Good Friday has no historical equivalent

“The entire sequence from the death of Jesus on Good Friday to his resurrection on Easter Sunday is not only unique in history, it is unique in its conception in the entire experience of human sensibility”. Taken from The Weekend Australian (April 16-17, 2022, pp. 20-21): Union of Heaven and earth Greg Sheridan “This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it”. Ephesians 5:16 …. The lessons of Ukraine are many and terrible. They demonstrate the changeless essence of human nature – people are called to glory and yet every one of us is capable of monstrous evil. The Russian government is behaving exactly as the Roman Empire did in the time of Jesus, seeking conquest and subjugation with methods of remorseless brutality. We thought we had abolished that, in Europe at least. If you want to see what Christian hope looks like, google Ukrainians singing hymns. See the solace and courage and inspiration there. Christianity is also evident in Poland’s generosity to Ukrainians fleeing the terror of the Russian military. Poles and Ukrainians don’t have an untroubled past, or an untroubled relationship generally. They are not, typically, best friends. Yet Poland, even today, not an especially rich country, has taken in more than two million Ukrainians so far and the efforts of individual Poles in this crisis are magnificent. Yet Christianity is dishonoured in Ukraine too. The backing of the invasion given by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is a crime, the most shocking misuse of Christian religious authority, to justify murder and cruelty and dreadful destruction, in many decades. We thought we had abolished that, too. …. There is simply no way at all that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is a just cause, a last resort or being waged by proportionate or moral means. Therefore, every Christian, including Russian Christians, are obliged to oppose it, or at the very least not to participate in it. But the tragedy of the Ukraine war engages Christian belief at a more personal, existential level. Every Ukrainian, deciding whether to fight or flee, to stay or go, how to help their family, how to help others, what the war means for their whole life project, for their very human existence, will confront their own mortality, their own human quest for meaning. Every human being faces, ultimately, the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell. Easter provides hope because it shows us that death does not have the final victory. But this works for a person, helps them, only if they understand something of the whole supernatural quality of human life. Modern Christians make a tremendous mistake in underplaying the essential supernatural claims of Jesus and the Christian tradition. It is understandable that modern Christians in sceptical Western societies – phobic about the transcendent, scared of death and trained to mock belief at every turn – tend to emphasise Christianity’s good works, its hospitals, schools and shelters for the homeless. You might not like Mother Teresa’s theology, but how many homeless, diseased people did you personally try to help on the streets of Kolkata? But, in truth, Christianity stripped of its supernatural claims is not just an attractive ethical system or a picturesque and benign myth. It is literally nothing at all. Without its supernatural claims it is at best delusional, and really a system of lies. Nothing of lasting good can come from a system of lies. As St Paul says in Ephesians: “If Christ is not risen, our preaching is useless, your faith is useless … we are of all people the most to be pitied”. There is nice debate among Christians as to whether Western societies such as ours have become so post-Christian that they are in a sense pre-Christian, so removed from their Christian roots that they are wholly innocent of any knowledge of what Christianity is all about. Easter is a good time therefore to remind ourselves just how absolutely weird and radical Christianity is, how unlike any prevailing social orthodoxy or ethos, how radically challenging it is to the zeitgeist, even though the good things in Western society, such as universal human rights and equality of the sexes, to name just two, derive directly from Christianity. It’s unclear, at best, that these good things can be sustained in the absence of transcendent belief, at least among a sizeable portion of the society. But the good things in Christianity in any event are entirely dependent on the supernatural claims it makes, and these should never be watered down, or put to one side by Christianity’s friends. The entire sequence from the death of Jesus on Good Friday to his resurrection on Easter Sunday is not only unique in history, it is unique in its conception in the entire experience of human sensibility. It teaches, among other things, that resurrection is part of death. But even that is not its most radical claim. The most radical and distinctive claim of Christianity is not after all the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday but the death of Jesus on Good Friday. Many religious traditions involve the interaction of God with humanity. Many polytheistic traditions even involve the idea of one of the gods walking the earth, sometimes disguised as a human being, and dealing with people. Sometimes the gods fall out. Sometimes they go to war. But true polytheism is, I think, much rarer than is generally claimed. For many seemingly polytheistic traditions have the idea that behind the lesser gods there is a Great Spirit, the author of all things. The similarity of other religious traditions to elements of the Christian tradition does not suggest that all religions are just man-made artefacts and interchangeable. It suggests instead that profound religious hunger, and equally an instinctive religious knowledge, is part of the human condition, written in our spiritual DNA. Any religious tradition that believes in any kind of God would hold that the gods can conquer death, or transcend death or not be subject to death. But in all human sensibility, there is no equivalent, nothing even roughly similar, to the idea of Good Friday, that the eternal, all powerful, all knowing, everlasting God could become a human being, preach the truth, yet be mocked and vilified, be subject to all the limitations of the human condition, be defeated and humiliated, be tortured and killed, physically killed, Suffer, in other words, in earthly terms, comprehensive defeat. That God could die. That is Christianity’s most astonishing claim. That God in moments could need our compassion. It tells us a great deal about distinctive [?] the character of God as understood in Christianity. First, in Jesus, God didn’t just take on human form, like a disguise; he became a man, a human being, in an act of supreme solidarity with all human beings. Solidarity indeed with all human suffering, and with all the limitations and pains and frustrations of being a person. In doing this, Jesus uniquely elevated the status of human nature. The ancient world’s first great pro-human rights statement came in the Book of Genesis, where it is declared that God created humanity in the image of God. This is not how humanity was seen before that. The experience of Jesus further elevates human nature. It declares that human nature is worthy of carrying the personality of God himself. This human nature is not to be trifled with, this human dignity demands respect. The experience of Jesus also produces the most radical inversion of power in all history, then or now. Until Jesus came along, being weak, being defeated, being humble – these were not considered virtues. At best, you might temporarily endure defeat but hope for revenge. The idea of denying yourself power, making yourself weak to serve others, was revolutionary. It’s still revolutionary. Jesus is absolutely clear about his divine status and supernatural claims. On the cross, enduring the most savage, extended, agonising death, he is concerned not only for the welfare of his mother and his disciple John, the only one of his male followers brave enough to stand with him at the foot of the cross. He dies praying, in dialogue with God the father, and he exercises divine authority in offering heaven to the good thief: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”. After the resurrection, the early Christians were in no doubt about who Jesus was. Many endured violent death rather than deny that he had risen from the dead, or that he was the son of God. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul offers his own answer to the central question of the New Testament: who is Jesus? Paul wrote: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and become as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him a name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. At the start of his breathtaking gospel, John, referring to Jesus as “the Word”, writes: “In the beginning was the Word: the word was with God and the Word was God”. There is really no halfway house with Christianity. Either Jesus is God and we are immortal beings filled with eternal destiny, moral choice, divine status, irreducible human dignity and irreducible moral responsibility, and loved as though an only child by God, or it’s all lies and I’d rather be at the races. No halfway house works. Several times in the gospels, Jesus talks of heaven. He doesn’t give us much detail but he certainly confirms its existence. He tells the good thief he will be in paradise that day, he talks several times of the eternal reward prepared by God the father, he explains that in heaven the saints, like the angels, don’t marry. Yet heaven is a central part of Christianity. You can’t do away with it, and why would you want to? When they stop talking about the supernatural claims of Christianity, you wonder if Christians continue to believe in them. One of the most enthralling contemplations of heaven is to be found in Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Gilead. This is the best, most important Christian novel so far of the 21st century. Robinson is a liberal Calvinist and Gilead, a novel of sublime transcendence and hypnotic power, concerns the life of a Congregationalist minister, John Ames, aged 77 in 1956. He is likely to die soon of heart disease and writes an account of himself for his seven-year-old son. Being an actually believing Christian, Ames is much exercised by what heaven will be like and the relationship between life and in heaven and life on earth, especially life with his wife and son. He knows heaven will not be a disappointment. But how will he meet the people he loves? The idea of everyone meeting as a vigorous young adult appeals to him. But then he’d love once more to have his son as a toddler to jump into his arms. And what will be the relationship in heaven with this life, with all its beauty? He reflects: “I can’t believe that, when we’ve all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that means the whole world to us. … I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try”. In other words, in heaven we won’t lose the connection with our life on earth. One of the great Christian philosophers of the 20th century, Jacques Maritain, a key figure in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as long ago as 1963 lamented the lack of dialogue about and with heaven among Christians. He wrote: “It seems to me that an extreme negligence prevails among Christians concerning the Church of Heaven …”. He went on to describe a bit of what we might know of heaven: “Just as the Word incarnate had on earth a life divine and human at one and the same time, so also the blessed in Heaven have entered into the divine life through the vision, but they also lead there, outside of the vision although penetrated by its radiance, a glorious and transfigured human life”. We might all have our visions of heaven, and these might be domestic and quotidian: the family nearby, the Bulldogs winning the grand final in golden point time, chicken curry for dinner. For it is not to trivialise the terrible and the evil, to counterpose the domestic and the good against it. Christianity is a power for good, because it is true. If it’s not true, it’s not a power for anything. Bu happily it is true. Ukrainians singing Easter hymns in the shadow of war might know this better than we do.

