“THE INFANCY OF JESUS” TO DEBUT NOVEMBER 20The Vatican announced today that Pope Benedict’s third volume in his trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth, “The Infancy of Jesus” will be presented on Tuesday, November 20th. The book, expected before Christmas, was signed at Castelgandolfo last August 15, the feast of the Assumption, and was presented last month at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Publishers from 32 countries have been negotiating with the Vatican Publishing House for rights to translate the book from the original German into 20 different languages.
As he did for the previous two volumes dedicated to Jesus, Pope Benedict also wrote a forward for this book on the Gospel stories about the childhood of Jesus. He says this tome is not a “volume” but “an antechamber” to the previous two books.
Here is that forward, entitled “I hope it will help many people”:
“I can at last consign to the reader the long promised little book on the narratives of Jesus' childhood. It is not a third volume but a sort of small “antechamber” to the two preceding volumes on the future and message of Jesus of Nazareth. Here I have sought to interpret, in dialogue with exegetes of the past and of the present, what Matthew and Luke recount at the beginning of their Gospels about the infancy of Jesus.
“I believe that a correct interpretation calls for two steps. It is first necessary to ask oneself what the respective authors were intending to say with their texts at their time in history – this is the historical component of exegesis. However it does not suffice to leave the text in the past, archiving it among events that happened long ago. The second question of the correct exegete must be: is what has been said true? Does it concern me? And if it does concern me, how does it do so? With a text such as the Bible, whose ultimate and most profound author, according to what we believe, is God himself, the question on the relationship of the past with the present is inevitably part of our interpretation. Rather than diminishing the seriousness of historical research this increases it.
“I have taken pains to enter into dialogue with the texts in this sense. By so doing I am well aware that this conversation in the interweaving of past, present and future can never be complete and that every interpretation lags behind the greatness of the biblical text. I hope that my little book, despite its limitations, will be able to help many people on their way towards and with Jesus.”
That forward was made public by the publishers on October 9, as were the following two excerpts:
When Jesus was born
(...) Jesus was born at a time that can be accurately determined. At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, Luke once again gives an accurate and precise date to that historical moment: it is the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar; the Roman governor of that year and the tetrarchs of Galilee, Iturea and Trachonitis, are also mentioned, as well as Abilene and the chief priests (cf. Lk 3:1ff.).
Jesus was not born and appearing in public at some indefinite “once upon a time” like legends. He belongs to an historically precise time and an exact geographical location: here the universal and the concrete come together. In him, the Logos, the creative Reason for everything, came into the world. The eternal Logos became a man, and this means he took on the context of time and space. Faith is tied to this concrete reality, even if, by virtue of the Resurrection, space and time are overcome and the Lord’s going “before you to Galilee” (Mt 28:7) leads the whole of humanity into the great expanse (cf. Mt 28: 16ss). Translated from page 36 of the manuscript
That Child wrapped in swaddling clothes
Mary wrapped the Child in swaddling clothes. With no sentimentalism, we can imagine how lovingly Mary would have awaited her time and prepared for her Son's birth. The iconographical tradition, on the basis of the theology of the Fathers, has also provided a theological interpretation of the manger and the swaddling clothes. The Infant, tightly bound in swaddling clothes, appears as a prefiguration of his death: he is the Sacrificed One from the outset, as we shall see in even greater detail, reflecting on the words about the first-born.
Thus the manger was depicted as a sort of altar. Augustine interpreted the significance of the manger with a thought that at first sight seems almost incongruous, but, instead, on closer examination contains a profound truth. The manger is the place in which animals find their food. Now, however, lying in the manger is the One who indicated himself as the true Bread come down from heaven – the true nourishment man needs in order to be a human person. He is the nourishment that gives man true life, life that is eternal. In this way the manger becomes a reference to the banquet of God to which man is invited in order to receive the Bread of God. The great reality, in which the redemption of mankind is brought about, is delineated in the poverty of Jesus' birth. Translated from page 38 of the manuscript
”WE MUST OFFER CONVINCING REASONS FOR OUR FAITH”
At the Wednesday general audience in the Paul VI Hall, Pope Benedict XVI continued his new catechesis on the Year of Faith, which he inaugurated with the Synod Fathers who were in Rome on October 11, the 50th anniversary of the start of Vatican Council II.
He said that, in the Year of Faith catechesis, “we have seen that a mysterious desire for God lies deep with the human heart. By his grace, God inspires and accompanies our efforts to know him and to find our happiness in him. Yet today, in our secularized world, faith often seems difficult to justify; we are faced with a ‘practical’ atheism, a tendency to think and live ‘as if God did not exist’.”
