"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Today I finished Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues: Exploring the Spiritual Themes of Lord of the Rings by Mark Eddy Smith. It’s an extremely readable book, riskly through The Lord of the Rings, drawing out important life lessons and the importance of virtues from Tolkien’s magnum opus.
Over the next few months I’ll be writing some more about ancient Christian symbols (the fish, the anchor etc), but I thought I’d reboot my Symbolism Series by talking about something which caught my eye at Liturgy this morning.
In my parish, around the inner portion of the dome, we have paintings of the Twelve Apostles (with St. Matthias replacing Judas). This morning I ended up sitting next to the following painting of St. John:
It occurred to me that, while I know the book he is holding is symbolic of his Gospel, I had no idea of the symbolism behind the chalice and snake. When I got home I needed to satisfy my curiosity, so I did some research…
It has taken me a while, but I finally got around to editing the audio from my recent Theology On Tap session entitled “Reading the Bible for all its worth”. The audio quality wasn’t great, but I’ve cleaned it up the best I can. For the benefit of those who couldn’t attend my talk, I have created a YouTube video which plays the audio synchronized with my slides:
The video doesn’t contain the Q&A after the talk or the “Mega Bible Study” discussion which took place afterwards. The audio for these sections is available below:
Main Talk (Download)
Q&A (Download)
Mega Bible Study (Download)
Handout (Download)
In my talk I recommend looking for one thing at each Sunday Mass to take away for your spiritual nourishment during the rest of the week and I suggest writing this down in a Mass Journal. I have six Mass journals to give away!
Simply leave a comment below describing an insight from a recent talk, sermon or Bible study which touched you. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering, just something which you might record in your new Mass Journal! The first six comments will win.
It’s another long one today, one hundred and eighty-two verses.
Surah 37 – “Those who set the ranks” (As-Saaffat)
The chapter opens with Allah swearing by the different angels that “your God is One”.
We are then treated to a description of Heaven’s defense system. We are told that an “adornment of stars…[act] as protection against every rebellious devil [so] they may not listen to the exalted assembly [of angels]” and “are pelted from every side” by flaming meteors. I believe this is a reference to the jinn we read about earlier who eavesdrop on Heaven and report what they hear to soothsayers.
I recently read an article by Taylor Marshall, the author of the excellent book, The Crucified Rabbi. In this article, he shares with his readers that he has recently discovered that he has Jewish ancestry. Towards the end of his post, he addressed a concept which I’ve heard throughout my life, but to which I have never really given much thought. This is the idea that Judaism is matrilinial, that you’re considered a Jew if either you are a convert or your mother is Jewish.
This belief seems to be first officially found in the Mishnah, the Second Century codification of Jewish Oral Tradition. I did a little bit of research and found out that matrilinialism is still officially upheld by Orthodox Jews. In contrast, Karaite Judaism holds a patrilinial belief, saying that Judaism comes through the father, and Reformed Jewish groups favour a bilinial stance, saying that you’re Jewish if either parent is Jewish.
In his article, Dr. Marshall presents a number of very compelling Biblical examples to show that Judaism can’t be matrilinial:
1. The tribes of Ephraim and Manesseh
These were the sons of the patriarch Joseph and the heads of two tribes of Israel. Their mother was an Egyptian, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. If Judaism is matrilinial, that would exclude a sizable portion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel!
2. Moses
He married and had children with a Cushite (non-Israelite) woman.
3. David
We read in the genealogy of David of his grandfather Obed. He was the child of Boaz and Ruth who was a Moabite. If Judaism is matrilinial, Obed was not Jewish and, by extension, neither was King David!
I’ve seen some writers respond to these arguments by saying that the Jewish people (“a kingdom of priests, a holy nation”) only begin at Sinai with the giving of the Law. Other explanations say that the conversion of the foreign wife to Judaism is assumed even if the biblical text sees no need to explicitly narrate it.
However, as a Catholic, it doesn’t really matter whether Judaism is matrilinial or not, since every Catholic has a Jewish mother, Mary the Theotokos! As Pope Pius XII said in 1938 to a group of Belgian pilgrims, “Spiritually, we are Semites”.
Today is the Feast Day of probably my favourite Early Church Father, St. Ignatius of Antioch:
Today in the Office of Readings we read a section of one of the letters he wrote on his way to martyrdom sometime around AD 107:
“I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God.
“No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire. The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God. If you have him in your heart, you will understand what I wish. You will sympathize with me because you will know what urges me on.”
– Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans
Here is a diagram showing the relationships between Jesus, His Apostles, Ignatius of Antioch and some of the other Early Church Fathers:
If you would like to read more of St. Ignatius’ writings, or listen to them free on MP3, be sure to check out the Church History section of this blog.