Epiphany

Miracle on 34th Street Christmas Display, Manger Scene, Baltimore, Maryland in USA

The Epiphany of Our Lord is a Christian holiday normally held on 6 January among Western Churches.

Eastern Churches following the Julian Calendar observe the Theophany feast on what for most countries is January 19 because of the 13-day difference today between that calendar and the generally used Gregorian calendar<sup>,

"</sup>It is an old Russian tradition - on the day of Epiphany you dip in the ice cold waters of lake or river, through a cross-shaped hole in the ice^."


Epiphany in the waters of Meschersky pond in Russia

Prayer for the Salvation of the World

"World Peace"  Photo credit: The Dryer Report

Father, hear our prayers for the salvation
of the world.  Grant mercy to all souls that
turned away from you. Open their hearts
and minds with your light.

Gather your children from the east and
the west, from the north and the south.
Have mercy, O God, on those who do not
know you. Bring them out of darkness
into your light. You are our saving God
Who leads us in our salvation. Protect us
from evil.

Bless and praise you, O Lord. Hear our
prayers and answer us. You, our Savior,
are the hope of all the ends of the earth
and the distant seas.  May your way be
known upon earth. Among all nations
Your salvation.

We put the world in your hands. Fill us
with your love and grant us peace
through Christ, Our Lord.  Amen.

NIHIL OBSTAT: September 10, 1998
+ Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap.
Archbishop of Denver

Michaelmas

 Above: The Archangel Michael defeats the Dragon with his sword of light

This week Christians celebrate the Feast of St. Matthew, to be followed by Michaelmas.

From Wikipedia:

"Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel (also the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a day in the Western Christian calendar which occurs on 29 September. Because it falls near the equinox, it is associated in the northern hemisphere with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days. In medieval England, Michaelmas marked the ending and beginning of the husbandman's year."

At British universities, the academic year used to begin late in September, and the first part of the academic year was therefore called "Michaelmas term."

The Sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel (Santuario di San Michele Arcangelo) is a sacred cave and popular Catholic shrine near San Giovanni Rotundo. Here the Archangel Michael is said to have appeared in 490, 492 and 1656 and consecrated the shrine himself.

Requiem for the Lost Souls of the Titanic

For those who are not aware of it, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the night of Sunday 14 April 1912.  Lifeboats were launched between 12:45 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. and the great ship sank beneath the dark waves of the North Atlantic at 2:17 a.m. Monday 15 April 1912, exactly 100 years ago today.

To honor and remember the 1,514 people who died, a requiem mass is being sung at St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast, Ireland, this morning.  The requiem is a special composition for the 100th anniversary, and it was also sung yesterday, Saturday 14 April 2012 and broadcast by BBC.

The home page of St. Anne's Cathedral may be found here:  http://www.belfastcathedral.org/

The music of the requiem may be found at this website:   http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01g4s93

All are encouraged to participate in prayers for the dead.  May they rest in eternal peace.

The Golden Ratio and the Ten Commandments

Reading for the Third Sunday of Lent (Exodus 20: 1 - 17):

"You shall not have other gods besides me.
You shall not carve idols for yourselves
in the shape of anything in the sky above
or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,
inflicting punishment for their fathers' wickedness
on the children of those who hate me,
down to the third and fourth generation;
but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation
on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments."

A Word about Words

The theme that ties together all of today's readings is, once again, the Golden Ratio or Golden Rule.  This may not be obvious at first, so let's review some of the key concepts or terms being used here:  The Word of God, the Laws of God, and the Rules or Commandments of God.

The most important idea to grasp is what people in the ancient world meant when they used the word  logos, which is a Greek word often mistranslated or misunderstood.  We are missing a great deal of the ancient context of the word logos, but much of its context may be recaptured by simply pointing out that logos is the root-word for "logic" and "analogy."

When ancient Greeks and Jews referred to the "Word of God" or "Laws of God" or "Commandments of God" they were by all means thinking in terms of logic, analogy and ratio.  The main point of today's gospel readings is simple:  It's extremely important to model God's justice in one's own life by making one's own words and actions a perfect and rational analogy to the words and laws of God.

The first step is to maintain absolute honesty and integrity, that is, a one-to-one ratio between word and reality, word and deeds. Likewise one tries to maintain an accurate one-to-one ratio when speaking of God or making images of God.  Every word, letter and detail must correspond exactly to the word of God.

The goal is to make an exact, point-by-point analogy both in letter and in spirit.

For example, if someone learning a new language wants to be given a spoon but mistakenly asks for a "fork"  or draws the sign for a fork, then that person has used the wrong word or symbolic analog, and the results are not what the seeker wanted.  Using the wrong word or symbolic analog (the wrong sign or symbol) yields bad results.  Using the wrong word, sign, symbol or image may destroy the relationship or ratio between what one wanted and what one gets.

