Women of the Old Testament: Sarai/Sarah

Sarai (or Sarah as she would become known) is a complex and ambiguous character. We first meet her in chapter 12 of Genesis when her husband Abram (later to become Abraham) is summoned by God to leave his home in the land of Haran and set out for the land of Canaan; a land which God promises to give to Abram's progeny (Genesis 12:7).

Abram almost immediately places this promise in jeopardy. In an anticipation of the Joseph story later in Genesis, Abram is forced by famine in the Promised Land to move on to Egypt. Once there, aware that his wife Sarai is very beautiful and worried by the attention she has drawn from the Egyptian men, Abram lies to Pharoah telling him that Sarai is his sister. As a result Pharoah enthusiastically takes Sarai into his hareem and 'treats Abram well' (12:16). For the moment, then, God's plan seems to be thwarted. Sarai cannot possibly concieve Abram's child and indeed is vulnerable to another man.  Abram has chosen, at least for the moment, comfort in Egypt and seperation from his wife over God's promise. We are not told how Sarai feels about this. Yet God protects Sarai, he does not allow human frailty to undo his work. An understandably indignant Pharoah dismisses both Abram and his wife after his household is punished by God and Abram's deception is revealed to him, God's plan is not threatened by human sinfulness.

Sarai and Abram return to the Negeb and settle at Hebron (Genesis 13:18). In chapter 15 God renews his promise that Abram's descendents will inherit the land 'from the River of Egypt to the Great River' (15:18). Yet there is a problem: Sarai has no children and she is ageing. She comes up with a clever solution: she offers her husband her maid servant Hagar that she might 'get children through her' (16:2). Hagar does indeed concieve, but instead of handing over the child to Sarai a rivalry emerges between the two women. Sarai treats Hagar cruelly and  eventually Hagar and her son Ishmael are driven away (16:6). God's purpose in establishing the chosen people can not be overcome by human sinfulness, neither can it be earned or built by human hands: Israel owes its existence to the gratuitous generosity of God.

In Chapter 17 the promise is once again renewed, God makes a covenant with Abram and gives him a new name: Abraham, 'for he will be father of many nations' (17:5). Sarai too is renamed Sarah, for God will bless her and 'she will become nations, Kings will issue from her' (17:16). In chapter 18 Abraham is visited by three mysterious strangers. He welcomes them, and they tell him that the now elderly Sarah will now concieve. Sarah, though she denies it later, laughs in disbelief when she hears (18:32). Yet these messengers from God speak the truth: what is humanly impossible is possible for God. Even though Abraham once more risks everything by allowing Sarah to be taken into the hareem of a foreign King in  chapter 20, God overcomes all obstacles and blesses Sarah with a son, Isaac, in chapter 21. In her joy Sarah is able to mock herself saying: 'God has given me cause to laugh! All who hear about this will laugh with me!' (21:6).

Isaac of course would go on to be the Father of Jacob who will be renamed Israel and be father to the 12 tribes. Sarah is therefore is in a sense a quasi-Eve figure, the mother of the chosen people, the mother of the nation that will give birth to Christ. Despite the complications, difficulties, and disapointments of her life she is used by God to further His work of salvation. Sarah dies in chapter 23 and is the first to be buried in the Promised Land in the tomb of the Patriarchs bought by Abraham: a momument to Israel's claim on the land that God had promised them, a monument to God's fidelity to his word.

Women in the Old Testament: Eve

In the second creation story, seeing how Adam desires someone equal to him, God gives woman to man as his partner. She is the first being like Adam, spiritual and physical, and cast in the divine image. Adam names her Eve, a modification of the Hebrew word meaning “to live” as she is “the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:19).

Despite being the mother of all men, history turns an unsympathetic eye towards Eve, often dismissing her as the one by whom man fell into sin. She is the first person tempted by the lure of the tree’s fruit. She is the first human to consider that God’s gifts do not contain enough for her – as Satan is the first to do so for the angels. It is true that Eve brings the fruit to Adam, and that he eats of it freely. However, what history often overlooks is that Adam is fully responsible for his subsequent actions – at Eve’s great peril.

