.

ALL IS AT REST

Our sister Whitney would have sung the following hymn many times in church.
It seems an appropriate ending to a meditation on Psalm 68
and a beautiful way to end a little tribute to Whitney Houston

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Refrain:
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.


May our sister Whitney, whose soulful songs surely helped many people along their own wilderness journey, indeed spend eternity filled with His goodness and lost in His love!

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THE CHALLENGE OF SILENCE

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ON EATING ALONE

This morning I gave my sophomore New Testament students the following in-class journaling assignment:

Jews at the time of Christ considered sharing a meal to be an important, even a sacred act.
- How important to you is eating together with family or loved ones?
- How often do you eat a meal with your immediate family? Is this something you would like to do more often?

My students’ responses were for the most part predictably appalling. In one class of 19 kids only one student reported eating with his family on week nights, and a couple said that they usually had Sunday dinner as a family. They tried patiently to explain that since grown-ups are boring and corny, teenagers don’t want to hang around with them. Sharing a meal with family members was a foreign concept that seemed to make almost no sense to the majority of the kids.

Several spoke about how nice it is to just come home, grab something from the fridge and go your room (read “private fully-furnished apartment with TV, computer, phone, etc.”) and close the door. You never have to talk to or even see your parents. Nice arrangement, right?

Then one student said, “You have to understand, Father Al, that we teenagers like to be alone.” Lots of heads nodded in knowing agreement.

Well, they haven’t heard the end of this topic!

If kids “like to be alone” then why do they compulsively text one another into the wee hours of the morning? Why are they addicted to Face Book and Twitter and so on? What could “alone” possibly mean in such an environment?

If I go on in this vein this post will become a disgruntled complaint – exactly the kind of thing that makes kids want to avoid us adults! So instead I’ve decided to turn inward and see if any of this has to do with my own spirituality.

NOISE, SILENCE AND SOUL-SEARCHING

“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10)

Why do most of us have such a difficult time with silence? Why have we become so addicted to “background music” and the meaningless mumble of radio or television that serves merely as an acoustical version of wallpaper? From my own experience I suspect that we’re often afraid of silence because of what we might hear coming from the quiet depths of our hearts. Our instincts tell us that if we’re completely silent and still some serious things might start happening. We might start encountering questions that we’ve been studiously avoiding or truths about ourselves that we’d rather not know. Silence is scary stuff!

So, if he controls who talks to him by locking his door and having caller i.d. on his phone, and if he can keep the ambient noise loud enough to drown out the inner voice of the Spirit, then a teenager can supposedly escape being hassled by anyone. No probing questions or unsettling challenges. But I too have my own adult versions of that teenage isolating behavior. Or should I call it “insulating” behavior. In fact, I use it as a kind of barometer. When I find myself wanting to keep the radio on in my room constantly, I ask myself, “Okay, so what’s going on? What’s upsetting me that I don’t want to think about or deal with.”

Sitting quietly with a scripture text can be a great exercise in listening. If I can still my mind and heart enough, I may be able to hear something the Spirit is trying to say to me. Even if I have to leave some urgent work undone, some inspiring words unsaid or some uplifting insight un-blogged.

A spiritual life without silence is a contradiction in terms. So is a spiritual life that is isolated from challenges and difficulties. You can think of the countless ramifications of this for your own life, so I’ll let you turn off the radio and the computer and try it.

A PARTING SHOT

I noticed that the students who said that they ate with their family every night also said that it was a time when people talked to one another about what had happened during the day; and they seemed grateful for the experience. My prejudice is that these kids will grow up knowing a little bit more about themselves as persons, be more at ease speaking with people older than themselves, and have more of a sense of what it means to belong to a community.

I’m sure that spending half an hour in some virtual voluntary online “community” via a chat room can be stimulating for a teenager, but somehow it doesn’t seem as human as a real live encounter between brothers and sisters and parents over plates of real (not virtual) spaghetti and meatballs. Of course, now and then a teenager may get so upset that he needs to get up from the table and run to his room and slam the door and stare at the wall for fifteen minutes to cool off. That kind of aloneness is healthy (psychologists would call it essential). But alas, odds are that he will probably not have that valuable experience of just staring at the wall, but will instead reach immediately for his phone and start texting.
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.....TEEN CONTEMPLATING SACRED TEXT

FOR MANY OR FOR ALL?

