01 - Prologue
Welcome to this Bible study on marriage. And today's talk will begin with a prologue. The prologue is about a certain number of themes that we absolutely need as a prerequisite in order to really get into the meat of the subject, which is the discussion of marriage. So first, I'd like to thanks father thank father Saroki for his generosity in opening up this hall at Our Lady Mont Carmel, where we are actually having this holding the study. And I also want to thank Paul Jonah for his for reaching out and asking me to actually start this bible study.
Michael:This is a bible study in eight parts on the topic of marriage. And today, as I said, we're gonna start with a prologue. You don't need necessarily to focus too much on the rest of the topics. I'll be covering those as we go, but I effectively chosen a series of tableau from the scriptures that I'm going to use as point of reflection on marriage. And we'll go through that, through those in detail starting next, the next talk on March 27.
Michael:What we'll cover today is three really important concepts. First, we're going to talk about the concept of recapitulation, recapitulation, which is really an important topic that we really need to understand that's because it's gonna power most of the conversation on most of the discussion on marriage. And then we'll discuss or we'll actually revisit the notion of a biblical interpretive principles to understand how we're to interpret scripture. And finally, we'll talk about the covenant. These three concepts, recapitulation and biblical principles and the covenant are really key to drive this talk forward.
Michael:However, I will be going over those multiple times throughout the whole study. So you don't need necessarily to catch everything I'm gonna say right now. If it seems a little confusing or maybe overwhelming, that's all right. We're going to go over those again throughout the rest of the talk. So let's begin with recapitulation.
Michael:What is recapitulation? Recapitulation is actually scripture as blueprint for married life. And the key here when we think about recapitulation is that instead of reading Scripture as a point of reflection, which is obviously very good and very useful, we can also look at Scripture as a reflection or rather as a blueprint of our own life. In other words, Scripture functions as a plan for every human beings life. That is the fundamental idea behind recapitulation.
Michael:I'm gonna explain this now as we go through this section. But on this slide, the first slide and the topic of recapitulation, I give you an example, a series of quick samples. On the left hand side you have scriptural events, the right hand side you have a marital context. Now I'm looking at recapitulation here in the context of marriage but also recapitulation can be used fruitfully for our own personal individual life. Not doing this in this talk, but that is the first use of recapitulation.
Michael:It's to look at my own life in light of Scripture. And I'll go through this as we talk more about recapitulation. When we consider Adam, when he was created and he was alone in the garden, well in the context of marriage that's the period of our lives where we are not dating and we are not married. So we can look at that situation which we're going to do in the next talk and ask ourselves this question: How must I best prepare for marriage? What should I do?
Michael:Then Adam meets Eve, well that is falling in love and courting. And then they're together in Eden, well that's the honeymoon. Then we have the fall, which is a moral disorder and every couple ends in a situation where they have to grapple with difficult situations and difficult decisions, we then look at the exile as living in the world and the flood as a serious blow. What happens when you face real difficulties, economic difficulties, job loss or sickness in the family, within the life of a couple. After the flood is really the rebuilding then God calling Abram could be looked at as God guiding every married couple.
Michael:And then more than one wife, that's the situation in which Jacob finds himself. Nadi is essential with infidelity and the consequences of infidelity. And settling in Egypt is essentially giving into materialism and when they are enslaved well, well that's what happens when we are enslaved. So you can see this is certainly not a full list, it's not comprehensive, but it gives you a good understanding of how recapitulation fruitfully looks at Scripture as a blueprint for our own lives. Alright, now, if I keep looking at it this way I can think of recapitulation in the context of the Holy Family.
Michael:So, I can for instance say, if I am reflecting on the Holy Family in the context of recapitulation I could say Adam is alone in Eden, well that reflects Joseph before Mary. Adam meets Eve that's when Joseph meets Mary. Together in Eden they are betrothed. The fall, Joseph is tempted but resist. Exile, well, there is not necessarily correspondence directly with the Holy Family at that point.
