I’ve seen this meme pop up more frequently latey. Although I have seen versions of this going back to pretty much when the term selfie came into use.
Today I realized Mary used the first Instagram filter with “indigenous women” mode.
Setting the scene from what would have been last week’s Gospel reading if not for the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, Jesus is preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum using realist language telling his followers that they would have to eat his body and drink his blood to have life in them. (John 6:51–58)
In Leviticus 17:11–12 it says:
For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.
So it is no wonder in the first line of this reading many of his disciples call this a hard saying that it can’t be listened to. The realist language Jesus used did not leave room for a metaphorical interpretation. When Jesus did use hyperbolic or metaphorical language in the past the disciples were generally aware of it. When the Apostles were confused on such interpretations, Jesus corrected them such as in the case when they misunderstood the leaven of the Pharisees.
When Jesus ask them if they take offense at this, once again Jesus is referencing the Israelites in the wilderness and their grumbling in connection with the manna. He is not asking them what point must be clarified. Over the course of this discourse Jesus has been ratcheting up his language, not softening it. To think that this was only meant to be symbolic is to say Jesus was aware of their grumbling, but as a teacher failed to correct their misunderstanding.
Instead Jesus asks them a rhetorical question, “what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Jesus is pointing to his divinity and the fact of his authority. That he has the ability to carry out what he says and that they had to lay down their previous understanding in light of this fact. How often do we think we understand something and its limits and when confronted by something that seemingly contradict this, we are not open to new information. The false conservatism of “this is how we have always done it.”
Chrysostom. (Hom. xlvii. 2.) He does not add difficulty to difficulty, but to convince them by the number and greatness of His doctrines. For if He had merely said that He came down from heaven, without adding any thing further, he would have offended His hearers more; but by saying that His flesh is the life of the world, and that as He was sent by the living Father, so He liveth by the Father; and at last by adding that He came down from heaven, He removed all doubt. Nor does He mean to scandalize His disciples, but rather to remove their scandal. For so long as they thought Him the Son of Joseph, they could not receive His doctrines; but if they once believed that He had come down from heaven, and would ascend thither, they would be much more willing and able to admit them.
Catena Aurea
Verse 63: “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” For modern ears this phrase seems to give an out regarding the realism of what Jesus was teaching. Partly because in more modern parlance “spirit” can imply a symbolic underpinning. Spirit is never used in this way in scripture. Brant Pitre says: “For First Century Jews, and for Christians throughout all of history, the Spirit is not less real than the material, it’s more real than the material because God himself is pure spirit.”
It is odd to think of Jesus as a teacher who would spend so much time building up the language regarding consuming his body and blood and then to dispel it all in one sentence. “I’m just kidding guys!” Besides if this was true, why would so many disciples still leave if he had actually dispelled them of their misunderstanding? The next point is that when Jesus speaks of the flesh being of no avail. He is not speaking of his flesh as he specifically used “his flesh” multiple times in this discourse. The flesh [ho sarx] is more properly understood as judging by appearances or by the standards of the fallen world. Anybody who believes that Jesus death on the cross is salvific acknowledges that his flesh was indeed of avail to us.
Chrysostom. (Hom. xlvii. 3.) He does not speak of His own flesh, but that of the carnal hearer of His word. [
Catena Aurea
One of the foremost ways to understand what God is teaching us is with humility. Case in point is Peter’s answer to this question from Jesus.
67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
If we start from the premise to reject what we don’t understand, we have just made our world much smaller and inverse connected to the circumference of our ego. St. John Henry Newman said in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.” It is fine to wrestle with difficulties and have plenty of questions regarding what we do not understand. Those that walked away did not have this humility thinking they already knew the answer and actively doubted Jesus’ words. Peter here is showing a humility he did not show in other places were he would restrict what God can and can’t do. He is being guided by the Holy Spirit here.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. John] ↩
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 12 August 2021 to 18 August 2021.