DIDN'T JESUS DIE FOR ALL?
One of the most troublesome changes in the new English translation of the mass is the revised version of the words of consecration said over the chalice: “This is the chalice of my blood... which will be shed for you and FOR MANY.” Frankly I had never noticed that there was this discrepancy between the official Latin text and the English translation until I was chatting one day a few years ago with Francis Cardinal Arinze, the then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship (talk about name dropping, huh!). He mentioned to me that his office had been getting some vehement written protests over the mistranslation of the Latin words of consecration which should read “for you and for many,” not “for you and for all.” So I wasn’t shocked when I saw that the new translation had gone back to the literal translation of the Latin.

But just why did the translators decide to change Christ’s words from “for all” to “for many?” Before answering the question let me point out a couple of assumptions about theology that grew out of the post-Vatican II era.

Assumption #1. For centuries Catholic Christians had been taught an image of a strict, authoritarian God whose main jobs seemed to be things like making rules, keeping count of sins and punishing people in purgatory or hell. Pope John XXIII and the Council fathers were at pains to show the world another side of God as the loving, compassionate and all-forgiving One. The fear of God drifted into the background in light of this new emphasis, and we children of the Vatican Council got comfortable dealing with only the “nice” aspects of God and of religion, and so have little patience with any negative concepts such as sin.

Assumption #2. We children of Vatican II also make an assumption based on the idea behind translating the mass into English: The texts for the mass and the other sacraments were translated into English so that everyone could understand easily what was going on. So we automatically assumed that everything in the liturgy must be immediately and completely comprehensible to the average person the first time it is read or heard. This was surely one of the assumptions driving the English translation of the mass texts that we’ve been using the past 40 years (in which so many rich prayers got simplified to the point of being downright pedestrian). This assumption is, not surprisingly, the basis for one of the chief criticisms leveled at the new translation: “All liturgical texts should be simple enough for everyone to understand immediately upon hearing them, but the new texts are sometimes complicated and difficult to understand.”

I’m mentioning these two assumptions in order to caution the reader that they might not necessarily be correct, or at least may get in the way of appreciating what's behind some of the new translations. With regard to Assumption #1, maybe some of the translations will point out certain theological concepts that have been pushed into the background in the past half-century, such as human sinfulness and our need for redemption. And, contrary to Assumption #2, maybe some of the new translations actually require (God forbid!) deep reflection and instruction over time before we can appreciate the more profound mysteries they express.

“FOR MANY" and "FOR ALL"

So, why DID the translators decide to change Christ’s words from “for all” to “for many?”
Remember Assumption #1 above, that everything must be understandable immediately and effortlessly? Well, that won’t work on this passage. We will need to do some work in order to do it justice. If you’re willing, let’s start with Sacred Scripture.

WHAT DOES SCRIPTURE SAY?

One of the so-called "Suffering Servant passages" (Isa 53:12), often seen as a prophecy about Christ, reads “he bore the sin of MANY, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Jesus echoes this passage in his preaching about humility: “whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for MANY” (Mk 10:43b-45).

In his commentary The Gospel of Mark, (Sacra Pagina Series, Liturgical Press, 2002) John R. Donahue, S.J. says on page 313 “The [Greek] term pollon literally means ‘many’ but can also carry the sense of ‘all’ (e.g. ‘Many have been created but few will be saved’ (4 Ezra 8:3)).”

Now let’s take a look at the account of the last supper in Mark’s gospel, in which Jesus’ words over the cup are “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for MANY (hyper pollon.)” (Mk 14:24). Once again using Donohue’s commentary (p. 396) we find that although in English “many” is often equivalent to “not all,” in Aramaic and Hebrew “many” can be understood in these two passages from Mark as equivalent to “all.”

In an article in America magazine Msgr. Richard Antall reminds us that these words [“for many”] have been translated first from the original Aramaic our Lord spoke, then from Greek to Latin and from Latin to English. The Latin phrase “pro multis” never changed when the new order of Mass appeared after the Council. What changed was the translation of the Latin.
Partly, this new translation was based upon biblical studies that said that, for all practical purposes, the two phrases meant the same thing. (By the way, apparently Aramaic didn’t even have a specific word for “all.”)

In what seems to me to contradict Fr. Donahue, Msgr Antall writes that the problem was that the Greek preserved the distinction between “for many” and “for all.” He says that the “Greek of the New Testament did not express the equivalence that the liturgical translators insisted upon.” In other words, the Greek NT word does not have the sense of both “many” and “all.” This assertion is borne out in two Greek lexicons I consulted.

In any case, the official Latin version was and is still “pro multis” which means “for many” and is translated as such in the Greek, Syriac, Armenian and Slavic Oriental Rites of the Eucharist. Now the new English translation is in line with the official Latin. The other languages (e.g. French, Spanish and German) that had opted for the interpretive translation “for all” must also change their translation.

