Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 45-46 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 38)

Happy New Year to Everyone!

It is almost two years since I undertook to get through the Scriptures - Old and New Testaments - on my blog, getting all my notes and thoughts over the years out so that others could see them. When I finish with Isaiah, I will be done. I am a little anxious that I have no plan to continue with anything else. We'll see.  

Isaiah 45 – This oracle in praise of Cyrus, emperor of the Persians. This guy, though he does not even know Yahweh at all, will be the vehicle of Yahweh’s salvation. He will conquer the nations who raise up useless idols; he will return the chosen people to Jerusalem, help in the rebuilding of the Temple. But this chapter is just beautiful in the words it uses to describe the Lord’s presence in it all: “Though you do not know me, I am Yahweh, unrivaled; there is no other God besides me. Though you do not know me, I arm you that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that, apart from me, all is nothing” (45:5-6).

“I form the light and create the dark, I make good fortune and create calamity, it is I, Yahweh, who do all this. Send victory like a dew, you heavens, and let the clouds rain it down. Let the earth open for salvation to spring up” (45:7-8).

“Truly, God is hidden with you, the God of Israel, the savior” (45:15). “’By my own self I swear it; what comes from my mouth is truth, a word irrevocable: before me every knee shall bend, by me every tongue shall swear, saying, ‘From Yahweh alone come victory and strength.’” (45:23)

Isaiah 46 – The idols of the Babylonians – Bel [Ba’al] and Nebo [Nabu] – are “carried off like bundles” (46:1), “powerless to save the ones who carry them” (46:1). But the people of the House of Jacob and the House of Israel have been “carried since birth” (46:2) by Yahweh. He promises salvation to Zion.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 38

To live a life of hearing and obeying is something we can all commit ourselves to so that in everything we do we can “do rightly, justly, truly, holily, equally to all people in all things.”  We can “live in the Power of Truth and wisdom of God, to answer the just Principle of God in all people upon the earth. And so answering. . . come to be as a city set upon a hill . . .”  There is no reason in the world why we Catholics ought not respond to the call to “let your lives preach.” 

I have often wondered why there is so little emphasis upon the idea of living consecrated lives among lay people in the Catholic Church; I don’t know the answer except that perhaps the Church wants to let people know that it does not consider this level of commitment normative for everyone. Or perhaps there is a fear that a serious lay option will drain candidates away from the priesthood or the “religious life.” But practicing the spirituality of early Friends is a way of consecrating one’s life to Christ, a way that is open to any man or woman who chooses to put the hearing and obeying of Christ at the center of his or her life. Ultimately, offering lay people ways to deepen their spiritual lives can only improve the environment for vocations.

The other benefit in fostering among lay Catholics a knowledge of the kind of spirituality Friends developed is that it can provide people who must live in the world with the spiritual resources to avoid getting dragged down by that world. Quaker spirituality trains people to look at the world and its enthusiasms with discerning eyes, to live simple lives, to avoid materialism, insincerity, superficiality, and the allure of power. It teaches us to be patient, to see in small acts of integrity the path Jesus wants us to follow. And it teaches us that the life of Christ offered to us is something we can enter into today, in our lives here on earth.

But if we take to heart the deep and profound things Friends have to teach us, how can we be sure we will not also absorb their excesses? Perhaps one of the things that makes Buddhism attractive to some Catholics is that Buddhists do not threaten us as much. Buddhists don’t have much to say about the things we claim to be and know. We will not find in their books passages comparing the Church to the whore of Babylon or the Beast in Revelation as we most certainly will find in some Quaker writings and Reformation writings generally. But I think we [we who are Catholics] must learn to find a way to use the good in other Christian approaches without being threatened by the harsh things they might have said about us in their past anger and frustration. The prophets said some pretty hard things to the people of Israel, after all, yet they were not silenced or banished on that account—at least not forever. The Catholic Church needs to find a way of incorporating the prophetic voice Protestantism has to offer into its own larger story.

All I know is that Friends opened me to the God who led me back; and I know that the message I responded to is a message anyone can respond to, and I must remind my readers of it again before I close. The work of redemption God performed among the Jews and brought to us all in Christ is a work we are all invited to be joined to. Open your eyes and see that God is in you. He has been in your from the beginning. He has loved you, called you, guided you, lifted you up, and carried you. You have felt his work in you many times but have not seen him in it. Open your eyes and acknowledge him. Serve him, obey him, let his life grow up in your. If you do, you will experience a delight deeper than any you have ever known, a depth of meaning in your life greater that you have ever imagined. As my friend Isaac Penington put it,

“I have met with my God, I have met with my Savior; and he has not been present with me without his salvation, but I have felt the healings drip upon my soul from under his wings. I have met with the true knowledge, the knowledge of life, the living knowledge, the knowledge . . . which is life, and this has had the true virtue in it, which my soul has rejoiced in, in the presence of the Lord . . . I have met with the true birth, with the birth which is heir of the kingdom, and inherits the kingdom. . . . I have met with the true peace, the true righteousness, the true holiness, the true rest of the soul, the everlasting habitation, which the redeemed dwell in.”

Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 21-22 and John 17

Ezekiel 21 – The same prophesy of destruction is directed to the people of the Negeb. The King of Babylon will stop at the crossroads that lead either to Jerusalem or to Rabbah of the Ammonites, and there he will conduct all kids of magic to see which one he is meant to attack. It will be Jerusalem. But the Ammonites too, practitioners of all kinds of “lying omens,” will be slaughtered.

The prophet here seems to wander away from the revolutionary idea he expressed earlier in chapters 14 and 18 about the upright man being able to count on his “works” to save him from God’s wrath. He returns to the more communal understanding here. “Now I set myself against you; I am about to unsheathe my sword and to kill both upright man and sinner. My sword will leave its sheath to kill upright and sinful alike and turn against all mankind from the Negeb to the North. All mankind is going to learn that I, Yahweh, am the one who has drawn the sword from its sheath; it will not go back again” (21:2-3).

The Lord “will exhaust [His] wrath” (21:17). Both the Ammonites and Jerusalem will suffer this wrath. Jerusalem will be next.

Ezekiel 22 – The Lord asks Ezekiel if he is prepared to confront Jerusalem with “all her filthy crimes” (22:2). They shed blood, set up idols; the princes have made themselves tyrants; parents are not respected; widow and orphans are not cared for. God means to disperse them and dishonor them in the opinion of the nations.

The Lord means to disperse them to foreign countries, a process that will “take your foulness from you” (22:15). As “base metal” is melted in the melting pot to make something useful, the House of Israel will be melted down by the fire of God’s fury; and in this way they will learn that God’s anger has to be dealt with. “I have made their conduct recoil on their own heads—it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks” (22:31).

John 17 – Now Jesus speaks to his Father in the presence of his disciples. The hour has come for the son to glorify his Father. Jesus has authority to give eternal life to those whom God has given him, “And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3). I love these words, and they mean to me that “eternal life” is not necessarily living through all time in some heaven in the clouds but “seeing” into that realm which transcends AND penetrates all the moments in time we are given: “the still point of the turning world.” 

He has done what he was to do—made God’s name known to those whom God gave him. He asks his Father to protect them, “so that they may be one, as we are one” (17:11). “I am not asking you to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth” (17:16-18). “I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself so that they too may be consecrated in truth” (17:19).

Jerusalem Bible use of the word “consecrated” here in verses 18 and 19 is so important to me. It is this sense of consecration that I seek in my spiritual life.

Jesus continues his prayer. “I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me . . .With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realize that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you loved me.” (20-23) “I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them” (17:26).

Being Catholic AND Quaker

Well, I don't know how this is going to work, but I've decided to put the Bible Study on a separate blog that is linked to this page, but not on this page. This is partly so I can continue having a blog that is completely dedicated to the reading and study of the Bible, but also have space to have posts on other things. So Catholic-Quaker will be a place I can post my ideas about other things.

How is it possible to consider oneself a Roman Catholic AND and Friend/Quaker? I consider the Catholic Church to be the original home of the gospel of Christ at least in the west. The Eastern Orthodox Churches go back to the beginning too, but I am from the western world. The separation of church and secular state is something achieved by the church in the west and I think that was a good thing. There is a lot of history and a lot of religious diversity within the Catholic Church that a lot of people don't appreciate. There is a deep tradition of mysticism and many stories of individuals feeling "called" by God to live out their faith in different ways. As my husband once said, I am drawn by the history and the mystery of the church.

Then how can I be a Quaker as well? Quakers arose in 17th c. England in a landscape of religious ferment brought on by the Protestant Reformation. With the rebellion of Martin Luther and the crumbling of church unity that came as a result of his prophetic call, the political ferment of the times, the revolutionary role of the printing press and people's access to the Scriptures and the church's inability or unwillingness to respond constructively, a whole array of new voices emerged and many groups that believed that they had recovered a vision of the gospel that was truer, more faithful than what the church was teaching. I think that many if not most of these voices were authentically prophetic and should have been listened to better. George Fox was one of these voices, and his vision of Christ's gospel - the new covenant and "gate" or portal into the Kingdom of God - as a way we could truly enter into Life as God meant us to live it. The difference between Fox's message and the messages of St. Francis or probably many other holy people was the this was a way not just for those who committed to "religious life" as the Catholic Church understood it - it was for all lay people who wished to live the consecrated life.