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A Holy Temple in the Lord

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The union between Christ and the Church is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “a great mystery” (Eph. 5:32). For that reason, he and the other New Testament writers used a number of descriptive images to give a multifaceted picture of the Church: it is at once the household or family of God, the kingdom of David, the kingdom of heaven, as well as the Body of Christ and a sacred temple. In our first reading taken from Ephesians 2, we see several such concepts used simultaneously: the Apostle Paul described “the household of God” not only as a kingdom with citizens, but also as a sacred structure “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”

In the Gospel reading we see Jesus in the act of prayerfully building his Church, his temple, by picking out those who would form its foundation, the Apostles (Lu. 6:12-16). These men are the only people in the New Testament to whom Jesus gives the authority to “bind and loose” as is evident in Matthew 18:18: “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Binding and loosing referred to the unique authority that had previously been held by the scribes and Pharisees.

Even though Jesus gave intense critiques of the personal character of the scribes and Pharisees, we can see in Matthew 23:2-3 that he still respected their teaching office and expected his followers to do the same: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.” This expression, “to sit on the seat of Moses,” meant that the scribes and Pharisees inherited Moses’ authority to bind and loose; in other words, as his successors, they had the power to interpret the Law.

Therefore, when Jesus gave his apostles the authority to bind and loose, he was transferring the authority of the scribes and Pharisees to the twelve and establishing new offices invested with teaching authority. The same Holy Spirit who would inspire the infallible authorship of the New Testament, became the divine guarantee that what was “bound on earth” would truly be “bound in heaven.”

We can easily observe this understanding of apostolic succession at work in the early Church by examining the writings of Christians such as Irenaeus, who had been taught by Polycarp, who in turn had been taught by the Apostle John; also, Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, who had heard from John himself. For their writings and more, check out The Faith of the Early Fathers (Vol. 1) by William Jurgens.

Ultimately, apostolic succession explains why Jesus would represent the Apostles as the stones upon which he would build his temple. Through the authority of their office, the Church was given divine protection from error and the unwavering certainty that despite the turbulence of life’s storms, God’s will would prevail.

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.

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Alone Together

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As a Christian, I feel as though it’s easy to talk about Jesus’ suffering and death, but it’s a lot harder to understand my own. What do you do, for example, when you’re doing your best to remain faithful to God, but tragedy strikes and God doesn’t come with healing or seem to come at all? Have we been left behind, like a kid in a park who didn’t make it into the van with his brothers and sisters? Somehow I don’t think so, because the Bible tells another story: that God’s apparent absence can actually be one of the most powerful means of union with Christ. It’s counterintuitive, it’s paradoxical, but it’s scriptural and it’s true; so please, put some milk in the steamer and let me explain.

First of all, in our opening reading, we meet Job, who might as well be the poster child for hard knocks. After many years of faithfulness to God, he is struck down in a satanic attack. This man experiences the death of all his children, financial ruination, and loss of health. Amidst it all, he continues to seek God and justice, even as his “friends” attempt to convince him that he is getting what he deserves. In the heat of the struggle, Job is alone. He doesn’t experience God’s presence or healing in any way.

If we compare Job to Jesus, we see two innocent men enduring great suffering as a consequence of satanic activity. Job was battling for his own soul, while Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world. Shortly before he died, Jesus let out a cry of pain from having entered fully into the human condition: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46).

At face value, it can seem as though in that moment on the cross Jesus was despairing, but his words were actually a direct quotation from Psalm 22. At that time, to quote the first line of a scriptural passage was to draw attention to the entire body of the text. The psalmist begins by describing the torture of God’s chosen one—both spiritual and physical—but ends by saying, “[God] has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (vv. 23-24). In quoting this psalm, Jesus showed that he maintained tremendous hope until the very end.

In centuries past, Martin Luther and John Calvin, the founders of Lutheranism and the Reformed tradition within Protestantism, believed that Jesus did despair on the cross as a result of the Father venting his wrath onto his beloved son. They referred to this idea as “penal substitution,” because Jesus was said to be the substitute or replacement for the sinner. While having its problems, this concept still has a lot of good elements: We can affirm, for example, that Jesus did replace us on the cross; his was an entirely unique sacrifice made “once for all,” but the fathers of the Church and the Catholic tradition have long understood the cross in terms of Jesus bringing his loving bond with the Father into the dimension of human suffering, thereby transforming it from within (Heb. 10:10).