Just as Eve is the first human person to sin, she also is the first to experience man’s inhumanity towards man. When God confronts our two fallen parents, Adam’s immediate reaction is to blame both God and Eve for his transgression. “The woman whom you gaveto be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen 3:12). He will not say, “I took it” or “I chose to eat it.”

Adam receives Eve as a precious gift from God, created to fulfill his earthly life with human love. Yet, in his now-fallen state, Adam cannot face his own culpability. Had he acknowledged her wrongdoing without eating the fruit, then he would have done so out of his original innocence and love for her; perhaps he could have been her advocate before God. However, he now has intimate knowledge of good and evil. This is the double-edged sword that defeats Adam: he now knows fully what he has done, but he no longer has the grace to repent. And so, he hides his guilt behind the very person he should love and protect without hesitation: his wife.

Leaving the story as it is, Eve’s life is a tragedy for her and all humanity. She ushers in an era of death and isolation from God. She even loses her son Abel to the violence of murder rooted in the very sin she helped release into the world. Her only hope lies in her own long-descendant son. Only this time he is a pure man coming forth from a pure woman.

When we look at the Old Testament and New Testament as mirror images, we see how Christ’s pure self-sacrifice in atonement for the sins he did not commit undoes Adam’s selfishness. Adam tried to hide his sin behind the sin of Eve. Christ stands before God as the sinless man who takes responsibility for all sin.

Moreover, the first fruits of his sacrifice go to preserving his own mother from the stain of that first sin, so that she could answer God’s call and become the new mother of all the living. Eve’s and Mary’s similarities are striking. Initially, both are women without knowledge of sin. Both women lose their sons to the violence of murder. It seems as though Mary’s life continues to suffer from the bad choices of our first parents.

Yet, Mary’s choice is radically different. Eve made a choice without knowing sin, but a choice that would lead to sin. Mary made a choice without knowing sin, but a choice that would lead to destruction of sin. The New Eve not only brings forth life anew in Christ, but life eternal in the same Christ: her child, perfectly human and perfectly divine.

We must look kindly on Eve and with sympathy. For like her, we all have fallen by our own ignorance of sin. And she shares in the fruits of salvation just as we do. She is the mother of our race and our sister in Christ. History blames Eve for Adam’s downfall. If we can call Adam’s traitorous sin “a happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a redeemer,” then we must also acknowledge Eve’s role in setting into motion not only our destruction, but our restoration and perfect union with God.

The Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist

My father’s name was Jean-Baptiste, obviously the French for John the Baptist. He did not know much about the Gospel – or he probably had forgotten much of it – but he used to call John the Baptist a great prophet and preacher. He would try to explain to us everything about John the Baptist but, thus doing, he would mix up names of several centuries of the history of the people of God. He also suspected that his ‘strange’ name might have had something to do with Baptism!

John the Baptist is one of those well-known biblical figures. He is one of those whose birth stories are told in details and involve the direct hand of God, often through the sending of an angel. In the Holy Scriptures, the mothers of Samson, Samuel and John were barren. God sent angels to announce the birth of those personalities who become involved in the transformation of the history of their people: Samson protecting them from the Philistines who were much stronger than the Israelites; Samuel by anointing King David who became the ideal king of the Jewish people; and John the Baptist who came to prepare the way of the Lord.

The story of the conception, the nativity and the infancy of John is told in the Gospel according to Luke. He was announced by the angel Gabriel as someone who “[would] be great in the eyes of the Lord […] he [would] turn many of the children of Israel toward the Lord their God and he would proceed in front of Him, in the spirit and power of Elijah, such that the hearts of the fathers [would] turn toward their children, and the disobedient toward the outlook of the righteous: a prepared people [would] be arranged for the Lord.” (Lk 1: 15-17). Later, when he was born, his father Zechariah prophesied in the words of the Benedictus prayed every morning by the Christian community in Lauds.