Michael:So you can see, repetition doesn't mean that every single event in Scripture matches an event in the life of a couple, it and and so that's really important. I don't want you to think that every single scene or every single situation, historical situation that occurred in Scriptures is going to be reflected in our lives. Rather, what happens to us can be found back into Scripture. The flood, well that corresponds to Herod's killing the children. That is a big event.
Michael:That's a massive blow. And then after the flood obviously there is nothing there but God calling Abram, that's when God calls Joseph to essentially, you know, be the head of that family. In the case of more than one wife, well, the corresponding situation is perfect fidelity. Then settling in Egypt, that's when they actually go down to Egypt and settle there, but they don't fall into materialism. And finally the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt and the Holy Family Mary and Joseph submit to God in obedience.
Michael:So you can see how when you look at the life of the Holy Family in the context of recapitulation, you get a sense of how even Mary and Joseph had begun the work of salvation, obviously through the grace of God and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Nothing happens without the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and His saving grace, but He enables them to be able to do what they need to do. And what is then this concept of recapitulation? Where do we find it in the Scriptures? Well, for that we turn to Ephesians chapter one verse nine through 11 and we read, For He has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of His will according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth, in Him according to the purpose of Him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will.
Michael:Well that word unite in verse 10 can also be translated as sum up. So the Greek word anakephaleosastai and I'm most likely destroying it, can be literally rendered as to recapitulate in Latin. Now recapitulate is to redo, is to do again. So for instance, if I walk into your house and you ask me to paint a wall and I paint the wall pistachio green and you just don't like that you decide to repaint it with a more pastel color. Well when you repaint you recapitulate.
Michael:You're redoing what I did to fix it. That's the essential idea behind recapitulation. So then how does Christ recapitulates all things? Well, by getting right what Adam got wrong. So essentially He is going to relive the life of Adam and get it right.
Michael:That's the fundamental idea of recapitulation in Christ. So St. Irenaeus states, He has therefore in his work of recapitulation summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam. The enemy would not have been fairly vanquished unless it had been a man born of woman who conquered Him. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of Man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one.
Michael:And as through a man death received the palm of victory against us, so again by man we may receive the palm against death. Central to this idea of recapitulation is that Christ could not have saved us unless He had lived the life of Adam and lived it well and lived it the right way. Now this idea that Saint Irenaeus brings forth, we can also see it this way. The ultimate goal of Christ's work of solidarity of humankind is to make humankind divine. Of Jesus Saint Irenaeus says, He became what we are that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.
Michael:So, Christ came, lived as a man, so that we can live the divine life. Now this idea of the divine life is not a strange one. Most Catholics are familiar with it, although under a different term which is the supernatural life. We don't necessarily speak of divinization, of the divine life these days, but we speak of the supernatural life which is the divine life. And why is it the divine life?
Michael:Well for a very simple reason, is that if we are in heaven and we call ourselves the children of God as we ought, then since the parents and the children share the same nature, for instance human beings will bring forth children who are human. And then dogs will beget dogs and cats beget cats and frogs beget frogs. And even if you a dog that you absolutely love that dog will never be your son because the dog doesn't share your nature. So if that's the case, and if it is also the case that God is divine and we are human, how could we be truthfully and authentically called the children of God in heaven since God's nature is divine and ours is human? Well the only way is for us to change our nature.
Michael:And that's the whole idea behind divinization. That doesn't mean that we become God equal to the Trinity. It simply means we share their nature. Just as you and I are not in a sense the same, identical to our parents, we're different, nature. This idea is shared by St.
Michael:Ananaceus, Gregory of Naziones, St. Augustine, St. Maximus the confessor. In the Orthodox theology, the development of recapitulation, out of recapitulation view of the Atonement is called theosis which means deification which is a supernatural life in Catholic theology. Now there is a typology of recapitulation and here I'm going to briefly touch on the historical and the redemptive recapitulation.
Michael:The historical recapitulation record of the interventions of the incarnate Word for mankind, I. E. Salvation history culminating in the incarnation, passion and resurrection. So salvation history is a historical recapitulation. St.
