Quadragesima Sunday

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, Quadragesima Sunday. Quadragesima means forty, and it is now forty days until Good Friday. Quadragesima is the name in Latin for the whole season of Lent.

Today would have been a good day for the restoration of the traditional Mass. For Eastern Catholics and schismatics, "The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy" is celebrated today, in remembrance of the overthrow of Iconoclasm in AD 843. This destroying impulse had periodically afflicted the east since 726. The Holy Roman Catholic Church in recent years has had its own destroyers of pious tradition to cope with, and it still reels from the effects of their pernicious influence.

It is not yet 8 am in Rome, so it is possible that the motu could be published today. But since no one hints that Pope Benedict will do anything today on this score, apparently the wait will continue. [The Holy Father will be on retreat with the Curia this week, starting today, so no news is likely this week].

I hope the Church will not have to wander for a full forty years in a liturgical desert of its own creating.

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From the Novus Ordo first reading for today:

When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us,
imposing hard labor upon us,
we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry
and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
He brought us out of Egypt
with his strong hand and outstretched arm,
with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;
and bringing us into this country,
he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.

Deuteronomy 26:6-9

From the traditional epistle for today:

We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful.

2 Corinthians 6:8

Both the old and new Gospel readings for today recount Jesus' temptation by the Devil, after His 40 days of fasting. The Anglican Reverend Dr. Peter Toon [who should really be Catholic] offers this meditation on the temptations of our Lord.

Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity [Day 2]

Posted two years ago today in Occidentalis:
An interesting quote from Bishop Kallistos Ware (via Pontifications):

At Corpus Christi processions, the Orthodox behaved with marked reverence towards the Latin sacrament. The Chian Jesuit Andrea Rendi recounts how in 1630 the Greek Metropolitan with another Orthodox bishop went specially to a house from which they could conveniently observe the procession, while in front of the building they posted three priests, to cense the blessed sacrament as it passed. On the predominantly Orthodox island of Andros, the Greek bishop himself took part in the Latin Corpus Christi procession, accompanied by his clergy in full vestments, with candles and torches.

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May the Good Lord reward those Greek bishops, successors of the Apostles, for their reverence, and inspire in us a similar attitude!

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Today is the second day of the octave of prayer for Christian unity.

ANTIPHON: That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in me and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.

V. I say unto thee, thou art Peter;

R. And upon this rock I will build my Church.

[Our Lord called twelve men to be Apostles, and they received power and authority from Him, but only one is listed first, and to that one alone did He entrust the keys of His kingdom. May all of Christendom return to unity with Peter, the rock chosen by the Lord.]

For the return of the Eastern Orthodox Christians to communion with the Apostolic See.

Let us pray. Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who saidst unto Thine apostles, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you;" regard not our sins, but the faith of Thy Church, and grant unto her that peace and unity which is according to Thy will, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and ever.

O gracious Father, we humbly beseech thee for Thy holy Catholic Church; that Thou wouldst be pleased to fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it it in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, establish it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Him who died and rose again, and ever liveth to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord.

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, The Prince of Peace; Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that as there is but one Body and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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All or Many? (from an Eastern Orthodox forum)

From OrthodoxChristianity.net:

The young fogey wrote:
I don't know if Eastern Orthodoxy has proclaimed anything either way but its consecration prayers get it right and say 'many'.


Νεκτάριος wrote:
Either a bad translation or an attempt to change the theology of the RCC even more. In the Tridentine mass and the latin version of the new missal "for many" is used. You can only come up with calvinism if you read that into the scriptures. Taken in context with the rest of liturgy and the scriptures calvinism has no place... besides if the Lord did die for all, He also died for many.

...I misread, Br. Max's post....since in the current english translation of the RCC mass (which I had thought he was refering to ) "for all" is used. I know "for many" is what Greek says, so I was just tired and confused I think.


But JohnCassian wrote:
Essentially, 'many' is a woodenly literal translation of what Christ said in the words of institution as recorded in Mark. However, the Greek word 'polloi' or 'many', as your initial post pointed out, is used by St. Paul frequently to mean 'all', because it is being used (as it was in the Septuagint) to overlay/translate a Hebrew/Aramaic word that has the connotation of all. So, the first liturgical sample is translating woodenly literally from the Greek. The second is translating for meaning.

The Tridentine explanation is a pretty classic example of late-Medieval rationalizing after the fact, because the discipline of philology was just then being revived by the Humanists and the real reasoning behind the word had been lost.

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I guessed that JohnCassian probably picked up this many = all idea during his journey out of Calvinism, before he arrived at Orthodoxy. His comments sound like something out of ICEL. To confirm that many = all is not the Orthodox view, I asked for comments here. To my surprise, here is the answer I received:

Please pardon my ignorance, but I honestly don't see a difference between saying "for many" or "for all". We believe that Christ shed His blood for all, but not everyone will believe or accept His sacrifice. Therefore, "for many", it (i.e. His Blood) will save them.

Just an additional note... I just opened my Orthodox Study Bible, and according to it:

14:24 For many is the Semitic way of saying for all, for an innumerable people (see Matthew 26:28).

I was curious how an Orthodox Study Bible could say such an unlikely thing. First, I found that the Orthodox do not have much to choose from in the way of study Bibles: just one, according to this book review on Amazon.com. Perhaps that is why it appears to be widely used. Not everyone loves the study guide, however. An Eastern Orthodox Abbot wrote a generally negative review:

There is much that some people may find useful in this book, but there is much that is wrong or misleading. It was not to be expected that the ROCOR would have co-operated in such a project, but it needs a good injection of traditional old-fashioned, even old-world, Orthodoxy.

And on the same site, an EO priest wrote:

As one reads the notes to the text, a false, non-Orthodox tone becomes uncomfortably apparent. ... There is not anything inherently wrong in the idea of writing notes on a Bible to help convince non-Orthodox of the truth of Orthodoxy (assuming the notes accurately reflect the true views and positions of Orthodoxy, which is by no means always the case in the Study Bible) ... These comments are representative of the non-Orthodox viewpoint which permeates this Study Bible and which makes it unsuited for use by Orthodox Christians. ... several more reliable "Orthodox Study" Bible commentaries are available in English for Orthodox readers (e.g. Johanna Manley's "The Bible and the Holy Fathers" her "Grace for Grace: The Psalter and the Holy Fathers" (which has the added advantage of using the Orthodox Psalter as its basic text, rather than the Protestant one); and the ongoing translation of Blessed Theophylact's commentaries on the Gospels.

On a website associated with the very traditional Holy Transfiguation Monastery, a reviewer stated:

The Orthodox Study Bible, as is obvious from the few representative examples, is not patristic either in conception or content, in formulation or expression, in its commentaries or addenda; indeed, it is often not only unpatristic and untraditional, but anti-patristic and anti-traditional. If it is not patristic, to call it Orthodox is a misnomer verging on misrepresentation.

On the other hand, I found more web sites using or recommending the O.S.B. than condeming it. So I don't know. It looks to me like heresy slips past complacent Orthodox as easily as it slips past complacent Catholics, if it comes from a credentialed source.