The Heart Should Sing
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Friday, January 16, 2009 7:00 PM
This lucky duck got special attention at Wednesday’s Papal Audience, at which the Pope preached on the “twin epistles” of Colossians and Ephesians.
The theme of the lesson this week is Christ as head of the Church, but I have to point out Benedict’s lovely introductory remark.
Noting that in both epistles Paul encourages his flock to sing psalms and hymns of gratitude to the Lord, the Pope invites us to do the same:
We could meditate on these words: The heart should sing, and also the voice, with psalms and hymns, to enter into the tradition of the prayer of the whole Church of the Old and New Testament. We thus learn to be united among ourselves and with God.
I find I often learn as much from the Holy Father’s digressions as from his actual theses: it requires gratitude—a singing heart—for us to enter fully into the union to which Christ invites us.
To be one with Christ means to be drawn into his headship, and that brings us to the point of this week’s catechesis.
What do we mean when we say Christ is head of the Church? What does Paul mean?
Christ is head in the sense of “director,” but that’s only the most obvious point. A deeper meaning of headship is to be found in the analogy with the physical body. The head is that which gives life to the other parts of the body, and that is what Christ is for us. Not just a leader we follow, but that without which we have no life:
His commandments are not just words, mandates, but are vital forces that come from him and help us.
That’s why our prayer and sacramental life are literally vital: they’re the means we have of remaining connected to our Head.
Benedict next points to yet a third dimension of Christ’s headship: his being head of the entire cosmos. I’m sure we’ve all been touched at some point by the famous Pauline proclamation that Christ is above every principality, power and authority, but the pope points out how truly new that claim would have been in the midst of a pagan culture used to being on guard against evil spirits at every turn. How radically liberating—and liberating above all from fear.
For the pagan world, which believed in a world full of spirits, mostly dangerous and against which one had to defend oneself, the proclamation that Christ is the only victor and that he who is united to Christ did not have to fear anyone, appeared as a true liberation.
When Christ comes, man can as it were stand up straight and attain to his full powers at last.
Which brings us to our “take-home message” for the week, which is that what was true for pagan Rome—that it needed deliverance from fears of all kinds—is true of our modern pagan societies, too.
the current followers of these ideologies see the world as full of dangerous powers. To these people, it is necessary to announce that Christ is the conqueror, such that one who is with Christ, who remains united to him, should not fear anything or anyone. It seems to me that this is also important for us, who should learn to face all fears, because he is above every domination, he is the true Lord of the world.
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