However, if one uses the proper word, sign, symbol or image for the desired object, and if that word or analog is perfectly proportional to something at hand in the real world, then it is very likely that one will be understood and given the object that one desires.  Ask for a spoon, and some kind soul at the table will hear you, understand you, and gladly hand you a spoon.

The importance of maintaining an honest, fair and clear analogy between words, symbols and images and their objects in the real world is the central theme here.  The point of today's gospel is that one must be specially careful when making images of God, when representing God or God's word, or when dealing with words, signs and symbols in the Temple.

Graven Image as False Analogy

How does one honestly present to the public the true name of God or the true image of God?  This is a difficult problem.

Spoons aren't a problem. One can certainly draw a spoon or use a word or symbol to represent a spoon with very positive and practical results. The word for "spoon" may be shared with everyone and used by everyone safely.

Gods is a problem. Any attempt to create a word or graven image for the purpose of fetching, controlling or using God is doomed to failure. The larger of two entities may control the smaller with words, but the smaller of two entities cannot necessarily control the larger and more powerful of the two with words.

God is all powerful and cannot be used as a tool or ordered about as one might sort out the spoons in a silverware drawer.

God is not a utensil.  Calling on the name of God is a dangerous thing to do, because one cannot be sure what result one will get.  Viewing God as an object or tool that can be used for one's own selfish ends is a very wrong-headed view of God indeed.  The case is very much the reverse.  God is much more likely to use us as a tool.  Hence the saying in Proverbs:  "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Those who view God as an object, person or tool to be used for personal pleasure or personal gain have made an idol of God, which is a very grave error. Bowing down to an idol and leaving any kind of monetary bribe or offering at the feet of an idol is worse than throwing one's money out the window.  It's a clear sign of ignorant superstition and shows an amazing lack of good sense..

The problem with naming or objectifying God is that it encourages people to see God as a utensil or tool -- a spoon that can used to feed one's face or a measuring scale that can be tipped in one's own favor, or a big stick that can be used to hit one's enemy over the head.

Idol vs. Ideal

God is not an instrument or slave that serves us.  Neither is God a master to whom one must kowtow and bow down. God is not an idol, but the imagined embodiment of an ideal.

When we understand that God is an ideal, then all idolatry ceases. We serve justice. We serve the truth. We seek wisdom and study at the feet of the wise.  But these virtues and qualities aren't things we can "get" and bring home in a box from Macy's.

Neither are these ideals perfectly embodied by godlike people. Faith, hope, charity, truth, justice and wisdom are not virtues that can be perfectly embodied by any one person, nor are they commodities that can be packaged, bought or sold at market.

Jesus and the Money Changers

Today's verse from the New Testament is from the gospel of St. John, and it's about Christ turning over the tables of the money changers who are cheating people in the Temple yard.  The heart of the problem is dealing in unfair proportions or ratios.  If you short-change a person in the Temple, you are not dealing fairly in one-to-one ratios.

The great warning in both Old Testament and New is this: Speak the truth. Use numbers just as carefully and give a fair accounting or don't do business anywhere near the Temple.

The God whom Hebrews called Yahweh ("I am") was first and foremost a God of truth, a God who kept his word. The words spoken in Temple had better be true and honest words.  Even the small change made in the courtyard had better be fair and honest change, not an attempt to short-change one's neighbor.

For the God of the Hebrews was not an idol but an ideal called Truth.  This ideal was very much connected to the ideals of unity,  integrity and justice.  Yahweh was a just God who, like a wise King, placed heavy emphasis on dividing the land, cattle and crops of Israel fairly and proportionally among his people.

The one basic command of Yahweh was a demand for integrity and honest relations with one's neighbor.  Don't be two-faced.  Deal with your neighbor honestly and openly, exactly as you would want your neighbor to behave toward you.

An honest one-to-one ratio between words and reality, words and deeds was paramount.

The Ten Commandments are One Great Commandment

Christians understand the New Testament to be a fulfillment of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. Christ did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. The whole of the law is fulfilled by obeying one commandment, to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole mind, and with your whole body.

The over-arching ideals contained in the Ten Commandments were absolute honesty,  absolute integrity and absolute justice.

Christ summarizes the Ten Commandments with one commandment:  To love your neighbor as yourself.  That is the whole of the law in a single sentence.

The Great Commandment and the Golden Ratio

Not surprisingly, the great commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself" contains all the basic elements of a Golden Ratio.   God relates to you exactly as you relate to your neighbor.   As you relate to your neighbor, so you relate to God.

