Carthage Must Be Destroyed

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. ~ Daniel 7:13-14 This Sunday is the the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. A fitting Mass for Thanksgiving weekend. The Solemnity proclaims that Christ is preeminent over all creation. But Jesus’ rise to kingship is like no other. The desire for power is itself a powerful thing. Man has always craved power. We like to control things. But as history tells us, power also corrupts. The irony of power is that the more you desire and attain it at the expense of others, the more it destroys you–a basic survey of the history of the Byzantine emperors alone will prove this s...

The Bible is full of little nuggets–stories that seem so simple in passing but have deep meaning upon further reflection. The Last Supper is explicit enough as an event in Sacred Scripture. The Synoptic Gospels and the First Epistle to the Corinthians give us the explicit Eucharistic narrative. But there are other stories, or nuggets, that are implicitly connected to the Mass. One I find compelling is the story in the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke where the risen Jesus travels with two disciples along the road to Emmaus. Here, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” And later, the disciples exclaimed: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” This is in the same vein as the Liturgy of the Word, when Christ, the Word of God, opens to us the the Revelation of God. When the party arrives at their destination, they compel Jesus to st...