“Yet,” said the Holy Father, “once God is removed from our lives, we become diminished, for our greatest human dignity consists in being created by God and called to live in communion with him. As believers, we need to offer convincing reasons for our faith and hope. We can find such reasons in the order and beauty of creation itself, which speaks of its Creator; in the longing for the infinite present in the human heart, which finds satisfaction in God alone; and in faith, which illumines and transforms our lives through our daily union with the Lord. By the witness of our living faith, may we lead others to know and love the God who reveals himself in Christ.”
After an Arab-language summary of his catechesis, the Pope gave the following greeting in Arabic: “The Pope prays for all Arab-speaking people. May God bless you!” الْبَابَا يَصْلِي مِنْ أَجَلْ جَمِيعَ النَّاطِقَيْنِ بِاللُّغَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّةِ... لِيُبَارِك الرَّبُّ جَمِيعَكُمْ
VETERANS DAY AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
Arlington National Cemetery, which I visited on Veterans Day with my friend Ted Bronson, a retired Navy Captain, is 624 acres of peace and serenity and beautiful gardens for the remains of 327,000 men and women who fought and died for the United States of America.
We had a special permit to drive throughout the cemetery but most visitors climb rolling hills to visit the various sections that honor different categories of war dead as Arlington is the only national cemetery (there are 146 national cemeteries in the U.S.) to hold servicemen and women from every war in our history. Four million people visit Arlington each year.
Among the many specially-designated sections are those marking the Battle of the Bulge (WWI), Korean War, Vietnam War, Iran Rescue Mission, Global War on Terror, Spanish-American War, Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, PanAm Flight 103 memorial, etc. There are special sections for chaplains and nurses and an area dedicated to 3,800 former slaves of the Civil War era. I learned that confederate soldiers’ headstones are peaked, not round.
I took this as we approached the entrance to Arlington – this is the Women in Military Service for America Memorial.
Built on the estate that was confiscated from Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the site was proposed in 1866 as a new military cemetery for the Civil War dead. That same year, the remains of 2,111 unknown Civil War soldiers were placed in a tomb in the estate gardens. Here is that monument today.
Here is Nurses Hill:
There are also markers called “memorials” for those for whom there are no bodies but there are names. These are placed closer together than those graves where there are the remains of soldiers.
This is Chaplains Hill:
There is a Columbarium that has room for 300,000 remains. There are on average 27 funerals a day at Arlington. Flags are lowered to half staff thirty minutes before the first funeral and remain at half staff until thirty minutes after the last service. Monday, when Ted and I visited, he pointed out to me that the flag was not at half staff, so there had not been a funeral that day.
President John F. Kennedy’s tomb, at the bottom of a hill sloping down from the Lee mansion, is marked by an eternal flame. Buried next to him is his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and his infant son, Patrick, who died just days after his birth.
Ted told me that every year, over the Memorial Day weekend, flags are placed on each and every grave in the cemetery by troops from the Old Guard (3rd Infantry).
A single grave and many flags.
The road to the Tomb of the Unknowns was closed Monday when we visited so we could not drive to that area. There was a slight time crunch because of my flight and the walk from the parking area for the changing of the guard ceremony would have required more time than we had allowed, so I took the photos you see below from an area below the tomb. The following information is from the cemetery’s wonderful website.
The Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA, is also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and has never been officially named. The Tomb of the Unknowns stands atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C. On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I in the plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater.
The white marble sarcophagus has a flat-faced form and is relieved at the corners and along the sides by neo-classic pilasters, or columns, set into the surface. Sculpted into the east panel that faces Washington, D.C., are three Greek figures representing Peace, Victory, and Valor. The six wreaths, three sculpted on each side, represent the six major campaigns of World War I. Inscribed on the back of the Tomb are the words: “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”People await the daily noon ceremony of the changing of the guard.
The Tomb sarcophagus was placed above the grave of the Unknown Soldier of World War I. West of the World War I Unknown are the crypts of unknowns from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Those three graves are marked with white marble slabs flush with the plaza.
Because of modern forensics it is likely that there will never again be an “unknown soldier” added to the 5,000 unknowns buried at Arlington.
2012 SYNOD ON NEW EVANGELIZATION – FINAL PROPOSITIONS
**Proposition 8 : WITNESSING IN A SECULARIZED WORLD
We are Christians living in a secularized world. Whereas the world is and remains God’s creation, secularization falls within the sphere of human culture. As Christians we cannot remain indifferent to the process of secularization. We are in fact in a situation similar to that of the first Christians and as such we should see this both as a challenge and a possibility. We live in this world, but are not of this world (cf. Jn 15:19; 17:11, 16). The world is God’s creation and manifests his love. In and through Jesus Christ we receive God’s salvation and are able to discern the progress of his creation. Jesus opens the doors for us anew so that, without fear, we can lovingly embrace the wounds of the Church and of the world (cf. Benedict XVI).
In our present age, that manifests aspects more difficult than the past, even if we are like “the little flock” (Lk 12:32), we bear witness to the Gospel message of salvation and we are called to be salt and light of a new world (cf. Mt 5:13-16).
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