Pope Francis invites people to follow in Jesus’ footsteps

By Courtney Mares Vatican City, Mar 24, 2024 / 09:45 am

On Palm Sunday, hundreds of priests, bishops, cardinals, and laypeople solemnly carried large palm branches in procession through St. Peter’s Square to begin the first liturgy of Holy Week. “Dear brothers and sisters, since the beginning of Lent until now we have prepared our hearts by penance and charitable works,” Pope Francis said in a soft voice at the beginning of Palm Sunday Mass on March 24. “Today we gather together to herald with the whole Church the beginning of the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery, that is to say, of his passion and resurrection.” Speaking in St. Peter’s Square adorned with palms and greenery, the pope invited the crowd to follow in Jesus’ footsteps as he entered Jerusalem “so that being made by his grace partakers of the cross, we may have a share also in his resurrection and in his life.” Pope Francis chose not to read the homily prepared for Palm Sunday Mass at the last minute without explanation. The 87-year-old pope, who arrived at the Mass in a wheelchair, has had aides read some of his speeches for him in recent weeks. …. The pope did read the prayers for the Mass and spoke at the end of the liturgy, offering an appeal for peace in Ukraine and prayers for the victims of the terrorist attack in Moscow. In his peace appeal, Pope Francis gave a brief reflection on the Gospel account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey as the Prince of Peace. “Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus entered Jerusalem as a humble and peaceful king. Let us open our hearts to him. Only he can deliver us from enmity, hatred, violence, because he is mercy and the forgiveness of sins,” the pope said. Palm Sunday is the only Mass of the year in which two Gospels are proclaimed. The Gospel of Mark’s account of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey was read aloud at the beginning of the Mass and later the Passion of the Lord was solemnly proclaimed with a choir singing the words of the crowd. An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes. At the conclusion of the liturgy, Pope Francis rode through St. Peter’s Square on the popemobile greeting enthusiastic pilgrims who waved flags and cheered. Pope Francis has a busy schedule for Holy Week. He will preside over a chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday morning before going to a women’s prison in Rome to offer Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. At the end of Palm Sunday Mass, Pope Francis said: “And now we turn in prayer to the Virgin Mary. Let us learn from her to stay close to Jesus during the days of Holy Week, in order to arrive at the joy of the Resurrection.”

Bearing witness to Truth, the basis of the Kingdom of Jesus

by Damien F. Mackey Reading through, on a previous Lent, by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, I was particularly struck by his wonderfully philosophical discussion of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate regarding ‘What is Truth?’ The basis of the unique kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the very Messiah - and indeed equal to God - was, not earthly power like the kingdom in which Pilate served, but Truth. This was all, of course, completely mystifying to Pontius Pilate, who could not initially regard Jesus as any sort of threat to Roman law and order. So Benedict writes: …. At this point we must pass from considerations about the person of Pilate to the trial itself. In John 18:34–35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus' own people, from the Temple authority. It must have astonished Pilate that Jesus' own people presented themselves to him as defenders of Rome, when the information at his disposal did not suggest the need for any action on his part. Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus' confession. To Pilate's question: "So you are a king?" he answers: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37). Previously Jesus had said: "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world" (18:36). That God the Almighty is utterly contemptuous of our much-vaunted human power, the ‘might-is-right’ mentality, is attested by Psalm 2:1-6: Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” Obviously Pilate, though, had never embraced this deeper wisdom of Divine perspective. Benedict continues: This "confession" of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía). Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus' case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has "no legions". Jesus is operating on a plane completely different from the world of Pilate – a level of being with which this superstitious pagan Roman cannot come to grips. But can we? So, Benedict: With these words Jesus created a thoroughly new concept of kingship and kingdom, and he held it up to Pilate, the representative of classical worldly power. What is Pilate to make of it, and what are we to make of it, this concept of kingdom and kingship? Is it unreal, is it sheer fantasy that can be safely ignored? Or does it somehow affect us? It is Truth, not power or dominion, that actually typifies the kingdom of Jesus Christ: In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with "kingdom": namely, power — authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus' "kingdom" nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: "What is truth?" (18:38). But Pilate’s question continues to have relevance as it is still, today, being asked in political discussions. And human freedom and “the fate of mankind” may be dependent upon the right answer given to this question: It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power? And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all — criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom? What is truth? The pragmatist's question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community? Benedict now moves on to a philosophical discussion of truth, beginning with the scholastic definitions of it by Saint Thomas Aquinas, so highly regarded in the Catholic world: The classic definition from scholastic philosophy designates truth as "adaequatio intellectus et rei" (conformity between the intellect and reality; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 2c). If a man's intellect reflects a thing as it is in itself, then he has found truth: but only a small fragment of reality — not truth in its grandeur and integrity. We come closer to what Jesus meant with another of Saint Thomas' teachings: "Truth is in God's intellect properly and firstly (proprie et primo); in human intellect it is present properly and derivatively (proprie quidem et secundario)" (De Verit., q. 1, a. 4c). And in conclusion we arrive at the succinct formula: God is "ipsa summa et prima veritas" (truth itself, the sovereign and first truth; Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5c). This formula brings us close to what Jesus means when he speaks of the truth, when he says that his purpose in coming into the world was to "bear witness to the truth". Pope John Paul II had, in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (1998), observed that a modern distrust of human reasoning has led to thinkers of today greatly limiting the range of their philosophical endeavour: …. 55. Surveying the situation today, we see that the problems of other times have returned, but in a new key. It is no longer a matter of questions of interest only to certain individuals and groups, but convictions so widespread that they have become to some extent the common mind. An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”. Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures. Benedict will, along very similar lines, lament that now: “The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear”. Again and again in the world, truth and error, truth and untruth, are almost inseparably mixed together. The truth in all its grandeur and purity does not appear. The world is "true" to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God's likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility. "Bearing witness to the truth" means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being. In this sense, truth is the real "king" that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God's perspective — the perspective of creative reason — in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth. We, like Pilate, lacking a Divine perspective - such as Jesus was attempting to proclaim - end up by falling hopelessly short of the ideal, worshipping power, not truth: Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world. And, with power, science, since we consider it to supply many of the answers - some would even go so far as to say it encapsulates ‘the theory of everything’. But, as Benedict goes on to explain, science does not of itself have the capacity to penetrate to the deeper metaphysical truths: At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: "The language of God was revealed" (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward "truth" itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose. Truth is indeed most powerful because God’s seeming powerlessness far outweighs any human power: What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. "Redemption" in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world's standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power. The kingdom offered by Jesus Christ is liberating for man, because in truth man finds his true liberation: In the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, the subject matter is Jesus' kingship and, hence, the kingship, the "kingdom", of God. In the course of this same conversation it becomes abundantly clear that there is no discontinuity between Jesus' Galilean teaching — the proclamation of the kingdom of God — and his Jerusalem teaching. The center of the message, all the way to the Cross — all the way to the inscription above the Cross — is the kingdom of God, the new kingship represented by Jesus. And this kingship is centered on truth. The kingship proclaimed by Jesus, at first in parables and then at the end quite openly before the earthly judge, is none other than the kingship of truth. The inauguration of this kingship is man's true liberation. Jesus Christ is Truth incarnate: At the same time it becomes clear that between the pre-Resurrection focus on the kingdom of God and the post-Resurrection focus on faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God there is no contradiction. In Christ, God — the Truth — entered the world. Christology is the concrete form acquired by the proclamation of God's kingdom. The Devil’s Anti-Kingdom, based on lies “He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: ‘He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies’ [John 8, 44]”. Carlo Cardinal Caffarra Carlo Cardinal Caffarra gave this talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 19, 2017. It is a perfect illustration of Satan as the ‘ape of God’: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/how-satan-destroys-gods-creation-through-abortion-and-homosexuality ROME, May 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32]. “The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19]. Reading these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in the world, within the human story, considered in its depths. The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom. The area in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty. And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other. 