The Benedictus is a prayer not only of celebration of the birth of John the Baptist, but an expression of the hope of the people of Israel. It was a manifestation of God’s concern for His people. Some of the verses of the Benedictus that have always struck me and sounds sweet in my ears everytime I pray it in the morning are verses 76 – 78: 'As for you, little child, you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High. You shall go ahead of the Lord to prepare his ways before him, to make known to his people their salvation through forgiveness of all their sins, the loving-kindness of the heart of our God who visits us like the dawn from on high.' It has always been for me one of the most comforting verses in the Bible and one of the most beautiful descriptions of God’s nature. Thus, contrary to the common description of John the Baptist as someone who scared everybody and pronounced severe judgment, from the beginning, from the time of his birth, his message was a message of comfort and hope. No wonder the Church chose this beautiful prayer to be said every day before we start our daily activities!

It is obvious that many people, both in and outside the Church, know about John Baptist and can say something about him. Muslims call him يحيى بن زكريا, read Yahya Ibn Zakariya (John, son of Zechariah). One reads in the Qur’an, Surah 19 (Maryam), verse (or ayah) 15: “So, Peace on him the day he was born, the day that he dies, and the day that he will be raised up to life (again)!” Muslims recognise the reverence of John to Jesus while both were still in their mothers’ wombs, as the first testimony of someone recognising Jesus as the word of God. It is reported that Ibn Arabi, a Muslim Sufi of the 12^th and the 13^th centuries, tells the story in a humorous way, attributing to Elizabeth complaints about her son bowing in her womb all the times she meets Mary! She might have suffered a lot for an old woman! Muslims claim to have the tomb of John the Baptist in Damascus in the Umayyad Mosque and a Franco-Algerian Muslim artist Rachid Koraïchi, who is very much involved in monotheistic religions’ dialogue, inspired by those relics, begun a project called Salomé in the French Centre Georges Pompidou, referring to the beheading of St John the Baptist after Salome’s beautiful dance, but would be more explained on the feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist. Mentioning these non-Christian sources does not intend to look down or to deny the Christian version of the birth and infancy of John the Baptist. It rather aims at showing how much respected he is in different religious traditions and could be a central figure in the interfaith dialogue.

In conclusion, we could say that John the Baptist, as often stressed especially by the Eastern Church, was a bridge between both Testaments. The Benedictus gives us the full meaning of the nativity of John and invites us to rejoice in this day, when our salvation is announced. It calls to going out with joyful and positive minds, to preach the Good news of the loving-kindness of God to people who might have often been told that God is waiting for them around the corner to punish them severely. It gives hope to those living in dark times. It invites us also to understand that we share much with our brothers and sisters of other faiths, who obviously are children of the same God.

Blackfriars Summer Fair

You might think that moving the customary Blackfriars Easter Fair to a later date, and calling it the Blackfriars Summer Fair, would increase the chances of warm, sunny weather; at least, until the faltering start to the British summer this year threatened to wreck such hopes. In the end – praise God! – the summer came back just in time. So it was, following the 9.30 Family Mass last Sunday, that the fun began.

First the food...

...but then a dilemma: so many stalls, so little time.

Finding our bearings...

...to locate the pirate hideout.

Then some target practice...

...before punishing several friars in the stocks...
(that's a wet sponge, not a piece of cheese)

And for those seeking a more civilised celebration, there were cakes and refreshments in the refectory.

Thank you to all who gave generously of their time and effort to make the event such a success. Let's hope the summer stays with us a little while yet!

New Series - Women in the Old Testament

As we come to the end of the academic year here at Blackfriars, it's time for us to introduce our summer series on Godzdogz. This year, we've decided to focus on the Old Testament, but from an angle that can often be overlooked. It is common to characterise the Old Testament as representative of a very patriarchal society, with women taking very much a secondary role. Of course, this claim does identify a real phenomenon, but it can risk being self-fulfilling. If we assume too quickly that it is true, then our reading of the Old Testament will be coloured accordingly, so that we end up discounting the stories of those women we do find as necessarily secondary.

