The Ark and The Dove

Difference

In light of today's reading, I couldn't help noticing the difference between what it means to say that the Apostles "laid hands" on somebody and that the enemies of the Apostles "laid hands" on somebody.  The contrast is especially vivid in English because "laid" is in English the word you use for both of those things; it translates two different verbs in the Greek (or Latin).

Lacking good fruit

Perhaps today could come to be known as "Cumber-ground Sunday."

The Model Reader of Scripture

I recently ran across an interesting convergence between Umberto Eco's idea of the "model reader" of a text and this writing on how properly to read Sacred Scripture from William of St. Thierry (courtesy of The Pontificator).

From William of Thierry,

The Scriptures need to be read and understood in the same spirit in which they were written. You will never enter into Paul’s meaning until by constant application to reading him and by giving yourself to meditation you have imbibed his spirit. You will never understand David until by experience you have made the very sentiments of the psalms your own. And that applies to all Scripture.

From this paper I happened across online by Prof. Radford of Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.,

There is an important distinction between a Model Reader and an empirical reader. The empirical reader is you, the person next to you on the bus, anyone, when we read a text. Empirical readers can read in many ways, and there is no law that tells them how to read because they often use a text for their own reasons such as escape, entertainment, or killing time on the bus commute. It is impossible to predict with any certainty what the [mental] encyclopedia of any empirical reader will be like, how this text will fit within that encyclopedia, and the uses the encyclopedia will make of this text and the meanings it will take from it. ... You need to recognize and agree to the rules of the particular game I [the text] am playing. As a Model Reader, you will agree to abide by the rules I set in order for you to derive a coherent understanding of me. For example, consider the problem posed by the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.” We know as empirical readers with a particular world knowledge that wolves do not speak. However, as Model Readers we have to agree to live in a world where wolves do speak in order for the tale to make sense. As Model Readers, we must agree to abide by the rules of the fairy tale, where animals speak and grandmothers can be swallowed whole and alive by wolves. As Eco (1992) points out, “every act of reading is a difficult transaction between the competence of the reader (the reader’s world knowledge) and the kind of competence that a given text postulates in order to be read in an economic way” (p. 68).

Of course, for Scripture, being a model reader does not mean merely temporarily stepping into the rules of the game as the Model Reader of a piece of fiction does, but forming one's "world knowledge" by them.  I think that if you search St. Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, you will probably find analogs to many of the Model Reader principles contained in this paper.

Old Books

An American businessman has acquired the oldest known copy of the Gospel of St. Luke and one of the oldest of St. John and donated it to the pope.  The copy, known as "The Bodmer Papyrus" is estimated to date to about A.D. 200.

Audience

Mark's Gospel must have been written with gentile Christians in mind; otherwise I don't suppose he would have had to explain that Bartimaeus was the son of Timaeus.

Today's Gospel

The Gospel reading for the Feast of Christ the King today (well, yesterday by the time you're probably reading this) stops right before Pilate asks Him the big question: "What is truth?"

There's something neat about this passage if you read it in Latin.  "What is truth?" is "Quid est veritas?"  If you rearrange the letters in this question, you can get a good answer: "Est vir qui adest," which means "It is the man who is right here [standing before you]."  Neat, huh?

Observations on today's readings

1st Reading: II John 4-9
1.) "Let us love one another."  This is one of those compact and beautiful statements that if you have only a superficial understanding of it, you think you know all about it, but if you really know, you realize that you may have some grasp on what it means but also that you haven't possibly explored all the implications.  It's like Newton's Second Law in physics.  "F=ma."  Three little symbols, but you could write a whole science textbook on that little equation and not exhaust all of what it implies.  Likewise, "love" in Christianity is so much of a richer concept than can easily be described.

