Kataluma

I am fascinated by this insight, especially given what I just taught about the Third Epiphany at Cana:

That there was “no place for them in the kataluma”  therefore may be an oblique and tactful reference to the awkwardness of Joseph and Mary’s situation. Typically a man would return to his father’s house in his home town to complete the marriage if the betrothal took place elsewhere. However, in Mary and Joseph’s case it was not appropriate for them to use the kataluma. Mary was already pregnant. The relatives of Joseph therefore fulfilled their obligation to offer hospitality, but also recognized the apparently shameful situation of Mary and Joseph by offering them shelter in the warm, adjacent back room which was the cave used for stabling and storage.

This understanding of kataluma also adds weight to Luke’s use of the word for the room where the Last Supper was held. Note that Jesus’ words about “In my father’s house are many rooms” takes place during the Last Supper. In a kataluma often used as a bridal suite, Jesus refers to the kataluma that a bridegroom would build for his bride and refers to his “coming again to take them to himself”. This affirms and corroborates the nuptial imagery that occurs throughout the gospels–in which in his sayings and parables Jesus regularly refers to himself as the bridegroom and we, as the church, his bride.

I therefore do not think it is stretching this too far to see that Our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem is like the betrothal of the bridegroom and the bride. He “comes to his own but his own receive him not” His incarnation is his betrothal to his bride the church and this is theologically why he does not use the kataluma. But he will come again to take us to himself and then we will be with him at the marriage supper of the Lamb–and finally in the room he has prepared for us in his Father’s house: which is why St John in Revelation pictures heaven as the marriage supper of the Lamb and the consummation of the marriage of he bridegroom with his bride–the Church.

https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-true-meaning-of-the-inn-in-bethlehem/

Noel

                  by J.R.R. Tolkien

Grim was the world and grey last night:

The moon and stars were fled,

The hall was dark without song or light,

The fires were fallen dead.

The wind in the trees was like to the sea,

And over the mountains’ teeth

It whistled bitter-cold and free,

As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;

His mantle long and pale

Upon the bitter blast was spread

And hung o’er hill and dale.

The world was blind,

the boughs were bent,

All ways and paths were wild:

Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,

And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer

Was pricked with distant light;

A star came shining white and clear

Alone above the night.

In the dale of dark in that hour of birth

One voice on a sudden sang:

Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth

Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:

They heard her song arise

O’er mist and over mountain snow

To the walls of Paradise,

And the tongue of many bells was stirred

in Heaven’s towers to ring

When the voice of mortal maid was heard,

That was mother of Heaven’s King.

Glad is the world and fair this night

With stars about its head,

And the hall is filled with laughter and light,

And fires are burning red.

The bells of Paradise now ring

With bells of Christendom,

And Gloria, Gloria we will sing

That God on earth is come.

our hope is not in this world

out of gloom and darkness,
the eyes of the blind shall see.

The lowly will ever find joy in the LORD,
and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant will be no more
and the arrogant will have gone;
All who are alert to do evil will be cut off,
those whose mere word condemns a man,
Who ensnare his defender at the gate,
and leave the just man with an empty claim...

Those who err in spirit shall acquire understanding,
and those who find fault shall receive instruction. 

Holiness will hurt

 In case you were misled about what happens to GOOD people:

12 Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith in Jesus.

13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

14 Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand! 15 Another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to the one who sat on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” 16 So the one who sat on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.

17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. 20 And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles.

Hurt will bear fruit. 

Remain in the Word

I normally abhor the NAB translation, but today's reading was noteworthy:

Many deceivers have gone out into the world,
those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh;
such as the deceitful one and the antichrist.
Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for
but may receive a full recompense.
Anyone who is so “progressive”
as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God;
whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.

Update: another way of looking at the term 'progressive' 
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/10/22/the-decomposition-of-synodality/

Liberal Bigots

 Bret Stephens, in an opinion column for the NYTimes, offers an incisive analysis of the prejudice that led to Trump's election, and here's the money quote:

the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.

So, there it is, folks (though it's ironic to think of liberals as folks, since that is who they so vehemently disdain). You made the bed you're lying in.

__________________________________

More on the Catholic vote:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/why-catholics-voted-for-trump

Psalm 84

 My soul is longing and yearning,

is yearning for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my soul ring out their joy

to God, the living God.

The sparrow herself finds a home

and the swallow a nest for her brood;

she lays her young by your altars,

Lord of hosts, my king and my God.

They are happy, who dwell in your house,

for ever singing your praise.

They are happy, whose strength is in you,

in whose hearts are the roads to Zion.

As they go through the Bitter Valley

they make it a place of springs,

the autumn rain covers it with blessings.

They walk with ever growing strength,

they will see the God of gods in Zion.

-Monday of Week III

Nary a whimper

from The Pillar, a pithy observation of synodality: 

The pope will not issue an apostolic exhortation, telling delegates that  “what we have approved is sufficient.”