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I also post at Jimmy Akin’s blog.
Angelus
General Audiences
Messages
Papal Tweets
- “With the help of young people and their innovative spirit, we can make the dream come true of a world where bread, water, medicine and work flow abundantly and reach those most in need first. #YouthDay” @Pontifex 12 August 2021
- “Prayer is vital for life: just as we cannot live without breathing, so we cannot be Christians without praying.” @Pontifex 13 August 2021
- “There is no better way to pray than to place oneself like Mary in an attitude of openness, with a heart open to God: ‘Lord, what you want, when you want, and how you want’.” @Pontifex 14 August 2021
- “Mary’s secret is humility. It is her humility that attracted God’s gaze to her. Today, looking at Mary #assumed into heaven, we can say that humility is the way that leads to Heaven. #Angelus” @Pontifex 15 August 2021
- “#LetUsPray for Afghanistan, so that the clamour of weapons might cease and solutions can be found at the table of dialogue. Only thus can the battered population of that country return to their own homes and live in peace.” @Pontifex 15 August 2021
- “#LetUsPray also for Haiti. I want to express my closeness to the dear people hard hit by the earthquake. May the solidarity of all alleviate the consequences of the tragedy!” @Pontifex 15 August 2021
- “Let us remember those who cannot go on vacation. I think especially of the ill, the elderly, the incarcerated, the unemployed, refugees and all those who are alone or in difficulty. May Mary extend her maternal protection over each one of you.” @Pontifex 15 August 2021
- “God does not come to free us from our ever-present daily problems, but to free us from the real problem, which is the lack of love. This is the main cause of our personal, social, international and environmental ills. Thinking only of ourselves: this is the father of all evils.” @Pontifex 17 August 2021
- “Vaccination is a simple way of promoting the common good and caring for each other, especially the most vulnerable.” @Pontifex 18 August 2021
- “It is good for us to ask ourselves if we still live in the period in which we need the Law (cfr Gal 3:23–25), or if instead we are fully aware of having received the grace of becoming children of God so as to live in love. ” @Pontifex 18 August 2021
Papal Instagram
After recording The Journey Home there was a kind of a lightning round where I was asked quick questions by John Matthew Swaim and Seth Paine.
This is a short video of my answer when asked about G.K. Chesterton.
How far can we torture St. Joseph to sell our house?I have been very annoyed by the whole bury a St. Joseph statue to sell your house idea. Even more annoyed to see these kits sold in Catholic stores.
I once wrote a parody that included the idea where you could buy a Jack Bauer and St. Joseph pack and have Jack torture St. Joe until your house sells. While this is a parody form of Reductio ad absurdum, it follows the same logic.
I think of Saint Teresa of Avila relying on this great saint without ever resorting to burying him at all.
“Would that I could persuade all men to be devout to this glorious saint,” wrote St. Teresa in her autobiography, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel, “for I know by long experience what blessings he can obtain for us from God.”
“It is now very many years since I began asking him for something on his feast, and I always received it,” wrote St. Teresa. “If the petition was in any way amiss, he rectified it for my greater good.” source
Just a taste from an excellent post by Amy Welborn titled It’s not the reverence; It’s the ego:
I’m going to suggest that the core of what drives people crazy (in a bad way) about the celebration of this Mass is the always-present-fear that when you open the door and sit down in that pew, you are never quite sure if what’s about to happen might involve you being subject to surprise attacks and being held hostage by someone’s ego.
You go to Mass with your hopes, joys and fears. You’re there carrying sadness and grief, questions, doubts and gratitude and peace. You’re bringing it all to God in the context of worship, worship that you trust will link you, assuredly to Christ – to Jesus, the Bread of Life, to His redeeming sacrifice. That in this moment, you’ll be joined to the Communion of Saints, you’ll get a taste of the peace that’s promised to the faithful after this strange, frustrating life on earth is over.
And what do you get?
