apenitentialprayer

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A friend of my girlfriend wanted to propose a Diwali-themed emoji a year or so ago, and that's how I learned that you actually can propose new ones! There is a downside, though; there are actually a bunch of rules about how new emojis are to be proposed, and which ones are seriously considered. My girlfriend's friend, for example, had to come up with multiple other contexts for which the emoji could also be used. You would also need to prove that you can't get the same idea across using a combination of emojis that already exist. Also, if the inclusion of an emoji creates a need for even more emojis ("Why do we have the sign of the Cross and not any other emojis for physical expressions of piety?"), the proposed emoji might be denied. To use the guideline's own words, ""the goal is iconographic representation of large categories, not completeness in the sense of filling out the categories of […] a classification system," so the prayer-hands emoji might be seen as enough. In an incredible emoji win, however, they also explicitly reject brand-name emojis. If I were to make a suggestion, though, maybe:

🙋🤏⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️🙏

Or, for our Eastern Christian brethren,

🙋🤏⬆️⬇️➡️⬅️🙏

we need a crossing urself emoji immediately

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Jewish Demonology: Jesus of Nazareth

The intent of the observance of Nittel Nacht was to avoid certain acts that would strengthen and intensify the powers of evil; this meant following specific customs to repudiate Christian beliefs regarding Christmas Eve. More broadly, the winter, according to European society, was a period when dark forces were around; in the Jewish tradition, a particular soul visited and terrorized their community on Christmas Eve: Jesus, in his return to Earth. Despite the centrality of Jesus in both religions' versions of the holiday, the differences in Jesus' character was stark; for Askenazic Jews it was concern regarding the character of Jesus which warranted a communal response.

A variation on the Christmas folk tradition, the framework of Nittel Nacht acted as a "mystical calculus . . . about European anxiety regarding the Christian majority." As such, while the themes and spirit of night originated in European culture, the Jews expressed the imagery differently: "in a way that expresse[d] the particular sensibilities and fears of the adoptive [Jewish] community." This was due to older Judaic traditions and customs which were incorporated into the observance of Nittel Nacht. This, through the amalgamation of two distinct, yet interconnected traditions, Nittel Nacht was an anti-holiday-holiday: a night that blurred the line between recognition and denouncement.

In regard to the ban on religious study, the principal prohibition of the night, the rabbis related four main explanations for refraining from the commandment to learn Torah.

First, by learning, the Jews would inadvertently be giving honor to Jesus' name, since it was celebrated as the day of his birth, as he too was considered to have studied to holy texts — there is even Talmudic basis for Jesus being a sage. Second, in a similar vein, since Jesus had learned these religious texts, the Jews would therefore be giving comfort for his soul; this, too, is based in the Talmudic concept that studying Torah in a deceased's name would assist them in the grave or the next world. Third, the idea, which worked within the framework of subversion, that the Jews were supposed to be mourning the date. Accordingly, since Torah study was considered a joyful endeavor in the rabbinic tradition, Jews were supposed to abstain from the practice on such a particularly sad date.

The final explanation, considered by scholars to be the most historically relevant, originated in an ancient Christian belief that Jesus, on Christmas Eve, would travel from Jewish home to home looking for a place for his soul to rest: a home of study and prayer. To prevent and counteract this, the Torah study was prohibited and merriment was practiced to prevent his soul from resting. For the rabbis, the concept of evil being ascendant on Earth, and the dead returning to life to menace the living, worked in tandem with their own conception of Jesus; this was the a key point in the Jewish subversion of the Christian tradition. {...} The concept of a revenant Jesus {...} was given dynamism in popular Jewish culture in Europe, furthering the place of Nittel Nacht within the Jewish calendar. Drawing upon rabbinic concepts, the folkloric traditions of Christmas Eve supported the belief of Jesus, in physical form, intent on disturbing the Askenazi communities. Specifically, these popular sources supported a similar narrative of a grotesque, corporeal Jesus motivated to assault Jews on Nittel Nacht. Many of these accounts relate to the concept of learning on the night, and the punishments directed towards Jesus for transgressing: "demand[ing] to be paid tuition," will "hide in a holy book and won't come out" or "he soils it [i.e., defecates on it] in hatred and disgust." These explanations for such actions are a reiteration of rabbinic ideas, some based in contemporary thought while others from older tradition: "he was once a great scholar and will wish to be honored for it," or that "he also taught it." All of these corporeal descriptions are intended to prevent any individual from being reckless.