BUT DIDN’T JESUS DIE FOR ALL OF US?
So, is this new translation saying that Christ did NOT die “for all”? Certainly, a lot the people in the pews must be wondering about this. And they aren’t the first Christians to reflect on the phrase and its implications.
The church’s greatest theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) comments on why the Gospels and the Mass say “for the many” and not “for all.” He makes a fine distinction which it is worth trying to follow. “The blood of Christ has been shed FOR ALL concerning its sufficient power [i.e. it certainly is intended to save all] but ONLY FOR THE ELECT as regards to its efficacy [i.e. in fact it does not necessarily have to work in every case].”

This is very far from the “double predestination” taught by John Calvin, who said that Jesus’ blood was the redemption of only an elect group, with the rest of the people basically created to go to hell. St. Thomas clearly says that “for many” does not imply that God does not desire salvation for all. IT SIMPLY RECOGNIZES THE POSSIBILITY THAT SOME WILL NOT BE SAVED.

This rubs many moderns the wrong way (remember our Assumption #2 above). In the back of their head lurks the idea that-- no matter what-- everyone is going to end up in heaven. This is the other extreme from Calvin’s “double predestination” (by which the elect are predestined to heaven and the others to hell).

No, what’s at issue is simply this: If hell doesn’t exist, that means that everyone is dragged into heaven whether they choose it or not. But that would mean that we are not truly free, and that human freedom would become a myth. Contrary to Assumption #1 we should not think that there are only happy endings in the universe: Our human freedom is a wonderful and a terrible thing, because we can lose our souls.

Perhaps, some suggest, the translators made a pastoral mistake by changing "for you and for all" and upsetting people who aren't trained to make fine theological distinctions. But, since the change is now in place I suggest (as I always do on this blog) that rather than complain about it we should see what we can learn from it instead.

WHAT’S ALL THIS MEAN FOR ME?
What can we take away from the phrase “for many” which we will be hearing at mass for the rest of our lives?

One lesson that I’ve drawn from the new translation of “for many” is that it implies that my personal salvation is not automatic, but requires that I cooperate with God’s grace. It reminds me, in other words, that I mustn’t take my eternal salvation for granted, but rather that I must cooperate freely and responsibly with God’s grace at work in my heart.

A second lesson I can take away from “for many” is based on an idea I found in Fr. Donahue’s commentary cited above concerning Jesus’ offering of the chalice “for many” at the last supper: “The Markan Jesus understands his imminent death as bringing about a covenant community that will benefit all humans” (p.396). But I am part of that covenant community (the "MANY") through which Jesus wants to benefit ALL of humanity. What am I doing to help extend Christ’s saving sacrifice from “the many” of which I am a part to “all people” according to Christ’s plan for the Kingdom? Do I extend myself toward others in Christ-like kindness and generosity? Do I bear witness to sacred joy by my demeanor? In what ways do I help make Christ present to more people every day?

If the new translation “for many” still rubs you the wrong way, try letting it remind you not to presume that you are automatically saved, and perhaps it can even encourage you as one of the "many" to go out and by your actions extend Christ's love to “all.”

GRIEVING FOR A FRIEND

I lost a valuable friend this past Wednesday. Fr. Matthew Wotelko, O.S.B. of our community is now singing in the heavenly choir. His funeral is this morning (Saturday) in about a half hour.

Fr. Matt was a friend for about 45 years. He was a complicated guy, as you might glean from various obituaries. But I want to take this post to thank him publicly for the gift he gave me.

A PUBLIC THANK YOU

On New Year’s eve a few weeks ago we suddenly found out that he had cancer and the prognosis was very bad (three to six months turned out to be three weeks). So on new year's eve I wrote him a three-page handwritten letter to let him know what a difference he had made in my life and to thank him for that. He got the letter on New Years' Day, and was in the hospital by Jan 2, after which he went downhill amazingly quickly. He died here in the monastery. I'd written just in time.

As a recovering alcoholic who worked his program faithfully and fully and who met God in the midst of that struggle, he had this way of constantly demanding that same honesty of others and challenging them to risk, to reach into areas that were “scary” for them as he put it. When I was in my late twenties he did me the favor of pushing me that way. Sometimes I went unwillingly, but he was a relentless and demanding advisor.

I told him in my letter that I truly believe that if he hadn’t forced me to look at myself and take certain leaps of faith as a person, then I would never have had many of the relationships I have enjoyed, I suspect that I would have been too timid to pack up and go off by myself on a sabbatical year, and would have had nothing very interesting to say about risking or love of God or neighbor. So those six books of mine would never have been written.