Why this rule is true becomes much more clear when we see it in terms of the Golden Rule or Golden Ratio, that is, a ratio that preserves the identity of the whole (God) by making the whole line segment proportional to the larger line segment (you) exactly as the larger line segment is proportional to the smaller segment (your neighbor).

God has been kind and just to you, therefore you must be equally and proportionally kind and just toward the person living next to you.  

Conversely, if you stand in the courtyard of the Temple and short-change your neighbor, using God's scales of justice to practice a fraud, you can absolutely count on God coming around to unbalance your table and knock it over.  

As you have treated your neighbor, so God will treat you.  This truth is repeated several times in the Bible, using parables that say almost exactly the same thing.  

They are using as their golden scale of justice the Golden Rule, also known as the Golden Ratio.

Father, Son and Golden Ratio

The illustration above may seem to be geometry, but it contains one of many names for God: ABBA, Father.

Today's readings for the second Sunday of Lent are all about fathers and sons.  One might say that the "right" relationship between father and son is a Golden ratio: As the Whole Line is to the Larger Portion (the Father), so must the Larger Portion be to the Smaller Portion (the Son).  

That is, as God relates to a father, so a father must relate to his Son. Conversely, as a son trusts and places faith in his father, so must his father trust and place faith in God.


First Reading

We see this Golden ratio at work in our first reading, the strange story of God, Abraham, and Isaac.  God (who is certainly the greater of the three) tells Abraham (a father) to sacrifice his beloved son (the smallest of the three). 

Abraham is about to comply by cutting Isaac's throat when God stays his hand and informs Abraham that because he has chosen to follow God's divine order with the unquestioning faith of a good son, Abraham's own son will be spared. Though small, Isaac's offspring will become a great people more numberless than the stars of the sky or the grains of sand on the shores of the sea.

Second Reading

We also see the Golden Ratio at work in our second reading, a letter from St. Paul to the Romans.  St. Paul specifically underscores the parallels between Abraham's offer to sacrifice Isaac and God's sacrifice of His only begotten son, Jesus Christ.  

As God proved his love for the sons of Abraham through Abraham, so does God prove his love for all people through his son, Christ Jesus.  St. Paul is pointing out that the covenant and bond of love between God and the children of Abraham and Isaac has been even more powerfully reaffirmed and magnified by God through the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.

Through Christ, God has adopted every child who believes in Him.

"If God is with us, who can oppose us?" he asks.

 The Divine Ratio and The Holy Trinity

Those who have never heard of the Golden Ratio or Divine Proportion are encouraged to see the explanation and illustrations on this page:  http://goldennumber.net/goldsect.htm

Put simply, the Divine Ratio is the only symmetric division of a line  that preserves the identity of the whole in its larger and smaller parts. A Golden ratio brings the whole, the larger part, and the smaller part into a perfect three-part analogy. The whole is reflected in the Father, and the image of the Father is perfectly reflected in the Son.

It's a formula for immortalization: God's spirit is embodied in Abraham, Abraham is embodied in Isaac, and Isaac's descendants (millions of mini-me's) progress in proportional steps that grow smaller and smaller and smaller, yet they follow the Golden rule and preserve the original  loving relationship (the Golden Ratio) between God, Abraham and Isaac.

Conversely, the Golden Rule is the means by which small and ordinary people may find a medium or means for relating to God.  So long as a person or a people persist in their faith and practice of the Golden Rule, they will remain in right relationship with God and they will grow in ever greater Golden Spirals toward heaven. This was God's promise to Abraham, and Christ's promise to all who believe in Him.

At the heart of God's promise is a three-part Golden ratio, a tri-unity that provides an excellent analogy for the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  They are 3-in-1.  Outwardly they appear to be distinct and separate portions of a line (a line, it's larger portion, and its smaller portion).  Yet upon careful analysis they are analogous and, indeed, identical.  They are all one.

Realizing this, one never need fear separation from the Kingdom of God, for truly the Kingdom of God is within you and all around you.  Indeed, where ever bread is broken in the right spirit of love, God is there.

Abraham and Christ as Mediators

Both Abraham and Christ play the role of mediators or mediums.  They are the "middle term" in the three portions of the Golden Ratio.  They act as a medium or bridge that connects the little people to God.

God is the largest portion (the whole line), Abraham and Jesus are the Big Daddy portions of the line, and Isaac represents the Baby portion, the common man or little guy.  It's Abraham who brings Isaac into right relationship with God, and Jesus who brings the common people into right relationship with God.  

The Holy Spirit of God was translated to Isaac and his descendants through Abraham.  Likewise, the Holy Spirit of reconciliation with God was translated to all of mankind through Christ Jesus.

