This morning we awoke to find snow, and lots of it, falling hard and fast. By 10:00 it was practically a blizzard! Well, not really, but this was the first snow we've seen since Christmas, so it seemed like it. Three hours makes quite a difference though, and as I walked back to the Kartause around 1:00 the sun was out, and the snow had stopped falling and was quickly melting away. Hopefully we'll have some nice weather yet for Will and Anna.
I have this evening a class on the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, for which I am reading the opening chapters of Leviticus, in which I encountered again the story of Nadab and Abiu, the sons of Aaron.Leviticus 10
1 And Nadab and Abiu, the sons of Aaron, taking their censers, put fire therein, and incense on it, offering before the Lord strange fire: which was not commanded them. 2 And fire coming out from the Lord destroyed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 And Moses said to Aaron: This is what the Lord hath spoken: I will be sanctified in them that approach to me, and I will be glorified in the sight of all the people. And when Aaron heard this, he held his peace.
This brought to mind our Lord's cleansings of the Temple, once early one in His public life, recorded by John, and again near the end of His earthly life (see Mt. 21:12-13; Mk. 11:15-17; Lk. 19:-46).
John 2
14 And he found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting. 15 And when he had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew. 16 And to them that sold doves he said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic. 17 And his disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.
This further brings immediately to my mind the words of Pope St. Pius X in his 1903 Instruction on Sacred Music Tra le Sollecitudini: And it is vain to hope that the blessing of heaven will descend abundantly upon us, when our homage to the Most High, instead of ascending in the odor of sweetness, puts into the hand of the Lord the scourges wherewith of old the Divine Redeemer drove the unworthy profaners from the Temple.
Much food for thought here I think in the context of the constant liturgical abuse perpetrated throughout the Church.
1 comment:
John-
This reminds me of that old post on our blog about how serious God takes liturgy when I said, "You can tell how important God thinks something is by how many people He strikes dead over it," and Nadab and Abihu are prime examples. David was not struck dead for adultery and murder, but these two were for incorrect liturgical protocol. Something to think about.
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