Transubstantiation

O Sacrament Most Holy by Br Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Transubstantiation

The Roman Catholic dogma that the substance of bread and wine transforms into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ during the celebration of Holy Mass.

To make sense of the obvious fact that the communion wafer doesn’t change in outward appearance, Catholic theologians rely on the Aristotelian distinction between a thing’s form and its substance.

According to this belief, the form (what we can see) does not change but the substance (sometimes called the “essence”) does.

This is in opposition to the popular view, which from a Catholic perspective is inadequate, that the Eucharist is a mere symbol of remembrance or, as some New Age believers say, sign of human or cosmic unity.

While the sacrament of the Eucharist includes symbolic and unifying aspects, its essentially heavenly mystical quality supersedes these reductive interpretations concerning its meaning and character.

Symbolic and social realities aside, there is a current trend to equate the cosmic and/or astral realms with the heavenly. For Catholics, however, there is a qualitative difference among the cosmic (e.g. galaxies, stars, planets), the astral (spirits, gods, goddesses, energy fields), and the heavenly (experienced as the indwelling of grace).

» Agape, Aristotle, Consubstantiation, Grace, Quiddity

On the Web:

• While Catholics believe that the Eucharist need not change in physical appearance to be an effective sacrament, claims are sometimes made as to its miraculous transformation

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Virgin Mary, The Blessed

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP

The Blessed Virgin Mary

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, wife of St. Joseph.

According to Catholic teaching, Mary was conceived immaculately and born without the taint of original sin.

The Greek Orthodox Church accepts devotion through Mary but not the idea of her immaculate conception.

Catholics believe that Mary always was and will be a virgin. That is, Mary and her elderly husband Joseph remained perfectly chaste.

The virgin birth refers to Mary’s conceiving Jesus after she freely chose to accept God’s miraculous intervention. This took place before her marriage to Joseph and Mary most likely suffered from the misunderstandings of Joseph and others who initially saw only scandal.

From reading the New Testament and Apocrypha, many believe that Joseph and Mary had sex and four other boys and two girls after Jesus.

But the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Mary bore only Jesus.

For believing Catholics, the “other Mary” mentioned in the New Testament bore James and Joseph, the so-called “brothers” of Jesus.

Catholics say the term “brother” (Greek: adelphos) is in keeping with Old Testament usage, meaning “close relation” (i.e. kith and kin) and designates spiritual instead of physical brotherhood.

Catholics believe that Mary is a mediator between Christ and mankind, not a goddess. The idea that Mary is a mediator between mankind and God has been traced to the 3rd century CE.

When praying to Mary through the Holy Rosary, Catholics do not worship her but rather request that she intercedes for them–as the Hail Mary Prayer says, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Some Protestants and Fundamentalists complain that Catholics have got it all wrong because, so they say, Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and Man. But these very same people freely ask their friends and associates to “pray for them” which to any thinking person is clearly a request for intercession.

The Catholic reply to this contradictory Protestant and Fundamentalist charge is that if you can ask souls on Earth to pray for you, why not souls in heaven?

In the New Testament Mary instructs Jesus to perform his first miracle at a wedding ceremony at Cana (John 2: 1-11).

Jesus hesitates – “it is not my time” – but performs the miracle of turning water into wine at Mary’s insistence.

Mary is depicted musically in Stabat Mater, the “standing mother” (at the foot of the cross of her crucified son). The composers Palestrina, Pergolesi, Rossini, Haydn, Verdi and Dvorak have written unique works, each called Stabat Mater. While Pergolesi’s work is the most popular, all compositions are based on the same New Testament account of Mary’s grief while witnessing Jesus’ execution at the hands of the Romans.

Since 1727 the devotional poem Stabat Mater Dolorosa (“A mother standing, grief-stricken”) has been set to a plainchant melody in the Catholic Mass.

Mary became widely venerated throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The devotion of monks and religious during this period was enthusiastic to the point of their sometimes being taken as madpersons.

