Episode 15: Year A–Second Sunday of Lent
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we’re going to focus on two details present in the readings for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A) that are relevant for doing apologetics, particularly with our Protestant brothers and sisters. The first detail is Jesus’ communication with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, which comes from the Gospel reading taken from Matthew 17:1-9. The second detail is Paul’s teaching on the gift of salvation being given independent of our works, which is found in the second reading taken from 2 Timothy 1:8b-10.
The Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030523.cfm
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INTRODUCTION
Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to focus on two details that are relevant for doing apologetics, particularly with our Protestant brothers and sisters. The first detail is Jesus’ communication with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, which comes from the Gospel reading taken from Matthew 17:1-9. The second detail is Paul’s teaching on the gift of salvation being given independent of our works, which is found in the second reading taken from 2 Timothy 1:8b-10.
Let’s start with the Gospel reading. Again, this is taken from Matthew 17:1-9. Matthew records,
1 After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 b And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5 While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” 8 And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. 9 As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
The key detail to focus on here is Jesus’ communication with Moses and Elijah. The apologetical theme that it ties into is the Catholic practice of invoking the saints to intercede for us.
Consider that some Protestants argue that the Catholic practice of invoking the saints to pray for us violates the Bible’s prohibition of communicating with the dead. James White, for example, in his book Answers to Catholic Claims: A Discussion of Biblical Authority, writes,
The Bible strongly condemns communication with the dead. It does not matter if those who died were good or bad, saintly or evil, there is to be no communication between the living and the dead. The only communication with spirit beings that originates with man that is allowed in Scripture is that of prayer to God and He alone.
Presumably, the Bible passage that White is referring to here is Deuteronomy 18:10-12, which reads,
There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD; and because of these abominable practices the LORD your God is driving them out before you
For White (and others), the Catholic practice of invoking the saints to pray for us violates God’s prohibition of consulting a necromancer. Why? Because it’s “communication with the dead.” White assumes that necromancy is “communication with the dead.” It’s clear that he interprets necromancy this way because he writes, “there is to be no communication between the living and the dead.”
Now, here is where Jesus’ communication with Moses and Elijah comes into play, or at least just Moses. If White’s interpretation of necromancy were correct—that is, we can’t communicate with the dead in any sense, then Jesus would be violating His own prohibition because He’s communicating with the dead Moses. His communication with Elijah wouldn’t work here because Elijah never died (he was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot without dying—2 Kings 2:11). Moses, however, did die. Deuteronomy 34:5 reads, “Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.” Surely we don’t want to say that Jesus is guilty of the very abomination that He articulates in Deuteronomy 18:12.
For this reason, we should reject White’s interpretation of the prohibition of necromancy, which in turn gives us reason to reject White’s argument against the Catholic practice of invoking the saints to pray for us.
Furthermore, we have grounds to reject White’s argument from necromancy based on the proper understanding of necromancy. The dictionary defines necromancy as “conjuration of the spirits of the dead for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events.”138 The term comes from two Greek words: nekros (“dead person”) and manteia (“oracle,” “divination”). An example of this is what King Saul did in 1 Samuel 28 when he consulted the medium of Endor and requested that she conjure up the soul of the prophet Samuel to inquire from him about what he should do to defeat the Philistines.
It’s the conjuring of spirits to elicit secret knowledge that Deuteronomy 18:12 is prohibiting. And there are at least two reasons we know this.
First, the text also forbids “divination” and seeking a “medium,” a “sorcerer,” and a “wizard,” all of which have to do with an attempt to gain secret knowledge—knowledge beyond ordinary human intelligence. The Hebrew biblical phrase doresh’el-ha-metim, which is translated as “necromancer,” literally means “an inquirer of the dead.”139
The second reason is the subsequent instructions that Moses gives concerning a coming prophet. In verse 15, Moses says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed.” In other words, there is no need to go to mediums, sorcerers, wizards, and necromancers to gain knowledge because God will send a prophet of his own. God then speaks through Moses and says, “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (v.18). As for the prophet who presumes to speak in God’s name without God’s command or the prophet who speaks in “the name of other gods,” God says that prophet “shall die” (v.20).
Since the context is about looking to God’s prophet and not to mediums, sorcerers, wizards, and necromancers, it’s clear that the prohibition has to do with seeking secret knowledge apart from God. And since conjuring up the dead (necromancy) is one way of doing that, God forbids it.
But this is not what we do in the Catholic practice of invoking the saints to pray for us. Asking saints to pray for us is an entirely different thing from necromancy. The Church doesn’t teach that we are to invoke the saints to gain secret knowledge—in fact, this is condemned in CCC 2116.
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
Rather, we’re giving information to the dead by making our requests known to a departed soul. Nor does the Catholic Church teach that we conjure the saints’ spirits when we invoke their prayers. In fact, the same Catechism passage also explicitly affirms the Bible’s condemnation of such a practice.
