Class 27: Engaging the Four Evangelists

Pages 128 - 131

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So let me begin here on page 129, then, with the evangelists. Alright? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Remember, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar to each other. And then Saint John is his own. Alright? And then we're going to end with just the first of the great manifestations of Jesus as Lord with the baptism. Example one. Okay, so let's start with Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Alright, Matthew. Matthew is writing primarily to a Jewish audience. You recall St. Matthew's story. Remember, he's a tax collector in Capernaum. Capernaum, who's been to the Holy Land? Just raise your hand. Capernum is on the Sea of Galilee. Okay, so let me just give you a visual if you're not familiar with geography, it is super important in the Holy Land. Okay? So the Holy Land society is in New Jersey. Okay? In the north, one of the most important provinces for Christians is Galilee. Okay? There are certain towns in Galilee that are very important. For instance, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum. I'd say Magdala. Those are the big four. You can still go in there today. It's beautiful. And then at the very north, you have the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is a lake. It's called Lake Genesseret. It's about 20 miles north to south, and about 12 to 15 miles east to west. Okay? It's a good size body of water. Okay. North of Galilee, all the way up to Mount Tabor, near Mount, I'm sorry, even north of there, is Lebanon. So sometimes when I take groups in the Holy Land, we can't go much more north than Nazareth or the Sea of Galilee because Hezbollah's launching rockets into Israel. I mean, that's a little bit of a prohibitive. Okay, that's kind of a non-starter. Alright. So why can't we go, Father? Well, they're kind of launching rockets. Okay, that's good. We'll stay down here, which's a little bit safer, okay? You know, it's not like, oh, it's closed. There's a music, you know, there's a road closure. No, no, they're launching rockets. That's a kind of a different, you know, kind of a limiter on your on your life. Okay. So up in the Sea of Galilee, at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee is the opening of the Jordan River. And the Jordan River goes all the way down the middle of Israel. You pass through Samaria, the home of the good Samaritan, the home of the Samaritan woman at the well. Okay? And then you get to the southern province. Again, I'm going through a lot of other places. Judea. And three two towns in Judea are outstanding for our information. Bethlehem, eight miles from Jerusalem. With me? Okay? So Galilee in the north, Judea in the south. Matthew is from the north. He's from Capernaum. Capernaum was a bustling town in the first century. And why? It's a crossroads of people coming from the Mediterranean in the west, across the north of Israel, through Capernum, and then further east into Jordan. And then on to Persia, Syria. Okay, like these roads. And you know, people, I mean, most transportation was your feet. Okay? Only the wealthy could afford wagons if they were even available. Mostly people just walk and carry things. That's how things, information traveled, that's okay. So Matthew's from Capernaum, and Capernaum is a very, very important place because it's not only where Matthew was called, but it's also where Peter and Andrew were called, or brothers, and two other brothers, James and John. They're all in business together as fishermen. So that's five of the twelve. Five of the twelve. Almost half of the apostles are from Capernaum. So when Matthew's writing his gospel, his audience is primarily Jewish converts to the faith. And he's very, very aware that the way he's composing his gospel, okay, is attuned to the fact that most of the people who are going to be reading it or hearing about it are of Jewish extract. So many of the conventions that Matthew uses in his gospel already assume some knowledge of Judaism. Now, Matthew's gospel, its most important part, at least in my opinion, is Matthew chapters 5 through 8. Matthew 5 through 8 is the Sermon on the Mount. It begins with the Beatitudes. Chapter 5, verse 1. Okay? Now it's very there are really beautiful details there. For instance, it begins. Jesus ascended a mountain and he sat down and began to teach. Now that to you might seem like a minute detail. Loaded. Loaded, loaded. First of all, in Judaism, their sense of direction is very different than us in the West. This is what I'm saying, the bigger theme. Don't project your Western conventions on the Bible. They don't always fit. I'll give you an example. Here we are in Virginia. If I go to Miami today, I would say I'm going or I'm driving or walking or cycling or flying down to Miami. Right? Because for us, down is north to south. If I'm in Miami, three days later, I'm saying I'm going back to Virginia, I'm flying up to Virginia. No one in our country would say, at least no one sane would say, I'm flying down to Virginia. Okay. But in Judaism, you would. Why? Because up and down does not mean north to south. It means sea level to mountain. In Judaism, yeah. So for instance, take the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is in Luke's gospel, we'll get to that in a second. Right? It says a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He's going down in elevation, but he's going north