Reflection: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The agony in the garden was really the agony in His mind. He suffered the passion in His mind before He suffered it in His body — to the point of actually affecting the latter by sweating blood. But from then on, it was His bodily suffering that affected His mental suffering.

At the base of all His suffering was the one thing that human beings dread the most: rejection. He was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by all the rest of His Apostles; those He had hand picked as His closest intimates. He was most rejected by those who put Him to death. They not only wanted Him dead, they wanted Him to suffer. They not only considered Him to be worth nothing, they considered Him to be worth minus nothing! This significance was not lost on Him. He felt fully the rejection as each physical agony reminded Him.

So we thank Him for joining us on our human journey and actually choosing to experience what we fear the most.

We thank Him for enduring the arrest and the cruelty of the guards and the Sanhedrin. We thank Him for enduring the cruelty of Pilate who allowed Him to be executed rather than risk his own political ruin — and for the cruelty of Herod who wanted to be entertained by having Him work a miracle. We thank Him for all the time He spent satisfying their preoccupation with themselves, just delaying His ultimate death. We thank Him for the anxiety of that night in a cell.

The next morning He was brutally scourged with such intensity and violence that He became as an aged man in a matter of minutes. His multiple wounds bloodied His entire body. The loss of so much blood not only severely weakened Him; it also caused a severe, throbbing headache that remained with Him for the duration.

We thank Him for this and for the mockery He received when they put a purple cloth on His shoulders and pushed a crown of thorns down into His head which intensified His headache. They blindfolded Him and slapped Him, insisting that He 'prophesy' who had hit Him. The spat on Him and beat Him.

He stood at the praetorium in utter disgrace according to the attitude of the crowd — while in reality, He stood in utter glory: almighty God, being present to every person who has ever suffered rejection, joining them in their moment of pain. It was there that He was sentenced to death by crucifixion. As a further humiliation, He was forced to carry His instrument of execution. He revealed to St. Bernard that carrying the cross was His most painful agony. He was so weak, He could hardly walk. So the weight of the cross on His shoulder was unbearable. It most likely dislocated His shoulder. It is not surprising that He fell down on the stone streets that were filthy with animal dung — with the cross on top of Him. And He got up each time.

It was only with the help of Simon of Cyrene that He made it to the top of Calvary. There they drove the nails into the carpal tunnels of His hands, causing pain throughout His upper body. The nail in His feet registered great pain through all the sensitive nerves there. When the cross was righted, His up-stretched arms squeezed His lungs and He began to pant for lack of oxygen. So He had to push down on His crucified feet to push His body up in order to fill His lungs with air. This took great effort because He was so weak. Yet He managed to maintain such effort for three hours of agony which increased gradually as He became weaker moment by moment.

By the end of the third hour, His agony was at its peak. He had come to the point where His strength simply gave out and He suffocated. In this eternal moment as He died, He gave us His life. Transcending time, this moment of divine love is present to us in the tabernacles of the world.

Thank you, Lord. We adore you O Christ and we praise you. By your holy cross, you have redeemed the world!

— Father Vincent Serpa, O.P.


Personal Thought:

Through Christ, we reach God personally. Christ gives us a deeper understanding of the Love of God and his purpose for coming to us in the flesh - being fully human and fully divine. For God loved the world so much that he came to us Himself, in the flesh, and lived among us and died for us, to touch our lives, be closer to us, and to save us. He went through the process of living as a human and fully experiencing the emotional and physical pain that came with it. He faced first hand, the most painful experiences any of us could ever imagine - rejection of His beloved, humility, betrayal, and an excruciatingly painful death.

Let us always remember to live each moment for Him, and to give thanks for what He has done for us, and to praise Him for who He is.

Catholic Interpretation of the Bible

The Bible is a collection of books inspired by God, but written by man with man's understanding of God during the time when the books were written, so it is extremely complicated. In order for it to start making any sense, its interpretation should be contextual, not literal. The contextual approach attempts to go back to the original intent of its authors by analyzing and taking into account the time, place, culture, language, practices, mode of thinking, purpose in writing, the manners in expression, and other circumstances when the scriptures were written. God inspired the human authors of the Bible to write using their own talents, abilities and styles - He didn't merely dictate messages to them as stenographers or as a ventriloquist uses a dummy.