Michael:Irenaeus regarded all biblical events as mystery centered on and depending on Christ. The primordial mysteries are repeated and fulfilled in Him. So what happens in the Old Testament is repeated and fulfilled in Christ. And it is fulfilled perfectly. Christ Himself said, I have not come to deny but to fulfill, to complete.
Michael:Redemptive recapitulation, for Sidoronius, redemptive recapitulation is not simply Christ writing what went wrong. Even before the world began, all men and all creation were preordained, predestined for the incarnation of the Logos. In becoming man Christ renews or recreates creation. So St. Irenaeus doesn't think of the Incarnation of Christ as a reaction to our sins.
Michael:Instead he thinks of our creation as a reaction to the incarnation of Christ. Now, some of us were created before Christ came and lived among us here on earth, some were created after. But the fundamental idea is that we are created because Christ was to become man. That's how he thought about it. And the other really important thing is that in becoming man Christ renews or recreates creation.
Michael:It is when He is incarnated as a man, as the God man, that Christ is able to renew all of creation. Now He could have done it obviously by simply remaining the Logos, there was no question about it, but the point that Cyren Irenaeus says that in justice, in order to really defeat the devil, Christ had to become a man. For otherwise, the devil could claim that since the Logos defeated him and the Logos is God, there is no real victory there because it simply proves that no man could possibly defeat him. Therefore Christ became incarnate in order to defeat the devil. And in so doing, in so doing, he recapitulates the whole history of mankind in him in order to save us.
Michael:It is this recapitulation, the fact that all of history of mankind has been, is sort of subsumed into His victory, He took on all of our sins on the cross so that He can be victorious over sin. It is that fact that allows Him to be truly be, the savior of the world. And without that, we would not be able to be saved. That's really a key element of the whole salvation history. And this is why recapitulation is so important.
Michael:Now in the catechism chapter five, 518, Christ's whole life is a mystery of recapitulation. Christ's whole life is a mystery of recapitulation. All Jesus did, said and suffered had for its aim restoring fallen man to his original vocation. So the entire purpose of Christ's life was to save us by living a human life and doing what Adam failed to do. The catechism continues.
Michael:When Christ became incarnate and was made man, he recapitulated in himself the long history of mankind. He recapitulated in himself the long history of mankind. Mankind. He redid the entire human history in himself and procured for us a shortcut to salvation so that what we had lost in Adam, that is being in the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus. For this reason, Christ experienced all the stages of life thereby giving communion with God to all men.
Michael:So again the idea being that by living a human life and living it perfectly He united Himself to us and allowed us then to be united to God. But that living His life here on earth perfectly was meant as a replay, as a redoing of the entire human history. What is meant by that is that if you look at the entire human history and you look at all the sins that plagued human history, Christ defeated all of them, every single one of them. In his own life, he showed how it is possible for humanity to overcome sin. And that's the essential idea behind recapitulation.
Michael:In paragraph 668, the catechism tells us that Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Christ's ascension into heaven signifies his participation in His humanity in God's power and authority. That's really key. I'm stopping the quote from the Catechism here. It is the participation in His humanity, in God's power.
Michael:So when you read in the letter of Hebrews and letters of Saint Paul about these ideas that Christ, that God raised Him from the dead and set His name above all other name, St. Paul is not talking about the logos. St. Paul is really talking about Christ as God man. He is really talking about the recapitulation of Christ that led Him to raise all of us from the dead and allow us to get to heaven.
Michael:And that's really important. Jesus Christ is Lord. So the God man is Lord. He possesses all power in heaven and on earth. He is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.
Michael:The catechism says, for the father has put all things under his feet. Christ is Lord of the cosmos and of history, in Him human history and indeed all creation are set forth and transcendentally fulfilled. All of history is set forth in the life of Jesus Christ and is fulfilled in His life. So you can see how the life of Christ is recapitulating all the events of scripture. And in a sense, since we are to be imitators of Christ, we too, our lives, recapitulates the events of scripture.
Michael:Therefore, if we use that idea as a principle, we can start to read Scripture and look at it as a blueprint. These are the events of Scripture. My life is going to recapitulate those events. What could I learn by reflecting on scripture in this fashion? And that is also true.
