The only Son is not alone
March 5, 2012, 11:17 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
Brothers and sisters, God has so blessed us in the name of Christ that he has filled the earth with his children, adopted into his Kingdom, coheirs of his only begotten Son. He begot a single Son, but he did not wish him to remain the only one…. He made brothers and sisters for him, if not by generation, by adoption, which made them his co-heirs. He made his Son to share in our mortality so that we might believe that we can share in his divinity. (Augustine, EnPs 66[67], 9; PL 36, 811)
Just last night I was thinking about Jesus’ sisters. We know the names of his brothers, and many people are very devoted to one of his brothers — St. Jude.
I wonder if anyone has ever prayed to Jesus’ sisters. I’ve never seen a novena to them, hymn, devotional booklet, prayer pamphlet, or anything.
Has Augustine had any influence over the Eastern Church? His point about “sharing divinity” makes me wonder. Some of the Eastern fathers go overboard with that notion, I think. What did Augustine mean by “sharing diviniity”? Does he relate is in any way to contemplative prayer?
That’s part of the Eucharistic prayer:
“Comme cette eau se mêle au vin pour le sacrement de l’Alliance, puissions-nous être unis à la divinité de Celui qui a pris notre humanité.”
One of my many favorite phrases. I’m always straining to try to hear it!
Apparently the English version (which I almost never can catch) is: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Not as nice in my opinion, but anyway, there you go: a prayer at every Mass for us to share divinity! So, there is nothing overboard about it; it’ part of our regular prayers.
Jesus has many, many sisters, and people pray to them all the time. Who could name them all: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, etc., etc., etc.
“Partakers of the divine nature” is already in 2 Pet 1:4.
The prayer Claire quotes is said quietly by the priest at the Offertory as he pours a few drops of water into the chalice: “Grant that by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity.”
I don’t think Jesus’ sisters had Roman names, Joseph. For references to Jesus’ sisters see http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-siblings.html
As to the martyrs you mention, there’s a lot about how Damasus, “one of late antiquity’s most brilliant and ruthless popes”, used their legends in his “gendering of Christianity” in Nicola Denzey’s book, The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807013099/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
Wiki’s article on Divinization provides the views of various denominations, including that of the Mormons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinization_(Christian)
(I wonder which “Eastern fathers” Ann O. imagines “go overboard with that notion”.)
Gerelyn: Surely some of Jesus’ sisters had (and have) Roman names, and Jewish, and Greek, and Irish, and Slovak, etc., etc., etc.
I’ve always like The Friendly Beasts (especially as sung by Jessye Norman), but I’ve never heard it sung in a Catholic Church. I guess I thought thinking of Jesus as a brother was Protestant.
But I might read this book: Jesus Our Brother: The Humanity of the Lord, by
Wilfrid J. Harrington, OP. http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Our-Brother-Humanity-Lord/dp/0809146711
(Or at least the free sample for Kindle.)
” puissions-nous être unis à la divinité”
Claire and JAK –
Doesn’t this literally say “to be one with the divinity”. “Being one with” is ambiguous and can meaning simply “is united with into a whole”. It is not the same thing, as being part of, which “participate” suggests too strongly.
I wonder what the Greek verb is and what it meant.
Gerelyn –
I was thinking of St. Symeon the New Theologian and his followers. I can’t find the quote again, but I’ve seen him quoted as saying something like this about mystical contemplation: “Am I God then? Yes.” I lost an Orthodox friend when I said i thought that was heresy. But she didn’t deny he had said it.
I’ve always thought that there was a symmetry between Christ becoming human and us becoming divine in him; becoming one like water mingling with wine… and I imagine, as I repeat that phrase to myself sometimes with as much pleasure as a child eating candy, that it is a necessary part of our becoming one with him. It’s also one of the images that makes me look forward to the afterlife…
Now I’m afraid that Fr K.’s coming explanation might spoil it
The irony of the man and the woman in the Garden sinning by wanting to be like gods (which ultimately is the root of every sin that we commit) is that it didn’t have to be that way. It did not have to be a sin. The irony is that God Himself wants us to be like gods! (CCC 460)
As St. Athanasius wrote, “The Son of God became man so that we might become God.” (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) Likewise, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that He, made man, might make men gods.” (Opusc. 57, 1-4)
The problem is that we (mankind) wanted and want to be gods on our own terms. We want to be gods by our own will, by our own doing. We want our divinity to be self-actualized, without the involvement of He who is already God.