This transformation is what makes the cross an example for us and the way in which we participate in Christ’s redemptive work (1 Pet. 2:21, Col. 1:24). The Apostle Paul taught that Jesus was the representative of man, the “last Adam,” who restored to a wounded humanity the ability to become sons and daughters of God (1 Cor. 15:45). We mature as God’s sons and daughters in the same way Jesus did: we learn obedience by what we suffer (Heb. 5:8).

This means that through faith in Christ, we can face the same suffering that Job experienced armed with the knowledge that our intimacy with our risen Lord has never been greater. We can meet Jesus in our solitude and know that we are “alone together.” Always together.

(For further reading on the meaning and experience of Jesus’ sacrifice, please see the book What is Redemption? by Philippe de la Trinité.)

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.

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Buying Oil

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I’ve always been fascinated by the image of ten virgins in the dead of night, each nursing a solitary flame. They are waiting, as women tend to do, for a bridegroom to appear. When he does, he’s just as mysterious as they, welcoming the first five women into the feast, but turning a cold shoulder to the last five who arrived late because the oil for their lamps had run out.

The seemingly insignificant detail of the oil in the women’s lamps makes all the difference in this Gospel reading. What is this oil, and how does it affect us? How do we “buy” enough of it before the night overtakes us and time runs out?

Like every good parable, this story’s treasures are hidden in its use of symbolism. The primary symbol here is the lamp which holds oil that fuels a flame. In Scripture, there is something, or rather someone, who is constantly symbolized as both oil and flame: The Holy Spirit.

I think it’s interesting how the Catholic Church has come to understand from scripture that the Holy Spirit isn’t just Person #3 in the Trinity; he is actually the bond of love between the Father and the Son. Therefore, those who possess the Holy Spirit have an intimate knowledge of Jesus and the Father. Jesus would not be able to say to them, as the bridegroom said to the foolish virgins, “I do not know you.”

The main function of the oil is to establish a connection between the women and the bridegroom. According to the Old Testament, the Messiah promised by the prophets had divine characteristics and would “marry” the nations just as God had “married” Israel when he renewed his covenant with them (Ex: 19-24). In Matthew 9:15, Jesus actually referred to himself as “the bridegroom.” The heavenly communion of Christ with the Church at the end of time represents the ultimate fulfillment of these prophesies.

So, if Jesus is the bridegroom and the Holy Spirit is the oil/flame, it would seem that the women represent the people (us) who are destined to live in covenant with Christ in the eternal, heavenly wedding banquet.

The next piece to the puzzle is this notion of “buying oil.” Even though the grace of salvation is a free gift, scripture repeatedly speaks of Jesus “paying the price” for that gift. According to 1 Peter 2:21, we are called to “follow in [Christ’s] steps” and to offer our own sufferings in union with his perfect sacrifice. As St. Paul said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).

The Catechism explains: “The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the ‘one mediator between God and men.’ But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man,’ the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery’ is offered to all men” (CCC 618).

So, when we suffer in the darkness of this world, we are actually partnering with our heavenly bridegroom. We are preparing for our future with him by receiving “his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” not just once, but every time we choose to believe in Christ and to love as he loved. This is how we “buy oil” – this is how we light our lamps.

The last key detail is that after the women “slumbered and slept,” all of their subsequent efforts to buy oil were rejected. Jesus frequently used sleep as a metaphor for death. If he was doing the same here, it would mean that once we die, our efforts to “buy oil,” to receive the Holy Spirit by suffering in union with the Savior, no longer carry eternal weight. If we have extinguished the life of God in our hearts, it cannot be rekindled after death. That fits right in with current Church teaching.

This is sobering stuff, but I can see why Jesus told this story: Life isn’t always pretty and knowing how much our sufferings matter can help us get through the long night ahead.

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.