In 431 the Council of Ephesus defined Mary as Theotokos, a Greek term meaning “The Mother of God.”

The doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption (i.e. her rising at death) into heaven was formed around the 6th century CE by orthodox theologians. It became sanctioned by the Catholic Church in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

The idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception was hotly disputed in the Middle Ages but generally accepted by the 16th century. The doctrine was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854, stipulating that Mary was born free from “all stain of original sin.”

Many lay and religious persons around the world claim to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the most publicized being those at Fatima, Lourdes and Medjugorge. For a good summary of Marian apparitions, see http://www.apparitions.org/.

Some religious scholars and lay people, alike, equate Mary with the Egyptian Isis, the Roman Demeter, the Hindu Kali or the Chinese Kwan Yin, among a host of other goddesses.

Likewise, C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell somewhat dubiously equate Mary with various goddesses, envisioning all as archetypal images of an underlying and some say sexist “feminine principle.”

But even a casual study of these various female deities reveals striking differences. And to equate them as if they were all the same, as so many New Agers and pop psychologists do, seems facile.

» Adam, Anima, Assumption, Brahman, Fatima, Goddess vs. goddess, Great Mother, Greek Orthodox Church, Hail Mary Prayer, Heaven, Icon, Infallibility, Knight, Koran, Madonna, Nicene Creed, Sister

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Winnowing

Separate the wheat from the chaff

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Winnowing

In Old Testament farming this is the separation of the edible grain from the chaff–that is, the inedible stalks and husks (Ruth 3:2).

The grain was either raked with a “winnowing fork” or thrown into the air where the breeze would blow away the chaff but not the heavier grain.

Similar agricultural methods are still used in the 21st century in the Near East, Africa and Asia.

The image of winnowing is found several times in the Old Testament, symbolizing the dispersion of Israel during the exile. It is also used as a metaphor for the judgment of Yahweh.

In the New Testament, which for many Christians fulfills the Old Testament, the image of winnowing designates a final judgment and eternal separation of good souls that enter heaven and evil souls that descend to hell.

Along these lines, John the Baptist await the Messiah (Jesus) who holds a winnowing fork (or fan) to clean the threshing floor, gather the good wheat and throw the useless chaff into the eternal fires of hell.

His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:17).

Catholic teaching has to some degree elaborated on this ancient view of ’salvation vs. damnation’ with the idea of purgatory.

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Wach, Joachim

Wach, Joachim (1898-1955)

Influential German Christian scholar of religion who held a position at the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1955.

Wach asked important questions about the study of religion.

For instance:

• Are researchers able to understand the essence of a belief system that they, themselves, don’t believe nor participate in?
• Do researchers simply articulate some kind of marketable fiction that has little bearing on the intricacies of what really happens in the religious lives of so many unique individuals?
• Conversely, are researchers able to discern a common thread among apparent differences in religious phenomena?

For Wach that common thread among humanity is the tendency toward religion, itself.

Theodore M. Ludwig further notes that

Wach repeatedly takes up the question of the “objectivity” of the interpreter, whether one who is not a committed believer can understand a religion, whether historical distance helps or hinders understanding, and the like. His position is argued at length: the scholar can by “bracketing” his or her own views enter into understanding of another religion, sometimes presenting it even more completely and accurately than believers can. But there must be, Wach argues, an empathy or sensitivity for religion on the part of the scholar, otherwise there can be no understanding.

Theodore M. Ludwig, “Review: Joachim Wach’s Voice Speaks Again” in History of Religions, Vol. 29, No. 3, Feb., 1990: 289-291, p. 291.

Wach is extremely interested in religious experience. As such he defines the term Ultimate Reality in terms of a personal experience, an approach not unlike that found in Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy.

Although it wouldn’t be politically correct to do so today, Wach differentiates religious from magical experience.

Religious experience is a continuous (with intermittences) response to a “powerful, comprehensive, shattering, and profound” experience of Ultimate Reality that must simultaneously involve the hierarchical elements of intellect, affect and volition, and which leads to definite and imperative action.

