Do We Really Need To Be Perfect? (Worth Revisiting)

This post was originally published in January, 2014 shortly after I started this blog; it was re-published in February 2015.   To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

 It’s funny how different things can look from just a slightly changed perspective.  I remember as a fallen-away Catholic college sophomore responding to what must have been a Divine prompting  by picking up a copy of the New Testament and starting to read.  I can’t say why, as a cradle Catholic, I didn’t first seek out the sacraments or a priest (maybe it was a result of the catechesis I received in the ‘70’s).  In any case, I began with the first chapter of Mathew’s Gospel, and things were looking pretty good until I came to the Sermon on the Mount.  Here I began to entertain the unpleasant suspicion that a Journey of Faith might entail some Demands (horribile dictu!) upon me.  I continued nonetheless until I came to Chapter 5, verse 48: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  I needed to be perfect? This was asking way too much, I thought.  I put the book down. It would be almost another ten years before I gave serious thought to returning to the practice of the Faith.

Sebastiano Ricci, "The Sermon on the Mount"

     And yet that passage troubled me on and off for a long time.  Odd that as a Classics major, and later a teacher of Latin and Greek, it didn’t occur to me to look up the Greek word that was translated into English as “perfect”.  If it had, I might have found Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 5:48 less overwhelming (although at the time, honestly, I may not have wanted that badly to be saved from my sins). 

     Eventually, of course, it did happen.  As an older and (somewhat) wiser man I was explaining to my students that the Latin word perfectus had not yet completely taken on its modern connotation of flawlessness or moral perfection; its primary meaning was “finished” or “complete”, which is why the verb tense denoting completed action is called the perfect tense.  That’s when the proverbial light went off in my head: was this the word St. Jerome used in translating the Gospel from Greek in the fourth century, and if so, what did the Greek word mean?

  What I found changed my entire perception of the passage.  The Latin is indeed  perfectus, and is a translation of the Greek word τέλειοι (teleioi). τέλειοι is related to the noun τέλος (telos), “end”, and the adjective signifies something that has reached its proper end, or fulfillment, i.e., is complete. I also realized, for the first time, that verse 48 is intended as a conclusion to the verses preceding, indicated by the word "therefore" οὖν (oun). When I looked at the passage as a whole, it all began to make more sense:

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 

so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  MT 5:44-48

Just as God loves completely (i.e., everyone), and forgives completely, so must we.  Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t calling us to strive for perfection as we understand the word today: he certainly is.  In this particular passage, however, he is primarily concerned teaching us to love with a perfect love, and he gives us a “road map”, if you will, to show us how to get there. That’s still a pretty tall order, but somehow it seemed less hopelessly impossible when I could see Jesus is proposing concrete actions, and not simply commanding us to, well, be perfect.

     I don’t want to make it seem that my difficulty with one scripture verse held me back from rejoining the Mystical Body of Christ for a decade.  I needed more experience of life, of realizing the futility of trying to do things “my way”, and particularly of the Mystery of the Cross to soften my heart and lead me back to the Lord.  Nevertheless, coming to a new appreciation of Christ’s call to perfection in Matthew 5:48 removed one small but significant barrier on that journey.

Feed My Sheep (Worth Revisiting)

This Worth Revisiting post was one of my very first, originally published January 10th, 2014; a revised version was posted February 11th of this year.
     To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers visit Worth Revisiting Wednesday,hosted by Elizabeth Reardon of theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.”    JN 21:15-17

It's Greek To Me

     You’re probably familiar with the beautiful passage from John’s Gospel above.  As he sits with the risen Christ at a charcoal fire on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Peter has the opportunity to redeem himself for what he did the last time we saw him at a charcoal fire: on that occasion he denied Jesus three times; here Jesus invites Peter three times to tell his Lord, face to face, that he loves Him.

