The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace. For if in the sight of others, indeed they be punished, yet it is their hope of full immortality; chastised a little they shall be greatly blessed because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.
It’s from the Book of Wisdom, chapter three, verses one through six.
If you use a “King James” Bible, you don’t get the benefit of that beautiful reading. In fact, you have risked missing out on it entirely if you are bull-headed about your Bible.
Wisdom is one of the “deuterocanonical” books. Protestants commonly call these books “the apocrypha,” which means they are of doubtful authenticity. But they are not dubious, they are part and parcel of all the Bibles Catholics use.
The books in question include Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees, Sirach, parts of Daniel, Esther and Judith. They were expurgated by a Hebrew biblical council about the time of the life of Christ.
Martin Luther took advantage of these exclusions when he translated the Bible into German. He didn’t like the Letter of James, either, (it disputes his “faith alone” fabrication) but without precedent he was unable to rationalize excluding it. Luther found the ancient Hebrew ruling convenient to his agenda.
The first Christians (the Catholics) did not agree with the actions of that Jewish council, so the deuterocanonical (second canon) books have stayed in our version to this day.
Now we are getting somewhere. Recall, the “poem” at the beginning of this Letter came from Wisdom. You should read the entire Book of Wisdom. I have, and I highly recommend it.
You don’t get that in the King James version. In any case, the KJ suffers from dilution which results in weakness in matters of precision and clarity. There are wimpy aspects in the KJ, and to that end, here comes my major case in point, my coup d'état:
From the KJ version, read Isaiah 45, 23: “ . . . to me every knee shall bow.” And from the KJ version, Philippians 2, 10: . . . “That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow.”
I have a problem with this. My New American Bible, St. Joseph Edition, uses the word “bend” in both of these Old and New Testament scriptural selections.
It’s just stupid. Knees don’t “bow.” Even in the time of Isaiah and in the time of St. Paul, knees would “bend.” To this day, unless there’s something I missed in anatomy class, knees bend. Heads bow.
So hang on to your KJ version for old time’s sake. It’s useful as a souvenir. I still have the one my grandparents gave me in about 1955. It’s not hazardous to my salvation if I pick it up and read it. It’s a delightful keepsake.
But even more than all those “thees and thous” that remain to haunt us from the early 1600s, one hazards to read errors. The NAB is indisputably a more accurate version.
The price of a so-called “Catholic” Bible is about the same as a “Protestant” Bible. But with the Catholic version, you get more, so much more, and you get a flat-footed translation from the original languages, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
Am I the first to take note of this anomaly in the King James? Every knee should bow? I mean really. It’s a mistake that’s been in that Bible since the 1600s. There’s a clue in this somewhere.
Fiction
Once upon a time in the dim and distant past, I aspired to be a novelist, a writer of fiction.
I seriously wanted to write novels – until I actually read a novel. (To be truthful, I read several novels before I caught on.)
Probably the last “fiction” I ever read was the fourth book in the “Dune Trilogy” by Frank Herbert.
While I was reading the original “Dune,” I admit I was quite thrilled by the author’s clever constructs and mysterious story-telling. Was it about the future? The distant past in another world? “Dune” sold really well, so Frank went to work writing more of the same . . . er, fiction.
After the fourth book, I put Frank away forever. What an unadulterated load of Feces de Taurus.
Frank simply made all that stuff up. It came out of nowhere but his own head. It was contrived, fabricated. A collection of foolishness, a fully imaginary scenario. In fiction, “the truth” is not a consideration; it’s all relative. I have a problem with that. Relativism is to be avoided.
I don’t have any need to waste my reading time absorbing someone else’s fabrications. Deathless, fabricated prose, the printed version of a faux reality. To me, reading fiction is only slightly more useful than playing golf. Very slightly. It’s a distraction I don’t need. Napping is more productive.
So what do I read?
My latest love is “Understanding Sacramental Healing. Anointing and Viaticum.”
I’ve read it twice and I’m halfway through the third time. Author John C. Kasza is a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit where he serves as the secretary to the Cardinal Archbishop of Detroit.
He is an assistant professor of Liturgy and Sacramental Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. His doctorate is in sacramental theology from the Pontifical Atheneum Sant’ Anselmo in Rome.
Credentials, anyone?
Using his resources as a learned churchman, anthropologist, historian, a reader in science, and English, Latin and French, Msgr. Kasza examines the Sacrament of Extreme Unction from the post-Vatican Two perspective.
He points out that disease itself is different in these times than in the past, and that the sacrament’s own nature has caused its practice to devolve over time.
His goal with the book is to gently guide the people – clergy and laity – in the proper, licit and lawful dispensation and reception of the Sacrament of Anointment. He succeeds.
Through a very human erosion, emphasis for dying persons had gone from the Sacrament of the Eucharist to the Sacrament of Healing. Anointment had become more important than viaticum to the terminally ill. This is just wrong. Of the seven sacraments, Eucharist is always king.
Msgr. Kasza straightens all this out. He also works on the apparent confusion among priests and laity over the necessary condition of the health of the person seeking anointment. New illness? Terminally ill? Mentally ill?
These and many other subjects are discussed. It has become fascinating to me. And yet, there are more important reasons for my love of this and other books like it:
I find it a pleasure to read because it’s so easy. It isn’t “work” for me. The spelling, grammar, syntax, are flawless. In Msgr. Kasza’s book, I have thus far found only one proof error.
Interestingly enough, the copy editor missed “Uunction” (too many U’s) at the start of a paragraph. It’s a shame someone missed that, but precious little labor for me. I can just keep on reading without stopping to groan and bitch. Verbal smear and smut does not interrupt my gleeful enjoyment.
Msgr. Kasza doesn’t require correction in person, place, gender, number. It’s pleasurable to read because it has already been edited. No one left it for me to do.
You’ve heard the old axiom, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Perhaps. Better yet, as my old friend Guido once said, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the truth from reality.”
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Word of the Week: Syncretism. This is one of the bad things the Hebrews kept falling into. In addition to idol worship and polytheism, they missed the point in the commandments about there being only one God.
It’s from the Greek, synkretismos, a joining of two parties against a third. It’s the combination of differing beliefs in religion.
It would be much like the “Buddhist Methodists” or “Buddhist Episcopalians” we had in Fort Lupton right after WW Two. Except Buddhists don’t have the ten commandments. The old-time Jews integrated the local flavor into their worship, which was a big no-no.
I have known a lot of Mormons who were syncretists, too. These people chose their religion from a local vantage of expedience. Naughty naughty. But more about that another time.
Next week's word: Proselytization
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Merry Christmas!
These verses from Wisdom are some of my favorites. I have included them in my funeral Mass readings. Glad you like them, too. Hopefully they won't be needed too soon!
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