A Letter from Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB

Dear Friends in Christ,
    “Learn the heart of God in the words of God,” said Pope St Gregory the Great (d. 604).
This is a perfect maxim with which to approach the new Lectionary that will come into force in our churches in Scotland, England and Wales on the 1st Sunday of Advent.

“New” and not “new”! Not new in the sense of new readings – all those familiar to us over the last two generations will continue as hitherto. The Lectionary of the Roman Rite, was revised in response to the Second Vatican Council’s wish that Scripture be opened to us more fully, was first published as the Ordo Lectionum Missae or Lectionarium (the Order of Mass Readings / Lectionary) in 1970 and slightly amplified in 1981. It will continue to be the foundation of our Lectionary. It has proved to be one of the most successful and transformative fruits of the Council’s renewal of the Roman Liturgy. Our “new” Lectionary will not be new in this sense. The readings will be of the same biblical passages as now.    

And yet it will be new. New, above all, in using a new version of Scripture for the readings and a revised version of the Psalter for the Responsorial Psalms. New too in including readings for those saints who have recently become part of of our General or National Calendars. And the published version prepared by the Catholic Truth Society will be newly formatted, set out in sense lines to facilitate proclamation, include verse numbers and also some musical settings.

We will be saying goodbye, then, to the Jerusalem Bible version. It has served us faithfully for two generations and we may at times miss some of those turns of phrase that have become familiar to us. The English language, however, has moved on, as has scholarly work on the original biblical texts. The ethos of translation has also shifted. And so, following the Catholic Church in India, the Bishops in Britain have opted for the Catholic Edition of the English Standard Version (ESV - CE). The ESV was the work of largely Evangelical scholars in the USA and England in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Catholic edition has introduced some modifications and, of course, the deutero-canonical books we recognise as inspired (e.g. Tobit, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees etc). It is a competent revision of the well-known Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the 1950s which, in its two Catholic editions, has been and still is widely used in English-speaking Catholicism, both in and out of the liturgy. The ESV stands in this tradition and indeed in the great tradition of English translations of the Bible going back to the 17th century. Its paramount aim is to render the inspired biblical text – “the words of God” – in a faithful way, respecting the unique character of biblical language, avoiding paraphrase. At the same time, it aims to speak a dignified, contemporary and accessible English. It is inclusive where appropriate without making a distracting “thing” of inclusive language. It is markedly more inclusive than what we have at present! No translation is perfect, nor can any translation appeal to everyone, but the ESV – CE succeeds, I believe, in conveying a sense of the divine inspiration of Scripture. We will sense we are listening to the voice of God. It will, generally, “proclaim” well and chime well with the language of the Liturgy.

As to the Psalm versions, we have been familiar hitherto with the Grail Psalter. We will now adopt the Revised Grail Psalter, largely the work of the Benedictine monks if Conception Abbey, Missouri, USA. Its aim likewise is to be closer to the original Hebrew and bring us the richness of the original. It is in no way dramatically different.

It would be a mistake, I think, to become too absorbed in the details of the differences we will hear, or in arguments about the pros and cons. No change is without jolts and challenges. My own hope, though, is that this new Lectionary – the books, by the way, are beautifully produced – will enhance our celebration of that integral element of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word. There the living Christ speaks to us as a community and as individuals. And through and beyond that, that we may “learn the heart of God in the words of God” and become Christians steeped in and shaped by God’s holy, Spirit-filled Word - as the Church so longs us to be.
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The birds of the air

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them (Mt 6:26).

From Genesis 1 onwards, birds are frequently mentioned in the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments. They also came to symbolise various characteristics and to be associated with both saints and sinners. Some are mentioned by name; others simply as ‘birds’, although various translators have made guesses as to their species.

Birds are a significant part of God’s Creation and, according to Genesis, he brought them into being on the fifth day: ‘And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created … every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good’ (20-21). God gave the birds (and all other creatures at the time) ‘every green plant for food’. In chapter 2, the man, the ‘Adam’ is given the privilege of naming all creatures, including the birds. We don’t discover any of their names until later, when God sends a great flood to destroy the wickedness that descended on his beautiful Creation after the Fall of humankind, when all that God had made also fell from grace. According to tradition, it was then that animals and birds began to prey upon other creatures, instead of being content with green plants.