Scripture teaches the truths that God intends to reveal for the sake of our salvation, but it is expressed in different ways in various literary forms - history, prophecy, poetry, law, proverbs, myths, allegory, legends, fables, parables, etc. All of theses literary forms are capable of communicating truth in dramatic fashion. It is interesting that the more important a subject matter is to us, the more we tend to be more creatively abstract and poetic . The Bible deals with life and death, love and hate, good and evil, God and nothingness - subjects that dry, scientific or technical literary forms could not do justice.

Times were different when the scriptures were written. God communicated in a way that was understood for that time and guided people to the extent that they could accept divine revelation. Before Christ, people had a hard time discerning the difference between causing and allowing.  They thought God caused everything, including evil. It was only after centuries passed and people grew in spiritual maturity that they could grasp more and more of God's truth. God didn't change, but we did in terms of our ability to hear what He was saying. It shows as things start becoming clearer to us as we go further into the Bible from the later books of the Old Testament and into the New Testament. We don't disregard the Old Testament, however, because we wouldn't have a full understanding of the New Testament without it. The Old Testament prepares us for Christ and the New Testament completes and fulfills the Old Testament. 

So it is extremely important to not become so overly concerned and preoccupied with the individual words in the Bible and taking them at face value, but to look at the Bible as a whole and hear the message that those words are conveying to be understood in a better light. If we don't do this, it is probably possible for anyone to argue almost any position by quoting or citing certain parts of the Bible while excluding or dismissing others.  

The Bible is without error in the truths of its message, but imperfect in the sense of its language and how it can be interpreted since it was written by humans. This would explain why there may be some confusion in scripture, which can appear to be contradictory or inconsistent. For example, we have two accounts of creation in Genesis. In Genesis 1:1 - 2:4, man was created after the animals, whereas, in Genesis 2:4 - 3:24, man was created before the animals. Obviously, we are not so concerned with such differences; both are included because each had been long treasured in the community, and it is merely emphasizing that God is the creator of all. We also see it in the book of Acts when Jesus appeared to Paul on his way to Damascus, and those who accompanied Paul "heard the voice but could see no one." (Acts 9:7), and then in another verse (Acts 22:9) Paul says "My companions saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke to me."

We also need to look extensively at what was going on in history at that time, otherwise something that was translated may have a different meaning than what we may understand it to be today, especially if it is not easily translated into modern language. The human race is constantly changing and evolving in culture and language.  

The Bible, which encompasses over 4.000 years of human history, is much too complicated and important for any individual to attempt to tackle alone, and is not meant for personal interpretation (Jn 24:45, 2 Pt 1:18-21). The Bible came from the church - not the other way around. "...the church is the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim 3:15). Sacred written and oral tradition is what the Church uses to teach that truth via the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church. In addition to these traditions that Jesus handed down to the church, the Vatican Library, one of the oldest libraries in the world, holds hundreds of thousands of ancient documents that support Roman Catholic doctrine and are used to research  and analyze the Bible in context with regard to all that surround the scriptures when they were written.  

The Church is a living organism in which Christ lives. Catholics are encouraged to interpret the Bible according to objective principles endorsed by the Church within its living Tradition, which are based on, expand on, and are in harmony and consistent with sacred scripture.

Personal Reflection: Free Will & Trust

I used to wonder why, if God is omnipotent, all-knowing and all-loving, and knows that we will sin and that some of us will be condemned to hell, why just not create the ones that He knows will go to hell and save them from misery and eternal suffering?  Why not just make everyone sinless and not allow evil?  Well, the way I am starting to understand it, God created us out of his own goodness, and He would never allow evil to exist if it didn't have the opportunity to become good again.  

 It all comes down to the profound gift of free will that God has blessed us with.   Yes, we are given the freedom of choice, and God is very aware that giving us free reign of the earth includes us making bad decisions and sin. Just as we, as human parents, know that human choices can lead to grief, yet we still long to bring children into this imperfect world. All we can do is teach them about life the best way we can. In that sense God is the same - we are all His children, and He, Himself, came to us on earth as Jesus, and sacrificed Himself for our sake to help and teach us with His wisdom.