1. At the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether - which is the meaning of Pilate’s question - he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory. Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18, 37]. “Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth. Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but through the truth of which he is witness, which “all who are from the truth” receive with faith” [I. De La Potterie]. Thomas Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself”. Jesus on the Cross attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of which he is witness is resplendent. Yet this force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth”. That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth, who live in familiarity with it. Pascal writes: “You would not seek me if you had not already found me”. He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies [John 8, 44]. The wording is dramatic. The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the beginning” - is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth”. The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth. It is murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth, the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate. Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan - as today the majority of exegetes believe - do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this refusal; he is this opposition. The text continues: “because there is no truth in him”. The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie. From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. When the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature”, he introduces us to the interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in shadows: a house without doors and without windows. To summarise, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralise the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us. Yet, not being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living which is specifically human. Given that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie. There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat. The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they [= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11]. 2. In this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular. The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right. Note well: I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation”. What in fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion? Firstly, it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6]. The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an “anti-creation”. By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his “creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein. St Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I, page 417]. At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation - the human person - is desecrated. The second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage. The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other. Only thus does man escape his original solitude. One of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of conjugal love. In summary. There are two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness”. The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar. At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation. This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation”. This is the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man. Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendour of the Truth. He is not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness. He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself. And therefore - continues the Satanic discourse - we tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure. The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves …. I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and cowardly.” How should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my reflection, I will seek to answer this question. The reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation, we are called upon to TESTIFY. This testimony is our mode of being in the world. The New Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter. I must confine myself to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony. Testimony means to say, to speak, to announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The March for Life is therefore a great testimony. Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in particular of the Gospel of Life and Marriage. Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr. John 16, 8-11]. I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel. As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favour: in favour of Jesus and his Gospel. Announcement of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of hostility, of challenge, of unbelief. The alternative is one of two options: either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else. Obviously, what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should render themselves… antipathetic to everyone. St Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle …and to refute the opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6]. In the context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded. On this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical attitude towards the disease. Augustine writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin”. Note this well. The Latin word per-sequor is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality”. I CONCLUDE with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, THE WITNESS. At His crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth”. [The philosophy of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512]. Years ago, from her convent, Sr. Lucia wrote a letter to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, saying: “Do not be afraid … Our Lady has already crushed his head.” Love over political power Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal: the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.” He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Pope Francis’s Angelus address for the feast of ‘Christ the King’ (2018) can be read at, for instance: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-11/pope-francis-angelus-christ-the-king-love.html Pope at Angelus: ‘Jesus’ eternal kingdom founded on love’ Ahead of the Sunday Angelus prayer on the Solemnity of Christ the King, Pope Francis says Jesus came to establish an eternal kingdom which is founded on love and gives peace, freedom, and fullness of life. By Devin Watkins Pope Francis prayed the Angelus on Sunday with thousands of pilgrims huddled under umbrellas in a rainy St. Peter’s Square. He even complemented their courage. “You’re brave to have come with this rain!” he said. In his address ahead of the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father reflected on the day’s Gospel passage (Jn 18:33b-37) and the Solemnity of Christ the King. He said Jesus’ kingdom rests on the power of love, since God is love. Christ the King Pope Francis noted that the feast of Christ the King “reminds us that the life of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal: the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation.” He said the end goal of history will be fulfilled in Christ’s eternal kingdom. In the day’s Gospel, Jesus has been dragged – bound and humiliated – before Pontius Pilate to be tried. The Pope said the religious authorities of Jerusalem present Jesus to the Roman governor of Judea as one who is seeking to supplant the political authority of Rome. They say he wants to become king. So Pilate interrogates him, twice asking Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Jesus replies that his kingdom “is not of this world”. “It was evident all his life that Jesus had no political ambitions,” the Pope said. He noted that, after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus’ followers had wanted to proclaim him king and to overthrow the power of Rome, in order to restore the kingdom of Israel. Jesus responded, the Pope said, by retreating to the mountain alone to pray. Founded on love He contrasted this eternal kingdom with short-lived, earthly kingdoms. “History teaches that kingdoms founded on the power of arms and lies are fragile and collapse sooner or later.” The kingdom of God, Pope Francis said, “is founded on his love and is rooted in the heart, granting peace, freedom, and fullness of life to those who accept it.” Finally, the Holy Father said Jesus is asking us to let Him become our king. “A king who by his word, example, and life sacrificed on the cross has saved us from death and points the way to people who are lost, and gives new light to our existence that is marked by doubt, fear, and daily trials.” But, said Pope Francis, we must not forget that Jesus’ kingdom “is not of this world.” “He can give new meaning to our life, which is at times put to the test even by our mistakes and sins, only on the condition that we do not follow the logic of the world and its ‘kings’

Revolution of Jesus not politically-based

