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PAGE 5—January 1,1976
V
Prophets During Babylonian Exile
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BY STEVE LANDREGAN
God responds to the needs of His people. In
the days of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah
when prosperity and political expediency
caused the Israelites to abandon their covenant
promises to Yahweh, He sent them prophets to
exhort them to faithfulness, to warn them of
the consequences their apathy toward the
covenant could bring upon them.
When Jerusalem fell to the might of
Nebuchadnezzar and most of the citizens of
Judah were exiled to Babylon, the dangers
facing the remnant of God’s people were
entirely different from those they had faced as
an independent nation.
Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, had been
conquered and destroyed. The Temple had
been leveled and the Ark of the Covenant
destroyed or hidden never to be found. Those
who had interpreted their “chosenness” to
mean national invincibility had their dream
shattered by reality.
Exiles who survived the fall of Jerusalem and
the 600-mile death march to Babylon were grief
stricken and confused. The Land, promised
them by Yahweh, had been wrenched from
them. The city where His name was to dwell
forever was in ruins. It was as if the Word of
Yahweh had been blotted out by pagan
victories.
With their religious roots brutally yanked
from the sacred soil of Israel they were faced
with the sjame despair that had caused their
brothers from the Northern Kingdom to
disappear completely when exiled to Assyria a
century and a half earlier.
The feelings of desolation are expressed in
Psalm 137. “By the streams of Babylon we sat
and wept when we remembered Zion. . . .”
But God responded to the new need of his
people and raised up among them great
prophets to speak to them of Yahweh’s love for
Solomon:
BY REV. ALFRED McBRIDE, O.PRAEM.
(Part 2)
Solomon combined human wisdom and
divine guidance to turn a nomadic peasant tribe
into a luminous earthly kingdom. He built a
temple to insure that genuine religion would
unify the spirit and hopes of the nation. World
leaders sought his counseling talents. The queen
of Sheba graded him as the world’s wisest man.
Into this eden of wisdom crept the ancient
snare, to use wisdom for self-serving purposes
and not as a stairway to the stars. Solomon
BY REV. JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
A recent news item out of Los Angeles
reported the proposed establishment in that
area of four centers for the study of Gregorian
chant. The founder, Msgr. Robert E. Brennan,
believes there is “a growing movement to bring
back Latin and Gregorian chant as a normal
pajrt of liturgical prayer.”
I concur in his observation about the trend
toward restoration of chant and Latin in our
Liturgies, but with some qualification. My
experiences indicate the return of these musical
elements is only a partial reintroduction and
those melodies tend in a given celebration to be
combined with other contemporary vernacular
songs.
Two illustrations should clarify the point.
St. Charles Borromeo Seminary at Overbrook
in Philadelphia possesses the reputation among
peer institutions as a conservative, old style,
formidable Eastern school for future priests.
The massive buildings and vast campus, the
students in cassock (and surplice for Mass), the
seminarians’ very deferential attitude toward
visiting priests, the ancient paintings in every
hallway tend to confirm this impression.
However, after directing a three-day retreat
for the theological students at Overbrook, I
found the label inaccurate. These young men
are not ashamed of the past or of the
Philadelphia tradition, but they seem very open
to the Church’s needs for today and tomorrow.
The liturgies for that opening retreat
reflected this pride of the past, but in tune with
the present attitude.
We worshiped from the Prayer of Christians,
celebrated a communal Penance service and
concluded on Friday with benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament.
The music included “Deus in adjutorium
intende” (a famous Gregorian chant
introduction to the divine office) and the Bossa
Nova “Holy, holy, holy.” We chanted the
Agnus Dei (Mode VIII) and joined in songs by
Deiss aiftl the Dameans. We sang “Down in
adoration falling” (a vernacularized Latin
them and exhort them to hope in His promise
that a Holy Remnant would return to the land.
The two great prophets of the Exile were
Ezekial and he who is known to us only as
Second Isaiah.
Ezekial was among those taken hostage and
deported to Babylon in 597 by
Nebuchadnezzar. He received his prophetic call
in 592 (Ezk 1-3) and spoke the Word of God
among his fellow Exiles until 570.