He loves us so much that he gives us a choice.  A choice to accept Him and be in His presence, or to separate ourselves and turn our back on Him.  God created us as human, sentient beings, and with that comes human emotions and experiences, involving tribulation as well as bliss - a mixture of light and darkness.  One thing is for sure; we would never be able to fully understand or appreciate that light without the darkness.  No true joy without sorrow.  Because of this, life can be extremely difficult and confusing at times as we all know.  And out of that chaos and sometimes even desperation and hopelessness, we start searching for answers.  We all have questions and problems in addition to our goals, aspirations and objectives in life. 

When we open our heart to God, we open the door to something divine; something we can turn to in times of need that we can find some comfort in, and that may help us cope with the trials of life, or provide some peace in the midst of chaos, and even offer some of the answers that we are searching for.  God is that mysterious something which not only created all that exists, but that gave everything life - He is what makes a flower bloom, a bird sing, and even more mysteriously, makes our heart beat.  Perhaps the moments when we feel the most lost is when we get so caught up in the beauty of that creation, we forget about that which created it.

When we speak of God and His ultimate plan, in a way, there is no concept of time because He knows all; past, present and future - all at once. He also presents us with opportunities that we have the option to take or chose not to accept.  So even though every moment we can make our own choices, God can still intervene when we ask Him to, or for reasons we may not understand for the sake of the ultimate plan that He has in mind for us, which is beyond our capacity for comprehension. When we reflect on these things, it may help to remind us to trust in God, and that He probably knows what He's doing.

How Did the Catholic Church Get Her Name?

by Kenneth D. Whitehead

The Creed which we recite on Sundays and holy days speaks of one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. As everybody knows, however, the Church referred to in this Creed is more commonly called just the Catholic Church. It is not, by the way, properly called the Roman Catholic Church, but simply the Catholic Church.

The term Roman Catholic is not used by the Church herself; it is a relatively modern term, and one, moreover, that is confined largely to the English language. The English-speaking bishops at the First Vatican Council in 1870, in fact, conducted a vigorous and successful campaign to insure that the term Roman Catholic was nowhere included in any of the Council's official documents about the Church herself, and the term was not included.

Similarly, nowhere in the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council will you find the term Roman Catholic. Pope Paul VI signed all the documents of the Second Vatican Council as "I, Paul. Bishop of the Catholic Church." Simply that -- Catholic Church. There are references to the Roman curia, the Roman missal, the Roman rite, etc., but when the adjective Roman is applied to the Church herself, it refers to the Diocese of Rome!

Cardinals, for example, are called cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, but that designation means that when they are named to be cardinals they have thereby become honorary clergy of the Holy Father's home diocese, the Diocese of Rome. Each cardinal is given a titular church in Rome, and when the cardinals participate in the election of a new pope. they are participating in a process that in ancient times was carried out by the clergy of the Diocese of Rome.

Although the Diocese of Rome is central to the Catholic Church, this does not mean that the Roman rite, or, as is sometimes said, the Latin rite, is co-terminus with the Church as a whole; that would mean neglecting the Byzantine, Chaldean, Maronite or other Oriental rites which are all very much part of the Catholic Church today, as in the past.

In our day, much greater emphasis has been given to these "non-Roman" rites of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council devoted a special document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches), to the Eastern rites which belong to the Catholic Church, and the new Catechism of the Catholic Church similarly gives considerable attention to the distinctive traditions and spirituality of these Eastern rites.

So the proper name for the universal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church. Far from it. That term caught on mostly in English-speaking countries; it was promoted mostly by Anglicans, supporters of the "branch theory" of the Church, namely, that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed was supposed to consist of three major branches, the Anglican, the Orthodox and the so-called Roman Catholic. It was to avoid that kind of interpretation that the English-speaking bishops at Vatican I succeeded in warning the Church away from ever using the term officially herself: It too easily could be misunderstood.