    The first time I read this passage in the original Greek I was intrigued by the fact that two different words for “love” are used, which is not reflected in English translations.  The first two times Jesus asks, “do you love me?” he say ἀγαπᾷς (agapais), and when Peter answers  “I love you” he says φιλῶ (philo).  Now, knowing that, among Christians, the verb ἀγαπῶ came to mean all-embracing divine love, whereas φιλῶ referred to ordinary human affection, I thought I had stumbled onto Something Big.  It seems that many others have had the same idea, because I soon learned that there has been quite a lot written on this topic (who knew?).  Scripture scholars warn us, however, not to make too much of the different verbs.  It appears that at the time John wrote his Gospel the two verbs were used more or less interchangeably, although φιλῶwas much more common.  John, the scholars tell us, was probably doing no more than making his language more interesting by avoiding redundancy.

More Than Words

     I’m not one to pick a fight with the experts on their own turf; on the other hand, we know that John is a careful and subtle writer, and if he were that concerned with varying his vocabulary for purely stylistic reasons the prologue to his Gospel would read rather differently.  In any case, even if we can’t find a Big Linguistic-Theological Significance here, it seems to me that John is nonetheless showing us something.  Here’s what he have in the passage: Jesus asks “do you love me?” using one verb (ἀγαπᾷς), Peter answers affirmatively using what appears to be a synonym (φιλῶ); then they repeat, each using the same separate verbs they used before; finally, as Peter grows visibly distressed by Jesus repeating the question (but knowing all too well why it needs repeating), the Lord asks a third time . . . only this time He uses Peter’s word, as if to say, “All right, Peter, you love me, but do you love me?”.   

     I think we can see in this a reflection of how Grace works in our life.  Christ comes to Peter, who does not at first recognize Him; after Peter realizes with whom he’s talking, Christ invites him to express his love, and in so doing repudiate his earlier sin; Peter is willing, but can’t quite bring himself to use the same word that Jesus uses, instead replying with a (possibly more humble) synonym; after the same thing happens the second time, Jesus finally moves a little closer, and when He asks him the third time he echoes Peter’s own word back to him.  And every time Peter proclaims his love, Christ calls on him to share that love with others (“feed my sheep”).  

The Word Becomes Flesh

     Just so, God is always the initiator, inviting us to share His grace; He often comes to us in a tangible form (the Incarnation, the Eucharist, his ordained ministers acting In Persona Christi); He calls on us to act out the love we proclaim (audible confession, acts of mercy, evangelization). And He’s always willing to move a little closer, if it will bring us closer to Him.  Christ is asking us, "Do you love Me?"  Will we answer, along with Peter, φιλῶ ?

"Doing" the Truth in Love

The episcopal motto of a new bishop casts fresh light on a familiar passage from scripture; an earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published February 19th, 2014. Please visit the linkup for Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com, and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com)

To Speak The Truth . . . 

Last year [14 February 2014] the Diocese of Portland, Maine, saw the consecration of a new Bishop, Robert Deeley.  His episcopal motto: "To Speak The Truth In Love."

Episcopal arms of Robert Deeley, Bishop of Portland, Maine

     That’s not a bad motto for any of us.  I remember many years ago hearing Mary Cunningham Agee explaining how this same verse (it comes from Ephesians 4:15) served as a sort of mission statement for The Nurturing Network [link], her ministry to women at risk for abortion.  In our family we have tried to make it a guiding principle as well; it has come to be called the “Prime Directive” (yes, that’s a Star Trek joke).  Sometimes, in our human frailty, we honor it more in the breach than in the observance.  Saint Paul tells us in another place that:  

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-2) 

Some of the reasons why this should be so aren't hard to grasp, once we see them.  Even those who disagree with us, no matter how angry, abusive, or blasphemous, still carry with them the image and likeness of God, which we must honor.  Also, we will not be very convincing evangelists for the God who is Love (1 John 4:8) if we seem to be lacking in that quality ourselves. 
     But there’s more to it than that.  The old saying that “something is always lost in the translation” seems to be particularly true about Holy Scripture.  So it became clear in this case when I first saw our new Bishop’s episcopal arms, where his motto appears in Latin: Veritatem Facere in Caritate. I was struck by the fact that the word translated as “speak” in English wasn’t the Latin equivalent, dicere, as I would have expected, but facere, which more properly means “make” or “do.” A more literal translation would be “Doing The Truth In Love.” It seemed a curious (if not unpleasing) choice of word, and I suspected that the answer lay, at least in part, in the scriptural source.

