We explore the mystery of true mercy this 26th Ordinary Sunday.
Perhaps we can pick up something helpful for dealing with the cruelty with which those of a traditional leaning are being treated by the papalatrous Modernists right now. Perhaps they can pick something up from this about kicking people when they are down.
Our Collect for Sunday, slightly different from its ancestor in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary, is also in the 1962 Missale Romanum for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost.
Deus, qui omnipotentiam tuam parcendo maxime et miserando manifestas, gratiam tuam super nos indesinenter infunde, ut, ad tua promissa currentes, caelestium bonorum facias esse consortes.
A consors is someone with whom you share a common destiny (cum, “with” + sors “lot, fate, destiny”). Parco means, “to spare, have mercy, forbear to injure; forgive.” We see this verb often in our prayers. Think of the responses during the litanies: “Parce nobis, Domine… Spare us, O Lord!”
LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who manifest Your omnipotence especially by sparing and by being merciful, pour Your grace upon us unceasingly, so that You may make us, rushing to the things You have promised, to be coheirs of heavenly benefits.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, you show your almighty power, in your mercy and forgiveness. Continue to fill us with your gifts of love. Help us to hurry toward the eternal life you promise and come to share in the joys of your kingdom.
CURRENT ICEL (2011):
O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven.
We can slip into the trap of associating justice only with the exercise of power.
Today we affirm the other side of power’s coin: mercy.
Nevertheless, the affirmation of God’s mercy does not diminish God’s justice.
One of the ways God reveals Himself as “almighty” is by being forgiving and sparing.
God knows all things which ever were, are or will be, as well as how each human action impacts every other throughout history.
For God, balancing mercy and justice is no problem at all.
For us, however, this balancing act is exceedingly difficult. Our will and our limited intellect are wounded. We struggle with passions. It is hard to see what is good and right and true and then rein in our emotions. We oscillate between being just and then being merciful. Bringing the two streams of mercy and justice together in just the right way is a tremendous challenge. When we encounter a person who does this well, we are deeply impressed by him and hold him up as an example of wisdom because he seems to act more clearly as an image of God. His example moves us because we know that we too must conform to God’s image.
When I catch myself out of balance with mercy and justice, I call to mind God’s will for Jonah. God sent Jonah to Nineveh to tell them of their destruction by God in forty days. For a change, the Ninevites believed this prophet and started doing penance, such that God did not destroy them. Jonah was furious that they were not destroyed.
Let’s see that whole passage and find the flow the God’s teaching Jonah about compassion and peace in the Lord’s will. This is chapter 4:
But this [God sparing the city because they did penance] was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
6 The Lord God appointed a bush, [Heb kikayon varying versions, castor oil plant, and in LXX gourd vine, Jerome says “ivy”] and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
Jonah seems to get everything wrong. He is “out of his gourd”, if we go with the Septuagint. But God tries to bring him around.
I have to add this. In the Abruzzi region of central Italy there is a tiny, amazingly well preserved jewel of a 12th c. Romanesque church, Santa Maria in Valle Porclaneta. The pulpit is magnificently carved with reliefs, including Jonah sitting under his gourd vine. God is above and the worm is below. I think it captures the prophet perfectly.
Let’s not be out of our gourds with anger because God does not punish the wicked in the way we would like him to.
One way in which we act the most according to God’s image, behaving as Christ’s good consortes, is precisely when we act with compassion.
In biblical language, such as the Hebrew racham, compassion is often interchangeable with mercy. The Latin word compassio comes from Latin cum+patior, “to suffer/endure with” someone. We are moved when we witness suffering and attendant compassion because they reveal in a mysterious way who we are as human beings and how we ought to act.