by Damien F. Mackey “Love of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution", a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness”. Pope Benedict XVI Anyone who reads the late pope Benedict XVI”s series on Jesus of Nazareth will appreciate just how pitifully weak is any argument attempting to make of Jesus Christ some sort of political revolutionary bent upon overthrowing the Romans. According to a 2011 review of his book: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8374056/Pope-Jesus-was-not-a-political-revolutionary.html In a new book, 'Jesus of Nazareth', Benedict XVI said Jesus comes to the world "with the gift of healing" and to reveal God's power as "the power of love". He wrote that Jesus "does not come as a destroyer. He does not come bearing the sword of a revolutionary." In the biography, Benedict also says that Jesus separated religion and politics "thereby changing the world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path. "This separation ... of politics from faith, of God's people from politics, was ultimately possible only through the cross," he said. The 83-year old pontiff also speaks out against religious violence, following a wave of attacks on Christians in several parts of the Muslim world. …. [End of quote] How can one who promotes his “kingdom” as being one of “truth”, and of service - exemplified by the washing of his disciples’ feet - and who commands us to love even our enemies, be, at the same time, a sword-bearing militant? In 2007 (18th February), pope Benedict XVI had considered this matter in an Angelus address: http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20070218.html Dear Brothers and Sisters, This Sunday's Gospel contains some of the most typical and forceful words of Jesus' preaching: "Love your enemies" (Lk 6: 27). It is taken from Luke's Gospel but is also found in Matthew's (5: 44), in the context of the programmatic discourse that opens with the famous "Beatitudes". Jesus delivered it in Galilee at the beginning of his public life: it is, as it were, a "manifesto" presented to all, in which he asks for his disciples' adherence, proposing his model of life to them in radical terms. But what do his words mean? Why does Jesus ask us to love precisely our enemies, that is, a love which exceeds human capacities? Actually, Christ's proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it with more love, with more goodness. This "more" comes from God: it is his mercy which was made flesh in Jesus and which alone can "tip the balance" of the world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive "world" which is the human heart. This Gospel passage is rightly considered the magna carta of Christian non-violence. It does not consist in succumbing to evil, as a false interpretation of "turning the other cheek" (cf. Lk 6: 29) claims, but in responding to evil with good (cf. Rom 12: 17-21) and thereby breaking the chain of injustice. One then understands that for Christians, non-violence is not merely tactical behaviour but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who is so convinced of God's love and power that he is not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Love of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution", a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the world! Here is the heroism of the "lowly" who believe in God's love and spread it, even at the cost of their lives. Dear brothers and sisters, Lent, which will begin this Wednesday with the Rite of Ashes, is the favourable season in which all Christians are asked to convert ever more deeply to Christ's love. Let us ask the Virgin Mary, docile disciple of the Redeemer who helps us to allow ourselves to be won over without reserve by that love, to learn to love as he loved us, to be merciful as Our Father in Heaven is merciful (cf. Lk 6: 36). With this in mind, I must have serious reservations about writer/director Lena Einhorn’s suggestion, in her admittedly intriguing article "Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet": http://lenaeinhorn.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Jesus-and-the-Egyptian-Prophet-12.11.25.pdf that Jesus may have been involved in a battle on Mount Olivet just prior to his arrest, enabling for Lena to make an association of Jesus with Josephus’s Egyptian prophet. This is how Lena introduces her article: ABSTRACT Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John 18:3 and 18:12 state that Jesus on the Mount of Olives was confronted by a speira – a Roman cohort of 500 to 1,000 soldiers. This suggestion of a battle preceding Jesus’ arrest is reminiscent of an event described by Josephus in the 50s (A.J. 20.169-172; B.J. 2.261-263), involving the so called ‘Egyptian Prophet’ (or simply ‘the Egyptian’). This messianic leader – who had previously spent time “in the wilderness” – had “advised the multitude … to go along with him to the Mount of Olives”, where he “would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down”. Procurator Felix, however, sent a cohort of soldiers to the Mount of Olives, where they defeated ‘the Egyptian’. Although the twenty-year time difference would seem to make all comparisons futile, there are other coinciding aspects: The preceding messianic leader named by Josephus, Theudas (A.J. 20.97-99), shares distinct characteristics with John the Baptist: Like John, Theudas gathered his followers by the river Jordan, and, like John, he was arrested by the authorities, and they “cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem”. Curiously, although the names of dignitaries may differ, comparing the New Testament accounts with Josephus’ accounts of the mid-40s to early 50s in several respects appears to be more productive than a comparison with his accounts of the 30s: It is in this later period, not the 30s, that Josephus describes the activity and crucifixion of robbers (absent between 6 and 44 C.E.), a conflict between Samaritans and Jews, two co-reigning high priests, a procurator killing Galileans, an attack on someone named Stephanos outside Jerusalem, and at least ten more seemingly parallel events. Importantly, these are parallels that, judging by Josephus, appear to be absent in the 30s. The significance of this will be discussed. [End of quote] In a reply to Lena Einhorn, I wrote in part: .... As I suspected, there is much of interest to be found in your intriguing article, “Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet”. One point that jumped to mind when reading of your discussion of the arrest of Jesus involving a battle, and a ‘speira’ of some 500-1000 soldiers, is that poor old Razis of 2 Maccabees, who wasn’t then part of a battle, had 500 soldiers sent to arrest him by Nicanor (14:39-40): “Wanting to show clearly how much he disliked the Jews, Nicanor sent more than 500 soldiers to arrest Razis, because he thought his arrest would be a crippling blow to the Jews”. A show of force rather than a battle. Razis is, in my historical reconstruction, the great Ezra (Ezras = Razes), a ‘Father of the Jews’, the same approximate appellation given to Razis. …. [End of exchange] For more on Ezra as Razis, see e.g. my four-part series: Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis beginning with: (4) Ezra ‘Father of the Jews’ dying the death of Razis. Part One: Introductory section | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The Shocking Culture of God “When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”. Fr. Nadim Nassar Fr. Nadim Nassar describes it as “shocking”, when “the culture of God” comes into contact with the “culture of the people”. He, the Church of England’s only Syrian priest, urges a theme in his recent book, The Culture of God (Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), that is also central to my own point of view: Fr. Nassar is “an outspoken advocate for Western Christians to recognise the Middle-Eastern roots of their faith”. Actually, this is nothing new. Eighty years before Fr. Nassar wrote his book, pope Pius XI, addressing a group of Belgian pilgrims (1938), asserted that: “Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites”. “When the culture of God reaches us, the inevitable result is that it shakes our world; sometimes it is like a hurricane or an earthquake”. (Nassar, p. 180) Jesus Christ, who had come to set all things right, was wont to say (e.g. Matthew 5:21, 22): ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago …. But I tell you …’. The first part of this statement refers to the received cultural view of long-standing. Fr. Nassar describes this as follows (p. 180): “For all of us, we organise our world around ourselves according to what we have been taught, with ‘in’ and ‘out’, friends and enemies, right and wrong, values and vices and so on”. He then goes on to describe the second part of Jesus’s statement: “What a shock when God breaks into our lives and sweeps our ordering of the world aside like a house of cards, and says to us, ‘This is not what I want from you’.” Whilst there is a meek and mild side to Jesus, he can also be, according to Fr. Nassar’s description, “a volcanic Jesus” (p. 10): In Matthew 23 Jesus launches a series of fierce attacks on [the Pharisees and scribes]: ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them’. (23:13) Along with “volcanic” fury, Fr. Nassar also discerns a humour (“funny”) and irony (“ironic”) in this remark that he thinks Levantine people at least would pick up. He continues (pp. 10-11): This saying of Jesus belongs to the essence of the culture of God; here, Jesus is being both ironic and funny, and his audience would have laughed when they heard this. Jesus wanted to speak the truth that touches the people’s hearts on the one hand, and on the other, to really strike the leaders. This is how Jesus handled his earthly culture and the culture of God. Nobody now listens to this sentence and smiles – but in the Levant, you would immediately laugh at Jesus’ irony. Jesus then attacks the religious leaders for their flawed understanding of what is sacred: ‘Woe, to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?’ (23:16-17). Here, Jesus is not only using harsh words – this is also an exceptional way of speaking that Jesus used exclusively when he spoke to or about the religious leaders. He did it on purpose, to show without any doubt that the leadership they modelled does not belong in any way to the culture of God. Jesus is furious with the religious leaders because they place great weight on minor matters while ignoring what really counts; he calls them hypocrites, ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). Hypocrisy is especially loathed in the Levant, and an accusation of hypocrisy would stain someone’s character. On p. 183, Fr. Nassar contrasts the West and the Levant: The dilemma of the early Church is still in the Levant today. In the West, the secular world has also permeated Christian beliefs, especially the Enlightenment and its focus on reason, which pushed Christianity into becoming an intellectual exercise, losing the warmth of the heart. Spirituality is now left to those on the verges of faith. ….

