Friday, 5/3/13
Today we celebrate
the feast of two lesser-known Apostles, Philip and James. We were not left the biographies
of each of the twelve Apostles, because for the early church their
personalities did not matter. What mattered was that Christianity was at least
the equal of Judaism. Judaism could boast of being founded on the twelve sons
of Jacob who gave their names to the twelve tribes of Israel. The Book of
Revelation insists that Christianity too was founded on twelve patriarchs, on
the twelve apostles.
In the Bible the
holy city of Jerusalem is presented as the entire people of God. Jerusalem includes
the people of the Old and New Testaments. Chapter Twenty-One of the Book of
Revelations uses the image of the wall of the heavenly Jerusalem to show us
that the two testaments actually fit together. In 21: 12 we read, “It had a massive high wall with twelve gates
. . . on which the names were transcribed of the twelve tribes of Israel.” Two verses farther on we read, “The wall of the city had twelve courses of
stones as its foundation on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve
apostles of the Lamb.”
The Second Vatican
Council told us that we do not need to accept everything in the Old Testament
as factual. Paragraph 15 of the Constitution on Divine Revelation states, “These books, even though they contain
matters imperfect and provisional, nevertheless show us authentic divine
teaching.”
Neither should we
take everything in the New Testament as factual. Paragraph 12 of the
Constitution on Divine Revelation tells us that rather than just reporting
facts, the sacred writers used something like poetic license. It says, “Truth is differently presented and
expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetic and poetical
texts.”
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