Isn't the Nativity story just mythology? - part 3

Continued from Last week… 

It has become fashionable to assume that Christianity is just another myth among a lot of fine and amusing myths.  The blessed Mother, Mary, is compared to Isis and Christmas was really the feast of Unconquered Sun and the winter solstice, or perhaps the Roman feast of the Saturnalia, etc. etc.  This is a bunch of horse-puckey as far as I am concerned.

I pointed out at this time last year there is good reason to celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December and even better reason to believe that Christ was born in Bethlehem. As I wrote last year, “What about the scholars who say that there was a journey to Bethlehem and that part of the story was thrown in just to make the prophecy about the messiah being born in Bethlehem come true?”

 All I know is that the Christian author St. Justin Martyr (100 – 165 AD), a Palestinian Christian, said that the Holy Family stayed in a cave outside of Bethlehem. “Joseph took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia found Him.” (Dialogue with Trypho  Chapter LXXVIII). 

So, from the first days, Bethlehem and its cave were venerated and are still venerated to this day as the site of Christ’s birth.  In 135 AD, the Emperor Hadrian built a shrine and planted a sacred grove of trees at the site venerated by the first Christians of the Holy Land in order to obliterate the memory of Christ there, just as he built a pagan temple over the site of Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher. He sure went to a lot of trouble to obliterate nothing if there was nothing there in the first place. 

The first Christians weren’t really interested in marketing and holiday sales. They treasured these things and told their grandchildren about them. When a few people came asking, the places associated with these events were well known to the people who lived there, and whose descendants live there still.  

There are symbolic reasons that make the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem part of the divine plan. You might say that for that very reason the whole Bethlehem story must be a construct. People who believe everything is random and thus there is no meaning to any of these things should probably just check in at work on December 25th like Ebenezer Scrooge.

Things have meaning. The shepherds who were tending their flocks were watching over sheep that were destined for sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem. His birth in Bethlehem reminds us that He was the lamb for sacrifice promised by God through Abraham when Isaac asked “Where, Father, is the lamb for the sacrifice.” Abraham told Isaac, “Don’t worry son. God will provide.”  And God does provide. John the Baptist shouts “Behold the Lamb of God” when he first sees Jesus. Every Catholic priest repeats these words at every Catholic Mass. All these things bring us back to Bethlehem.   

The very word “Bethlehem” points to the temple in Jerusalem and to every Catholic Mass. The very word Bethlehem means “house of bread”, and so the Bread of Life whose flesh is true food was born in the House of Bread. The regular sacrifice of a lamb was always accompanied by an offering of wine and bread (Numbers 15).  Ever notice that in the Catholic Mass we continue what Judaism has ceased? We offer bread and wine to the Lord, and then we offer bread transformed as the Lamb of God.  This was commanded as a perpetual offering. We are still doing it when others have ceased. Wow! Symbolism! (unless of course you think existence is meaningless.) 

Jesus was born in the house of bread, Bethlehem because bread was essential to the sacrificial order of the religion of Israel.  The Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the temple was built on a threshing floor. Both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 tell the story of Araunah (Ornan) and his threshing floor.  Beneath the grandeur of the Jerusalem temple was a simple stone floor where wheat was crushed and separated from its chaff in preparation for the making of bread. The temple was all about bread, the bread of sacrifice, the bread which came down from heaven, the foreshadowing of the Jesus, the Bread of Life for a third of the modern world’s inhabitants. 

We forget this at our peril. Herod and the High Priest forgot and were obliterated. The Maccabees started the profanation of the temple when they extended its area for military purpose and Herod rebuilt the temple not for the honor and glory of God, but for the aggrandizement of his political reputation. The priestly family of Annas and Caiaphas made a commercial venture out of the temple and enriched their family at the expense of the temple’s holiness. The temple was destroyed and Israel was scattered. 

To use the house of God for one’s own profit or political power is a dangerous and deadly thing. Jesus was surely born in the House of Bread and our churches are the Houses of God built to make that Bread available to all the world. We depart from that sacred purpose at our own peril.

RKIA Explains the Mass -- part 4

In this week’s installment, dear reader, I would like to let you know that you are wasting your time with this harangue. There is a wonderful app “The Mass Explained” by a fellow named Dan Gonzalez. It looks pretty good and Mike Aquilina is involved in it so it must be good, but it’s a bit pricey and, well this is free, so I guess you might as well keep reading. Still, if you really want to know about the Mass in depth, check out the “Mass Explained” app. (Aren’t you impressed that I can use trendy terms like “app”? Until just a few years ago I was still working with goose quill pens and carrier pigeons.)