In a famous passage from the Council’s Gaudium et spes, we are taught that Christ came into the world to reveal man more fully to himself (GS 22). Christ did this in His every word and deed during His earthly life. His supreme moment of revelation to us about who we are was His Passion and death on the Cross and subsequent rising from the tomb. When we imitate His Passion, in sacrificial love and in the genuine “with suffering” which is compassion, we act as we were made by God to act. In sincere and concrete acts of compassion we, in our own turn, reveal man more fully to himself! We in turn show God’s image to our neighbor. Only the stony, cold and dead are not to be moved by examples of genuine compassion rooted in the sacrificial love which is charity.
Pope John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis 9, that “man cannot live without love”. By this he meant both the love we give and the love we receive.
Unmerited acts of charity, mercy, and compassion make visible to our neighbor the God after whose likeness we ourselves are fashioned.
In sincere and concrete acts of compassion, in our biblical “bowels of mercy” (Colossians 3:12), we in our turn reveal man more fully to himself.
Individuals can by their example effect great changes in a society.
If one person can do much, how much more could be done by armies of men and women thirsting for holiness and righteousness (i.e., a Church), striving to act in compassion, justice and mercy?
By His justice, God will give us what we deserve.
By His mercy, He will not give us certain elements of what we deserve.
By His pouring forth graces upon us, God gives us what we do not deserve.
God’s justice must be received with joyful trepidation, whether we want it or not.
God’s mercy we must beg for with humble confidence.
God’s grace, unmerited by us, we embrace with exultant gratitude.
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Jerome says “ivy”
I hope this is not a rabbit hole, but since no one is commenting anyway, allow me to mention Jerome’s explanation of why he says “ivy” which explanation he provided at the end of his letter to Augustine (ep. 112):
In eo loco ubi Septuaginta Interpretes cucurbitam, et Aquila cum reliquis hederam transtulerunt, id est, κισσὸν, in Hebraeo volumine CICEION scriptum est, quam vulgo Syri CICEIAM vocant. Est autem genus virgulti, lata habens folia, in modum pampini. Cumque plantatum fuerit, cito consurgit in arbusculam absque ullis calamorum et hastilium adminiculis, quibus et cucurbitae et hederae indigent, suo trunco se sustinens. Hoc ergo verbum de verbo edisserens, si CICEION transferre voluissem, nullus intelligeret: si cucurbitam, id dicerem quod in Hebraico non habetur: hederam posui, ut caeteris interpretibus consentirem. Sin autem Judaei vestri, ut ipse asseris, malitia vel imperitia, hoc dixerunt esse in voluminibus Hebraeorum, quod in Graecis et Latinis codicibus continetur, manifestum est eos aut Hebraeas litteras ignorare, aut ad irridendos cucurbitarios voluisse mentiri. Peto in fine epistolae, ut quiescentem senem olimque veteranum militare non cogas, et rursum de vita periclitari. Tu qui juvenis es, et in Pontificali culmine constitutus, doceto populos, et novis Africae frugibus Romana tecta locupletato. Mihi suflicit cum auditore et lectore pauperculo in angulo monasterii susurrare.
[Good job, thanks for adding that. I was going to get into Jerome, but I didn’t want to go too long. And remember that when posting Greek, etc. here, use UNICODE.]
Augustine to Jerome. Written in A.D. 403
To my venerable lord Jerome, my esteemed and holy brother and fellow presbyter: Augustine sends greetings in the Lord.
Never since I began to write to you, and to long for your writing in return, have I met with a better opportunity for our exchanging communications than now, when my letter is to be carried to you by a most faithful servant and minister of God, who is also a very dear friend of mine, namely, our son Cyprian, deacon. Through him I expect to receive a letter from you with all the certainty which is in a matter of this kind possible. For the son whom I have named will not be found wanting in respect of zeal in asking, or persuasive influence in obtaining a reply from you; nor will he fail in diligently keeping, promptly bearing, and faithfully delivering the same. I only pray that if I be in any way worthy of this, the Lord may give His help and favour to your heart and to my desire, so that no higher will may hinder that which your brotherly goodwill inclines you to do.
