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Thursday, October 19, 2000 Faith Alihrei The Southern Cross, Page 9 CNS photo (left) from The Crosiers, (right) by John DeRosen Times when culture was more familiar with signs and symbols By Father Eugene LaVerdiere, SSS Catholic News Service w, e cannot escape our culture. Modernity permeates every aspect of culture, including religion and our faith. We even read the Bible through the lens of modern culture. Reading Genesis, we want to know exactly what happened when God created the heavens and the earth. If we open the New Testament Book of Revelation, we seek in formation about how the Lord Jesus will re turn in the Second Coming. Modern culture is interested in facts, not images and symbols. As modern people, we are interested in clear, distinct ideas and pre cise definitions, not mysteries. So our tendency is to reduce biblical signs and wonders to scien tific and historical facts. Against the at tacks of the rational ists, we try to defend our faith by rational arguments. The modern era be gan with the Renaissance 500 years ago, and it continued with the En lightenment, the Industrial Age and in our Age of Information. Before the Renaissance and the En lightenment, we Christians lived in a pre-modern culture for 15 centuries. We lived in a sacramental universe revealing God’s power and grandeur. We lived in a symbolic world, sur rounded by stained-glass windows. In a symbolic world, instead of measuring the mystery, we entered the mystery. A few years ago I taught a two- week course in Paris. Each week I visited the Cathedral of Chartres, fo cusing on the portals of the west fagade, built at the end of the 12th century. Above the lintel of the south portal portraying Jesus’ life I saw five pan els. On the left were the angel Gabriel and Mary. Beside them I saw Mary and Elizabeth. In the middle, Mary was lying on a low bed. Joseph was standing at her head, looking on. Be hind her bed was a table, and the child wrapped in swaddling bands was ly ing on the table. You see, in the Cathedral of Chartres, Jesus’ manger became an altar table, relating the incarnation to the Eucharist. In the 12th century, people’s under standing of the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s Gospel (2:6-7) resulted from seeing the divine through the human images. We read that “while they were there, the time came for her to have her child,” and Mary “laid him in a manger.” That is, she offered her son, the firstborn of God, as nourishment for the flock. And “there was no room for them in the inn”; there was no place for the heir to David’s throne in the city of David, which evokes the Passion and the Last Supper. —Pre-modern culture wanted t< know the meaning of Jesus’ birth an< its implications for the human race. —Modern culture wants to knov when and where Jesus was born. Today, the times are changing We are entering a post-modern era Unlike the modern era, which was interested in facts and in precist definitions, the post-modern era i.‘ interested in mystery and persona relationships. Concerning Jesus, the emerging 'efore the Renaissance, we Christians lived in a sac ramental universe revealing God’s power and grandeur. Today we are entering a post modern world where we contemplate the divinity of Jesus in his humanity. post-modern era is interested in the Lord Jesus as he is presented in the New Testament. And with the post modern era, we are entering a new symbolic world that invites us to con template the divinity of Jesus in his humanity. Now, we are beginning to under stand the story of creation in Genesis and the wonders and signs in the book of Exodus. But we are not returning to the pre- modern era. We are going forward, integrating our modern values into a greater vision as we search for the realities revealed in the Scriptures. (Father LaVerdiere, a Blessed Sac rament priest, is a Scripture scholar and senior editor of Emmanuel magazine.) Capturing an understanding of Christ By Lawrence S. Cunningham Catholic News Service -W hen Thomas Merton was 15 he made a solitary trip to Rome dur ing his vacation period from the En glish boarding school he attended. In the Roman church of Sts. Cosmas and Damien, he was overwhelmed by the power of the sixth-century mosaic of Christ in the apse. That was the time, he wrote later in his famous book The Seven Storey Mountain, that he first asked who this Christ was. In many Byzantine churches apses are decorated with majestic depictions of Christ as “Pantocrater,” who holds all things in his hands. That vision, common in the Christian East, at tempts to capture an understanding of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Gospel of St. John’s Prologue — the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). The Byzantine “Pantocrater” re flects the conviction that Christ’s full meaning has to include his place in the Holy Trinity, role in creation, earthly life as Savior, and sustaining power as the One “at the right hand of the Father” and who will come again to “judge the living and the dead.” Such a picture of Christ reflects the end of the long controversies about Christ in the early church settled at the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) where the church affirmed that Jesus Christ, perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, is one person with two natures. St. John of the Cross, the Carmelite mystic of 16th-century Spain, cap tured this understanding of Christ in a striking observation to the effect that “God once spoke his Word, and having spoken, needs speak no more.” John meant that the same Word poured out in creation, who spoke to Israel through the prophets and who took flesh, still lives with us. We all are called toward that Word. When the adolescent Merton looked at the great figure of Christ in Rome, he encountered the church’s ancient faith. After his conversion and en lna Nutshell Different historical periods have differing needs and opportunities. Thus, during different time periods some aspect of Christ may either he ignored or heavily accented. Pre-modern culture wanted to know the meaning of Jesus’ birth. An analytical modern culture wants to know when and where Jesus was horn. Today we’re entering a post-modern era. Will it, unlike the modern era, show much greater interest in mystery? trance into monastic life, he encoun tered that same Christ in the world’s beauty and in people’s hearts; in his monastic prayer, at the altar as a priest and in his writings, where he used words to glorify the Word. Father Merton’s Christ was the Word made flesh, the Wisdom of God, and, as St. Paul says, the Christ who will unite all things both in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:10). This is the Christ in whom all of creation as well as human labor is elevated, consecrated and trans formed so that “the whole world enters into a hymn of glory in honor of the Creator and Savior” (Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation). (Cunningham is professor of theol ogy at the University of Notre Dame.) All contents copyright ©2000 by CNS