Monastery of the Holy Cross

Articles under Scripture

The “Crisis” of Candlemas

The month of February, despite its brevity, is full of critical liturgical celebrations. I use the word “critical” in a precise sense: “of, relating to, or being a turning point…” according to Webster’s. These turning points were somewhat more transparent in the old calendar, before the invention of “Ordinary Time.”

Giotto’s rendering of the Presentation

I invite you to consider the feast of the Presentation (or, as it is often traditionally called, “Candlemas”), which we just celebrated this past Tuesday. This celebration falls forty days after Christmas and is rich in symbolic associations. It is the Incarnate Word’s first visit to the temple—his temple. In the hymn at Lauds on February 2, we sang,

“Parentes Christum deferent,
in templo templum offerunt.”

”His parents carry the Christ;
in the temple, they offer the [true] Temple.

Aside from the obvious paradox in this poetic line, there is a quiet allusion to Christ’s Passion. Christ is brought to the temple as an offering, to be redeemed on the same mount where Abraham had nearly sacrificed Isaac to God. Not only that, but in referring to Christ as the Temple, the hymnist surely is reminding us of a different exchange. The new Temple of Christ’s Body is inaugurated and revealed through His death and resurrection [cf. John 2: 19-22].

The Magnificat antiphon at Vespers this evening (taken from the Benedictine lectionary for the office of Vigils) once again uses the word temple, but in yet a different sense. Here is the text in full, from 1 Corinthians 3: 16-17:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.

According to the traditional four senses of Scripture, Herod’s temple is the “literal” temple, and Christ’s body is the temple in the “allegorical” or Christological sense. In this quotation, Saint Paul shows us the “tropological” or moral sense. “You are the temple of God! And the Holy Spirit dwells in you!” Thus, the procession on Candlemas, accompanying Christ to the temple, is, in a sense, a procession inward, to the temple that we are. We carry lighted candles, the illumination of the Holy Spirit, into our hearts where Christ wishes to abide.

Candlemas at the Monastery, February 2, 2020

Again, the beauty of this theological reality is accompanied by a serious challenge for us: that we strive to be more and more faithful to our baptismal vows. After all, in our baptisms, we died to ourselves, and we were conformed to Christ’s own Passion, that we might also be conformed to His Resurrection. If we are, with Christ, the temple of God, then we are also an offering to God. Let us, then, today, rededicate ourselves, to “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God [Romans 12: 1].” In making this effort, we will undoubtedly discover various resistances to this spiritual renewal, and this in turn will help us to craft a realistic and effective ascetical plan for Lent, only eleven days away.

The world needs spiritual pioneers more than ever. Let us accept God’s invitation and join the saints’ procession to the final temple (the “anagogical” temple), the Church Triumphant in heaven.

The Feast of Saint Mark

Choosing my favorite gospel would be a foolhardy task. Each of the four canonical gospels has its profound insights, theogical importance, and literary charms. I do, however, tend to return to Saint Mark in lectio divina. Since he is traditionally identified as a disciple of Saint Peter, perhaps it’s the influence of my patron saint at work (in the First Letter of Peter, the author refers to “my son Mark” [1 Peter 5: 13]). Since today is his feast day, I’d like to share with you some of what makes this gospel special and interesting.

First of all, it is the shortest of the gospels, mostly because Jesus does very little teaching. The breathless story leaps from event to stunning event. Mark resorts often to the word “immediately,” when describing the action. This is probably an allusion to the immediacy of the creation narrative in Genesis 1. God speaks, and things spring into being. Jesus’s speech has the same power and efficacy.

Saint Mark is the patron of Venice, where one finds the famous basilica named after him.

We now know, almost for certain, that the earliest version of Mark’s gospel had no report of the resurrection. The earliest manuscripts lack chapter 16, or have a confused mixture of different resurrection stories which appear to be later insertions. Some critics leverage this fact to claim that there was no resurrection. This begs the question of why Mark would trouble to write a book if nothing special happened after the death of Jesus. Nevertheless, this curious fact demands an explanation. From a purely literary standpoint, Mark’s gospel has no need of an account of the resurrection for several reasons. First of all, he’s writing for insiders who either believe already, or are surrounded by persons who know and retell often the stories of the risen Jesus. There is good reason to think that the Church herself is the presence of the risen Christ in Mark’s worldview (an idea unpacked by my NT professor Deacon Charles Bobertz). Most importantly, in the opening of the gospel, Mark unambiguously announces that Jesus is the Son of God [1: 1]. John the Baptist then prophesies “Prepare the way of the Lord [=God],” just before Jesus arrives. This is followed by Jesus’s baptism, which is a clear anticipation of the resurrection, ascension, and descent of the Holy Spirit: “When he came up [anabainon=”arose”] out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens open (Ascension) and the Spirit descending upon him (the Spirit descending on the Church, which is Christ’s risen body) [Mark 1: 10].”

