Joseph Ratzinger Contrasting the Early Christian Call to Christ to Come: “Maranatha” ("Come, Lord Jesus") and Our “Dies Irae” ("Day of Wrath" - Doomsday [when Christ comes]
Ratzinger gives an explaination of the the text below of St. Bernard, his Sermo 5, In Adventu
Domini, that reads:
“(T)here are three comings of the Lord. The third
lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible.
In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself
testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God,
and they will look on him whom they
pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the elect see
the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved… Because this coming lies
between the other two, it is like a road on which we travel from the first
coming to the last…. In case someone should think that what we say about this
middle coming is sheer invention, listen to what our Lord himself says: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,
and my Father will love him, and we will come to him” (Office of readings,
Wednesday of the first week of Advent).
Ratzinger writes that advent has lost its true
meaning of eschatological hope. From the Ascension to the Second Coming, there is a wasteland of the absence of
Christ who has come 2,000 years ago, and will return at the end for the final
judgment. But the intermediate stage in which we are now, the so-called state
of the Spirit by Joachim of Flora, is a valley of tears where we are left to
our own devices of a truncated Christianity where moral life is the zenith of
our achievement, at the end of which harsh Judgment [Doomsday] will come ("Dies Irae"). This state of affairs is what Francis refers to when he
speaks of Christian life today, that morality cannot substitute for sanctity. This getting out of self and going to the
peripheries for the others who are always poor in love besides the necessities
of life has been bypassed and obliterated. In fact, it doesn’t even surface, and the case
in point is economic life. There has been no call to sanctity there. To "out" this has drawn down the ire of “conservative”
Christianity on Francis. And this is the reason why he persistently asks for prayer on all sides.
Ratzinger
commented: “The term adventus, the
translation of the ancient Greek parousia (the arrival of the king and his
ongoing and burgeoning presence), has lost its eschatological meaning… [It is obvious that] we
are dealing with… a Christianity for which grace and salvation are past, and
the future holds only threat and judgment.
Isn’t this shifting of the axis the real cause of the crisis in
Christianity? Hasn’t Christianity elected to make the past its preferred moment in time and so deprived itself of
the future?... I have to confess that my impression is of a sensibility welling
up from the late mediaeval period by which Christendom became so attached to
its past that it lost hold of both present and future. In part, it must be
admitted, Gospel preaching was itself responsible for this deadly
development through a one-sided emphasis on the threat of doomsday….
“What can we learn from all this? In the first place,
the decisive consideration is still looking to our Lord. Eschatology’s meaning
and driving force depend upon the power of this waiting on Christ, not on
temporal expectations of the world’s end of transformation, no matter of what
kind. Furthermore, though past Christian history receives very considerable
emphasis, that history is invoked in the Litany as a generator of hope, and so
contains a dynamism directed to the future.”[1]
I break off to send out a few Christmas cards.
What fits in here is the entire content of the spirit of Opus Dei which is to
achieve the fullness of the baptismal vocation which is to become not only “another
Christ,” but “Christ Himself.” This is the universal call to holiness as
announced in Chapter V of Lumen Gentium of Vatican II. Having been made in the
image and likeness of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, each human
person, created and sinful, has been baptized (or destined for baptism), and
therefore, chosen and called to be
another Christ and a Son/Daughter of the Father. St. Josemaria Escriva received
the vocation to announce and provide the formation necessary to achieve this
universal call in the founding of Opus Dei. Its ground consists precisely in
becoming “Ipse Christus” as the normal and ordinary denouement of imaging The Son
and Baptism into Christ. Its practical achievement is neither leaving the world
(which is to be loved passionately) and taking the vows of poverty, chastity
and obedience which are integral parts of “consecrated life,” but rather living
out the hidden life of Christ in the exercise of ordinariy work and ordinary
secular life. This is the true eschatology which fills the space between the
Ascension to “the right hand of the Father” and the parousia of the Second Coming. The petition is Maranatha rather than Dies
Irae. It is the time of hope that vibrates as a result of the exodus from
the self to, as pope Francis says, living the mission to the peripheries. Amen.
Maranatha: Come, Lord Jesus.
Wikepedia:
Maranatha (either
מרנא תא: maranâ thâ' or מרן אתא: maran
'athâ' ) is a two-wordAramaic formula
occurring only once in the New Testament (see Aramaic of Jesus) and also in the Didache,
which is part of the Apostolic
Fathers' collection. It is transliteratedinto
Greek letters rather than translated and, given the nature of early manuscripts,
the lexical difficulty lies in determining just which two Aramaic words
comprise the single Greek expression, found at the end of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (1Cor 16:22 ).
If one chooses to split the two words as מרנא תא (maranâ thâ), a
vocative concept with an imperative verb, then it can be translated as a
command to the Lord to come. On the other hand, if one decides that the two
words מרן אתא (maran 'athâ), a possessive "Our Lord" and a
perfect/preterite verb "has come," are actually more warranted, then
it would be seen as a credal expression. This interpretation, "Our Lord
has come," is supported by what appears to be an equivalent of this in the
early credal acclamation found in the biblical books of Romans 10:9 and 1
Corinthians 12:3, "Jesus is Lord."
In general, the recent interpretation has been to select the
command option ("Come, Lord!"), changing older decisions to follow
the preterite option ("Our Lord has come") as found in the ancient
Aramaic Peshitta, in the Latin Clementine Vulgate, in the Greek Byzantine
texts, Textus Receptus, critical Greek texts like Westcott and Hort,
Tischendorf, Cambridge, etc., and in the English translations like the King
James Version, the Finnish Raamattu, etc. One reason the change from the
previous scholarly view has occurred is that the P46 papyrus (ca.
A.D. 200) divides it as μαρανα θα ("marana tha").
The NRSV of 1 Cor 16:22 translates the
expression as: "Our Lord, come!" but notes that it could also be
translated as: "Our Lord has come"; the NIV translates: "Come, O
Lord"; the NAB notes:
"As understood here ("O Lord, come!"), it is a prayer for the early return of Christ.
If the Aramaic words are divided differently (Maran atha, "Our Lord has
come"), it becomes a credal declaration. The former interpretation is
supported by what appears to be a Greek equivalent of this acclamation in Book of Revelation 22:20 "Amen. Come,
Lord Jesus!"
The 1985 New Jerusalem Bible translates 1 Cor 16:22, "If
there is anyone who does not love the Lord, a curse on such a one. Maranatha."
In the context of First Corinthians, understanding the Greek
"maranatha" as Aramaic "Maranatha" in the preterit sense
would provide substantiation for the preceding anathema. That is, one who does
not love the Lord is accursed because our Lord has ascended and come unto his
throne (e.g., Dan 7:13) and wields power to implement such a curse. It would
also substantiate the following prayer for grace from the ascended Lord Jesus,
who has come to his throne and then sends the Holy Spirit.
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