in direction. We would not say that. We would say that man is going up to Jericho because he's going north. Not for the Jews. See, these are these little things. Okay, so Jesus ascends the mountain, which is always the posture of when God intends to speak to his people. For instance, remember when Abraham and Isaac go up Mount Moriah? Revelation. Mount Tabor, up the mountain, Revelation. Mount Sinai, up the mountain, Revelation. See that? So the idea of going up means this is time for revelation. Jesus is going to say something that's going to reveal something to us about the Father. So he ascends a mount, the Sermon on the Mount, now, even more profound. And then before he opened his mouth, it says he sat down. Now look, we get up and sit down all day long, and we don't think anything of it, other than, oh, it's nice to have a seat when you've been standing a long time. Like for example, I'd like to have a seat right now. But okay. So, but in scripture, when you sit down, that's a posture of teaching. Now, do we have that in the West? Yeah. Cathedral from the Latin cathedra, which means seat of the bishop. If you play an instrument in an orchestra, if you're number one violin, you have the first seat. If you have an endowed chair at the university, that's because you're a teacher. And your position is not only tenured, but fully funded. See that? So we have a sense of that even in the West. But even these little details are so important. So when you're doing Bible study, don't gloss over things as simple as he went up the mountain, sat down, that means he's going to teach, and then open his mouth. And when by the way, in Hebrew, in Greek too, when you say open your mouth, it doesn't mean, I mean, it does, but because it means he's about to enunciate something important. Okay? So the phrasing sometimes gets lost on us because, one, for those of you who speak other languages, you know, there's some things about other languages that don't translate very well. Like my Filipinas here. No. There's a lot of Filipino humor, this should be true in Spanish too. There's a lot of humor that just doesn't make sense in English. Because the word play only makes sense in the other language. And we all experience that. Okay? So just be aware of that. So that's just one example. So for my money, Matthew 5 through 8 is the meat of Matthew's gospel. Okay. So far, so good? Any questions about any of that? Okay, we'll do more questions at the end. Okay, let's go on to Mark. Now, Mark, another interesting gospel, the shortest of the four, okay? John Mark, as St. Paul calls him, is St. Peter's secretary. So it's very fair to call the Gospel of St. Mark the Gospel of St. Peter. I mean, we don't call it that, okay? And don't call it that, but I'm just saying it's when you're reading Mark, you're reading Peter's encounter with the Lord. Okay? And Peter figures prominently in Mark. Now, I just want to make mention of one thing about the Gospels in general, and this is especially true of the synoptics. One of the proofs of the authenticity of the Gospels and why these are canonical, is that the Gospels are not propaganda. They're testaments. They're testimonies to what they've encountered. And they're very unique because, normally speaking, if you're trying to start a new movement, here we'll say Christianity, you tend to not feature any of the foils or failings of the group. But you notice in Mark's gospel, same in Matthew and Luke, repeatedly the apostles, the disciples. In John, they're called disciples. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're called apostles. So many stories of their hardness of heart, their lack of belief, their treachery, right? Betrayal and denial. I mean, normally speaking, you're starting a group, you don't talk like, you know, nobody likes to bring up Benedict Arnold. Like, you know, ah, it's one of our guys. You know? But when we mention Judas without, you know, we don't, we don't even like shy away from Judas. He's always mentioned as the one who betrayed Jesus. Okay? And this is part of the authenticity of the gospels, because what the gospel are actually trying to do was give hearers a sense of their encounter and that Jesus' healing grace transformed these men, especially post-Pentecost. And they were new men after Pentecost, imbued with the Holy Spirit. Normally speaking, you know, like for instance, if you remember back in the days, I don't know if they still do this, I haven't bought a new car in like forever. But, you know, I remember as a kid, my parents would buy a new car. I like to tag along to the dealership, and I used to love those glossy brochures, you know, and then the showroom problem, and you know, the car never looks like the one in the magazine, or you know, it's like, you know, okay. And of course, you know, they're not gonna say, oh, this this car's been really bad in the safety ratings, uh, breaks down all the time. I mean you're not gonna see any of that. But in the gospels you do. Okay, and Jesus, by the way, scolds the disciples on multiple occasions for their lack of virtue. Okay, now I just want to mention, you know, I mentioned something about St. Matthew's gospel about going up the mountain and sitting down and opening his mouth. Mark's gospel, even more even more provocative. Because that's not provocative, that's very consoling to me in your teaching. This is Mark's gospel. Mark writes his gospel in Rome, probably right after the martyrdom of St. Peter. Okay, so the tradition in Rome