The Finding in the Temple

Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety." And he said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and men. 

--Luke 2:41-52

It's not entirely clear from the passage, but the first line implies that Mary and Joseph went up to Jerusalem alone in past years. I find that reassuring. Even the parents of Jesus needed to get away sometimes, to go and pray alone together, to take a trip and leave the little second person of the Trinity with one of the numerous relatives or acquaintances.

I like young Jesus. His answer to Mary isn't sass, nor is it only understandable on a deeper spiritual level. He's being entirely divine, and entirely a smart kid. When he finds himself alone in Jerusalem, he goes to the most obvious place (he believes) his parents would look for him: the temple. And he stays there until they come. So when Mary tells him that she and Joseph had been all over the place looking for him, he's understandably flummoxed. Why'd you do that, Mom? Couldn't you guess I'd have been here all the time, waiting for you? Why did you look anywhere else? It's just the answer a bright twelve-year-old would give, completely plausible on the literal surface level, and precisely the sort of story a mother would keep in her heart and recount years later when asked for memories of her son.

A Catholic Goes to Backyard Bible Camp

Some new neighbors down the street were hosting Backyard Bible Camp, a truncated version of Vacation Bible School, and I sent the kids down last week. I went, as a youngster growing up in the Bible Belt, to VBS for several years, and still remember a few of the songs from the year the theme was "Joy Trek". ("Only one came back, only one came back, only one came back to say thank you to the Lord!") There was always the mildly strange element of being a Catholic kid in a predominantly Protestant group, but the strangeness was of the three-headed calf variety: more an oddity than a horror. And then there was the time my siblings and I were part of the cast of Kids Praise! 2, a musical featuring a big blue talking (and singing) Bible who put kids through their memorization paces. This is primarily memorable for me not for the theological content but because I first experienced the thrill of being in the theatrical clutch: one of the kids forgot a line which was necessary for moving the action forward; after an awkward pause, I stepped forward and delivered it, the show went on, and no one congratulated me for saving the day because from the audience it only looked like I had forgotten my own line and delivered it a beat too late.

So last week was full of songs, verse memorization, and games. Helping the kids memorize their verses was a cinch: I made it to Guards in AWANA back in the late '80s, so "God is my refuge and my strength; an ever-present help in time of trouble" (Ps. 46:1) rolled trippingly off my tongue as if I learned it yesterday. But the songs, oh, the songs! Christian faux-pop tarted up with the nasal stylings of auto-tuned teens wailing about how my God will meet all your needs. My girls, natural mimics all, had learned their verse after listening to their take-home CD the first day, but were also imitating the bad musicality of the singers. I don't care how catchy the songs are; I'm throwing the thing out because I can't stand much more of it. The message is good, true, and beautiful; the presentation? Killing me.

Watching Bible Camp from the outside was intriguing, as I watched most of the kids from the block file in each morning and recite (or not) their memory verses, urged on by the enthusiastic candy-wielding teenagers from my neighbor's Evangelical church. There are varying levels of religious observance on the street, and some children barely know what a bible is, let alone who Jesus is. Many of the parents were desperate for an hour and a half of daycare at the end of the summer. (I'm guilty as charged; I hadn't really considered sending the kids down to Bible Camp until I was so hard-up for quiet homeschool planning time that I would have let them beat each other with sticks outside if they would just leave me alone.) I wondered how effective an introduction to the Christian life it was to hand out isolated bible verses to those who have no basis for crediting anything the Bible says. I don't know; I'm not trying to be snide or dismissive of the clear and joyful effort put into the whole project. The parable of the sower and the seeds did become a running meditation for me all week: the soil must be prepared if the word is to be accepted and take root, and it seems to me that part of that preparation is that an appeal to the authority of the Bible must be grounded in the necessity of the search for God. The existence of the Bible, as a physical object, is incontrovertible, but its authority rests on establishing that God has indeed chosen this means of communicating Himself to man, something that gets circular when using the Bible to establish itself as such. The urge for God, or the search for meaning in life has resonance even to children, even outside of any established religious convention. Does this need to be explored, or even touched on, for scripture memorization to take on any significance other than a means to candy?

"He then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety." 

