Through the Looking Glass

Talk about truth.  Turns out we've had prophets warn us for centuries about word-twisters.

The Word is Coming

Today's readings (Rom 10:9-18; Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Mt 4:18-22) at Mass did not at first seem to prompt Fr. Johnson's homily at OLO Lourdes, Bethesda. That's OK by me, because the homily is supposed to be the "Word of God under another form," or something like that, and on Sundays the epistle isn't usually calibrated to match themes with the first and gospel reading anyway. I especially enjoy lives of the saints. In any event, I was mistaken, and happily so. Fr. Johnson's homily was
inspired. I'll try to recap a couple key points in brief.

• Especially as one begins to study languages, languages and words become fascinating.
• A word is, on one level, just a sound made by a voice; but not really, because it is a sound intended to convey meaning.  Words are attempts to communicate what is inside oneself to others.
• The Holy Father is to be commended for his easy, comfortable use of the Greek word logos, which means "word."
  
• God "in many and various ways... spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets," (Heb 1:1).  In doing so, he was attempting to reveal himself to us more and more; our ears were stopped, but gradually he prepared for the fullest revelation.
• Jesus is the Word of God - not mere words spoken by men - but the Word become a Man.  Jesus is God's Logos.  He is the fullest utterance of God to people about himself, about who he is, about what he wants for us.
• Everything about the life of Christ, then, is revelatory - a self-disclosure of who God is and what he wants for us.

• Jesus was born humbly, lived his life dodging fame, and died in humiliation - and all of it voluntary.  God's ego is not on the line.  He doesn't want us to worship him so he can get his kicks.  He wants us to worship him because that is what will give us joy.
• This Word, Jesus, is so powerful because it is divine and because it is filled with love.  It is this Word that turned Peter, Andrew, James, and John on their heels and led them to drop their nets, their livelihoods, their lives, and to follow Jesus.

I would like to add my own point.

• The Word comes to us today in our lives, but the world is very cluttered and busy, chaotic and noisy.  The Word is not forceful or violent.  It is quiet.  It is born in a manger.  We will only hear the Word if we make time for silence in prayer and with the Word of God written on paper, so we can get a sense of how he speaks and thinks.

Wow, Fr. Johnson!  Thanks!  That was  a great homily.  At the end of Mass, he apologized for going on a bit long with his logos.  That was awful considerate of you, Fr. Johnson, but unnecessary.  The heads nodding when you asked if people were understanding you should confirm a theory of mine.  People don't mind someone going on for a bit if they really have something useful to say.

Democracy, Greeks, and Global Affairs

So the word democracy comes from two Greek words. The first is deme, meaning a district, together with its dwellers. The second is kratos, meaning rule or authority. A place is a democracy to the extent that it is ruled by the people living there. The United States is an indirect, or representative, democracy because we elect people to represent us for the purposes of governance and rule. We feel ourselves to be rather egalitarian on top of it all because we don't have very clear, rigidly defined social classes. A man might be born of two beggars, and yet end up with billions. The opposite of an egalitarian democracy would be something like an oligarchic (Greek, again, for "leadership by the few") aristocracy.

Many of the world's nations are democracies in some way, shape, or form, and the United Nations (UN, or ONU in the romance languages) is ostensibly a democracy. Many Americans don't like our country being a part of it because they feel it interferes with our national self-determination. Interestingly enough, many people in smaller and less-developed countries feel likewise.

Well, to see whose sovereignty is more imposed upon, or at least to see who is making out better in this whole international way of running things, it is hard not at least to consider who's got more, and who's getting more. I don't mean that I am richer, dear reader, or that you are. Times are hard, sure enough. But does any of us in the US honestly think for a moment that we'd be doing better in Mogadishu or Brazil? Up until the last couple years, most Americans had more and more - more food, more clothing, bigger houses, and we are only now starting to think about ways to economize, to make do - and that's something 5/6 of the world's population has had to do for as long as anyone can remember.

The funny thing is that tonight, while working on my Greek, I came across the word aristos (Mt 22:4) and didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up. It means feast. Aristocracy, then, literally means rule by the those who feast. In the global economy, which is staggering everywhere, have we been the global aristocrats without even really noticing it? It's a old jibe (and wives' tale, in my experience) that even our convicted prisoners have cable TV. Whether it's true or not, it is telling. A friend of mine once powerfully observed that the West is like a great big shopping mall, with the rest of the world standing outside, looking in the windows, and we only letting them in to mop the floors.

Aristocracy, rule by the elite, by those who feast, should naturally disturb a Christian and leave him disquieted. Is it not so that we Christians worship a king who was poor?

Español

I love Spanish. It is a beautiful language that has arisen from and connected an array of complex and diverse cultures. It is a language that can be both forceful and direct, and yet sustains rich nuance. There are an array of local dialects because of different regional influences, primarily native American indigenous. But even the core language has some interesting twists. Like all the modern Romance languages, it has a latinate core vocabulary with a germanized grammar, and its inflection has been moderated over time. Because of the seven centuries of foreign domination by the (peace-loving, of course) Muslim Moors, its vocabulary also has a good deal of Arabic influence, which is somewhat unusual in the Romance languages.
Its writers have opted for the phonetic approach to spelling. That is, when absorbing a foreign word into the Spanish vocabulary, they have changed its spelling to make it conform to the Spanish phonetic system, so spelling is generally an easy task. The other basic approach, the philological approach, preserves foreign spellings of words as the words are introduced into the language, so that the language becomes an apparently unruly hodgepodge of rules and exceptions. English is the best example most people run into.

But what is bothering me right now is that I cannot find my Oxford Spanish Dictionary, last seen in the hands of one of my roommates (maybe), and AWOL for six months or so now. It's funny though, because it just occurred to me to pray St. Anthony to find it. If anyone sees it walking around without me, please scold it about the dangers of booknapping, and send it right home. Thanks!