That's Christian teaching in a nutshell: a golden ratio. Christians relate to God through Christ, as mediator, or through the Blessed Virgin as mediatrix.  They do not presume to understand God as a whole.  They admit they are small and that God is very large, therefore they seek the help of a medium or an intercessor to reconcile them with God.

Christians do not submit to the authority of corrupt states or corrupt leaders like King Herod or Pontius Pilate for exactly this reason: Kings and Princes and Fat Cats are not necessarily mediators of God's will   (There's something definitely "off" about anyone who manages to divide a group but fails to reconcile people as a whole!)

A true Prince of Peace brings people back together into right relationship with each other and with God.

The Beginning and the End of Time

Above: Zodiac Clock


Time may be defined as a series of sequential moments in linear order.  Just as a child recites the alphabet by running through a linear series of unique letters, so time runs through a linear series of orderly, sequential and unique events, from the beginning of time to the end of time.

Presumably time is a straight line that begins at one point, Alpha, and ends at another, Omega.

Most clocks, however, represent time as a circle.  The small hand (hours) and the big hand (minutes) run round and round, through the same sequence of 12 numbers, over and over and over again.  There is no end to the number of times that the hour hand, the minute hand or the second hand on a clock may sweep through the same sequence. 

Circular clocks imply that time is indeed a series of sequential moments that follow one another in an orderly and sequential manner, but the series is cyclical and recurrent -- at 12 midnight a clock magically resets itself, and starts all over again. 

At midnight on December 31st, our calendars act like circular clocks and do the same thing: They magically reset themselves to zero and start the sequence of 12 months all over again.  The 12 days of Christmas (December 25 to January 6) neatly bracket that magical zero-hour, and thus they represent in miniature the twelves months of the year and the twelve astrological signs of the celestial zodiac.

Like a snowglobe, Christmas represents the magical circle of time in one small and beautiful crystal ball.  In the center of that crystal ball, one may see the image of a father, a mother and a baby held in the mother's arms (the past, the present and the future) joined together in a happy family group.

What is this picture trying to tell us? 

Be joyful and glad!  Life may sometimes seem to be linear, at the end of each year it may seem to end in gloom, doom, winter, death, despair and darkness, but in fact life is a great circle.  At the end of each cycle of time, the clock does not stop.  Sunset is followed by a new sunrise. Winter is followed by another Spring.  Death is followed by birth, resurrection and a new generation of life.

Time does not stop. Life goes on. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Recently, a number of books on the year 2012 have made people begin to wonder if time and the world are about to end.  As proof, they point to the Mayan calendar, which ends on the date 21 December 2012.

Obviously this is a very linear, straight-line way of looking at things. It's a philosophy of time that places little or no faith in the great circle of time or the power of life to regenerate.  It believes in abrupt beginnings and dead ends.

This "End Time" view of 2012 is the natural opposite of the Big Bang Theory of creation, and it is the necessary corollary of such a linear hypothesis of time.  If time and the universe began at point Alpha with a Big Bang, then surely there must be some final point in time, point Omega, where time and the world come to a screeching halt with a Big Crash or a Big Thud. 

To straight-line thinkers, the Mayan calendar suggests we are going to reach point Omega in 2012 because 21 December 2012 marks the end of the Mayan calendar.

Should we all panic, then, and run around like Chicken Little shouting that the sky is about to fall on us?  Of course!  Start screaming right now.  But only if you really believe that time is linear.

The Mayan calendar itself is a big circle, and one must emphasize that the Mayans believed that time was cyclical.  December 21, 2012 may represent the end of a great cycle, but one must underscore the word cycle.   The Mayans were not linear thinkers.

The Mayans thought of time and life as a great circle.

One might ask anyone who is worried about time ending, how did they know that it would not end at midnight on December 31st, 2011?  After all, that was the last day on just about every 2011 calendar ever sold.

Why did all of the calendar makers make December 31 the very last day in 2011?  Why didn't they keep the 2011 calendar going? Was it because they knew that the world was going to end on December 31 at midnight?

Or did they, like the Mayans, stop there because that was the end of a single cycle?

The Mayans assumed that people in the future would be bright enough to realize that calendars, like alphabets, are linear measurements of cyclical time.  All calendars must come to an end. They end when they have finished summarizing a single cycle of the never-ending cycle of time.  The fact that a single calendar has come to an end does not mean that time itself is going to dead end.

The Mayans assumed that the people of our generation (a generation that they imagined as the distant future) would be bright enough to understand the circular nature of time.   They never imagined that millions of people would be running around in 2012, freaking out over the end of a calendar the Mayan priests had carved on a temple wall, thinking that time itself was going to stop.

Just in case future generations really were that stupid, the Mayans decided to portray time as a big circle or wheel.  They trusted that we would understand what a circle means.

What were they thinking?