Franciscan at Home

Fr. Paul Watson explains the significance to the Sabbath as portrayed in this miracle.

When Jesus begins to perform miracles in the Gospel of Mark, it is interesting to note that the first few miracles happen in the context of the Sabbath. In the first chapter of his Gospel Mark records the cure of the demoniac in the synagogue on the Sabbath, followed by the cure of Simon’s mother in law, who had a fever. We are told that ‘that same evening, after sunset, they brought to him many who were sick and those who were possessed by devils. The whole town (Capernaum) came crowding round the door, and he cured many who were suffering from diseases of one kind or another; he also cast out many devils, but he would not allow them to speak, because they knew who he was.’ Again, in chapter 3, Mark relates that Jesus went into the synagogue, and there was a man there who had a withered hand. ‘And they were watching him to see if he would cure him on the Sabbath day, hoping for something to use against him’.

The miracle reveals Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s creation – the man who is completely faithful to the Sabbath. And at the same time, Jesus is the saving presence of God Himself bringing about the new Covenant and the true Sabbath.

French catechist and theologian, Waltraud Linnig, offers us three doors into reading and teaching the Bible and three keys for opening these doors. Part 1 follows.

three keys in doorIn this article I would like to propose ways of opening the Bible and entering into it. Perhaps you will ask me why I want to do this, because it is so easy to open this book! It’s like all the other books and if you know the language of a book you can read it. This Bible is written in English, so there’s no problem. However…

For many Catholics, the sacred book is a closed book, a sealed book. How can we help them?

For many people, catechists and many other Catholics, it is not easy to read and to understand the Bible. When I was a student, one of my professors in Belgium told us that when he was young they had a wonderful Bible in his house, ranged high on a shelf, but nobody had ever touched nor read it. As a Catholic, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was often the case that, while you had to have a Bible, you should not necessarily read it at home, because you should not imitate Protestants! That's why so many Catholics now are still not used to reading the Bible personally.

Jason Gale explains how the Credo ultimately contains only a single dogma, whose mystery can and must be spread out in many aspects. There is a direct relationship between the person of Christ and the one Deposit of Faith. In catechesis, we say that we teach Christ, but we also say that we teach the Catholic Faith. The Creed, Sacraments, morality, and prayer not only describe what is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but also summarize for us God and his plan for salvation. This plan is fully revealed and receives its power in Jesus Christ. He is the center of our faith and life. When our faith and life blend together, we describe ourselves as persons of integrity. The integrity of the Catholic faith is sometimes overlooked in catechesis. We must strive to teach the whole of who Christ is as expressed in the Church’s faith.

Msgr. Paul Watson proposes that we catechise on two ‘new creation’ events that are linked to Elijah.

The reader may by puzzled by the decision to link together the two incidents of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36 and parallels) and the raising of the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11-17). There are two reasons for this decision. In the first place, both miracles are what C.S.Lewis would classify as ‘new creation’ miracles; and secondly, the two events are linked through reference to Elijah.

In previous articles we have considered two ‘old creation’ miracles - that is, miracles in which Jesus acts in a way that God always acts in Nature – changing water into wine or transforming corn or fish into an abundance. Such actions reveal nature’s dependence upon God and are examples of a more fundamental principle: that a higher order of being enters the realm of a lower order of being, giving that lower order meaning and purpose.

A ‘new creation’ miracle is quite different. In such miracles God is revealing a new purpose and a new order of reality. For C.S.Lewis, the primary ‘new creation’ miracle is the Resurrection – by which God is bringing about a new form of existence for humanity and which is first manifested in the humanity of God’s incarnate Son. In the second volume of his work, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict speaks of the Resurrection as an ‘ontological leap’ or as an ‘evolutionary leap’ – a completely new and unprecedented mode of existence. In revealing this new mode of existence, God is also revealing the ultimate destiny of the human race.

As part of the tribute to Sofia Cavalletti we reproduce here a short article from here writings.

In the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae (On Catechesis in Our Time), we read that the catechist “will not seek to keep directed towards himself and his personal opinions and attitudes the attention and the consent of the mind and heart of the person he is catechizing. Above all, he will not try to inculcate his personal opinions and options as if they expressed Christ's teaching and the lessons of his life. Every catechist should be able to apply to himself the mysterious words of Jesus: ‘My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me (John 7:16).’ Saint Paul did this when he was dealing with a question of prime importance: ‘I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you (1 Corinthians 11:23).’ …what detachment from self must a catechist have in order that he can say, ‘My teaching is not mine!’” (N. 6)
The need for rigorous objectivity

The text cited establishes a principle of the utmost importance in catechesis: the need for the catechist to be rigorously objective in the transmission of the message.

In every educational process the educator must put the one to be educated in relationship with reality so that he or she becomes capable of establishing his or her own personal relationship with it. The task of the catechist is to initiate into religious reality, that is to say (1) to point to the reality that we are surrounded by the presence of a Person, of a Love, because from this knowledge is born (2) a personal relationship with God.