Michael:This is how I use recapitulation. I use it as a I use scripture again as a blueprint for mid life. And that's how we're going to study marriage throughout the rest of this series. One more paragraph from the catechism twenty eight fifty four. That's 2eight 54.
Michael:When we ask to be delivered from the evil one, pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In his final petition, the church brings before the father all the distress of the world along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity. She implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance and expectation of Christ's return. By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in Him who has the keys of death and Hades, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. The idea being that since Christ recapitulated all of human history, are He has now authority over all of human history, therefore, we can go to Him and petition Him to free us from all these evils, past, present, future.
Michael:Because He recapitulated all of them and did it perfectly. Hence, by His grace, by uniting ourselves to Him and receiving His grace, we should also be able to overcome these evils. That applies to us as individual and that also applies to us within our married life. Alright. Now, like I said, I will be returning to this to these ideas of recapitulation because I am I know they're not easy to grasp.
Michael:And most likely, you may have gotten maybe 10% of everything I said. Now obviously I encourage you to listen to this talk multiple times to familiarize yourself with the notion of recapitulation, but also be aware that I will be covering that again and again and again throughout this series. Alright, let's move now to the biblical interpretive principles. How do we interpret scriptures? How should we interpret scripture?
Michael:How should we read scripture? As you know, the Bible is written by multiple authors over long a long span of time, and it's not it's not an easy book to read by any means. The catechism helps us to understand that in paragraphs one fifteen to one twenty one or one nineteen. In one fifteen, the catechism tells us that according to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of scripture, the literal and the spiritual. And the literal is what the author intended.
Michael:What was meant when the text was written? The spiritual are the extension of what the author meant through the Holy Spirit. The spiritual sense is divided is further subdivided into the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. And I'll I'll get into those in a minute. What's key here is that there is a profound concordance of the four senses that guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the church.
Michael:In other words, there ought to be a harmony between the way these four senses work for us to feel or sense or be convinced we're on the right track when we interpret text some in in in one way or the other. In paragraph one sixteen, the meaning conveyed by the words of scripture and discovered by exegesis following the rules of sound interpretation, All other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literals. That's the that's that's the literal sense. The definition of literal sense is in paragraph one sixteen. The meaning conveyed by the words of scripture and discovered by exegesis following the rules of sound interpretation.
Michael:All other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literal. And like I said, this basically means this is what the is what scripture this is what the author meant when the book was written. Alright. Paragraph one seventeen, the spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of scripture, but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
Michael:The allegorical allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ. So the allegorical sense, the allegory here is that the historical literal events are actually signs pointing to Christ. Now like you've heard me say in the first segment, talking about recapitulation, Christ recapitulated everything in His own life. Therefore, therefore, we look into the Old Testament and we see, we look at different situations in the Old Testament, and we can see in them a prefiguration of Christ.
Michael:And that's what this is saying. This is what the allegorical sense means. For instance, the crossing crossing the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites is a sign or a type of Christ's victory in Christian baptism. So the, Moses parts the waters, the Israelites cross the sea safely, and then the Egyptians are lost in the water, which is a sign of baptism, so Christ's victory, and us dying in the water and rising with him. That's what baptism is supposed to be.
Michael:A death and a new creation. And then the Egyptians who are lost in the waters is a sign of the defeat that the devil has suffered at the hands of Christ. That's the allegorical sense. The moral sense, the events reported in scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As Saint Paul says, they were written for instruction.
Michael:This is presumably, this is the sense that we're most familiar with. Reading scripture and trying to derive from it some ways in which we can address a situation or a conflict. And then lastly, the analogical sense. We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland, thus the church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. And likewise we can think of the Old Testament as a sign for the New Testament.
Michael:So that's the analogical sense. So, the literal sense is the sense of Scripture as it was intended by the author when the text was written. The allegorical sense is the sense in which the text becomes a sign that shows Christ. The moral sense is the way in which we read the text to figure out how we live a just life. And the anagogical sense is a sense of the eternal significance of the text, meaning if you will the end times, but also the time of the church in a sense.