I know that the format of Catholic basic religious education for children has altered greatly since my days of atrocious catechesis in CCD. I can still remember the Silver Burdett books used for sacrament prep in second grade: banal and blithely content-free. From teaching second-grade classes at church when Eleanor was preparing for her first communion three years ago, I know that even the poorer textbooks under consideration made more of an effort to communicate a Catholic worldview, even if their paucity of vocabulary meant that the mass was described as a "celebration!" on every other page. I know that the catechism format of question-and-answer is having a bit of a revival, even if the questions are a bit simplistic. I celebrate this, if you will, because the catechism format gives a philosophical underpinning to the Catholic life. The traditional first question we ask children: "Why did God make me?" has several different answers, depending on the source consulted; the versions I memorized were "God made me to know, love, and serve him, and to be happy with him in heaven" and "God made me to show forth his goodness and to be happy with him in heaven". This kind of questioning, introducing children to the broader world of ideas and of an examined life (Why did God make me? Why did God make anything? What does the answer to this question say about the way that I should live my life?), starts to build an awareness of God and our life in him that is enhanced, transformed, and directed by the Bible; fed and enriched by the sacraments; encouraged and sustained by the Churches Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant.

I love this rich, multi-layered religion, and I love the the simple beginning. "Why did God make me?" isn't a just Catholic question, nor even a Christian one, but thanks to centuries of theological and philosophical tradition, and generations of systematic childhood catechesis, we OWN it.

But this isn't an infallible approach, if presented only as information. Generations of poorly-educated Catholics and Protestant converts can attest to that. So what's the answer? I don't know. All I can say is that I find more and more that I am Roman Catholic, not just by birth but by temperament as well as theological and philosophical inclination. The flatter spiritual approach of Protestantism is not for me, nor is it something I desire for my children, no matter how grateful I am for free babysitting. But I am grateful for it, and I hope that the zeal my neighbor shows bears fruit, and that the word so enthusiastically scattered will take root even in imperfectly tended soil.

The Elder Son

Some fiction for your Friday...

Yes, well. Of course you know the story, the story of my younger brother, in which I play the foil's part. Advanced inheritance; dissolution: wine, women, gambling, banquets, all the usual; money exhausted; the dramatic return; and his father's -- our father's -- joyful forgiveness. It's not a story, I realize, in which I come off well. I assure you I'm at least self aware enough to know that. I'm not here to make excuses. The grand emotional appeals have always been my brother's forte anyway. And at this remove, however much I may see myself as the hero of my own story, I know that it is my brother who holds a special appeal to people.

He, of course, is telling no stories now. He is in that eternal moment which needs no telling and is untellable. While I, always ahead and so always behind, am here to talk to you.

You will be thinking, by now, that I am "just" a fictional character. That would, I sometimes think in my still unperfected state, have been a comfort. Then I would have been "the elder son" and nothing more. But no. I am as real as any other invention of the divine mind. And so, naturally, my brother and I were followers of the Savior. Yes, me too. I could always be relied on to keep the accounts and purchase food to be distributed to the widows and orphans, to re-read the letters of the Apostles to the children or the catechumens and offer up my own -- perhaps over-smug -- thoughts on them. I was a linchpin, invaluable for my organizational skills, if I may so confess. And my brother. Well, he stole the money from the charitable purse -- no, not for the reason I've let you think, for a satisfying moment, by saying that. He stole the money and gave it all away at once. My weekly distributions were so orderly, but he gave it all away. I, on the other hand, worried about how we'd find the money to feed the widows the next week.

I clung to system and sense and frowned on those who were swept away by their feelings about the Savior -- in part because I have seldom been blessed with any such feelings myself. I could fast and give away my possessions with the best of them, but unlike the best of them I did so because I thought it was the right thing, not because I believed it was.

Thinking. Calculating. Reasoning. These were the things I was comfortable with. And the regularity of discipline. When the persecutions came, under Nero, I organized our community. I planned a new meeting place each week, secret passwords, people were not to go about in groups, no strangers to be admitted. I was determined not to lose a single one of those entrusted to my care. And my brother. He had a different determination. He was determined to preach the faith to the legionaries.