As I have sent you two letters already to which I have received no reply, I have resolved to send you at this time copies of both of them, for I suppose that they never reached you. If they did reach you, and your replies have failed, as may be the case, to reach me, send me a second time the same as you sent before, if you have copies of them preserved: if you have not, dictate again what I may read, and do not refuse to send to these former letters the answer for which I have been waiting so long. My first letter to you, which I had prepared while I was a presbyter, was to be delivered to you by a brother of ours, Profuturus, who afterwards became my colleague in the episcopate, and has since then departed from this life; but he could not then bear it to you in person, because at the very time when he intended to begin his journey, he was prevented by his ordination to the weighty office of bishop, and shortly afterwards he died. This letter I have resolved also to send at this time, that you may know how long I have cherished a burning desire for conversation with you, and with what reluctance I submit to the remote separation which prevents my mind from having access to yours through our bodily senses, my brother, most amiable and honoured among the members of the Lord.
In this letter I have further to say, that I have since heard that you have translated Job out of the original Hebrew, although in your own translation of the same prophet from the Greek tongue we had already a version of that book. In that earlier version you marked with asterisks the words found in the Hebrew but wanting in the Greek, and with obelisks the words found in the Greek but wanting in the Hebrew; and this was done with such astonishing exactness, that in some places we have every word distinguished by a separate asterisk, as a sign that these words are in the Hebrew, but not in the Greek. Now, however, in this more recent version from the Hebrew, there is not the same scrupulous fidelity as to the words; and it perplexes any thoughtful reader to understand either what was the reason for marking the asterisks in the former version with so much care that they indicate the absence from the Greek version of even the smallest grammatical particles which have not been rendered from the Hebrew, or what is the reason for so much less care having been taken in this recent version from the Hebrew to secure that these same particles be found in their own places. I would have put down here an extract or two in illustration of this criticism; but at present I have not access to the manuscript of the translation from the Hebrew. Since, however, your quick discernment anticipates and goes beyond not only what I have said, but also what I meant to say, you already understand, I think, enough to be able, by giving the reason for the plan which you have adopted, to explain what perplexes me.
For my part, I would much rather that you would furnish us with a translation of the Greek version of the canonical Scriptures known as the work of the Seventy translators. [LXX – Septuagint] For if your translation begins to be more generally read in many churches, it will be a grievous thing that, in the reading of Scripture, differences must arise between the Latin Churches and the Greek Churches, especially seeing that the discrepancy is easily condemned in a Latin version by the production of the original in Greek, which is a language very widely known; whereas, if any one has been disturbed by the occurrence of something to which he was not accustomed in the translation taken from the Hebrew, and alleges that the new translation is wrong, it will be found difficult, if not impossible, to get at the Hebrew documents by which the version to which exception is taken may be defended. And when they are obtained, who will submit, to have so many Latin and Greek authorities pronounced to be in the wrong? Besides all this, Jews, if consulted as to the meaning of the Hebrew text, may give a different opinion from yours: in which case it will seem as if your presence were indispensable, as being the only one who could refute their view; and it would be a miracle if one could be found capable of acting as arbiter between you and them.
A certain bishop, one of our brethren, having introduced in the church over which he presides the reading of your version, came upon a word in the book of the prophet Jonah, of which you have given a very different rendering from that which had been of old familiar to the senses and memory of all the worshippers, and had been chanted for so many generations in the church. Thereupon arose such a tumult in the congregation, especially among the Greeks, correcting what had been read, and denouncing the translation as false, that the bishop was compelled to ask the testimony of the Jewish residents (it was in the town of Oea). These, whether from ignorance or from spite, answered that the words in the Hebrew manuscripts were correctly rendered in the Greek version, and in the Latin one taken from it. What further need I say? The man was compelled to correct your version in that passage as if it had been falsely translated, as he desired not to be left without a congregation — a calamity which he narrowly escaped. From this case we also are led to think that you may be occasionally mistaken. [I’m picturing Jerome seeeething angry at reading that.] You will also observe how great must have been the difficulty if this had occurred in those writings which cannot be explained by comparing the testimony of languages now in use.
