The Faith Explained with Cale Clarke

If you attended Mass earlier today, you witnessed the end of an era. Today was the final celebration of the liturgy with the now “old” English translation of Mass, officially known as the 2nd Edition of the Roman Missal in English. Beginning tonight with the vigil Masses for the 1st Sunday of Advent, we will be using the 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal – the new English translation – in North America, and in many other English-speaking countries around the world.

I can’t wait to get started with the new translation. Since I created The New Mass app for iOS and Android, and have been giving all kinds of presentations explaining the new Missal, one might expect that. But I really do believe this is going to be great. Pope Benedict said when the final text was presented to him last year that he hoped it would serve as “a springboard for renewal of Eucharistic devotion all over the English-speaking world.” So, let’s dive in!

How about you? Will there be anything you’ll miss about the old translation, or is there anything you can’t wait to hear in the new? Let us know in the comments below.

The Old Testament readings at daily Mass lately have been taken from the book of Daniel. This was a book that Jesus drew from in important ways to explain his identity. In today’s first reading, we witness Daniel’s incredible night visions:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

- Daniel 7:13-14

Many Christians are under the mistaken impression that the term “Son of God” refers to Jesus’ divine nature, while “Son of Man” (which is Jesus’ favorite self-designation in the Gospels) is a reference to his human nature. In reality, the opposite is the case. Now, don’t get me wrong – Jesus is God the Son, the unique, “only-begotten son” of the Father (cf. John 1:18, 3:16). But, in the Old Testament, all Israel was known as God’s “son” (see Hos 11:1), with individual Israelites known as the “sons of God” in an adoptive sense.

The passage from Daniel above speaks of  an enigmatic “one like a son of man”, coming on the clouds of heaven, who approaches the “Ancient of Days” (God the Father) and receives an indestructible kingdom and the service of all people. This passage is quoted by Jesus when he is on trial before the high priest. At issue is his messiahship.

And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But he was silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” And the high priest tore his garments, and said, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death.

- Mark 14:60-64

The high priest certainly understood what Jesus meant by referring to himself as “Son of Man”. He is that figure who Daniel had envisioned so long ago – the everlasting King.

We are thrilled to announce that The New Mass app, the #1 app for the new English translation of the Mass, is now live in the Android App Market! Click here to download it!

We’re so happy to offer you this incredible tool for the Mass, alongside our popular iPhone app.

Our team has been working some very long hours on this one, especially the great Batsirai Chada. My hat’s off to you, big guy!

Today’s Gospel relates a somewhat embarrassing truth about the Apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee:

When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him.
On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them,
and they journeyed to another village.

- Luke 9:51-56

These two brothers were also known as “Boanerges” – the “sons of thunder”. And, no, it’s not because they had gas. It seems they had a bit of an anger problem – their passion for our Lord led them to want to “zap” those who didn’t accept him.

But Jesus knew about their faults, and called them to be his followers anyway. That’s because he knew that he could transform their faults into strengths. Francis Fernandez, in his magnificent daily devotional, “In Conversation With God”, relates an anecdote about Saint John in later life. St Jerome wrote that the aged Apostle, when speaking with his fellow believers, used to repeat, again and again, “Little children, love one another”. His listeners, perhaps a bit miffed that someone who knew our Lord personally didn’t seem to have any fresh homiletical material, asked him, “Why do you keep on repeating the same thing all the time?” John replied, “Because if we only do this one thing, it will be enough”. John’s desire to call down fire from heaven was changed to a living flame of love.

Jesus’ teaching on love being the hallmark of  a Christian’s life – even for one’s enemies – eventually sunk into John’s ears, especially when he saw it in praxis at the foot of the cross, along with Mary. And when he was chosen by the Master to take care of his Mother, John no doubt was privy to even more lessons on what it means to love, from the person who knew Jesus best.

If Jesus could change this angry young man into “the Apostle of love” – his Gospel and New Testament letters are rife with this theme – imagine how Jesus can turn our weaknesses into strengths, if we stay close to him on the Way.

Have you ever received devastating news about a loved one? News that was so unbelievable at the time that it didn’t even register with you for a few moments, or even much longer?

The sudden death of a relative. The unexpected and grim diagnosis. When news like that hits us, our first reaction is often disbelief, a refusal to accept the truth. but after reality sets in, a second question follows: “Why?”