His first prophecies pre-date the fall of
Jerusalem and like Jeremiah’s warn the people
of the coming disaster. Many of his prophecies
were dramatically acted out by the prophet
who most scholars would agree was the most
eccentric of a breed of unusual men.
He acts out the fall of Jerusalem by digging a
hole in the wall of his house through which he
escapes and flees into the darkness (12:Iff). All
this while his fellow hostages look on. Another
such comination prophecy is his “Song of the
Sword.” (21:13ff).
Ezekial’s visions of God on the Cherubim
(1:Iff), the dry bones (37:Iff) and the New
Temple (4042) are God’s consolation of His
people and His assurance that He is present
among them even in exile, and that they will
indeed be restored as a people to the Land of
the Promise.
His allegory of the two sisters (23) reminds
the Israelites of their history of infidelity to
Yahweh and the hardness of heart that resulted
in their conquest and fall.
After the fall of Jerusalem (587) Ezekial’s
prophecies change to messages of hope. In his
Parable of the Shepherd (34) He contrasts their
bad kings (shepherds) with the Good Shepherd,
God, and the messiah whom He will send to
gather them together.
The promise of a cleansing of His people and
the gift of new hearts, of flesh, not stone
found out that kingdoms cost money. In the
beginning the foreign trade helped pay the bills.
Soon, however, Solomon realized what all kings
and politicians come to know, that he must
levy taxes, and heavy ones at that, to sustain
the new style of government living.
Worse yet, he reported to what amounted to
slave laborfiHe forced the fiercely free-spirited
nomads of the northern tribes, especially Israel,
into contributed services. This was basically
forced labor camps, or more plainly, slavery. He
set up tax districts in the north in such a way
that they dissolved the old tribal lines, in an
benediction hymn) and listened to a melody by
the monks of Weston Priory.
Something old, something new indeed.
The priests of our Syracuse diocese gathered
this September at a local motel for their second
“live in” clergy workshop. Despite the presence
of two excellent lecturers, feedback stressed
that the highlight of the conference was not the
good academic presentations, but the daily
eucharistic liturgies.
Carefully planned to feature a variety of
options provided by the revised liturgical texts,
the two Masses contained musically, as in
Philadelphia, something old and something
new.
We changed a familiar Kyrie Eleison to begin
one Eucharist and concluded that service with
the popular “Let there be peace on earth.”
Contemporary composer Carey Landry’s “I’ll
Never Forget You” was a Communion
meditation piece for Mass and the Salve Regina
in Gregorian chant ended Compline or Night
Prayer. The priests united both in Lucien Deiss’
antiphonal “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the
highest” and an Agnus Dei, again in plain chant.
They also listened to a vocal solo with strong
Charismatic overtones and a violin rendition of
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
This is the type of old and new liturgies I see
developing across the nation. It represents a
restoration of Gregorian chant, true, but a
modified reintroduction.
Msgr. Brennan’s centers may stir more than
local interest. In too many seminaries the
Church’s rich musical tradition has all but been
abandoned for contemporary compositions.
Future priests certainly need an awareness of
today’s best in music, but they also should
acquire an appreciation for yesterday’s finest
works.
Ezekiel sought to preserve the identity of
God’s chosen ones in a strange land; Isaiah
announced the return home of these pilgrim
people. Perhaps the Los Angeles musician may
perform a similarly prophetic role in preserving
part of our heritage and leading the people of
God in this age back to some of its ancient
roots.
(36:24-28) speaks of the gift of God’s Spirit to
enable men to live by God’s statutes.
Second Isaiah (Is 40-55) is raised up among
the exiles toward the end of their captivity and
is charged with the message of hope and
consolation. Indeed his first oracle prophesies
an end to the exile. “Comfort, give comfort to
my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to
Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service
is at an end, her guilt is expiated ... A voice
cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the
Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway
for our God!” (Is 40:1-3).