On the other hand, if you go looking for the women who do feature in the Old Testament, it can be quite surprising (given the common opinion just mentioned) how many you find: indeed, focusing on their stories and their place in the wider context of the Old Testament can draw our attention to neglected corners of the Bible, as well as giving new insights to the parts we might know better.

That's why, this summer, the Godzdogz team are going to take a look at the women in the Old Testament, from Eve to Susannah, taking in many others, less and better known, along the way. We hope it will be an opportunity not only for our readers, but also for those of us writing the posts, both to acquaint ourselves better with parts of the Old Testament and also to explore what the Word of God is saying to us in them.

Vocation Story: Br. Augustine DeArmond, O.P.

I grew up in Springfield, a rural town in southeast Louisiana about 45 miles from New Orleans. While people refer to most of the southern United States as ‘The Bible Belt,’ due to the large population of Sola ScripturaProtestants, my family lives in the ‘Catholic Triangle,’ a section of Louisiana in the middle of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Morgan City. With Sicilian immigrants comprising half of my family, being Catholic was never a question for me.

At 18, I entered college seminary for the Diocese of Baton Rouge. After a very short stay, I realized I did not like being sequestered in a small college dormitory with other seminarians and a few Benedictine monks as my only neighbors. I also came to realize how little any of my faith made sense to me in light of being an adult. I think this problem had less to do with my education as a young Christian, and more to do with my lack of maturity. One afternoon, I informed the rector of my decision to leave, packed my bags and other personal items, and drove away without fanfare.

Upon leaving Seminary, I entered Southeastern Louisiana University, the nearest school to my hometown. While there, I studied liberal arts as an undergraduate. Instead of committing to one subject, I spread my studies out to include philosophy, sociology, history, literature, and some psychology, taking a few more classes than my degree program required. I sensed a deep desire to “make it all connect,” whatever “it” was. In each course, I tailored my essays to involve Catholic issues so as to see my studies in light of the Church’s involvement in the world. These exercises did not produce noteworthy scholarship, but the research always pushed me to examine why I embraced the Church’s tradition with such confidence.

While I volunteered as a catechist for my home parish, most of my work involved technical support for university offices and computer labs. However, in my final year of studies, I started working at the local Holiday Inn with my uncle and cousin. While my initial job had me in the kitchen most nights, I eventually started bartending and serving as night manager. In hindsight, I see God’s providence working through even that experience.

St. Dominic met and converted an innkeeper during one of his stays in Toulouse. He also traveled from place to place, engaging people in discussions of the faith and preaching the Gospel. Since I was not ready to follow St. Dominic, God set me at the inn, as the innkeeper, welcoming wayward travelers and engaging them in conversation. It is interesting to see how so many discussions lead to the topic of faith when one is open to the possibility. And people will often tell  bartenders and innkeepers things they would otherwise only say to their confessors. Discussing the faith with so many people from different walks of life helped me synthesize much of what I learned in adulthood and discuss it in ways relevant to people’s actual situations.

Yet, being a stubborn man, I still ignored God’s call to reconsider my vocation. It would be another five years before I entered the Order. During that time, I kept in contact with my home diocese and went back to school and earned a Master of Arts in English. This course of studies gave me the opportunity to teach English at a local Catholic high school while paying down personal debts in anticipation of another attempt at seminary.

While on retreat with several students, I recall looking across the Gulf of Mexico and hearing the wind blow past my ears. At one point, I asked myself, “I wonder if I should give seminary another try.” A voice that sounded like it came on the wind said, “Why not?” God does not have to say much – especially if He points out the obvious.

At this point, I had not seriously considered religious life and planned to reenter seminary for the diocese. Although I was baptized by a Dominican and grew up in a parish close to them, the possibility of being a religious priest always seemed foreign to the many positive experiences I had with diocesan priests. While serving on yet another youth retreat with some friends, I met Fr. Paul Watkins of the Dominican Province of St. Martin de Porres. I was impressed with his style of preaching and how approachable he was throughout the weekend. He was first religious to look me straight in the eyes and say, “You know, religious life isn’t too bad…” My response was, “Oh? Do tell…” (As you can tell by this point, I like the low-key approach to personal revelation.)

