Presenting the Nea

Hoyas 3-0! Yeah, buddy.

Speaking of which, it was nice to see our old homeboy Jeff Green on the court against the Wizards last night…

…Looking for an act of devotion in honor of the Solemnity of Christ the King?

Consider adding your e-signature to the Manhattan Declaration…

…After I finished high school, I got a job typing the reports of a company of local archaeologists.

The company specialized in pre-historic archaeology–that is, the study of artifacts produced by people who did not have writing.

In our area, you can discover a pre-historic artifact while you are out for a walk. There are still Algonquian arrowheads and potsherds lying on the surface of the earth.

Contrast this with archaeology in the Old City of Jerusalem. On Monday evening, we walked down four flights of steps from street level. We emerged into a cistern that was built to hold water for use in the Temple in the fifth century B.C.

Chiesa Nuova in Rome

There are books written about the building of that temple–they can be found in the Old Testament. My point is: In Jerusalem, archaelogists have dug and dug and dug, and they still have not gotten to the pre-historic level.

And here is some more perspective: In our day and age, since the beginning of the Digital/Organic Era (which began when Bill Gates’ net worth reached $1 trillion), “new” refers to something that came into being in the last half-nanosecond.

In Rome, there is a beautiful church called Chiesa Nuova, the “New Church.” It was completed in 1606.

In Jerusalem, the Nea, the “new” church in honor of Mary the Mother of God, has lay buried beneath the rubble of earthquake and Persian destruction for 1200 years.

Today is the day the Nea was dedicated in A.D. 543.

Our Lady was born in Jerusalem. She was among the girls who cared for the Temple paraphernalia.

When Mary brought the newborn Jesus to the Temple to present Him to the Father, she encountered the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna. The three of them may already have known each other.

The above is a mosaic map of Christian Jerusalem. It is not easy to read. The Cardo, or main street, runs left to right through the middle of the city. The huge ancient basilica of the Holy Sepulcher is below the main street, the Nea is above it, to the right. There was an annual procession between the two churches.

…I am sorry that I allowed the following “Bests” list to get as stale as five-year-old granola bars. It is retired. An exciting new edition is available behind the Bests tab above.

Useless

A lot of people think that America sins against the Sixth Commandment more than any other. And we certainly sin against the Fifth Commandment a lot–4,000 abortions per day.

But the real problem with our culture is that we do not keep the Third Commandment. If we kept the sabbath, we could keep the other commandments. Without the sabbath, we turn into violent, self-indulgent beasts.

Did He Have to Do It?

The Lord Jesus freely laid down His life for the salvation of the human race. He offered Himself to the Father as a sacrifice for our sins. He did it today, on Good Friday.

Good Friday is therefore a sacred day, one of the most sacred of the year. There are a number of ways to keep the day holy—going to church for the Sacred Liturgy, or Stations of the Cross, going to Confession, prayer, fasting, abstinence from meat.

These days, though, for some people, Good Friday passes more or less unnoticed. For some people it’s as good a day as any to go to a baseball game, or watch a movie, or go out to eat.

We live in a society in which some people do not keep Good Friday holy. This forces us to confront a serious question. How we spend Good Friday is not just a matter of personal devotional choice, of private preferences. The question we have to ask is a question about the human race as a whole.

Let’s put the question like this: Did Christ really have to die for us? Did mankind need Him to make the sacrifice He made for us today? Does the human race need a Savior?

Or are we really just fine on our own? Is the human race okay by itself? Can any human being say to Christ crucified: “Hey, thanks—but you went to too much trouble. Don’t do me any favors.”

Christ is a unique human being—He is the only divine human being. With Him, the human race as a whole can stand before God and say, “Lord, we are a race of sinners. We are dust and ashes before You. You made us out of love, and we have poured contempt on You in return. But we can boast of your only-begotten Son. He is just and true—He bore witness to You unto death—and He is one of us. See and love in us what You see and love in Him, O Creator, and have mercy on us.”

On the other hand what do we human beings have to show for ourselves without Christ? Left to ourselves, what are our hopes? Let’s consider…

We humans are ingenious. We have tall buildings. We have many, many cars, many television shows, a lot of guns and ammo. Our race has produced both LeBron James and Kobe Bryant at the same time. We have invented pizza, modern medicine, cellphones, umbrellas, space shuttles, and numerous other accomplishments. Splendid.

But when we go to meet God at the end of our lives, what will we do with all these things? Will they do us any good?

None of our accomplishments can exactly recommend us to God. God is perfect, and we are not. We have no claims on Him. Before Him, we have no rights. He owes us nothing. Everything we have, He gave us in the first place.

Without Christ we would come to the end of our earthly life in a state of terrifying weakness. We would be utterly bereft.

Are you or I going to go to judgment and then pull out an iPod and say, “Look, Lord—look at all this great music I put on my iPod. Shouldn’t you reward me for that?” Or am I going to say, “Look, Lord—I was a great cook. I grilled some killer hamburgers. Send me to heaven for my hamburgers.”

It really is ridiculous, the idea that we would be alright without Christ.

Do we need a Savior? We need Him more than we need oxygen. We need Him more than we need gravity to keep us from floating into outer space. We need Christ more than we need our incorrigible selves.

There is only one thing more desperate than the suffering Christ had to endure to save us today. The only thing more desperate is just how desperately we needed Him to do it.