Lovis Corinth (1858-1925),
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925),
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)
"He was appointed at the age of 34, auxilary bishop of the diocese of Cotonou
In 1960 he was appointed the first black Roman Catholic archbishop in Africa
In 1971, Pope Paul VI summoned him to Rome as number 2 at Propaganda Fide (now the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples) the Vatican congregation charged with activities in the missions.
Three years later he was made vice president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
A year later he became its president, and in 1977 Paul VI named him a Cardinal.
The following year, the short-lived John Paul I appointed Gantin president of Cor Unum, the pontifical council charged with distributing humanitarian aid.
Six years later, Pope John Paul II (with whom Gantin had been friends since their meeting at Vatican II) appointed him to one of the most important posts in the Roman Curia as prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
In 1993, Gantin became the first African to be made Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals
In 1998 he retired from the Congregation of Bishops, and in 2002, he petitioned John Paul II to let him retire as Dean. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) replaced him.
Gantin was free to become, as he said with a certain irony “a Roman missionary in Africa.” He retired there in relative poverty, explaining: “Materially I don’t have anything anymore. Better that way! This material poverty helps me to live spiritual poverty better.” "
Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531)
Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531)
Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531)
Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
Émile Antoine François Herson, 1805-1873
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 1696 - 1770"12. The Paraclete, Christ's first gift to those who believe, already at work in Creation (cf. Gen 1:2), is fully present throughout the life of the incarnate Word: Jesus Christ is conceived by the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt 1:18; Lk 1:35); at the beginning of his public mission, on the banks of the Jordan, he sees the Spirit descend upon him in the form of a dove (cf. Mt 3:16 and parallels); he acts, speaks and rejoices in the Spirit (cf. Lk 10:21), and he can offer himself in the Spirit (cf. Heb 9:14).
In the so-called "farewell discourse" reported by John, Jesus clearly relates the gift of his life in the paschal mystery to the gift of the Spirit to his own (cf. Jn 16:7).
Once risen, bearing in his flesh the signs of the passion, he can pour out the Spirit upon them (cf. Jn 20:22), making them sharers in his own mission (cf. Jn 20:21).
The Spirit would then teach the disciples all things and bring to their remembrance all that Christ had said (cf. Jn 14:26), since it falls to him, as the Spirit of truth (cf. Jn 15:26), to guide the disciples into all truth (cf. Jn 16:13).
In the account in Acts, the Spirit descends on the Apostles gathered in prayer with Mary on the day of Pentecost (cf. 2:1-4) and stirs them to undertake the mission of proclaiming the Good News to all peoples.Thus it is through the working of the Spirit that Christ himself continues to be present and active in his Church, starting with her vital centre which is the Eucharist.
13. Against this backdrop we can understand the decisive role played by the Holy Spirit in the eucharistic celebration, particularly with regard to transubstantiation.
An awareness of this is clearly evident in the Fathers of the Church. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses, states that we "call upon God in his mercy to send his Holy Spirit upon the offerings before us, to transform the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into the blood of Christ. Whatever the Holy Spirit touches is sanctified and completely transformed" .
Saint John Chrysostom too notes that the priest invokes the Holy Spirit when he celebrates the sacrifice: like Elijah, the minister calls down the Holy Spirit so that "as grace comes down upon the victim, the souls of all are thereby inflamed" .
The spiritual life of the faithful can benefit greatly from a better appreciation of the richness of the anaphora: along with the words spoken by Christ at the Last Supper, it contains the epiclesis, the petition to the Father to send down the gift of the Spirit so that the bread and the wine will become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and that "the community as a whole will become ever more the body of Christ" .
The Spirit invoked by the celebrant upon the gifts of bread and wine placed on the altar is the same Spirit who gathers the faithful "into one body" and makes of them a spiritual offering pleasing to the Father"
Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, 22nd February 2007, Paragraphs 12 and 13
Odilon Redon
A book which begins with the sentence “Evil makes us Human” must surely compel attention. This is no ordinary account of what is usually meant by the problem of evil, where the main emphasis is on justifying the ways of God to man.
Instead, Paul W. Kahn’s aim is to explore the nature of evil itself.
He interprets it, not just as doing or experiencing bad things, but as “a way of being in the world”. Evil, he claims, is about making ourselves the source of our own meaning, a meaning inevitably negated by death, the certainty of which gives urgency and depth to the way life is lived. It is this consciousness of our mortality, and the refusal to accept its implications, which can lead to the worship of false gods.