That conversation started the process. Within a few months, every financial barrier, anxiety, and doubt cleared away. It took a great deal of discernment and hard work, but everything fell into place exactly as I needed it. This alone was enough to give me confidence in God’s call.

As I look forward to Ordination to the Diaconate this September, I experience a sense of gratitude for God leading me to the Order of Preachers. While it seemed like I was aimless for a so long, and really not sure where I was supposed to use my gifts, God lead me through very careful paths. I can only hope my future in Dominican Life is as surprising as my route toward it.

Saved by the Blood of Christ

SOLEMNITY OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
 Ex 24:3-8; Ps 115:13-18; Heb 9: 11-15; Mk 14:12-16 & 22-26.




The liturgical readings have a focus on the blood of Christ and its saving effects for us. This is linked to and expressed in the making and entering into covenant and in the reception of blessings that flow from it. The covenants (or, more prosaically, contracts, agreements or pledges of loyalty) involved two parties: in these Biblical cases this meant God and a specified group of people. Each side made certain commitments, not necessarily identical ones, and in the case of God and humanity, identical ones were impossible due to the diverse natures of human creature and divine creator. These Biblical covenants served the salvation of humanity by God, a salvation in which human co-operation was required, salvation being concerned with the rescuing, liberation and protection and enhancement of life from what endangers it. God is alive in a unique and everlasting way and is life itself.

At a most profound level, people owe everything to God, including the gift of life, and are called to give themselves over to God and live in obedience to God, trusting in divine providence for all our provision in life, even unto death. Ultimately, we do not have control over the length of our life or over death and nor should we seek to do so. We are to hold back nothing from God. These ideas about life and death were symbolised for the Jews in blood: life was considered to be in the blood in a special way, and death is expressed most clearly by its shedding. This dedication of life and, with it, a commitment unto death was accompanied by blessings from God, and these blessings flowed further than death, either into one’s descendents or as was finally revealed, for eternity. It also found expression in cultic sacrifice that included the immolation (death) of the offering: by death, all that it was, all its life, is offered to God, the source from which it came. All of this is taken up in the formation of the covenants.

 In the Exodus reading we hear that God made a covenant with the people of Israel through the human mediation of Moses. The people showed the extent of their commitment to God and the covenant by sacrificing animals (ie some of their valuable possessions) and marking themselves with the animals’ blood, as such expressing their own commitment and in this way entering into the blessings of the covenant, including the forgiveness of sins and purification from its effects.


The reading from Hebrews recalls these events but makes clear that the Mosaic covenant was only a preparation, a fore-shadowing, or type, of what God was to achieve in Jesus Christ. God had blessed his people through the Mosaic covenant, one renewed each year with further animal sacrifices, but still the people fell away and did not live in divine intimacy to the degree that God wanted. God wanted to provide a better covenant made by a better mediator and with more power to remove sins and their impact, and to convey richer blessings. Jesus is that mediator and the letter to Hebrews shows how he and the covenant he makes fulfil and exceed the previous covenants and their mediators.

 He is human, one like us in all things apart from sin, and so able to represent us before God. He lived a blameless life, a holy life, of perfect and complete dedication to God his divine Father and to the divine will. He also offered to God the Father his violent death and the shedding of his blood that literally accompanied it, a death and hence blood offered to God by him in prayer for us, ‘through the Eternal (or Holy) Spirit’, as Hebrews puts it, expressed elsewhere in the prayers and teaching of Jesus. As such he was both priest and victim. In doing this he established a new covenant, an everlasting one, truly effective in forgiving sins and allowing us to receive divine life, and to become holy to the point of being divinised. The Resurrection and the Ascension show this offering of himself, in his humanity and unto death, being taken up into the presence of God in the heavens, a place and state from which all blessings flow down to us, a state and place whose blessings we are now caught up into. Jesus has led us into these blessings, and is thus both Moses and Joshua in terms of the Old Testament types, though greater than both. Jesus fulfils all these human types. Of course, as Jesus is the eternal Son of God, it also means God is reconciling the world to himself. In and through Jesus the perfect covenant is established with humanity, a covenant founded on the Tri-une life of God, into which humanity, in and through Jesus, has been taken up.


