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 16th
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. . . . “
