Once again you are invited to join me in promoting the Sabbath by taking a break from your normal blogging. Please share an older post from your blog that is near and dear to your heart. Make sure to leave your name and the URL of your post below and share a comment if you so desire. I look forward to reading your recycled posts!

Once again you are invited to join me in promoting the Sabbath by taking a break from your normal blogging. Please share an older post from your blog that is near and dear to your heart. Make sure to leave your name and the URL of your post below and share a comment if you so desire. I look forward to reading your recycled posts!

Perhaps one of the most disturbing parts of Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church for Evangelicals is our stubborn insistence upon giving honor to Christ’s mother, Mary.  Thomas Howard’s discussion of the subject brings us back around to the importance that Christianity places on the physical. He notes that in the Old Testament we see worship of God that almost always involves a blood sacrifice of some sort or another. He then asks what happened as a result of Christianity,

But that was all primitive. Surely something spiritual would emerge from those elementary lessons. Surely thoughtful men might anticipate the day when all of this would be put behind and be replaced with elevated thoughts and spirituality.

Indeed it was all put behind. There came an end to those gory altars and all that slaughter. But it was not a tissue of elevated thoughts that replaced them. Rather, an angel appeared to a woman and said, “Hail!” What we now had, far from the summons away from the physical realm that highminded men might have wished, was gynecology, obstetrics, and a birth. Whatever we may imagine about the spiritual rhapsody that might have attended this angelic visitation to the Virgin, the one thing we know to have occurred was a conception. The Virgin’s womb teemed.

It was embarrassing to the religious mind. It proved a scandal. The whole ensuing story bothered and even enraged religious men, and it has continued to do so.

Once again it is the Incarnation that is the key to understanding the honor given to Mary in our Churches. We honor the fact that Christ receives his humanity from her, that God chose her to take care of His Son. How amazing it is to think about the fact that Mary was asked to share the responsibilities of being a parent with God, the Father of all creation.

I appreciate that Howard continues to point out our tendency of wanting to separate Christianity from the physical. The fact that there are still many among us who are uncomfortable with having a God who participates in even the most earthy elements of our humanity illustrates that Paul’s description of the scandal of Christ crucified is still around, even to this day.

It is also good to hear from a writer who can recognize that there are some, who in wrongly placing Mary’s place above her Son have gone too far and have need of being pointed back to Christ. Howard points equally to the folly of turning to the solution that claims that God’s glory would be diminished by giving honor to anyone else. Howard asks the question,

What king surrounds himself with warped, dwarfish, worthless creatures? The more glorious the king, the more glorious are the titles and honors he bestows…..He is a very great king, to have figures of shuch immense dignity in his train, or even better, to have raised them to such dignity.

God has indeed raised Mary to a place of honor in his kingdom. I see no reason for us not to do the same. In doing so, we are reminded not only of the great dignity He has bestowed upon her, but upon the entire human race by His glorious Incarnation.

Today I am happy once again to be taking part in Elizabeth Esther’s Saturday Evening Blogpost. Elizabeth is hosting a special new year’s edition by asking bloggers to share their favorite post of the entire last year. My first thought was that it would be incredibly difficult to choose my favorite post from so many, but I quickly decided upon one entitled, Our Life In Christ. It is my favorite as it was the most successful post in opening up some dialogue on the Eucharist. There is still much to ponder simply in reading the comments.

I hope you will head over to Elizabeth’s site also to check out the many other bloggers’ best of 2009!

Though my internet friend Molly approaches this subject from the standpoint of being an Orthodox Christian, one could just as easily substitute, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist or any number of names. If we Christians are ever going to be reunited in faith, we must first be willing to love one another enough to share our own belief as well as listen to what other Christians have to say.

Today I would like to invite you to listen to Molly’s podcast, found at the link below.

