Christmas: Perennial and Contemporary
In his homily at Midnight Mass Pope Benedict invoked the Gospel and the theological tradition and applied it to our situation today:
In some Christmas scenes from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, the stable is depicted as a crumbling palace. It is still possible to recognize its former splendour, but now it has become a ruin, the walls are falling down – in fact, it has become a stable. Although it lacks any historical basis, this metaphorical interpretation nevertheless expresses something of the truth that is hidden in the mystery of Christmas. David’s throne, which had been promised to last for ever, stands empty. Others rule over the Holy Land. Joseph, the descendant of David, is a simple artisan; the palace, in fact, has become a hovel. David himself had begun life as a shepherd. When Samuel sought him out in order to anoint him, it seemed impossible and absurd that a shepherd-boy such as he could become the bearer of the promise of Israel. In the stable of Bethlehem, the very town where it had all begun, the Davidic kingship started again in a new way – in that child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The new throne from which this David will draw the world to himself is the Cross. The new throne – the Cross – corresponds to the new beginning in the stable. Yet this is exactly how the true Davidic palace, the true kingship is being built. This new palace is so different from what people imagine a palace and royal power ought to be like. It is the community of those who allow themselves to be drawn by Christ’s love and so become one body with him, a new humanity. The power that comes from the Cross, the power of self-giving goodness – this is the true kingship. The stable becomes a palace – and setting out from this starting-point, Jesus builds the great new community, whose key-word the angels sing at the hour of his birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to those whom he loves” – those who place their will in his, in this way becoming men of God, new men, a new world.
Gregory of Nyssa, in his Christmas homilies, developed the same vision setting out from the Christmas message in the Gospel of John: “He pitched his tent among us” (Jn 1:14). Gregory applies this passage about the tent to the tent of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to pain and suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and disfigured by sin. What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation? Anselm of Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of what we witness today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything was as if dead, and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of those who praise God. The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost their splendour because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their idols, for whom they had not been created” (PL 158, 955f.). Thus, according to Gregory’s vision, the stable in the Christmas message represents the ill-treated world. What Christ rebuilds is no ordinary palace. He came to restore beauty and dignity to creation, to the universe: this is what began at Christmas and makes the angels rejoice. The Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will, in the unification of height and depth, it regains its beauty and dignity. Thus Christmas is a feast of restored creation. It is in this context that the Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that holy night: it is an expression of joy over the fact that the height and the depth, Heaven and Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God. According to the Fathers, part of the angels’ Christmas song is the fact that now angels and men can sing together and in this way the beauty of the universe is expressed in the beauty of the song of praise. Liturgical song – still according to the Fathers – possesses its own peculiar dignity through the fact that it is sung together with the celestial choirs. It is the encounter with Jesus Christ that makes us capable of hearing the song of the angels, thus creating the real music that fades away when we lose this singing-with and hearing-with.
The joy and peace of Christmas to all.
[And, once again, Ian Fisher gets it right!]
Joseph Gannon:
See? Angels sing!
It’s a metaphor, Kathy.
It’s interesting that Benedict translates en anthropois eudokias “to those whom he loves”. I believe the Nova Vulgata has “hominibus bonae voluntatis”, which one would naturally take to mean “people of good will”. The sense of the Greek is closer to Benedict’s version. A little more precise rendering might be “those whom he favors”. The current version in the liturgy “to his people” is an interesting way round.
Joseph, when you say “metaphor” I hear “anthropomorphism.” Perhaps unfair of me to say?
In the Scriptures, the high points of human praise are most often caught up in history: the Song of Miriam, Psalm 136, the Magnificat.
The angels, though, seem to speak almost exclusively about God’s glory, which can obviously be apprehended apart from time, and what follows immediately from the fact of God’s glory. Including the peace of those whom God favors. But ordinarily they just sing (or talk) about the glory.
It’s when the angelic type of praise and the human praise conflate in the same poem that I am convinced that there cannot be an irreconcilable difference in kind between angel song and human. For example, when Eph. 1:30 and Colossians 1:15 ff talk about God’s “plan,” apprehension of which presupposes both a lived experience of salvation and a
vantage point outside of time.
Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory. (I Tim 3:16)
It seems to me that God teaches us, through history, to sing more and more like the angels, and, curiously, the angels “learn” (outside of time, of course) more perfect praise of God through us (Eph. 3:10)
(I wonder what ICEL is doing with en anthropois eudokias?)
The question hangs on whose “good will” (eudokia; bona voluntas) is meant: God’s or ours? And it’s pretty certain that it means God’s good will, that is, his favor, is love. So the Latin really means the same as the Greek, and is well interpreted by Pope Benedict.