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The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread

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The Talmud is filled with ancient Jewish teachings that existed as an oral tradition at the time of Christ. It describes the details of an unusual event, a miracle, that was said to occur annually as the High Priest officiated in the Temple on Yom Kippur. Like the readings for today, this miracle encourages us to reconcile ourselves with God while we have the chance. It shows that the battle for our salvation is simultaneously a love affair that revolves around the transformative power of God’s mercy.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, has historically been regarded as the most solemn day of the year for the Jewish people. On this day and on this day alone, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies where God’s Spirit was said to dwell. Having searched his conscience and repented of his sins, he would step behind a veil and offer up the blood of calves and goats for the sins of Israel and her priests.

While the High Priest was officiating, the people would pray outside. The Talmud says, “Originally they used to fasten the thread of scarlet on the door of the [Temple] court on the outside. If it turned white the people used to rejoice, and if it did not turn white they were sad.” In other words, if the thread turned white, the people knew they were forgiven, but if it remained red, they believed that their sins had been too great and had therefore not been expiated by the sacrifice of the priest.

The Talmud also says that “[f]or forty years before the destruction of the Temple the thread of scarlet never turned white but it remained red.” The Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Approximately forty years prior, the great veil protecting the Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died. Both the ripping of the temple veil and the miracle of the scarlet thread symbolize the spiritual reality that the Jewish sacrifices were fulfilled by Jesus’ self-offering on the cross (Heb. 9:1-10:14).

In the new covenant forged in Christ’s blood, the Holy of Holies still exists but it is given a new name: The Bride of Christ. In the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John was shown “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” who appeared as “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (Rev. 21:9-11). An angel produced a measuring rod to prove that the city’s “length and breadth and height [were] equal” (Rev. 21:16). This rather odd detail is significant because the Holy of Holies had been a perfect cube. By describing the Bride of Christ in such a way, the author was saying that the Bride will attain perfect intimacy with God, something those under the old covenant could scarcely imagine.

Here on earth, however, the Bride of Christ is still “[making] herself ready” (Rev. 19:7). This is the subject for today’s Gospel reading. Jesus likened his kingdom to a field in which wheat and weeds grow up together. He emphasized that this coexistence of good and evil which is so familiar to us will not last. The world will eventually end; in the meantime, our individual worlds will end when we die.

Christ taught us that the only way to survive death was by accepting God’s gift of mercy. In Revelation 7:14, St. John saw the souls in heaven who had “come out of the great tribulation,” and they were exalting in God having “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Mercy transforms us just like the miracle of the scarlet thread. As the Lord said in Isaiah 1:18: “[T]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” May the Lord give us the grace to believe in and enter into a love that is truly miraculous.

For more information on the miracle of the scarlet thread, please see Roy Schoeman’s book, Salvation is from the Jews, pp. 130-132.

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.

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Crossing Over

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In the year 586 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar led his troops from Babylon to Jerusalem, intent on taking the city and its most precious gemstone, the Temple of Solomon. The Babylonian Talmud, a book of Jewish teaching, later recounted how as the fire spread throughout the sanctuary, the young priests took to the roof: “They said before God: Master of the Universe, since we did not merit to be faithful treasurers, and the Temple is being destroyed, let the Temple keys be handed to You.” Taking the keys of the Temple, they threw them upward, “and a kind of palm of a hand emerged and received the keys from them.” The priests then jumped from the roof down into the fire. The idea that the existence of the Temple, the central dwelling place of God’s presence, depended on the people’s fidelity to God was not unique to the Talmud. The Old Testament prophets had repeatedly warned Israel that dallying in the paganism of their neighbors precluded their ability to be “faithful treasurers” of God’s mysteries. The people’s idolatrous entanglements placed them outside the bounds of God’s covenant and therefore outside of his protection. That is why the Temple priests could connect the failings of Israel with King Nebuchadnezzar’s weakness for plunder.

Like the Temple, man and woman were made so as to be consecrated to God and dwelling places of his Spirit. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are introduced as God’s image and likeness, and the divine breath that gave them supernatural life made them children of God (Gen. 1:26, Lu. 3:38). After their fall from grace, the stain of original sin proved to be indelible, causing the author of Romans to lament, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (X:X).

As we know, when Jesus came, he reforged the covenant of God, but in order to do so, he had to confront the reality of death that had been the primeval consequence of sin. Interestingly, he explained this confrontation by likening his own body to the Jewish Temple: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it” (Jn. 2:19). These words were fulfilled when Jesus’ bodily temple was crucified and then raised from the dead three days later. In the words of Romans 6:10, “As to his death, he died to sin once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God.”

