Incarnate Logos

Note: these excerpt threads are subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority permits

Liturgical Exegesis - Letter and Spirit - Liturgical Enactment

Letter & Spirit: V1: Reading Salvation: Word, Worship, and the Mysteries

Sofia Cavalletti: "Every liturgical event condenses time in some way, making us live in the present events that, without the celebration, would be lost forever, and projecting them towards the eschaton, thus preparing the completion of history... Memorial and typology each annul the distance between historical events, causing them to converge into the 'eternal present' of a manifestation of salvation and of God's love which encompasses the whole of history. Typology makes the listening to the Word today capable of creating a link with past history and what is still the object of hope, trying to discover the 'golden thread' of the plan of God which unites events into a single history. The memorial makes it possible to live today the salvation already realized in the events of the past and projected towards the eschatological completion, awaited now in hope and prayer... In order to receive the divine message and live it, it is necessary to follow the same rules which help us to grasp its totality; that is to say, we always have to live history as if it is concentrated in the present, in its dual dimension of past and future..." [84-85]

Jeremy Driscoll: "This Mystery includes the power of the Word of God in every moment to be received anew as an actual communication of salvation. Every proclamation of the Word in the liturgy is a moment irreducibly new: the event of Christ (all the events of Scripture are the event of Christ) becomes the event of the assembly that here and now hears this Word. The Word proclaimed in liturgy is not some pale reflection or residue of the event proclaimed there. It is the whole reality to which the words bear testimony made present... The exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the 'exodus' of Jesus from this world to his Father, and every believer discovers in penetrating the meaning of the Scriptures that he or she too is living this one and only exodus. The many events of the Scriptures are parts of the one event: Jesus Christ, and him crucified and risen in his Church, in each believer..." [91-92]

Scott Hahn: "Recognition of this biblical worldview has important hermeneutical implications. The interpreter of the Bible enters into a dialouge with a book that is itself an exegetical dialouge--a complex and highly cohesive interpretive web in which later texts can only be understood in relation to ones that came earlier. In order to read the texts as they are written the exegete needs to acknowledge the authors' deep-seated belief in both the divine economy and in the typological expression of that economy... the canon was a liturgical enactment--the Scriptures come to us as the authoritative texts to be used in Christian teaching and worship. But as it was written and passed on to us, Scripture has more than an instructional or exhortative function. When proclaimed in the Church's liturgy, Scripture is intended to 'actualize' what is proclaimed--to bring the believer into living contact with the mirabilia Dei, the mighty saving works of God... From the first pages to the last, we see expressed the biblical authors’ faith that God’s Word is living and active and possesses the power to bring into being what it commands..." [133-134]

Letter & Spirit: V2: The Authority of Mystery: The Word of God and the People of God

Mary Healy: "Who could have ever imagined, for instance, that the Ark of the Covenant before which David danced for joy prefigured an infinitely more intimate dwelling place for God among his people, Mary the Ark of the New Covenant in whose womb his very flesh was enclosed, and before whom John the Baptist leaped for joy before his birth? Who could have fathomed that Eve's creation from the rib of the sleeping Adam would foreshadow the Bride of the New Adam, the Church, born from the pierced side in the sleep of death? Who could have guessed that Joseph's betrayal by his brothers, which ultimately led to his saving them from famine as prime minister of Egypt, would anticipate Christ's rejection by his own 'brothers,' which led to his saving them from eternal death through the gift of the bread of life? These examples, found already in the New Testament's use of the Old Testament and then developed in the writings of the Church Fathers, could be multiplied indefinitely." [36]

David Fagerberg: "Leitourgia originally meant a work done by a few on behalf of the many. 'It denoted a work (ergon) undertaken on behalf of the people (laos). Public projects undertaken by an individual for the good of the community in such areas as education, entertainment or defense would be leitourgia.' Christ undertook a work on behalf of the vital interests of the clan to which he chose to belong--the family of Adam and Eve--and his liturgy continues in the activity of his body. We are the body of Christ because this activity continues in us. By baptismal grace, we are incorporated into the sacred humanity of Christ, his Spirit is poured into our bodies, and we are made one of a new race. Baptism makes a new people called into existence for the very purpose of continuing the work of Christ. Leitourgia is Christ's work become ours... Liturgy is participating in the relationship of love that flows between the persons of the Trinity. I therefore consider Christ to be the premier liturgist, and baby liturgists are born in the baptismal font when they are grafted into his life. The entire economy of salvation, as it is recorded in Scripture, has had as its purpose to produce liturgists... | What we have every eighth day, then, is a liturgy of the Logos and a liturgy of the Eucharist. Mystical liturgy would be a way into God's Logos, who is the mystery that invites the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve home to the Father's covenantal love... Becoming a theologian-soul means being further conformed to the God-man. We are to become an icon of the icon of God..." [58-59|67]

