St Jerome had a most important contribution to make - that of translating the Bible (mostly from Greek) into Latin, so that it could be understood by the majority of churches in the world. Christianity had spread on the hip of the Roman Empire - the common language of which was Latin. Most translations of the Bible into local languages, have been made from Jerome's Latin translation. They thus share a common view of the texts, which is welcome, but it is also valuable to read from translations made directly into local languages from the greek sources.
It is even more complex when one encounters - as often happens - greek texts that differ from each other - a natural result of the need to hand copy the greek text to make it widely available, long before any printing press was available.
The greek sources themselves are often translated from the voices of Aramaic speakers, those who actually heard Jesus speak for themselves.
When we read the bible, in whatever translation, we need to always pray that Jesus will speak to us, as St John Henry Newman said, Heart unto Heart.
St Michael ('one who is like God') is mentioned in the Apocalypse as the leader of the heavenly host. He is a patron of soldiers. St Gabriel, ('God's Strength'), perhaps the most well known and certainly having the most songs mentioning him, appears in the book of Daniel to explain some of the prophet’s visions, and was also the bearer of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Book of Tobit, Raphael is the angel who heals Tobit of his blindness. His name means 'God heals'.
St Gregory the Great (our patron) wrote of the Archangels, that the title denotes a function rather than a nature. All the angels are Holy Spirits, and are only called Angel when they are delivering a message. The Archangels are so called when delivering messages of greatest importance.
Lord God of hosts,
in your all-wise plan you assign to angels and to men
the services they have to render you.
Grant that the angels, who adore you in heaven,
may protect us here on earth.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
Suggested readings to accompany this weeks' session and videos for those who prefer to watch and listen are:
READINGS FROM THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
If you have more time, and if you want to go deeper into the topic of this session, you can follow up by exploring the longer Catechism of the Catholic Church. See the standard online version here, and a digital “flip-book” edition here. Here are the readings that go with this week’s Sycamore session:
#1878 to #1896 – the importance of community and society
NB the numbers (#) refer to paragraph numbers in the Catechism and not to page numbers. Click on the links themselves to read the paragraphs in the online version.
RELATED VIDEOS
WISDOM FROM THE BIBLE
Leviticus 19:18
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-6
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.”
Mark 12:28-31
“One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’
Matthew 25:35-36, 40
Jesus says: “‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…’ Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
John 13:34-35
Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”
1 John 4:7-10
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
KEY IDEAS from Sycamore
10A – What is love?
Let me give you two classic definitions of love. The first definition: Love seeks union. We want to be united with those we love. If I love someone, I care for them, I miss them, I want to be with them, I want to share my life with them.
The second definition: Love seeks the good of the other. If I love someone I want to do good for them, to help them. It’s not just what I can take from this relationship, it’s also what I can give.
Both of these meanings are in the bible. The love that God has for his people Israel in the Old Testament is like a bridegroom seeking his bride. And Jesus speaks about himself as the Bridegroom who seeks to be united with his Bride the Church.
The other meaning is there too, the sacrificial one. God calls his people to care for the poor, the widow, the stranger, the outcast. Jesus teaches us to be servants to each other. He gives us the example of his own life. He washed the feet of his disciples, gave them his Body and Blood at the Last Supper, and offered his life in sacrifice on the Cross.
The bible shows that you need passion and affection; and you also need sacrifice and sheer hard work. It’s true for our families, our communities, our schools, our places of work. We need a love that seeks union and a love that seeks the good of the other. When they come together, that is the deepest meaning of love.
10B – How to love your neighbour
Jesus said to his followers: “You must love your neighbour as yourself”. Then he went further and said, “Love one another, as I have loved you”. And he went even further and said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you”.
It’s a radical call to love without conditions, without calculation, without expecting any reward. It’s tough! And let’s admit that sometimes we do not like this teaching. We are called to a sacrificial love that seems to go beyond the normal call of duty and even beyond what seems reasonable.
But it doesn’t mean we become everyone’s doormat. Sometimes we need to stand up for ourselves, to stand up for others, and to stand up for justice. And it doesn’t mean that we are without joy. So many of the encounters that Jesus has with others are filled with joy. There is a lovely phrase. It goes like this: “Life grows by being given away”. We receive more, in unexpected ways, when we give more.
The story of the Good Samaritan is probably the greatest illustration of what it means to love one’s neighbour. A man has been stripped and beaten and abandoned by robbers. A Samaritan traveller is the only one who is willing to cross the road and help him. He is moved with compassion; binds up his wounds; and cares for him at the nearest place of lodging.
The Good Samaritan goes the extra mile. His love is kind, compassionate, generous, practical, selfless. It’s a sacrificial love, but it is filled with tenderness and affection.
This is the kind of love we are called to have for others. For those we are close to, who are sometimes the hardest to love: family, neighbours, colleagues at work. For those we see each day but never acknowledge. For the unexpected visitor, the stranger, the foreigner. And especially for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the lonely, the elderly, the dying.
This is what it means to love your neighbour. This is what it means to be a Christian.
10C – The love of God
A lawyer asked Jesus a question: “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” And Jesus replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
The most important thing in our lives is to know the love of God, and to love him in return. This is our deepest calling. It is also our deepest desire, even if we are only dimly aware of it. St Augustine said, “Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. We can never find ultimate happiness in the passing things of this world.
It’s impossible to love God as we need to without the help of Jesus Christ. He is our friend, our brother, our Saviour. If we believe in him, he unites us with himself, fills us with the Holy Spirit, and lifts us up to the Father in his own prayer.
If we put Jesus Christ in the centre, everything else falls into place. It doesn’t mean that all our difficulties disappear, but we can make sense of them, and know how to move forward.