Ascribing ultimate value to what is essentially nothing at all results in what he calls “a pathology of the will”. Personal evil is essentially about wilfulness rather than reason, nor can it be subsumed within our rational understanding. Evil in this sense, as part of our humanity, is not a fashionable concept, but we have good reasons to recognize it, not least in ourselves.
Such a crude summary of a profound and complex thesis cannot begin to do justice to this strange and thought-provoking book.
Its starting point is a prolonged meditation on the first two chapters of Genesis, with their contrasting stories of creation.
Humanity, so the myths tell us, belongs within an ordered world, which can be seen to be good, and of which it is possible to make sense.
This is the message of the first story, in Genesis 1, which in the light of our present understanding can be interpreted as a charter for rationality and science. But that is not the whole story.
As human beings we are also aware of our radical incompleteness, of being terrifyingly alone, of the need for action as well as contemplation, and of possessing a finite will that seeks to realize an infinite meaning. This, according to Kahn, is the message of the second account of creation and the story of the Fall, in Genesis 2.
He sets both creation stories in sharp contrast to the tragedy of Oedipus, for whom the problems of existence lay not in the order of the world, nor in the assertions of his will, but in the limitations of his knowledge and the apparent malevolence of fate. In Genesis, however, there are no hidden traps. The choice is clear. We can know good and evil only by sharing in them. There is no failure of reason, which is why, in biblical terms, the Socratic maxim “know thyself” can never be enough.
To know ourselves is to know our mortality and that, acccording to Genesis, is precisely the origin of our disordered wills and all that flows from them.
Which of these accounts is nearest the truth of our human condition?
Will knowledge save us? Or does the problem lie within ourselves?
Kahn has no doubts about the answer, and his repeated criticism of liberalism’s optimistic remedies for the world’s problems, as if rationality could save us, points to a much deeper source of evil than mere ignorance. Our human problem, he writes, is that nothing we can do as human beings is adequate to the ultimate meaning we intuit.
No life ever realizes its full potential; no state policies or actions are a full realization of a state’s sovereignty; no work of art is adequate to the artist’s full aesthetic vision; no narrative is adequate to the fullness of experience. In every direction, man knows himself to be more than he can realize. If we begin with this tension, the problem of evil has less to do with the body’s uncontrolled desires than with the problem of a finite will that seeks to realize an infinite meaning. Evil is not the pathology of the body, but of the sacred.
In the story of the Fall, the reason for the disaster is fixed firmly on the desire to be like God. Idolatry is the prime symptom of this fundamental pathology. Its evil character lies in our human attempt to make ourselves the source of the sacred.
A religion of law, for instance, runs the risk of becoming idolatrous in so far as it closes the gap between ordinary life, and the power and mystery of the transcendent. The point is relevant to the distinction between covenantal religious communities, such as Judaism and Islam, which are united by common obedience to a code of practice, and organic communities, such as Christianity, which are united by a common relationship as expressed, for example, in the Eucharist.
At stake are fundamental questions about how and where we encounter the sacred – in the law, or through self-sacrifice? Some of the misunderstandings and animosity between Christians, Jews and Muslims can be traced to this distinction.
“Where one sees ultimate meanings, the other sees only negation; where one sees God’s presence the other sees only the obstinate refusal of belief; where one sees the sacred, the other see idolatry; where one sees life, the other sees death”. These differences are experienced as being matters of huge importance, because evil is perceived “not in the failure to meet internal norms of a system of belief. Rather it is the external assault on the claim to have located the point of the sacred in a fallen world”.
In Christian belief this identification of the sacred is associated, not so much with obedience, as with love and self-sacrifice. On the face of it neither love nor self-sacrifice makes sense, yet often each will seem to be the most sensible phenomenon in the world.
“Love” says Kahn, “is the sole necessity in a meaningful universe . . . without love we would still know good and evil but we would not care”. Love and evil are linked together as opposites, two sides of the same coin. This close relationship is perhaps one reason why suicide bombing has its attractions. Love expresses itself in sacrifice, and evil in murder.
