Catholic Replies
Editor’s Note: In a recent bulletin column, Fr. George Rutler of the Church of St. Michael in New York City compared the situation in the world and the Church today with the one that existed when Pope Innocent IV convened the First Council of Lyons in 1245. Fr. Rutler said that the Holy Father at that time “opened the Council with a sermon on the five wounds of the Church. They were: (1) public heresy growing out of personal immorality, (2) the persecution of Christians by Muslims, (3) schism in the Church, (4) the invasion of Christian countries by unbelievers, and (5) attempts of civil governments to control the Church. Does this sound familiar?”
He said that in Pope Innocent’s day, “lax and immoral Catholics were trying to justify their lifestyle by ‘paradigm shifts’ in doctrine, Muslims were terrorizing Christians in the Middle East, the rift between Western and Eastern churches was growing and would not be checked even by the attempt of a second Council of Lyons some thirty years later, Mongol hordes were invading Hungary and Poland, and the Holy Roman Emperor was claiming political authority over the bishops.”
Recalling the words of the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, that “Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world,” Fr. Rutler said that having risen from the grave, Jesus “can die no more, nor can he suffer as he once did. But the Church is his body and ‘inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these little ones, you have done it to me,’ Christ’s supernatural agony is a triumph of divine love for those whose salvation he bought with his own blood. He is not passively aggressive because his confrontation in every age is a direct one against ‘the Devil and all his pomps.’ There is no need for revenge, for to get even is never to get ahead.”
Fr. Rutler said “it is wonderful that the Risen Lord did not say to the trembling apostles in the Upper Room, ‘I told you so.’ There is no tone of vengeful vindication or even the slightest condescension. He just serenely explains how these events had to be. The Lord has an assignment for the apostles, just as he offers each of us a plan for life. And he takes us seriously, only asking that we take him seriously in return. That is why he shows his wounds. They have not vanished in the glory of the Resurrection, for they are reminders that the new course of history will be fraught with challenges for which the Church must be prepared.”
Q. In Matt. 24:28, Jesus said that “wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” What does that mean? — M.R., Pennsylvania.
A. The word “vulture” is sometimes translated as “eagle,” and eagles appeared on the military standards of Roman soldiers. Also, in the Old Testament, the eagle was a symbol of pagan nations who sought to destroy Israel. For example, Habakkuk 1:8 says that “swifter than leopards are his horses, / and keener than wolves at evening. / His horses prance, / his horsemen come from afar: / They fly like the eagle hastening to devour.”
So Christ is saying that vultures, who represent the Romans, will devour the carcass of Jerusalem, a foreshadowing of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Q. Do you know the meaning of the expression, “Already but not yet”? I heard it mentioned at a talk, but the speaker did not explain it. — B.N., Massachusetts.
A. The expression refers to the obscure presence of God’s kingdom on earth, a presence that will not reach its fulfillment until all things have been subjected to Christ and He has finally triumphed over the powers of evil. The kingdom of God is “already present in mystery,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 669), and “the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect” (n. 670).
The Catechism continues by saying that “though already present in the Church, Christ’s reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled ‘with power and great glory’ by the king’s return to earth. This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ’s Passover” (n. 671)….
“According to the Lord, the present time is the time of the Spirit and of witness, but also a time still marked by ‘distress’ and the trial of evil which does not spare the Church and ushers in the struggles of the last days. It is a time of waiting and watching” (n. 672).
Christ’s Second Coming, says the Catechism, will be preceded by the “supreme religious deception” of the Antichrist, “a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh” (n. 675). It says that “the Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world” (n. 677).
Q. In the account of Jesus’ appearance to seven apostles by the sea of Tiberias, it says that when they hauled in the net filled with fish, it contained “one hundred fifty-three large fish” (John 21:11). Why are we given this specific number? — F.A., via e-mail.
A. Several explanations have been offered by saints and scholars. St. Jerome said that the number 153 referred to the kinds of fish that had been identified as existing in the world at that time. He thought the number symbolized the people of all time who would be saved through the preaching of the apostles, whom Jesus had made “fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19), and their successors. In other words, salvation will be open to people of every nation, race, class, and time.
St. Augustine expanded on the significance of the number 153. He said that we cannot be saved without keeping the 10 Commandments and without the grace of the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit. But 10 plus 7 equals 17 and, when you add up the numbers from 1 to 17, they total 153. Hence, he concluded that the elect will be saved by the gift of grace (7) and the Commandments (10).
Q. During Holy Week, I heard about how Christ was killed on the cross by the Romans. In my reading, it seems to me that He was not killed, but rather gave His life on the cross. This concept is clearly stated in John 10:17-18: “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.”
Note that Jesus said He had the power to lay His life down and that no man could take it from Him. He did not offer any exceptions.
So my question is: Was Jesus killed by the Roman soldiers, or did He actually give up His life by His own power? — D.M., via e-mail.
A. We would say that the answer is both. A Roman soldier stabbed Jesus in the side with a lance, causing blood and water to flow from His side. The blood came from His heart and the watery substance from the pericardial sac around the heart. Thus, if there were any doubt that Jesus had not died from suffocation on the cross, the thrust from the lance confirmed that He was dead.
So Roman soldiers crucified Christ and administered the coup de grace that definitely ended His life, but He freely allowed this to happen to save us from our sins. In the words of Dr. Ludwig Ott in his book Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma:
“The sacrificial character of Christ’s death on the Cross may be established, speculatively, in that all the demands of a sacrificial act were fulfilled. Christ as man was at the same time sacrificing priest and sacrificial gift. As God together with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, He was also the receiver of the sacrifice. The act of sacrifice consisted in the fact that Christ, in a disposition of the most perfect self-surrender, voluntarily gave up His life to God by permitting His enemies to kill Him, although He had the power of preventing it” (p. 185).