The love of Christ sets us free – free to love God and free to love others. That’s something we all long for, even if we will live it in different ways. And if we discover it for ourselves, we will want to share it with others.
St Catherine of Sienna said: “If you become who you are meant to be, you will set the world on fire”. And then, when we leave this world at the end of our life, we have the hope of sharing eternally in the fire of God’s love, in the glory that Moses saw in the burning bush, the glory that shines from the face of Jesus Christ.
For centuries, Korea was closed to all outside influences, and all contact with foreigners was forbidden. No missionaries went there. Nevertheless, a number of laymen sought to find out all that they could about the outside world, through the annual embassy to Peking. Some books about Christianity fell into their hands, and they were converted. Because of the secrecy involved, it is impossible to date the origin of Christianity in Korea with any precision: it may have started in the early 17th century, but the first known baptism is that of Ni-Seoung-Houn, who was baptized under the name of Peter when he visited Peking in 1784.
The first known martyrs are Paul Youn and James Kouen, who in 1791 refused to offer sacrifice on the death of their relatives. Over the next century, over ten thousand Korean Christians were executed, with great cruelty; and many others perished.
For most of this period the church in Korea had no priests and was an entirely lay phenomenon. In 1794 the first priest to visit Korea, a Chinese, found a community of 4,000 Catholics who had never seen a priest. He was executed in 1801. Two further Chinese priests, sent at the request of the Korean Church, had a similarly brief ministry. Some thirty years later, at the request of the Korean Catholics, Pope Leo XII established the Prefecture Apostolic of Korea, and a new missionary phase began. The first of these missionaries, a French priest from the Paris Foreign Mission Society, entered the country in 1836 and was beheaded three years later. Many others followed. Andrew Kim Taegǒn, the first Korean priest, was secretly trained in Macao, entered Korea in 1845 and was executed in 1846, together with his father. A lay apostle, St Paul Chong Hasang, and many others perished at the same time. A further major persecution occurred in 1866.
In all, 103 of the Korean martyrs are celebrated today: they are mostly lay men and women: some married, some not; some old, some young, some even children.
“The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by laypeople. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs. The death of these many martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today’s splendid flowering of the Church in Korea. Even today their undying spirit sustains the Christians of the Church of Silence in the north of this tragically divided land.” – Pope John Paul II at the canonization of the Korean Martyrs, May 6, 1984.
Some women were with them, who provided for them out of their means.
Luke is the gospel to go to to find out about Jesus' approach to women. And such women! Aside from Mary his Mother - who's 'fiat' ("Yes!") to the call of God to serve him as mother of Jesus, we have a number of other significant women. Three listed today would not have been typical of their times. Freed from possession by demons (Mary of Magdala alone freed of seven) they were also women of independent means. One was the wife of Herod's household manager - what might she have endured in that role, with a local mini despot as her boss? Amongst the many others, might the samaritan woman at the well have been there, following this remarkable man "who told me everything I had done" ?
They cared for his temporal needs, from their own means. We know that women ran the early house churches - the earliest churches of all - as this is mentioned in Romans 16 and Colossians 4. Perhaps Luke includes this detail (not present in the other Gospels) because at his time of writing (70 AD) , women such as Prisca and Aquila were already an important part of the leadership of the church.
We should not assume 'means' relates only to money: Prisca and Aquila had nearly given their lives for Paul, who clearly speaks of them as his equivalent in importance. We should not conflate 'importance' with 'leadership', and certainly as Pope Leo has recently said, should not be paying executive offices typically 600 times the salary of the workers in an organisation who actually produce the profit.
We should all aim to be like the women who supported Jesus, giving whatever they could to build his church in its foundational years.
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching; you will save both yourself and your hearers.
The first letter to Timothy is an excellent primer in how to conduct oneself as a teacher, deacon priest or Bishop. Full of encouragement and advice, the letter reminds us all of the gifts we have been given, and encourages us to persist in developing them.
This applies to us all - whatever our work, family situations or stage of life - we were all baptised as priests, prophets and kings. Today let us remember especially our priestly baptism. We are here with the vocation to bring God through his word and his love to all.
Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
personal service of the poor and fondness for wild animals
She is also known as Edith of Wilton.
She was the daughter of King Edgar, who abducted Wulfthryth, her mother, from her convent at Wilton, in Wiltshire. (For this act St Dunstan imposed on him the penance of not wearing his crown for seven years). Wulfthryth returned to her cell as soon as she could escape, and Edith was born there. She became a nun with Edgar’s consent, and refused his offers of the abbacy of three different communities, remaining in the cloister under her mother, now Abbess of Wilton.
In 978, after the murder of her half-brother, Edward the Martyr, certain magnates wished her to become Queen, but she refused. She was conspicuous for her personal service of the poor and fondness for wild animals. She had a church of St Denis built at Wilton, and died, at the age of 23, three weeks after its dedication.
Cornelius was made bishop of the church in Rome in the year 251. He fought against the Novatian schismatics, and established his authority with the aid of Cyprian.
The emperor Gallus sent him into exile, and he died at Civitavecchia in June 253. He is buried in Rome.
Cyprian was born in Carthage and spent most of his life in the practice of the law. He was converted to Christianity, and was made bishop of Carthage in 249. He steered the church through troubled times, including the persecution of the emperor Decius, when he went into hiding so as to be able to continue looking after the church. In 258 the persecution of the emperor Valerian began. Cyprian was first exiled and then, on the 14th of September, executed, after a trial notable for the calm and courtesy shown by both sides.
Cyprian’s many letters and treatises shed much light on a formative period in the Church’s history, and are valuable both for their doctrine and for the picture they paint of a group of people in constant peril of their lives but still determined to keep the faith. One of his letters, addressed to Cornelius, is read in today's office of Readings.