Well. That worked out. And if there's any single thing I can be proud of it's that when dragged before the governor I did not deny the Savior. Though I soiled myself while remaining silent. And bit my tongue quite viciously.

My brother prayed for our persecutors as we hung there. I cursed them, and shouted that the Romans had no business in Judea, that we were a free people and would always be such even if only in the freedom of death. His grand gesture was more in keeping with our maker than was mine. I'm sure that when he saw The Presence, he rushed forward, impulsive and childish as he always was. I held back, not turning away from that I longed for, but too proud to rush forward when I could have wished that someone, at last, would rush to me and say, "Welcome back, my favorite son."

And so here, neither coming nor going, I stay. Waiting. Trying to bend my will I thought so well-formed so that it will conform to the One which it loves imperfectly.

Perhaps, if you find time -- I can't say that I'm the most exciting project, I understand that there are far more who hold out hope for Judas or for Nero than for me, if only because so few know that I am something other than "a parable" -- dispatch a prayer or two for me. That some day I can overcome my wish that He would recognize how hard I've worked in my stolid way for him, and instead rush forward myself as my brother did so long ago and say, "Father, I have sinned."

Who Killed Christ

When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all, but that a riot was breaking out instead, he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood. Look to it yourselves."

And the whole people said in reply, "His blood be upon us and upon our children."

Then he released Barabbas to them, but after he had Jesus scourged, he handed him over to be crucified.
Matthew 27:24-27

These short lines have, through the fallen nature of humanity, caused their fair share of trouble over the centuries. The gospel message, through primarily one of hope and redemption, contains one dark undertone: Christ died for our sins. The one truly perfect being suffered horrifically because of our too clear imperfection.

It is in our nature to shy away from that which is unpleasant, and so it is perhaps no surprise that throughout history some Christians have attempted to assuage their own consciences by pointing the finger of blame at an obvious target: the Jews.

The fact, clearly stated in the gospel accounts, that it was the Jews who turned Christ over to be killed, and that Jews in Europe lived as a people set apart from the rest of the population, made them a good target against which to shift any blame one might feel for Christ's suffering. Or perhaps the gospel account simply provided a good excuse for the all too universal desire to cultures to treat minorities badly.

Either way, there is unquestionably a history in Christianity of the thousand years or more of Christians at times treating Jews badly and using the above statement of accountability as an excuse.

In recent times, rightly seeking to avoid any anti-Semitism, some have found a new scapegoat for the crucifixion: the Roman authorities. According to this narrative, which seems popular both with those who like to think of themselves as wise enough to know what is really going on between the lines of scripture and those who consider themselves particularly adept at critiquing civil authority from a religious perspective, the real motive force behind Christ's execution was the civil authorities. Christ preached a message of radical liberation, and this threatened the political and economic status quo, so the Roman authorities killed him. However, by the time the Gospel writers sat down to write their accounts, they found it expedient to gloss over the fault of the Roman authorities and lay blame on the Jews -- thus making nice with the Romans and scapegoating a people already on the outs with the empire.

Since I had run across this latter view several times this year, but on articles in the press and in online conversations, I had it in mind as I was re-reading the Passion narratives during Holy Week this year. That one can find no basis for it in the Gospels themselves is, of course, accounted for by the theory itself, yet it struck me with renewed force that this approach to the question, "Who killed Christ?" is really no different in its failures that the anti-Semitic one.

In both cases, the answer is effectively stated as: the other. The Jews. The oppressive authorities. Anyone but me.

The real answer to the question, "Who killed Christ?" is: We did.

As the Gospel accounts tell us, a mob of Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover were stirred up by the Temple elders to call for Jesus' death, until the Roman authorities gave in to avoid a riot. Yet the meaning of this is not to be found in identifying some particular ethnic group or power structure to blame. Rather, we must think about who the Jews were, God's chosen people. The people who called out, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" were the only people in the world to whom God's law and prophesies had been revealed.

As Christians we believe that we now possess the fullness of God's revelation. We are God's people. Pius XI wrote, "Spiritually we are all Semites." And it should serve as a reminder to us of how right belief is no guarantee against pride or evil action. The leaders who called for the crucifixion were, like us, people who were the keepers of God's revelation on earth.

The Dishonest Steward

While I'm on a scripture kick...