At the same time, we are in no small measure thankful to God for the work in which you have translated the Gospels from the original Greek, because in almost every passage we have found nothing to object to, when we compared it with the Greek Scriptures. By this work, any disputant who supports an old false translation is either convinced or confuted with the utmost ease by the production and collation of manuscripts. And if, as indeed very rarely happens, something be found to which exception may be taken, who would be so unreasonable as not to excuse it readily in a work so useful that it cannot be too highly praised? I wish you would have the kindness to open up to me what you think to be the reason of the frequent discrepancies between the text supported by the Hebrew codices and the Greek Septuagint version. For the latter has no mean authority, seeing that it has obtained so wide circulation, and was the one which the apostles used, as is not only proved by looking to the text itself, but has also been, as I remember, affirmed by yourself. You would therefore confer upon us a much greater boon if you gave an exact Latin translation of the Greek Septuagint version: for the variations found in the different codices of the Latin text are intolerably numerous; and it is so justly open to suspicion as possibly different from what is to be found in the Greek, that one has no confidence in either quoting it or proving anything by its help.
I thought that this letter was to be a short one, but it has somehow been as pleasant to me to go on with it as if I were talking with you. I conclude with entreating you by the Lord kindly to send me a full reply, and thus give me, so far as is in your power, the pleasure of your presence.
Jerome to Augustine. Written A.D. 404.
… you ask why a former translation which I made of some of the canonical books was carefully marked with asterisks and obelisks, whereas I afterwards published a translation without these. You must pardon my saying that you seem to me not to understand the matter: for the former translation is from the Septuagint; and wherever obelisks are placed, they are designed to indicate that the Seventy have said more than is found in the Hebrew. But the asterisks indicate what has been added by Origen from the version of Theodotion. In that version I was translating from the Greek: but in the later version, translating from the Hebrew itself, I have expressed what I understood it to mean, being careful to preserve rather the exact sense than the order of the words. I am surprised that you do not read the books of the Seventy translators in the genuine form in which they were originally given to the world, [zzzzzAP!] but as they have been corrected, or rather corrupted, by Origen, with his obelisks and asterisks; and that you refuse to follow the translation, however feeble, which has been given by a Christian man, especially seeing that Origen borrowed the things which he has added from the edition of a man who, after the passion of Christ, was a Jew and a blasphemer. Do you wish to be a true admirer and partisan of the Seventy translators? Then do not read what you find under the asterisks; rather erase them from the volumes, that you may approve yourself indeed a follower of the ancients. If, however, you do this, you will be compelled to find fault with all the libraries of the Churches; for you will scarcely find more than one manuscript here and there which has not these interpolations.
A few words now as to your remark that I ought not to have given a translation, after this had been already done by the ancients; and the novel syllogism which you use: “The passages of which the Seventy have given an interpretation were either obscure or plain. If they were obscure, it is believed that you are as likely to have been mistaken as the others if they were plain, it is not believed that the Seventy could have been mistaken.”
All the commentators who have been our predecessors in the Lord in the work of expounding the Scriptures, have expounded either what was obscure or what was plain. If some passages were obscure, how could you, after them, presume to discuss that which they were not able to explain? If the passages were plain, it was a waste of time for you to have undertaken to treat of that which could not possibly have escaped them. This syllogism applies with peculiar force to the book of Psalms, in the interpretation of which Greek commentators have written many volumes: viz. 1st, Origen: 2d, Eusebius of Caesarea; 3d, Theodorus of Heraclea; 4th, Asterius of Scythopolis; 5th, Apollinaris of Laodicea; and, 6th, Didymus of Alexandria. There are said to be minor works on selections from the Psalms, but I speak at present of the whole book. Moreover, among Latin writers the bishops Hilary of Poitiers, and Eusebius of Verceil, have translated Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, the former of whom has in some things been followed by our own Ambrose. Now, I put it to your wisdom to answer why you, after all the labours of so many and so competent interpreters, differ from them in your exposition of some passages?