Both are represented in the story of Cain and Abel. Why did Cain murder his brother? Jealousy because Abel’s sacrifice was recognized by God, whereas Cain’s was not, cannot be the whole story. Was it that Cain could not face recognition by God, a recognition that would have entailed the acceptance of a love he could not tolerate? It is in loving and being loved that we discover our finitude and mortality, a discovery which the story hints would for Cain have been unbearable.
We are told that he could not himself accept the prospect of death; hence the mark of Cain, with its assurance that his life would be spared. Paradoxically, the first murderer in this extraordinary myth eventually becomes one of the founding fathers of humanity.
Killing and being killed also lie at the heart of the nation state. The wars we fight tell us who we are. A willingness for self-sacrifice may appear senseless to those who observe only the suffering, but without such willingness there can be no love, and without love there can be no meaning to our communal identity.
A chapter on America’s guilt over its history of slavery raises uncomfortable questions about how its acceptance and persistence were possible in a supposedly Christian nation, and why the slaves never rebelled.
The obvious answer is that, at the heart of the experience, there was a readiness to see slaves as less than human, a prejudice confirmed by their supposed moral failure in not fighting back. The subsequent fear that they might, after all, be a threat to their oppressors provided a further motive for dehumanizing them. Safely relegated to the world of nature, rather than as part of civilized humanity, they could be treated as objects of shame, like Adam and Eve whose expulsion from Eden was the expression of their moral and physical nakedness.
It is no coincidence that humiliation and the shame of nakedness also featured so largely in the Nazi death camps.
...[T]here is much to be learnt from the way in which a scholar deeply immersed in both Judaism and Christianity interprets some of the foundation stories from both traditions.
Evil, he concludes, is not banal; it is the opposite of love, a symptom of our rage against mortality, a false understanding of who we are, and what we are meant to be.
... Even with the best will in the world, as Adam and Eve discovered, “knowing good and evil” is not as easy as one might think. It is also salutary to recall, as Paul Kahn so powerfully demonstrates, that evil is often uncomfortably close to the sacred. "
De profundis clamavi
J'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
Où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;
Un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
Et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire
— Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!
Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse
La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace
Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos;
Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux
Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,
Tant l'écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!
— Charles Baudelaire
De Profundis Clamavi
Have pity, my one love and sole delight!
Down to a dark abyss my heart has sounded,
A mournful world, by grey horizons bounded,
Where blasphemy and horror swim by night.
For half the year a heatless sun gives light,
The other half the night obscures the earth.
The arctic regions never knew such dearth.
No woods, nor streams, nor creatures meet the sight.
No horror in the world could match in dread
The cruelty of that dire sun of frost,
And that huge night like primal chaos spread.
I envy creatures of the vilest kind
That they in stupid slumber can be lost —
So slowly does the skein of time unwind!
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1952)
Frances Richards 1903-1985
Jacopo Caraglio (Printmaker; c.1500 - 1565)--Section IV, Little Gidding, “Four Quartets”, by T. S. Eliot“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”
Dr. Mary Berry and the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome "Through the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge she promoted the teaching, study and performance of Gregorian liturgical music within a 2,000-year-old tradition of Christian song and, after the sweeping changes generated by the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, she preserved the chant and kept it alive at a time when the old certainties were falling all around her. ...
In 1938 she was received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Liège before graduating with a music degree from Cambridge.
Then war broke out. When she was nursing with the Red Cross, her calling took a deeper turn. In March 1940 she joined the novitiate of the Canonesses Regular of St Augustine of the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Jupille in Belgium. This put her right in the line of the invading German Army, and two months later the novitiate was evacuated on the last train to Paris with its few possessions wrapped in scarlet blankets...
As her work became known, her teaching of the chant took her all over the world — to France, Estonia, Canada, America and Australia, and places in between. Galvanised by her knowledge and encouragement, numerous local chant groups were formed, including a flourishing all-black choir from Dominica in the Windward Islands.
Devout and erudite, Berry radiated a joyful and sunny blessing, occasionally interspersed with crisp commands if singers flat-footed a wrong note. There were no concessions to ignorance — either of the chant or the liturgy — but her bubbling humour leavened long hours of choir practice. With a fund of interesting and mildly scurrilous anecdotes delivered with a twinkle in her eye, she was fortunate to attract many fine cantors to sing at festivals and record CDs on the Herald label.
