Work as Worship

Here’s my latest article for Catholic Answers. Enjoy! 

Many of us celebrated Labor Day recently by taking some well-deserved time off before the back-to-school, back-to-work, back-to-reality September rush kicked in. But some of the chatter over Labor Day barbecues was actually a cultural conversation about the dignity of work—all thanks to an attempted public shaming that backfired.

A shopper named Karma Lawrence recently spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working scanning groceries at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad, uh, karma life had doled out to Owens.

News sites picked up the story, which quickly went viral, leading to a torrent of support from friends of the actor as well as fellow thespians. They noted that most actors look for other types of work to support themselves between gigs, just as Owens was doing. Then, superstar producer Tyler Perry offered him a job, and soon Owens’ phone was blowing up with opportunities to tell his story on talk shows. He’s even landed a role on NCIS New Orleans. All of a sudden, enough work isn’t an issue for Owens!

As for Karma? Well, you know what they say about that. She was forced to endure a social media shaming of her own, and as of this writing her Twitter account has been suspended.

Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had also put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.

What’s interesting to me about Owens’s story is what it says about the dignity and meaning of work.

We live in a culture in which labor is frowned on and retirement—the earlier the better—the goal, with many millennials embracing the FIRE (financially independent, retired early) movement, dropping out of the workforce often in their late twenties and early thirties. For some, such freedom means having the time to do what one sees as meaningful, even if that happens to be another type of work. But there are many more who view any type of work as a sort of necessary evil, with the ideal life amounting to uninterrupted leisure.

Even some Christians actually view work simply as part of the punishments stemming from original sin. But does that view… work?

The Bible notes that before our first parents fell into sin, work was there. God himself “worked,” establishing the heavens and the earth, after which he rested (Gen. 2:1-3). Yes, we are to imitate God in his rest; but his plan isn’t “all play and no work.” in fact, work is also one of the joyful gifts God gave his children in Eden’s paradise. Adam had a job to do: he was to “till” (Hebrew: ’abodah) and “keep” (Hebrew: shamar) the garden. These verbs are later used in the Old Testament to describe the Levitical priests’ service in the temple, connecting Adam’s work with the task of worship!

Of course, the entry of sin into creation adversely affected the arena of work, too. The joy of work became toil: because of the disobedience of our first parents, God told Adam, “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:17-19).

But the goodness of work for humanity remains; as birds were created to fly, we were created to share in God’s work of creation, no matter what our job might be.

When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”

This is straight out of the Catholic playbook. The dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds.

It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, wrote: “Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done” (Furrow, no. 487). One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.

Jesus spent the vast majority of his life as a worker. And in that, he was redeeming us too, albeit in a different way, by sanctifying work. God worked in St Joseph’s workshop just as he did in building the heavens and the earth, in order to remind us that, through service in the most ordinary things of life—yes, even at Trader Joe’s—we can discover the divine.

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Four Reasons to Believe in the Assumption of Mary

Today, August 15, is the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, celebrating that God raised the Virgin Mary, body and soul, to the glories of heaven at the end of her earthly journey. Here are four quick facts you need to know about this teaching of the Church on this:

1. Catholics must believe this in order to hold the Faith.

The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian Dogmas (infallible teachings) that Catholics must believe (the others being the Immaculate Conception, Divine Maternity, and Perpetual Virginity of our Lady). The reason why validity of the doctrine can be trusted is that it rests on the same foundation as that of Transubstantiation or the Canon of the Bible – namely, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

2. There is good circumstantial, supporting evidence for the Assumption.

No Christian community has ever claimed to have the relics (bones or other mortal remains) of the Virgin Mary. When one considers how Christians venerated the relics and final resting places of important saints in the early Church period (such as St Peter’s Basilica being built over his tomb), it is remarkable that no church has ever claimed to have her relics. If the relics of the Mother of Jesus relics really did exist, they would have been prized above all others. An argument from silence isn’t always the greatest, but in this case, silence speaks volumes.

3. There is indirect, biblical support for the doctrine.

The simple fact of the matter is that, in salvation history recorded in the Bible, “assumptions happen”. Genesis speaks of Enoch, who “walked with God and was no more, because God took him” (Genesis 5:24; cf. Hebrews 11:5). Most interpreters believe that Enoch was assumed, body and soul, into heaven. Also, Elijah was taken up to heaven, body and soul, in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11).

If these holy ones of old could be translated directly to heaven, why not the “Panagia” (“All-Holy”) mother of God, who “gave the Word flesh” (cf. John 1:14)? In Revelation 12, John sees the “Ark of the (New) Covenant”, Mary in heaven.