I’m grateful to him for his example of introspection, unflinching honesty and dedication to the task of opening himself to God’s grace. I’m grateful for prodding and encouraging me on my own journey to see things I would have missed and to go places I would never have thought of going.

He faced his impending death exactly as I would have expected: with the serenity, courage and wisdom of someone who has struggled for decades to be open to the Lord and to the divine will. His last words to me were “Pray for me.” So now I’m asking him publicly to pray for me.

Thanks, Matt!

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AN OLD NEW WORD

WHAT’S "CONSUBSTANTIAL" ANYWAY?

At every Christmas get-together I attended this year people wanted to talk about the new translation of the mass. Of all the changes in the new English translation of the mass, none seems to have raised more criticism than the word “consubstantial” in the Nicene Creed. It used to be translated “one in being with the Father,” but now reads (following the technical Latin vocabulary) “consubstantial with the Father.”

Since we’ll be living with this seemingly incomprehensible word for the foreseeable future, I suggest that we try to make friends with it by learning something about its background, its meaning and it's practical implications for our spiritual journey. This long post is a short step in that direction.

IT’S ABOUT JESUS

Have you ever asked yourself a question such as “Exactly what do I believe about Jesus? Is Jesus God? If so, doesn’t that make two Gods? If he’s God’s Son doesn’t that make him inferior to the Father? Or is he the same as God, or equal to God but not the same as the Father? What’s the deal here?”

If you have ever asked such questions, you should know that these were also the central questions for the church in the third and fourth centuries, and it took two hundred years of painful struggle and division to come up with a satisfactory way of dealing with them.

During its first 200 years or so, the early church accepted Jesus as a man and confessed and worshipped him as God. It placed him on the same level as the Father and the Holy Spirit. It did this naturally and without any feeling of contradiction. The church recognized, of course, that the person of Christ was a deep mystery that we would never fully understand, but rather than debating the mystery it simply adored and revered it.

By the fourth century, however, the Church had spread into Greece and Asia Minor, the land of Greek philosophy, where people loved to intellectually dissect difficult problems in philosophy and theology. So it was probably inevitable that the mysterious nature of the person of Jesus would eventually come under intellectual scrutiny, and questions would be raised to which there were no answers in the New Testament. For example, what was the relationship between Jesus and God the Father? How was Jesus both human and divine? Exactly what is the Holy Trinity about? The various attempts to invent an appropriate vocabulary for answering these questions fill the history of the church in the fourth century.

The mystery of Jesus is set out clearly at the beginning of John’s gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,* full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14)

So people began to ask analytical questions about this passage: How are we to understand that the Son of God (whom John calls “the Word”) and who became a human being in Jesus the Messiah, is both with God and is God? How can God be at the same time one and more than one? Just how is the Son related to the Father?

These questions, which are all interrelated, led to tremendous controversy. At issue was the very identity of Christ himself. The church considered several competing answers to the questions, often with bitterness and bloodshed, before arriving at an “answer” that most could agree on. The dispute led eventually to the church’s formulating the doctrine of the Trinity.

ARIUS GETS IT WRONG

The heresy of Arianism that eventually engulfed the church in a firestorm, began as an abstruse disagreement between the bishop of Alexandria and one of his priests, a man named Arius. Although it started as a local quarrel about exactly the questions mentioned above, Arius went outside Egypt to enlist the support of bishops and scholars around the near east, so that before long the entire Greek church was bitterly divided over these issues.

Here are some of the beliefs that Arius was teaching. See how they compare with what you've been taught. Being concerned about the unity of God he taught that the Father alone is without a beginning. The Son, the “Word” (in Greek Logos) had a beginning; God created the Logos in order that he might create the world. Since the Logos was the first and highest of all created beings, Arius was willing to call the Logos God. But this was only a manner of speaking. The Logos was a creature.

In Arius’ view, Jesus had a human body but not a human soul. The Logos took the place of the soul in Jesus. He was therefore a creature who was neither God nor man. He was not God because the Logos that was in him was created; he was not a man because did not have a soul. Moreover, the Logos was subject to change: He could become a sinner.

GOSH WAS HE WRONG!

This Jesus of Arius doesn’t sound very much like the Jesus you and I know and pray to. We'll look at the practical implications of this heresy in the last section of this post. You can skip to that part now if you want, but first I want to finish the story with the church's response to Arius and his heresy.

