Bach's Actus tragicus

J.S. Bach composed the cantata Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit ("God's time is the very best time") around 1707, when he was a young man.  As Ken Myers observed in his column,

[It] is both a musical and theological tour de force. In this 20-minute-long work (also known as Actus tragicus) Bach organizes biblical texts, Lutheran melodies, and instrumental textures to convey the comforting message of the gospel in the face of death. ... This remarkable and confidently assuring work should be much better known than it is. So now: go hear it. Be comforted and amazed.

See, for instance, this video of a performance by the Netherlands Bach Society.

B.E. Murillo, The Two Trinities, 1675-1682.  (Image: Web Gallery of Art)

Today is Trinity Sunday.  Murillo (1617-1682) was a Spanish Baroque artist who painted many hopeful, beautiful religious paintings despite his harsh life and the difficult times in which he lived.  This image combines the Holy Trinity (the three Persons who are one God) and the Holy Family.  According to the Web Gallery of Art:

The Christ Child is raised on a dressed stone, both a compositional device to set him at the apex of a triangle in the centre of the painting and symbolic: 'thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion...a precious corner stone, a sure foundation' (Isaiah 28:16). As the clouds part to reveal the divine light, their shadows temper the bold red and ultramarine blue, the apricots, pinks, gold and white of the highlights to a wonderful overall harmony, a haze of grey, sky-blue and saffron.

The Good Shepherd

“The Good Shepherd ,” Medieval Art, accessed April 26, 2020, http://projects.leadr.msu.edu/medievalart/items/show/15.

Today's Gospel is from the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John (10:11-16):

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

The image here is a fifth-century mosaic in a mausoleum in Ravenna, Italy.  Note that the sheep are all looking at Jesus, the shepherd, who is sitting in a pasture but wearing royal robes.  The shepherd is also a king.

Theological Aesthetics

In The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume I: Seeing the Form, Hans Urs von Balthasar describes a theological aesthetics that "develops its theory of beauty from the data of revelation itself with genuinely theological methods." 

According to von Balthasar, the supreme object of beauty is the form of divine revelation centered on Jesus Christ, who is God, bears witness to God as a man, and reveals God's glory, "the primal splendour of the love of a God who humiliates himself."  This sacrifice does not destroy, however, for it transfigures all of creation through love.  His form, "the most sublime of beauties," which can be seen by those filled with the Holy Spirit, captivates Christians and inflames their love, and thus the Christian form is the most beautiful human form.

(Quotes are from the translation by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, published by Ignatius Press.)

The Spirit of the Liturgy

In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, published in 2000, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI discussed the history of Christian liturgical music, which began after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1-2):

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him."

According to Benedict, "Christians now sing an altogether new song, which is truly and definitively new in view of the wholly new thing that has taken place in the Resurrection of Christ. ... It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us to sing. ... Church music comes into being as a charism, a gift of the Spirit."

Liturgical music went through different phases, and each phase ended with changes that were made to keep it centered on Jesus Christ and the true nature of the liturgy.

Regarding music in the current age, Benedict laments that classical music is "an elitist ghetto," while two other types of music entertain everyone else: pop music, which is a commercial product, and rock music, which provides only "the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects."

Liturgical music, unlike these forms, must proclaim the Word in response to God's love, inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that it "elevates the senses by uniting them with the spirit" and expresses "man's special place in the general structure of being."  Finally, liturgical music should have a "cosmic character" because, in the liturgy, "we sing with the angels."

Chaput on Fides et Ratio

In the March 2018 issue of First Things, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput discussed the lessons of Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II's encyclical on faith and reason.  (Last year I discussed this document here.)

Archbishop Chaput highlighted the pope's emphasis on truth:

John Paul II argues that the search for truth is central to any genuinely human culture. The drive to understand the world and our place in it is one of the most basic human hungers. Truth is not the enemy of freedom but its foundation, since it gives us the capacity to love reality as it really is. Knowledge of the truth expands our freedom to love.

The search for truth and the capacity to love are both important and are not opposed to one another. 

We can only resolve our inner confusions about life by seeking the objective truth about things, and by exploring that truth with others who hold us accountable to reality. As John Paul states bluntly, “Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”

But searching for the truth is not limited to scientific, empirical research.

