David Starkey’s ‘Magic’

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/david-starkeys-magic/

Wednesday in the Octave of Easter

Today’s readings

It is always interesting to me, in this story of the appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, how the one thing that got through to them was the breaking of the bread. He spent a long time walking with them, interpreting the Scriptures and recollecting all the things that had happened on the way. But they never knew it was Jesus until he broke bread with them.

Because of this, the early Christian community quickly took on a Eucharistic identity. They gathered often and took part in the breaking of the bread, and it is in this act of worship that they found the icon of who they were. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus had commanded them, and through appearances like this one on the road to Emmaus, they quickly began to see how important this actually was. And because the early Christian Community found its own identity in the breaking of the bread, it is not terribly surprising, I think, that we find ourselves to be a Eucharistic people.

This story of the journey to Emmaus is an important one for us to hear with fresh ears. Because this story reminds us what Holy Communion is all about. Just as those disciples came to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so it will be for us. Filled with the grace of today’s Holy Communion, maybe we can recognize our Lord with fresh eyes and truly see him in our brothers and sisters. Maybe you will see our Lord in the faces of the needy when you come to serve them. Maybe you will see him in the faces of your children or grandchildren as you teach them and correct them and love them into the kingdom of God. Maybe you will see him in the face of a coworker or friend who is going through a difficult time. As we love those people the Lord puts in our paths, maybe we can see our Lord among us in a new way.

We are a Eucharistic people. So we gather over and over to find our identity once again. We offer our gifts: bread and wine, our experiences, our sorrows and joys, our loving and our living, our successes and failures, who we are and who we were meant to be. Jesus takes all this, blesses it, breaks it and offers it back redeemed and sanctified and made whole and holy. Every time we gather for the Eucharist, we not only recognize our Lord in the breaking of the bread, but also we recognize our true selves, the ones we were created to be.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Holy Thursday: The Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Today’s readings

We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
through whom we are saved and delivered.

That is the proper entrance antiphon, also known as the introit, for this Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which we sang at the very beginning of our time together this evening. It is taken from Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which he says “May I never boast about anything other than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.” As you may know, the Church considers these three days – the Sacred Triduum – as just one day, one liturgy. When we gather for Mass tonight, and reconvene tomorrow for the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion, and finally gather for the great Easter Vigil in the Holy Night on Saturday, it’s just one day for the church, one great Liturgy in three parts. And the only part that has an entrance antiphon is tonight’s Mass, so the Church has chosen this text to set the tone for our celebrations for these three nights, and to draw all of them together with the cross as the focal point.

I think what the cross teaches us in these days, and what this evening’s part of the Liturgy says in particular is summed up in the Latin word, caritas. Caritas is most often translated into English as either “charity” or “love.” And, as in the case of most translations, both are inadequate. When we think about the word “charity,” we usually think of something we do to the poor: we give to the poor, we pray for the poor, that kind of thing. And “love” can have a whole host of different meanings, depending on the context, and the emotion involved. And none of that is what caritas means at all. I think caritas is best imagined as a love that shows itself in the action of setting oneself aside, pouring oneself out, for the good of others. It’s a love that remembers that everything is not about me, that God gives us opportunities all the time to give of ourselves on behalf of others, that we were put on this earth to love one another into heaven.

And I bring this up not just as a lesson in Latin or semantics. I bring it up because caritas is our vocation; we were made to love deeply and to care about something outside ourselves. We are meant to go beyond what seems expedient and comfortable and easy and to extend ourselves.

Two parts of this evening’s Liturgy show us what caritas means. The first is what we call the mandatum: the washing of the feet. Here, Jesus gets up from the meal, wraps a towel around his waist and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. Washing the feet of guests was a common practice in Jesus’ time. In those days, people often had to travel quite a distance to accept an invitation to a feast or celebration. And they would travel that distance, not by car or train or even by beast of burden, but most often on foot. The travelers’ feet would then become not only dirty from the dusty roads, but also hot and tired from the long journey. It was a gesture of hospitality to wash the guests’ feet, but it was a gesture that was usually supplied not by the host of the gathering, but instead by someone much lower in stature, usually a servant or slave. But at the Last Supper, it is Jesus himself who puts on the towel, picks up the bowl and pitcher, and washes the feet of his friends.

We are omitting that ritual this evening, but we aren’t off the hook for it. That’s because I think this particular ritual should be reenacted outside of church. Every day, in every place where Christians are.

For example, maybe you make an effort to get home from work a little sooner to help your spouse get dinner ready or help your children with their homework. Maybe at work you try to get in early so that you can make the first pot of coffee so that people can smell it when they come in to the office. Or maybe after lunch you take a minute or two to wipe out the microwave so it’s not gross the next day. If you’re a young person, perhaps you can try on occasion to do a chore without being asked, or at least not asked a second time, or even wash the dishes when it’s not your turn to do it. Or if one of your classmates has a lot of stuff to bring to school one day, you can offer to carry some of his or her books to lighten the load.

