Hold Fast To Hype. 4 December 2019.

Preface.

It is fitting indeed and just, right and helpful unto salvation -- oh wait, not that kind of preface, but it is dignum et justum to say I did not write what follows this preface. It is an article by Patrick Marrin of the National Catholic Reporter, with copyright given. It is, or at least was, also published online here. I am posting the text, typos and all.  The article refers to an accompanying story, and that is also given.  The accompanying story is an address given by Godfrey Diekmann OSB in 1997.

Who is that and why should I care?  Godfrey was a leading figure, both in the movements in the decades before Vatican II that led up to it, and at Vatican II itself where he was a peritus.  What's that?  "peritus" in Latin means skilled or expert, and in church usage it's a noun meaning an expert in theology appointed by the Vatican Secretary of State to attend and advise a church council.

It was my inestimable privilege to have known Godfrey, a stunning accomplishment of the human spirit and a professor and Benedictine extraordinaire, even if he was, IMHO, wrong about damn near everything.  I'm actually much more in awe of his much lesser known brother Father Conrad, whose World Lit (Homer, the Greek tragedians, Virgil, Dante and Cervantes, I suppose to-day we would say Western Lit, though Conrad also offered a wonderful class on haiku which I also took) classes, though at 0800 on Minnesota Winter mornings, were among the singular experiences of my life.

Father Godfrey was born into eternity on 22 February 2002.  There's some real irony here.  Godfrey was a champion of "collegiality" and 22 February, in the new order to which Godfrey was such an influence, is now in the Roman Calendar the Feast of the Chair of St Peter.  I suppose it might have been fitting etc. to post this on that date.  Formerly, 18 January was the Feast of the Chair of Peter at Rome and 22 February was the Feast of the Chair of Peter at Antioch.  The novus ordo abolished the former and combined it with the latter.

Either way, it's all about chairs, as in seats of authority.  Yet our beloved synod, ever ready to engage in Vatican II for Lutherans, in its current worship book reinvents the 18 January date as being about the confession of St Peter and ignores the 22 February date though that is the date traditionally associated with St Peter delivering his confession!  This blog disentangles the well-intended but misguided the story of these feasts on that date, along with much else that comes from it, in the post "22 February.  The Confession of St Peter.  On Chairs, Guardians, Noble Lies and Pious Fictions Too."

So, 22 February is taken with much bigger stuff.  It might be even more fitting to post this on 11 October, the anniversary of the opening of Vatican II in 1962.  That was my original intent.  But, on 1 October 2019 I took a bad fall in the rain, with injury to the right shoulder, at first expected to heal with immobilization but examination by an orthopaedist revealed more extensive damage requiring a hemiarthroplasty, which was done 10 October 2019.  So I was a bit taken up at the time.  What to do?  Well, 4 December 1963 is the promulgation date of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.  This is the document of Vatican II most directly affecting not just Catholics but non-Catholics as well, particularly those like ourselves (LCMS) who historically retain liturgy.

It is this document that both summed up the drift of the preceding decades of the "liturgical movement" and resulted in a wholesale change to the previous liturgy in the promulgation of what is often called the novus ordo, though that is not its actual name.  Liturgical rites are named for the pope under whose authority they are promulgated, thus, it is the Mass of Paul VI.  He promulgated it on 3 April 1969 and it was to take effect with the beginning of the church year, the First Sunday of Advent, of that year, but, he was so unhappy with the text prepared for it that that didn't happen until a revision came out the following year, which is why one sees both 1969 and 1970 as its date.

Novus ordo means "new order" in Latin, which though that is not its name describes exactly what it is, a new order.  The bumbling around its initial appearance is but openers for no end of bumbling around in the decades since, which continues unabated to the present re both the Latin typical text and translations thereof.  The only thing that Magnum Principium, "The Great Principle" in Latin, Pope Francis' document of 3 September 2017, really clarifies is that bumbling around following Vatican II is now the irreversible norm of the Catholic Church.  The extent to which this bumbling around is completely antithetical to the reforms of the Lutheran Reformation is detailed in this blog's post for 25 June, the anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession.

