THE Catholic Leader reported that Cardinal George Pell deplored the recent mob violence and called for peace at Christmas (CL 18/12/05).
One has only to read the work of Rene Girard, as explained by Gil Bailie in Violence Unveiled, to understand that history has always been lived in the interval between the violence and the act of contrition.
The Bible is the first literature to grapple with the moral dilemma that this choice represents.
The hinge upon which history as religion has turned is the judgment of Caiaphas in the Passion that it is better that one man die for the community of Israel.
The story in Acts 8:26-40 of Philip’s explanation to the Ethiopian eunuch explains the meaning of Jesus as the victim of mob violence.
The funeral spice “myrrh” was a gift of the Magi and Matthew’s Nativity lineage lists Mary along with Rahab, Tamar, Ruth and Uriah.
The Synoptic Gospels link Mary’s Motherhood of the Messiah within a context of a woman living in a man’s world as a subplot of typical violent Jewish history culminating in Jesus’ death.
These Old Testament heroines distorted the expectations of behaviour both for good and bad.
Ruth was the mother of the “the anointed one”, David, despite being a Moabite who came to Bethlehem, like Mary, as a foreigner.
Ruth found human redemption as the wife of Boaz, Mary as the spouse of Joseph. Spiritually both women lived and trusted in the “hesed” of Yahweh.
Jesus could find no room in the inn. He was crucified in case false doctrine destroy the status quo.
Girard stands for the proposition that the Christian Church must make it impossible to forget how Jesus lived and died.
Violence could no longer ever be sacred after Jesus, the righteous victim, was resurrected.
VINCE HODGE
Paddington, Qld