Can’t metaphors be true: that is, state the real?
Not to break into this highbrow conversation, but I enjoyed that sermon almost as much as a segment of one of Sister Wendy’s art shows.
And I don’t mean that flippantly.
The “crumbling palace” theme is one I’ve seen repeated over and over, suggesting at once both Christ’s majesty, his humility and his mission to restore the “palace” of the world, and I think mentioning it adds perspective and resonance to the sermon.
Not to go off on a tangent, but it seems to me that art ought to be brought into RCIA programs more–starting with the art that is in the home parish’s church, its architecture, stained glass, statuary, vessels, and vestments.
A Catholic church ought not to be stripped down like a lobby, but alive with visual as well as auditory ideas and confirmations that Christ is among us. And it ought to contain people who can point out the “richesse” (I think that’s the Middle English word I want) of these images.
Jean,
“Amen” to your desire that art be brought into RCIA programs and, I would add, homilies.
I remember my first experience of the Cathedral of Monreale (outside Palermo) with its magnificent mosaics that immerse the worshippers in salvation history.
Pope Benedict has made a significant move in restoring art to catechesis by his insistence that art works be an integral part of the Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (including my beloved moasaic of the Cross as Tree of Life from San Clemente in Rome).
Sandro Magister has an interesting post about the new Italian lectionary with artistic reproductions by contemporary artists:
“A Test of Courage: Have the Nativity Painted by an Abstract Artist
The Italian bishops’ conference has entrusted the illustration of the new Lectionary to thirty contemporary artists, with their styles. It’s the first time that a liturgical book has been associated with modern images. An audacious undertaking – and one immediately criticized.”
For the full post:
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/183968?eng=y
In response to Komonchak:
I would say that stories, parables, symbols, and metaphors can be true, but not in the same way as propositional truth in either a descriptive or explanatory mode, as in judgments of fact (e.g., “God created heaven and earth,” “The Word was made flesh/pitched his tent among us”) or in judgments of value (e.g., G.M. Hopkins’s advice to one having doubts about his faith: “Give alms”; or “Love your enemies.”) In the case of the truth of myth, parable, or metaphor, the referent is the truth of existence, as in Kierkegaard’s biblical expression, “living in the truth,” which, to speak both technically and metaphorically, would mean living in harmony with the light one has at any given time. Such light may derive from one’s natural desire to see God or from the Holy Spirit that has been offered/given to everyone. The latter teaching, of course, goes against the teaching of Leonard Feeney, about whom our teacher, Bernard Lonergan, made the wry comment that he had the distinction of leaving the church because of his conviction that there is no salvation outside the church. Nevertheless, I would venture, if he was living in accord with the light he had . . .
Amen!
Here’s the problem: http://www.rvosko.com/pages/philosophy.asp
Fr. Komonchak, in my understanding metaphors often combine two things that are utterly unlike except in a single regard. If I were to picture the object of a metaphor alongside its referent, I would usually say, “No, it’s not that at all–but I know what you mean.” It’s that “I know what you mean” moment that causes the delight and truth of a metaphor.
Spring is “a box where sweets compacted lie.” A Spring, a box–two almost totallty unlike things.
Granted that angel song must be very much unlike human song, being first of all unbodied, still the sense of quite a number of Scripture passages is that angels and humans will sing together. Our singing and their singing will have to be in the same room, as it were, and alive, in a way that Spring and a box never have to be.
If a poem or a painting was destined to spring to life, then I guess in that sense it could be a metaphor.
Kathy: I don’t see the problem you’re pointing to in the site you send us to.
I’m working at the moment on metaphors for the Church, of which there are many (Paul Minear thought he had discerned 96 of them in the NT alone!). “Holy is the temple of God, which you are,” said St. Paul, a text Augustine often quoted, and one can almost see him pointing to his congregation when he got to the last phrase: “quod estis VOS.” He knew the difference between metaphorical and “proper” senses of words and statements. He also knew that we constitute the Church which we enter, that we are singly children of Mother Church, but taken together are Mother Church. We constitute the Temple we enter.
He also knew the difference between singing with one’s voice and singing with one’s heart; it’s the latter we we do together with the saints and angels. Only an hour ago, I read this from Fulgentius of Ruspe, where he is distinguishing and closely relating the part of the Church still on earth with the heavenly Jerusalem, already engaged in songful praise of God: “The Church here on earth is walking in faith, singing what that Church is singing as it rests in the sight [of God]. This part of that Church sings while it is nourished by the bread for the journey with which that Jerusalem is eternally filled. How could a Church dare to believe or to say that she is the daughter of the holy heavenly Jerusalem if she does not think that she must say on earth what that holy mother does not cease to say in Heaven? And how could she have a common happiness with her if she does not share in the praise of the same God? For no one can attain communion with that holy Jerusalem who does not now imitate her obedience, for when the Son was born in the flesh, the host of heaven itself sang no other song on earth than, “Glory to God in the heights.”