Since the Catholic practice of requesting the saints to pray for us is not a form of necromancy, then it doesn’t fall under the prohibition in Deuteronomy 18:10-12.
Now, White might counter and say, “You’re misrepresenting my objection. I’m not excluding communicating with the dead in any context. I’m only arguing against communication with the dead when the contact originates with us.” This seems supported by White’s statement above, where he writes, “The only communication with spirit beings that originates with man that is allowed in Scripture is that of prayer to God and He alone.”
How might we respond to this counter?
First, White’s appeal to Deuteronomy 18:10-12 still wouldn’t justify his claim that we can’t initiate communication with the dead in the way that Catholics do when the invoke them for their prayers. Recall, necromancy is the “conjuration of the spirits of the dead for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events.” That’s not what we do when we ask the saints to pray for us.
Second, Jesus is the one who choreographed this exchange with the dead Moses. He initiated it. And as man, we must imitate him. This would be a grave scandal for us as Christians if we couldn’t initiate a conversation with those who have gone before us in the way that we do in the invocation of the saints.
Third, the Bible reveals that we Christians do in fact initiate some sort of contact with the blessed in Heaven. Consider, for example, Hebrews 12:18-24. The author writes,
18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest [Mt. Sinai] . . . 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel
The author is contrasting the Old and New Covenants here. And in the New Covenant, we approach the “spirits of just men made perfect” at the same time we approach Jesus “the mediator of a new covenant.” Some have interpreted this as a reference to what we’re approaching when we pray. Regardless, it’s clear that we initiate some sort of contact with the blessed in heaven, in a way that we do when we initiate contact with Jesus.
So, Jesus’ conversation with Moses provides us biblical justification for the Catholic practice of the invocation of the saints. And more specifically, it provides us a way to meet the Protestant challenge against the invocation of the saints from the Bible’s prohibition of necromancy in Deuteronomy 18:10-12.
The other detail that we’re going to focus on comes from the second reading for this upcoming Sunday Mass, which is taken from 2 Timothy 1:8b-10. Here’s what Paul writes,
[B]ear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. 9 He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, 10 but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
The detail that we’re going to focus on here in this episode that’s relevant for apologetics is Paul’s statement, “He saved us . . . not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began.”
This gives us an opportunity to reflect on the Church’s teaching concerning our initial justification—when we first enter in Christ and are saved. It is not by the merits of our works but by the grace of God. In its Decree on Justification (Chapter 8), the Council of Trent states the following:
We are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification. “For, if by grace, it is not now by works, otherwise,” as the Apostle says, “grace is no more grace” (Rom. 11:6).
This teaching dispels the common misconception of Catholic theology that we must do good works to merit entrance into the state of justification, a misconception that is found among both Protestants and Catholics.
The Catechism reiterates this teaching of Trent in paragraph 2010. It states, “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion.”
Good works don’t have any meritorious value regarding our justification until after we’re initiated into a state of justification. And the effect that they have on our justification is one of preservation and growth. Concerning the growth in justification, Chapter 10 of Trent’s Decree on Justification states the following:
Having, therefore, been thus justified and made the friends and domestics of God (Eph. 2:9), advancing from virtue to virtue (Ps. 84:7), they are renewed, as the Apostle says, day by day (2 Cor. 4:16), that is, mortifying the members (Col. 3:5) of their flesh, and presenting them as instruments of justice unto sanctification (Rom. 6:13, 19), they, through the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, faith cooperating with good works, increase in that justice received through the grace of Christ and are further justified.
Later in Chapter 16, the Council gives its teaching on good works preserving our justification, stating,
Therefore, to men justified in this manner, whether they have preserved uninterruptedly the grace received or recovered it when lost, are to be pointed out the words of the Apostle: Abound in every good work, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.[93]
The Council sums up both teachings in Canon 24 on Justification:
If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works,[125] but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of its increase, let him be anathema.
As I mentioned above, many have misconceptions about the Church’s teaching on the relationship between justification and good works. For this reason, it’s necessary that we have a clear understanding of the Church’s teaching on the gratuitous nature of the initial grace of justification. This teaching must always nuance the discussions that we have with our Protestant friends about whether we’re justified by faith or works. Some Catholics often use the phrase “justified by faith and works.” But, given the Church’s teaching, we must be clear about which stage of justification we’re talking about: the initial stage or the current stage of justification. There’s also nuances that must be made concerning “faith.” Are we talking about pre-justifying faith—the faith that precedes justification (faith without charity) or the faith that actually justifies—the faith that’s given with sanctifying grace.
There’s a lot more to the equation than meets the eye. But that’s all we can do for now.
CONCLUSION
So, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. We have Jesus’ communication with the dead Moses that helps in our conversations about the invocation of the saints and Paul’s teaching about the gratuitous nature of the initial grace of justification.
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I hope that you have a great 2nd Sunday of Lent.