I have already explained that the smells, bells, and strange clothing are borrowed from the temple and are a kind of souvenir of our entire history: Israelite, Greek, Roman, the whole schmeer. Much of our liturgical (fancy Greek word meaning “church service”) paraphernalia (fancy Greek word meaning “stuff”) is modeled on the temple in Jerusalem. “Why?” you ask. First, it’s in the Bible. And second, we claim to be legitimate, albeit adopted, children of Israel. Our Jewish friends have given up the temple liturgy since the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the subsequent banishment of Israel from Jerusalem in 132 AD. The first Christians claimed that Jesus had established a new temple, one not made with stone, and that temple is us, the church! So it’s only natural that we have candles and incense and holy water and bread and wine and vestments and sacrifice and oil and chanting and psalms and altars. We are the temple, and in this temple the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world is eternally sacrificed once and for all. My friend Rabbi Yehudah ben Yiddishkeit once told me, “You Catholics! You’re more Jewish than we are! You have altars and sacrifices and temples! We don’t do that anymore!”

 I would agree with the Rabbi, save for one point. We are not more Jewish. We are more Israelite. Judaism is Israel without the temple. We claim to still have the temple. In fact, we claim to be the temple.

On Mount Sinai, Moses was commanded to build a portable dwelling for the Lord. The Hebrew word for dwelling is “Mishkan” and it is usually translated by the Latin word “Tabernacle”, which in Latin literally means little hut or tent. Though there is dispute about this, it seems that the structure was also called the Tent of Meeting, the place where God would meet His people. It consisted of a large roofless enclosing which had an altar and behind this altar was a smaller roofed tent in which was kept the Ark of the Covenant.

When King David conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, he moved the Ark of the

Covenant to Jerusalem. His son Solomon built the temple which was really the Tabernacle/Tent of Meeting turned into a permanent stone structure. It was a set of courts each one smaller than the other. The largest court was open to all the Israelites, the next court to Israelite men, the next court, open only to priests and Levites, held the altar of sacrifice, and the innermost court, which held the Ark of the Covenant, was open only to the high priest, and then only once a year. It was there that God dwelt on the wings of the cherubs over the Ark of the Covenant, called the Aron in Hebrew.

Synagogues and traditional Catholic churches imitate this structure. The center piece of the synagogue is the Aron which holds the scrolls of the law. There is no altar, because in Judaism there can be no sacrifice since the destruction of the temple. The traditional Catholic church imitates the temple even more closely than does the synagogue. In a Catholic church, there is the nave or body of the church in which the congregation gathers, which is separated from the sanctuary by a communion rail just as the court of the priests was separated from the court of Israel. The Israelites would come to the edge of the court of priests carrying their offerings. In a Catholic church, the communion rail is the place where the faithful bring themselves, their offering, to the Lord and experience communion with the Lord. Beyond this place of encounter is the altar of sacrifice, and a small box, usually made of metal in which the consecrated communion wafers are kept. This box, or tabernacle, the same word that described the tent in the desert, is a focus for prayer; the sign of Christ’s abiding presence with His people.

So, in the traditional Catholic church you have hints of the structure of the temple in Jerusalem and the Tent of meeting in the desert, you have an outer court, a court for sacrifice and a small structure, and a tabernacle that serves as the dwelling place of God. This is the tradition. There was an aberrant period in the 20th century in which liturgists and architects decided that art was to be judged by its ability to shock and offend. Churches were built to look like spaceships from Planet Ugly. We are slowly recovering from that era and returning to the idea that symmetry is beautiful. In churches built in the era of ugly, you won’t find these elements that tie us to three thousand five hundred years of the Judeo-Christian heritage, but it is still there in a lot of older churches and even in some newer churches.

Next week: Finally, the Mass

RKIA explains the Mass -- part 3

Smells and Bells and Funny hats and much, much more!

Before we explain all those fascinating hats, just a little more about the vestments. You may have noticed that they come in different colors. This goes back to the Jerusalem Temple. The Bible is very clear about the way the priests of the Temple dressed. The Bible says, “…you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother (the first high priest), for dignity and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). The priest’s clothes are described in Exodus 28, Exodus 39 and Leviticus 8. The high priest wore eight sacred vestments.

1. Priestly undergarments “to cover their nakedness” Good idea. (Exodus 28:42) We wear street clothes under our vestment, but we do wear an amice mentioned above.
2. Priestly tunic from the neck to the feet, with sleeves reaching to the wrists. (Exodus 28:39 and Exodus 28:40), just like our white alb.
3. Priestly belt embroidered with blue, purple and scarlet (Exodus 28:39, 39:29) for the high priest plain white for the regular priest, just like the cincture we wear.
4. The turban. The High Priest wore a broad, flat-topped turban. The ordinary priests wore cone-shaped turban. The modern bishop wears a miter. (More on this later)
5. The High Priest wore two ephods, a sleeveless robe with blue, purple, and scarlet, 
6. and another over it, a sort of vest. 
7. A breastplate with twelve gems, each one carved with the name of one of the tribes of Israel, and finally 
8. A golden plate fastened to the miter with an inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.”