The Magi and the Star that Stopped

by Damien F. Mackey This will be a two-part article in which, firstly, I shall attempt to account for the ethnicity of the eastern Magi, and, secondly - but not originally - identify Matthew 2’s “Star”. Some might call it arrogance, while others might recognise it as a personal conviction that one’s well-researched conclusion is most definitely the correct one. Whatever about all that, the entertaining Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Catholic priest, author and lecturer, is utterly convinced that he has, after a long and serious probe into the matter, properly identified the enigmatic Magi of Matthew 2. Fr. Dwight tells all about it in the following articles, the validity of whose conclusions I shall consider further on: https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-myth-of-the-magi/ The Myth of the Magi About this time in 2017 my book The Mystery of the Magi was published. I had high hopes for it. Of all my books it was the one I had spent the most time on. I had actually done something like RESEARCH believe it or not. I mean, the darn thing had footnotes and a bibliography!!! Seriously, I had worked hard on the book and thought I had made some important discoveries about the historical basis of the Magi story in Matthew’s gospel. I hoped New Testament scholars and historians of the period might at least read it and that it might be critiqued and if I was wrong in my speculation, that the book would raise the issues of the possible historicity of the story of the wise men. I was not prepared for how difficult it would be to dislodge centuries of myth about the magi. Whoa! I hear you say, “Myth! Father, are you a liberal after all? You don’t believe the Bible? You think the Magi story is a myth?” Yes and no and not quite so let me explain. First of all, I don’t think Matthew’s account of the magi visiting Bethlehem is fiction. I think the story is based in real events with real historical characters. However, I’m aware that most Biblical scholars think the whole thing is a fanciful fairy tale. In fact, thinking that the Magi story is a fairy tale is a kind of test of whether you are a serious Bible or scholar or not. Raymond Brown admits it and even jokes about it in his big fat book The Infancy Narratives. I was told the same thing by several well known conservative Bible scholars–both Evangelical and Catholic. “Whoa!” they said, “Don’t you know that if I even suggest that the Magi story might have some basis in historical truth I’ll be laughed out of my job and relegated to teaching Sunday School in North Dakota!” (no offense intended towards the good people of ND) I had a conversation with one condescending scholar on the phone who said, “But you are beginning from entirely the wrong premise. There is no historical basis for the Magi story.” “Uh. That is what my book is about. The historical basis for the magi story.” “You don’t seem to understand. There is NO historical basis for the magi story.” “No, YOU don’t seem to understand. That is what my book is about.” The conversation ended. So why do the scholars think the magi story has no historical basis? Because, of all the stories from the New Testament, the Magi story actually has become rather mythical, magical and mysterious. I explain in my book how the Magi story began to be elaborated by the Gnostic writers in the third and fourth centuries and beyond. They were very influenced by Manicheanism, and with their emphasis on secret knowledge and magical lore, the magi story was tailor made. The gnostic magi became the heroes of far out and fanciful gnostic apocryphal writings. Soon they had names, they were kings and they followed a magical star and rode on camels on a long trek across the desert. Add a few more centuries and a lot more story tellers and soon they came from India, China and Africa. One was old, one middle ages and one young. Then they represented the three main racial groups – African, Caucasian and Asian. But none of that is in Matthew’s gospel. This mythical version became the received version and it is still the version we tell ourselves at Christmas. In rejecting this elaborated mythical version, (which they were right to do) the scholars threw out the magi with the magic. They decided the magi story was nothing but a fanciful fable made up long after the birth of Christ by Christians who wanted make him seem more special. In rejecting the myth they went ahead and created their own myth–the myth that the magi story can’t possible be historically true, and that myth is even harder to shift than a myth that is fanciful and magical. So I decided to dig past all the myths and explore the culture, history, politics, geography and religion of first century Judea and Arabia. As I did the research I kept asking why nobody had done this before. What I was discovering was truly ground breaking and fascinating. Then I realized, the reason no one had bothered to do the homework was because they all believed the myth. The traditional folks continued to believe the myth about three wise men named Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar going on a long desert journey on camels following a magical star while the liberals continued to believe the myth that the whole thing was a myth. Consequently neither side bothered to look into the question whether there might have been such characters and where they might have come from and why they might have been motivated to go on a quest to find a newborn King of the Jews The result was The Mystery of the Magi. Most of those who read it thought highly of the book. Unfortunately many did not read it. Why? Because they already figured that they knew about it already. In other words, they were not concerned with the Mystery of the Magi because they believed the Myth of the Magi. …. November 30th, 2019 …. Fr. Dwight will come to the conclusion that the Magi were wise Nabataean Arabs from the fabulous land of Petra: https://stream.org/mystery-of-the-magi-solved-an-interview-with-fr-dwight-longenecker/ …. Matthew says they came “from the East.” He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula. …. The Stream: So who were the Nabateans? And why would they … or specifically, counselors to the Nabatean king … be interested in some Hebrew prophesy about a Messiah? The Nabateans were a trading nation controlling the trade routes from Yemen across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean port of Gaza and from Egypt North to Syria and beyond. Their capital of Petra was at the crossroads of these two important routes. They traded in luxury goods from India and China through Yemen and back with goods from across the Roman Empire. Gauze? It came from Gaza. Damask fabric? It came from Damascus. The Nabatean culture at the time of Jesus’ birth was a blend of Abrahamic tribes that had wandered in the Arabian desert, immigrants from Babylon who occupied the Arabian peninsula and the influence of the Greeks. Petra was therefore a very cosmopolitan city with the traders bringing not only goods, but culture influences from the ancient world from China to Greece and Rome and from Africa North to Syria, Persia and present day Turkey. As wise men they would have been astrologers, but also students of the prophecies from the different cultures — including the Jewish prophecies. At the downfall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., many Jews went into exile — not only to Babylon, but into the Babylonian controlled territory of Arabia. Some think the second portion of the book of Isaiah was actually written there, and this includes the important prophecy in chapter 60. …. Were the Magi “enlightened pagans’’? Although Biblical critics claim to find whom they call “enlightened pagans” all through the Bible (Old and New Testaments), I am not so sure that they always get this right. I took a sample of such characters: MELCHIZEDEK; RAHAB; RUTH; ACHIOR; JOB; and concluded - in some cases following other researchers - that none of these was in reality a pagan (Gentile). Keeping it very simple by way of summary here: MELCHIZEDEK was, according to Jewish tradition, the great Shem, righteous son of Noah. Whilst that does not make him a Hebrew (Israelite/Jew), which tribal concepts did not exist at that early stage, he, truly blessed as he was (cf. Genesis 9:26-27), was not, as is commonly thought, an enlightened Canaanite (hence pagan) king. Melchizedek