In fact, the lack of a resurrection narrative strikes me as the foremost instance of one of Mark’s literary innovations, the use of irony as a challenge to the reader or listener. Will I decide for or against Christ? Mark leaves the story unfinished so that we must ask ourselves, “What do I think happened next? Do I believe that the man depicted here is the Son of God Who died for us and rose again?”

This challenge appears in another often-misunderstood episode in Mark’s gospel:

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. [Mark 10: 17-18]

Hasty readers often paraphrase Jesus’s words to mean, “Why are you calling me good? I’m not God after all.” But what if the Lord’s question is not rhetorical? Jesus, like a good rabbi, has proposed a syllogism to the man. The major premise is that only God is good; the minor premise is the fact that the man called Jesus good. Will the man draw out the implication of his own words and recognize Jesus as God? Or is the man is only calling Jesus good to flatter him? Either way, the question goes unanswered. The man’s dejected response to Jesus’s later invitation to follow Him demonstrates a blinding attachment to the world. As a result, he lacked the insight to grasp the question that Jesus posed. It’s as if he didn’t even hear it. Will I avoid that mistake?

Mark’s use of irony helps to answer yet another famous conundrum. At the end of Mark’s gospel, the only words that Jesus utters from the Cross are slightly scandalous: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? [15: 34]” This verse is again used as supposed evidence that Jesus did not anticipate his resurrection, and that he had been mistaken in trusting God. In short, it is the clincher that Jesus is not the Son of God, and that the divine “Jesus of faith” is a later fabrication of the Church. How ironic, then, that the centurion standing at the foot of the Cross does identify him! “And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was a son of God!’ [15: 39–my translation]” Once again, Mark depicts the scene with heavy irony; an anonymous pagan soldier has more insight into the identity of Jesus than anyone else. Whose vision do I share?

To understand the real import of Jesus’s words from the Cross, we should look to their source, Psalm 22 [21 in the Vulgate]. This poignant, beautiful poem chanted every Sunday in the monastery is a classic example of a lament. The Psalmist describes merciless attacks by enemies, disease, and wild animals as an anticipation of death and abandonment by God. Mark alludes to two prophecies from this Psalm: “they have pierced my hands and my feet [v. 16],” and “they divide my clothing among them [v. 18–cf. Mark 15: 24].”

A Coptic icon of Saint Mark, traditionally the founder of the church in Alexandria, Egypt.

Next we should note the amazing reversal that takes place in this Psalm. After twenty plus verses of agony, a light begins to appear:

You who fear the Lord, praise him!…For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him….All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the famlies of the nations shall worship before him. [vv. 23a, 24, 27]

I could easily have quoted more, but the point is that the reversal that takes place in Psalm 22 is foreshadowing of the resurrection from the dead (the great Jewish Biblical scholar Jon D. Levenson corroborates this reading, especially in his book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel). Moreover, the result of this resurrection is that not only Israel worships the One True God; all nations are gathered to God. Saint Mark, probably writing around the year 70 A.D. in Rome, can point to his own mixed congregation as proof that the prophecy of this Psalm has been fulfilled by Jesus, who quoted its opening lines in the inaugurating moment of salvation.

The evangelist John, writing much later (and it’s hard say whether he knows Mark’s gospel), perfects these techniques of irony, but it is Mark who first seized on this procedure to press his readers toward the crucial moment of decision. The urgency of this gospel speaks to us at every moment. Am I one who witnesses to Christ’s identity by my own life? Am I like the rich young man who wants reassurance from Christ but refuses the act of faith that would alter my world? Is my faith in need of strengthening, such as the blind man whose initial cure allowed him only partial vision [Mark 8: 22-26]? Once you’ve finished reading Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, maybe Mark’s gospel will provide the comfort and challenge fit for the moment.

The Presentation

About twenty years ago, when I was a junior monk, Abbot Lawrence O’Keefe, a noted scripture expert, preached our annual retreat. At one point, he made a curious remark. The fifth Joyful Mystery is the Presentation, but he said that it really ought to be classified as a Sorrowful Mystery. Understanding why requires a bit of excavating of this interesting episode from Luke’s gospel.