2.) 'Anyone who is so “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God.'  The Latin of the Vulgate is "Omnis, qui ultra procedit et non manet in doctrina Christi, Deum non habet."  This might be translated literally "Every one who proceeds beyond and does not remain in the teaching..."  Whoever was doing the translation of this passage was really on the ball because he realized that what the Beloved Disciple was trying to describe back when this was written has since become a systematized attack on Christianity with its own buzzword, and used that buzzword in an excellent instance of "dynamic equivalence"-style translation properly applied (for once).

Psalm: selection from 119
This is a Psalm of thanksgiving for the Law.  This is the longest Psalm; it has to be something like five pages long.  As Brian observed once, "They must have been really thankful for the Law."  As should we.  Perhaps you recall a NT reading not to long ago (or was it an antiphon) that begged the Lord to "deliver us from all lawlessness."  If you can understand why this is good, you will greatly help yourself in understanding Christianity.

Gospel: Luke 17:29-36
It is worth commenting on the "caught up" thing.  There is confusion about this because there are Protestant groups that are all about "The Rapture" being "Left Behind" etc.  I am sure many Catholics are confused because they don't know about what we teach, except that it must be not whatever they teach.  Then they see passages like this in the Bible and are confused.

Ok, here's how it works.  Q. Do we teach that there is a "Rapture?" ("rapture" - from Latin rapere, to seize, snatch up, carry off)  A. Yes.  Didn't you read this passage?  Jesus will come and some will be "taken up" and others won't.  Q. Then how do those dispensationalist Protestant sects differ from what we teach?   A. They believe that there will be a SECRET rapture a significant amount of time BEFORE the Last Judgment.  The SECRET rapture is the one you always hear about people talking about as "the Rapture" and talk about being "left behind" as in those famous novels of that name.  According to their theory, there will be a secret rapture (what they call "the Rapture") where all the righteous people will be taken and the only thing everyone else will notice is that a lot of people have mysteriously vanished.  Then will come the tribulations, after which some more may be saved.

What will actually happen is that this "taking up" (Rapture, if you will), will come at the Second Coming, at the end of the world, immediately prior to the Last Judgment.  Neither will it be secret.  When Jesus comes it will be a triumphal entry, with "trumpets and the voice of an archangel" as Scripture tells us.  There.  Even if I have made some small errors I think I am substantially accurate, and as usual if there are any errors, please attribute them to ignorance and not to wilful disobedience to the Church.

It's Greek to all of us

I don't know if you are into trying to read the Bible in Greek, but if you are, here is a "passage of the day" tutorial site and a Greek New Testament online, neither of which require you to have Greek fonts.  Not that I'm such a Greek expert, but I'm interested.

The dishonest/prudent steward

That was the Gospel reading for today, as you know if you were at Mass.  I understand that this is widely regarded as a difficult passage to interpret, because it is a parable about a guy who is rewarded  and commended for his sneakiness and dishonesty.

This is my take on it, which will be one of my main interpretations until someone proposes a much better one to me or someone of sufficient authority tells me it's a bad one.  I think, however, it's at least a passable one because it solves the difficulties of the passage, leads to charity, and is in accord with the rule of faith.  I see St. Francis as one of the greatest "dishonest" prudent stewards.

Oftentimes in parables the master of a house is the Lord.  But here I see the rich man as the World.  And so the "dishonesty" of the steward is not to be interpreted as dishonesty in the absolute sense, but only the relative (for instance, a "good" thief in the relative sense means someone who is good at being a thief; a "good" thief in the absolute sense is like St. Dismas).  When you take the world lightly, the world is not very forgiving to you.  But when it calls you to account, instead of trying to make amends with it, give its goods away in acts of mercy and gain the communion and brotherhood of those who are no friends of the rich man.  The world may not be very happy about this, but it can't help but respect you.

In the end, it was prudent to be a bad servant of the world/rich man and rip him off, so to speak, because in the end you won't be judged on how well you served the world.  But the communion of saints, which you gained at the price of some temporary grief from the world - you will value that beyond price.