4. Christians have believed this for centuries.

Catholics did not “invent” the doctrine of the Assumption when Pope Pius XII officially defined it in 1950. All the Pope was doing was making clear that this teaching was always true and part of the deposit of faith (cf. Jude 3) for centuries. How do we know this? Because the Church’s liturgy (including the content of liturgical prayers and feast days) included the Assumption from the earliest times. Some even believe it was the earliest of Marian feast days, originating in Jerusalem.

Many Christian practices were suppressed under the wicked reign of Emperor Hadrian, who had levelled much of Jerusalem in 135 AD, renaming the town after the pagan god Jupiter. After Constantine’s acceptance of the faith in the fourth century, many Christian feasts were revived. The Assumption began to be celebrated in Rome as early as the seventh century. It is in the liturgy that Sacred Tradition is taught most clearly, for “the Church believes as She prays” (Lex orandi, lex credendi).

We have a powerful intercessor in heaven in Mary, who precedes all of us who look forward to life in the new heaven and the new earth in a glorified humanity of body and soul. We close with a liturgical prayer asking for that intercession: Recordare, Virgo Mater Dei, dum steteris in conspectu Domini; ut loquaris pro nobis bona (“Remember, Virgin Mother of God, when you walk in the presence of the Lord, to speak well of us”).

This post was originally published as “4 Quick Facts on the Assumption of Mary”.

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Was the Good News Old News?

(My latest for Catholic Answers Magazine.)

When were the Gospels written?

You might respond with a question of your own: “Who cares?” Or, “Why does it matter?”

Here’s one reason why: some skeptics are claiming that the Gospels are unreliable accounts of Jesus’ life because they were written too long after the fact. They then use the alleged unreliability of the Gospels as a weapon against Christianity.

For example, the quite popular (and quite skeptical) New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman states in his book How Jesus Became God that the Gospel authors had no intent of presenting “biographical information” concerning “what Jesus really said and did.” Skeptics like Ehrman maintain that accounts of Jesus’ career were passed down orally for many decades before they were ever written down in the Gospels, leaving them open to be embellished until they bore little to no resemblance to what actually took place during Jesus public ministry during A.D. 30-33. To their reckoning, the process of Gospel composition was like the children’s game of Telephone, in which a message, whispered from one ear to another, gets changed many times before it reaches its final destination. This despite the evangelists’ claims to be reporting the truth about Jesus’ career (cf. Luke 1:1-4; John 19:35, 21:24-25).

Ehrman contends, along with the majority of modern textbooks on the New Testament, that the Gospels were composed decades after the life of Christ, with Mark circa A.D. 69-70, Matthew and Luke in the 70s or possibly the 80s, and John in the 90s, possibly as late as 95. Ehrman is sure that the forty- to sixty-year gap between Jesus’ life and the appearance of his biographies lessens the probability that they preserve accurate information about him.

But there is another view, long dormant, that is reasserting itself on the scene: the idea that, just maybe, the Gospels were written much earlier. Years ago, the scholar John A.T. Robinson claimed that the entirety of the New Testament was composed prior to A.D. 70! Why? For the simple reason that not one of the twenty-seven New Testament books mentions the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in that year—a cataclysmic event of cosmic significance for Jews.

Now, I can hear what some of you are saying: “But Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple!” True, but it wasn’t prophecy ex eventu (“after the fact”), with the Gospel writers reading some recent event back into Jesus’ words years before. (If that was the case, the evangelists did a terrible job.) No, this was real prophecy, for Jesus spoke of the temple stones being “thrown down,” whereas the temple was actually burned to the ground. If the Gospel writers were aware of how the temple actually was destroyed, they might have mentioned that, because fire is a well-known biblical image of judgment.

It defies belief that no New Testament book, if written after the year 70, would have mentioned the temple’s decimation in clear fashion, especially given the role of the temple authorities in Jesus’ death. (Hebrews 13:10 implies that the temple is still standing at the time of its writing: “We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.”) If the temple really had been lying in ruins when the New Testament writers put ink to scroll, the temptation to say, “Hey, here’s God’s judgment on the temple authorities for what they did to Jesus!” would have been too great to ignore.

And there are other reasons the Gospels might have been written earlier. The Acts of the Apostles leaves off with Paul in Rome under house arrest, awaiting trial. It’s highly doubtful that Luke, the author of Acts and traveling companion of Paul, would not discuss the martyrdom of the book’s central figure—not to mention that of Peter, who was also martyred circa A.D. 64 under the Neronian persecution. So there’s a good case to be made that Acts was composed pre-70; in fact, pre-64!

We also know that Acts is part two of Luke’s “two-volume set,” as it were, with the Gospel of Luke being part one, so obviously Luke’s Gospel had to come even earlier. And, if Mark was indeed written prior to Luke, serving as a source for that Gospel and for Matthew (as most scholars believe), Mark must date earlier still.