To Do The Truth . . . 

     That proved to be the case.  In the Vulgate Latin translation of Ephesians 4:15 St. Paul says: Veritatem autem faciens in caritate, crescamus in Illo per omnia Qui est Caput, Christus, “But speaking” (literally “doing”) the truth in love, let us grow through all things into him who is our Head, Christ.”  Veritatem faciens is itself a translation of St. Paul’s original Greek word aletheuontes, which can mean “speaking the truth”, but also “being true.”  St. Jerome could have chosen the narrower, more obvious meaning and used dicens, but he seems to have thought a broader meaning was called for. His choice is instructive, especially when we look at it in the context of the whole verse.  Truth should be more than just what we say, but what we do.  St. Paul is talking about not just evangelization, but about becoming more like Christ (“growing into Him”) so we can take our place in His Mystical Body.  Evangelization is inseparable from our own growth in holiness.  It’s even clearer when we look at the larger context: 

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.   (Eph 4:11-16)  

"If I Speak In The Tongues Of Men And Of Angels . . ."

     It all comes down to love; it is love that binds together the body of Christ.  Without love we can say true things, but we can’t embody The Truth (as in 1 Cor 13:1 , above).  It’s that understanding of embodiment that is one of the great insights, and one of the great strengths, of the Catholic tradition.  It has often occurred to me that one of Martin Luther’s great mistakes was misunderstanding fides as simply “faith”, a largely internal and subjective experience.  Fides is, in fact, much wider than that: it is “fidelity”, or “faithfulness”, a whole way of acting and living.  Think of what we mean by faithfulness or fidelity in marriage: it’s more than feelings or intentions, it involves doing certain definite things, and specifically not doing others.  So it is with veritatem facere.  It does not only mean speaking the truth lovingly (although that’s certainly a part of it), it means doing the truth, living it out in love, in order to make up a worthy body for our Divine Head.

Spirit, Matter, and the Word of God

The Word Made Flesh     

My family doesn’t attend the Extraordinary Form of the Mass on a regular basis, but we go whenever we can.  One of the things that stands out for me is the fact that every Mass closes with a reading of the “Last Gospel”, which is opening of John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

     There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him.  He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light.   That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him,  and the world knew him not.

     He came unto his own, and his own received him not.  But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.  Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,  (and we saw his  glory, the  glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:1-14)

St. Jerome Visited by Angels by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi

     On those occasions when I have been granted the privilege of teaching a religion course in the High

School where I work I always start the school year with this passage because it is the best introduction to the Catholic understanding of what we might call the Sacramental Principle, our understanding that God teaches us spiritual truths through material things. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"!  Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always understood the Embodiment in the Man Jesus Christ of the Eternal Word who existed before the creation of the universe to be a pattern that is repeated in countless lesser embodiments: the men and women whom God chooses to carry out his will, such as prophets, evangelists, and saints, not to mention his ordained clergy; his Church and its sacraments; the events of Salvation History and everyday life.  “The Heavens proclaim the Glory of God!”, says the Psalmist in Psalm 19:1.  Accordingly, things, details and events are important.  That’s why the early Church was always careful to emphasize that Jesus was a actual man who lived in specific places under certain verifiable Roman officials such as Pontius Pilate.  The details matter.