By way of contrast, Wach says that magical experience is a mere series of “unconnected thrills,” this perhaps paralleling Sri Aurobindo’s notion of ‘vitalistic’ energy which, for Aurobindo, stands definitely lower on the ‘quality scale,’ if you will, of interior experience.

Wach’s definition of action seems quite forward thinking in that it includes acts of contemplation, a perspective that we’re just getting glimmerings of today in our so-called enlightened age.

In differentiating contemplation from slothful indifference, Wach notes William James’ Christian pragmatism: “Our practice is the only sure evidence even to ourselves, that we are genuinely Christians” (Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions, Joseph M. Kitagawa ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958: 31-35).

One must ask, however, if even the so-called indifferent sloth is, in fact, doing some form of spiritual labor, if perhaps unwittingly.

This notion of different types of work, visible and invisible, echoes the Greek pre-Socratic Heraclitus’ conviction that

Even sleepers and dreamers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.

Heraclitus in Philip Wheelwright ed., The Presocratics, Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1982, p. 79.

» Energy, Holy, Magic

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Abyss

The Abyss

Originally uploaded by imagical

Abyss (Greek, abyssos, Latin abyssus). Myths about an abyss or bottomless pit are found in most cultures.

In Judaism the abyss lies deep within the earth, a place where evil spirits of the dead are banished (Job 32:22, Psalm 6:5, 143:7).

In ancient Greece the majority of the dead retire to a gloomy underworld, an abyss of “shades” where they endure punishment for worldly sins.

The ancient Greek idea of heaven is not well developed. In fact, only a few heroes pass on to the favorable Blessed Isles. After the 5th century BCE the belief that the dead reside among the stars appears. But this still radically differs from the concept of heaven as forwarded by Jesus Christ.

In Hindu lore, a popular version of the Ramayana epic portrays the heroine Sita being consumed by a great opening in the earth.

The Druidic tradition tells of evil foes falling down into bottomless caverns.

The biblical Satan is bound by an angel and cast into a bottomless pit (Rev. 20:3).

Mircea Eliade notes that myths about “binding” evil beings are quite plentiful.

New Testament (NT) accounts of an abyss refer to a hellish region from which a wild beast emerges to temporarily destroy prophets after they have completed their mission.

The Abyss in the NT is likewise described as a prison for evil spirits (Luke 8:31; Rev 9:1-2; 11; 11:7-8).

Interestingly, Victorian Fairy imagery is replete with watery underworlds inhabited by ghoulish beings, amidst which fairies are protected from harm by dwelling, often sleepily, within a sort of magical cocoon.

In the Beowulf myth, an evil water-troll is slain in her underwater lair by use of a magical sword discovered by the hero, deep under the water’s surface.

More recently, the invention of the bathysphere and the submarine opened the door for pulp fiction and numerous Hollywood “B” movies about underwater horrors.

An underwater abyss is also found in the science fiction film, The Abyss.

Sci-fi also depicts the abyss motif in outer space. In several episodes, Star Trek Voyager’s Captain Janeway stands perilously above an almost bottomless cylinder within a Borg ship.

Likewise, Star Wars‘ Luke Skywalker perches on a ledge over an abyss in the evil Emperor’s Death Star. And the more recent Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is replete with strange subterranean beings.

In psychoanalytic terms, Freudians see the abyss as a symbol of the mother’s womb or the tumultuous forces of the instinctual id.

Jungians tend to regard the abyss as an archetypal image of the collective unconscious.

Regardless of which school one subscribes to, in the most general sense a fear of total destruction seems to coexist with a potential for victory over, and order arising from, the dark chaos of the abyss.

As Rod Serling put it in the close of the 1961 Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” (pictured above), in which apparently normal American neighbors go beserk during an atomic bomb scare:

For civilization to survive the human race has to remain civilized.

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Adi Da (aka Free-John, Da 1939- )

Adi Da (aka Free-John, Da 1939- ) Originally Franklin Jones, Adi Da is an American guru born in Jamaica, New York. He has also gone under the names of Da Free-John, Bubba Free-John and Heartmaster Da.