Something struck me last week while listening to the gospel on the dishonest steward -- a parable that's always a bit troublesome. The question that one struggles with is: Why exactly is this fellow being held up as an example for defrauding his master in a totally self-interested way -- though it helps others in the process?

Well, how exactly would a dishonest steward have been living it up all this time? He's been stealing from his master's property (treating it as if it's his own to spend) and also defrauding his master's tenants by demanding more from them than the master is actually asking for. With a lord who wasn't around much, a dishonest steward could practically live at the level of nobility. After all, he had all the resources of a noble estate to work from.

So this defrauding is hardly new. The steward has been defrauding both master and tenants for years in order to line his own pockets. But what happens when the steward learns that the audit is coming? He knows he can't conceal all the wrongs he has done. And he knows that even if he steals one last big amount, he might get it taken from him, and it wouldn't last the rest of his life anyway. So what does he do? The man who has always taken everything for himself starts giving away to others.

The point being, that if even someone who had previously stolen everything not nailed down could suddenly discover generosity when it came down to it -- why don't we do the same when we think that "you can't take it with you"?

Maybe nothing very new, but somehow it "clicked" for me in that sense in a way it hadn't before.

The Lady and the Beast

A couple readers have asked that I go ahead and post some notes from the presentation of sorts that I put together for bible study last night on the Whore of Babylon. Notes is probably putting things a little strongly for what I walked into the room with, but I'll try to organize and put up here what I came up with.

First, on the more general principles we've been working on, and which I'm getting primarily from our assistant pastor (who's led half the sessions) and also from Sacra Pagina and the Collegeville bible commentary. As such, I'm taking Revelation as dealing primarily with the situation of Christians living around the time and place it was written (aprox 100AD in the churches of Asia Minor) rather than being a prophecy primarily dealing with the literal end of the world. John is writing in much the same genre as Old Testament books such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel -- using a fantastic and apocalyptic vocabulary to talk about the current tribulations of God's people, their need for repentance, and their eventual deliverance.

Thus, while John is in a certain sense talking about the end of the world per se, he's also talking much more specifically about the hope that the Christians currently suffering persecution under the pagan Roman Empire can have that a new order will come which will wipe away their current persecutors and allow the worship of Christ our Savior to flourish.

So, all of that said, let's dive right in.

Then one of the seven angels who were holding the seven bowls came and said to me, "Come here. I will show you the judgment on the great harlot who lives near the many waters. "

The "many waters" refer to the confluence of rivers at the historical Babylon. While the term "Babylon" is used metaphorically rather than literally in Revelation (as a nod to the historical references to Babylon in the OT, and also as a way of referring to a large and profane empire in general) this evocation is based on the actual geography of the literal city.

The kings of the earth have had intercourse with her, and the inhabitants of the earth became drunk on the wine of her harlotry." Then he carried me away in spirit to a deserted place where I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns. The woman was wearing purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held in her hand a gold cup that was filled with the abominable and sordid deeds of her harlotry. On her forehead was written a name, which is a mystery, "Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth."

Something to keep in mind here is that among the prophets of the Old Testament, fornication, adultery and prostitution are all used as a metaphor for idol worship. When paganism springs up in the kingdom of Israel, Israel and Jerusalem (as the metaphorical brides of Yahweh) are accused of harlotry and adultery. Thus, the image of the harlot here is probably best seen as an embodiment of the idol worship that was the state religion (and one cannot over-emphasize the extent to which Roman cult and civic life were intertwined) of the Roman Empire.

I saw that the woman was drunk on the blood of the holy ones and on the blood of the witnesses to Jesus. When I saw her I was greatly amazed. The angel said to me, "Why are you amazed? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, the beast with the seven heads and the ten horns.

So here we hear that the harlot is gorging on the blood of martyrs, which also seems to underline her identity as the Roman Empire, and the pagan world in general. The angel then provides some additional explanation:

The beast that you saw existed once but now exists no longer. It will come up from the abyss and is headed for destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world shall be amazed when they see the beast, because it existed once but exists no longer, and yet it will come again. Here is a clue for one who has wisdom. The seven heads represent seven hills upon which the woman sits. They also represent seven kings: five have already fallen, one still lives, and the last has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a short while. The beast that existed once but exists no longer is an eighth king, but really belongs to the seven and is headed for destruction.

