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| A ciborium holds the holy food at Mass |
We often bandy words, assuming we know their meanings. But our understandings can be impoverished. Early on in my priesthood I had a pastor who had taught Latin to young seminarians for years. I only have two years of high school Latin and so I enjoy Latin discoveries.
One evening I was sitting in my front room struggling to translate the lovely hymn Ave Maris Stella (Hail Star of the Sea) from Latin to English. The pastor came up behind me and looking over my shoulder at the Latin text he gave me a free translation which was so beautifully tender - very unlike the book translations I'd seen. Then out of no where he said, "Do you know the word ciborium comes from the Latin word cibus (chee-bus) meaning food?" I had never made that connection. And what a lovely inner light turned on.
I remember when it dawned on me that the word humility comes from the Latin word humus which means good earth. Not that we are dirt or should degrade or falsely deny ourselves but that we should be down to earth about ourselves - realistic or real with and about ourselves - our vulnerabilities, fears, neediness, hopes.
And I remember when I realized the word radical comes from the Latin word radix which means root. So radical doesn't mean a destroyer or bomb-thrower but a person or a movement looking to get back to the root of deep origins. Jesus is indeed radical in this sense: getting back to the root or essential thing of religion which is the love of God and the love of other people.
Recently someone asked if I was leading a revolt against the Church when I suggested (since God has become human in Jesus Christ) that churches should offer bathrooms. That's Christianity 101 for me, not a revolt. But then I discovered revolt comes from the Latin word volvere which mean roil (a small wheel) which gives us vault - to jump. With the prefix re it means to roll back, unroll or return.
The word only assumed the sense of a violent overthrow in the 16th century. But between that late usage and the ancient Latin, the word meant a complete reversal. So....the young people in our country have clearly abandoned the Church and given up on institutionalized religion, we are lost in the worst and often ugly polarization and contentious argument about all kinds of religious believing and do-ing. Yeah, the Church needs a revolt - an unrolling, a jumping back to what is essential which is the mystery of God drawn so close to us that we often miss its meaning. But mystery is more like a room with too much light.
Some priests (maybe not a few) have lost their sense of the mystery. They have become religious functionaries and need an inner revolt. The young people can detect it at once. I knew a priest who had done seminary in what is said to be one of the finest theological centers in Europe. I shared with him the Genesis account of creation which I'd just seen in a new children's bible.
The page read something like this: God had created all the planets and the stars and the plants and animals but then out of his lonely heart God created us. I told the priest that I thought this was lovely and sensitive and he said, with a kind of knee jerk reaction, "Well yes, maybe, even though it is completely heretical."
And I thought, poor fellow, he has lost the mystery - which is the sense of wonder and pondering about the love of God. He doesn't know that love has to know loneliness and incompleteness. Ask any newlywed. But he was locked in by his mind-training, his catechism page, his academic-drunk and had lost the sense of Jesus: "The kingdom of heaven is LIKE..."
So yeah, bring on the revolt: getting the heart-mind of Jesus and not just using bible verses to defend dogmas and moral teachings.
Recently someone asked if I was leading a revolt against the Church when I suggested (since God has become human in Jesus Christ) that churches should offer bathrooms. That's Christianity 101 for me, not a revolt. But then I discovered revolt comes from the Latin word volvere which mean roil (a small wheel) which gives us vault - to jump. With the prefix re it means to roll back, unroll or return.
The word only assumed the sense of a violent overthrow in the 16th century. But between that late usage and the ancient Latin, the word meant a complete reversal. So....the young people in our country have clearly abandoned the Church and given up on institutionalized religion, we are lost in the worst and often ugly polarization and contentious argument about all kinds of religious believing and do-ing. Yeah, the Church needs a revolt - an unrolling, a jumping back to what is essential which is the mystery of God drawn so close to us that we often miss its meaning. But mystery is more like a room with too much light.
Some priests (maybe not a few) have lost their sense of the mystery. They have become religious functionaries and need an inner revolt. The young people can detect it at once. I knew a priest who had done seminary in what is said to be one of the finest theological centers in Europe. I shared with him the Genesis account of creation which I'd just seen in a new children's bible.
The page read something like this: God had created all the planets and the stars and the plants and animals but then out of his lonely heart God created us. I told the priest that I thought this was lovely and sensitive and he said, with a kind of knee jerk reaction, "Well yes, maybe, even though it is completely heretical."
And I thought, poor fellow, he has lost the mystery - which is the sense of wonder and pondering about the love of God. He doesn't know that love has to know loneliness and incompleteness. Ask any newlywed. But he was locked in by his mind-training, his catechism page, his academic-drunk and had lost the sense of Jesus: "The kingdom of heaven is LIKE..."
So yeah, bring on the revolt: getting the heart-mind of Jesus and not just using bible verses to defend dogmas and moral teachings.