‘At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.’ The raven did not return to the Ark; according to a Jewish legend, the raven was originally white, but its feathers turned black when it failed to return. Known to feed on carrion and to pluck out the eyes of the dead, it often became associated with the devil. However, some reconciliation with its Creator must have happened, as we find ravens used as God’s messengers, such as when one brings food to Elijah in the wilderness (1 Kings 17).

Then Noah sends out a dove three times, ‘to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.’ Twice the dove returns to the ark, the second time with ‘freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.’ Ever since, a dove and olive branch have been associated with peace and friendship, just as Noah realised that God’s anger had also subsided. On the third occasion, ‘he sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore’ (Gen 8:6-12). Thereafter, throughout Scripture, doves are often mentioned: as doves, turtledoves or pigeons, and in the New Testament become associated with the Holy Spirit. The latter is usually depicted in art as pure white – white doves today tend to be smaller – although then, as now, there were many varieties of dove or pigeon. For example, the turtledove, famously associated with the Beloved in the Song of Songs, is a very pretty, dark-coloured variety of ring dove. Doves were also the cheapest option for poor people to offer ‘a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord (Lev 12:8)’, and so we find Jesus’s parents offering ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons’ in the temple (Luke 2:24).

In the lengthy lists of dietary restrictions in Leviticus are birds which ate the flesh of other creatures, either freshly killed or carrion, for they would have been rendered unclean by eating unclean meat; these include vultures, eagles, ravens, owls, herons and storks, seagulls and even ostriches. Bats are included in this list! It is unclear what status many smaller birds had which ate insects, worms etc – think of the traditional English folk song On Ilkley moor baht ‘at!   

Next to doves, perhaps eagles are mentioned most often, frequently used as symbols for God himself, overshadowing and protecting his people with mighty wings which conceal them from their enemies. God tells Moses from Mount Sinai, ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself’ (Ex 19:4). Whenever we find this image of great outspread wings, overshadowing humankind and concealing them from their enemies or helping them escape, we know it is a symbol of God’s loving protectiveness and power:

‘Guard me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings’ Ps 16:8).
‘O Lord, how precious is your love! The children of man find refuge in the shelter of your wings’ (Ps 35:7).
‘In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by’ (Ps 56:1).
‘For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I rejoice’ (Ps 62:7).
‘He will conceal you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge’ (Ps 90:4).

Tolkien in Lord of the Rings adopted this image for the mighty eagles who rescued Gandalf from his tower prison, fought with the forces of Good against Evil, and saved Frodo and Sam from death at the Crack of Doom.

God sends quail (also known as doves) to feed the starving Israelites wandering in the desert; and many other birds are mentioned in Scripture by name, birds which we know are still to be found in the Holy Land: partridge, swallow, pelican, crane, peacock.

In the New Testament, where we meet our loving Creator in the form of his Son made man, we find more homely images of birds. Not always – unspecified birds are used in the Parable of the Sower as symbols of the Evil One who ‘snatches away what has been sown in his heart’ (often depicted in paintings as black birds like starlings or crows). A barnyard cockerel is a symbol of Peter’s denial of Christ (Lk 22:60-2) and is often a detail depicted in icons of the Crucifixion. Jesus tells us that ravens are not much use, yet God feeds them; are we not worth more? Just before this, he assures his listeners ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows’ (Lk 12:24, 6-7). If our heavenly Father concerns himself with the fall of a humble sparrow, how infinitely much more does he concern himself with each one of us?

Perhaps the most tender (and my own favourite) image of the Lord’s caring love for us comes in exactly the same words in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!’ (Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34) If you have ever seen how chicks or cygnets nestle amongst the feathers of their mothers, you will appreciate just how poignant an image this is.

What of the robin which we associate with the birth of Christ? No mention in the Bible, but more of him anon…

BY EILEEN CLARE GRANT