I would not now give a ginger snap -- or, in the magnificent phrase now nearly entirely absent from usage, a popefig -- about all this except for its woeful effect on Lutherans, distancing them (ie, us) from their heritage as it has with Catholics, all the while presenting a pastiche that looks traditional superficially but in reality is an intentional break with the very tradition it claims to renew.  There's more to tradition than wearing vestments, following a church-approved order and talking about Jesus.  Both the article and the accompanying story are expressly clear about something I heard daily in those heady days, that this is a real and intended break yet one that is not really a break at all, but a return to and a renewal of something that had been increasingly obscured in the last millennium and a half.

Sounds a lot like an acknowledgement of what we call the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and the Reformation, doesn't it?  Yes, it does.  I refer the reader again to this blog's post for 25 June for a fuller discussion; here, the main points which show this to be quite something different than what we are about.

1.  Constantine did not decide in 313 to advance Christianity as the state religion.  This is a reference to the Edict of Milan (Edictum Mediolanensa) of February 313.  The edict exists in two versions, that of Lactantius, a scholar who was tutor to Constantine's son Crispius, whom Constantine ordered hanged in 326 and shortly thereafter had his stepmom Fausta executed by immersion in boiling water, which was not a Roman method of execution but was a technique of abortion, suggesting an adulterous relationship and pregnancy, and that of Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea.  For one thing, the two versions are not at all the same.  For another, Lactantius' version is not in the form of an edict.  For another, far from making Christianity the state religion, it simply granted Christianity legal status, and ordered reparations made for recent persecutions.  For yet another, it wasn't even specifically about Christianity, it grants legal status to any and all religions found in the Empire!  The advancement of Christianity as the state religion did not come from Constantine but in the joint declaration of the co-emperors (Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I) on 27 February 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica (Cunctos populos) defining what is and is not the Catholic Church and making it the state religion.

2.  Nowhere in our Lutheran Confessions is there anything even remotely like a concept or sense of reversing 1,600 years (well, at the time the Confessions were written it would have been about 1,100 years) of bad development, jumping over centuries to restore and renew a lost purity of New Testament and Patristic (the "fathers" of the first few centuries of church history) times.  This idea of some sort of lost ideal in the early church, whose purity is to be recovered and restored, is entirely a churchy version of an endemic Romantic fiction of C19 in which the "Liturgical Movement" began, a "noble church" as the ecclesiastical expression of the "noble savage".  Noble savage, btw, is a phrase often associated with Rousseau, but, he never used it; it comes from John Dryden much earlier, in his play published in 1672 The Conquest of Grenada -- I am as free as nature first made man / Ere the base laws of servitude began / When wild in woods the noble savage ran.  "Savage" at the time did not have its common pejorative connotation now, but quite the opposite, a sense of free, unrestrained, even superior for not being held back by later imposed norms.

3.  What our Confessions do state, in complete contrast to the above, is continuity with the past, warts and all, and re the warts, removing them by the criteria of, not a model of a lost past, but whether it contradicts anything in Scripture.  Wrt to worship, our Confessions repeatedly point out that our services are NOT a new order but for the most part the ones previously in use.  Godfrey makes an anonymous reference to Pius XII's encyclical Mystici corporis Christi (Of the Mystical Body of Christ) of 29 June 1943, yet omits anything about it not concerned with the liturgical movement, resulting in an emphasis both misplaced and misunderstood.  1943 -- the insistence on the value of each human life to the Church carries over to society, in contrast to Nazi Germany's Aktion T4 programme of killing of those with mental or physical disabilities or those of races or cultures deemed inferior, or as we put it now, insufficient quality of life.  Also, while the encyclical is clear that the Church is not composed of an active clergy dispensing the sacraments and a passive laity receiving them, it is also clear that this life happens within the visible structure established for it by Christ, namely, the Pope as head and the bishops in communion with him.

4.  This in turn led to one of the great bumblings-around since the council.  The encyclical says the mystical body of Christ is the Catholic Church.  Is, or in Latin, est.  Lumen gentium, "Light of the nations" in Latin, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church as it is called, in its eighth paragraph says instead that the Church subsists in (Latin, subsistit in) the Catholic Church.  Many critics of Vatican II have seen this as the Catholic Church backing off from its former self-understanding.  For decades now the Catholic Church has put forth explanations how these two different statements are the same.  Guess what, they are the same, and guess further what, that is not good news though it sounds like it.  Subsistit in simply means that the church of Christ is only fully found within the visible structure of the Catholic Church, though elements of the Catholic Church sufficient for salvation can and are found outside its visible structure.  IOW, we Lutherans and others are saved by those elements of the Catholic Church which can exist outside the Catholic Church and which we do not deny, such as Baptism.