Adi Da claims to have reached enlightenment at age three years. In their Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult, Mather and Nichols note that this achievement did not last. In his college days Adi Da explored different forms of hedonism, to include LSD and open sex.

To this criticism Adi Da replies that his activities were an essential stage within his path of discovery.

Adi Da also says he is an incarnation of the Brahman. Like many New Age enthusiasts, he denigrates organized forms of Christianity. And like most Hindus and devotees of Hinduism, Adi Da counters the Christian claim that Jesus is the only son of God.

For Adi Da Jesus is one of many avatars or “incarnations,” not unlike that which Adi Da, himself, claims to be.

But Adi Da is not just critical of organized Christianity. He, in fact, contests all organized religions, claiming the truth of the spiritual quest may be found in one’s own heart.

To realize this apparent truth, veils of selfishness and ignorance must be recognized and dispelled.

Ironically, his California group gatherings and North American tours exhibit many of the characteristics of organized religion, with Adi Da at the center.

Listed in several cult and manipulation internet indexes, Adi Da has founded the Free Communion Church/Dawn Horse Fellowship and Laughing Man Institute.

While claiming to be beyond any particular system, he studied under and has theological affinities with several Hindu gurus, the most salient affinity being the belief in reincarnation. It has also been suggested that he possesses psi abilities and can read the thoughts of his disciples, an alleged ability known as siddhis in Hindu and Buddhist belief systems.

Some call Adi Da a religious genius, others a profound theologian and yet others suggest he’s the head of a “dysfunctional organization” for sincere but sorely misguided seekers (Source » http://www.adidaarchives.org ).

On the World Wide Web:

• http://www.adidam.org/ (Official web site)
• http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/adida.cfm/ (Mixed opinion)
• http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com/2005/06/big-adi-daddi.html (Negative opinion)

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Agape

Agape In literary circles the Greek term agapē (Latin: caritas) refers to the ideal of universal love, particularly, charitable Christian love among brothers and sisters of the human family.

As C. S. Lewis suggests in The Four Loves (1960), this is distinct from matrimonial, emotional, passionate-erotic and friendly love.

For many Christians, agape also refers to the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus Christ.

The Eucharist is often connected with the Jewish Passover meal, an event signifying, among other things, fellowship.

Christians tend to stress that the Eucharistic meal is not just a celebration of fellowship. For Christians believing in the Eucharist, agape is a “love feast” that involves a genuine participation in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. The rite is said to pierce through time and space and be sanctified from heaven.

For believers, the Eucharist is not a mere symbol nor memorial; rather, the host is essentially if not visibly transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

The roots of the Eucharist are traceable to ancient Greece and Rome, where it was believed that deceased ancestors partook of food and drink offered at funeral feasts.

Somewhat like the Eucharist, this was not just a memorial feast but an active celebration of the living and the dead. » Consubstantiation, Eros, Philia, Transubstantiation,

Image Credit:

• “Painting of a feast / Early Christian catacombs / Paleochristian art.
  Fresco of female figure holding chalice in the Agape Feast. Catacomb of Saints Pietro e Marcellino (Saints Marcellinus and Peter), Via Labicana, Rome, Itally” » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Agape_feast_03.jpg

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Apostle

Apostle (Greek: Apostolos, derived from apo [away] + stellein [to send])

The Apostles were, for the most part, ordinary folk transformed by Jesus Christ to assist and continue in his spiritual mission.

For Christians, the number twelve suggests that the apostles are a divinely chosen group since this number parallels the twelve tribes of Israel, as outlined in the Old Testament.

Collectively the apostles are: Simon Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholemew (possibly Nathanael), Matthew (possibly Levi), Thomas, James the Less, Thaddaeus (possibly Judas the son of James), Simon the Zealot or Cananean, and Judas Iscariot.

Judas Iscariot, who helped with the accounting, was the one who betrayed Jesus.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas after his death by suicide.

Paul was another later addition.