The cantors of the Schola, a professional group of singers interested in Gregorian chant and early music, specialise in the reconstruction and performance of liturgy from the 10th century to modern times. Led by Berry, they were the first in the field to record a reconstruction of a complete festal service based on the tropes and organa of the Winchester Troper, and this won the Michael Beazley Medieval Recording of the Year in 1991. Their work was, and continues to be, very significant in bringing early music to a wider audience.
In 2000 she was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for her work with Gregorian chant, and in 2002 she was appointed CBE for her services to plainsong and Gregorian chant."
William Bouguereau born 1825 - died 1905
Jacques BLANCHARD 1600 - 1638"This rooting of the Church's engagement in God was undoubtedly one of the deepest motivations that led Benedict XVI to write as his first official doctrinal work the Encyclical Deus caritas est. I do not need to repeat the surprising commentaries all over the world that accompanied the text - the fact that the "Panzer Cardinal" would choose "love" as the subject of his first major teaching. Perhaps the history of the text's writing is less familiar to you.
It shows clearly what was of most importance to the Pope.
Since Cor Unum is directly concerned with the praxis of the Church's love for our fellow human beings, Pope John Paul II had asked that I prepare for him a preliminary draft of a papal writing on charity. My intention was to begin with an inductive presentation: reflections on the general willingness of people to provide help today, followed by a description of Christian initiatives that exist, moving in the end to the rooting of love of neighbour in God.
The former Cardinal Ratzinger was aware of my writings.
When he was elected Pope, he decided to publish an Encyclical on charity, but he totally reversed my intended order. His starting point is Revelation's central message: "God is love." He initiates the Encyclical with a drumbeat, proclaiming the absolute precedence of Him "Who has first loved us" (1 Jn 4:10), both in the order of time and in the scale of values.
In my conversations on Deus caritas est with other Episcopal Conferences, the Pastors and those responsible for Caritas have been predominantly or exclusively interested in the second part of the Encyclical, "The Practice of Love by the Church as a ‘Community of Love'." This section is important for offering structural and practical guidelines for the Church's charitable engagement, which are based on global experience and call for an observance of the papal teaching.
When one delves into the details of this section, however, one discovers an important change of perspective. Namely, the Encyclical seems to present in this section a new message. Until now, the Church's teaching on the struggle against misery - like the social encyclicals - dealt with public defects, goals and programs; they addressed factual problems and they insisted on concrete changes outside of oneself.
Besides all this, Deus caritas est turns now decisively to committed persons: the Pope wishes to shape the life of the actors through a "formation of the heart" (n. 31a). So, for the first time, he formulates basic guidelines for a "spirituality" of those working in help-agencies.
Clearly the first preoccupation of Caritas cannot intend to change society and unjust structures. It is the human heart that makes the structures. Therefore, the essential requirement for action - as the Pope says - is to "be persons moved by Christ's love, persons whose hearts Christ has conquered with his love, awakening them with a love of neighbour" (n. 33). This is the new "standard" that Jesus proclaims in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5-7).
It is the justice of love that surpasses the political and social dimensions without negating them. We cannot then reduce or collapse charity into "social justice"; to do so would be to rob charity of its specificity and splendour. God certainly requires the actualisation of justice in societal relationships, as the Old Testament prophets repeatedly remind us: "Make justice your aim," Isaiah affirms, "redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow" (Is 1:16ff).
But ultimately this comes through conversion in the heart of the human person, whose self-giving example and source is the charity of Christ. As St. Paul affirms: Caritas Christi urget nos (2 Cor 5:14)!
Service to our neighbours, therefore, has not only its universally recognized technical and practical side; it also makes demands of the heart, not primarily in the emotional sense, but in the very rational decision to desire the best for the other person, even at the price of self-abnegation. Whoever dedicates himself to diakonia thus takes on the opposite of reputation, power, and rank that leaders and political entities claim for themselves.
Benedict encourages us: "My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is not my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift" (n. 34). In the gift, the giver provides his material contribution; in loving service, his self-dedication. Diakonia is the antithesis of the egocentric society; Jesus with his self-oblation for the "ransom of many" is its model and prototype.