is that after being at the Vatican Hill in the arena, the Circus of Nero, to watch Peter killed, Mark runs across town, crosses the Tiber into downtown Rome, and he sits at the base of the Capitoline Hill, the top of which are the Imperial palaces. And he said, This is the first line, Mark 1.1, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now that's extremely provocative. And you know what? Most people gloss right over Mark 1.1 and have no idea how provocative that is. Why? First of all, the title Son of God was reserved for the Caesars who were considered divine. Okay? Now, gospel from the Greek Evangelion means glad tiding or tidings of military victory. This is what Mark's saying. He just saw Peter killed for Christ. In the city at the bottom of the Capital Hill, I can just romantically imagine it, parchment and quill. And he scratches the evangelion, the glad tidings of military battle Peter just won by his martyrdom, of Jesus Christ, the real Son of God, not Caesar. And he's at the bottom of the hill. Almost doesn't say, okay. Alright? Now, where are the Caesars? Tourist monuments. Right? Just go to the forum. Go to Circus Maximus. Coliseum, it's all there. Who's reigning in Rome? Far well known in the world as Pope Leo, not Giorgio Maloney, the Prime Minister of Italy, whom I love by the way. But okay? So you can see that, I mean, Mark was prophetic. He's like, this is going to change the world. Could you imagine European history without Christianity? You can't. It's inextricable. You can't separate those two things. Okay? So extremely provocative. Now, does this even have consequences for our architecture? Sure. Just by show of hands, how many of you have been to Rome? Okay, good. If you go to a Roman church, okay, very classic Romanesque church, you'll notice that as you get to the sanctuary, there's usually an arch, and on the pediment of the arch, usually a lot of mosaic work. That's not just aesthetics, that's theological. Because arches were symbols of military victory, Evangelion. So, Arch of Constantine, right next to the Arch of Titus, both of which are next to the Coliseum. Champs-Élysée, the Arc de Triomphe. The French, in their imperial mode, thought of themselves as the new Roman emperors. So that arch. So you know, when the priest is processing in the mass, the cross bearer is like the standard bearer in a battle. It used to be Roman soldiers carrying one that said SPQR. Sinatus Papoluspe Romani, the send to the people of Rome. And the church says, take that down, put a cross on top. It's almost as if to mock death. You think we're scared of dying as martyrs? Our leader, the Lord, paid the ultimate price. So the priest processing in is processing in to do battle in the sanctuary, passing through the military arch of victory, to do cosmic battle with evil in representing Calvary on the altar. See we we see these things every Sunday. Most people don't know that. I'm sure most, I mean, I don't know, well, maybe all of you knew that, but most people I talked to don't know don't know that. That procession, that's why the music is supposed to be a little bit more state, you know. Leap in the mountains, bound in the hill. I mean, yeah, that's like that's hard, like glory and praise is hardly like, you know, that's not what you would have heard in a Roman procession. They would have had trumpets and triumphal, like, we are going to win. Okay? Not, you know, Woltrap and Indigo Girls and James Taylor. Okay. This is sort of that kind of betrays the moment. Okay. Now, let's move on to Luke. Luke, I would argue, is the gospel of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Why? No, okay. Matthew is Jewish. Luke is a Gentile. Luke's perspective is decidedly non-Jewish. Okay? Now there's two big currents here. One is the role of the Blessed Mother. Read the infancy narratives we use for Christmas in Luke. The only person who could have given him that information was Our Lady. Read it very carefully. I'll give you an example. When she gives birth, remember from last time I talked about perpetual virginity, she bore forth the son not through the birth canal, put him in swaddling clothes, then usually had a midwife to do that. Even poor Jewish women had a midwife, an assistant, someone, like a dula or somebody nearby who would help. You never did that yourself. You can only do it yourself if you haven't passed through the birth canal. Because you haven't been ravaged by that experience. Okay. Or any of the infancy narratives in Luke are decidedly married. So the Magnificat with St. Elizabeth at the visitation, she's there, obviously. That's all very lucky. Okay. But even there's even more. Luke is particularly interested in appealing his gospel to the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast. Especially the sinner. So you know the most famous parable in all of the Gospels is the parable of the prodigal son. Most things. You know, people use that even in American colloquial English. They haven't seen a guy for a while, he's come back. Oh, the prodigal son has returned. Okay, just sort of tongue-in-cheek, right? Luke's gospel is the only gospel that has a parable of the prodigal son. It's singularly Lucan. You don't find that in any other gospel. The second most popular parable in the New Testament is Good Samaritan. Only Luke. The prodigal son is a sinner. The Samaritan is from Samaria, who were the blood enemies of the Jews. He's the hero. Remember, for the Jewish mind, the only good Samaritan was a