When I get home, I will send the reference for a splendid book published a couple of years ago and lavishly illustrating with works of art across the centuries the events and personages of the Gospels. If I am not mistaken, a work or two has come out recently in England using art in catechesis. I remember a review in “The Tablet,” but don’t think I could find it now. Perhaps someone else has heard of it.
Fr. Komonchak,
I mean that Vosko’s work (he is enormously influential) is a problem. Where, for example, is the art here? http://www.rvosko.com/pages/projectdetail.asp?projectID=42
The problem as I see it is one of explication. In these large, relaxed interiors, the horizontal dimension shouts loud and clear. The vertical dimension is (possibly) implied by skylights, but practically speaking it is not emphasized at all. The horizontal is constantly reiterated. This is in keeping with his philosphy: “nor is it a temple to honor the deity. The fundamental blueprint for the building is found in the memories and hopes of the community.”
No, the fundamental blueprint for the building is found in the merciful initiative of God towards us in Jesus Christ. Certainly there are personal and communal experiences of grace, and they ought to be expressed. But there are normative expressions of mercy and grace (esp. the Gospels) that come to the community from beyond its own limited memories. There’s a deeper memory and a much greater hope, and there is supposed to be praise of God, or, um, honor of the deity.
I think we agree about singing.
Speaking of Fulgentius: “Now at last, Paul rejoices with Stephen, with Stephen he delights in the glory of Christ, with Stephen he exalts, with Stephen he reigns. Stephen went first, slain by the stones thrown by Paul, but Paul followed after, helped by the prayer of Stephen. This, surely, is the true life, my brothers, a life in which Paul feels no shame because of Stephen’s death, and Stephen delights in Paul’s companionship, for love fills them both with joy. It was Stephen’s love that prevailed over the cruelty of the mob, and it was Paul’s love that covered the multitude of his sins; it was love that won for both of them the kingdom of heaven.”
Fr. Imbelli, thanks for that info. In googling for more on the story, it appears to me that the art is unpopular with many, and the fact that the print job in the new lectionary is exceedingly sloppy isn’t going to help make it more popular.
I await Sister Wendy’s verdict on the pieces. I hope someone has sent her a copy in her little house trailer. Her Book of Saints is recommended for parish libraries.
Now there’s a way to put your money where your mouth is! Get a list of recommended art books for your parish and donate one or two of them. Better, donate them with a short review for the parish bulletin so people know they’re there. Wouldn’t it be great if parishes actually left their libraries open once in awhile so people could USE the books and other materials sometimes?
Our local parish is locked up tight as a drum except for Mass, Bingo and AA meetings. The Church Ladies say that people would be coming in and performing satanic masses if they left the doors open otherwise. I didn’t realize mid-Michigan was such a hotbed of demonic worship.
Ooops, meant that “put your money where your mouth is” in a general way, not implying that Fr. Imbelli personally should buy art books for parishes.
It seems to be a bit of a stretch to say that we can interpret “hominibus bonae uoluntatis” to mean “men whom God loves”. Traditionally both “bona uoluntas” and “eudokia” were taken to mean “good will” in the passage in question and the phrase was interpreted either as “men of good will” following tjhe Vulgate or “good will towards men” following the received text of the Greek NT (the so called textus receptus). On the question of syntax the Vulgate was right and textus receptus was erroneous. Bauer’s Greek Lexicon of the New Testament quite rightly distinguishes three senses of “eudokia”: 1. good will; 2. favor, good pleasure and 3. wish, desire. I did not mean to suggest that Benedict had mistranslated the Greek text, but I doubt the Latin can bear the same sense, unless one is going to say that the Vulgate, being authoritative, must mean what the Greek means. There is a thorough discussion of this in Joseph Fitzmyer’s edition of Luke in the Anchor Bible and a briefer but equally good one in Luke Timothy Johnson’s edition in the Sacra Pagina series.
Jean,
Thanks for the rectification — I thought that my trip to Rome was down the drain after buying all those art books!
Seriously, I will keep my eye out for the new Italian lectionary and report back on my impressions.
I understand, from a previous post by Sandro Magister, that Msgr. Timothy Verdon, an art historian based in Florence has a new book that correlates art works with the Sunday readings. I’ll look out for it as well.