Michael:That is because the church is the final institution, divine institution, and the church will last until the end times. These concepts, by the way, are well established within Catholic tradition. So in the and fifth century, John Cassian had, come up with this idea of a Catholic quadriga and so did Hugh Saint Victor in the, eleventh, twelfth century. A quadriga is a wheel. And so it essentially the idea behind it is that they they would teach the four senses by setting up a wheel in the middle and then having the four senses as the, you know, above above it, below it, to the right, and to the left.
Michael:In my deck, I have replaced the wheel with the Temple Of Jerusalem, and I show you the four senses using the temple as an example. So the literal meaning of the temple at time of Christ, well, is the structure. It's the building that was commissioned by Herod. That is the literal meaning. So if somebody speaks of the temple at the time of Christ, that's what they mean.
Michael:It is that building. The analogical meaning, that is remember the meaning in which we take something and look at it as a sign that points us to Christ. Well, Jesus Himself used that idea of a temple to speak of His own body in the Gospel of Saint John chapter two verse 19 when He said, Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. The anagogical meaning, well the church is the new temple, right? The church replaces the temple.
Michael:The church is the new temple of Jerusalem. And then we see that in Corinthian Ephesians, and in Ephesians. And finally, the moral meaning, Saint Paul reminds us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit in one Corinthians six nineteen. So you can see how all four meanings work together. There's harmony between them, to sort of elicit the meaning of that text.
Michael:And that's the the approach we're going to take here. Now, what is also key is when we're interpreting a paragraph or a verse is that we must interpret it, keeping in mind the content and unity of all of scripture. That's paragraph one twelve, the interpretation of scripture. Be especially attentive, the catechism reminds us, to the content and unity of the whole scripture. Different as the books which compose it may be, scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart open since his Passover.
Michael:This paragraph emphasizes that sacred scripture must be read as a unified whole with Christ at the center. This is known as the canonical approach, meaning that no single passage should be interpreted in isolation but in the context of the entire Bible. Incidentally, if you want to learn more about the four senses, you can head over to korbono.com and then pick up the Catholic Foundational Library. It's the first series on that website. And if you open that series, you will see four talks that delve into details about the four senses.
Michael:I'll give numerous examples of each of the four senses in each of the talks. So if you want to learn more, you can definitely avail yourselves of these talks. Now, a word of warning. Literal doesn't always mean literally. Doesn't mean the words as they were written.
Michael:You need to keep in mind the context. So, as an example, when we look at Genesis and the account of creation, there's always this question, was the text written to tell us that God created the world in six times twenty four hours? Was that the meaning? Is the meaning of six days today, literally six days as we understand it, the meaning that the author had in mind when he wrote the text. Well, we first consider the text itself in light of what we know.
Michael:And we see for instance that in Genesis chapter one verse 11 through 13, and I am quoting sparingly here from these verses, and God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation a third day. And in 16, so eleven sixteen, sorry, or '19, Yeah. 11 through 19. My bad. In 16, he made the stars also, and then in 19, a fourth day.
Michael:So what I'm highlighting here is that in this in this account of creation, we see that the author tells us that the stars were created after the grass, after vegetation. Now, cosmologically, well, based on modern science, we know that that's not the case. The stars were not created before the stars, before the grass. They were created well I mean, I'm sorry, the stars weren't created after the grass. They were created well before it.
Michael:Now I know there are some people who try to come up with explanations, scientific explanations to say, no, no, that's possible, but they're not mainstream science. However, like I said, you need to consider the context. When the text was penned, when it was written, we understand that it was written when the Jews the the Jews were in exile in Babylon. Now Babylon back then was like New York today. It was a hip city.
Michael:It was the city where the where, you know, it was a city of the happenings, of fashion. There was, you know, the suspended gardens Of Babylon, 1 of the seven marvels of the ancient world. The Temple Of Melkert was beautiful with golden cherubs guarding the doors and beautiful paintings and statues. And then there was also the account of creation, the Babylonian account of creation called the which translates on which which translated as when on high. And in it, we read that Melkhart, who is a god, fought Anat, his mother, and essentially, Anat and her allies were defeated by him, and then eventually he created man from dirt and the blood of a dragon.
