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The World's First Love
World's First Love - April 2022
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1. Along the Way
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John
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Apr 01, 2022 03:38AM
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In fact, this is the pivotal idea behind Benson's novel, as shown by its title: "By what authority?"
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I think he should have considered a third option: St. Joseph could have been in his prime, age about 40. Then he would have died between 65 and 70, a typical age for old men at that time. I prefer this option to the other two.
EWTN shows Bishop Sheen's show Life Is Worth Living every Thursday evening.
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1. Sheen says that the lack of wine during the marriage feast was the fault of Christ's disciples, who had come in a large number and charged at the food and wine. I have never seen such a suggestion before, and find it dubious, to say the least. He also says that Jesus and his disciples had journeyed for three days and covered a distance of ninety miles. How does he know? John's Gospel just says this: On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. Also walking such a distance would have been unfeasible. Or did they use horses or camels?
2. Sheen comments Christ's answer to Mary: Woman, what's that to me? My hour is not yet come. In an long interpretation of these words (three long paragraphs), he says that Mary had to decide at that point about the time of Christ's cross and death, and that she chose to speed it up. I find this interpretation somewhat convoluted.
I've only read one chapter and it's already striking me as wrong. I agree that every human being has a God-shaped hole inside, but I do NOT believe each has a romantic ideal we recognize right away and fall in love with forever. That happens once in a while, but more often genuine love grows gradually from friendship and sharing of life. In a similar way, I don't believe God has a preordained blueprint for each of our lives. Rather, I think He befriends us and we work out the plan together, rerouting according to the consequences of our choices. I also don't think every artist has an ideal in his mind ahead of time and simply brings it to life. Some sculptors begin working the material then see what emerges. Some novelists begin with a germ of an idea or a character or a setting and the story unfolds.The OT passages he quotes from the Wisdom literature are NOT about Mary. Mary did not pre-exist and co-create with God! Most theologians have read those passages as personifying Wisdom and foreshadowing our NT understanding of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Blessed Trinity.
I also had trouble with his assertion that because Mary is sinless, we can aspire to be better. It would be just as easy to think, She was conceived without original sin so has an unfair advantage; I can never be like that.
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I thought the same when I read this.
I have studied in school those passages as referring to Mary (of course, not only to Mary). Also, if I remember correctly we had that reading from Proverbs at some masses of the Virgin Mary (not on days of obligation).
Bishop Sheen explains afterward that we fall short of His plan due to our sin.
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Seven decades later, the modern world is much worse than it was at that time.
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Yes, I was aware of that. But the original interpretation refers those passages to God's Wisdom, who according to most theologians would be the Son (or Christ). The association with Mary was secondary, as though she were Wisdom personified in a purely human being, while Christ-Wisdom is both God and Man.
When Sheen speaks about Mary's eternal blueprint in the mind of God, I think he's mixing time with eternity. The use of the term "blueprint" implies that God, at the beginning of time, had an idea about how I (or anyone) should be. Later in time, I came to exist, and failed signally, being different from my blueprint. But this is making God subject to time, which is absurd, for time was created by God.
God does not have a blueprint of me, which means "what I should have been but wasn't." Being outside time, God's eternal idea of me (or anyone else, including Mary) includes all I have done in time, good or bad. And yes, in the case of Mary, bad things are missing.
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He draws much too hard a line between body and spirit, to the detriment of the union of the real-live body-soul. Seems to think all sex is somehow dirty or inferior. Why wouldn't Mary's body be changed by pregnancy and nursing? Why would God deprive her of the challenge and joy of childbirth, making her unable to identify with other mothers? And I sure hope she and Joseph did a lot of hugging!He has many ideas that hadn't occurred to me before, e.g.
-sacrifice of Isaac as punishment for passing off Sara as his sister
-Jesus as Mary's first-born entails her mothering us
-connecting the term "Woman" at Cana with the Cross
-proclamation of Immaculate Conception needed because of widespread belief in human perfectibility
Mary should lead people to Jesus, but in fact many with popular Marian piety have little to do with Jesus.
I don't think Mary envisioned the Cana miracle as embarking on the path to Calvary. She just saw a homely human need and brought it to Jesus' attention. No need to posit gratuitous "secret" miracles before this.
On pages 55-56, he explains very clearly in one paragraph the argument from St. Anselm’s Monologion about how the Word is generated of the Father.
I agree, the chapter on equality vs. equity is solid. I'd never heard this history of women being "liberated" until the Industrial Revolution.But it's simplistic to say God represents justice (punishment) and Mary mercy. God the All-Merciful is the source of mercy. That's why He sent Jesus to die for us!
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I understand Sheen to mean here that God (who is Justice and Mercy) prefers petitions towards his mercy to be channeled through His Mother.
Sorry, that divine "preference" makes no sense at all to me!
if that were so, Jesus would never have given Saint Faustina the Chaplet of Divine Mercy
I found the reflection on the seven "dolors" pretty ponderous. I'm sorry, but I don't think under-2-year-old Jesus was drawing on his omniscience to twist the sword in his mother's experience/heart. And my favorite reflection on the losing-for-3-days incident is to explain Jesus' rebuke (Why did you have to look for me; didn't you know...) by noting that Jesus was so "normal" that they probably looked first in the places a typical 12-year-old boy might have been hanging out rather than starting with the temple!
Regarding Justice vs Mercy, the Virgin Mary has mentioned (in Fatima and La Salette) that she was interceding in our behalf and staying God's punishment.
In the final chapter, he seems naively to suggest that Woman/nature will save the world from nuclear catastrophe. Maybe Woman, but certainly not contemporary feminists who want to pretend they're just like men!!How can he say democratic form of government is identified with belief in God and autocracy with militant atheism? There's nothing Christian about the democracies of Western Europe today! And tyrants like Putin (and, arguably, Trump) often make at least a pretense of being Christian.
In 1952, democracies were much more associated. But alas -- put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man.
This book is making me want to reread Alice von Hildebrand's The Privilege of Being A Woman and read Gertrude Von Le Fort's The Eternal Woman.