The source for this "spirituality of diakonia" is prayer. It is telling that, in this relatively short Encyclical, two quite detailed paragraphs are dedicated to prayer as the motor for charitable action. In a culture as frenetic as Britain or Germany, the Pope points to the need for prayer, not action alone: "People who pray are not wasting their time even though the situation seems desperate and calls for action alone." And he offers concrete advice for those countries and people with an excessively "economic" mindset: "It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work" (n. 37)."
Jacques Blanchard (1600-1638)"One of the best works of the painter who was called "the French Titian". The composition and the colours manifest the influence of contemporary (and not Renaissance!) Venetian painting. The detailed execution of the head (especially the beard) is remarkable."
"Since the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, had bestowed the Scriptures on the humanrace for their instruction in Divine things, He also raised up in successive ages saintly and learned men whose task it should be to develop that treasure and so provide for the faithful plenteous "consolation from the Scriptures." Foremost among these teachers stands St. Jerome. Him the Catholic Church acclaims and reveres as her "Greatest Doctor," divinely given her for the understanding of the Bible."
"Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today, we turn our attention to St Jerome, a Church Father who centred his life on the Bible: he translated it into Latin, commented on it in his works, and above all, strove to live it in practice throughout his long earthly life, despite the well-known difficult, hot-tempered character with which nature had endowed him.
Jerome was born into a Christian family in about 347 A.D. in Stridon. He was given a good education and was even sent to Rome to fine-tune his studies. As a young man he was attracted by the worldly life (cf. Ep 22, 7), but his desire for and interest in the Christian religion prevailed.
He received Baptism in about 366 and opted for the ascetic life. He went to Aquileia and joined a group of fervent Christians that had formed around Bishop Valerian and which he described as almost "a choir of blesseds" (Chron. ad ann. 374). He then left for the East and lived as a hermit in the Desert of Chalcis, south of Aleppo (Ep 14, 10), devoting himself assiduously to study. He perfected his knowledge of Greek, began learning Hebrew (cf. Ep 125, 12), and transcribed codices and Patristic writings (cf. Ep 5, 2).
Meditation, solitude and contact with the Word of God helped his Christian sensibility to mature. He bitterly regretted the indiscretions of his youth (cf. Ep. 22, 7) and was keenly aware of the contrast between the pagan mentality and the Christian life: a contrast made famous by the dramatic and lively "vision" - of which he has left us an account - in which it seemed to him that he was being scourged before God because he was "Ciceronian rather than Christian" (cf. Ep. 22, 30).
In 382 he moved to Rome: here, acquainted with his fame as an ascetic and his ability as a scholar, Pope Damasus engaged him as secretary and counsellor; the Pope encouraged him, for pastoral and cultural reasons, to embark on a new Latin translation of the Biblical texts. Several members of the Roman aristocracy, especially noblewomen such as Paula, Marcella, Asella, Lea and others, desirous of committing themselves to the way of Christian perfection and of deepening their knowledge of the Word of God, chose him as their spiritual guide and teacher in the methodical approach to the sacred texts. These noblewomen also learned Greek and Hebrew.
After the death of Pope Damasus, Jerome left Rome in 385 and went on pilgrimage, first to the Holy Land, a silent witness of Christ's earthly life, and then to Egypt, the favourite country of numerous monks (cf. Contra Rufinum, 3, 22; Ep. 108, 6-14).
In 386 he stopped in Bethlehem, where male and female monasteries were built through the generosity of the noblewoman, Paula, as well as a hospice for pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, "remembering Mary and Joseph who had found no room there" (Ep. 108, 14). He stayed in Bethlehem until he died, continuing to do a prodigious amount of work: he commented on the Word of God; he defended the faith, vigorously opposing various heresies; he urged the monks on to perfection; he taught classical and Christian culture to young students; he welcomed with a pastor's heart pilgrims who were visiting the Holy Land.
He died in his cell close to the Grotto of the Nativity on 30 September 419-420.
Jerome's literary studies and vast erudition enabled him to revise and translate many biblical texts: an invaluable undertaking for the Latin Church and for Western culture. On the basis of the original Greek and Hebrew texts, and thanks to the comparison with previous versions, he revised the four Gospels in Latin, then the Psalter and a large part of the Old Testament.
Taking into account the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Septuagint, the classical Greek version of the Old Testament that dates back to pre-Christian times, as well as the earlier Latin versions, Jerome was able, with the assistance later of other collaborators, to produce a better translation: this constitutes the so-called "Vulgate", the "official" text of the Latin Church which was recognized as such by the Council of Trent and which, after the recent revision, continues to be the "official" Latin text of the Church.