dead one. And why? Because at the time of the Babylonian exile, 500 years, or well, less than 500 years since before Christ, when the entire nation was deported to modern day Iraq, the Jews of the 12 tribes kept the bloodline pure by only intermarrying among Among the twelve tribes. The Samaritans in the Jewish mind made a huge blunder in marrying non-Jews. And they polluted the bloodline. Now, you think that sounds eugenic? It is. Is that racist? Absolutely. Okay? I mean, we're so conscious, we're so sensitive about racism in our country. We are not a racist country compared to Europe and the Middle East. Oh my gosh. And not saying that that's the bar we should be following. But relative to the rest of the world, we are not a racist country at all, trust me, compared to them. I mean, there are so many expressions in Italian, for instance, that I learned, unfortunately, that are intrinsically racist. And it's not, by the way, about the Germans or the Spanish, it's about themselves. Okay? Like most people in Milan think anything south of Rome is no longer Italy. They don't consider Sicilians Italians. Okay? I mean, I mean, okay, they're like, oh yeah, I guess officially, but then come on, really. Okay. It makes really remarkable. And they don't make any apologies about it either. Okay? So, alright. So, Luke's gospel is super rich with those two parables. And then lastly, let me make a mention here of John. Again, you know, I'm limited here on time, but John depicts the Lord as not only the fulfillment of the Old Testament, but he's trying to work out what the church will struggle with for her first 300 years of the personhood and nature of Christ. Even the idea that the second person of the Trinity, the Word of the Father, the Logos, from all eternity in time, John's Gospel, takes on humanity in all things but sin. John's Gospel is constantly making reference to Christ as a divine person, not a human person. Don't say Jesus is a human person. Okay? That's Arianism. We struggled with that for 300 years to rid the church of that. Jesus is not a human person. He's a divine person who takes on human nature. And again, I don't have time to get into the distinction between personhood and nature. That's a little bit too if they take that, that'd be a whole class, okay? And it's really a philosophical concept anyway. Okay. So the first 300 years of the church, notice in 2025, last year, we celebrated the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Constantinople Creed. So next May I'm doing a trip to Greece and Turkey, and we're gonna actually have mass over where the Nicene Constantinople Creed was first said. The one we say after the Gospels? Alright? I believe in one God. The long form, not the Rosary Apostles' Creed. But you notice the Nicene Constantinople Creed, which takes most of its source material from John, okay, 80% of the creed is about Jesus. Little bit about the Father, a little bit about the Holy Spirit and the church and the forgiveness of sins. But the tradition is that the Apostles' Creed, the one we pray at the Rosary, was established in about 95 A.D. at the Council of Jerusalem. There, it's the 12 basic statements about Catholicism, which at the time was just Christianity. Same thing. Okay. And then the Nicene Constantinople Creed takes the parts about Jesus and deepens and widens because so many controversies came up about his personhood, his nature, and his salvific acts on the cross and the paschal mystery. So the church had to define terms, but it took 300 years. Which is another remarkable thing, right? Because normally, like organizations that are taking that long to kind of figure things out normally aren't going to last. I mean, our country's only 250 years. The church took 300 years just to get the creed right. Okay? Okay. Now, in a remaining time, I just want to spend a couple of minutes on the baptism of Christ. The baptism of the Lord is one of three moments of revelation. The first is the epiphany. We celebrate on January 6th, three kings or the magi. Remember, gold, frankincense, smurr? That's Jesus as an infant. The second is the baptism of the Lord. And then the third is the wedding feast of Cana, which is singularly in John's gospel. At the end of the narrative of the wedding feast of Cana, John writes, Jesus performed this as the first of his miracles. And then he adds the famous line and his disciples began to believe in him. Okay, like that's a seminal moment. So here I'm just focusing on the second one, the baptism of the Lord. The baptism of the Lord is not the same as our baptism. Because our baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus did not need to be forgiven of sin. His baptism is from the Greek baptisma, which means cleansing, but mostly symbolic, I can say all symbolic, because the primary role of baptism is one, the infusion of the virtues, faith, hope, and love, prudence, charity, I'm sorry, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Jesus does not need the virtues, he is the fullness of virtue, and the forgiveness of original sin. Notice I haven't mentioned a thing Jesus needed, because guess what? God doesn't need anything. He's good. Okay? But the manifestation of the dove and the Father's voice firmly plants the concept of the divine trinity. It's the first time in the New Testament we have evidence of the Trinity. But it's not the first time in the scriptures. Anyone know where the first time in the scriptures we have some evidence already of the Trinity?