Letter & Spirit: V3: The Hermeneutic of Continuity: Christ, Kingdom, and Creation

Scott Hahn: "Luke reflects a deep biblical worldview. Both his gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, are based upon a hermeneutic of continuity. Luke’s widely recognized reliance on Old Testament allusion and citation is really only the surface manifestation of this deeper, underlying hermeneutic, which is a way of reading and interpreting sacred history. Luke sees an analogy between the first man, Adam, and the 'new adam,' Jesus Christ; between creation and the kingdom of God, and again between the kingdom and the Church; and between the old covenant and the new covenant made in the blood of Christ. Likewise, he sees these relationships diachronically, that is--growing, and developing over the course of time, with the new marking a profound restoration and renewal of the old... | We can conclude further: the close correspondence between the building of the Tabernacle and the creation of the cosmos indicates that the tabernacle-building is a recapitulation of creation, and thus the tabernacle is in some sense a microcosm, a small embodiment of the universe. Conversely, we may conclude that the universe is a macro-tabernacle, a cosmic sanctuary built for the worship of God. Moreover, the close integration of the Tabernacle construction with the giving of the Sinai covenant to Israel suggests that the original construction of the cosmos likewise took place in a covenantal context... | In sum, when Luke-Acts is read in light of the Old Testament--that is, in canonical perspective--it shows how the Church’s universal mission effects the restoration of the Davidic kingdom for all nations, just as it fulfills God’s plan and purpose for all creation. God’s plan for Adam and creation, renewed with David and his kingdom, is thus fulfilled by Christ in the Church." [113|125|138]

Emmanuel Kaniyamparampil: "The limitations of human language in talking about divine mysteries demands the use of symbols and images. Symbols have the capacity to open up various new realms of meaning. Through visible symbols invisible realities can be made accessible to human understanding. Symbols do not reduce the divine to a simple definition, rather they establish a link between the one who employs the symbols and the One symbolized. Thus, symbols reach up to the source of the reality that surpasses human grasp. They afford us a penetrating insight into the mystery of faith. In fact, this is why the Christian liturgy is permeated with symbolic expression. The biblical authors often made use of various symbols familiar to their readers. This is especially true with regard to the identity of the Spirit of God. To evoke the presence and activity of the Spirit, they articulated various symbols based on elements of the natural world--wind, breath, water, and fire. Beginning in the pages of Scripture, these symbols became helpful as believers sought to understand the Spirit’s function in the divine salvific economy..." [169]

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: "Therefore the question of whether Jesus intended to found a Church is a false question because it is unhistorical. The only proper way to phrase the question would be to ask whether Jesus intended to abolish the People of God or to renew it. The answer to this question, rightly put, is plain: Jesus made the old People of God into a new People by adopting those who believe in him into the community of his own self... Put differently, Jesus has entered into the already existing subject of tradition, God's People of Israel, with his proclamation and his whole person, and by doing so he has made it possible for people to participate in his most intimate and personal act of being; that his, his dialouge with the Father. That is the deepest layer of meaning of that process in which he taught his disciples to say 'Our Father.' This being so, fellowship with Jesus and the resultant knowledge of Jesus presupposes that we are in communication with the living subject of tradition to which all this is linked. It presupposes that we are in communication with the Church. The message of Jesus has never been able to live and mediate life except in this communion. Even the New Testament, as a book, presupposes the Church as its subject. It grew in and from the Church; its unity comes solely from the Church's faith, which brings together diverse elements into a unity. We can see this mutual involvement of tradition, knowledge, and community life in all the writings of the New Testament. In order to express it, the Gospel of John and the Johannine letters coined the 'ecclesial we.' Thus, for example, in the concluding verses of the First Letter of John, we come across the formula 'we know' three times (5:1-20). It is also to be found in Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:11). In each case it points to the Church as the subject of knowledge in faith. The concept of 'remembrance' in the Fourth Gospel plays a similar role. The evangelist uses it to show the intertwining of tradition and knowledge..." [199-200]

Letter & Spirit: V4: Temple and Contemplation: God's Presence in the Cosmos, Church, and Human Heart

Brant Pitre: "From a theological and liturgical perspective, for a first-century Jew, the Temple was at least four things: (1) the dwelling-place of God on earth; (2) a microcosm of heaven and earth; (3) the sole place of sacrificial worship; (4) the place of the sacrificial priesthood. As I hope to show, when these four Jewish beliefs about the Temple are given due emphasis, Jesus' strange combination of criticizing others for abusing the Temple and prophesying its destruction makes eminent sense. The reason: Jesus saw all four of these aspects of the Temple as being fulfilled in himself and his disciples. Indeed, the evidence in the Gospels strongly suggests that Jesus saw his own body as (1) the dwelling-place of God on earth; (2) the foundation stone that would be the beginning of a new Temple and a new creation; and (3) the sole place of sacrificial worship in the new covenant. Moreover, there are good reasons to believe that he saw himself and his disciples as constituting (4) the new, eschatological priesthood that had been spoken of by the prophets. Because of this, the old Temple was destined to pass away and be replaced by a new Temple, a greater Temple, one 'made not with hands,' and the old priesthood with a new." [48]

Michael Geisler: "As scholars have long noticed, the psalms represent the single most quoted portion of the Old Testament in the New Testament writings. No doubt this reflects the importance of the psalms in the liturgical life of devout Jews... Jesus consciously uses the psalms throughout his life, according to the Gospel testimony. He draws them out on many occasions and for many purposes--to clarify, to rebuke and silence, to predict his own glorious future, to express his deepest affliction, to exemplify and add power to his teaching, to refer to himself and the Kingdom of God, and to sing and give praise to God like any other pious Jew (see Matt. 26:30-32)." [93]

Scott Hahn: "While a baptismal reference is certainly intended in John 3:5, Jesus subsequent dialouge does not develop the water motif or deal with specific actions of baptism; instead he focuses on the reality of the Spirit's action. The emphasis in John's gospel is always on the divine initiative; baptism, then, is not described as a human action but as the human reception of divine action. One does not 'birth oneself,' rather one 'is born' (gennethenai). The verb gennao, 'to bear, beget' in John always appears in the passive, as the individual (anthropos) is always acted upon by the Spirit... | In Jesus last discourse, we observed the theme of the commissioning of the disciples to continue the work of Christ after his departure. In John 14:2-3, the Temple imagery applied to Christ's body in John 2:19-21 transfers to Christ's Mystical Body, his disciples. Our exegesis showed how this community of disciples, the ekklesia, will now also be the Temple, since God dwells in them and they in God..." [118-119|141]

Raymond Corriveau: "This further suggests a development of belief in the primitive Church--the realization that Jesus was the new Temple, the new cultic center and dwelling of God, led to the understanding that Christian believers themselves were built up with him and by him into one and the same Temple... | Before God, all sonship is concentrated in Christ, through whom Christians participate in Christ's own sonship so as to become sons and daughters of the Father... | In the new Temple, the material symbol of the Old Testament gives way to the full reality which was foreshadowed by the Jerusalem Temple. All the longing of Judaism in regard to the new age and the new Temple are found fulfilled in the Christian community. God does dwell among his chosen people but with a dwelling so close, so intimate, and so real that it transcends even the wildest dreams of the Israelites. It is this presence which is the central reality of the new Temple and the new cult... The whole community is to pursue a purity and holiness which corresponds to its priestly status. The Mystery of the Christian community as Temple has brought us to the heart of the mystery of Christian life as a worship of the all-holy God." [150|152|156]

Thomas Dubay: "Not only does God, as revealed in the Old Testament, overflow with an amazing love for his human children, they in turn are to love him in an entire surrender. In the Gospel, Jesus Christ makes this love of man for God a condition for the indwelling presence of the Trinity; thus, we may not omit to notice how the Old Testament prepares for this aspect of the indwelling mystery... | God has purchased this temple-soul by his own blood; it belongs to him alone as his delightful dwelling. His love for this soul must be inconceivable for he has paid an almost incredible price for it. It is his. Yet at the same time, and even more inconceivably, he is its possession. God belongs to man. Over and over in the New Testament, words are used to describe the divine inhabitation that imply a bestowal of possession rights. Through the giving of the Spirit, man somehow owns the Spirit and can enjoy the Spirit... The Temple that we are is to be transfigured in body as well as in soul, that it might become at last a worthy habitation for the divine fire within. The transfiguration of the Temple is modeled after the very pattern of the risen Lord. The risen Lord remains the cornerstone of the spiritual house... The transformation of the Temple is a resurrection patterned after that of Christ Jesus. It is a glorification of our bodies sharing in that of the Lord who, on the mount and in the presence of his disciples was transfigured. By some mysterious power the abiding Spirit will so transfigure our mortal Temple that it will shed the imperfections of its earthly state and become a worthy eternal habitation of the most sacred God... So marvelous is this final glorification of God's sons that St. Paul presents the material universe as yearning for its completion as we grown in our bodies..." [175|185-188]

Denis R. McNamara: "Even in the time of shadow, the process of undoing the Fall is begun as God leads Israel back to himself. Despite the disobedience and chastisements of the chosen people, God's self-revelation continues in preparation for a high point of salvation history: the incarnation. In the incarnation, a God who was distant and veiled becomes yet more imminent and legible by taking human form. In Christ, God speaks in a language humans understand from a human-divine mouth to humanity's natural ears. In making God present in his very body, Christ becomes the new Temple, and in sharing his presence through the sending of the Spriit, the Church becomes incorporated into this same Temple as a Mystical Body with Christ as its head. Christ promises a glorious heavenly future where God is all in all, later revealed in apocalyptic terms to St. John in the Book of Revelation..." [194]

Jean Cardinal Danielou: "The contemplation of the presence of God in history is the reading of Scripture. The cosmos and Scripture are the two great Temples where God hides himself beneath signs, beneath the veil of the Tabernacle. The death of Christ rends the veil, reveals their meaning, shows us his presence hidden beneath signs. This is why meditation on Scripture was the special task of the early Fathers... | Thus we penetrate more and more into the interior, and in proportion as the soul thus enters into herself, God draws near to her... The right way to find God is thus to detach oneself from the exterior man, from this foreign life in which we alienate ourselves, in order to recover our real life, the image of God, which is the center of the soul... | This does not mean, all the same, that the Christian is not interested in the world, but he sees in it only a beginning, only a crucible where immortal souls are in the making. The only work that interests him is, at every moment, making the life of Christ grow in himself and others. The world is indeed for him 'a machine for making gods.' But it is in this world that gods are made; so he takes part eagerly in temporal struggles... This apprenticeship is not only that of our life with God, it is also that of our life together... Just as beneath the appearances of our mortal body is hidden our glorified body, so beneath the appearance of the visible Church is hidden the Mystical Body, the unity of man..." [276|281|286-287]

Yves MJ Cardinal Congar: "The Church of the Apocalypse is a community of kings and priests, that is, of the faithful who share in the dignity and activity of Christ as king and priest. As kings, they share in the Kingdom of God and its struggles throughout history, and they will share God's eschatological reign in the world to come. As priests they share in the worship of thanksgiving and in the praise offered to God in heaven by the elect, but which begins in the Church on earth... | There is only one heir, one man who fulfils the promise made to David, just as there is only one heir, one man who fulfils the promise made to Abraham, but in both cases the faithful are included in him. The Temple of God is this unique person, both Son and King, Jesus Christ, and ourselves in and with him. In actual fact, therefore the whole meaning of the Temple as it is understood by the Gospel and the apostles is restated in the Apocalypse. The Gospel meaning is that Christ (immolated and risen from the dead) is the Temple. The meaning in the teaching of the apostles is that the Temple is the community of the faithful..." [290|301-302]

Letter & Spirit: V5: Liturgy and Empire: Faith in Exile and Poltical Theology

Scott Hahn: "There is much evidence to suggest that the Chronicler was self-consciously writing a homiletic and theological commentary on Israel's history to serve as the summary entry in the Hebrew canon... | The Chronicler indeed presents us with a theocratic and utopian vision, as some of the most provocative of recent scholarship has suggested. It is not an ideal poltical economy or military superpower, but a liturgical empire, a worldwide kingdom ordered to a cosmic liturgy, to offering sacrifice and praise to the living God... The Chronicler also seems to share with the prophets a belief in the liturgical consumation of history, an eschatological vision of the nations streaming to Zion to worship Israel's God. I cannot pursue these points of universalism here, except to note that this liturgical consummation is anticipated in the long priestly psalm of remembrance, thanksgiving, and praise, composed by the priest-king David to celebrate the restoration of the Ark. This priestly song of redemption combines passages from three psalms and is a profound work of biblical theology in its own right. David interprets Israel's history as an economy of salvation flowing from the covenant with Abraham to the moment when all the nations and peoples of the world--and indeed all the cosmos, the heavens and the earth--worship Israel's God... | Indeed, I would suggest that in these and other areas the Chronicler offers us a kind of royal-priestly prototype of the New Testament Church. With his liturgical and sacramental appropriation of history, the Chronicler wants to lead his audience to see the 'signs of the times,' the divine purposes being unfolded in everyday reality. He is preparing his readers, those who have returned to Jerusalem and those still in the Diaspora, to recognize these 'signs' and to prepare their hearts to live as a royal and priestly people, the agents through whom God will bless all the nations." [13|42|50]

John Bergsma: "By todah cycle, I refer to the sequence of experiences through which the individual would pass, culminating in the liturgical offering of the todah. These experiences would begin with a situation of distress, such as illness or attack, that would cause the believer to cry out to God and ... to vow to offer the todah or thanksgiving sacrifice when God delivers him. There would follow an act of divine deliverance, often not explicitly described in the psalms. In thanksgiving, the worshipper would then process to the Temple in the company of family and friends, perform his vow to sacrifice the todah, praise God publicly by recounting the distress from which God delivered him, and share a festive meal with his entourage... Thus, when read in canonical context, we see new dimensions to the self-offering of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In consenting to their deaths in testimony to the worship of the true God, they become, as it were, sacrificial holocausts; and yet they experience deliverance from the deaths they willingly accepted, resulting in the true God being praised by Nebuchadnezzar, the head of the Kingdom of Man. This same pattern--consent to death for the sake of true worship ultimately leading to the universal knowledge and praise of the Lord--repeats in the narrative of Daniel in the den of lions, which also culminates in the foreign king issuing a universal decree ordering worship of Israel's God. In their exile, given the absence or unavailibility of the Temple liturgy, the Judean youths of the Book of Daniel are asked to consent to personally serving as the sacrificial offerings in an 'actualized' liturgy that results, ironically, in a more effective proclamation and praise of God among the nations than the Temple liturgy had ever produced to that time..." [69-71]

Jeremy Driscoll: "And so the cultic act--the Eucharist--becomes the place where Christians encounter in all its force the sacrifice that eclipses all others, where they encounter the sacrifice of which they themselves are a part. It is here that the desire expressed in other ancient Hellenistic texts about logike latreia finds itself fulfilled, the desire to have the very Logos itself praying within the one who prays. But the Hellenistic religions conceive of this as an extremely rarefied and non-material form of worship. Instead, Christianity proclaims that this deep human desire is fulfilled only in the incarnate Logos, in Jesus Christ, who is the Logos acting in human history. And if it is the Logos who is acting in Jesus Christ, then his self-surrender on the cross is the true and definitive logike latreia... When in the Eucharist Christians offer themselves with Christ to God as a holy and living sacrifice, they are encountering the source from which flows their actual dramatic and difficult world of everyday living and the summit toward which their actual dramatic and difficult world of everyday living tends. Because of the Eucharist, their everyday living is a life in which they really are dead to sin but alive to God, in which they offer their bodies to God as instruments of righteousness. They live their everyday lives not according to the flesh but with their minds set on the Spirit. They are not conformed to this age, but rather are being transformed by the renewal of their minds. In their everyday lives they are able to discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect..." [94-95]

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