Matthew 26 - The Last Supper - Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

 “In the institution of the Blessed Eucharist at the Last Supper, … Jesus creates for himself a new form of existence as food for man’s life.  As supreme culmination of the work of redemption, God the Word Incarnate takes on the created form of greatest possible vulnerability by becoming edible and potable, in an act of creative anticipation and transformation of what would  happen to him physically on Good Friday on the Cross.”                                    

Source:  Fire of Mercy Heart of the Word Volume IV, Gospel of Matthew,  by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (Ignatius Press 2006), at page 149.

A Layperson Looks at Desiderio Desideravi

    Pope Francis published his apostolic letter, Desiderio Desideravi (DD),  on June 29, 2022. At section 10, the Pope says:

Ghent Altarpiece D- Adoration
 of the Lamb, by Jan Van Eyck
Credit: Wikpedia Commons

            Here lies all the powerful beauty of the liturgy. If the resurrection were for us a concept, an idea, a thought; if the Risen One were for us the recollection of the recollection of others, however authoritative, as, for example, of the Apostles; if there were not given also to us the possibility of a true encounter with Him, that would be to declare the newness of the Word made flesh to have been all used up. Instead, the Incarnation, in addition to being the only always new event that history knows, is also the very method that the Holy Trinity has chosen to open to us the way of communion. Christian faith is either an encounter with Him alive, or it does not exist.

The Pope in DD presents his take on the  Eucharist as an encounter with our Lord 

in the Paschal Mystery.   

Henri de Lubac - St. Ambrose

I have been reading a lot of Henri de Lubac lately.

Somewhere de Lubac quotes St. Ambrose who said:

"Et nunc deambulabat in paradiso Deus, quando divinas Scripturas lego."

Even today, God walks in paradise, when I read the divine Scriptures.

Return of Jesus

 From a recent study of Psalms and Genesis, I see the divine entourage, starting with, "Let us make man in our image." And then in Ps. 82 - where the RC bishops' version of the Bible (NABRE) backs me up that this is the divine council - we see the harm caused by angelic "rebels" whom we later see in St. Paul, Ephesians ch. 6, the principalities and powers. There is a great deal of biblical support for this "unseen realm." Satan and his corp normally work as wolves in sheep's clothing ("unseen"), such as with the priests who are for the Constitutional right to gay marriage or who don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus, or with church leaders banning the Hail Mary and the St. Michael prayer from post-Mass prayers. But now we see the devil working out in the open, in the U.S. with law court attacks on the faith, and way more horribly in AFG where believers are being burned alive for their faith as we speak. I believe that we should keep an open mind, that in days like these Jesus may well return to the earth, as promised, and if he does the Book of Acts says that we will see him on the Mount of Olives. It's important to look to him and for him daily (the worship of the Lord); otherwise, I might miss him.

Ps. 82 NABRE Notes

 

The New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE),  is a  Bible translation made available online by  the  United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their footnotes to Ps. 82 echo Divine Council teaching which we get from Michael Heiser and others, as you see here, where I quote from the NABRE footnotes:

Footnotes

Psalm 82 As in Ps 58, the pagan gods are seen as subordinate divine beings to whom Israel’s God had delegated oversight of the foreign countries in the beginning (Dt 32:8–9). Now God arises in the heavenly assembly (Ps 82:1) to rebuke the unjust “gods” (Ps 82:2–4), who are stripped of divine status and reduced in rank to mortals (Ps 82:5–7). They are accused of misruling the earth by not upholding the poor. A short prayer for universal justice concludes the Psalm (Ps 82:8).

a.     82:5 The gods are blind and unable to declare what is right. Their misrule shakes earth’s foundations (cf. Ps 11:3; 75:4), which God made firm in creation (Ps 96:10).

b.     82:6 I declare: “Gods though you be”: in Jn 10:34 Jesus uses the verse to prove that those to whom the word of God is addressed can fittingly be called “gods.”

c.     82:8 Judge the earth: according to Dt 32:8–9, Israel’s God had originally assigned jurisdiction over the foreign nations to the subordinate deities, keeping Israel as a personal possession. Now God will directly take over the rulership of the whole world.

Ps. 82 footnotes, New American Bible  (Revised Edition) (NABRE),   © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC.

Kathleen Norris - Psalms

 The Jewish believers sang the Psalms.  Jesus sang the Psalms of ascent with his disciples (Matt 26:30). The Apostles sang Psalms (1 Cor 14:26). That was also the practice of the ancient Christians.  