Today in an era of widespread dissent in the Church, and of equally widespread confusion regarding what authentic Catholic identity is supposed to consist of, many loyal Catholics have recently taken to using the term Roman Catholic in order to affirm their understanding that the Catholic Church of the Sunday creed is the same Church that is united with the Vicar of Christ in Rome, the Pope. This understanding of theirs is correct, but such Catholics should nevertheless beware of using the term, not only because of its dubious origins in Anglican circles intending to suggest that there just might be some other Catholic Church around somewhere besides the Roman one: but also because it often still is used today to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church is something other and lesser than the Catholic Church of the creed. It is commonly used by some dissenting theologians, for example, who appear to be attempting to categorize the Roman Catholic Church as just another contemporary "Christian denomination"--not the body that is identical with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed.

The proper name of the Church, then, is the Catholic Church. It is not ever called "the Christian Church," either. Although the prestigious Oxford University Press currently publishes a learned and rather useful reference book called "The Oxford Book of the Christian Church," the fact is that there has never been a major entity in history called by that name; the Oxford University Press has adopted a misnomer, for the Church of Christ has never been called the Christian Church.

There is, of course, a Protestant denomination in the United States which does call itself by that name, but that particular denomination is hardly what the Oxford University Press had in mind when assigning to its reference book the title that it did. The assignment of the title in question appears to have been one more method, of which there have been so many down through history, of declining to admit that there is, in fact, one--and only one--entity existing in the world today to which the designation "the Catholic Church" in the Creed might possibly apply.

The entity in question, of course, is just that: the very visible, worldwide Catholic Church, in which the 263rd successor of the Apostle Peter, Pope John Paul II, teaches, governs and sanctifies, along with some 3,000 other bishops around the world, who are successors of the apostles of Jesus Christ.

As mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, it is true that the followers of Christ early became known as "Christians" (cf. Acts 11:26). The name Christian, however, was never commonly applied to the Church herself. In the New Testament itself, the Church is simply called "the Church." There was only one. In that early time there were not yet any break-away bodies substantial enough to be rival claimants of the name and from which the Church might ever have to distinguish herself.

Very early in post-apostolic times, however. the Church did acquire a proper name--and precisely in order to distinguish herself from rival bodies which by then were already beginning to form. The name that the Church acquired when it became necessary for her to have a proper name was the name by which she has been known ever since-the Catholic Church.

The name appears in Christian literature for the first time around the end of the first century. By the time it was written down, it had certainly already been in use, for the indications are that everybody understood exactly what was meant by the name when it was written.

Around the year A.D. 107, a bishop, St. Ignatius of Antioch in the Near East, was arrested, brought to Rome by armed guards and eventually martyred there in the arena. In a farewell letter which this early bishop and martyr wrote to his fellow Christians in Smyrna (today Izmir in modern Turkey), he made the first written mention in history of "the Catholic Church." He wrote, "Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church" (To the Smyrnaeans 8:2). Thus, the second century of Christianity had scarcely begun when the name of the Catholic Church was already in use.

Thereafter, mention of the name became more and more frequent in the written record. It appears in the oldest written account we possess outside the New Testament of the martyrdom of a Christian for his faith, the "Martyrdom of St. Polycarp," bishop of the same Church of Smyrna to which St. Ignatius of Antioch had written. St. Polycarp was martyred around 155, and the account of his sufferings dates back to that time. The narrator informs us that in his final prayers before giving up his life for Christ, St. Polycarp "remembered all who had met with him at any time, both small and great, both those with and those without renown, and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world."

We know that St. Polycarp, at the time of his death in 155, had been a Christian for 86 years. He could not, therefore, have been born much later than 69 or 70. Yet it appears to have been a normal part of the vocabulary of a man of this era to be able to speak of "the whole Catholic Church throughout the world."

The name had caught on, and no doubt for good reasons.

The term "catholic" simply means "universal," and when employing it in those early days, St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna were referring to the Church that was already "everywhere," as distinguished from whatever sects, schisms or splinter groups might have grown up here and there, in opposition to the Catholic Church.