He contrasts the power of Yahweh to the
lifeless idols of Babylon (40:12-31). Cyrus, the
conquerer of Babylon, is pictured as the chosen
instrument of God to free His people (45:24ff)
and the fall of Babylon as God’s punishment
for the Babylonian’s treatment of Israel
(45:1-7)
Yahweh’s forgiveness and restoration of
Israel is movingly described in Second Isaiah’s
canticle on “The New Zion” (54), where the
barren and rejected wife (Israel) is taken back
by God to be the mother of the New Israel.
It is in Second Isaiah that we find the
beautiful and mysterious Servant Songs
(42:14, 49:1-6, 50:4-11 and 52:13ff) that
portray the ideal servant of God, unselfish,
self-sacrificing and responding perfectly to the
covenant call of Yahweh. Jesus clearly
identified himself as this Servant, the Man of
Sorrows.
Second Isaiah, like his predecessor whose
name he bears emphasizes the holiness of God
and particularly the power of His Word (55:10)
that is able to recreate and renew (43:19ff).
God responds to the needs of His people as
part' of His hesed, his covenant love. Through
Ezekial and Second Isaiah he responds to a
broken, dejected and despairing people with
consolation and hope based upon His promise
of restoration.
effort to attach everyone firmly to the throne.
The combination of heavy taxes and slavery
policies set in motion the political discontent
which would lead to civil war after his death,
and permanently divide Isfael in the north from
Judah in the south.
His second great error was idolatry. Divine
wisdom aided him to build a kingdorp. His new
fascination with false gods led to the quick
destruction of that kingdom. “Solomon had
seven hundred wives of princely rank, and three
hundred concubines. His wives turned his
heart.” (I Kings 11:3)
The number is doubltless an exaggeration,
but the corrupting result was not. His marriages
to foreign wives led to a support for their
strange religions.
“When Solomon was old his wives had
turned his heart to strange gods. By adoring
Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians and
Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites, Solomon
did evil in the sight of the Lord. He built a high
place (i.e. shrine) Chemosh, the idol of Moab
and to MolechJthe idol of the Ammonites.” (I
Kings 11:4-9)
The Bible does not hide this seamy side of
the sun king. Clearly he was too fond of
ostentation and the display of wealth. His
enormous harem witnesses both to his
monumental lust for self indulgence as well as a
senile pampering of his wives; idolatrous pieties.
His autocratic spirit which served him well in
establishing a sound administration for his
kingdom turned sour when he became
churlishly insensitive to the demands of human
dignity and the griefs caused by unbearable
taxation.
4 Thus idolatry, unfair taxation and a
humilating slave policy marked ihe final days of
Solomon. The glory of Solomon, which could
have bepn that, of the integrated genius of a
religious leader and a political monarch, turned
merely into the flatulent wheezings of a typical
oriental despot, surrounded as all such people
have ever been, by a corps of sychophants.
Other troubles plagued his final years. The
Egyptian pharaoh hired Hadad, the prince of
Edom, to conduct border raids against
Solomon’s kingdom. The desert chieftan,
Rezon, created an independent nation at
Damascus, which eventually became a serious
military threat to the northern territories.
Appalled by the slave policies, a group of
prophets persuaded Jeroboam to initiate a
rebellion against Solomon. The attempt failed
and Jeroboam was exiled to Egypt. But the
spirit of armed rebellion was sown and would
mature at the king’s death.
Speaking of his death, the Bible simply
notes: “Solomon rested with his ancestors. He
was buried in his father’s City of David, and his
son Rehoboam succeeded him as king.” (I
Kings 11: 49)
He who could have left a legacy of peace and
hope and divine witness to the world, instead
bequeathed a political and religious situation
that resulted in civil war. Israel in the north
broke away from Judah in the south. The
northerners set up a center of worship in
Gerizim to rival the terpple in Jerusalem. The
north became known as Samaria. Their religious
and political quarrels turned them in upon
themselves.
However, dreams don’t die. The initial vision
and wisdom of Solomon lives on, even as his
later foolishness serves as a cautionary tale.
“MANY OF HIS (EZECHIEL’S)
prophecies were dramatically acted out
by the prophet who most scholars
would agree was the most eccentric of a
breed of unusual men.” Ezechiel strikes
BY REV. AUGUSTINE PAUL HENNESSY
Singleminded commitment to any great love
is a rare human achievement. To know one’s
way to personal fulfillment and to follow that
way without deviation seems to be too hard an
assignment for the ordinary man or woman.