The aim of any true philosophy, it notes, should be to find the unity of truth in all things, an understanding of the whole. This demands an engagement with the classical discipline we call “metaphysics,” ... an exotic word for a very basic subject: the study of the deep truths and harmonies built into the world.

As we journey through Lent towards Good Friday and Easter in a world that denies the existence of any truth beyond this world, we must, as the pope wrote, seek answers in Jesus Christ:

Reason cannot eliminate the mystery of love which the Cross represents, while the Cross can give to reason the ultimate answer which it seeks.

The Christian Way

The statement by Evangelicals and Catholics Together on The Christian Way was published in the December 2017 issue of First Things.  Some highlights:

Being a Christian requires more than intellectual or moral agreement with Christian teachings. Christ asks for our love and loyalty. Following him requires conversion, which leads to membership in the Church, the Body of Christ. To be a Christian means being a citizen of a city that has a rich inheritance and glorious future. 

Even now, the Christian way bears witness to the fullness of life promised in Christ. Caring for the sick and the poor, friendship for the prisoner and the outcast, comforting the sorrowful and educating those who need instruction: These are works of mercy that embody the love of God in Christ. This active witness is crowned by ongoing prayer for the needs of fellow Christians, as well as for the world. 

The Christian way seeks to be faithful to that which has been given by God, which turns it outward rather than inward. It serves God’s love for the world. Evangelization seeks to bring people to Christ. But this is not so that Christianity might grow more powerful and “win.” Instead, the Christian mission proclaims the good news that God, in his mercy, offers deliverance to humanity from the power of sin and death, opening up a new future in which the fullness of life reigns. 

Symbols and Revelation

In Models of Revelation, Avery Cardinal Dulles presented five models (descriptions) of revelation that seem to be in conflict: (1) propositions about God (including the statements in the Bible), (2) God’s deeds and the prophets' insights about these events, which are recorded in the Bible, (3) an inner and immediate experience of communion with God, (4) a dialectical presence in which God speaks to a believer who better understands his true powerlessness, and (5) a new perspective or higher level of consciousness that leads to activity to transform the world. 

Dulles gave a definition inspired by all five models: 

Revelation is God’s free action whereby he communicates saving truth to created minds, especially through Jesus Christ as accepted by the apostolic Church and attested by the Bible and by the continuing community of believers.

Dulles then proposed an approach based on the power of symbols, which are divine signs that suggest more meanings than they clearly state and have properties in common with revelation: they are engaging, transforming, influential, and insightful.

I would synthesize his ideas as follows: First, in the past, God revealed Himself in deeds and events and through the life, death, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.  God’s people have perceived (and continue to perceive) these events as symbols, and the propositions (doctrines) of the Church (in the Bible and Tradition) state truths that interpret and explain these symbols (in a limited way), but the symbols also express things that propositions cannot.  Second, a person may have an inner experience of God, but this must be through symbols that provide a way for the person to articulate the experience.  Third, through God's grace, with or without an inner experience, any Christian, by knowing about God’s deeds and agreeing to the Church’s doctrines, can hear God speaking to him (through these symbols) and better understand who God is.  Moreover, “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe,” (Ephesians 1:18-19) the Christian will have a new perspective on his vocation and the meaning of his life, which will yield a higher consciousness that results in serving God and transforming the world by loving his neighbor.

References cited:  

Avery Cardinal Dulles, Models of Revelation, Orbis Books, 1992.

Thomas G. Guarino, “Why Avery Dulles Matters,” First Things, May 2009.

Revelation and the Word of God

Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation issued by the Second Vatican Council in 1965, explains the importance of divine revelation and its relationship with sacred Scripture (the Bible) and Tradition.  The document was written "so that by hearing the message of salvation the whole world may believe, by believing it may hope, and by hoping it may love" (Preface).

Jesus Christ "perfected revelation by fulfilling it" through his life, death, and resurrection.  He commissioned the Apostles to preach what he taught them.  Consequently, "by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances" they "handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit."  The Apostles and others "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" fulfilled this commission by writing down "the message of salvation." Their writings became the New Testament.  The four Gospels "faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven."  In the other books of the New Testament, "those matters which concern Christ the Lord are confirmed, His true teaching is more and more fully stated, the saving power of the divine work of Christ is preached, the story is told of the beginnings of the Church and its marvelous growth, and its glorious fulfillment is foretold."

Thus, reading the Bible is an important part of the Christian life:

in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life. (Chapter 6)