The term was already understood even then to be an especially fitting name because the Catholic Church was for everyone, not just for adepts, enthusiasts or the specially initiated who might have been attracted to her.

Again, it was already understood that the Church was "catholic" because -- to adopt a modern expression -- she possessed the fullness of the means of salvation. She also was destined to be "universal" in time as well as in space, and it was to her that applied the promise of Christ to Peter and the other apostles that "the powers of death shall not prevail" against her (Mt 16:18).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church in our own day has concisely summed up all the reasons why the name of the Church of Christ has been the Catholic Church: "The Church is catholic," the Catechism teaches, "[because] she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation. She is sent out to all peoples. She speaks to all men. She encompasses all times. She is 'missionary of her very nature'" (no. 868).

So the name became attached to her for good. By the time of the first ecumenical council of the Church, held at Nicaea in Asia Minor in the year 325 A.D., the bishops of that council were legislating quite naturally in the name of the universal body they called in the Council of Nicaea's official documents "the Catholic Church." As most people know, it was that same council which formulated the basic Creed in which the term "catholic" was retained as one of the four marks of the true Church of Christ. And it is the same name which is to be found in all 16 documents of the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Church, Vatican Council II.

It was still back in the fourth century that St. Cyril of Jerusalem aptly wrote, "Inquire not simply where the Lord's house is, for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call their own dens the houses of the Lord; nor inquire merely where the church is, but where the Catholic Church is. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Body, the Mother of all, which is the Spouse of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (Catecheses, xviii, 26).

The same inquiry needs to be made in exactly the same way today, for the name of the true Church of Christ has in no way been changed. It was inevitable that the Catechism of the Catholic Church would adopt the same name today that the Church has had throughout the whole of her very long history.

---

From The Catholic Answer, May/June 1996?
Published by Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750, 1-800-521-0600.

Catholic Bible vs. Protestant Bible

Why does the Protestant Bible have less books in it than the Catholic Bible?

There is an incorrect accusation that the Catholic Church added the seven “apocrypha” or deuterocanonical books to the Old Testament during the Council of Trent that was held between 1545 to 1563. The Council of Trent actually only officially confirmed and canonized which books were already being used long before even the Council of Hippo (393 AD) and Council of Carthage (397 AD). 

Before Christ, there were two collections of sacred books that were accepted and used by the Jewish community. One was called the Masoretic or Palestinian, which was in Hebrew. The other one was called the Septuagint or Alexandrian, which included some books in Greek and Aramaic, as well as others translated from Hebrew, so it was larger. Since the New Testament was written in Greek, the common language Christians of Jewish and gentile origin in the Mediterranean world, the early (Catholic) church used the Septuagint for the Old Testament.

The Masoretic text was set by Jewish scholars probably during the Jewish Council of Jamnia in 90 AD, which was in reaction to the Christian use of the Greek text. They did this also because the books in the Septuagint text helped to affirm that Jesus was the messiah, which they did not want to accept.

Since the time of Jesus, all Christians used the same canon of 73 books of the Septuagint until the early 16th century when Martin Luther left the Catholic Church. When he did, he decided to use the Masoretic text for the Old Testament, which would make his version 7 books shy (a total of 66) of the original Catholic Bible.

Apologetics - Tim Staples

Tim Staples Catholic Answers Apologist

Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers, but he was not always Catholic. Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps. During his four-year tour, he became involved in ministry with various Assemblies of God communities. Immediately after his tour of duty, Tim enrolled in Jimmy Swaggart Bible College and became a youth minister in an Assembly of God community.

During his final year in the Marines, however, Tim met a Marine who really knew his faith and challenged Tim to study Catholicism from Catholic and historical sources. That encounter sparked a two-year search for the truth. Tim was determined to prove Catholicism wrong, but he ended up studying his way to the last place he thought he would ever end up: the Catholic Church!

He converted to Catholicism in 1988 and spent the following six years in formation for the priesthood, earning a degree in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. He then studied theology on a graduate level at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for two years.

Realizing that his calling was not to the priesthood, Tim left the seminary in 1994 and has been working in Catholic apologetics and evangelization ever since.

 

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Part 3

 

Part 4