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Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Transfiguration

In the Transfigured Lord, we see a glimpse of our own future, in glorified bodies, radiant like the sun.  The illumination we received in baptism, as the counter to the darkening that our minds underwent because of sin, eventually suffuses even the veil of the body itself.  Evagrius writes of seeing the light of one’s own soul, and this imagery is very much alive in Orthodox spirituality.

Such a transformation takes place only after long effort under the influence of grace, the doing of many good works in charity.  But it also presupposes prayer and the renewal of one’s mind.  The whole of the soul must be refashioned according to the model of Christ.  When we put on the mind of Christ and, over all the virtues, put on love, we become transparent bearers of the uncreated light of the indwelling Holy Trinity.

Will we ever strive for such a beautiful gift—such a gift to the world, which longs for beauty and transcendence—if no one ever meditates on our calling to live transfigured lives?  Will we follow Christ to a place to be alone with Him, to be transformed by the light of His face and the sound of His voice?

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:11

“Who told you that you were naked?”

We perhaps hear God speaking in an angry tone, which is unfortunate, since the text indicates no such thing.  The fact that no one answers the question should be taken, not as an indication of God’s ‘impatience’, but as representing fearful silence on the part of Adam and Eve.

Who told them that they were naked?  No one, of course; they simply became aware of this terrible fact.  They needed no one to tell them; nor does God need to find out.  Again, I suspect that we tend to hear His following question (“Have you eaten…?”) as God piecing together the crime, but this is clearly absurd.  Why, then, does God ask this?

God does all things for the purpose of teaching and forming His creatures toward fullness of life and understanding.  Adam and Eve, pondering this question, would have to answer as we did above:  “No one told us that we were naked.  We discovered it after eating the fruit.”  It is true: they now know good and evil for themselves.

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Preaching of the Kingdom of God

We certainly need apostles in today’s Church, but what is the Lord Himself actually doing while the Twelve are out preaching?  We are not directly told.  However, in a passage from John’s gospel with many parallels (chh. 15-17), Jesus prays that the Holy Spirit may keep the Apostles in truth.  Rejoicing in the Spirit, He gives thanks to the Father for the mission.  Finally, He prays that all may be one, as He and the Father are one [17: 22].  For this purpose He consecrates Himself by His death, that the Apostles may also be consecrated.

Now, that Jesus may have been praying very much in this vein during the pre-Resurrection mission (surely the model for the post-Pentecost mission!) is confirmed by the following verses in Luke’s gospel.  Upon the return of the seventy, He “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” [10: 21].  This paragraph is known by Biblical scholars as a ‘Johannine logion’, meaning a saying of the Lord’s that sounds like it was transplanted from John’s gospel.  So there is clearly overlap here.

In any case, if we wish to meditate on this mystery in an Incarnational way, we must learn to recapitulate in our own lives the life of Christ.  We must allow for the possibility that our contribution to the Church’s mission might entail the self-immolation that is a life of ceaseless prayer, perhaps even with aspects of the cloister.  Christ is ‘hidden’ during this mission, like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, in order to strengthen the Apostles in a mystical fashion.  We do this when we rejoice in the Holy Spirit, give thanks to the Father, and pray that our leaders in the faith may all be one.

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:5

“God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”

This is perhaps evidence of a primordial fall of ‘the gods’ (the serpent would also be evidence), the fall not recounted directly in Scripture, but referred to by Our Lord (Luke 10: 18).  These ‘gods’ (the Hebrew word elohim can mean either ‘gods’ or ‘God’) wanted knowledge of the forbidden, ultimately so as to go beyond good and evil and establish their own rule against the Creator God.  The serpent, speaking of their eyes being opened, knows of what he speaks.  The fact that he seems not to be dead (at least in a literal, bodily sense) also supports his contention that disobedience will not result in (literal) death.

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Wedding at Cana

Jesus changes water into wine.  I relate to this mystery primarily as a priest, but I think that the overall lesson applies to all.  Those invited to the wedding of the Lamb come to Mass desiring to celebrate, whether fully conscious of this or not.  But they are often held back by various sufferings, confused thoughts and the like.  “They have no wine!” says Holy Mother Church.  Will I be able to offer the spiritual wine fermented by love and unity with Christ, and by personal experience of prayer?  Will the living water of the Word become the wine (say, in the homily) that gladdens men’s hearts?  Perhaps, if I “do everything that Christ tells me.”