And don’t forget that Paul’s letters, which corroborate many facts about Jesus’ life, were probably written prior to any of the Gospels.

Now, if the Gospels really were written later, as Ehrman and many scholars assert, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are historically unreliable. But we’d probably all agree that the closer in time a document is written to the events it covers, the more likely it is that it’s accurate and, just as importantly, can be verified by others.

An experience I had might help us to understand this. While visiting the Catholic Answers offices in San Diego not long ago, my family and I took a side trip to see Torrey Pines, the gorgeous golf course that hugs the Pacific coast. Not far from the course we stumbled upon a beautiful veterans’ monument, honoring those who had given their lives in service to their country. Many of those memorialized had served in the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. Of course, many veterans of that conflict are still alive today, with still-vivid memories of their tours of duty.

This all reminded me of an insight from the Evangelical writer Greg Monette: the period of time that has elapsed since the Vietnam War until the present day is pretty much exactly the same time frame that elapsed—if the earlier dates are right—between the public ministry of Jesus and the time when the Gospels were likely completed and circulating: about forty years. Just as someone today offering an erroneous, fictional account of the Vietnam conflict could be discredited by the testimony of those who were actually there and lived through the experience, the controlling influence of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry would have prevented the Gospel writers from fabricating events from Jesus’ career that never really happened.

Even if the Gospels had been written later, on Ehrman’s timeline, that would be about the same gap from World War II to the present day. Just as there aren’t as many World War II vets still living as Vietnam vets, there are still some who could be interviewed. Paul noted in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that many of the over 500 individuals who witnessed the resurrected Christ on one occasion were alive, and ostensibly willing to be consulted.  New Testament scholar Robert McIver contends that there would have been up to 63,000 potential adult witnesses to Jesus’ public career, with 18,000 to 20,000 still living after thirty years (which would correspond to the earlier dates of Gospels composition) and between 600 and 1,100 within sixty years (the later dates). An early apologist named Quadratus, who lived from 70-130 AD, also claims that eyewitnesses to Jesus were alive in his day.

As the Acts of the Apostles notes, “This was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26), or in a galaxy far, far away. Whatever the exact dating of the Gospels, Jesus’s ministry was a public event whose chroniclers were intent on accuracy and whose witnesses were not going to stand by to let what they had seen and heard be swallowed up in legend.

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Did Jesus Reject the Old Law?

My latest for Catholic Answers Magazine.

Once, in Jerusalem, I was privileged to attend Mass with a group of Catholics who had converted from Judaism and celebrated the Mass in Hebrew. None of those present who had come to believe in Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Messiah) would have said they had “changed religions.” They didn’t view the Catholic Church as a new religion that had replaced Judaism—rather, it was Judaism, but with the Messiah having come.

For these converts, many facets of New Covenant worship evoked elements of the Old: features such as the tabernacle, the ambo, and the altar made sense to them in a way that they may not for those who convert to Catholicism from non-Christian or Protestant Christian backgrounds. And the similarities didn’t end with liturgy. They didn’t see Catholicism’s doctrines as something foreign, either. Rather, they saw the continuity, the inner logic, of Jesus’ teachings vis-a-vis the Old Testament.

Considering that Jesus of Nazareth was a faithful Jew, this really shouldn’t be a surprise. Yet throughout the centuries until now, many theologians and scholars have believed the opposite: that Jesus broke clean with the Old Covenant religion of his day, railing against its “legalism” and focusing instead entirely on God’s mercy and love.

Without a doubt, Jesus delighted in dispensing God’s mercy to those who repented of sin. But there is no opposition between mercy and law. In fact, in so many ways, God’s law is an expression of his mercy. A careful reading of the New Testament shows that Jesus was in no way opposed the law given to Moses.

Open your Bible and let’s take a look together.

For example: in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus gives five major discourses that represent the crucial emphases of his teaching that the evangelist wished to impart to his audience. The first is the Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5-7. The second is the Missionary Discourse in chapter 10, followed by the Parabolic Discourse in chapter 13 and the Community Discourse in chapter 18. The fifth and final speech is the Eschatological Discourse in chapters 24-25.

We have several reasons to believe that Matthew intentionally arranged this material into five “teaching blocks.” First, there are literary clues. Each discourse concludes with the verb telein (“to finish”—cf. Matt. 7:28, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, 26:1). This corresponds to verbiage from the Pentateuch: “When Moses finished (suntelein) speaking all these words” (Deut. 31:1; cf. Num. 16:31; Deut. 31:24, 32:45).