Who knows. From week to week, from place to place, who knows.
Who knows what the personality of the celebrant will impose on the ritual. Will it be jokes? Will it be a 40-minute homily? Will it be meaningful glances and dramatic pauses? Will it be the demand for the congregation to repeat the responses because they weren’t enthusiastic enough?
This puts very succinctly what I have experienced myself when I travelled more widely in parishes in my diocese and to other places. A hesitancy towards what you are about to experience. Almost a relief at the end of Mass to have experienced nothing out of the ordinary at all. A rather miserable way to look at Mass with a complacency to the Mass as being the source and summit of our faith.
Sometimes it seems the message of some priests is contrary to John the Baptist with them indicating “I must increase.” Or you get the feeling that some other person or group have imposed themselves on how Mass is celebrated at that parish.
Amy puts this all and more very well in her post. I really like that her occasional posts on the subject are not part of the liturgy wars trying to contrast one Mass against the other. That they are observations and not mandates about what will fix everything.
What especially struck me when I read this the other day was that earlier the same day I read a section from Benedict XVI’s apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis.
Certainly the ordained minister also acts “in the name of the whole Church, when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the eucharistic sacrifice.”53 As a result, priests should be conscious of the fact that in their ministry they must never put themselves or their personal opinions in first place, but Jesus Christ. Any attempt to make themselves the center of the liturgical action contradicts their very identity as priests. The priest is above all a servant of others, and he must continually work at being a sign pointing to Christ, a docile instrument in the Lord’s hands. This is seen particularly in his humility in leading the liturgical assembly, in obedience to the rite, uniting himself to it in mind and heart, and avoiding anything that might give the impression of an inordinate emphasis on his own personality. I encourage the clergy always to see their eucharistic ministry as a humble service offered to Christ and his Church. The priesthood, as Saint Augustine said, is amoris officium,54 it is the office of the good shepherd, who offers his life for his sheep (cf. John 10:14–15).
Plus for the time being I am rather settled in my daily liturgical life where I don’t have that fear that I am going to experience the priest’s ego and not the Logos. So I count myself privileged to be currently in this situation.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 8 August 2021 to 11 August 2021.
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I also post at Jimmy Akin’s blog.
Angelus
General Audiences
Papal Tweets
- “In #TheGospelOfTheDay (Jn 6:41–51), Jesus reveals Himself as the Bread of life. For He alone nourishes the soul, He alone makes us feel loved even if everyone else disappoints us, He alone gives us the strength to love and forgive in difficulties, He alone gives eternal life.” @Pontifex 8 August 2021
- “God does not come in extraordinary events, but works amid the apparent monotony of our daily life, in the frequently dull rhythm of our activities, in the little things that, working with tenacity and humility, we achieve in our efforts to do his will.” @Pontifex 10 August 2021
- “The external law cannot bring life because it does not change the heart. The radical newness of the Christian life is life according to the Holy Spirit who frees us from the law and at the same time brings it to fulfilment in the commandment of love. #GeneralAudience” @Pontifex 11 August 2021
Papal Instagram
So I have been going through G.K. Chesterton’s “St. Thomas Aquinas” again since it is the next book we are looking at as part of our local Chesterton society.
The first chapter “On Two Friars” is superb with the comparisons between St. Aquinas (sometimes St. Dominic) and St. Francis.
I have repeated the following quote quite a lot over the last two decades and it is nice to see I usually quoted it correctly.
“It is an old story that, while we may need somebody like Dominic to convert the heathen to Christianity, we are in even greater need of somebody like Francis, to convert the Christians to Christianity.”
Still, the image I have in mind of the comparisons between Francis and Aquinas is of St. Laurel and Hardy. This kind of works on some levels.
I also enjoyed this point:
“St. Francis is called humane because he tried to convert Saracens and failed; St. Dominic is called bigoted and besotted because he tried to convert Albigensians and succeeded.”