Michael:So the anthropological understanding of man in Babylonian conception is that man is half evil, half good. And as you know from even the accounts of the Gospels from the Magis that the stars played a very significant role in the Babylonian conception of the world. The stars influenced the lives of human beings. And today, that same concept can survive in the idea of astrology. And if you're a Catholic in good standing, you should not give any credence to astrology.
Michael:That's called superstition and it's against our faith. So if you keep these ideas in mind, you can see that there is a cultural war going on and a religious war, a spiritual war, a war of understanding of who man is. Anthropological. That opposed the Jews who were exiles living in Babylon under cultural pressure from the very the flourishing Babylonian culture. They had to defend against it with a proper understanding.
Michael:If that's the case, then you can see how this text says then that the stars were created after the grass. Well, stars can also mean deities, it means angels. And so the intention of the author here seems to be to downgrade the importance of the stars so as to reaffirm or reassert that the grass is far more important and more consequential to our lives than the stars could be. That the stars are really inconsequential. They are less important than the grass, than the vegetation.
Michael:That sense accords well with understanding, in the spiritual sense, the moral sense, that we shouldn't be paying any attention to the gods of the world, and rather we should only worship the true God. So here's an example of how the literal sense can guide us to an understanding of scripture that is centered into its historical context and into a meaning that is useful for us. The other example is Jonah in the belly of the fish, that's in the book of Jonah chapter one verse 15. So they took up Jonah and threw him into the sea and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Michael:Well we know from the morphology and structure of a whale that that could not have been a whale because a whale cannot swallow a man. So what kind of fish this might be? Well, as we've seen a minute ago, that scripture, every verse, must be understood in the unity of all of scripture. So we look elsewhere to see if there are similar situations where a meaning of an object might not point to the physical object itself. Well, that's the case of the Magi.
Michael:The Magis were guided by a star. Now that star behaved in ways that is not common to stars. Number one, it moved. Stars don't move. Not as fast, not at the speed of a camel movie.
Michael:It doesn't happen. When the Magi reached Jerusalem and spoke with Herod, the stars vanished and reappeared after they left. That's not how stars behave. So in that case the more reasonable thinking would be to say that star was, well the spiritual meaning of a star, an angel. And it was an angel who appeared to them as a star because in their eyes the stars are important and so it spoke their language and guided them to the real light of the world, not a star, the real light of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Michael:In this case that fish could also have been of angelic nature, that it contained Jonah and then brought him back out three days later. So again, it's an example. Now I'm not I'm not I'm not being dogmatic about this. I'm not saying this is the explanation. I'm just saying this might be or seems to me a more reasonable explanation than to think that it was actually a physical fish.
Michael:Okay. However, there are parts of Scripture that we have to take literally. So, in the Gospel of Saint John chapter six verse 53, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread which I will I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. Here, the Lord is speaking literally, and, you know, the whole the whole context bears it out, and there's really good reasons to to understand that it is literal.
Michael:This is exactly what he means. The other really important principle here is that in the gospels, the audience matters. Who Jesus is talking to colors the meaning of the text. So we can't understand the text without understanding first who is he addressing. And on this particular slide I've listed 10 different categories of people.
Michael:You have got the father, you have our lady, Saint John the Baptist, the chief priests and elders, Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes and heroines, that's one group. The demonic spirits, the apostles, the disciples, Roman authorities, the crowd, and the pagan. Depending on whom Jesus is talking to changes the meaning of the text. And I'll give you one example, which is one of my pet peeves, and that's from the Gospel of Saint Matthew chapter 18 verse 20 in which our Lord says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. And that, you hear it in many homilies, is understood according to the moral sense.