I’ve discussed elsewhere how Jesus is presented in Matthew as a new Moses. Matthew’s arrangement of Christ’s teaching into five narrative segments is meant to allude to the five books of Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Why? In large measure to deal with the allegations of some Jews that Jesus and his followers intended to abolish the Law of Moses. This is an important theme in Matthew’s Gospel, intended as it is for a primarily Hebrew audience.

The number five (are you sensing a theme here?) comes into play most clearly in the material following Matthew 5:17-20, which is the key passage, in many ways, to understanding the Sermon on the Mount. In these verses, Jesus explains that he has “not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill” (v. 17), and that “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (v. 18). Jesus also states that lawbreakers (such as he is accused of being) “will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them (the commandments of the law) will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (v. 19).

Then Jesus states that, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one’s “righteousness” must be greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (v. 20). This is truly a remarkable statement, because in Jesus’ day those very scribes and Pharisees were considered theauthority on the interpretation of the Law of Moses.

This highlights the main issue: who has the true interpretation of the law? Jesus and his followers? The Pharisees and scribes? Some other group?

Jesus goes on to show, by means of a series of five “antitheses” (“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you”), that his interpretation of the law, as practiced by himself and his followers, is the true interpretation—and indeed, the fulfillment—of the law given to Moses. These five antitheses correspond to the five fulfilments of Old Testament prophecy given in the infancy narrative of Matthew (1:22-23, fulfilling Isaiah 7:14; 2:5-6, fulfilling Micah 5:2; 2:15, fulfilling Hosea 11:1; 2:17-18, fulfilling Jeremiah 31:15; and 2:23, which summarizes Judges 13:5 and Isaiah 11:1). Together, they make a powerful case that Jesus has come to fulfill the law and the prophets.

Specifically, the five antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount fulfill five aspects of the books of Moses: Deuteronomy 5:17 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:21; Exodus 20:14 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:27; Leviticus 19:12 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:33; Exodus 21:23-25 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:38; and Leviticus 19:17-18 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:43.

Many “historical Jesus” scholars, when assessing whether Jesus could have plausibly taught what the Gospels claim he did, are fond of employing something called the criterion of double dissimilarity. “If something sounds too much like the teaching of Judaism,” the thinking goes, “or too much like later Church teaching, Jesus probably didn’t say it.” That has always sounded ridiculous to me, considering that Jesus was Jewish and that he founded the Church! We should expect to find an abundance of continuity between the Old Testament, the teaching of Jesus, and that of the Church. And this is exactly what we do find.

And here’s one final, commonsense fact: if Jesus, as many caricatures of him suggest, really represented a radical break with Jewish teaching, there is simply no plausible way he would have garnered such a massive following among his fellow Israelites. No one would have believed that he was the promised Messiah if he had rejected the Law of Moses!

It seems reasonable, then, to believe the opposite, which is exactly what Jesus set out to do: not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17).

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Talking Crosses, Camping Scribes, and Other Apocry-Follies

Here’s my latest piece for Catholic Answers. Hope you enjoy it. — Cale

Every Easter season we encounter articles, documentaries, books, and news reports suggesting that the canonical Gospels got the Resurrection wrong. Scholars with impressive credentials appear in the media to tell us that, if we want the full story about Easter, we must turn to what are known as the apocryphal Gospels.

It often comes as a surprise to Christians to learn that there were many other “Gospels” that circulated in the decades and centuries after the composition of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but never made it into the New Testament. Some of these have survived to our day, to the fascination of scholar and layman alike. But do these works indeed provide credible information about Jesus that isn’t in the Bible?

A professor of mine always gave this advice to students who were curious about these writings: “Just read them,” he said, “and ask yourself this question: do you really think they smack of authenticity?” Some of the scholars who champion the apocryphal Gospels imply that the Church hid these documents from the people because they contain the “real” story about Jesus. But reading them, as Dr. Evans knew, shows that the Church had very good reasons for not canonizing these works. Far from radiating authenticity, they come across as quite strange and not reliable historically.

Let’s take one example of these texts, the Gospel of Peter, and compare its Easter narrative to that in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew’s account of the Resurrection, written in the first century, is sober and rather restrained—especially compared with the account in the Gospel of Peter, a highly embellished collection of legends likely written in the second century. (No, it wasn’t actually written by Peter, don’t worry—later writers would attribute their works to apostles in an attempt to gain credibility).

Far from being an early, original source of material on the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Peter is actually dependent on the canonical Gospel of Matthew for much of its content. Its unbelievable reworking of the Resurrection account in Matthew includes—get this—a talking cross that emerges from Jesus’ tomb along with the risen Jesus and two angels, all of whom are so tall that their heads are, quite literally, in the clouds (39-43). It also mentions many other elements that a Jewish audience would find implausible and ahistorical, such as members of the Jerusalem religious elite pitching tents and sleeping among the tombs with Roman soldiers, making sure Jesus stays dead (33, 38). Ever heard of uncleanness and ritual impurity? Hello!