Good Will Toward Men

Here we come to the part of the mass that most Western Christians would consider to be the center and most important part of our prayer, that being the institution narrative and consecration. The new GIRM describes this section of the Eucharistic Prayer in these words,

At our recent priest gathering, I was challenged by Fr. Gerry Austin to look once again at the Eucharistic Prayer in the wider sense. He reminded us that there are indeed valid forms of the Eucharistic Prayer that do not contain the words of institution and therefore this is not required for the consecration to occur. It is true that there are no such prayers in the West, but our sister Churches in the East do have such prayers and as we are in union with them, the Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged their validity. The prayer most commonly looked at in recent years that falls into this category is the prayer of Addai and Mari that is used in the Assyrian Church of the East. In the seminary I studied with students from this Church. In 2001 the Vatican declared this ancient Eucharistic Prayer to be valid, even without containing the words of institution.

Those of you who find this to be completely new or even confusing might take a look at Robert Taft’s 2003 article in America Magazine entitled, Mass Without the Consecration? which I will refer to in this blogpost. Taft explains first that,

The Catholic magisterium teaches that the traditional practices of our Eastern sister churches are worthy of all veneration and respect.

He also reminds his readers that there are several ancient Eucharistic Prayers that do not contain the words of institution. From the very fact that these prayers have been in practice from the earliest years of the Church without having been condemned by the Church Fathers would indicate that Christians have been using them for the valid celebration of the Eucharist for many years longer than most of our current prayers.

Fr. Gerry pointed out to us that we must remember that many things in the Church have developed over time. For example, Eucharistic Prayer I does not have the traditional epiclesis due to the fact that it is older than the other prayers we use in the West and originated before the time that the Church had more clearly defined the role of the Holy Spirit.

Taft’s article also notes that we might do better to see the entire Eucharistic Prayer as a formula of consecration, rather than limit our understanding to seeing only the words of institution as consecrating the bread and wine that is offered. I believe that if more people adopted this understanding, it would enrich our experience of the Eucharist. Taft is also quick to point out that are not saying that the words of institution are unimportant. He writes,

…the words of institution are always consecratory, even in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, because Jesus’ pronouncing them at the Last Supper remains efficaciously consecratory for every Eucharist until the end of time.

These words remind me of a homily given by Fr. Bob Barron who was one of my professors at Mundelein Seminary when responding to those who question how Catholics can believe that the bread and wine in the Eucharist actually becomes the Body and Blood of Christ. Fr. Bob points out God’s word has an authority that is unlike our own human words. One need only think back to the story of creation where God speaks, Let there be light, and there was light. His word has the power to bring things into being. So when Jesus says, This is my body, this is my blood, His very words have the authority to bring about what is spoken.

We are reminded each time we gather for the Eucharist of these transformative words when we hear them narrated by the priest. We should in turn give thanks for the great gift that God continues to give us by sharing His only Son completely with His Church.

Baptism and the Eucharist were at the center of the presentations given by our retreat director, Fr. Gerry Austin O.P. this past week. He also helped us to take a close look at what he called the three priesthoods that exist within the Church–first and foremost is the priesthood of Jesus Christ, within this priesthood is contained the priesthood of the faithful that is received by all at our Baptism, and within the priesthood of the faithful is the ordained priesthood. It was a good reminder of the differences between these various priesthoods and the essential nature of their healthy interaction.

One image that I have been pondering, however, has to do with the different ways we as Christians can look at the sacrament of Baptism. Fr. Gerry pointed out the contrast between Western Christians who have traditionally seen Baptism as being primarily about the removal of original sin versus Eastern Christians who have traditionally seen the same sacrament as being primarily about the reception of the Holy Spirit. They are not contradictory traditions, but here is an area where it seems to me that Western Christianity could be enriched. Fr. Gerry pointed out that when we see Baptism as pushing the Holy Spirit into the person receiving the sacrament, the other spirits of sin, death, and the like have no other option but to be pushed out. So in this sense there is the removal of sin, but the essence of the sacrament is looked upon in a more positive sense.

I have Orthodox friends who like to say it this way: in the fall we humans lost the likeness but kept the image of God, though tarnished, intact. The image of God can still be seen, even in the most sinful human being. Our life as Christians is centered on allowing God’s grace, primarily through the sacraments, to restore us to the image and likeness of God.

This recent retreat has sparked an interest in writing more about the sacraments in the coming weeks. I hope that the readers of this blog will be open to conversation on their own experiences of the sacraments as well.