If the Psalms are obscure, it must be believed that you are as likely to be mistaken as others; if they are plain, it is incredible that these others could have fallen into mistake. In either case, your exposition has been, by your own showing, an unnecessary labour; and on the same principle, no one would ever venture to speak on any subject after others have pronounced their opinion, and no one would be at liberty to write anything regarding that which another has once handled, however important the matter might be.
… You tell me that I have given a wrong translation of some word in Jonah, and that a worthy bishop narrowly escaped losing his charge through the clamorous tumult of his people, which was caused by the different rendering of this one word. At the same time, you withhold from me what the word was which I have mistranslated; thus taking away the possibility of my saying anything in my own vindication, lest my reply should be fatal to your objection. Perhaps it is the old dispute about the gourd which has been revived, after slumbering for many long years since the illustrious man, who in that day combined in his own person the ancestral honours of the Cornelii and of Asinius Pollio, brought against me the charge of giving in my translation the word “ivy” instead of “gourd.” (1) I have already given a sufficient answer to this in my commentary on Jonah. At present, I deem it enough to say that [This is where the Latin quote in the comment above starts…] in that passage, where the Septuagint has “gourd,” and Aquila and the others have rendered the word “ivy” (kissos), the Hebrew MS. has “ciceion,” which is in the Syriac tongue, as now spoken, “ciceia.” It is a kind of shrub having large leaves like a vine, and when planted it quickly springs up to the size of a small tree, standing upright by its own stem, without requiring any support of canes or poles, as both gourds and ivy do. If, therefore, in translating word for word, I had put the word “ciceia,” no one would know what it meant; if I had used the word “gourd,” I would have said what is not found in the Hebrew. I therefore put down “ivy,” that I might not differ from all other translators. But if your Jews said, either through malice or ignorance, as you yourself suggest, that the word is in the Hebrew text which is found in the Greek and Latin versions, it is evident that they were either unacquainted with Hebrew, or have been pleased to say what was not true, in order to make sport of the gourd-planters.
In closing this letter, I beseech you to have some consideration for a soldier who is now old and has long retired from active service, and not to force him to take the field and again expose his life to the chances of war. Do you, who are young, and who have been appointed to the conspicuous seat of pontifical dignity, give yourself to teaching the people, and enrich Rome with new stores from fertile Africa. I am contented to make but little noise in an obscure corner of a monastery, with one to hear me or read to me. [Where the Latin ends. In essence, be a good little bishop in the countryside, sonny, and leave the hard work to people who know what they are doing.]
Augustine to Jerome. Written A.D. 405
… I beg of you … to send us your translation of the Septuagint, which I did not know that you had published … in order that we may be delivered, so far as is possible, from the consequences of the notable incompetency of those who, whether qualified or not, have attempted a Latin translation; and in order that those who think that I look with jealousy on your useful labours, may at length, if it be possible, perceive that my only reason for objecting to the public reading of your translation from the Hebrew in our churches was, lest, bringing forward anything which was, as it were, new and opposed to the authority of the Septuagint version, we should trouble by serious cause of offense the flocks of Christ, whose ears and hearts have become accustomed to listen to that version to which the seal of approbation was given by the apostles themselves. Wherefore, as to that shrub in the book of Jonah, if in the Hebrew it is neither “gourd” nor “ivy,” but something else which stands erect, supported by its own stem without other props, I would prefer to call it “gourd” as in all our Latin versions; for I do not think that the Seventy would have rendered it thus at random, had they not known that the plant was something like a gourd … [If “gourd” was good enough up to now, it’s good enough going forward.]