The Gospel of Peter therefore lacks what is called verisimilitude. Its miraculous details seem purposely fantastic. It doesn’t cohere with the way things actually were in Jesus’ time and place. Readers of Matthew’s Easter account, especially those of a Jewish background, would have found its Easter account much more credible and persuasive. Let’s look at some of its details.

Facets of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ burial later become important proofs for Jesus’ resurrection. The mention of Joseph of Arimathea’s donation of a new tomb for Jesus burial (Matt. 27:57-61) is significant. Joseph, who is mentioned in all four Gospels and undoubtedly a historical personage, was a member of the Sanhedrin, and thus a known public figure. This means that the location of Jesus’ tomb was also known to friend and foe alike. If Jesus’ remains were still entombed following Easter, it would have been easy to prove this by searching Joseph’s tomb. However, even the enemies of the nascent Christian movement do not dispute the empty tomb (Matt. 28:11-15). Matthew also notes that many of Jesus’ women followers saw the place where Jesus was buried (27:56; 27:61; 28:1-8), discrediting any theory that the women went to the wrong tomb on Sunday morning.

Among the canonical Gospels, only Matthew’s mentions the presence of Roman guards at the tomb, a point that many critics of the Gospel dispute. The Gospel of Peter also mentions the guards, though again with legendary accretions. Even so, this demonstrates that the guard account was an enduring aspect of the apologetic for the Resurrection. Therefore it is more certain, from a historical perspective, that guards were in fact present.

The chief priests, after hearing “everything that had happened” from the guards, bribed the soldiers to propagate the story that the disciples of Jesus stole his body from the tomb while they slept (a first-century edition of “fake news,” one might say). Matthew reports that, at the time of the writing of his Gospel, this version of events was still being told among the Jews (Matt. 28:11-15). In fact, this story became a well-entrenched facet of an anti-Christian Jewish apologetic, for Justin Martyr, writing in the second century A.D.,states that it was still being circulated in his time.

The guards’ probable historicity is even further bolstered by the edict of Caesar, possibly enacted in Galilee in the first century, decreeing capital punishment for grave robbers. The fact that tampering with Jesus’ tomb would have been punishable by both Jewish and Roman authorities, and that the tomb, according to Matthew, was sealed (Matt. 27:66), make any potential moving of Jesus’ body from the tomb highly unlikely in this case.

Add to that the fact that liars usually make terrible martyrs (why would the disciples later die for their belief in the Resurrection, if they had in fact stolen the body?), and one has a very solid case for the empty tomb. Again, even the enemies of the Christian movement admit the tomb is empty, and enemy attestation is excellent evidence.

But, of course, an empty tomb alone does not a resurrection make. This is why Matthew’s accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus are so important. That Mary Magdalene and the other women “took hold of his feet” (Matt. 28:9) affirms the corporeal (bodily) nature of Jesus’ resurrection, making the same point as Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:24-29.

Matthew’s very mention of women as the first to discover the empty tomb on Sunday morning, encounter the resurrected Jesus, and inform the male disciples of the event is, in all likelihood, historical. Given the (unfortunately) very biased and low view of the testimony of women in both Jewish and Greco-Roman settings of the time, Matthew (and the other Gospel writers) would never have mentioned this unless it was factual. Consider these quotes from Jewish sources of the general period:

Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women (Talmud, Sotah 19a).

But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex…since it is probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment (Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15).

Any evidence which a woman (gives) is not valid (to offer)…This is equivalent to saying that one who is rabbinically accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman (Talmud, Rosh Hashannah 1.8).

The bizarre Gospel of Peter instead describes many prominent maleenemies of Jesus as witnesses to his resurrection. What a stark contrast to Matthew, who not only presents women as the first eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, but does not claim that anyonewitnessed the resurrection event itself. This striking omission, perhaps above all the other differences, testifies to the sober realism of Matthew and the other Gospels over the fantasies of apocryphal texts.

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Ice Cream and “The Last Acceptable Prejudice”

Neil MacCarthy, Comms director for the Archdiocese of Toronto, writing in the Huffington Post in part about the “Sweet Jesus” ice cream store controversy:

In speaking with clarity and charity, Cardinal Collins regularly reminds us that the name of Jesus and sacred symbols of Christianity hold great meaning for the faithful. He would have told Sweet Jesus executives that the upside-down cross that has been used on many of their products is a reminder to Christians that St. Peter, one of the 12 apostles in Jesus’ inner circle and the first pope of the Catholic Church, was crucified upside down. The Cardinal would have emphasized that calling their bottled water “Holy Water” has a sensitive meaning for the family members of a child who is baptized, or for all those who bless themselves with holy water as they enter a church.