Loosening Up the Meaning

     I couldn’t help but reflect on these things as I read the Anthony Esolen article that was the subject of yesterday’s post (7 april 2014). He starts out saying:

I recently read Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae the way it was principally meant to be read: in Latin.  There’s something illuminating, I find, about reading in the original a work that is familiar to you in translation.  It becomes unfamiliar.  You can’t catch the gist of a clause unless you pay unusually close attention to the words.  You can’t dismiss something before you have quite determined what that something is.

     I had been thinking of writing about just this idea myself, because I apply the same principle in many of my posts dealing with Holy Scripture (see here and here), where looking at a word or words in the original Greek, and maybe the way it was translated into Latin just a few centuries later, is not so much a matter of “linguistic analysis” as it is simply a way of loosening up the meaning for me after the English translations have become so familiar that they have calcified, and no longer sink in.

     It’s also true that having to work through a language like Latin or Greek, where the syntax follows different principles, forces you to examine the language much more closely than if you were simply reading it in English.  Some of my students know this first hand. A few years ago I was searching through the encyclicals of John Paul II looking for some “modern Latin” for a third year Latin class.  One day I heard some of the students in the class teasing one of their classmates because he had visited a store called “Condom Sense” (yes, it is what it sounds like).  “Of course!” I thought, “Humanae Vitae!”  Which we did, in the original language.  Those students knew Pope Paul’s teaching inside and out (which is not to say that they were pleased to know it).

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

     Another problem with translations is that invariably many of the connotations and possible meanings of the original language will be lost.  This is always the case, but even more so in the latter half of the twentieth century, when an approach called “dynamic equivalence” was popular among translators, in which the translator would render what he thought the text meant, as opposed to what it actually said.  The result was “translations” that were really interpretations, with much of the concrete and vivid imagery flattened or erased, and thus the distinctness, and sense of embodiment.  Think of the recently replaced translation of the Mass: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you . . .” as opposed to “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof . . .” The so-called “dynamic” version is abstract and remote, the new more literal translation is something you can visualize, besides retaining a clear connection to the Biblical source (the Roman centurion with a sick servant in Matthew 8:8).
     So, you might be saying, "I don’t know Latin or Greek: where does that leave me?"  Well, it’s never too late to start learning, but in any case there are things you can do in reading Scripture, for instance, that can help you achieve some of the same result.  You can read the Bible with a good Catholic commentary, for instance.  It can also be helpful to compare different translations. I would advise sticking to approved Catholic translations. I would also make a point of including the Douay-Rheims version, which for a long time was the Catholic Bible in English; it is from the same era as the King James ( a few decades earlier, in fact), and makes a point of sticking much closer to the original text than has been the fashion in recent years (the passage from John's Gospel at the beginning of the post is from this translation). Working with the language in this way can help to free it from the choices of a particular translator.

They Are There For A Reason

     Here’s my final point: God speaks to us through his creation, including the words of Holy Scripture written by men under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The words of those Scriptures are themselves filled with all manner of vivid concrete images and events.  They are there for a reason: who are we to say that we know better than the inspired authors?  And the more tangible we can make them, the better we will understand. For instance, I have heard some people say, in praying the Our Father, "give us this day our daily strength", instead of the more literal "give us this day our daily bread."  "Strength" is certainly one of the things that the image includes, but there's so much more: all the various other ways in which God fulfills our daily needs, and specific connections such as the Manna from Heaven (which was good only for one day) and, most important, Christ the Bread of Life, present in the Eucharist. 
     We are neither soulless animals, nor disembodied angels: God has created human beings as a unique combination of matter and spirit. It is for that reason the Word Became Flesh and dwelt among us.  And for the same reason, when we see spiritual realities through the material lenses with which our creator has provided us, we see most clearly.
     

(An earlier version of this "Revisited" post was originally April 8th, 2014 under the title, "Scripture: Why Language is Important".  Please visit the linkup for Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com, and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com)

      

History, Culture, And Narcissism (From Nisi Dominus)

Dante and Vergil in Hell

Whose Culture Is It?