Essentially a Catholic bishop is wearing the same sort of garments — amice, tunic belt, miter, dalmatic and chasuble — no breastplate with gems and no gold plate, but the miter does have two small stoles attached to it as signs of office. The reason I mention all this stuff is to point out that it comes from the same instinct to worship the Lord in “holy attire.” 

We even have a special color scheme though it is not quite the same as the high priest’s. We wear green for the ordinary times, white or gold for feast days, red for the feasts of martyrs or of the Holy Spirit and purple for the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent. In addition rose vestments can be worn for the fourth Sunday of Lent and the third Sunday of Advent to remind us that the feast is coming and the penance will be over. Black is now rarely worn but may still be worn for the feast of All Souls Day. You can tell where we are in the liturgical year by the color the priest is wearing. Catholics are always either feasting or fasting, just like our Jewish neighbors. We get the concept of the religious calendar from the worship of ancient Israel. Every year is marked with feasts and fasts to remind us that we are journeying through time just as Israel journeyed in the desert. The celebrations of the liturgical year and the feasts of the saints are signposts on the way to heaven.

Now just for the fun of it. The Hats! Why do we wear all those strange hats? Have you ever been in a gothic cathedral in Europe during winter, or summer for that matter? It’s cold — sometimes very cold. The first and most probable reason that hats are worn for religious rituals is to keep the head warm. I have also heard the theory that God, looking down from heaven, finds it easier to tell who is who by the hats. This is ridiculous. I don’t even know why I mention it. You and I, however, can get an idea of who is who by the hats. We already know about the pointy hat that a bishop wears. It is an adaptation of the miter worn by the high priest in the Temple. 

There is also a kind of crown that was worn only by the pope that is not used these days, but you will see it represented in art, on the papal flag, the papal seal and in architecture. It is called the Papal Tiara. It was used in former times for a papal coronation. It is a single pointed version of the miter and around it are three crowns or bands. These mean that the bishop of Rome has authority over the three locations of the church: heaven, earth and purgatory.

Under the miter a bishop wears what is called a zucchetto. I am not making this up. Zucchetto means “a little pumpkin” referring to the head of the wearer. It resembles a Jewish kippah or yarmulka (skull cap). The pope's zucchetto is white. A cardinal’s is red, a bishop’s is violet. Priests and deacons may wear a black zucchetto, though almost no one ever does anymore outside the Vatican. Franciscans frequently wear a brown zucchetto. The zucchetto is never worn with modern clothes, only with vestments or the cassock, the long black tunic worn by priests, (again, red for cardinals and violet for bishops and white for the pope.) 

There is another hat worn by priests, that is pretty rare now. It is called the biretta, not to be confused with the small pistol of similar name, nor with the Italian word for a quick beer. It is an academic hat, just as the mortar board hat worn for graduations. It was worn in the middle ages by judges and the clergy and as such the priest wore it in confession and processions, taking it off at the beginning of Mass.

All the hats are doffed in the presence of someone of higher rank and in the Mass all the zucchettos, miters, tiaras and everything comes off for the part of the Mass when the Lord is present in the form of bread and wine.

Why do all this? Isn’t it a bit pompous? Maybe. But it is also a bit humble. We all used to get dressed up for special occasions. Now people wear flip- flops and cut-offs to their grandmother’s funeral, because the most important thing is that I, ME, MOI, should be comfortable. Who cares what my flip-flops and gym clothes say about my respect or lack of respect for those around me. After all no one is so important that I should be uncomfortable just to impress them. Keep thinking that and one day the Judge of all will ask you. “Where is your wedding garment for the great feast of heaven?” (Matthew 22:12) And you will say, “Lord, I thought flip flops and gym shorts would do.” We wear these things for the Lord, that He should be worshiped in the beauty of holiness. They remind us that we belong, not to the present age, but to a world that has always been and is yet to come. 

These things take us back to the Temple. In fact most of our liturgical customs remind us of the Temple. The bread, the wine, the oil, the palms, the holy water, the incense, even the bells take us back to the Temple. The high priest wore little bells on the hem of his garments when he entered the most holy precincts. We still use bells when we enter into the most holy parts of the Mass. Our traditional chants probably came from the style in which the ancient psalms were sung in the Temple in Jerusalem. All of these things remind us that we have the renewed, rebuilt Temple of which we are living stones. 

When the Temple of Herod was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, the Pharisees salvaged the moral and ethical content of the Torah but they no longer had a Temple. Those members of Israel who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah found a new Temple, the Church and we still offer sacrifice as we have done for four thousand years. The smells and bells and funny hats and all the other obscure and interesting things that inhabit Catholic worship are all about the symbolism of the Temple. They exist to remind us that this is not just about the everyday world. It is about eternity. It is the constant reminder that the Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow! 

Next week: Church architecture. The houses of God, the foretaste of heaven or spaceships from Planet Ugly?