It was a funny way to end things, because the 28,000 word text calls for changes to canon law, and the creation of offices, and other concrete initiatives, which have to actually be taken up and put into motion by someone with executive authority — namely, the pope himself. 

But rather than choose to receive those recommendations and then issue a text saying he’ll implement them, the pope instead formally promulgated a document — carrying his authority — calling on him to do things, which he may or may not do.

Quid est veritas

 This article lays out succinctly how we came to this highly anti-Ratzingerian moment in the history of the Church. What we need is a restored ecclesiology.

That will come about when we identify the roots of this distorted eccelesiology so prevalent in the Church currently. Many of those distortions, such as moral proportionalism, are being foisted upon the synodal process currently underway.

The Pretend Church

Oh, what a fisking!

The penitential service “is intended to direct the work of the Synod towards the beginning of a new way of being Church.”

It seems to have forgotten about an older way of being Church, even from just twenty-five years ago. 

I would add: Not forgotten- deliberately eschewed. 

Spot on

 Those adolescent liberal boomers strike again: 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/10/05/the-liberal-and-flawed-roots-of-tiresome-synodal-grievances/

Senseless

Chaput rhymes with 'slap-you' for good reason, as expressed so masterfully here:

We are called Christians because we believe Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity. From the beginning of our faith, followers of Christ were unique among world religions because they accepted as true Christ’s extraordinary claim that he is God—in part because of his miracles, in part because of his preaching, but ultimately because of his death and bodily resurrection. Christians have also always believed that this reality makes Christianity categorically distinct from all other religions, and in turn requires a total commitment of our lives. (For the Church’s Christology, see: the New Testament, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s document Dominus Jesus, which all, among many others, teach clearly the divinity of Christ and his unique role in salvation history.)

Well that's the tricky bit, isn't it? Dominus Iesus is precisely the kind of magisterial teaching from his predecessors that our current pontiff (and an entire generation of liberal dissent) has been slowly trying to undermine, having foamed at the mouth when Ratzinger first published it.

Interesting that Chaput's article showed up alongside this one:

In particular, it states: “The magisterium also judges with authority whether opinions which are present among the people of God, and which may seem to be the sensus fidelium, actually correspond to the truth of the Tradition received from the Apostles” (§77).

At the same time, the document acknowledges that there are historical examples where the sensus fidei—even specifically manifested in the laity—helped the magisterium in the formulation of doctrine (see Chapter One, part 2 and §72). It states: “Sometimes the people of God, and in particular the laity, intuitively felt in which direction the development of doctrine would go, even when theologians and bishops were divided on the issue” (§72). Such historical examples give warrant to the document’s insistence that “the magisterium has to be attentive to the sensus fidelium” (§74), properly understood, of course.

What is important for the purposes of this article is the centrality of the word faith or faithful in the terms sense of the faith or sense of the faithful. Faith is a supernatural virtue by which we believe that which has been revealed by God because it has been revealed by God. Nothing can be a part of a proper and authentic sensus fidei that is contrary to the deposit of faith. Anyone advocating the rejection of dogma or any other infallible teaching on faith and morals is not exhibiting a true sense of the faith. Unfortunately, despite this fact, there are Catholics who appeal to the term sensus fidei or sensus fidelium to do precisely that. They equate their sentiments and desires—which not coincidentally happen to correspond to debased elements of our society—with the working of the Holy Spirit to fundamentally change the Church into their image.

Having been raised among liberal dissent, I am only too familiar with this false image of the sensus fidei that pervades their entire ethos and its misapplication of Vatican II.

Chaput was generous when he observed:

The bishop of Rome is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide. This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically. Loose comments can only confuse. Yet, too often, confusion infects and undermines the good will of this pontificate.

Not only do we have a pope who seems not to know what is a pope, he seems not to know what even is a Christian.

Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God. To suggest, imply, or allow others to infer otherwise is a failure to love because genuine love always wills the good of the other, and the good of all people is to know and love Jesus Christ, and through him the Father who created us.

Had he ever read his predecessor's writings with an open heart, he may have understood this. But the opponents of Benedict XVI never read his theology; they simply mortally opposed it and made a cariacature of it. I mean, Pope Francis only had to read the opening paragraph:

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

Larry Chapp is more charitable than I: 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/16/the-many-and-sometimes-puzzling-paths-of-pope-francis/

Pearls again!!

First in the account of Juan Diego, this time from St. Faustina:

Today I saw the Crucified Lord Jesus. Precious pearls and diamonds were pouring forth from the wound in His Heart. I saw how a multitude of souls was gathering these gifts, but there was one soul who was closest to His Heart and she, knowing the greatness of these gifts, was gathering them with liberality, not only for herself, but for others as well. The Savior said to me, "Behold, the treasures of grace that flow down upon souls, but not all souls know how to take advantage of My generosity" (Diary, 1687).