Today's Gospel

Mark 10: 17-27

Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and put this question to him, 'Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You must not kill; You must not commit adultery; You must not steal; You must not bring false witness; You must not defraud; Honour your father and mother.' And he said to him, 'Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days'. Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, 'There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.

Jesus looked round and said to his disciples, 'How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!' The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, 'My children,' he said to them 'how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' They were more astonished than ever. 'In that case' they said to one another 'who can be saved?' Jesus gazed at them. 'For men' he said 'it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God.'

One could write an awful lot about that gospel, but what strikes me as especially suggestive is that when Jesus examines this man on the commandments, he leaves out those commandments which have to do with God directly. When one considers the fact that at the root of the commandments is the first commandment which prohibits idolatry and the worship of any one or any thing apart from the One God of Israel, this omission is very thought-provoking, especially when put alongside Christ's question, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
Perhaps Christ realised that despite the seeming virtue of this man, that virtue was hollow at heart because he didn't 'do God'. Combine that with the instruction to the Apostles concerning how to enter heaven (It is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God), and you have a decent starting point if you want to explore the relationship between the Pauline doctrine of grace and the synoptic Gospels, to say nothing of the question of the relationship between theology and morality.

It has always been thus...

It seems there was a Laodicean presence in Rome this weekend, and it sometimes seems that pretty much all serious Catholics (if I might use that term...) know someone in Rome.  With modern means of communication, this is not surprising.  What's interesting is that if you look at the closing of St Paul's Letter to the Romans, you read the following:

I commend our sister Phoebe to you; she has devoted her services to the church at Cenchrae. Make her welcome in the Lord as saints should, and help her in any business where she needs your help; she has been a good friend to many, myself among them. 

My greetings to Prisca and Aquila, who have worked at my side in the service of Christ Jesus, and put their heads on the block to save my life; not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles have reason to be grateful to them. My greetings, also, to the congregation which meets at their house; to my dear Epaenetus, the first offering Asia made to Christ, and to Mary, who has spent so much labour on you. My greetings to Andronicus and Junias, kinsmen and fellow-prisoners of mine, who have won repute among the apostles that were in Christ's service before me. My greetings to Amplias, whom I love so well in the Lord; to Urbanus, who helped our work in Christ's cause, and to my dear Stachys; to Apelles, a man tried in Christ's service; and those of Aristobulus' household; to my kinsman Herodion, and to such of Narcissus' household as belong to the Lord. My greetings to Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who have worked for the Lord so well; and dear Persis, too; she has been long in the Lord's service. My greetings to Rufus, a chosen servant of the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me; to Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren who are with them; to Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, Olympias, and all the saints who are of their company. Greet one another with the kiss of saints; all the churches of Christ send you their greeting.

 Even though he didn't found the Church in Rome, and had not yet visited it, St Paul had a friend (Phoebe) who was traveling to Rome and was willing to bring his letter with her, where she would find a whole slew of people who already knew Paul. Just shows that in some ways, things haven't changed at all.

Judith and Holofernes...

I was chatting with Cnytr recently, about the manner in which Judith slaying Holofernes is usually painted. Knowing her prejudices about the religious art of the Renaissance, I proposed that it normally wasn't painted as religious art at all, but served as a particularly dramatic scene from scripture which gave the artist a chance to show their mettle. For instance, I argued, this painting of Artemisia Gentileschi has nothing particularly religious or devotional about it at all.

In fact, I added, it could just as easily be from the director's cut of a 21st Century Version of Pride and Prejudice - Jane and Lizzy getting revenge on that cad Wickham.
The Cnytr disagreed. She suggested I search for some illustrated manuscripts in order to see the Slaying of Holofernes presented in a devotional form. So, I did a bit of googling and found the following extraordinary comparison.

I've read a fair bit of patristic and some medieval exegesis, and so I'm fairly familiar with the typological parallels between the Old and New Testament. However, I'd never come across this one before. Judith slaying Holofernes is presented as a prefigurement of the Virgin Mary defeating the Devil by giving birth to Christ.
Pretty cool, no?

Henry VIII's Bible

The Times has a fascinating article about an edition of the Bible that I'd not heard of before:

In July 1535 the industrious London stationer Thomas Berthelet, who also served as “King’s Printer” to Henry VIII, published a selective text of the Latin Old and New Testaments, in the Vulgate version of St Jerome: this seems to have been, perhaps surprisingly, the very first bible to have been printed in the British Isles.
[Snip]
Berthelet’s isolated novelty, a stout but handy small quarto, laid out in double columns, is titled Sacrae Bibliae Tomus Primus (ie, the first volume – only – of the Holy Bible); it consists of the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges, Psalms, Proverbs and the Sapientia or Wisdom of Solomon (a late Greek text now consigned to the Apocrypha), plus the entire New Testament, including Revelation. A preface addressed to the devout reader, headed “Pio Lectori”, apologizes none too humbly for the apparent eccentricity of leaving out more than half the canonical Old Testament, and promises to collect all the omissions in a supplementary volume, which either never appeared or (far less likely) has perished.
[Snip]
One might assume at first that the writer of such a preface, who begins by routinely puffing the product – the Scriptures – as “true riches” valuable beyond any worldly goods, but also takes specific credit for its selection, arrangement and issue, was the publisher Berthelet himself, [...] However, a second look reveals that the author, hence the conceiver or designer of this idiosyncratic recension and its robust apologist, was not Thomas Berthelet, nor any of his corresponding or in-house scholars or “correctors of the press”, but his own royal patron, Henry VIII.
[Snip]
You know well”, the prefacer declares,
how our Lord God, whose words or scriptures we are discussing, ordered that when a king sat on the throne of his kingdom, he should write for himself the law of God, and having it with him, should read it every day of his life, so that he should thus learn to fear the Lord his God, and guard His words."
This is a reference to Deuteronomy 17:18–19, employed to justify (as only a king could) the present reordering and selection of scriptural materials, offered to the pious but perhaps obstinate reader who found any “departure, however slight, from ancient practice or established form . . . an offence to religious scruple”.