This risen Jesus —the flying, monstrous, physical Jesus— therefore "require[s] defensive steps" seen in the observance of Nittel Nacht. As such, "Jewish tales of the revenant Jesus who wanders on Christmas Eve . . . predate[d] the earliest acknowledgement of these customs in Jewish sources." Jewish legends surrounding Jesus assumed and encompassed motifs of European culture, in turn, becoming inherent to the character of Jesus in the Jewish tradition. Through the paradigm of Toledot Yeshu, Nittel Nacht extended a mythology of older traditions of Jewish communities of Europe, which borrowed from and undermined Christian traditions, simultaneously connecting and dividing the two religions.

- Daniel Barth ("Nittle Nacht: A Jewish Christmas?").

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Christmas Eve: A Jewish Holiday

By living as a religious minority, Jews were forced to incorporate, and adjust to, the Christian calendrical system. […] By recognizing the Christian calendar, Jews concomitantly attempted to undermine the principles of those holidays in favor of their own. [...] Christmas gained religious and mass popularity during Europe's transition to the modern period, evolving into the principal holiday of the Christian calendar. This transformation within Christianity was concurrently reflected in the language, practice, and traditions of the Askenazi communities on Christmas Eve. The Jews of Europe, subjected to a Christian winter seasonal culture, referred to Christmas predominantly as Nittel Nacht, though it was given alternative names based on geography and local language. Derived from the Latin Natale Domini, "Nativity of the Lord," the phrase reflected Jews' antipathy towards saying the word Christ in relation to Jesus — a concept found in earlier rabbinic tradition. In addition, drawing on the Talmudic concept of derision of idolatry, the word Nittel was commonly spelled with the letter tuf in order to connote a derogatory meaning: "Night of the Hanged One." Beyond altering its name, the Jewish communities formed their own folkloric reaction to Christmas, intended to renounce Christian dominance, and to counteract the purported powers at play during the night. In the process, these Ashkenazi communities developed a particular tradition for Christmas Eve; while inverting Christian doctrine, Jews allowed their version of Christmas to permeate their own tradition. This produced the quasi-holiday of Nittel Nacht; in its attempt to repudiate Christmas Eve it formed an annual Jewish tradition with Jesus as its focus. The tradition of Nittel Nacht was a collection of observances practiced on the night of Christmas Eve, which consisted of Jews "putting aside their holy books, refraining from sexual relations . . . staying up late, and holding rowdy communal gatherings." Additionally, Toledot Yeshu, an older Jewish biography of the life of Jesus, was commonly read on the holiday in those gatherings, though it was not given the same prominence in the rabbinic tradition as the other Nittel Nacht practices. Rabbinic corroboration of the four practices was outlined in religious texts, in responsas and halakhic commentaries, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; none of these customs are found in Talmudic or Medieval rabbinic literature, suggesting that they originated in a later period. The earliest explicit reference to these practices is found in the writings of Rabbi Yair Bacharach (1639-1702), also known as the Mekor Hayyim. It is written in his work, "and there is a custom of abstaining from study on the evening of That Man's holiday." The act of refraining from religious study, the foregoing of a fundamental aspect of Jewish life, was seldom performed during the Jewish calendar. A later rabbi who discussed the customs of Nittel Nacht was Rabbi Moses Schreiber (1762-1839), known as the Hatam Sofer, one of the leading religious figures of European Jewry. Discussing the nucleus of observance, Schreiber cites the "'prohibition of Torah study on the eve of their holiday,' 'the universal custom of forbidding sexual relations,' and the practice of 'staying awake' or 'rising after midnight'" as the main characteristics of the night. Such examples highlighted the mainstream nature of Nittel Nacht practices in the rabbinic tradition and Ashkenazi communities of the late modern period.

- Daniel Barth ("Nittle Nacht: A Jewish Christmas?")

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Majority Influence on a Religious Minority

As a minority within [Christian] society, Jews were forced to create a space to express their own beliefs, traditions, and practices. Adapting to such a world —one seemingly different and antithetical to the practice of Judaism— produced a particular condition for Judaism within Europe. By existing within that state and repudiating Christianity while living underneath its authority, a new tradition was born: to "honor the religious culture of the powerful majority while simultaneously resisting its message." This animosity towards Christian Europe was mirrored in Ashkenazi Judaism that both reflected and absorbed aspects of the culture which enveloped it. Despite attempts to maintain complete distinctiveness, Judaism's tradition could not be disentangled from Christianity. The centuries of Judaism within Christian Europe in the early modern period —roughly the fifteenth to the eighteenth century— had a profound effect on the complex history of Ashkenazi culture. Through attempting to deconstruct and undermine Christianity —a condition of the Jewish community's minority status in Europe— Ashkenazi Judaism, as a result, acquired a new identity, one that was birthed from the knowledge, inversion, and adoption of Christian traditions[.]