Kathleen Norris in her book, Dakota: A Spiritual Biography (1993) describes her time praying and singing Psalms at Benedictine monasteries.  The pace of life is too fast, and as Norris wrote in 1993 she saw that people were coming to recognize that time at the monastery just might slow us down.  Norris says:  

The attraction is real. For all our secular preoccupations, our fascination with lifestyles of the rich and famous, twentieth-century Americans are flocking to monasteries for retreats in record numbers. The poor and humble are so popular, in fact, that when I tried a few years ago to arrange on short notice a retreat at a monastery in New England, I was told an apologetic monk that the guest facilities were booked solid for the next six months.    

**** 

The Psalms are the word of God, which is alive and active. It's not  surprising that for Norris the experience of the monastery is  life changing:
She says: 

Often, when I’m sitting in a monastery choir stall, I wonder how I got there. I could trace it back, as I can trace the route from back East to western South Dakota. But I’m having too much fun. The words of Psalms, spoken aloud and left to resonate in the air around me, push me into new time and space. I think of it as the quantum effect: here time flows back and forth, in and out of both past and future, and I, too, am changed

                          

Genesis Chapters 2 and 3 - JSB and Brueggemann

Per the Jewish Study Bible (JSB), Judaism does not see "the fall"  in Genesis chapters  2 and 3.  The JSB claims that getting ejected from the garden and then having to work hard and put on clothes reflects real adult life. The Garden of Eden is like a child's place, where Adam and Eve don't even know they are naked.  I don't agree with this assessment of the rule violation of Adam and Eve. The world changes after this disruption in the garden.  The sin has a cosmic effect. The sin of Adam and Eve drives them away from this great place. I'm going with the the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St. Paul when it comes to original sin and the meaning of  Genesis 2 and 3.  

The garden is God's place. "They heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden." Gen. 2:8.   He sets the boundaries. He is the gardener. Adam and Eve live with him.  Here you see the personal relationship which God offers.  Skipping ahead to Christian application, this relationship provides the  joy of the spiritual life.  There is only one rule in the garden. And they can't even handle that.  Human nature craves autonomy. The serpent stokes that fire. Who is this serpent? The text does not say. And we can't  know from this chapter alone, but other Bible study indicates that the serpent is a spiritual being, here embodied.  One of the themes of this chapter is to avoid the tree of knowledge. Is this a teaching of anti-intellectualism? No. Read Gen. 1:28 (master the earth) and  Proverbs 3:18 (seek wisdom).  But believers can't get anxious about what they do not know. We too live in God's world. Will we respect his boundaries? 

Brueggemann says in chapters 2 and 3 we have the horizontal (conflict between people) and the vertical (conflict with God) which goes hand-in-hand, just as we see with Cain and Abel and in the teaching of Jesus (love God, love your neighbor).  The relationship between  Adam and Eve breaks down. This is love of neighbor - not happening. Adam blames Eve in 3:12. And we see the vertical, where Adam blames God in 3:12:   He says, "The woman you put at my side...."  Adam does not love God. He does not love his  neighbor. See Matt 22:36. Eve comes off much better, where she says in Gen. 3:13, "The serpent duped me."  And that is exactly what happened. She is  just accurately reciting what happened.  And yet fake Christians over the centuries mistreated women citing Genesis 3 as authority for a theory  claiming that from the beginning  women could not be trusted. 

Chapter 3 presents a law court scene. God the gardener becomes the questioner. And there is a judgment and a sentencing.  They were supposed to die.  Gen.  2:15. That was the law. They had been warned. But God had mercy. He even made clothes for their naked bodies. Gen. 3: 21: He "made the garments...and clothed them." Here we see the love of God, and the forgiving grace of God.  They lived. They had children.  I like what the JSB says quoting a talmudic rabbi, that the Torah begins with God clothing the naked, and it ends with him burying the dead (Deut 34:6 where God personally buries Moses). The Lord here provides the example of how we are to live- doing acts of unmerited kindness. 

For Christians Genesis 2 and 3 begins God's  "salvation history." Man has fallen away from his creator, but God is going to restore him. We see a glimpse of the restoration in chapter 3 with his mercies to these his first people. The Bible is the story of God. He is the central character. His people forsake him, over and over, starting here, but he will not give up on them. He finally wins victory over sin and death with the resurrection of Jesus. 

Source:   Walter Brueggemann,  Genesis:  Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (2010).