Because Jesus was the one “faithful treasurer” of God’s temple, his self-offering for sin was accepted. The Church tells us that baptism enables us to enter Christ’s body and become the vessels of holiness we were always intended to be. And yet baptism involves confronting the same reality of death that Jesus did: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4). The rite of baptism is meant to be actualized in our daily lives, meaning that this death to sin is simultaneously a death to self. Jesus put the situation plainly: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:37). The good news is that through the power of grace we can die to sin in the here and now, meaning that we can continually cross over into freedom and discover greater levels of union with God. In the words of the Savior: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.

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Making A Return

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“Jesus Christ, my sweet Master, presented Himself to me, all resplendent with glory, His Five Wounds shining like so many suns. Flames issued from every part of His Sacred Humanity, especially from His Adorable Breast, which resembled an open furnace and disclosed to me His most loving and most amiable Heart, which was the living source of these flames.” This vision received by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in June of 1674 was one of her many revelations that helped establish the Catholic Church’s devotion to the Sacred Heart. It continued with Jesus expressing grief over mankind: “If only they would make Me some return for My Love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were it possible, to suffer still more.” The readings for today are a meditation on what it means to “make a return” for Christ’s love amidst persecution and the mind-bending turmoil of life.

In the first reading found in Acts 25:13-21, St. Paul is being dragged before King Agrippa to be executed. Before the trial is finished, he gives a beautiful defense of the faith. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, he manifests a belief in God’s sovereignty that leaves him undeterred by the imminence of death. His conviction is echoed by the Responsorial Psalm in Psalm 103: “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.”

Inspiring as it is to observe St. Paul’s courage under fire, such a witness can feel a bit intimidating, if not downright unattainable. In the Gospel reading of John 21:15-19, Peter is the one whose faith is being tested. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, the unspeakable shame and horror of the cross engulfed Peter’s devotion, and he denied three times even knowing the Lord. He quickly repented, but the damage was done. Fear had broken his spirit, and his love for Christ was no longer sure.

In John 21 after the resurrection, Jesus gave Peter the chance to put a word on what happened, to describe his own fidelity or lack thereof. Interestingly, Jesus didn’t use the name, “Peter,” a name meaning “Rock,” but returned to his old name, “Simon”:

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”

In the original Greek text, Jesus used the word “agapaō” for “love,” which means “willing or sacrificial love,” whereas Peter responded by saying that he only loved Jesus with “phileō” love, meaning “friendly affection.” This little conversation repeated itself twice until Peter was “distressed.” No matter how much Jesus desired heroic love from the man to whom he had entrusted his flock, Peter in all honesty could not claim it as his own.

Thankfully, the conversation did not end there: Jesus addressed Peter’s upset by describing “the kind of death [by which Peter] would glorify God.” Far from being a prophecy of doom, this prediction of his eventual martyrdom must have been a consolation. Just because Peter was not able to follow in Jesus’ footsteps right away did not mean that he would not follow afterward. The same is true for us. Our inability to love properly often results in a string of failures whereby we hurt others and we hurt ourselves.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque suffered from her own inability to respond in kind to Christ’s great love. In another mystical encounter, Christ asked for her heart. When she gave it to him, she said he “placed it in His own Adorable Heart where He showed it to me as a little atom which was being consumed in this great furnace and withdrawing it thence as a burning flame in the form of a heart, He restored it to the place whence He had taken it.” When we approach Christ with Peter’s humility and allow him to forgive us, to love us, and to reconcile us with our brothers and sisters, we open ourselves up to the fire of his love. It is his purifying passion that empowers us to “make a return” and to give ourselves to the One who has given so much.

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Nikol M. Jones is in her final year at Franciscan University’s Master’s in Theology and Christian Ministry program where it has been her joy to learn how to integrate the tools of modern biblical scholarship with the principles of biblical interpretation set forth by the Catholic Church in the service of the Word of God. She also has a passion for creating artwork and children’s books that honor the life and teachings of Christ. When she’s not studying or painting, she utilizes her writing and organizational skills as an administrative assistant. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-m-jones-4b9893140/.