Along with this analysis:
“St. Thomas takes the view that the souls of all the ordinary hard-working and simple-minded people are quite as important as the souls of thinkers and truth-seekers; and he asks how all these people are possibly to find time for the amount of reasoning that is needed to find truth. The whole tone of the passage shows both a respect for scientific enquiry and a strong sympathy with the average man. His argument for Revelation is not an argument against Reason; but it is an argument for Revelation. The conclusion he draws from it is that men must receive the highest moral truths in a miraculous manner; or most men would not receive them at all. His arguments are rational and natural; but his own deduction is all for the supernatural; and, as is common in the case of his argument, it is not easy to find any deduction except his own deduction. And when we come to that, we find it is something as simple as St. Francis himself could desire; the message from heaven; the story that is told out of the sky; the fairytale that is really true.”
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 6 July 2021 to 4 August 2021.
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I also post at Jimmy Akin’s blog.
Angelus
General Audiences
Homilies
Messages
Papal Tweets
- “The Lord is aware of all that we have been through in this time. He is close to those who felt isolated and alone, feelings that became more acute during the pandemic. He is not indifferent to this. #IamWithYouAlways” @Pontifex 23 July 2021
- “The Lord is always close to us: through new invitations, new words, with His consolations. The Lord is eternal. He never, ever retires. #IamWithYouAlways” @Pontifex 24 July 2021
- ““I am with you always” are the words as Bishop of Rome, elderly person like you, want to address to you on the first World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly. The Church is close to you, to us. She loves you and doesn’t want to leave you alone! #IamWithYouAlways
@laityfamilylife” @Pontifex 25 July 2021 - “The significance of this Day is that every grandfather and grandmother, every older person, especially those among us who are most alone, might be visited by an angel! #IamWithYouAlways
@laityfamilylife” @Pontifex 25 July 2021 - “Dear grandparents, what is our vocation today, at our age? To preserve our roots, to pass on the faith to the young and to care for the little ones. Let’s never forget this. #IamWithYouAlways
@laityfamilylife” @Pontifex 25 July 2021 - “It would be good to ask ourselves every day: “What do I bring to Jesus today?”. He can do a lot with one of our prayers, with a gesture of charity for others. This is how God loves to act: He does great things, starting from those small things. #GospelOfTheDay (Jn 6:1–15)” @Pontifex 25 July 2021
- “In this time of pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics are a sign of hope, a sign of universal brotherhood marked by a healthy competitive spirit. #Tokyo2020” @Pontifex 25 July 2021
- “On this #WorldDayAgainstTraffickingInPersons, I invite everyone to work together with the victims to transform the economy of trafficking into an economy of care. #CareAgainstTrafficking #EndHumanTrafficking #TalithaKum” @Pontifex 30 July 2021
- “The invitation in the #GospelOfTheDay (Jn 6:24–35) is this: rather than being concerned only with material bread, let us welcome Jesus as the bread of life and, starting out from our friendship with Him, learn to love each other. Freely and without calculation.” @Pontifex 1 August 2021
- “Let us pray for the Church, that she may receive from the Holy Spirit the grace and strength to reform herself in the light of the Gospel. []” @Pontifex 3 August 2021
- “The Gospel is the Good News and the force that changes our lives and hearts for the better. For this I ask you to read the Gospel every day and meditate on a short passage to be nourished from this inexhaustible source of salvation. #GeneralAudience” @Pontifex 4 August 2021
- “Let us #PrayTogether for all priests so that, following the example of #SaintJohnVianney, they may bring to all their brothers and sisters in difficulty the living Gospel of their witness of love, mercy, and solidarity.” @Pontifex 4 August 2021
- “Today, a year after the terrible port explosion in the capital Beirut, I appeal to the international community to offer #Lebanon concrete assistance in undertaking a journey of “resurrection”, so that Lebanon may once more be a message of peace and fraternity.” @Pontifex 4 August 2021
Papal Instagram