The tenth plague, the one that finally convinced Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to flee Egypt, was the killing of the first-born. All throughout Egpyt, all offspring that “opened the womb,” including those of livestock, fell prey to the Angel of Death. God made a distinction, however, between the Egyptians and the Israelites, and spared the first-born of the enslaved people. Before that fateful night, God gave an indication about one important consequence. Since God spared the first-born of the Israelites, these all belonged to Him. “Whatever is first to open the womb…is mine [Exodus 13: 2].” Later, at Mount Sinai, God’s claim becomes even stronger: “The first-born of your sons you shall give to me [Exodus 22: 29].” As the great Jewish scripture scholar Jon Levenson has pointed out, this is clearly a commandment to sacrifice the first-born son, after the pattern of Abraham’s testing in Genesis 22. Later still, God mitigates the harshness of this command, allowing first-born sons to be redeemed rather than sacrificed. “All the first-born of your sons you shall redeem [Exodus 34: 20].”

Saint Luke is actually combining several events in his recounting of the Presentation (this is the reason that feast was previously known as the Purification of the Virgin; mothers underwent a period of ritual impurity after childbirth). Let me return to focus on the “sorrowful” aspect of this mystery. Jesus Christ is not only the Virgin Mary’s first-born Son; He is God the Father’s first-born Son. From His conception, He belongs to God, and the redemption that Joseph and Mary offer merely delays the final gift that Jesus will make to Father by offering His life on the Cross. Today’s celebration foreshadows Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion and consecrates the child Jesus to the Father.

Let’s turn to another aspect of this mystery. When the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 587 B.C., the ark of the covenant, the sign of God’s presence, was removed from the temple. What happened to it remains an unsolved riddle–Indiana Jones notwithstanding. When the temple was rebuilt, the ark was no longer in the Holy of Holies (when the Roman general Pompey entered the Holy of Holies after taking Jerusalem in 63 B.C., he was puzzled to find it empty of any idols or statues). God was not entirely absent; nor had He fully returned after His dramatic departure narrated at the beginning of Ezekiel’s prophecy, dating from the Babylonian captivity. The prophet Malachi, writing perhaps in the fifth century B.C., indicated the God would suddenly appear in the temple. In the arrival of the Virgin Mary and the boy Jesus, the early Church saw the return of the true Ark of the Covenant (the Mother of God, whose womb was God’s resting place for nine months), and the sudden arrival of God in His temple. The long exile of the chosen people was finally ended, that moment that holy Simeon and Anna had awaited with such love for God.

The Wedding of the Lamb

In the first antiphon of First Vespers,* this arrival is seen as the consummation of the marriage covenant into which God had entered with Israel. Now, if we remember back to the Exodus, and God’s claim on all first-born sons, we see that this espousal is intimately connected with Christ’s self-offering on the Cross. He returns to claim His bride, at the cost of His own blood. There is indeed a certain sorrow to this, but it is that of those who sow in tears, only to reap in joy. In the Presentation is encapsulated the whole of the story of salvation. God the Father, in receiving back the Son of Mary, liberates not only Israel, but through her all humanity, and not from political slavery in Egypt, but from spiritual slavery to sin. It is significant that, at Mass tomorrow, we will bear candles in procession, just as we will at the Easter Vigil. It is one and the same Passover that we celebrate, from differing perspectives. As such, today’s feast marks the perfect nodal point between the Incarnation and Christmas, and the Paschal Triduum that looms in the future.

 

* This antiphon begins (in translation): “Adorn your bridal chamber, O Zion, and receive Christ the king…”

Understanding Christ’s Kingship

The concept of kingship, considered throughout history and in multiple cultural contexts, varies quite a bit. Contemporary Americans tend to equate kings with tyrannical figures wielding huge amounts of arbitrary governmental power, whether it be the power of taxation exercised unhappily by George III at the expense of the Colonies, or the power of complete policy control as brandished by the Sun King, Louis XIV (“I am the state,” “L’état, c’est moi,” was his memorable way of expressing it).

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Which Questions Should We Ask?

Why a blog on a monastery website? It could be used to share monastic spirituality, and I do hope to cover that. The seniors in our community teach monastic spirituality to the novices and juniors regularly. Thus, not only our own experience of prayer, work and silence should offer some fresh insights on Christian discipleship, but we should also be somewhat experienced in teaching this perspective to others.

What I have discovered, however, is that the spirit of monasticism can be misunderstood,

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