quote of the week, december 26, 2010-january 1, 2011

Now welcome for me his conception and leap for joy, if not indeed like John in the womb, then like David when the ark came to rest. Be awed at the census record through which you have been recorded in heaven, and revere the birth through which you have been released from the bonds of birth, and honor little Bethlehem, which has brought you back to paradise, and bow before the manger through which you who were without reason have been fed by the Word. Know, like the ox, your owner - Isaiah exhorts you [cf. Isaiah 1:3] - and like the donkey know your master's crib, whether you are among those who are pure and under the law and chew the cud of the Word and are prepared for sacrifice, or whether up to now you are among the impure and unfit for food or sacrifice and belong to the Gentiles. Run after the star, and bring gifts with the magi, gold and frankincense and myrrh, as to a king and a God and one dead for your sake. With the shepherds give glory, with the angels sing hymns, with the archangels dance. Let there be a common celebration of the heavenly and earthly powers. For I am persuaded that they rejoice and celebrate with us today, if indeed they love humankind and love God, just as David represents them ascending with Christ after his Passion as they come to meet him and exhort each other to lift up the gates. (Nazianzus 2008:75-76, Oration 38.17)

_______
References:
St. Gregory of Nazianzus. (2008). Festal Orations: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (N. V. Harrison, Trans.). Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

quote of the week, december 19-25, 2010

All time is God's time. When the eternal Word assume human existence in the Incarnation, he also assumed temporality. He drew time into the sphere of eternity. At first it seems as if there can be no connection between the "always" of eternity and the "flowing away" of time. But now the Eternal One himself has taken time to himself. In the Son, time co-exists with eternity. God's eternity is not mere time-lessness, the negation of time, but a power over time that is really present with time and in time. In the Word incarnate, who remains man forever, the presence of eternity with time becomes bodily and concrete.

[...] The feast of Christ's birth on December 25 - nine months after March 25 [the day that the early "Church honored both the Annunciation by the angel and the Lord's conception by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin"] - developed in the West in the course of the third century, while the East - probably because of a different calendar - at first celebrated January 6 as the birthday of Christ. It may also have been the response to a feast of the birth of the mythical gods observed on this day in Alexandria. The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion. However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and the Cross, of creation and Christ's conception. In the light of the "hour of Jesus", these dates brought the cosmos into the picture. The cosmos was now thought of as the pre-annunciation of Christ, the Firstborn of creation (cf. Col. 1:15). It is he of whom creation speaks, and it is by him that its mute message is deciphered. The cosmos finds its true meaning in the firstborn of creation, who has now entered history. From him comes the assurance that the adventure of creation, of a world with its own free existence distinct from God, does not end up in absurdity and tragedy but, throughout all its calamities and upheavals, remains something positive. God's blessing of the seventh day is truly and definitively confirmed. The fact that the dates of the Lord's conception and birth had a cosmic significance means that Christians can take on the challenge of the sun cult and incorporate it positively into the theology of the Christmas feast. There are magnificent texts that express this synthesis. For example, St. Jerome in a Christmas sermon says this: "Even creation approves our preaching. The universe itself bears witness to the truth of our words. Up to this day the dark days increase, but from this day the darkness decreases...The light advances, while the night retreats." Likewise, St. Augustine, preaching at Christmas to his flock in Hippo: "Brethren, let us rejoice. The heathen, too, may still make merry, for this day consecrates for us, not the visible sun, but the sun's invisible Creator." (Ratzinger 2000:92, 107-108)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:1-5)

For [the Father] rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Colossians 1:13-15)

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth His speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber;
It rejoices as a strong man to run his course.
Its rising is from one end of the heavens,
And its circuit to the other end of them;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat. (Psalm 19:1-6)
_______
References:
Ratzinger, Joseph. (2000). The Spirit of the Liturgy (J. Saward, Trans.). San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press.

quote of the week, december 12-18, 2010

The passage below comes from John Behr's preface to his own book The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death. This section opens with the following quote from the Danish philosopher/theologian Søren Kierkegaard:

We only understand life backwards, but we must live forwards.