Okay, so this is probably where some of the "Whore of Babylon is the Catholic Church" stuff gets started: The seven heads represents seven hills on which the woman sits. What city famously sits on seven hills? R0me. Ha! We've got those papists now, haven't we?

Well, maybe not. What did Rome symbolize to St. John? This woman drunk on the blood of martyrs, arrayed in the jewels and purple robes of imperial wealth doesn't seem like a good fit with the Church in Rome circa 110 AD. Saints Peter and Paul were executed in Rome not so many years ago, and the church there suffers some of the more systematic persecutions under Nero, Domitian and Trajan.

This beast's heads represent not only seven hills, but seven kings, the sixth of whom rules now. The Roman Empire, then.

Were they on the sixth Roman Emperor? No. How you count the emperors is fuzzy. Does Julius Caesar count when he never accepted the title? Do you count Galba, Otho and Vitellius from the years of the four emperors? (The fourth was Vespasian, who lasted ten years.) Revelation seems to have been written somewhere around 90-115 AD, which puts it under Domitian, Nerva or Trajan. (see list of emperors here)

I don't think John is trying to be strictly historical here. He may have six specific emperors in mind for the first six heads, or he may not. (You could make a good case for counting Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Domitian as the six "major emperors" -- with Domitian as the current one up to 96AD -- if you wanted.)

So what's this business with this shadowy eight emperor, somewhere in the future, who will be one of the first five who "existed once but exists no longer is an eighth king, but really belongs to the seven and is headed for destruction". The notes in the Jerusalem Bible (as well as Sacra Pagina and the Collegeville commentary) suggest that this is Nero, about whom there was a legend that he would return from the dead. I looked up Suetonius' life of Nero to follow up on this and found the following:

LVII. He died in the thirty-second year of his age, upon the same day on which he had formerly put Octavia to death; and the public joy was so great upon the occasion, that the common people ran about the city with caps upon their heads. Some, however, were not wanting, who for a long time decked his tomb with spring and summer flowers. Sometimes they placed his image upon the rostra, dressed in robes of state; at another, they published proclamations in his name, as if he were still alive, and would shortly return to Rome, and take vengeance on all his enemies. Vologesus, king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the senate to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that due honour should be paid to the memory of Nero; and, to conclude, when, twenty years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some person of obscure birth gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him so favourable a reception from the Parthians, that he was very zealously supported, and it was with much difficulty that they were prevailed upon to give him up.

So in addition to the general rumor of Nero's possible return, there was an actual claimed re-incarnation of Nero right around the time that Revelation was written. Certainly, one can imagine a Nero returned from the underworld as the opposite to Christ -- a king of the damned rising not through triumph over death, but as death triumphing over the world, leading a "culture of death" in persecuting Christ's church.

This is getting awfully long, but one other thing that struck me and which I mentioned in class is that the beast "was covered with blasphemous names". If we're seeing the beast as embodying in some sense the Roman state and state religion, we might imagine these names as being the countless pagan deities which made up pan-pagan set of cults accepted in Rome: Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, Mithras, Dionysius, Bacchus, Isis, Osiris and many others drawn from all over the empire, everything from the lars (household spirits) of everyday superstition to the semi-messianic fertility "mystery religions" which had come in from Egypt and the east. Alternatively (or in addition) one might imagine the beast to be inscribed with the countless semi-religious/semi-civic offices through which ambitions Roman citizens climbed the ladder of the state cult: tribune, praetor, questor, augor, consul, etc. The innumerable deities and the many semi-priestly political offices which served them probably both seemed equally bizzar and demonic to the early Christians to whom John was writing.

The account them moves on to a civil war and degeneration into chaos in which formerly subservient kings bring down the beast, and then finally the triumph of the followers of the Lamb. Here John is looking forward to an end of the domination of the earth by profane powers, and the coming of an order the acknowledges Christ as king.

Some might see this as simply looking forward to and to to the pagan Roman order -- but in a larger sense I think we can see this as applying to all of us in looking forward to the kingdom of heaven in which the worldly priorities on which the kingdoms of this world are focused will be forgotten.