Oh, yes, please do! It would be interesting to learn more about the art in the lectionary. I couldn’t find many pictures of the new art on Google.
I used to subscribe to Magnificat, which always had an informative, if somewhat perfunctory, article in the back based on art that illustrated something in the readings for the month, though I don’t recall any art that was controversial or modern.
Hasn’t Christian visual art always been representational? I thought that one of the quibbles folks had with the Italian lectionary was the abstraction of the art.
I am by far no expert on art, but I believe some of the old illuminated manuscripts contain only such things as ornamented initials and decorative patterns, although of course the most well known contain clearly representational art. I am not sure exactly how one would classify this page from the Book of Kells
http://www.snake.net/people/paul/kells/image/kell2bmp
In searching Google, I discovered that you can order a DVD with high-resolution reproductions of every page from The Book of Kells at
http://www.bookofkells.com/
Hebrew and Arabic illuminated manuscripts with nonrepresentational art prove that art doesn’t have to be representational to be beautiful. But of course it would be difficult today to compete with the old masterpieces, whether representational or not.
Mr. Gannon:
Why do you think it a stretch that “hominibus bonae voluntatis” means people on whom God’s favor rests. There is nothing grammatical or semantic that would preclude that interpretation.
Kathy, you and I are probably reading the same articles about the lectionary. Yes, some object to it because it’s not representational. But others have said the Church has no set “style.”
There are, of course, certain iconographic conventions, and it will be interesting to see if the artists use those or take a whole new approach.
As David Nickol points out, there are certainly surreal/abstract elements in medieval religious art. Figures are not meant to represent real people, but their position, size, dress and accoutrements–even the animals nearby–are meant to convey things like holiness, social position, holiness and suffering. (I once derailed my graduate studies for three months to study British images of women with croziers. Frustrated paleographer, what can I say?)
I’m not expecting to particularly LIKE the art or to understand it without commentary, but I think it’s an interesting experiment.
Dr. Gannon, I’m confused now, but I think you’re right. If one said “bona voluntas hominum”, I agree that it would be ambiguous whether this were good will directed at men or the mens’ good will toward something else. The first is an “objective genitive” and the second “subjective genitive.” This is different because the good will is in the genitive and the men whose relationship to the goodwill is in question are the noun modified by that genitive. If one said, “Caesar vir est summae virtutis”, then there’s no doubt about who we think is courageous. “Caesar vir est bonae voluntatis” sounds the same. (This is sometimes called a “genetive of quality” by people who like to tack genitives onto the word “genitive.”)
On the other hand, the idea courage doesn’t really imply an object the same way the idea of good will does. Is this similar to the place in Miller’s “Canticle for Liebowicz” where a monk sees “Fallout Shelter” on a door and runs away, because he figures this is where the dangerous monster Fallout lives? To parse “fallout shelter”, you need to know something about fallout; the grammar by itself is ambiguous.
Suppose we said “Hannibal vir est magnae perfidiae.” Could that ever be interpreted to mean that we had betrayed him?
In Colossians Christ is called “filium dilectionis suae”: now granted that the “suae” makes it clear that the love is God’s; but the phrase “filium dilectionis” has its parallel with “hominibus bonae voluntatis.” I suppose the argument continues as to whether the Latin moves more in one direction than does the Greek.
Fr. Komonchak
I would say that “suae” makes all the difference. If the Vulgate had “bonae uoluntatis illius” it could be fairly translated “of His favor”, i.e.,” to whom He is favorably disposed”. As the text stands, I do not think anyone in the Vulgate tradition thought it could mean anything other than “men of good will” in the sense “men who are well disposed”, at least not until very recently. That was certainly how the Catholic translations of the Vulgate took it. Is there any evidence that St. Jerome intended otherwise?
That said, the authentic Greek text is also difficult. Most people now take “eudokias” to mean “of [God's] favor”. Actually “eudokias” looks like a Lucan afterthought. The text “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men” is a neat dicolon. The addition of “eudokias” destroys the symmetry. That is probably how the Greek text came to be altered to yield in the language of KJV “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men”.
“eudokia” is found in Eph 1:9, clearly referring to God’s good will, and here Jerome translates it as “secundum beneplacitum ejus.” So perhaps he saw a difference in the meaning of the term when it referred to God’s disposition toward us (Eph) and our disposition toward Him (Lk), but in that case he would be reading Lk differently than the Pope has.
But the historical exegetical question is a good one. I’ll see what I can find.
On the question of what the Greek means I am completely incompetent to judge. (My Greek is weak.)