was the eponymous Semite (Shem-ite), whose “slave” Canaan was (9:26). RAHAB the prostitute, in the Book of Judges, was truly enlightened (Hebrews 11:31): “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient”, but she, actually Rachab, may need to be distinguished from (the differently named) Rahab of Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 1:5). RUTH was a Moabite only geographically, but not ethnically, otherwise she would have encountered this ban from Deuteronomy 23:3-4: No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the Assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor … to pronounce a curse on you. ACHIOR. The same comment would thus apply to Achior ‘the Ammonite’, presuming that he truly was an Ammonite. He wasn’t. Achior needs some special extra treatment (see further on). JOB was, in my firm opinion, Tobias, the son of Tobit, a genuine Israelite from the tribe of Naphtali, in Ninevite captivity. I suspect that his given pagan name in captivity was the Akkadian ‘Habakkuk’ (also shortened to Haggai), the prophet of that name. And I suspect, too, that others could be added to the list, as Israelites, not pagans. The Magi, for one. Delilah, a presumed Philistine. Whilst she may not deserve the epithet, “enlightened”, Delilah most probably was an Israelite - as convincingly explained by George Athas: https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/samson-and-delilah-the-israelite-woman/ Achior, his conversion and circumcision Various significant misconceptions abound about this important character, ACHIOR. First of all, Achior of the Book of Judith (and the Douay’s Tobit) was not an Ammonite. The Book of Judith, as we now have it, suffers from an unfortunate confusion of names (people and places), making it most difficult to make sense of it. “… Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5), should read, instead, “… Achior, leader of all the Elamites”. Not that Achior was ethnically an Elamite, but because king Esarhaddon had assigned him to govern Elam. For Achior was the same person as the famous Ahikar, governor of Elam, of whom the blind Tobit tells (2:10): “… Ahikar took care of me for two years before he went to Elymaïs [Elam]”. To confuse matters even further, the Book of Judith has a gloss (1:6), in which Achior/ Ahikar is now called “Arioch”: “Rallying to [the king] were all who lived in the hill country, all who lived along the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, as well as Arioch, king of the Elamites …”. As noted further back, had Ruth been a Moabite, or Achior an Ammonite – as is commonly thought – then the Deuteronomical ban against these two nations (23:3-4) would disallow either from being received into the Assembly of Israel – which, in fact, Achior was, after the triumphant Judith had shown him the head of his Commander-in-chief, “Holofernes” (Judith 14:6-7, 10): When [Achior] came and saw the head of Holofernes … he fell down on his face in a faint. When they raised him up he threw himself at Judith’s feet and did obeisance to her and said, ‘Blessed are you in every tent of Judah! In every nation those who hear your name will be alarmed’. …. When Achior saw all that the God of Israel had done, he believed firmly in God. So he was circumcised and joined the House of Israel, remaining so to this day. The unfortunate misconception that Achior was an Ammonite, who would join the Assembly of Israel despite the Deuteronomical ban, is one of the primary reasons why the Jews (Protestants) did not accept the Book of Judith into their scriptural canons. The confusion of names (people and places), as already mentioned, is another reason. But this, too, can be rectified. Tobit himself tells us precisely who was this Ahikar (Achior) (Tobit 1:21-22): But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and when they fled to the mountains of Ararat, his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael, over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. …. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration and accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria, so Esarhaddon appointed him as second-in-command. He was my nephew and so a close relative. The Magi were Transjordanian Israelites Whilst I greatly enjoyed reading Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and I admire both his infectious enthusiasm and his genuine efforts to identify the Magi, my own conclusion is that they were - like those other alleged biblical “enlightened pagans” - true Israelites. Fr. Dwight was right to look for a biblical East, rather than for a more global one, for the home of the Magi. We recall that he wrote: Matthew says they came “from the East.” He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula. …. That, too, the biblical approach, is the one that I favour, but I would identify the Magi’s East, instead, with the East of the Book of Job (1:1-3): In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. I vaguely recall having read of (but can no longer trace it) a tradition that had the Magi descended from the prophet Job. The best location for Job’s “Uz” is Ausitis in the Hauran region east of the Jordan. Job, as young Tobias, had returned to that region, to “Ecbatana”, accompanied by the angel Raphael (Tobit 7:1). This was the Syrian Ecbatana, which is Batanaea, or Bashan, south of Damascus. This East was very close to Israel proper. There, holy Naphtalian descendants of Job patiently awaited the return of “His Star” (Matthew 2:2). But how did they know that it was coming? And how did they know that it was “His”? A key to this, and to the identification of the “Star” itself, may be Tobit 13. Old Tobit (now dying), a possible ancestor of the Magi, proclaimed this to his son, Tobias (i.e. Job) (13:11-18): A bright light will shine to all the remotest parts of the earth; many nations will come to you from far away, the inhabitants of the ends of the earth to your holy name, bearing gifts in their hands for the King of heaven. Generation after generation will give joyful praise in you; the name of the chosen city will endure forever. Cursed are all who reject you and all who blaspheme you; cursed are all who hate you and all who speak a harsh word against you; cursed are all who conquer you and pull down your walls, all who overthrow your towers and set your homes on fire. But blessed forever will be all who build you up. Rejoice, then, and exult over the children of the righteous, for they will all be gathered together and will bless the Lord of the ages. Happy will be those who love you, and happy are those who will rejoice in your peace. Happy also all people who grieve with you because of your afflictions, for they will rejoice with you and witness all your joy forever. My soul blesses the Lord, the great King, for Jerusalem will be rebuilt as his House for all ages. How happy I will be if a remnant of my descendants should survive to see your glory and acknowledge the King of heaven. The gates of Jerusalem will be built with sapphire and emerald and all your walls with precious stones. The towers of Jerusalem will be built with gold and their battlements with pure gold. The streets of Jerusalem will be paved with ruby and with stones of Ophir. The gates of Jerusalem will sing hymns of joy, and all her houses will cry, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed be the God of Israel!’— and the blessed will bless the holy name forever and ever.” Some time later, as the Temple about which Tobit spoke here was nearing completion, the motivating prophet Haggai - who I believe to have been Tobit’s very son, Tobias (= Job/Habakkuk) - will promise the return to the Temple of the Glory of the Lord, commonly known as Shekinah (a name that does not, however, appear in the Bible). Haggai announces (2:6-9): This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this House with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the LORD Almighty. ‘The glory of this present House [Temple] will be greater than the glory of the former House,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty. His Star “Stopped” What a contrast in attitudes (personalities?)! Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s complete certainty that he has identified the Magi, and Matthew Erwin’s almost matter-of-fact right identification (so I think) of the “Star”. Once again, as in the case of Fr. Dwight, the biblical approach is taken. Previously I wrote regarding Matthew Erwin and his identification of the “Star”: At last I have found an article that, for me, makes proper sense of the Nativity Star. Professor Matthew Ervin, in December 2013, explained it as the Glory of the Lord. He uses the word, Shekinah, which word, however, is not found in the Bible. I would prefer: Glory of the Lord (כְבוֹד יְהוָה), Chevod Yahweh (e.g. 2 Chronicles 7:1). Matthew Ervin writes in a simple blog: https://appleeye.org/2013/12/15/the-star-of-bethlehem-was-the-shechinah-glory/ The Star of Bethlehem Was the Shekinah Glory …. Theories as to what the Star of Bethlehem was are myriad. The usual answers look to celestial objects ranging from real stars to comets. Indeed, the inquiry has been so wide sweeping that virtually every object appearing in the sky has been posited as the Bethlehem Star. However, when Scripture is examined the identity of the Star is evident. The Greek ἀστέρα or astera simply identifies a shining or gleaming object that is translated as star in Matthew 2:1-10. The magi specifically referred to it as, “His star” (v. 2). In addition, the behavior of this Star alone is enough to discount any natural stellar phenomenon. …. If not a regular stellar object then what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? The synoptic narrative in Luke’s Gospel provides an answer: And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. Luke 2:8-9 (ESV) The glory of the Lord here is a powerful example of the Shekinah Glory. This type of glory is a visible manifestation of God’s presence come to dwell among men. The Shekinah was often accompanied by a heavenly host (e.g. Ezek. 10:18-19) and so it was at the birth of Christ (Luke 10:13). The Shekinah Glory declared Messiah’s birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-11). The Star of Bethlehem likewise declared to the magi that Messiah had arrived (Matt. 2:9-10). No doubt this is because Matthew and Luke were describing the same brilliant light in their respective gospels. Although the Shekinah takes on various appearances in Scripture, it often appears as something very bright. This includes but is not limited to a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), a burning bush (Ex. 3:1-5; Deut. 33:16), a pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. 13:21-22), a cloud with lightning and fire (Ex. 19:16-20), God’s afterglow (His “back”) (Ex. 33:17-23), the transfiguration of Jesus (e.g. Matt. 17:1-8), fire (Acts 2:1-3), a light from heaven (e.g. Acts 9:3-8) and the lamp of New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23-24). It was the Shekinah Glory that dwelled in the Holy of Holies. It was last in Solomon’s temple but departed as seen by Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4-19; 11:22-23). Haggai prophesied that the Shekinah Glory would return to the temple in Israel and in a superior way (Hag. 2:3; 2:9). And yet it would seem that this never happened for the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Perhaps though the Shekinah did return. The Star of Bethlehem was the Shekinah Glory declaring the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and residing in His person. And why not? The Messiah was prophesied to come as a star (Num. 24:17), and Jesus is called the, “bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16). …. [End of quote] It would be most fitting for the prophet Haggai to foretell the return of the Glory cloud. The family of Job-Tobias knew, from what we now have written in Tobit 13, that the Glory of the Lord was going to return after the Exile. Job, as Haggai, now in his late old age, had advised the people, disappointed at the sight of the second Temple, that the Glory of the Lord would return to it. And return again it did, with the Birth of Jesus Christ, the New Temple, who would render obsolete “the old stone Temple” (pope Benedict XVI). In other words, the second Temple was only ever to be temporary, and would be dramatically replaced (destroyed even) by He who is the true Temple of God. The Shepherds saw the Light at close hand and were able to go directly to the stable. For the Magi, the guiding Light conveniently stopped, just as the shining Cloud was wont to do during the Exodus (Numbers 9:17): “When the cloud moved from its place over the Tent, the Israelites moved, and wherever the cloud stopped, the Israelites camped”. The Magi had long been expecting it. Their possible ancestor, Tobit, had foretold its return, and his son, Haggai, had confirmed it some time later. The Magi, who - as descendants of Job, as I think - were undoubtedly clever and educated, did not really need, though, to be able to read the heavens and constellations (as Job almost certainly could, Job 38:31-33) to identify the Star. They were expecting it and they simply had to wait until they saw it. This was a manifestation for Israel, to be understood by Israel, which is a solid reason why I think that the Magi must have been Israelites, not Gentiles. The Nativity Star of relevance to Israel determined the ethnicity of Matthew’s Magi. Child Jesus at Pontevedra stands on a luminous cloud The resplendent Christ Child appeared again, with his holy Mother, at Pontevedra, Spain, 10th December, 1925, likewise “elevated on a luminous cloud”. We read about it at: https://fatima.org/news-views/the-apparition-of-our-lady-and-the-child-jesus-at-pontevedra/ On July 13, 1917, Our Lady promised at Fatima: “If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved … I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.” As Fatima scholar Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité tells us, this first secret of Our Lady “is a sure and easy way of tearing souls away from the danger of hell: first our own, then those of our neighbors, and even the souls of the greatest sinners, for the mercy and power of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are without limits.” …. Circumstances of the Apparition …. The promise of Our Lady to return was fulfilled in December 1925, when 18-year-old Lucia was a postulant at the Dorothean convent in Pontevedra, Spain. It was here, during an apparition of the Child Jesus and Our Lady, that She revealed the first part of God’s plan for the salvation of sinners: the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays of the month. Lucia narrated what happened, speaking of herself in the third person – perhaps, in humility, to divert attention from her role in the event: “On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to her [Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said: “‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’ “Then the Most Holy Virgin said: “‘Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess … receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.’” The Great Promise and Its Conditions As Fatima author, Mark Fellows, noted: “The Blessed Virgin did more than ask for reparatory Communion and devotions on five First Saturdays: She promised Heaven to those who practiced this devotion sincerely and with a spirit of reparation. Those who wonder whether it is Mary’s place to promise eternal salvation to anyone forget one of Her illustrious titles: Mediatrix of all Graces.” …. Our Lady promises the grace of final perseverance – the most sublime of all graces – to all those who devoutly practice this devotion. The disproportion between the little requested and the immense grace promised reveals the great power of intercession granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls. Furthermore, this promise also contains a missionary aspect. The devotion of reparation is recommended as a means of converting sinners in the greatest danger of being lost. …. For more information, see The Magnificent Promise for the Five First Saturdays (Section III, pp. 8-16). …. https://fatima.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/cr49.pdf

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Our Lady of Fatima’s Historian