 There’s an interesting piece at The Catholic Thing [here] by David Warren called “The Counter-Culture”. I find myself agreeing with his conclusion, but not with everything he says along the way.  Warren takes issue with those Catholics who disparage Western Civilization, and insists that the Church is the author of that civilization, however much it might owe to previous societies (just how much is included in that “however much” is the rub; more on that in a moment), as well as secularists who tout an oddly non-Christian interpretation of it.  He concludes that championing that culture, and particularly its Christian dimension, is the only way to counter the rapidly decaying culture of secularism that has grown up around us in recent decades.

It's Both/And, Not Either/Or

     So far, so good.  Problems arise, however, when Warren attempts to counter secularists who would draw a direct line from Greco-Roman times that, somehow, skips over the heavily Christian period from about A.D. 300 to 1968.  Warren goes overboard, however . . . 

(Read the entire post HERE at Nisi Dominus)

Does He Really Expect Us To Be Perfect?

     It’s funny how different things can look from just a slightly changed perspective.  I remember as a fallen-away Catholic college sophomore responding to what must have been a Divine prompting  by picking up a copy of the New Testament and starting to read.  I can’t say why, as a cradle Catholic, I didn’t first seek out the sacraments or a priest (maybe it was a result of the catechesis I received in the ‘70’s).  In any case, I began with the first chapter of Mathew’s Gospel, and things were looking pretty good until I came to the Sermon on the Mount.  Here I began to entertain the unpleasant suspicion that a Journey of Faith might entail some Demands (horribile dictu!) upon me.  I continued nonetheless until I came to Chapter 5, verse 48: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  I needed to be perfect? This was asking way too much, I thought.  I put the book down. It would be almost another ten years before I gave serious thought to returning to the practice of the Faith.

Sebastiano Ricci, "The Sermon on the Mount"

     And yet that passage troubled me on and off for a long time.  Odd that as a Classics major, and later a teacher of Latin and Greek, it didn’t occur to me to look up the Greek word that was translated into English as “perfect”.  If it had, I might have found Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 5:48 less overwhelming (although at the time, honestly, I may not have wanted that badly to be saved from my sins). 

     Eventually, of course, it did happen.  As an older and (somewhat) wiser man I was explaining to my students that the Latin word perfectus had not yet completely taken on its modern connotation of flawlessness or moral perfection; its primary meaning was “finished” or “complete”, which is why the verb tense denoting completed action is called the perfect tense.  That’s when the proverbial light went off in my head: was this the word St. Jerome used in translating the Gospel from Greek in the fourth century, and if so, what did the Greek word mean?

  What I found changed my entire perception of the passage.  The Latin is indeed  perfectus, and is a translation of the Greek word teleioi. Teleioi is related to the noun telos, “end”, and the adjective signifies something that has reached its proper end, or fulfillment, i.e., is complete. I also realized, for the first time, that verse 48 is intended as a conclusion to the verses preceding (notice the word “therefore”; oun in Greek):

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 

so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  MT 5:44-48

Just as God loves completely (i.e., everyone), and forgives completely, so must we.  Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t calling us to strive for perfection as we understand the word today: he certainly is.  In this particular passage, however, he is primarily concerned teaching us to love with a perfect love, and he gives us a “road map”, if you will, to show us how to get there. That’s still a pretty tall order, but somehow it seemed less hopelessly impossible when I could see Jesus is proposing concrete actions, and not simply commanding us to, well, be perfect.

     I don’t want to make it seem that my difficulty with one scripture verse held me back from rejoining the Mystical Body of Christ for a decade.  I needed more experience of life, of realizing the futility of trying to do things “my way”, and particularly of the Mystery of the Cross to soften my heart and lead me back to the Lord.  Nevertheless, coming to a new appreciation of Christ’s call to perfection in Matthew 5:48 removed one small but significant barrier on that journey.