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 2:18

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone (ləbddo); I will make him a helper fit (kənegdo) for him.’”

Man’s ‘being alone’ is actually related to the important ‘separating’ (root bdl) that God does ‘in the beginning’.  Man has been separated out, but has no complement, as light has darkness and the sea has the land.  Therefore man’s definition is incomplete; he is an anomaly without a creature ‘fit’ for him.  This fundamental incompleteness of the human person is at the root of the characteristic drive of desire to find one fitting for ourselves—one who, in being opposite to us, matches the aching loneliness and fills it.  We discover eventually that this desire is for God, in Whose image we were created and Whose temples we are meant to be.  In the present, the sacrament of marriage produces the best analogy to the union of God and the soul.  At last, Adam rejoices in seeing not merely flesh of flesh and bone of bone, but subject to subject, desire to desire.

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Baptism of Jesus

Confirmation, also known as chrismation, deepens the Trinitarian imprint on our new lives.  The Holy Spirit descends upon us, and a more ‘public’ mission is enjoined upon us.  Unfortunately, it is rarely understood today in the light of this commissioning.  It is instead understood as a personal choice and commitment.  But when the Holy Spirit descended on Christ, we read nothing of His personal choice.  We see rather the revelation of Who He truly is, and afterward, He is impelled into the desert by the Holy Spirit.  In the sacraments, we are reborn as the ‘real’ person that God intends us to be.  We certainly can refuse, but just as certainly we are not free to cast about for ideas to create our own identity.  If we are earnest about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will find ourselves driven into spiritual combat as Christ was after His reception of the Spirit: a combat from which we are certain to emerge victorious in faith.

Who Gave You This Authority?

The rosary is a quintessential devotional prayer for Catholic laity and even for some religious, and has been for over seven hundred years.  While at first glance, the repetition of Ave Marias can give the impression of the multiplication of words at the expense of genuine devotion, anyone who prays the rosary will tell you that the important activity is not the recitation of the words, but the meditation on the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ.  Busying the lips with familiar words allows the spirit to be freed up to attend to consideration of the meaning of Christ’s presence and action, how His very being communicates God’s love and our salvation.

This is in interesting contrast to a different type of devotion to the Word of God, also edifying in its way.  At some point after the invention of the printing press, someone had the idea to set the words of Jesus in red.  Most of us have seen such versions of the gospel.  What stands out are the teachings of the Lord, and of course these can no more be neglected by Christians than the mysteries of His life.

It happens that the past century and a half have seen the rise of a view of Jesus of Nazareth that exalts Him as a great teacher of wisdom, without admitting to the traditional Christian claims of His divinity.  While it would be an unfair exaggeration to say that ‘red-letter’ gospel editions are the cause of this emphasis on Christ as mere human teacher, they certainly offer support to the idea that what really counts are the teachings.  The signs performed by Jesus, so important especially in John’s gospel, are muted along with the rest of the narrative material.

Yet the authority of Jesus is dependent on just these signs.  De-emphasizing Christ’s mystery has the effect of undermining the legitimacy of the very teachings that the red-letter edition is meant to underline.  Jesus Himself pointed to the necessity of the signs: “Even though you do not believe me, believe the works [that I do], that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” [John 10: 38]

Hence the importance of meditation on the mysteries of the rosary.  Seen in this light, the addition of the Luminous Mysteries by St. John Paul II appears even more providential.  Just those sorts of legitimating moments in the life of Christ are added, particularly the Baptism, the Wedding at Cana and the Transfiguration.  These mysteries of light ‘illuminate’ the mind to ‘know and understand’ that Christ was indeed sent by God the Father.  In turn, this illumination makes it possible for us to accept the ‘hard’ sayings [John 6: 60] and to grow in holiness, growing up to be true ‘spiritual’ men and women, not merely wise in the teachings of the wise, but sanctified in the Truth.

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