Behr maintains that Kierkegaard's comment applies to our modern understanding of theology, which has become fragmented. Moreover, Behr argues that, with regard to the Incarnation, the disciples understood and enterpreted this "event" as such retrospectively, in the light of Christ's Passion. I have selected this because it has potential implications for how we understand the Incarnation - its purpose, meaning, and relation to the Passion, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and coming of Jesus Christ - which is often the content of our contemplation during the Advent season. The way I read his work, Behr encourages us to consider the Incarnation of Christ in a holistic, "timeless" sense, rather than in a manner which is fragmented and compartmentalized. He writes:

It is sometimes said that for antiquity truth is what is, for enlightened modernity it is what was, and for postmodernity it is that which will have been. The historicizing approach of modernity places the truth of Jesus Christ firmly in the past - how he was born and what he did and said - and subjects his truth to our criteria of historicity, which are ultimately no more than a matter of what we find plausible (as evidenced by the "Jesus Seminar"). For antiquity, on the other hand, the truth of Christ is eternal, or better, timeless: the crucified and risen Lord is the one of whom scripture has always spoken. Yet, as the disciples come to recognize him, as the subject of scripture and in the breaking of the bread, he disappears from their sight (Lk 24.31). The Christ of Christian faith, revealed concretely in and through the apostolic proclamation of the crucified and risen Lord in accordance with scripture, is an eschatological figure, the Coming One. Hence the importance of the other half of Kierkegaard's observation, that while we understand retrospectively, we nevertheless live into the future. As we leave behind modernity's fascination with the past, it is possible that we we are once again in a position to recognize the eschatological Lord.

This, moreover, allows us to see a greater depth of meaning in the term "Incarnation." As it is only in the light of the Passsion that we can even speak of "Incarntion," the sense of the term is pregnant with greater fertility: by the proclamation of his gospel, the apostle Paul is in travail giving birth to Christ in those who receive his gospel (cf. Gal. 4.19), that is, who accept the interpretation he offers in accordance with the scripture, and are thereby born again to be the body of Christ. This is still in process, as our life is "hidden in Christ with God" (Col. 3.3). Yet the indeterminacy celebrated by post-modernism, locating the "event" always in the future, is given concrete content in Christian theology, by anchoring its account in the crucial moment of the passion. The timeless subject of Christian theology is the crucified and risen Lord, the one who "was from the beginning, [who] appeared new yet is to be found old, and is ever young, being born in the hearts of the saints." (Behr 2006:17-18)

_______
References:
Behr, John. (2006). The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

quote of the week, december 5-11, 2010

Writing on one way in which "theological beliefs change the way we value other things," George M. Marsden (Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame) notes how the incarnation informs one of the potentially "positive contributions of Christianity to scholarship" (Marsden 1997:82):

For the Christian the incarnation is not an abstraction; it is central to the revelation of the character of God. [...] God's display of his sacrificial love to us in Christ relativizes our self-righteousness. United with Christ, we are to love even those whom we would naturally despise.

This revelation of the character of God in Christ should thus change our sensibilities toward other humans. In the incarnation, Christ emptied himself and became poor for our sake. He identified with the poor and the ordinary. Christ went so far as to instruct us that when we see the poor and destitute we see him. How we act toward them is an indicator of how we love him. Christ's incarnation honors what the world has not usually honored.

Once again we run into a central irony in attempting to isolate the implications of Christian commitments for our scholarship. The sensibilities of Christians toward the poor and the weak have been dulled by the very success of the assimilation of these same sensibilities by the wider Western culture and lately world culture. [...] One of the great tasks of Christian scholarship is to recover some dimensions of Christian teaching which have been alienated from their theological roots. This task is particularly urgent in an era when secular morality is adrift and traditional Christianity itself is too often beholden to the politics of self-interest and simplistic solutions. (Marsden 1997:92-93)

_______
References:
Marsden, George M. (1997). The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.