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Offerings Vol. 10 Contents and Editorial Overview

DIVINE SACRAMENTAL PRESENCE

Editorial Overview

 

The various elements of this volume of Offerings call attention to God’s redemptive presence as the risen Jesus Christ, particularly to the sacramental mediation of that presence.

Linda Gibler explores how the common elements of water, olive oil, and wheat reveal the glory of God, the author of Creation. Unfolding initially as primary particles, atoms and photons, creation progresses with the emergence of elements that variously bond and produce, among many other substances, water. This primordial liquid was part of the Solar System’s birth and continues to be found amid all that is embraced by the Sun’s gravitation. On Earth water became the place of the first divine call to life, and so from there came over time every other form of earthly life. Dependence on water endures moreover as all types of such life in countless ways continue to be maintained and purified by it. Yet without oil, primordial life could not have emerged and endured. Oil was the protector of life’s components and nurtured their endurance. The protective and nurturing influence of oil continues physiologically in all biological species, environmentally in facilitating plant-animal interdependence, and culturally in the multiple ways that oils contribute to craftsmanship, artistry, hygiene and cooking. After primitive vegetation moved from water to land, grasses emerged. The subsequent wheat, deriving nutrients from the Sun and soil, provides abundant nourishment for animals and humans. Wheat is thus a primary ingredient, not only in culinary configurations, but also in ritualistic ones, including the Eucharist. As we examine distinctive elements of the evolutionary process, elements of God’s creation become a Revelation; the apparently commonplace becomes sacramental and the stuff of Sacraments.

Sandra Schneiders reflects on the awareness by which modern Christians believe they participate in the historical event of Jesus’ resurrection. This reality, unlike empirical awareness of what is objective, belongs to an order more dependent on the imagination, like the truth of friendship, family life, or love. Loving God who is revealed in Christ, and loving one’s neighbor in whom Christ lives reflect belief in the current reality of Christ alive among us. And since the truly divine Jesus Christ is also truly human, his life with us is thus bodily. The totality of Christ’s body entails his risen self and the believing community surrounding him. Scriptural statements regarding his resurrection, as well as the post-resurrection narratives about him, are like the Infancy narratives, namely revelatory, not insofar as they are statement of a publically verifiable fact, but as witnessing to what has been experienced within the believing community — though admittedly they are presented as if they are publically verifiable. Such experience of the risen Christ is akin to the believing community’s experience of divine action through Sacraments, whose situational performance is all that is publically verifiable. Jesus’ resurrection, like 9/11, was a “saturated event,” one so overwhelming that it is beyond clear and unanimous interpretation. Biblical scholars generally agree that his tomb was indeed empty, and accounted for by his variously appearing to many after his resurrection. Such accounts witness to how he was newly, and now is enduringly, present in supportive, instructive, and empowering ways. His presence is bodily and glorified, namely his divine-human self, really and truly and powerfully, is not merely a memory or hallucination but in the believing community is alive and wondrously active communally, scripturally, and, sacramentally.

Recognizing that even the earliest accounts of Jesus emerged from communal experiences of the risen Lord, Dale Schlitt attempts to explore Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels in order to delineate a significant characteristic of Jesus that is relevant for believers today. Paramount to Jesus’ identity and activity was his particular awareness of God. Such experience is evident in three narratives selected because of their distinct cogency. Possibly influenced by usage from Hebrew Scripture, Jesus in Gethsemane addresses God as Abba. And  the our Father of the Lord’s Prayer makes clear that Jesus’ followers are invited in a stunning innovative way to share with him, God’s Son, the blessed gentleness and authority of their fatherly God. Moreover, in casting out demons and elucidating Scripture, Jesus clearly reveals his awareness that through him God’s Spirit is working. Jesus’ contemporaries are thus invited to experience with him the power of the Spirit reigning in their own lives. Finally, at his baptism Jesus, in the presence of the Spirit, is designated by the Father as the beloved Son. Along with other New Testament passages, scenes like these from Matthew and Mark invite disciples today to share with Jesus the dawning reign of the redeeming and consoling Trinitarian God.

In his review of Aldo Schiavone’s book on Pontius Pilate, James Zeitz refers to Jesus’ concern for the full revelation of God’s identity, even as Jesus faces death. Such awareness of Jesus’ disposition emerges, says the author of the book, from a careful interpretation of the personal and communal experiences recounted in John’s gospel.

Assessing the innovative contours of Pope Francis’ papacy, Richard Gaillardetz surveys the degrees of doctrinal authority and the exercise of the papal magisterium. During the hundred years just prior to Vatican II, popes’ encyclicals appeared more clearly than ever before as guardians of doctrine. With Vatican II came heightened interest in church teachings presented theologically in contemporary terms and with concern for pastoral needs. Imbuing such teaching should be a theological vision of revelation as God’s loving self-communication. Here instructive light is shined on current problems, without however always solving them. This approach to teaching, though not entirely embraced by his immediate papal predecessors, has become for Pope Francis a prominent preference. Attentive to the spiritual sensitivity of all believers and to the role of local church authorities, he exhibits by word and deed a humble awareness that doctrines in varying degrees designate aspects of what is essential, the saving presence of Jesus Christ. Helping believers to prayerfully form their consciences in light of doctrines should then replace rigor as a tool of the Church’s ministries, including the Petrine ministry. Doctrines mediate God’s redeeming love. And since elucidation of them is ongoing, papal statements made in light of them should not preempt questioning and debate. A pastoral papal magisterium entailing widespread ongoing discernment that is of the Spirit should ever proclaim anew the merciful solidarity of God with all humanity.

Sacramental experience is among the ways that Christians enjoy this redeeming presence of God as the risen Christ. In his review of Joseph Martos’ tome on sacramental theology, Kenneth Hannon reports on the author’s contention that Catholics of the early twenty-first century are in dire need of a renewed sense of the Sacraments. Lingering sacramental theology of earlier ages, while relevant at the time, succeeds less and less, says Martos, in helping Catholics to duly appreciate sacramental ritual. Today’s communities of believers will thrive spiritually by engaging in rituals more attuned to current experiences and social contexts. Such experience provides vital sustenance to the life of faith.

God’s active salvific ways, known to Christian faith as the abiding gestures of the risen Lord, suffuse creation and come especially to light through sacramental experience nurtured by the Church’s dutiful pastoral care.

Ronald Quillo

Co-editor

 

CONTENTS

 

 Divine Sacramental Presence

                                Editorial Overview………………………………………………………. 1

 

The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God: The Cosmic History of Three Sacramentals

Linda Gibler, OP………………………………………………………….. 4

 

The Resurrection: Story, Reality, or the Real Story?

Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM………………………………………. 15

 

Jesus, Spirit-Empowered Son of Abba

Dale M. Schlitt, OMI………………………………………………….. 40

 

Pope Francis and the Rise of a Pastoral Magisterium

                                Richard R. Gaillardetz………………………………………………. 58

 

Book Reviews      …………………………………………………………………………………… 78

Deconstructing Sacramental Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual. By Joseph Martos

Kenneth Hannon, OMI

Ponzio Pilato: Un Enigma tra Storia e Memoria. By Aldo Schiavone

James Zeitz

 

Theses and Dissertations for 2016…………………………………………………………. 83

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