- Daniel Barth ("Nittle Nacht: A Jewish Christmas?"). Bolded emphases added.

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Still not buying this, to be honest, but this interpretation does have a longer pedigree than I had initially thought three years ago; I just came across Bernard of Clairvaux making the same argument in Sermon 3 of Missus Est.

Donald Calloway relates a tradition in his book that is at odds with the normal interpretation of Matthew 1:19. Instead of divorcing Mary because he thought she had cheated on him, this tradition says that Joseph recognized the miraculous nature of the pregnancy, and wanted to divorce so that he wouldn��t get in the way of the Divine Mystery that was now unfolding. Calloway connects Matthew 1:19 to an incident in 2 Samuel; in this story, David witnesses the ineffable holiness of God, and how it destroys Uzzah when he comes into contact with it - he had touched the Ark of the Covenant, and then he died. David, afraid of the power that he witnessed, sends the Ark away from Jerusalem for three months (6:3-12). The reasoning is simple enough: typologically, Mary is identified as the Ark of the New Covenant. If Joseph recognized the holiness of what had occurred in her and felt unworthy, that would draw another parallel between the two Arks. But the appearance of the angel later in Matthew 1 prevents Joseph from making the same mistake his counterpart, David, performed. That being said… I’m not sure I’m buying this. In theory, the parallel still works even if Joseph is just sending her away. It just doesn’t work as well.

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Okay, so Bishop Barron brought up a really cute parallel in today's Gospel reflection, comparing the leap of John in the womb to the dance of David before the Ark. Little fetal boogeying before the Lord.

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In the long quiet that followed, as we passed around the wine and slowly became drunker, I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going." [...] There comes a time when we realise that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time gets dragged out to sea by the undertow — that, in short, we are all going.

Miles Halter (John Green's Looking for Alaska, pages 146, 146-147)

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how am i supposed to go to work when im literally thinking about The Character

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Oh, 180 pages in, and it was providential, just not in the way I had naively thought it was. To love, present tense.

Also, the fact that Looking for Alaska was the John Green book left out to be taken in a free pile of feeling mighty providential now that I'm 100 pages in

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Brick House in the City.

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Then He told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, Now as for you, you have many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God."

the Gospel According to Luke (12:16-21)

The tallest among us has a perpetual reminder of his nothingness before death, disease, old age, accidents, etc. We are living in the midst of death. What is the value of "working for our own schemes" when they might be reduced to naught in the twinkling of an eye, or when we may equally be swiftly and unawares be taken away from them? But we may feel strong as a rock, if we could truthfully say: "We work for God and His schemes."Then all is as clear as daylight. Then nothing perishes. All perishing is then only what seems. Death and destruction have then, but only then, no reality about them. For death and destruction is then but a change.

Mohandas Gandhi ("No Faith in Prayer," from the September 23rd, 1926 Young India paper). Italics original.

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You can have sympathy and even pity for someone who has made poor choices and hurt themselves in the process. You don't have to choose between compassion and recognizing personal accountability. They're not mutually exclusive.

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It is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: Prepare the way of the Lord, make God’s paths straight. (Mark 1:1-8)

At times when the trusting of faith becomes hard to grasp, we can say to God, “Do not look at what little faith I have, but enable me to rely on the faith of your whole Church, on the faith of so many humble witnesses who have rooted their lives in you to a point beyond compare.”

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[God] is present with rational creatures in many different ways. With the good alone He is present […] so that He is with them by agreement of wills. While their wills are subject to justice and right reason, God does not disdain to will what they will, for their wills being conformed to His, they in a manner unite God to themselves. If God is thus present with all the saints, He is especially so with Mary, with whom He was so closely united as to have not only one will, but one flesh, for from His own Divine nature and from her virginal substance one Christ was made, who, sharing both natures, was at once the Son of God and the Son of the Virgin Mary.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Missus Est, Sermon 3). Bolded line in the original Latin below:

Sed cum ita sed cum omnibus sanctis, specialiter tamen cum Maria: cum qua utique tanta ei consensio fuit, ut illiusnon solum voluntatem, Sed cum ita sed cum omnibus sanctis, specialiter tamen cum Maria: cum qua utique tanta ei consensio fuit, ut illiusnon solum voluntatem, sed etiam carnem sibi conjungeret.

Our Lady, Mediatrix of All Graces, by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

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Megalopolis-dweller privilege ✊😔

I keep forgetting that I'm actually incredibly spoiled to be within walking distance (<5 min - 40 min) of five Catholic churches

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Also, the fact that Looking for Alaska was the John Green book left out to be taken in a free pile of feeling mighty providential now that I'm 100 pages in