I suppose this is how the followers of Jesus felt after hearing his words recorded in today’s Gospel reading for Mass:

While they were all amazed at his every deed,
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Pay attention to what I am telling you.
The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”
But they did not understand this saying;
its meaning was hidden from them
and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

- Luke 9:43b-45

The disciples probably didn’t understand the words of the Master because, given Jesus’ great deeds of power – his control over nature, his exorcisms and healings – he seemed a superman who could never fall into the hands of any enemy.

Unless he did it on purpose.

One of the reasons why Jesus underwent the horrific sufferings of his passion (besides freeing us from our sins) was this: God foreknew from all eternity that people would doubt his intentions, goodness, and even his very existence because of the existence of suffering in this world. But after the passion of Christ, no one can say that God does not know what suffering is like, or that God could not understand one’s pain. For God himself suffered in Christ, and more than that, triumphed over it by his resurrection.

In today’s Gospel reading for Mass, Jesus reminds us, “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:43-45). When I was still on the journey home to the Catholic Church, but was still in Protestant ministry, I had an interesting encounter with a Catholic priest. At the time I was exploring Catholic doctrines, things I should have learned well while growing up Catholic, but didn’t. I was enthralled by what I was discovering, even becoming convinced of the truth of the Catholic position, but at the time I didn’t think it was necessary for me to revert. I thought I could remain in a Protestant context, and teach those who listened to my preaching about Catholicism, sharing its riches, without having to necessarily be visibly, corporately united to the Catholic Church. My conversation with this priest (whose name, sadly, I don’t recall) was one of the things that convinced me otherwise.

I had explained to the priest all of the things I just mentioned above, and he had patiently listened. In response he simply said, “You can’t give what you don’t have”.

I eventually realized he was right. I couldn’t share the wealth of the doctrines of Catholicsim, “the unsearchable riches of Christ”, as St Paul puts it, if I didn’t posess them myself. I had to try and live them, not just talk about them. And this is another reason why Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel matter so much.

If we hope to share our faith with others (and all of us are called to holiness and apostolate via our baptism), we can’t be operating out of our spiritual reserves. Our spiritual tanks must be full. We have to give out of our abundance, not our lack. The caregiver must be cared for as well. This is why we must allow Christ to minister to us, by spending time with him at Holy Mass and in personal prayer, allowing him to speak to us in our scriptural and spiritual reading, and letting him feed us with his very Body and Blood in the Eucharist. We must let him cleanse us regularly in the confessional, washing away the grime of life’s journey that can stick to our souls. Then, God can produce the produce of the Kingdom in our lives, luscious fruit that our companions on the journey can draw from, many of whom are spiritually starving.

And we can look to Mary, exemplar of the fruitful Christian life, to help us. No life bore more for Kingdom purposes, for “the fruit of her womb” (Luke 1:42) is none other than the King of that Kingdom, Christ himself.

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the birth of Mary of Nazareth. Saint Peter Damian captured the elation Christians should feel on this day: “Just as Solomon and the chosen people celebrated the dedication of the Temple with great and solemn sacrifice, so should we be filled with joy at the birth of Mary. Her womb was a most holy temple. There, God received his human nature and thus entered visibly into the world” (Sermon 45).

The Old Covenant temple was constructed of the finest materials, by the most superlative craftsmen in the world. No expense was spared. In like manner, God himself was the architect of the one whom he knew from all eternity would be the Mother of his Son, and he ensured that Jesus would have an Immaculate “house of gold”, as the Litany of Loretto calls Mary, in which to dwell. No person was ever closer to Christ. Since Mary knows him best, so let us fly to her patronage and intercession as we seek to worship the divine Messiah.

“And a great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Revelation 12:1).

Today’s feast of the Queenship of Mary celebrates the coronation of Mary as Queen of the universe. This is another Marian teaching of the Church that non-Catholics have trouble with, because it’s scriptural roots aren’t as obvious as they often are for other doctrines. A proper understanding of typology, however, makes the Queenship of Mary stand out in sharp relief as one reads the sacred page.

What is typology? As one writer put it, “God writes the world the way humans write with words.” Human writers can use literary devices like foreshadowing to tip the reader off to what’s coming in the future. When God acts in the history of salvation, he works in a similar fashion. He uses not words, but events, places, and people during Old Covenant times to foreshadow even greater realities – events, places, and people – of the New Covenant.

One of those realities is the position of Queen. In the Old Covenant Kingdom of David, the Queen was not the wife of the King, but his mother – the Queen Mother. This position began under King Solomon, the son of David. Solomon had, of course, many wives, so rather than have them slug it out in some sort of mud wrestling match for the title, the crown went to Bathsheba, the king’s mother, who sat at his right hand.