Since one apostle went bad and two new apostles were added, critics could say that the emphasis on the number twelve does not really make sense.

Biblical defenders reply with various theological arguments, which in essence say that apparent discrepancies such as these amplify rather than nullify the “Living Word.” » Bible

Image Source:

• “Altar mosaic” by Platform 3 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/platform3/381073540/, Creative Commons License

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Aquinas, St. Thomas

Aquinas, St. Thomas (1225-74) Italian theologian born in his family’s castle near Aquino.

While in a Dominican monastery his family members were unwilling to accept his decision and abducted him, taking him prisoner for two years.

He fled to Germany where he taught in 1248 after studying under Albertus Magnus.

His theological work borrows heavily from Aristotle, recasting his arguments within a Christian framework.

This is particularly evident in his treatment of time and eternity, which for him are different.

Aquinas takes Aristotle’s notion of a “prime mover” and says God is eternal and knows what will be for all time.

This does not mean, as some say, that the future exists in its own right. Rather, for Aquinas the mind of God has perfect knowledge of the future, aspects of which may be imparted to individuals in the present through prophecy.

Although Aquinas wrote extensively on angels and spiritual powers, his work recognized the importance of knowledge gained from sense experience and experimentation.

His Summa Theologia attempted to provide a comprehensive theology and outlined Five Ways to prove the existence of God. Like most theological proofs of God, these will probably seem self-evident to believers but somewhat lacking to skeptics.

To this day much of the contemporary Catholic catechism cites Aquinas to support Catholic teachings. This might be a little ironic if, indeed, legends are true about what Aquinas said after apparently receiving some kind of heavenly vision toward the close of his life:

All my works seem like straw after what I have seen”, St Thomas told Brother Reginald.

Source » http://www.opthird.com/sthomasgkc.htm

Meanwhile, another legend says:

Aquinas heard a voice from a cross that told him he had written well.”

Source » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Career

Neither, one or both of these legends could be true. That both might be true is possible because theoretical discourse is often a necessary precursor to more immediate forms of experience in not just spirituality but most human endeavors.†

Despite its medieval limitations, the sheer scope of Aquinas’ work is impressive, like any kind of intricate intellectual system. No wonder the popular writer Umberto Eco likened St. Thomas to a “medieval computer.”

To modern thinkers, however, it seems unwarranted for one person to set out to definitively explain the workings of God.

While Aquinas may have humbly admitted his intellectual grandiosity after having a direct experience of the godhead, it seems that some contemporary theologians continue to adhere to his kind of medieval analytical framework, with all the intellectual (and ethical) strengths and weaknesses that such an approach will likely provide.

Aquinas was canonized in 1323 and was given the formal title, Doctor Angelicus. His feast day is 28 January. » Adam, Alchemy, Archangel, Anselm (St.), Augustine (St.), Evil, Heaven, Origen, Original Sin, Providence, Reason, Reincarnation, Scotus (Duns), Soul, Suicide

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† We often learn conceptual basics before actually doing. Not to say that theory and practice are mutually exclusive, but one can look at the problem in terms of a dynamic continuum. For example, one studies rules of the road before taking a driver’s test. But licenced drivers still need to know and revise their driving theory as a result of ongoing experience. And so the same might apply to some forms of spirituality.

On the World Wide Web:

• “The existence of God can be proved in five ways”» http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/aquinasFiveWays.htm

Image Source:

• “Thomas Aquinas” by Niall McAuley http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnmcauley/1328768103/, Creative Commons License

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Aramaic

Aramaic [from Greek Aramaios] A group of Semitic languages as old as 2,000 BCE.

Jesus Christ apparently spoke a Gallilean dialect of Old Aramaic, related to Hebrew.

In modern times the Eastern Aramaic language of Syriac (or Assyrian) is still spoken in regions of the Middle East.

Image Source:

• Cropped from original, “Aramaic scrıpt at Mor Ibrahim in Midyat” by CharlesFred at http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesfred/212460376/, Creative Commons License

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