This kind of thing costs us. It’s not our job to do those things. We’re entitled to be treated well too. It’s inconvenient. I’ve had a hard day at work – or at school. I want to see this show on television. I’m in the middle of reading the paper. But caritas love requires something of us – something over and above what we may be prepared to do. But, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, he’s given us an example: as he has done, so we must do. And not just here in church washing each other’s feet, but out there in our world, washing the feet of all those in our lives who need to be loved into heaven.

The second part of our Liturgy that illustrates caritas is one with which we are so familiar, we may most of the time let it pass us by without giving it a thought, sadly. And that, of course, is the Eucharist. This evening we commemorate that night when Jesus, for the very first time, shared bread and wine with his closest friends and offered the meal as his very own body and blood, poured out on behalf of the world, given that we might remember, as often as we do it, what caritas means. This is the meal that we share here tonight, not just as a memory of something that happened in the far distant past, but instead experienced with Jesus and his disciples, and all the church of every time and place, on earth and in heaven, gathered around the same Table of the Lord, nourished by the same body, blood, soul and divinity of our Savior who poured himself out for us in the ultimate act of caritas.

We who eat this meal have to be willing to be changed by it. Because we too must pour ourselves out for others. We must feed them with our presence and our love and our understanding even when we would rather not. We must help them to know Christ’s presence in their lives by the way that we serve them, in humility, giving of ourselves and asking nothing in return. That is our vocation.

And sometimes that vocation is not an easy one. Sometimes it feels like our efforts are unappreciated or even thwarted by others. Sometimes we give of ourselves only to receive pain in return; or we extend ourselves only to find ourselves out on a limb with what seems like no support. And then we question our vocation, wondering if it is all worth it, wondering if somehow we got it wrong. But caritas isn’t something from which one turns away. We embrace our little crosses and journey on, knowing that Jesus carried the big Cross for our salvation.

The ultimate act of caritas will unfold tomorrow and Saturday night as we look to the cross and keep vigil for the resurrection. Tonight it will suffice for us to hear the command to go and do likewise, pouring ourselves out for others, laying down our life for them, washing their feet and becoming Eucharist for them. It may seem difficult to glory in the cross – it may even seem strange to say it. But the Church makes it clear tonight: the cross is our salvation, it is caritas poured out for us, it is caritas poured out on others through us, every time we extend ourselves, lay down our lives, abandon our sense of entitlement and do what the Gospel demands of us.

We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
through whom we are saved and delivered.

Holy Thursday begins the Triduum.

The Mass of the Lord’s Supper remembers the Last Supper, the gift of the Eucharist, and the example of service when Jesus washed His disciples’ feet. This night invites us to reflect on humble love and faithful service. ✝️🍞🕊️

https://young-catholics.com/840/mass-of-the-lords-supper-lent/

#HolyThursday #Triduum #Eucharist #CatholicFaith

Docetism

This term comes from the Greek word: dokein (“to seem,” “to appear”). This is the doctrine that Jesus wasn’t a human being of flesh & blood. But Jesus was a pure spirit who only appeared to be human, that his human form was an illusion. If God is perfected Spirit, He couldn’t possibly “unite” with matter. Therefore, Jesus’ body was a sort of divine hologram.

The word Doketai (“Illusionists”) referring to early groups who denied Jesus’ humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197-203). It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the beginning of John’s Gospel: “the Word was made Flesh.”

Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. This doctrine is heretical by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Armenian Apostolic Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, & Anglican Communion & many Protestant denominations such as Calvinist (Reformed Christians), Reformed Baptists, Waldensians, & all Trinitarian Christians.

There are 2 varieties of Docetism. In 1 version, called Marcionism, Jesus was so divine that couldn’t have been human. Since God lacked a material body, which couldn’t physically suffer. Jesus only appeared to be a flesh & blood man. His body was a phantasm.

Marcion of Sinope is perhaps the most famous figure associated with Docetic teachings. He was a wealthy shipowner who moved to Rome around 140 CE. Marcion was obsessed with the contrast between the “wrathful” God of the Old Testament & the “loving” Father of Jesus.

Marcion argued that Jesus was a completely new entity who descended directly from Heaven to Capernaum in 29 CE. He didn’t have a birth, childhood, or biological body. Marcion was the 1st to try & create a “closed” New Testament canon. This forced mainstream Christianity to define its own scriptures.

The other group who were accused of Docetism held that Jesus was a man in the flesh. But Christ was a separate entity who entered Jesus’ body in the form of a dove at His baptism, empowered him to perform miracles, & abandoned Him upon His death on the cross.

Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early 2nd century while on his way to be executed in Rome, he was the main “anti-Docetist.” He realized that if Jesus didn’t have a real body, His death & resurrection were meaningless.

Ignatius argued that if Jesus’ suffering was a fake, then the suffering of Christian martyrs was also a waste of time. He insisted on the physical reality of the Eucharist, calling it the “medicine of immortality” because it represented real flesh.

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