Michael:As to say, so in other words, the moral sense is taken to be the literal sense, where if you have two or three believers who are praying together, Christ is in their midst. But is that really what the Lord is intending to say? Well, we have to look at the audience. Who is Jesus addressing? Now in the beginning of that chapter, Matthew chapter 18 verse one, we read, At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
Michael:So it would seem as if Jesus is addressing the disciples. Who are the disciples? It's all of us. However, however, closer to this text, chapter 18 verse 18, we hear Him say, Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. Well, that, when you read the text you'll see, He's not addressing the disciples, He's addressing the apostles.
Michael:And we all know as Catholics that we don't have, I mean I don't have the power, you don't have the power to lose on earth, to lose and bind. This is something that belongs to the hierarchy. So it's ecclesial. So now Christ is talking about the nature of the Church. In chapter verse 20, when Jesus says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them, Jesus is talking to the Apostles.
Michael:The context is the Apostles. So then what is he saying? He's saying this is an easy it's an easy function, right? Given exclusively to the Apostles. He's telling the apostles and their successors that when they gather in his name, councils, he will be in their midst, infallibility.
Michael:This establishes the infallibility of councils. It has nothing to do with the moral reading. That's not the immediate intent. Because if that because if this were to be the case, then you take three guys that belong to the Sicilian mafia. They are pious Catholics.
Michael:They go to mass every Sunday, and they gather to plot the assassination of some innocent guy. Is Christ in their midst? You can see how ridiculous, very quickly, how this whole thing crumbles apart if you think that that was the primary meaning, but it wasn't. The meaning was addressed to the church, to her hierarchy and to her structure, and is really talking about the infallibility of councils. So that's where you can see that who he is talking to is of extreme importance.
Michael:So again, to recapitulate, no pun intended. There are four senses of scripture, the literal and then three spiritual senses, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical. The allegorical is the meaning that points to Christ. The moral is the meaning that points to us. And the anagogical is the meaning that points to the end times and to the church.
Michael:Scripture must be interpreted in light of scripture and the living tradition of the Catholic church. And then lastly, we must pay attention to the audience. And like I said, if you wanna learn more, head over to Corbono and you can listen to those talks which go into these talks in greater detail. Alright. Now I'm going to pivot and then talk about the third topic here, which is the covenant.
Michael:And that is absolutely critical for marriage because what is marriage? It is a covenant. Okay. What is a covenant definition? A covenant is an agreement between a strong and a weak party.
Michael:Between a strong and a weak party. It spells the condition the weak party must fulfill. If the weak party is faithful to the covenant, the strong party blesses them. If they are disobedient, the strong party curses them. That was the structure that was used in ancient times whenever a conqueror, a conquering king, would conquer a city, he would establish a covenant with the city, and the king will, put forth the conditions that the city must follow.
Michael:For instance, you pay your taxes, and then, your men are conscripted into the army. And if you do all these things and you don't plot against me, your blessing will be that I make you citizens of my kingdom with all the rights of the citizens. And if you don't, the curses will be that I'll destroy your city. So that that's how the ancient world functioned, and it is the structure that we find in scriptures as well. So, there are in the Old Testament five major covenants, the Aramaic covenant, Noahic covenant, Abrahamic covenant, Mosaic covenant, and Davidic covenant.
Michael:And in in and on this slide, I am listing, you know, those covenants and the the, key promises. I'm not gonna go into this them right now. I'm just listing them. If you want to learn more about the covenants, again, in the Catholic Foundation Library, I have four or five talks going to details of all of these covenants, what they mean, and what were their purpose. In the New Testament, we you hear of the covenant at every mass during consecration.
Michael:Take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me. So there is there is also a new covenant that is established by Christ and it is the eternal covenant. Covenant. There will be no other one moving forward.
Michael:Now, what is this covenant specifically? How was introduced the new covenant? Well, the strong party, the Gospels introduce Jesus and introduce God the Father. Typically in a covenant, the strong party introduce himself. There is a prologue in which the strong party says, this is who I am.
Michael:Well, we have that in the Gospels, in the first chapter of Saint Matthew, where we have the genealogy of Jesus Christ being introduced. And in John, in the Gospel of Saint John chapter one verse one through 34, where his divine sonship is introduced. So now we know who Christ is, who the strong party is. The weak party is all of us. We're all sinners.