But IF the Greek signifies clearly to a Greek-knowing ear that the good will is God’s and not the men’s, then
BECAUSE the Nova Vulgata (not just Saint Jerome’s Vulgate) has “hominibus bonae voluntatis”, I’m inclined to think it must be an acceptable way to translate the same thing. That Saint Jerome saw a Greek genitive and wrote a Latin genitive without considering whether that conveyed the same meaning is not difficult to believe; that Reginald Foster would make such a mistake is unthinkable.
But every week at the Spanish mass in my parish they sing, “en la tierra paz a los hombres que ama el Segnor.”
Barlaam
The Greek word eudokia can mean “good will” and it is perfectly possible that Jerome misinterpreted the Greek text.
Fr. Komonchak
The Pope has the advantage, as we do, of some excellent interpretive exegesis such as did not exist for Jerome. I just hope the ICEL under the spell of Liturgiam Authenticam does not try to change “his people” as we now say/sing in the Gloria to “men of good will”. In some version that was leaked on the Internet it looked as if they had.
I’m not wondering what “eudokia” means, but whether the objective genitive is really clear in Greek. I think the original point you made was that Greek uses the objective genitive much more freely than Latin does; that this is one case in which the usage differs; and that accordingly it was a mistake to use the genitive in Latin. And I agree. In all the years I’ve heard “hominibus bonae voluntatis” it never occurred to me that it meant anything else than that the angels think only well-disposed people should have peace on earth.
I want to stop obsessing about this, because I have a stack of exams to grade, but I took a look at the Slavonic (Russian Orthodox) text. In the Slavonic text (which is said to have been translated from Greek by Saint Methodius) the word “goodwill” isn’t in the genitive at all. It has, essentially, “Glory to God, and on earth peace, and goodwill to men.”
I think what’s happening here is that there were two versions of the text extant in the early centuries. One had (nominative) “en anthropois eudokia” and the other had “en anthropois eudokias” (genitive). Saint Methodius, the KJV and Pope Benny think the first is probably right. (“Right” means “a good translation of what the Aramaic-speaking shepherds told Dr. Luke the Greek they heard the angels singing in whatever language angels sing in.”) This is the one that goes “Glory to God. Peace to Earth. Goodwill to Men.” Saint Jerome had the second text. He didn’t hear an objective genitive anymore than you or I do. He thought it meant “peace on Earth to well-disposed men” which is what he put in his Vulgate. (My Greek NT has some cryptic footnotes that suggest there were these two alternate versions.)
I think anybody who knows Latin and Greek should be prepared for ICEL to come out with some pretty ear-grating noise. The cardiologists would advise you to listen calmly and not allow it to cause you undue stress.
Barlaam
Bt all means correct your exams. You are right that the nominative eudokia and the genitive eudokias are variants. However it is now from a thorough examination of the manuscripts quite clear that the original reading was the genitive eudokias and the nominative eudokia is a scribal “improvement” that was widely adopted. From what you say I gather that this “improvement” influenced the Slavonic translation. It was certanly to be found in the influential text of the New Testament published by Erasmus that became the basis of the vernacular translations under Protestant auspices from the 16th century on. It was only in the 19th century that anything like a critical text of the New Testament was printed.
What’s at stake, I suppose, is that the genitive would be partitive. Out of all the anthropois, there are some who are favored.
There are some who are “his people,” if you like.
Presumably there could be some who are not his people, who are not favored.
At this point, the question becomes not grammatical but soteriological. In this it resembles the other kerfluffle over the ICEL translation of “pro multis”–it will be shed for all? For the many? For the few?
How many people enjoy God’s favor?
I believe the Catholic answer to that question is, “Anyone who doesn’t refuse it.” And since it is the Incarnation that makes the favor available to us, perhaps the grammatical trajectories coincide in the end.
Kathy
The genitive would be descriptive rather than partitive. But you raise a good point about the sense. But look at verse 10 where the angel says “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people”. So the good news if for everyone. But God does not necessarily favor all in the same way. Of all nations he favored the children of Israel. But they were to be the beginning of his favor to all nations. And he did especial favor one Jewish woman, Mary, to whom tha angel says in Luke “Hail favored one”. (This is a better rendering than “Hail full of grace”.) But that “favor” redounds to the benefit of all. I think the point here –one point anyway–is that the initiative is God’s. It is not that he does something for those who first show good will and thereby deserve it.
How many people enjoy God’s favor?
I think the Catholic answer is All of them. That is what “catholic” means. see LG 13
or in more literary language:
Here Comes Everybody!