 
The Gospel reading shows how these blessings now reach us most pre-eminently, that is in the sacramental form of the Eucharist, in which we enter into the sacrificial self-offering of Christ to his Father, and receive the blessings of this, the gift of God’s very life, expressed most fully and perfectly in the devout reception of Holy Communion. ‘This is my body. … This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many’ (as Mark records it). The Mass, or Eucharist, catches us up into the offering of Jesus to his Father in the Spirit. It unites us to the saving presence, and action of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension. It catches us up into the blessings and life of Heaven and of the world to come even as we still live this life on earth. It points to and increases our longing for his return in full glory, giving us also the assurance of a sure hope. In the meantime we are to live Eucharistic lives, lives within the Covenant established by Jesus, lives of thankful praise to God, lives of generous service and sacrifice unto death, lives of obedient holiness and compassion, lives orientated in prayer to God the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, lives in which we become the body of Christ on earth.

Sacraments Series - A Recap

Over Eastertide, the Godzdogz team presented a series of articles on the Sacraments of the Church, a series which we have supplemented over the last couple of weeks with a treatment of certain related topics. We have tried over the course of the series to give a sense of the place the Sacraments occupy in the life of the Church, and of individual Christians, as ways in which we touch upon the divine reality to which the Church points and draws us. As the series now draws to a close, we hope our readers have found it useful: we would, as ever, be grateful for your comments. For your reference, below is a list of all the posts in the series:

• The Sacraments of the Church
• The Sacraments in General
• Baptism
• Confirmation
• Eucharist - Presence
• Eucharist - Sacrifice
• Penance
• Anointing of the Sick
• Holy Orders
• Marriage
• The Sacraments as Liturgy
• The Sacraments: Christ's Gift of the Spirit
• Sacramentals
• Christian Funerals

Christian Funerals

The Christian approach to death can often appear contradictory. Death is seen as the enemy, albeit one conquered by Christ; we mourn and lament over the dead, and yet we also celebrate that the end of our earthly pilgrimage marks a fulfilment of the life begun at Baptism as we are prepared for the vision of God. Thus the Christian Funeral is vital in marking the passage of the deceased; the blessings and prayers for the dead express the sense that those who have gone before us are still very much members of our Christian community. We love them and so pray for them and ask that they do the same for us. So the Christian funeral is for the whole community of believers, for the dead and those who mourn.

In accompanying the earthly pilgrim to their resting place, the Church follows the Order of Christian Funerals (Ordo exsequiarum). There are three principal parts to this order; firstly, the Vigil for the Deceased; secondly, the Funeral Mass; lastly, the Rite of Committal. The body of the deceased will normally be brought to the Church the evening before the Funeral Mass and the Vigil held accordingly. This includes prayers for the reception of the dead, a liturgy of the Word, prayers of intercession and concluding rites. The use of sacramentals such as Holy Water are evident throughout this and the following parts of the Ordo exsequiarum. The funeral Mass itself is at the heart of these liturgical celebrations, and it is in the Eucharist that the Church fully expresses that communion with the deceased; the Church, in offering to the Father and the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, asks that the dead be purified of their sins and gain admittance to the Kingdom.

The Rite of Committal takes place at the graveside and includes readings from scripture and further prayers for the deceased before the committal itself takes place. Burial, rather than cremation is encouraged by the Church, and throughout these rites we see importance of the body in Christian faith. Death marks the temporary separation of body and soul until the Resurrection and as such, respect for our bodies in death as well as life, is paramount. A corpse is not a mere empty husk to be discarded and forgotten. A burial site is an important place where the dead can be remembered, it forms a sacred focal point for those who mourn, and ultimately, it reminds us that one day we will rise together and, body and soul, be glorified in the presence of God. As we say in the Creed; I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.