Vol. XXIX                    No. 5

Dear Oblates and Friends of  Portsmouth,

                As we near the end of the Paschal Season and approach the new liturgical cycle of  Ordinary Time, it is worth  our while to consider some of the symbols the Church uses to help us understand the  Easter Mystery and how  they relate to our redemption through the life and death of Jesus.

               At Easter  Jesus is portrayed as a sacrificial lamb, being offered up  for  the  redemption of  sinful man and replacing the lamb used in the Jewish sacrificial ritual of the Passover. Several weeks later Jesus is  described  as  the Good Shepherd, reversing the role as it were, acting as the leader of the flock, the protector and  guardian who would, if required, give up his life for the safety of the sheep.  This was the earliest symbol  of Jesus used  in the catacombs by the early Christians, especially appropriate because Jesus used this figure of himself, deliberately identifying himself with the traditional concept of God as  the Shepherd/King of the Jewish people. But  the symbol of  shepherd was also a way of  Christianizing a pagan representation  of  the god,  Hermes, often portrayed as a beardless shepherd carrying  a lamb, a god who was invoked as the protector of flocks and patron of one  of the most widely practiced occupations  of the ancient world.  What could  be more natural  than to  associate this image with Jesus, a ready-made way of expressing the redemption in sculptural or pictorial form?  For the Greeks; this version of Hermes  expressed  the civic virtue of philanthropia, the love of mankind. The Christian  was now able to use the same image to convey the supreme degree to which the love of God could be demonstrated.

             In our  time the  image that most readily comes to mind  when we think of  Jesus' redemptive act is the crucifix with a suffering Christ undergoing the torments foretold in the 22^nd  Psalm  and in the prophetic  passages of Isaiah dealing with the Suffering Servant,  the one  who by his physical  death was paradoxically  the means of defeating the spiritual death of  the human race.  Until the time of Constantine and after, however,  the usual symbols of Jesus stressed Jesus as Victor over death, a triumphant king wearing a crown,  who reigned from the Cross (Christus regnavit a ligno)  or  those symbols  which recalled his miracles or his redemptive role, such as grapes, grain, loaves and fishes.   A representation  of one who seemed to be  a criminal and  an abject  failure  would have had little appeal  to  the first Christians who came largely  from the downtrodden  ranks of society and  who looked for the more obvious signs of a liberator. For the church of the first centuries, the age of persecution and the martyrs, when it was rapidly spreading throughout the Roman world, more affirmative symbols were needed, sometimes designedly cryptic or ambiguous because of persecution.  The fish as an acronym.(ichthus: Jesus Christ, of God the Son, Saviour} was frequently used to refer to Jesus both as a means of prayer and as doctrine, focusing on  Him  as Redeemer of Mankind, Second Person of the Trinity, and fulfillment of the Messianic Promise. The fish also recalled the miracle of the loaves and fishes, an adumbration of the Eucharist in the Gospel of John, as well as  the gathering of all mankind in the net  cast in the sea of humanity by the  apostles and their successors, whom Jesus dubbed  fishers of men. 

             Gradually, though, as Christianity became more firmly established, and the Eastern emperor involved himself in the affairs of the Church, the representations of Jesus took on an imperial cast. He became a figure of supreme authority, a Judge and a Ruler:  the Pantocrator, the Almighty, the one who had sovereignty over all, paralleling the power and dignity that the Emperor in the East  claimed for  himself. This portrayal of Jesus can often be found in frescos and mosaics in the apses of Byzantine churches,  a symbol that inspires awe and respect at the divinity hidden beneath the human form of Jesus. In the West, however, the humanity of Jesus has tended to be stressed.  One thinks of the graphic renderings of the suffering of Jesus in the late medieval depictions of the crucifixion (Grunewald's horrifying painting of the pock-marked Christ on the Cross immediately comes to mind), but the compassionate Jesus has also been stressed, in the Protestant hymns of the Wesley brothers, in the devotions to the Sacred Heart, in the sentimentalized sculptures and pictures that focus on the humanity of Jesus, often at the expense of his divinity.  It is in the iconography of the lamb and the shepherd that we in the Western world can find the most sympathetic symbols. Victim and saviour, sacrifice and guardian: these concepts convey the boundless love of the one who is able to dispel the shadow of death through having overcome it and to act as a guide for us, thereby enabling us to bear the cross in whatever form it takes and follow in his footsteps. The final symbol and perhaps the most obvious one, is the Paschal candle situated in the sanctuary, which signifies the Light of the World, the risen Jesus who is present for forty days after Easter, a way of convincing his followers that he has truly risen from the dead, and which, when extinguished on Ascension Day, yields to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who continues Jesus' divine presence in the Word of Scripture and in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Liturgical Calendar for May

 Cycle of Prayer for Summer: A Deeper Understanding between

Jews and Christians; the Persecuted, the Oppressed and those Denied

Human Rights; Seafarers; Europe

1        ASCENSION OF THE LORD (Holy Day)

      (St. Joseph the Worker, Patron of Laborers)

2        St. Athanasius, Bishop & Doctor

3        SS. Philip and James, Apostles

4        SUNDAY VII OF EASTER

11  WHIT SUNDAY: PENTECOST

(SS. Odo, Maieul, Odilo, Hugh and

Peter the Venerable, Abbots of Cluny)

14      St. Matthias, Apostle

15      St. Pachomius, Abbot

18   MOST HOLY TRINITY

19      St. Celestine, Pope and Hermit

25      CORPUS  CHRISTI

       (St. Bede the Venerable)

26      St. Gregory VII, Pope

27      St. Augustine of Canterbury,

       Patron of  English Congregation

30  Sacred Heart of Jesus

31  Visitation   of   Our Lady

1  JUNE  SUNDAY IX OF THE YEAR                        Christus Pantocrator

  OBLATE DAY OF RECOLLECTION: Dom Philip Hagia Sophia, Constsantinople