Catholic for a Reason: Scripture and the Mystery of the Family of God by Multiple & Scott Hahn & Leon Suprenant

Author:Multiple & Scott Hahn & Leon Suprenant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Catholicism, Theology, Apologetics, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles, General Fiction
ISBN: 0966322304
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
Published: 1998-04-02T06:00:00+00:00

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1 ^Stanley Hauerwas, William Kirk Kilpatrick, and William Bennett have all contributed to the growing awareness of the importance of stories in building up and passing on the content of a culture. I am much indebted to their work in coming to recognize the same process at work in the liturgy.

2 ^John Paul II, Apostolic Letter On Preparation for the Jubilee of the Year 2000 Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), no. 6 (original emphasis).

3 ^John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation On Catechesis in Our Time Catechesi Tradendae (1979), no. 23.

4 ^Ibid., no. 5.

5 ^Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 103.

6 ^Ibid., 104. Ratzinger also recalls the startling fact that Jesus was violating a religious ordinance in going beyond the Kedron to face His Passion in the Garden of Gethsemane. Beyond that boundary, the shalom of Jerusalem, the peace secured within the collective family gathered there for the Passover, gave way to chaos. In His desire to embrace the Father's saving will for us, Jesus strode straight into the territory of the Angel of Death. In this chapter, which was originally a Holy Thursday homily, Ratzinger challenges his readers to go out from the Eucharist having been strengthened by grace to face evil in the world in imitation of Christ.

7 ^Ibid., 105.

8 ^Here I am drawing from J. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper, 1985), 26 et seq. Levenson summarizes in succinct fashion what scholars have come to call the covenant formulary, those elements that were common to covenant making and renewal in the ancient Near East.

9 ^Ibid., 27.

10 ^The character of this mystical incorporation effected by covenant renewal is described by Levenson with particular reference to the recitation of Ps. 81, which he identifies as a prayer for regular liturgical renewal of the covenant. “The goal of this speech, as of the covenant renewal in which it probably originated, is to induce Israel to step into the position of the generation of Sinai, in other words, to actualize the past so that this new generation will become the Israel of the classic covenant relationship (cf. Deut. 30:19-20). Thus life in covenant is not something merely granted, but something won anew, rekindled and reconsecrated in the heart of each Israelite in every generation” (ibid., 81).

While Levenson would not necessarily see in the modern celebration of the Passover seder a covenant renewal, arguing as he does that covenant renewal liturgies of the kind suggested by Ps. 81 did not survive into the rabbinic era of Judaism, that does not necessarily mean that such a view was not held in the first century. In fact, that Jesus precisely enjoins His followers to keep this ritual meal as a memorial, and that He makes reference to the “new covenant” in His blood which His sacrifice on Calvary effects, would argue in favor of just such an appreciation of the Passover as a covenant renewal. This would certainly be in keeping with Jesus' inclination not to abolish, but rather to fulfill the Old Law (Mt.

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