Photina

Photina
n., An issue of water from the earth; a spring; a fountain. v.intr., To rise to the surface, ready to flow; to rise or surge from an inner source. v.tr., To pour forth. adj., In a satisfactory condition; right or proper. interj., Used to introduce a remark, resume a narrative, or fill a pause during conversation; used to express surprise.dictionary.com

Saturday, December 07, 2002

Today is the Feast Day of St. Ambrose, Doctor of the Church and influential in the conversion of St. Augustine. To see why he was declared to be a Doctor of the Church, take a look at his writings.

A prayer of St. Ambrose:

Lord, teach me to seek Thee, and reveal Thyself to me when I seek Thee. For I cannot seek Thee unless Thou teach me, nor find Thee except Thou reveal Thyself. Let me seek Thee in longing, let me long for Thee in seeking. Let me find Thee in love, and love Thee in finding. Amen.

posted by Heidi | 7.12.02

Today is also Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941, a Sunday morning. My grandmother remembered coming out of a performance of Handel's Messiah to be greeted by the news...

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Prayer

God of the ages, in your sight nations rise and fall, and pass through times of peril.

On this day, we remember with gratitude those who died in defense of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and all those who gave their lives in this nation's defense during the ensuing conflict.

Hasten the day when there will be no more war, and all your children will learn to live together as brothers and sisters, in peace.

For your own Name's sake.

Amen.

from the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association

posted by Heidi | 7.12.02

Friday, December 06, 2002

Happy St. Nicholas' Day!

St. Nicholas' Day and red-and-white peppermint drops have been inextricably linked for me ever since I was in nursery school, when my class received a silent visit from someone who left peppermint drops (wrapped!) in the boots we'd left outside the classroom door. He came again when I was in second grade--to a public school!--and again when I was in fifth. I was in fifth grade at a private school, so we were told a bit more of the life of this man, this bishop and saint, about his love for God and his deep generosity.

posted by Heidi | 6.12.02

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Headship and submission. Genesis 3 and Ephesians 5.

Genesis 3, verse 16:

To the woman He said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

Last night I was confronted by an alternate interpretation of this verse that presents the second half of the verse as a blessing of sorts, rather than a curse, punishment, or natural result of sin. The primary supporting argument was that the curse immediately prior to it contains an element of blessing. More than an element, in fact--verse 15 contains the "protevangelion," the first glimmer of the Gospel encapsulated in the promise that the head of the serpent will be crushed.

This was not a blessing for the serpent, however, to whom it was delivered.

As you can see to the right under "current books," one of the books I'm reading right now (no recommendation necessarily implied) is Freeing Theology: The essentials of theology in feminist perspective, a compilation of essays by (more or less) Catholic feminist theologians. None of them would agree with the interpretation that your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you is a blessing. Rather, they take the more traditional understanding that it is a negative consequence of the Fall, a curse or punishment.

"He will rule over you" does not have the ring of a blessing, but the element of curse or punishment contained in "your desire will be for your husband" is significantly less clear-cut. It becomes even more complicated with the knowledge that the Hebrew word translated "desire" in this phrase is only used in one other place in the Old Testament--the Song of Solomon, chapter 7, verse 10: I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. Clearly, this "desire" is not in and of itself negative and cannot be construed as itself a punishment or a curse.

Unless it is unfulfilled...

"Feminists" would like to be rid of Ephesians 5 with its Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, and turn to the words of God to Eve in the Garden as evidence that patriarchy is the heritage of sin, a distortion of God's original order. "Traditionalists" would like to explain away Genesis 3 as a consequence of sin in their support of Ephesians 5.

Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. Genesis 3:16

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:22-33 [NIV]

Neither needs to be explained away, however, to understand the one as the curse of sin and the other as God's order for marriage.

They fit together as lock and key.

As the New Testament redeems the Old, so Ephesians 5 redeems Eve's curse of Genesis 3.

He will rule over you. In the economy of the New Testament, domination is defeated not by rebellion but by submission...

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a bond-servant,
and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8

and

Your desire will be for your husband, this craving, this longing, this "stretching out after" answered, fulfilled, completed in:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...

And in each bending toward the other, husband to wife and wife to husband, the reign of Eve's curse is broken.

posted by Heidi | 5.12.02

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Greetings!

Today is the Feast Day of St. John of Damascus, the last of the Greek Fathers, a man honored by both East and West, and declared by Pope Leo XIII to be a Doctor of the Church. His writings were extensive, to put it mildly . . .

Writing at the beginning of the eighth century, he took up the enormous task of collecting, compiling, ordering, and structuring existing theology and gave to us the Fountain of Wisdom, the most influential part of which is Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.

A selection from this work, beautiful in both its truth and poetry:

"We believe, then, in One God, one beginning, having no beginning, uncreated, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompounded, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness and justice, the light of the mind, inaccessible; a power known by no measure, measurable only by His own will alone (for all things that He wills He can), creator of all created things, seen or unseen, the maintainer and preserver of all, for all the provider, master and lord and king over all, with an endless and immortal kingdom; having no contrary, filling all, encompassed by nothing, but rather Himself the encompasser and maintainer and original possessor of the universe, occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all essence as being super-essential and above all things and absolute God, absolute goodness, and absolute fullness; determining all sovereignties and ranks, being placed above all sovereignty and rank, above essence and life and word and thought; being Himself very light and goodness and life and essence, inasmuch as He does not derive His being from another, that is to say, of those things that exist; but being Himself the fountain of being to all that is, of life to the living, of reason to those that have reason; to all the cause of all good: perceiving all things even before they have become; one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one beginning, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, made known in three perfect subsistences and adored with one adoration, believed in and ministered to by all rational creation, united without confusion and divided without separation (which indeed transcends thought)."

posted by Heidi | 4.12.02

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

The Feast Day of St. Francis Xavier.

posted by Heidi | 3.12.02