THE CHURCH GETS IT RIGHT

Arius began teaching his errors in the year 311. Despite being condemned by various local councils of bishops his doctrines kept spreading until the controversy reached into every part of the East. The common people, although they did not understand the issues, nevertheless aligned themselves with one side or the other.

At this point the emperor Constantine realized that he had one empire and two churches – Arian and non-Arian. So for reasons more political than theological he moved to restore unity in the Catholic church by calling for a council of bishops to settle the dispute. The Council of Nicea (325), soon to be reckoned the first “ecumenical” or world council because of the range of representation there, included about 220 bishops, most of them Greek. At the solemn opening of the council Constantine urged the bishops to achieve unity and peace.

Skipping over the political and theological details, we can say that the bishops at Nicea ended the controversy over the questions concerning Christ and the Trinity by formulating a document that we now know as the “Nicene Creed” that is recited by Catholics at mass every Sunday and on important feasts. It is sharply anti-Arian.

Arius had claimed that the Son of God "came to be from things that were not" and that he was "from another substance" than that of the Father. So the Council condemned these beliefs by stating in the Creed that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance as the Father." The Latin word for “of the same substance” is “consubstanialis.” The recent translators of the Creed have chosen to translate this with a single English word, “consubstantial” to refer to our belief that Jesus and the father are distinct but equal, which is precisely what Arius had denied. If the translators had given us the equally accurate phrase "of the same substance as the Father," they might perhaps have created less of a stir. But we now have "consubstantial," so let's just deal with it.

Well, so what? Whether we say "consubstantial" or "of the same substance" what does it have to do with you and me as we try to live the gospel every day? Here are a couple of thoughts.

THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY BEHIND “CONSUBSTANTIAL”

“Consubstantial” tries to capture the beautiful fact that Jesus is both completely human and fully divine. We believe that long ago God decided to set things right with our broken world, and could surely have done so from a distance, like changing the channel with a TV remote control. But instead God chose to come into the world in person, to become one of us in an incredible, totally unforeseen supreme act of self-giving love. And so “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God came and shared everything human except sin.

Another implication of the doctrine of “consubstantial” is a famous quotation (which doesn’t sound sexist in the original Greek or Latin) variously attributed to St. Athanasius and Saint Augustine and others. It states “God became man so that man might become God.” Doesn’t that seem pretty bold, even arrogant? But it’s true nonetheless. But it could never be true if Arius is correct. That’s why we need to believe that Jesus is truly human and truly divine – consubstantial with the father.

Celebrating Christmas each year has gotten us so used to the idea that God became a human being that we forget that this incarnation business is incredible, unfathomable, and way beyond our ability to understand – which is why it’s called the “mystery of the incarnation.” In theology, a “mystery” refers not to a belief that is totally incomprehensible to us, but rather to one that we will never come to understand fully: There will always be more to understand about a mystery. So, when we reflect on the mystery of the incarnation we need to remember that we are on very sacred and mysterious ground. It is a time to be humble in the presence of an awesome and beautiful aspect of God’s love that we cannot ever fully understand.

Several people have objected to me that the new translation “consubstantial with the Father” is incomprehensible, and that the translators should have used a simpler word that everybody could understand. At least when we used to say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father” we understood what the words meant. The problem was that the latter expression didn’t really say very much about Jesus: everything in creation somehow participates in God’s being, so you could argue that plants and animals and rocks are all “one in being with the Father.” But the Council fathers at Nicea were trying to get at something much deeper and mysterious: that somehow God and Jesus are not completely different but "of the same substance" while being at the same time distinct entities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives more information about this in parag. 465

Let me offer a homely example that might help you understand a little bit more about “consubstantial.” If you take a handkerchief and tear it in half, the two pieces are of the same “substance” but are distinct entities. This rough and ready comparison is, of course, inadequate, but it gives us at least a glimpse of the truth that Arius denied when he insisted that God and Jesus were of two different substances, and thus Jesus was not divine.

So if “consubstantial” sounds like gibberish at least it doesn’t give anyone the false impression that we thoroughly understand what we’re talking about in the incarnation! It reminds us rather that the incarnation is a mystery that is ultimately incomprehensible, and that if we think we understand the incarnation completely, well, sorry, we don’t. Because we can’t.

I hope that this post has helped you to understand “consubstantial” a little better. If not, I hope that it will at least remind you to be grateful to those bishops at the Council of Nicea whose courage and determination preserved for us our belief in the ineffable mystery that Jesus who walked among us, sharing our sorrows and our joys, our desires and out dreams, our sufferings and our limitations was also God, the Divine Word made flesh.

To Him be glory and everlasting power! Amen.
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