It is interesting to point out the criteria which the great biblicist abided by in his work as a translator. He himself reveals them when he says that he respects even the order of the words of the Sacred Scriptures, for in them, he says, "the order of the words is also a mystery" (Ep. 57, 5), that is, a revelation.
Furthermore, he reaffirms the need to refer to the original texts: "Should an argument on the New Testament arise between Latins because of interpretations of the manuscripts that fail to agree, let us turn to the original, that is, to the Greek text in which the New Testament was written. "Likewise, with regard to the Old Testament, if there are divergences between the Greek and Latin texts we should have recourse to the original Hebrew text; thus, we shall be able to find in the streams all that flows from the source" (Ep. 106, 2).
Jerome also commented on many biblical texts. For him the commentaries had to offer multiple opinions "so that the shrewd reader, after reading the different explanations and hearing many opinions - to be accepted or rejected - may judge which is the most reliable, and, like an expert moneychanger, may reject the false coin" (Contra Rufinum 1, 16).
Jerome refuted with energy and liveliness the heretics who contested the tradition and faith of the Church.
He also demonstrated the importance and validity of Christian literature, which had by then become a real culture that deserved to be compared with classical literature: he did so by composing his De Viris Illustribus, a work in which Jerome presents the biographies of more than a hundred Christian authors.
Further, he wrote biographies of monks, comparing among other things their spiritual itineraries as well as monastic ideal.
In addition, he translated various works by Greek authors.
Lastly, in the important Epistulae, a masterpiece of Latin literature, Jerome emerges with the profile of a man of culture, an ascetic and a guide of souls.
What can we learn from St Jerome?
It seems to me, this above all; to love the Word of God in Sacred Scripture. St Jerome said: "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ". It is therefore important that every Christian live in contact and in personal dialogue with the Word of God given to us in Sacred Scripture.
This dialogue with Scripture must always have two dimensions: on the one hand, it must be a truly personal dialogue because God speaks with each one of us through Sacred Scripture and it has a message for each one.
We must not read Sacred Scripture as a word of the past but as the Word of God that is also addressed to us, and we must try to understand what it is that the Lord wants to tell us.
However, to avoid falling into individualism, we must bear in mind that the Word of God has been given to us precisely in order to build communion and to join forces in the truth on our journey towards God.
Thus, although it is always a personal Word, it is also a Word that builds community, that builds the Church. We must therefore read it in communion with the living Church.
The privileged place for reading and listening to the Word of God is the liturgy, in which, celebrating the Word and making Christ's Body present in the Sacrament, we actualize the Word in our lives and make it present among us.
We must never forget that the Word of God transcends time. Human opinions come and go. What is very modern today will be very antiquated tomorrow.
On the other hand, the Word of God is the Word of eternal life, it bears within it eternity and is valid for ever. By carrying the Word of God within us, we therefore carry within us eternity, eternal life.
I thus conclude with a word St Jerome once addressed to St Paulinus of Nola. In it the great exegete expressed this very reality, that is, in the Word of God we receive eternity, eternal life. St Jerome said: "Seek to learn on earth those truths which will remain ever valid in Heaven" (Ep. 53, 10).
He dedicated his life to studying the Bible, so much so that he was recognized by my Predecessor, Pope Benedict XV, as "an outstanding doctor in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture".
Jerome emphasized the joy and importance of being familiar with biblical texts: "Does one not seem to dwell, already here on earth, in the Kingdom of Heaven when one lives with these texts, when one meditates on them, when one does not know or seek anything else?" (Ep. 53, 10).
In reality, to dialogue with God, with his Word, is in a certain sense a presence of Heaven, a presence of God. To draw near to the biblical texts, above all the New Testament, is essential for the believer, because "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ". This is his famous phrase, cited also by the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Dei Verbum (n. 25).
Truly "in love" with the Word of God, he asked himself: "How could one live without the knowledge of Scripture, through which one learns to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers?" (Ep. 30, 7).
The Bible, an instrument "by which God speaks every day to the faithful" (Ep. 133, 13), thus becomes a stimulus and source of Christian life for all situations and for each person.