In a similar way, the one the New Testament hails as “the Son of David” rules a Kingdom. Jesus calls it “the Kingdom of God – exactly what David’s kingdom was called in the OT. That kingdom has a Prime Minister, which we saw in this past Sunday’s readings is Peter, who holds the “keys of the kingdom”, like Eliakim did in Isaiah 22.

This Kingdom also has a Queen – a Queen Mother, Mary. This is why foreign dignitaries pay homage to Jesus as to a king, alongside his mother after his birth (Matthew 2:11), just as other rulers would have done in earlier times for Solomon in the presence of his mother.

Brad West from Catholic Tech Talk.com has put The New Mass app through its paces, and his full review is now online! You can check it out by clicking here. Brad has really captured the essence of why we created the app.

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The scene was a McDonald’s in the aptly named town of Normal, Illinois. I was a 21-year-old business student who was doing an internship at Illinois State University. I was having a chat with Jerry McCorkle, a young adult pastor from a local Baptist Church. And I was in the process of leaving the Catholic Church to become an Evangelical. Over Big Macs, Jerry seemed to give me another big theological reason to make the move. “The Catholic Church invented the Assumption of Mary in the year 1950″, Jerry said. “1950! That’s almost two thousand years after the time of Christ! I mean, where are they coming up with this stuff?” Sadly, I didn’t even know what the Assumption was – such was the state of my Catholic formation at the time. I just nodded my head in silence. Jerry and I had two things in common that day: we were both sincere seekers of God, and neither one of us had any clue what Catholics really believed about the Assumption of Mary. Since today, August 15, is that great solemnity, it’s a good chance to run over some facets of this dogma.

The Assumption of Mary is the belief that, at the end of her earthly journey, God took Mary, body and soul, into the glories of heaven. Critics of the Assumption point out that the New Testament never mentions such an event. But not all of the truths of the faith that we need to believe are explicitly recorded in Sacred Scripture – in the Catholic Church we also have the Word of God delivered to us by means of Sacred Tradition – and even Sacred Scripture itself was Sacred Tradition before it was written down. It is also highly likely that Mary was still alive on earth when many, if not all, of the books of the New Testament were being written. Luke, for example, seems to have interviewed Mary himself in writing his gospel, in order to ascertain certain details about the events surrounding the Nativity of Christ.

It is also worth pointing out that all Christians – Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant – believe that Assumptions not only can happen, but have happened! Scripture records for us the case of Enoch, who “was taken up so that he did not see death, and he was not to be found because God took him up. For before his removal he had been commended as having pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). The prophet Elijah was also taken, or assumed, into heaven – body and soul – by a chariot of fire and a windstorm ( Kings 2).

As Scott Hahn points out in his excellent book, Hail, Holy Queen, no city ever claimed to have the relics of Mary – an absolutely astonishing fact, because the early Christians took great pride in venerating the relics of saints and martyrs, building their altars, and, indeed, their churches upon them. The example of Saint Peter’s Basilica, with its high altar directly over the underground crypt of Peter, is a prime example. The fact that no one ever claimed Mary’s relics, which would have been the ultimate prize, is good corroborating evidence that no one had them, because they didn’t exist. She had already been bodily Assumed into heaven. Two cities (Ephesus and Jerusalem) did claimto be the locale of her tomb, found to be empty, but none claimed the relics.

The liturgy is the place where Sacred Tradition is taught most clearly; the ancient maxim “Lex credendi, Lex orandi” – “the law of belief is the law of prayer”, or “the Church believes as she prays” holds true. If you want to know what Christians really believe, observe how they worship. Just because Pope Pius XII formally defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950 doesn’t mean that he invented it, as Jerry supposed, or that Catholics didn’t believe it beforehand. A defined dogma of the Church has always been contained in the original deposit of faith, but dogmas can be defined much later, when the need (eg. a heresy challenging the belief) arises. For example, God was always a Trinity of Persons, long before the Council of Nicea affirmed it in the 4th century AD – in fact, this truth goes back to all eternity! But it was never formally defined until it was challenged by the arch-heritic Arius and his followers. The Church clebrated the Assumption in its liturgy – the highest form of prayer, and thus belief – going back to at least the 4th and 5th centuries.

Much more could be said, but it’s fitting that we finish with an argument from what is called “fittingness”. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer for the solemnity reminds us that the Assumption simply makes good common as well as supernatural sense, with this prayer to God: “You would not allow decay to touch her body, for she had given birth to your Son, the Lord of all life, in the glory of the incarnation.”