June 30, 2014 Faith Formation (2 weeks of material)

June 30, 2014  St. Francis Faith Formation

V:  O God, come to my assistance.

R:  Lord, make haste to help me.
V:  Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
R:  As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.
V:  Lord, be with me as night falls,
R:  And I will rest in your Sprit always.

AH 601 Alleluia! Sing to Jesus

AH 579 I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say

Examination of Your Consecrated Day (Philip Neri Powell, OP:  Treasures Old & New)

The Reformation in a Nutshell

v  16^th Century (1517), Martin Luther and John Calvin

 

v  Complex:  over the centuries, the Church/Papacy had become very involved in the politics of Western Europe, had become very wealthy and powerful – charges of corruption (sale of indulgences ….)

v  By and large, most people were still loyal to the Church, but political authorities increasingly sought to curtail the public role of the church and thereby triggered tension.

v  “Reformations” had occurred before:  St. Francis of Assisi, John Wycliffe….

v  In the 16th century Erasmus of Rotterdam, a great humanist scholar, was the chief proponent of liberal Catholic reform that attacked popular superstitions in the church and urged the imitation of Christ as the supreme moral teacher.

v  Martin Luther considered the Church’s doctrine of redemption and grace to be perverted (he believed in sola scriptura and sola fide), but it was not his intention to break with the Catholic Church – he was excommunicated in 1521.

v  Luther also rejected the doctrine of Transubstantiation, claiming instead that the body of Christ was physically present in the elements because Christ is present everywhere. 

v  Also Anabaptists.

v  John Calvin:  stressed the doctrine of predestination and interpreted Holy Communion as a spiritual partaking of the body and blood of Christ.

v  By mid century, Lutheranism dominated northern Europe. Eastern Europe offered a seedbed for even more radical varieties of Protestantism, because kings were weak, nobles strong, and cities few, and because religious pluralism had long existed. Spain and Italy were to be the great centres of the Counter-Reformation, and Protestantism never gained a strong foothold there.

 

Prayers which were added to the Roman Mass after St Gregory the Great (590 – 604 Papacy) were among the first to be abolished by the Reformers (prayers at foot of altar, the Judica me, the Confiteor, the Offertory prayers). 

 A drastic reform of the liturgical rites.  Fr. Fortescue (The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy): 

            The Protestant reformers naturally played havoc with the old liturgy.

            It was throughout the expression of the very ideas (the Real Presence,

            Eucharistic Sacrifice, and so on) they rejected.  So they substituted for

            it new communion services that expressed their principles, but, of

            course , broke away utterly from all historic liturgical evolution.  The

            Council of Trent (1545 – 1563), in opposition to the anarchy of these

            new services, wished the Roman Mass to be celebrated uniformly

            everywhere.  The medieval local uses had lasted long enough.  They

            had become very florid and exuberant; and their variety caused

            confusion.

 

Michael Davies (The Catholic Sanctuary):

             The line of demarcation between Catholic and Protestant worship was laid down clearly at the Reformation.  The most striking differences were as follows:

             The Catholic Mass                                          The Protestant Lord’s Supper

 

            Latin                                                                English

 

            Much inaudible                                               audible throughout

 

            Began with psalm Judica Me                          abolished

            (going to the altar of God)

            Ended with Last Gospel

 

            Sacrificial altar facing East                             table facing the people

 

            Holy Communion placed on tongue               placed in hand

            by anointed hand of priest

 

            HC given laity under one kind                        both kinds

 

 Council of Trent:  codify Eucharistic teaching; anathema was pronounced upon anyone who rejected this teaching, and the Fathers insisted that what they had taught must remain unmodified until the End of Time.  The Council appointed a commission to examine, revise and restore the Missal “according to the custom and rite of the Holy Fathers:”  The goal being not to make a new Missal, but to restore the existing one (using best manuscripts/documents available).  The Missal not simply a personal decree of St. Pope Pius V, but an act of the Council of Trent:  1570 – “The Roman Missal Restored According to the Decrees of the Holy Council of Trent.”

 

(from A New Song for the Lord, Pope Benedict XVI)

             ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’(Heb. 13:8).  This was the profession of those who had known Jesus on earth and had seen the Risen One.  This means that we can see Jesus Christ correctly today only if we understand him in union with the Christ of ‘yesterday’ and see in the Christ of yesterday and today the eternal Christ.  The three dimensions of time as well as going beyond time into that which is simultaneously its origin and future are always a part of the encounter with Christ.  If we are looking for the real Jesus, we must be prepared for this suspenseful tension.  We usually encounter him in the present first:  in the way he reveals himself now, in how people see and understand him, in how people live focused on him or against him, and in the way his words and deeds affect people today.  But if this is not to remain simply second-hand knowledge, but is to become real knowledge, then we must go back and ask:  Where does all this come from?  Who was Jesus really at the time he lived as a man among other men and women?

….

            The Enlightenment then treats this thought quite systematically and radically:  Only the Christ of yesterday, the historical Christ, is in fact the real Christ; everything else is later fantasy.  Christ is only what he was.  The search for the historical Jesus clearly locks Christ into the past.  It denies him the today and the forever. . . But the more authentic this Jesus was supposed to be, the more fictitious he became through this rigid confinement to the past.  Whoever wants to see Christ only yesterday does not find him; likewise, whoever would like to have him only today does not encounter him.  Right from the beginning it is of his essence that he was, is and will come again.  Even as the living one, he has also always been the coming one.  The message of his coming and staying belongs in a fundamental way to the image of himself.  It turn, this claim to all the dimensions of time is based on his own understanding of his earthly life:  he perceived it as a going forth from the Father and simultaneously as a remaining with him; thus he brought eternity into play with and connected it to time.  If we deny ourselves an existence that can span these dimensions, we cannot comprehend him.  One who understands time merely as a moment that irrevocably passes away and who lives accordingly thereby turns away in principle from what really makes up the figure of Jesus and what it seeks to convey.  Knowledge is always a path.  Those who reject the possibility of such an existence extended in time have in fact thereby denied themselves access to the sources that invite us to embark on this journey of being, which becomes a journey of discernment. . . . “