To read Scripture is to converse with God: "If you pray", he writes to a young Roman noblewoman, "you speak with the Spouse; if you read, it is he who speaks to you" (Ep. 22, 25). The study of and meditation on Scripture renders man wise and serene (cf. In Eph., Prol.).
Certainly, to penetrate the Word of God ever more profoundly, a constant and progressive application is needed.
Hence, Jerome recommends to the priest Nepotian: "Read the divine Scriptures frequently; rather, may your hands never set the Holy Book down. Learn here what you must teach" (Ep. 52, 7). To the Roman matron Leta he gave this counsel for the Christian education of her daughter: "Ensure that each day she studies some Scripture passage.... After prayer, reading should follow, and after reading, prayer.... Instead of jewels and silk clothing, may she love the divine Books" (Ep. 107, 9, 12).
Through meditation on and knowledge of the Scriptures, one "maintains the equilibrium of the soul" (Ad Eph., Prol.).
Only a profound spirit of prayer and the Holy Spirit's help can introduce us to understanding the Bible: "In the interpretation of Sacred Scripture we always need the help of the Holy Spirit" (In Mich. 1, 1, 10, 15).
A passionate love for Scripture therefore pervaded Jerome's whole life, a love that he always sought to deepen in the faithful, too. He recommends to one of his spiritual daughters: "Love Sacred Scripture and wisdom will love you; love it tenderly, and it will protect you; honour it and you will receive its caresses. May it be for you as your
necklaces and your earrings" (Ep. 130, 20). And again: "Love the science of Scripture, and you will not love the vices of the flesh" (Ep. 125, 11).
For Jerome, a fundamental criterion of the method for interpreting the Scriptures was harmony with the Church's Magisterium.
We should never read Scripture alone because we meet too many closed doors and could easily slip into error.
The Bible has been written by the People of God and for the People of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Only in this communion with the People of God do we truly enter into the "we", into the nucleus of the truth that God himself wants to tell us. For him, an authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in harmonious accord with the faith of the Catholic Church. It does not treat of an exegesis imposed on this Book from without; the Book is really the voice of the pilgrim People of God and only in the faith of this People are we "correctly attuned" to understand Sacred Scripture.
Therefore, Jerome admonishes: "Remain firmly attached to the traditional doctrine that you have been taught, so that you can preach according to right doctrine and refute those who contradict it" (Ep. 52, 7).
In particular, given that Jesus Christ founded his Church on Peter, every Christian, he concludes, must be in communion "with St Peter's See. I know that on this rock the Church is built" (Ep. 15, 2). Consequently, without approximations, he declared: "I am with whoever is united to the teaching of St Peter" (Ep. 16).
Obviously, Jerome does not neglect the ethical aspect.
Indeed, he often recalls the duty to harmonize one's life with the divine Word, and only by living it does one also find the capacity to understand it. This consistency is indispensable for every Christian, and particularly for the preacher, so that his actions may never contradict his discourses nor be an embarrassment to him.
Thus, he exhorts the priest Nepotian: "May your actions never be unworthy of your words, may it not happen that, when you preach in church, someone might say to himself: "Why does he therefore not act like this?'. How could a teacher, on a full stomach, discuss fasting; even a thief can blame avarice; but in the priest of Christ the mind and words must harmonize" (Ep. 52, 7).
In another Epistle Jerome repeats: "Even if we possess a splendid doctrine, the person who feels condemned by his own conscience remains disgraced" (Ep. 127, 4).
Also on the theme of consistency he observes: the Gospel must translate into truly charitable behaviour, because in each human being the Person of Christ himself is present. For example, addressing the presbyter Paulinus (who then became Bishop of Nola and a Saint), Jerome counsels: "The true temple of Christ is the soul of the faithful: adorn it and beautify this shrine, place your offerings in it and receive Christ. What is the use of decorating the walls with precious stones if Christ dies of hunger in the person of the poor?" (Ep. 58, 7).
Jerome concretizes the need "to clothe Christ in the poor, to visit him in the suffering, to nourish him in the hungry, to house him in the homeless" (Ep. 130, 14). The love of Christ, nourished with study and meditation, makes us rise above every difficulty: "Let us also love Jesus Christ, always seeking union with him: then even what is difficult will seem easy to us" (Ep. 22, 40).
