Templar Edification

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to  them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his  understanding and his answers. -Luke 2:46-47 There is a sense in which the Gospels were written backwards. New Testament scholars refer to “the messianic secret,” the notion, firmly established in the text, that Jesus’ nature and identity are fully revealed only in the Resurrection. Before that He is misunderstood and misapprehended, even by those closest to Him: His Apostles, His Mother, His brothers and His sisters. Easter unveils Him not only as Christ and King but as the Word made flesh, God Himself incarnate. The paschal mystery illuminates all: all that went before, and all to follow after. The earliest Christian confession was the amazed and breathless cry, “Christ is Lord!”—with full understanding that Lord, κύριος, is the established Hellenistic euphemism for the Hebrew Name of God. The Resurrection is the b...

The Bible is a vulgar thing—from the Latin vulgus, meaning “common people.” When St Jerome translated the Christian Scriptures into Latin at the end of the fourth century, he did so because few in the West still spoke Greek. Latin was the common tongue of the common people; thus, Jerome’s Bible came to be known as the Vulgate, regular language for regular folks. The dialect of Greek from which Jerome had worked was koine, which also means “common.” Koine was the language of the Hellenistic world, of all the varied cultures and kingdoms conquered by Alexander the Great. The Gospels were written down in koine, despite Jesus teaching in Aramaic, so that everyone could hear and understand. And what was Aramaic? Why, it was the common Semitic tongue spoken by the Judeans following their return from the Babylonian Exile. We read in the Book of Ezra that most exiled Israelites could no longer understand Hebrew, the language of the Law, and so when the Law was read aloud, learned Levites had t...

The liturgical year of the Western Church begins anew at Advent, the season of four Sundays preceding the Nativity of Our Lord. It is a time of hope and expectation, of preparing our hearts and our homes for the King. In it, we await and we watch for light amidst the dark. When it comes to Yuletide celebrations, the Church often seems out of step with the surrounding culture. We laugh, a bit bitterly, regarding the appearance of Christmas decorations even before Halloween. My children cast covetous eyes upon those homes which have decorated their trees well ahead of Thanksgiving. And who could blame the advance guard? Perhaps you may be one yourself. It’s been a rough few years, a rough couple of decades. Who am I to begrudge someone their joy? If Christmas makes you happy, well, it makes me happy too. And we could all use some good holiday cheer both early and often. Yet Advent offers to us something a little different, something more than simply delayed gratification or finger-waving...