God does want us to be “gods,” but He wants us to be gods on His terms, He wants us to be gods by His doing. Not because He is a “jealous God” who can’t bear to have competition, but because He is Truth. He is the One and only God, thus, only He can make us like “gods.”
For us to be gods on our own, by our own doing (or for us to be our own saviors, to attain salvation all by our own merits) would not be consistent with truth, it would be a lie, it would be contrary to the very idea of God. No, to be true, man can become gods only by the action of the God who is Truth.
We can become gods only by God joining us to Himself, by Him taking us unto Himself in the entirety of our being — our soul joined to His Spirit, our body joined to His Body — so that we are in Him and He is in us to such a degree that we truly are a loving communion of persons, no longer separate and apart, but two become one, not merely in a symbolic or poetic sense, but in a very real, authentic and true sense.
“Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Jesus said. Only God is perfect, but by joining fully in communion with Him, in allowing ourselves to be truly sanctified by the Spirit of Sanctification, we can be made perfect as commanded by Jesus. The Lord does not demand the impossible of us, He makes the “impossible” possible. He makes us imperfect humans perfect, He — and only He — makes us like gods.
Oh Claire: I don’t want you ever to be afraid of what I might say! The symmetry you point to is found in other forms, too. E.g., St. Paul’s: He, though he was rich, became poor for our sake, so that we might be enriched by his poverty.” An oration in our tradition refers to the admirabile commercium, wondrous exchange, by which we are, by far, the greater beneficiaries!
It’s interesting that the French translation, cited by Claire, reads: “that we might be united with the divinity,” rather than “that we might participate in the divinity.” Do these say the same thing?
Ann: the Greek for the phrase in 2 Pet 1:4 is: theias koinonoi physeos: “sharers of the divine nature.” It’s the same word-group as koinonia, communion, common share, with different indications of what it is that’s being shared.
JAK –
Thank you. It seems, then, that koinonia implies no identification of creature-God. The word “participate” made me wonder. In English the word ‘participate’ is always dangerous — it can imply a sort of Platonic identification.
Bender: wonderful. Thank you so much – for the second time in two days. It almost makes me wonder if I should start taking seriously your comments on political threads. Almost, but not quite!
Father K.: I was afraid that my understanding might turn out to be faulty. I’m only worried about my own errors, but not afraid of you, don’t worry!
Yes, “unis à la divinité” = “united with/to the divinity” is ambiguous.
Thank you, Claire. Regardless of what everyone’s political philosophies might be, we are family. And that is a good thing.
Those not familiar with it may enjoy Daniel Keatings’s “Deification and Grace.” Here is what one reviewer says:
“While often misunderstood in or eclipsed by various theological traditions of modern provenance, deification stands at the very center of the Christian faith and constitutes the surpassing goal toward which the Christian life is directed. Daniel Keating has put all of us into his debt for proffering a synthetic treatment of deification that is as accessible as it is astute.”
I’m not the reviewer, but I approve this ad!
Gerelyn, thanks for the link to the wikipedia article, which I saw only just now. Very complete! If you click on “view history” on the top right, you can see that it’s been edited by many people and is the result of a collaborative effort over about a year. That’s what makes wikipedia so reliable.
“The prayer Claire quotes is said quietly by the priest at the Offertory”
… unless a deacon is present :-).
Yes, “unis à la divinité” = “united with/to the divinity” is ambiguous
… but if you consider the sentence as a whole, in French it is made more precise by the image at the beginning, that has much more meaning than in the English version I quoted. It is more poetic, and maybe that helps better communicate the overall meaning: in the end, that makes the French prayer more accurate than the English prayer.
Thanks, Claire. Wish I knew French better!