In 1515, the artist, Mattias Grünewald, completed a work that came to be known as the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is a complicated structure of painted panels which include a vivid and rather gruesome depiction of the Crucifixion. The altarpiece was produced for the hospital chapel of St Anthony’s Monastery as Isenheim in Alsace. The hospital was dedicated to the care of patients suffering from particularly unpleasant diseases such as leprosy and St Anthony’s Fire. What is striking about the depiction of Christ is that his body bears the same sort of infirmities as those of the patients of the hospital – twisted limbs racked in agony and skin covered with marks from the scourging, which could have appeared to the patients as replicating the effects of the diseases with which they were afflicted.

The passage from Mark 1:40-45 is the account of Jesus healing a man who had been afflicted with leprosy. Apart from the physical effects of leprosy, there were further distressing aspects for a leper in Israel. The book of Leviticus (13:1-2, 44-46), the reading chosen for the Sunday on which this gospel is read, indicates that the leper is also to be socially excluded. He or she is to ‘live outside the camp’. The phrase comes from the time when those who had fled from Egypt were in the wilderness and set up camp wherever God indicated. This exclusion partially hides an even more serious exclusion. The camp was the setting also for the Tent of Meeting, the place which was the sign of God’s presence among His people, the place of worship.

In this series on the Miracles of Jesus we have been exploring the whole question of the possibility of miracles by examining the approach of C.S. Lewis. We have seen that the idea that Nature accounts for all that exists is in the end untenable. Reason or rationality cannot be explained within the cause and effect relationship of natural processes. Rationality is something outside of Nature, which acts upon it – giving meaning and purpose.

From the basis of the human experience of Rationality acting from outside upon Nature, Lewis discusses whether this should be properly described as an “invasion”. When we look at the actual results of the interaction of Nature and Rationality, when Rationality enters Nature, then Nature is given order, purpose and meaning. Nature of itself does not provide this. It only provides a series of events following certain other events. It doesn’t actually make sense of them. For that is an act of Reason. When Nature tries to subsume Rationality into itself, making reason into a blind mechanism, then Nature succeeds not only in destroying reason, but ultimately, also destroys itself – condemns itself to being without purpose or reason. (Fortunately, says Lewis, the Naturalists often forget the theory they hold, and act in a human and rational way.)

In the first articles of this series on the miracles of Jesus we briefly explored the miracle of turning water into wine at Cana in Galilee. That miracle is classified by C.S.Lewis as a miracle of fertility and as a miracle of the Old Creation. Describing it in this way focuses attention upon the fact that a gospel miracle is a local and sudden occurrence of something that God is always doing in Nature. It is the sudden and nature of the specific action that testifies to the divine person of Jesus Christ, and that leads us to describe the action as a miracle.

In the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, the same principle can be seen. In the processes of Nature, a single seed of corn, once in the ground, eventually produces a whole new crop of corn. Abundance and fertility is something that God has granted to living things in Nature. This quality reveals the divine origin of living created things and reflects the Creator. In Nature fish, also, have the capacity in the cycle of reproduction to produce a superabundance of new fish.

The miracle of Jesus, in multiplying bread and fish, is a witness to the sudden and immediate action of the divine person accomplishing what God has always accomplished, though often unnoticed, on the broad canvas of Nature. The miracle is not so much a suspension of Nature, as a suspension of the normal or usual process by which God accomplishes something through Nature.

‘The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, exhibits this, or results from this. …every Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation.’ (C.S.Lewis, Miracles)

Before examining the particular miracles of Jesus, it would be good to consider what Lewis calls the ‘central miracle.’ He maintains that ‘all discussion of them (particular miracles) in isolation from it is futile’.

To illustrate his argument, Lewis puts forward an analogy. Supposing that we possess parts of a novel or a symphony; someone then comes along with a newly-discovered piece of manuscript claiming that this is the missing element of the work – the part upon which the whole theme of the symphony or the whole plot of the novel depends. Our task would then be to see whether or not this new passage did in fact ‘illuminate all the parts we had already seen and pull them together. … Even if the new passage or main theme contained great difficulties itself, we should think it genuine provided that it continually removed difficulties elsewhere. Something like that we must do with the doctrines of the Incarnation. Here, instead of a symphony or a novel, we have the whole mass of our knowledge. The credibility will depend on the extent to which the doctrine, if accepted, can illuminate and integrate that whole mass. It is much less important that the doctrine itself should be fully comprehensible. We believe that the sun is in the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else.’

The Apostles experienced Jesus praying so much, so frequently and so intensely that one day they just had to ask: ‘Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples’ (Luke 11:1). Little did they understand, as was so frequent during Jesus’ public ministry, that Jesus had been teaching them to pray all along through his witness of actually praying. Jesus, however, responds to their request by going beyond their request. He does not teach them to pray as John taught his disciples; he teaches them how to pray as he does.

One important aspect of the Lord’s Prayer is that it ‘is truly the summary of the whole gospel’ (CCC 2761). St. Augustine says, ‘Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture], and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord’s Prayer’ (CCC 2762). At first glance one might wonder how this is the case with a prayer of so few words. But it does contain the entire message of salvation, the Good News.

The most central mystery of our faith is the Blessed Trinity, an eternal exchange of love. We are destined to share in that exchange (see CCC 221). The Lord’s Prayer proclaims this glorious mystery. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are clearly revealed.