“Without Solzhenitsyn, the everyday reality and details of what Our Lady at Fatima warned would be our personal imaginings. His talent as a story-teller engaged readers worldwide”. Mary O’Regan Taken from: http://thepathlesstaken7.blogspot.com/2010/02/solzhenitsyn-our-ladys-historian_23.html SOLZHENITSYN: OUR LADY OF FATIMA’S HISTORIAN What Our Lady Foretold: Solzhenitsyn Chronicled When Solzhenitsyn’s died, the worldwide press were in a competition to out-do themselves in admiration of the literary giant. Solzhenitsyn was lauded as one of the greatest writers to have ever lived. He was accredited with having played a crucial intellectual role in the fall of Communism. And contrary to the usual candy-floss schmaltzy eulogizing the Western press doles out when a celebrity dies, the praise given Solzhenitsyn is deserved. Incredible. Yet since Solzhenitsyn’s death, there has been very little discussion of his real vocation in national newspapers and even on the blogosphere. No corner of the press – religious or secular has yet given Solzhenitsyn what is rightly his greatest honour. It is this: Solzhenitsyn was the artist who dramatized what Our Lady at Fatima foretold about Russia and the world. No comparison exists between Solzhenitsyn and the Queen of Heaven, there remains only an alliance. Solzhenitsyn (perhaps totally unwittingly) was Our Lady’s servant. …. Stalinism, Communism, the Gulags and societal Soviet persecution were the stuff of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, but they were also what Our Lady of Fatima termed Russia’s “errors”. Yes, the media correctly identified Solzhenitsyn’s writings as brave exposés of the horrors of Communist Russia. But the media confined Solzhenitsyn’s apocalyptic analysis to Communist Russia. There is a continuing prevailing sense that the media is trying to establish a sense of superiority over the Russian chumps who made all the mistakes. A sort of “well if the Russians had done Lefty-liberalism-socialism our way, they wouldn’t have got themselves in the pickle Solzhenitsyn described!” In essence, the liberal media’s analysis of Solzhenitsyn has been insufferably, school-prefect-like patronizing. No attempt is made to see that what Solzhenitsyn described was of significance to everyone worldwide. As I will detail, we have not learned from the “errors”. Solzhenitsyn was informed by his own personal, first hand experience of eight years in the Gulag and had the integrity never to deviate from the truth. It was Solzhenitsyn’s credibility that made the Soviet Russian authorities flinch. …. And the fact that he was a best-selling author who would eventually sell thirty million books worldwide. Without Solzhenitsyn, the everyday reality and details of what Our Lady at Fatima warned would be our personal imaginings. His talent as a story-teller engaged readers worldwide. Solzhenitsyn’s meticulous attention to detail captivates attention, we are there with Ivan Denisovich prisoner of the Gulag when he must [choose] either socks or hard boots to scuttle around in the snow; he cannot have both. Let us first explore Our Lady of Fatima’s urgent message. Before Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children. …. The children were taught to pray by the Guardian Angel of Portugal. The Angel told them, "to pray a great deal". Our Lady appeared to them for the first time on the 13th of May 1917. On the 13th of July 1917, Our Lady showed the three seers a vision of Hell. St. Lucia depicted the vision as thus: "Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers". The vision lasted an instant, but Our Lady told the children that poor sinners go there because they have no one to pray for them. Our Lady continued to notify the children that if people did not stop offending God, He would reprimand the world "by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father," using Russia as His chosen implement of punishment. In other words, Russia would be the means, but the consequences were for everyone. However, it was a precise consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart that Our Lady requested. Our Lady offered very specific instructions, that if not granted, "Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated." The "errors" of Russia were never clarified for the three seers. By "errors" Our Lady inferred that which is objectively wrong from a Catholic point of view. We can establish that, in Russia, the root "error" was the abrogation of Christianity, the denial of religious formation and the denunciation of religion as ever having played an important role. What Solzhenitsyn would describe as "the total surrender of the soul." Firstly in Russian society, it was the concept of God as creator and judge that was utterly abolished. Hence, the dominant ‘error’ of Soviet education. The very first thing a Soviet child learned at school was the theory of evolution and where, as "animals", they were on the evolutionary scale. There is much debate in Catholic circles about the validity of Evolutionary theories, but Catholics have never been taught by Mother Church to teach children that they are primarily animals. Under Stalin, the Soviet officials thought of the Russian people as animals with speech, and were content to treat them as such. In Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the Gulag prisoners are like sub-humans in an abattoir. They scrounge for scraps of food, stand naked in a frozen field during a body search and every minute their survival is threatened. Solzhenitsyn peppers his prose with lots of ironies; how the Gulag guards are in defiance of the Communist ideology of equality for all men. How Communism was meant to eliminate social divides; when in fact total societal breakdown ensues because only the ordained alpha male authority figures are able to protect themselves. The weak are to be used, it’s their fault they are weak. The Gulag guards are atheists, believing in no higher Judge, nor do they have any concept of grace or even kindness for its own sake. The Communist system has ensured the guards are aware of absolutely no biblical/Christian teaching that would lead them to think of themselves as other than vicious animals. Similarly, Solzhenitsyn’s novel Cancer Ward, ends with a zoo scene, representing the Soviet culture that has reduced [human] society to a jungle. Whilst not a Catholic, Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a true depiction of the accumulative effect of Russia’s errors on Russia herself. It is Stalin’s Russia in microcosm and portrays Stalin’s Russia as one huge prison camp. The character of Ivan Denisovich embodies the Soviet view of religion. He can only see what religion may do for him in material terms. The ‘Our Father’ is incomprehensible to him, because he does not see how it will give him daily bread. Prayers for Ivan are like the complaints one makes to the Soviet authorities, pieces of raggy paper put in a box that will never get the establishment’s attention and is merely a Pyrrhic exercise. A devout Baptist in the Gulag attempts evangelising Ivan. But for Ivan, talk of God’s love is meaningless babble. Ivan’s only religious contact is a Russian Orthodox priest who Ivan resented, and thus he distrusts anyone religious, because for Ivan religion and the personality of his cruel and indifferent authority figures are the same. Ivan’s rejection of religion signifies he is a product of the system he abhors. The challenge of bringing Ivan to the Christian faith is a taste of the challenge of bringing the entirety of Russia back to organised religion. Solzhenitsyn not only revealed the deplorable conditions of Soviet Russia, he bared the souls of select Russian characters. As the spiritual nucleus of Solzhenitsyn’s works became more obvious, more and more did he stand alone. Solzhenitsyn was the "traitor" of the "nomenklatura", upsetting Russia’s reputation, but simultaneously ‘\"progressive" politicians and writers found his traditionally religious outlook embarrassing. His devotion to orthodox Christianity and simultaneous rejection of westernization of Russian culture brooked no compromise. Throughout his writing career, Solzhenitsyn increasingly emphasized that the only antidote to Communism was a spiritual resurgence. This assaulted the West’s politically correct smarmy talk of democracy as the only solution. Solzhenitsyn wrote: "Our present system is terrible not because it is undemocratic and based on force but because it demands total surrender of the soul." Whilst Solzhenitsyn knew what medicine the world needed, Our Lady held the prescription pad. Part of the prescriptions given the whole world was to pray the Rosary everyday; indeed six times did Our Lady call for the daily recitation of five decades of the Rosary. Our Lady also advised "the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays".