Q. Can you explain how the date for Easter is determined? It changes every year. — R.W., Massachusetts.
A. Since the Council of Nicaea in 325, the date on which Easter falls is determined by the full moon. It is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon occurring after the vernal equinox, that is, the time of the year when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are everywhere of equal length. Since this is around March 21, it means that Easter can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25.
There have been suggestions that Easter be celebrated on a fixed date every year, and the Church has not expressed an objection to that possibility. However, there would have to be agreement from Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, who use the Julian, not the Gregorian, calendar and observe Easter between April 4 and May 8.
Q. At the Annunciation, Mary proclaimed that she “did not know man.” So why was she betrothed to Joseph? — J.S., via e-mail.
A. Mary’s statement that she “did not know man” is rendered in another translation as “I have no relations with a man.” She was referring to her vow to remain a virgin all her life and wondered if the Angel Gabriel’s statement that she was to have a child would violate that vow. Gabriel assured her, however, that she would miraculously conceive the child through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and not through ordinary sexual relations.
Once she understood that she would become a mother without loss of her virginity, Mary responded, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Mary was betrothed to Joseph, which means that she was already married to him when the Annunciation took place, because God wanted Jesus to be raised in a traditional family. So why would Joseph agree to a celibate marriage? Pope St. John Paul explained this in a general audience in 1996:
“It may be presumed that at the time of their betrothal there was an understanding between Joseph and Mary about her plan to live as a virgin. Moreover, the Holy Spirit, who had inspired Mary to choose virginity in view of the mystery of the Incarnation and who wanted the latter to come about in a family setting suited to the Child’s growth, was quite able to instill in Joseph the ideal of virginity as well.”
In his book To Know Christ Jesus, Frank Sheed rejected the theory that Joseph was merely brought into the marriage “to keep the neighbors from talking.” He said that “would hardly be a marriage at all, but rather a mockery of marriage….We must think of them as truly husband and wife, with a true union of personalities, each bringing completion to the other, with a profound sharing of interests, sharing of lives, enriched by the special graces from God that their virginity called for.”
Sheed said that “both loved God supremely, and their love of God poured back in a great flood of love of each other, love so great that it made the ordinary outward manifestation unnecessary. There was more love in that virginal family, more married love, than ever a family has known” (pp. 71-72).
Q. A friend invited me to attend a session about various portions of the non-canonical gospels at a local Catholic parish. The Jesus character was most unlike the Jesus in the regular Bible. A large crowd really ate it up. What is the validity of these gospels? — R.B., Michigan.
A. By the end of the fourth century, the Church, after investigating many writings that purported to be gospels, decided that only the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John should be considered divinely inspired and should be included in the canon, or list, of the books of the Bible. All other gospels, such as those attributed to Thomas, Peter, Philip, and Judas, are known as the Gnostic gospels, the lost gospels, or the apocryphal gospels, that is, writings of dubious authenticity that were not included in the New Testament because they were not considered to be valid accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus.
As Brant Pitre noted in his excellent book The Case for Jesus, these spurious gospels are trotted out a couple of times a year, usually around Christmas or Easter, as “breaking news” that will cause us to rethink everything we have believed about the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These reports, of course, are fake news about writings that were rejected by Church fathers nearly 1,900 years ago. For a good discussion of what the fathers said, see pages 55-66 of Pitre’s book.
These phony gospels got a lot of play following the publication in 2003 of the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Author Dan Brown ignored the real Gospels and had his characters quote from the Gnostic gospels to show, for example, that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus. One character, Sophie, quoted the following passage from the Gospel of Philip: “And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth.”
But that doesn’t say anything about marriage, said Sophie. Of course it does, said another character named Teabing, explaining that “any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse.” The truth is that the word actually meant a spiritual companion in Aramaic, not a spouse. But that’s irrelevant because the Gospel of Philip was written in the Coptic language, not in Aramaic.
It’s also worth noting that there are holes in the manuscript of the Gospel of Philip and a lot of words are missing. Here is how the quoted passage reads in the original document: “…the companion of the […] Mary Magdalene […] her more than […] the disciples, and used to kiss her […] on her […].”
Fill in the blanks any way you want, but the passage proves nothing about whether Jesus was married to Magdalene.
Another famous Gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, is often quoted to prove that Jesus was a radical feminist, that the Church of the first century was led equally by male and female bishops and priests, and that Magdalene was the chief apostle. But the Gospel of Thomas bears no resemblance to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It has no narrative, no miracles, no Passion, death, and Resurrection, and no reference to Jesus as God, Christ, Messiah, or Savior. This so-called gospel consists of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, but there is one significant saying that Dan Brown did not have his characters quote, and that’s the final verse of the Gospel of Thomas:
“Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’.”
Did Jesus really say that unless a woman becomes a man she can’t get to Heaven? Of course not, but the phony Gospel of Thomas says He did. No wonder Dan Brown omitted that quotation.
Or consider the Gospel of Judas, which includes secret conversations between Jesus and His betrayer. In one of them, Judas says to Jesus: “I know who you are and where you have come from. You have come from the immortal aeon of Barbelo, and from the one that has sent you, whose name I am not worthy to utter.” Jesus then tells Judas to separate from the other apostles, “and I will tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.”
You can see why Eusebius of Caesarea, the fourth-century Church historian, said that the phraseology in these false gospels “differs from apostolic style, and the opinion and tendency of their contents is widely dissonant from true orthodoxy and clearly shows that they are the forgeries of heretics” (Pitre, pp. 64-65).
We hope that those who “ate up” the discussion of these forgeries were also given the chance to study the real canonical Gospels.
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