Waywardness of some kind seems to be built
right into the human heart.
Even marital love which is two people’s
commitment to an enduring complacence in
each other rarely escapes periods of
disillusionment. Husband and wife can
normally mature together only through a series
of disappointments and rediscoveries. And
before each rediscovery, there is a strong
likelihood that one or the other may have a
painful feeling of having lost his or her way. “I
don’t know where we are going” is a very
understandable complaint at times, even in the
best of loves.
The prophet Ezechiel uttered prophecies of
doom and prophecies of restoration. For me,
one of the most beautiful is in the form of an
allegory about a marriage. In it, God speaks to
Jerusalem and its people, with all the grief,
indignation, poignancy, and ultimate
forgiveness of a hurt lover. He is a husband who
has been betrayed by a fickle and wanton wife.
And like any hurt lover, He seems unable to
refrain from chastising the beloved by
reminding her of all the things He has done for
her.
In vivid and earthy language, the prophet’s
voice tells of the Lord’s discovery of His
beloved as an abandoned child, unwashed,
uncared for, doomed to die. He made her live
and watched her grow into young maidenhood
but found her still naked and untamed.
Then the Lord says tenderly, “Again I passed
by you and saw that you were now old enough
for love. So I spread the corner of my cloak
over you to cover your nakedness; I swore an
oath to you and entered into a covenant with
you. You became mine.” (Ezechiel 16:8)
Loving solicitude was heaped upon the
Lord’s bride. All this solicitude is drummed
into her consciousness with an overtone of hurt
feelings until the Lord’s words to her culminate
in a rebuke for ruined beauty.
“You were renowned among the nations for
your beauty, perfect as it was because of my
splendor which I had bestowed on you. But
you were captivated by your own beauty. You
used your renown to make yourself a harlot
and you lavished your harlotry on every
passerby whose own you became.”
(Ezeehiel(16:15)
There is a timelessness to this rebuke to
Jerusalem and its people. It is the story of
mankind’s response to God in every age. The
Lord enriches us and beautifies us by the
outpouring of gratuitous love. And we forget
who we are, where we came from, and where
we are going. Waywardness is an old story. And
we throw ourselves away whenever we leave the
way where love is calling us to follow Him.
It would be calamitous if Ezechiel’s allegory
a prophetic posture in this drawing by
artist Paul Gustave Dore who allowed
his artisan engravers to sign the plates
also. (NC Photo)
stopped here. Even in the romance of God and
the human race, there is rediscovery after
disillusionment.
The hurt Lord says “Yet I will remember the
covenant I made with you when you were a
girl, and I will set up an everlasting covenant
with you, that you may remember and be
covered with confusion, and that you may be
utterly silenced for shame when I pardon you
all you have done.” (Ezechiel 16:60)
Saint Augustine has a somewhat shocking
remark about our Lord’s love for the Church.
He says, “He found her a harlot and made her a
virgin.”
Virginity is identified with singlemindedness.
Achieving singleminded love of the Lord is the
vocation of the whole redeemed people of God.
Christ, the Bridegroom, is ultimately the
adorable center of all that undeviating
complacence which human hearts are capable
of when looking upon the beloved.
While waiting to achieve this enviable fidelity
amidst all the indecision, restlessness, and
incongruity of our human bungling, we must
accept ourselves as we are. We must learn to
accept the struggle between our call to total
commitment and our flirtations with
waywardness. The virgin and the harlot live in
the same house. They live in your heart and
mine.
“THE PROPHET’S VOICE TELLS
of the Lord’s discovery of his beloved
as an abandoned child, unwashed,
uncared for, doomed to die.” A
six-year-old refugee child in the Gaza
Strip seems to fit the biblical
description of abandonment. (NC
Photo by Kay Brennan for UNRWA)
Something Old 9
Something New
>
Wise Man Turned Foolish
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1976 by N.C. News Service)
Living With Waywardness