Michael:And Christ lists our duties as His followers. Well, we know we're sinners because it's all over the New Testament. And the duties are introduced in Matthew chapter five for instance. There are other places as well, but that's the Sermon on the Mount. And where Christ tells us what we're supposed to do.
Michael:Okay, what are the blessings? The blessings are in Matthew chapter five verse one through 11, which we know as the Beatitudes. And in the Gospel of Saint Luke chapter six verse 20 through 22. And what are the curses? The curses are in the Gospel of Saint Luke chapter six verse 24 through 26.
Michael:They're the woes. Woe is another way of saying cursed. And it's also in the first letter of the Corinthians chapter 11 verse 20 through 22. A few additional thoughts before I go forward. When I say marriage is a covenant and I talk about a strong party and a weak party, I don't mean that the man is the strong party and the woman is the weak party.
Michael:Some people might interpret it this way, but it would be all wrong. And Scripture certainly doesn't mean that at all. The strong party is God, It's Jesus Christ. The weak party is us, man and woman. We're sinners.
Michael:We're weak, and we're in need of salvation and we need of the grace of Christ to be able to live a fruitful life. I just wanted to to clarify this in case it caused some confusion. The last thing I'll say is that we should not attempt to reverse engineer God's judgment. What do I mean by that? I mean that the covenant brings with it blessings and curses.
Michael:So we might be tempted to look at the lives of people around us and then observe them and conclude that they are either blessed or cursed because of some sins they've committed. The scripture warns us not to do that in two different places. The first one is the book of Job, where the friends of Job come and then hammer him with this idea that if you are suffering, it is because you have sinned. They are reverse engineering God's judgment based on what they are seeing. We cannot do that.
Michael:We don't have the wisdom or the knowledge to be able to do that in all cases. It could be then when we talk to someone and we understand the particular situation of that person that we may gain some insight and the Holy Spirit might want us to share with that person, you know, a thought or two that might help them. But generally speaking, the purpose of the covenant isn't for us to go judging our brothers and sisters, it is rather to help us live according to God's will. That's the first, like I said, the first part is the gospel, the book of Job. The other one is in Synoptics where the apostles come and ask Jesus about men who died when a tower fell and crushed them.
Michael:And they asked Jesus, was it because of the sins of their parents? So again, they're looking at, they're trying to reverse engineer the the the sit the situation, the parents. Because they're thinking if these men died that way, it was God's judgment and it was a curse. Therefore, their parents must have done something wrong. And Jesus cut to the chase and tell them, No, it's not this way.
Michael:Now, sometimes His response is interpreted to mean that the sins of the parents do not affect the children in all cases, but that would be also wrong because scripture showed us many situations in which the sins of the parents affect the children. I don't mean to say that the sins of the parents are transmitted to the children. I mean it affects them. It affects them. It makes them suffer.
Michael:So the first example is in the case of David, when he committed the sin with Bathsheba, the net result is that the baby, the first baby born from her, died. Baby was innocent from the crimes of his parents, but nevertheless he was affected by them. The other example is in the case of Noah, when Ham, his son, attempted to take over to mount a coup and take over the power for himself. Noah didn't curse Ham, he cursed Canaan, his son. Canaan, according to what we know, what we can read from Scripture, had nothing to do with it.
Michael:It was his father who committed this sin, but yet it was the son that was cursed, and there are good reasons for it. So the son was affected because of the sins of the parents. But point that Jesus is trying to Jesus made in the Scriptures is that do not look at a situation and conclude that if this happened, it must be because of that. You don't know. Saint Paul reminds us that he doesn't even judge himself.
Michael:Judgment is God's, not ours. Instead, we should pray. That's what we should do. We should intercede and pray and offer sacrifice and trust in God's, justice and God's mercy. Alright.
Michael:That's all I have for you, this time around. What this I I I want you to really understand these concepts to the best of your abilities because we're gonna use them as we move forward throughout the entire series. And I hope you'll find it useful. God bless you, and see you next time. Bye bye.