unknown 28:47

Genesis.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Genesis, in the creation of Adam and Eve, God says, let us make him in our image and likeness. Interesting, right? He refers to himself in the first person plural. He does not say, allow me. He says, let us. And then it's also references to the Spirit hovering above the waters in the vast abyss. Some people relegate that to the Holy Spirit. Okay. So the baptism of the Lord is extremely important in the New Testament because it brings together the central mystery of Christianity, which is that the Godhead is tripartite. Three persons, one God, all consubstantial with the other. The Son is begotten, not made. He's not created. Consubstantial with the Father, sharing of the same nature. Now, listen, this is a very hard thing for us to grasp because generally speaking, and by the way, we're not saying that God is three personalities. He's three persons. He's not three avatars, like in Hinduism, like three faces of the same head. No, three distinct persons. Now listen, if you told any of your friends that you were three persons, say, there's help for you. You are tripolar. Not bipolar. That's already its own set of issues. You're tripolar. I mean, you've got real problems, okay? You're tripolar. Now no one speaks like that. By the way, do you notice that bipolar people don't have two persons, it's two personalities of one person. This is the central mystery of Christianity. It's God is a Trinity. God is community. He's the first community. And by the way, anytime you gaze upon the host, I mean, we say that's the body of the Son, right? But I mean, if the Son's there, so is the Father and the Holy Spirit. They're consubstantial. Okay? I mean, some may I even argue piously it's also the Blessed Mother, because the flesh of the Son of Man comes from her. Okay? I mean, that's not crazy talk. I mean, I get it. That's a logical conclusion. We don't normally appropriate these things. But what do we do? We appropriate creation to the Father, redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Holy Spirit. But when one acts, they all act. Okay? It's not like the Son's, you know, doing his thing, and the Father and the Holy Spirit are like, well, listen, you've got a three-year run, we'll be back. We're gonna go on a trip, hang out. Okay? No. And by the way, not for a moment did Jesus lose consciousness that he was divine. Now, how he does that, I don't know, because but that's that's what you can do when you're divine person. You know, there are these theologians who say Jesus grew into an awareness of his divinity. That's heresy. Jesus was never not aware he was Jesus. Now you might say, well, how can he do that without a human brain? Well, remember, divine knowledge far surpasses human capacities. We do this chronologically, divine persons have always existed, namely the three. See the difference? That's why do not call him a human person. I hear this all the time. I even get nervous when they say he's a human being. Because I don't know if they know the difference between being in person. If they do, okay, I get it. When I'm talking to my colleagues, I know they know what they're talking about. But if I'm not talking to a person who gets those distinctions, being in person, by the way, just as a sidebar, that's the abortion debate these days. Did you know that? The proborts will concede the fetus is a human being, meaning they have all the constitution of an organism called Homo sapiens. But the question they do not accept, or the the um thesis they don't accept, is that their being is equivocated with their personhood. They may be a human organism, but they don't have personhood until the mother says so. Now, have we been down this road before? Yeah, in the United States, in fact. Remember to Dred Scott, a black person, a black man actually, not even a black woman, a black man was three-fifths of a human person for the sake of apportionment of free states and slave states. Okay, so here we go again. The person and being debate, which is central in scripture and Christology, the study of Christ, is precisely at the heart of the pro-life versus pro-abortion ongoing fight. Okay, so if you don't think these things have relevance, they do. Ask the child in the womb. Okay, they have a lot of relevance. Okay. We are at 1045?

unknown 34:07

1047.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

1047. My union contract ends. And um, from this moment on I'm paid over time. Which means I think I get to stay a few more nights. Something like that. Okay, let me close here. And if anyone needs to leave or wants to leave, you may. And if anyone wants to stay for some questions, I have time. Okay? Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. God bless your day, and see you next time. Thanks for listening.