Easter

e is Risen. Alleluia.

God is Dead, and We Have Killed Him

hrist became obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name." -Philippians 2: 8-9

Throughout the World, there is no single time when the Mass is not said. Endlessly, in a fashion the priests who ran the temple in Jerusalem, where the blood of animals flowed every day, could not even have imagined--without end, Jesus is truly sacrificed to God in a perfect act of sacrifice. The Son is offered again to the Father. But in any particular place, today is that day of days, when no sacrifice is made, when we pause our celebration of the new covenant so that our attention may be wholly focused on the incredible mystery. The lone day when Nietzsche's famous dictum holds true in the literal sense: "God is dead, and we have killed him." We remember your death, O Lord. 

Help me to live this day as if it were my last, to unify myself with Your sacrifice, to remember my sins, and the terrible cost. Amen.

Lexio Divina Reflection on Jephthah

olle Lege," heard St. Augustine from a child-like voice whose owner he could not see, as he was sitting alone with a Bible one day. He opened the book randomly to a page and read words that would shake his core: 


"Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." -Romans 13:13-14. 
Yesterday I performed some Lexio Divina myself at lunchtime. I read the story of Jephthah in Judges 11-12. In general the book of Judges, I have heard, is intended to underline the true moral depravity that reigned in ancient Israel before the coming of the monarchy under David, a messianic kingship that would foreshadow Christ's own kingdom. The recurring refrain is "And every man did what was right in his own eyes." 

Jephthah in particular is a good example of this, for he made a burnt sacrifice of his only daughter because he had made a foolish vow to offer as a burnt sacrifice the first person who met him after the great victory he had had. Reminiscent of Iphigenia from Greek mythology, his daughter submits to this crime, even as the reader shakes his head in dismay. Yes, it is wrong to sin against God by breaking an oath, but it is a worse sacrilege to perform a human sacrifice. 

In a subsequent (and the last) episode we hear from Jephthah's life, he is in conflict with the Ephraimites who have shown an unprovoked aggression towards him and the people of Gilead, their fellow Israelites. But his reaction appears to be too harsh in that anyone who wishes to cross the fords of Jordan must say perfectly the word "Shibboleth" which apparently the Ephraimites pronounced differently from the Gileadites.

This perhaps shows us a recurring fault in the life of Jephthah, as well as a fault in the Old Testament, that is the Old Covenant between God and man before Christ initiated the new covenant in his blood through the Eucharist: 

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. -Luke 22:20

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. -Matthew 26:27-28

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. -1 Corinthians 11:26-27

 In his pursuit of perfection, Jephthah lost out on grace, and in his zeal to fulfill his oath, Jephthah forgot to be merciful to the weak. In Christ, we see the exact opposite of Jephthah's cruelty both towards his daughter, and against anyone who was not able to perfectly pronounce "Shibboleth," when Jesus tells those in judgment against the woman caught in adultery (traditionally Mary Magdalene), "Let him who has no sin cast the first stone." -John 8:7

Whereas fulfilling the law against oath-breaking, and preventing Ephraim from winning in its struggle against the Gileadites, Jephthah slays the innocent, Jesus is unwilling to allow even the guilty to die and uses his authority as Divine Judge to spare the woman caught in adultery. "Neither do I condemn you."

The old covenant is insufficient and inhumane. Only Jesus Christ can save from sin. Praise God, the new has come, and the old has passed away, and that new covenant is, according to scripture, uniquely established in the Eucharist which all Christians share, as Jesus himself did with the disciples on the night he was betrayed.

Alternative view: Jephthah's daughter was not sacrificed as a burnt offering, but lived her life as a virgin, or as the first recorded nun, according to Rev. Gliston Morrisey of the so-called Baptist Church. According to him the "best translations" read, "offer them up to the Lord or as a burnt-sacrifice." He believes Jephthah took the former option, which is why such a great to-do is made over Jephthah's daughter's virginity, since offspring would be what she would be giving up if she was "given to the Lord" in such a manner. Morrisey offers as evidence the fact that Jephthah is actually upheld as a man of  faith in Hebrews 11:32: "And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets..." We need to remember though that Hebrews is primarily concerned with demonstrating how Jesus Christ is superior to the old covenant, and we may observe that the others mentioned on that list were not without their faults as well, as recorded in scripture. Furthermore, since Jephthah's daughter was an only child, her virginity would still be a great cause of sadness even if Jephthah intended to sacrifice her in the literal sense.

Moreover, Morrisey's does not appear to be the consensus view of most Catholics. They are in agreement that Jehphthah indeed slew his daughter. St. John Chrysostolm, for example: "and what he had done aforetime in the case of Jephthah, that he hoped now again to accomplish. For he likewise, when he had promised that the first thing that met him, after a victorious battle, he would sacrifice, fell into the snare of child-murder." Some even suggest that this was the unintended back-firing of a plot on Jephthah's part to get even with one of the relatives who slighted him due to his origin as an ilegitimate son as we read earlier in Chapter 11. After all, how likely was it that out of an entire city, it would be his daughter to come out to greet him first?

We may in any case observe that in holy orders and the religious celibate life, an alternative that Jephthah might have taken for his daughter (or son, had it been so) and would have pleased God was available. 

Archaeological Find Redates Northern European Christianity

 new archaeological find redates Chrsitianity in Denmark to early tenth Century as opposed to mid as formerly supposed. And it is a very beautiful one: