Hi folks - today, the second Friday in Lent, is the feast of the Holy Lance and Nails, which is to say another way to remember the passion of Christ.
Unrelated to that, I promised another insight from St. John Henry Newman, so here it is. In the book, The Mystical Rose, JHN remarks in passing that Mary is "a Queen upon her Son's right hand." And it made me think, OK, so this is why, when Mrs. Zebedee comes to Jesus and asks him if her sons can sit at Jesus' right and left in the Kingdom, Jesus says no. To be fair, her sons were two-thirds of Jesus' inner circle of three closest disciples: Peter, James, and John. And the image of sitting at the right and left is a normal way of thinking of the place of honor at a table. But it occurred to me that Jesus could not give those spots to James and John, because they were already reserved for Mary, and perhaps for Peter. The Queen Mother and the Steward of the Kingdom.
Or another way to look at it would be that, since Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, then the Father is at Jesus' left, and Mary is at his right. At the risk of taking this all too literally, the seating arrangement at the "head table" of the heavenly banquet would then be (from left to right, facing them): Mary, Jesus, the Father, and presumably, the Holy Spirit (the Church fathers call the Son and Spirit the two "hands" of the Father, so I'm going to go ahead an assume that the Spirit is at the Father's left) - and again, all this is too literal, of course, but it's interesting to think about.
In the medieval mosaic in the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Jesus crowns Mary Queen of Heaven, and she actually shares his throne, sitting on his right. So if it is true that the Son sits at the Father's right hand, it is equally true that Mary sits at her Son's right hand.
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
As promised, I thought that this would be a good discussion starter here in the community - this is from a conversation I had with my producer at Catholic Culture, around the podcast episodes on St. Gregory of Narek. If you've listened to the first episode on St. Gregory, you know that he is the first and only Doctor of the Church who was not Catholic! What are we to make of this? How do we explain it? Well, it was within the context of me trying to explain it that two really fundamental questions came up, and had to be hashed out between me and my producer. The first question - and this was surprising, given that we had a whole series on The Heresies - the first question is: What is a heresy? And how you answer that has serious implications for the second question, which is: What is the Universal Church? And that has serious implications for ecumenical dialogue, not to mention how we think about our fellow Christians who are not Catholic. So let's take the first question first (and here's ...