Prosper of Aquitaine, who defined Jerome as a "model of conduct and teacher of the human race" (Carmen de ingratis, 57), also left us a rich and varied teaching on Christian asceticism. He reminds us that a courageous commitment towards perfection requires constant vigilance, frequent mortifications, even if with moderation and prudence, and assiduous intellectual and manual labour to avoid idleness (cf. Epp. 125, 11; 130, 15), and above all obedience to God: "Nothing... pleases God as much as obedience..., which is the most excellent and sole virtue" (Hom. de Oboedientia: CCL 78, 552).
The practice of pilgrimage can also be part of the ascetical journey. In particular, Jerome gave an impulse to it in the Holy Land, where pilgrims were welcomed and housed in the lodgings that were built next to the monastery of Bethlehem, thanks to the generosity of the noblewoman Paula, a spiritual daughter of Jerome (cf. Ep. 108, 14).
Lastly, one cannot remain silent about the importance that Jerome gave to the matter of Christian pedagogy (cf. Epp. 107; 128). He proposed to form "one soul that must become the temple of the Lord" (Ep. 107, 4), a "very precious gem" in the eyes of God (Ep. 107, 13). With profound intuition he advises to preserve oneself from evil and from the occasions of sin, and to exclude equivocal or dissipating friendships (cf. Ep. 107, 4, 8-9; also Ep. 128, 3-4).
Above all, he exhorts parents to create a serene and joyful environment around their children, to stimulate them to study and work also through praise and emulation (cf. Epp. 107, 4; 128, 1), encouraging them to overcome difficulties, foster good habits and avoid picking up bad habits, so that, and here he cites a phrase of Publius Siro which he heard at school: "it will be difficult for you to correct those things to which you are quietly habituating yourself" (Ep. 107, 8).
Parents are the principal educators of their children, the first teachers of life. With great clarity Jerome, addressing a young girl's mother and then mentioning her father, admonishes, almost expressing a fundamental duty of every human creature who comes into existence: "May she find in you her teacher, and may she look to you with the inexperienced wonder of childhood. Neither in you, nor in her father should she ever see behaviour that could lead to sin, as it could be copied. Remember that... you can educate her more by example than with words" (Ep. 107, 9).
Among Jerome's principal intuitions as a pedagogue, one must emphasize the importance he attributed to a healthy and integral education beginning from early childhood, with the particular responsibility belonging to parents, the urgency for a serious moral and religious formation and the duty to study for a complete human formation.
Moreover, an aspect rather disregarded in ancient times but held vital by our author is the promotion of the woman, to whom he recognizes the right to a complete formation: human, scholastic, religious, professional.
We see precisely today how the education of the personality in its totality, the education to responsibility before God and man, is the true condition of all progress, all peace, all reconciliation and the exclusion of violence. Education before God and man: it is Sacred Scripture that offers us the guide for education and thus of true humanism.
We cannot conclude these quick notes on the great Father of the Church without mentioning his effective contribution to safeguarding the positive and valid elements of the ancient Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures for nascent Christian civilization.
Jerome recognized and assimilated the artistic values of the richness of the sentiments and the harmony of the images present in the classics, which educate the heart and fantasy to noble sentiments.
Above all, he put at the centre of his life and activity the Word of God, which indicates the path of life to man and reveals the secrets of holiness to him.
We cannot fail to be deeply grateful for all of this, even in our day. "
Jacques Blanchard 1600-1638"We celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, in which the liturgy has us relive the birth of the Church, according to what St Luke narrates in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (2: 1-13).
Fifty days after Easter, the Holy Spirit descended on the community of disciples - "with one accord devoted themselves to prayer" - gathered with "Mary, the mother of Jesus" and with the Twelve Apostles (cf. Acts 1: 14; 2: 1).
We can therefore say that the Church had its solemn beginning with the descent of the Holy Spirit.
In this extraordinary event we find the essential and qualifying characteristics of the Church: the Church is one, like the community at Pentecost, who were united in prayer and "concordant": "were of one heart and soul" (Acts 4: 32). "
BENEDICT XVI: Saint Peter's Square, Pentecost Sunday, 27 May 2007
Blanchard left for Rome at the age of twenty-four. After a number of years in Italy especially Venice where he imbibed the Venetian masters, he returned to France in 1628.
He was called "the French Titian".
He unfortunately died young.
L' église Saint-Jacques
Anne Tiessé b.1940