In his recent pastoral letter, “The Holy Name of Jesus,” Cardinal Collins wrote, “We ask our friends who do not share our faith to respect the name of Jesus, as we are equally committed not to treat disrespectfully what is sacred to others.”

Imagine the outcry that would ensue, even in liberal media circles, if another major world religion was insulted and denigrated in this fashion in the public square. Once again, the adage of writer Philip Jenkins holds true: Anti-Catholicism is  the last acceptable prejudice.

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Did Jesus Really Predict His Death?

This is my latest piece for Catholic Answers. Have a Blessed Triduum and a very Happy and Holy Easter!

During this sacred Triduum and during Easter, as we commemorate Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, it is not unusual for us to come across challenges—online, through the media, in our conversations with unbelievers—to the historical truth of these salvific events.

One criticism commonly leveled at the biblical record has to do with Jesus’ prophecies concerning his brutal death.

Skeptics allege that these are a case of prophecy ex eventu—prophecy after the fact. According to some critics, Jesus never really predicted such things. Rather, the early Church, in composing the Gospels, simply put these words in the mouth of our Lord afterward, making his “predictions” match what already happened.

There are, however, a number of compelling reasons to believe that Jesus did truly predict that he would be killed. But before we discuss these, a couple of housekeeping items are in order:

First, due to space constraints, we will only deal with Jesus’ prophecies concerning his death; though a treatment of his predictions concerning his resurrection is of equal value, it will have to wait for another day.

Also, we’ll leave aside the somewhat obvious fact that, as God incarnate, Jesus would have known the future. Those of us who already believe in Christ’s divinity won’t need much convincing on that front, so we’ll focus here on arguments that a skeptic might find plausible.

For the same reason, although Christians believe the Bible to be the infallible and inerrant word of God, we will look at the texts in question as a skeptic might assess any religious text purporting to be of a historical nature.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus makes three predictions (which are paralleled in Matthew and Luke) concerning his fate, the first of which is found in Mark 8:31-35:

And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (RSV2CE; the other two instances are found in Mark 9:31 and 10:33-34).

When historical-Jesus scholars examine the Gospels, one of the criteria they use for determining authenticity is called the “criterion of embarrassment.” If something in the text is a potential source of embarrassment for Jesus or for the early Church, there is a greater probability that it is an authentic reminiscence.

There are a number of potential sources of embarrassment in this passage: Peter, the leader of the early Church, is seen to be rebuking his Master. Jesus, in turn, has to rebuke Peter! This could potentially undermine Peter’s authority in the Church. If, as some scholars believe, Peter is the main source of historical material in Mark’s Gospel, this also speaks to the great humility of Peter, who would have related this account at great potential embarrassment to himself.

There is another potentially embarrassing thing to consider. Not only does Jesus predict his own death, but he expects his own disciples to “follow” him in carrying the cross. And yet, as scholar Craig Evans points out, Jesus was unable to do what he asked his own followers to do. In Mark, as in all three synoptic Gospels, someone else (Simon of Cyrene) carried Jesus’ cross (Mark 15:21). It is thus highly unlikely that Mark would have “invented” either the saying or what Simon did—especially considering that Simon’s sons, Alexander and Rufus, were likely members of the church in Rome, to which Mark probably addressed his Gospel (Mark 15:21; Rom 16:13 specifically mentions Rufus), and could corroborate the account.

One obvious—and ominous—portent of Jesus’ own fate was what happened to his relative and forerunner, John the Baptist. Jesus affirmed John’s message of repentance in preparation for the coming kingdom of God, a message that ultimately led to John’s demise. Jesus clearly would have known that by affirming John as a prophet and by continuing in the same vein of teaching as John, he ran the risk of suffering John’s fate. Jesus even sends a message to John’s executioner, Herod Antipas, referencing Jesus’ own impending death:

At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you” [showing that not all Pharisees opposed Jesus!]. And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem’” (Luke 13:31-33).

After arriving in Jerusalem and teaching about John in the temple precincts, Jesus tells the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants (Mark 12:1-12), in which Jesus clearly identifies himself with the “beloved son” who is killed. This is yet another piece of the puzzle. But perhaps the clearest piece of evidence that Jesus expected to be killed was something he said shortly before he was arrested.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled.” With his soul “sorrowful,” he prays that his hour might pass him by (Mark 14:33-36). That Jesus was “greatly distressed” and prayed to avoid his imminent suffering falls, once again, under the criterion of embarrassment. It is highly unlikely that a Christian would invent such a saying.

Much more could be said, but given these evidences, we already have very good warrant to believe that, in all likelihood, Jesus truly prophesied his passion. He knew, and he wanted his disciples to know, that his earthly mission was to culminate in the events of the Triduum that we will observe this week.

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The Ever-Deepening Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Note: This is my latest Article for Catholic Answers Magazine (Online Edition). Hope you enjoy it and find it educational!

Perhaps you’ve noticed one of the many stories about the Dead Sea Scrolls that have appeared recently (like this one), trumpeting the decoding of one of the two remaining undeciphered Dead Sea Scrolls.

An Ancient “Calendar App”

As it turns out, this scroll sheds light on the calendar employed by the Jewish sect (likely the Essenes — more on them below) that authored the scrolls, a calendar that differed markedly from the lunar version used by the ruling temple establishment in Jerusalem. The scroll calendar was a unique 364-day calendar, which could easily be divided into four and seven, guaranteeing that feast days would always fall on exactly the same day each year!

According to Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov of the University of Haifa, who deciphered the scroll, this calendar is “perfect” because it eliminated a major problem of lunar calendars: what happens if a major feast happens to fall on a Sabbath? Also, as the professors note, the “calendar is unchanging, and it appears to have embodied the beliefs of the members of this community regarding perfection and holiness.”

This discovery is a good occasion for us to go over what the Dead Sea Scrolls—and the community which composed them—are all about, and what importance they may have for helping us understand Jesus. 

When were the scrolls discovered?

Sometime in either late 1946 or early 1947, a Bedouin shepherd accidentally discovered a cave containing ancient manuscripts in the desert region near the shores of the Dead Sea. What was in that cave turned out to be the beginnings of the greatest archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. In total, eleven caves were found in the region (with a twelfth and possibly a thirteenth discovered in 2017), containing copies of many biblical books, along with other religious writings and communal documents belonging to the Jewish sect that compiled them. In all likelihood, this group was the Essenes.

The New Testament reveals that there were numerous sects within the Judaism of Jesus’ day—the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who ruled the temple priesthood, immediately spring to mind, of course. But don’t forget groups like the Herodians, and even the warmongering Zealots (a group from which Jesus called an apostle, Simon). Another active group in the first century, although one not specifically mentioned in the New Testament, was the aforementioned Essenes.

The Essenes believed that the temple establishment in Jerusalem had become hopelessly corrupt, and that their community alone possessed the true faith in all its purity. Withdrawing to the desert from what they viewed as a hopelessly corrupt society, they prepared for an imminent end-times battle between the “Sons of Light” (themselves) and the “Sons of Darkness” (essentially, everybody else). They settled in the harsh climes of the Dead Sea region, where the caves that housed the scrolls were eventually discovered.

What can the scrolls tell us about Jesus?

Let’s clear up a major misconception people have about the Dead Sea Scrolls: they are not Christian documents, although their composition overlaps with the life and times of Jesus and the early Church (they were generally composed between the third century B.C. and first century A.D.). However, they do show us what many Jews who were roughly contemporaneous with Jesus believed about the coming messianic age. These beliefs were expectations that were common to many Jews of Jesus’ day. When we read the scrolls through this lens, we see many points of contact between what the authors of the scrolls expected of the Messiah and Jesus’ own words and deeds.

One example comes from an Aramaic scroll found in Cave 4 (which was the motherlode, the cave containing the most scrolls), which speaks of a coming “Son of God,” a “Son of the Most High” who will be “great” and reign forever. Notice how this closely echoes the Annunciation narrative found in Luke 1. Another scroll, known as the “Melchizedek Scroll,” found in Cave 11, speaks of the appearance of one who seems to be God, having the power to forgive and defeat Satan.

A “Get Out of Jail Free” card?

In some cases, the scrolls can give us unique windows of insight into some hard-to-understand New Testament passages. For example, the scroll known as 4Q521 (signifying that it was found in cave 4 at Qumran — the region where the scrolls were discovered — document or fragment 521”) shows that Jesus did in fact proclaim himself as Messiah, despite claims to the contrary by many moderns. Moreover, it shows that Jesus did so in a very culturally relevant manner for his time.

Jesus’ reply to the imprisoned John the Baptist (Matt 11:2–6; Luke 7:18–23) is seen by some as not messianic. When asked, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt 11:3), Jesus answers in what appears to some as a vague manner, using words from Isaiah 61:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Matt 11:4­6).

4Q521 says this:

For the heavens and the earth will listen to his Messiah…For he will honor the devout upon the throne of eternal royalty, freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, straightening out the twisted…and the Lord will perform marvelous acts…for he will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim good news to the meek, give lavishly to the needy, lead the exiled, and enrich the hungry.

Comparing these two texts, you can easily see by why John asked the question about Jesus’ messiahship, and why Jesus replied the way he did. It was assumed that when the Messiah arrived, according to 4Q521, “prisoners would be set free.” The righteous John, at this time languishing in Herod’s fortress at Machaerus, is wondering why Jesus hasn’t sprung him from prison. Jesus replies to John by noting that his marvelous works indeed match up with the deeds of the expected Messiah, in line with the teaching of Isaiah 61 and 4Q521.

For Jesus to be any more explicit than this would arouse the attention of the secular authorities, prior to the completion of his messianic mission. However, attentive Jews would have understood Jesus’ claims. In a culturally relevant way, Jesus is inviting his fellow Hebrews to consider the evidence of his ministry and draw their own conclusions.

There are many reasons why the Dead Sea Scrolls are important. As we have seen, one reason is that they offer us helpful context for Jesus’ ministry. Last year, two more caves were discovered, which may have housed even more scrolls. Having worked on an excavation in Jerusalem myself, I’m thrilled whenever I hear about such new discoveries. Archaeology continues to turn up more and more of the material remains of Jesus’ day—and this can only help us to understand his life and teachings in ever deeper ways.

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Why Jesus Was Baptized

 

Note: Here’s my January piece for Catholic Answers Magazine. Hope you enjoy it! 

Monday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord marked the official end of the Christmas season. It’s also an annual occasion for many to ask, “Why was Jesus baptized?”

After all, he is the sinless, divine Son of God, and the baptism that John the Baptist administered was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4).

Christian baptism is of course greater than John’s baptism, even as Jesus himself is far greater than John (Matt. 3:14, John 3:30). Christian baptism not only forgives sins, but infuses the life of God into the soul, making us God’s children. And the origin of this sacrament is Jesus’ own baptism. Jesus had no need to be cleansed by the waters of baptism, for he had no sins to be washed away. Rather, hesanctified the waters by his descent into them.

Pope Benedict XVI (writing as Joseph Ratzinger), in his Jesus of Nazareth, offers some illuminating insights on all this. There’s a whole chapter in the book on Jesus’ baptism, but here are a few of his key thoughts.

First, in antiquity water conjured up two distinct images: death and life. Benedict notes:

On the one hand, immersion into the waters is a symbol of death, which recalls the death symbolism of the annihilating, destructive power of the ocean flood. The ancient mind perceived the ocean as a permanent threat to the cosmos, to the earth; it was the primeval flood that might submerge all life . . . But the flowing waters of the river are above all a symbol of life (15-16).

Even the physical act of baptism, especially baptism by immersion, represents death and new life: the descent into the waters is a form of death and burial; the rising to a new life is an icon of resurrection.

Looking at the events (of Christ’s baptism) in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, ”Take me and throw me into the sea” (Jon. 1:12) . . . The baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out “This is my beloved Son” over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word
“baptism” to refer to his death (18).

The Eastern traditions of iconography pick up on many of these themes, as the current pope emeritus elucidates:

The icon of Jesus’ baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell. Jesus’ descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from every side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld . . . John Chrysostom writes: “Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection” (19).

Jesus’ baptism not only is deeply intertwined with the salvific events of the Passion and of Easter, but it also reveals him to be a new and greater Moses. In the Easter Vigil liturgy of the Roman Rite, the paschal candle is plunged into the waters of the baptismal font, much as Moses stretched his staff over the waters of the Red Sea, which God parted (Ex. 14:21-31).

This created a means of escape for God’s people from the stampeding armies of Egypt and its Pharaoh, which are types of sin and Satan. Saint Paul, looking back at this event, refers to it as a prefigurement of Christian baptism (1 Cor. 10:2), which frees us from the rule of sin and death.

The baptism of the Lord also reminds us, of course, of our own baptism. The Church teaches that baptism not only lets us participate in Jesus’ victory over sin and death, but calls us to our own personal holiness and apostolate (sharing our faith). When you boil it all down, this is the essence of how we fulfill our baptismal mandate to become saints.

Who are the saints? The word “saint” derives from the Greek term hagios, which means “the holy ones.” Being a holy person just means being, with God’s considerable help, the person you were created to be.

The Bible says, “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14, NIV). This is also why we need to share our faith! If we want everyone we know and love to get to heaven, if we want them to see Jesus, they must become saints as well—no exceptions.

The world tends to value the letters at the end of people’s names—M.D., M.B.A., Ph.D. But Catholics care most of all about the letters we hope one day will come before our names: “St.” This was the ultimate reason the Lord was baptized, establishing the sacrament, and it’s why we are baptized, too.

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