5.  If Godfrey et hoc genus omne want to lament the phrase "people of God" overshadowing "body of Christ" they need look no further than right here, not at est and subsistit in.  Mystici corporis and Lumen gentium do not use the same nouns for what is supposedly the same in the verbs.  Mystici corporis says the body of Christ is the Catholic Church.  Lumen gentium says the Church, not "the body of Christ", subsists in the Catholic Church.  Oh, but church and body of Christ are the same thing, one might say. Indeed they are, but look at why that is.  The Church is what it is because of each member's baptism into the life of God, says Lumen gentium in chapter two, which thus forms them into not the Old Testament people of God but a new people of God.  IOW, the body of Christ and the people of God are equivalent terms for one thing created by one source, baptism.  If they are not equivalent terms, two nouns for the same thing, then est and subsistit in cannot be equivalent verbs, two verbs for the same thing.  The documents themselves bear that out.

6.  This bumbling is the fons et origo by which Pius XII's encyclicals, not just Mystici corporis, are stood on their heads.  Mediator Dei (Mediator of God, 20 November 1947) both champions the sacraments and liturgy as mediating the life of God to the members of the Church and warns against the effects of trying to encourage this participation by applying to liturgy the Romantic fiction discussed above thinking one has recovered some lost past purity, an effort he calls liturgical archaeologism.  Yet it is just this liturgical archaeologism that is the modus operandi celebrated below of the novus ordo.  Lex orandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, says the maxim derived from Prosper Aquitanus, a student of Augustine.  The original goes ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, that the law of praying establish the law of believing, which in Catholic hands is sometimes used to establish doctrine on liturgy, yet this is contradicted both by the principle of sola scriptura, by Scripture alone, is doctrine determined, and by Pius XII himself in Mediator Dei, saying that the proper distinction between faith and liturgy (so to speak!) is expressed by lex credendi legem statuat supplicandi, the law of belief establishes the law of prayer.

Point being, as you pray so shall you believe, and as you believe so shall you pray.  It works both ways.  If you pray in a manner devised out of a liturgical archaeologism, a Romantic fantasy of having jumped over a millennium and one half of loss of purity, so shall you believe about the faith, the church, the works.  And, if you have faith that includes such a Romantic fantasy, so shall you change the liturgy, the church, the works.  The latter is how the novus ordo and all the rest came to be, first in the Catholic Church and then in other churches or parts thereof who adopt and adapt it.  The former is the ongoing effect once the latter has become the norm.  And the greatest irony here of all is that this is entirely inconsistent with and false to the much vaunted idea of a body, which does not stay the same but grows, the same organism in later stages as in earlier ones, not jumping back to earlier stages but moving forward in organic continuity.

In the case of the mystical body of Christ this organic growth is both promised and guaranteed by Jesus (lo, I am with you always etc.) through the Holy Spirit.  Which is why there was, and is, a Babylonian Captivity not a Babylonian Extinction, why real liturgical reform proceeds within the organic continuity of the Body of Christ, the Church, as our Confessions state, normed by what is inconsistent with Scripture not with a Romantic fantasy about a distant past.

It's bad enough that for Catholics Vatican II makes normative exactly what Pius XII in Mystici corporis, Mediator Dei and for that matter Humani generis showed to be dangers to and dissent from Catholicism, and presents a contemporary pastiche that looks traditional, being made up of this and that from here and there, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (literally, in the case of Advent), but is anything but traditional and dismisses three-fourths of the elapsed development of the body of Christ the Church.  But that is their problem.

Our problem is when we follow suit and likewise, without meaning to or even recognising it, we incorporate this intended break with the Church's organic development in which our Confessions so proudly demonstrate we stand, by adopting and adapting the novus ordo pastiche model of a lex orandi that is quite at odds with our confessed lex credendi, thus no less than the cowo crowd trying to infuse Lutheran content into a concept of worship not meant to contain it. 

In this way is our lex credendi subtly altered and compromised.  Novus ordo?  Bogus ordo.  Sacrosanctum concilium?  Sacrorectal concilium.  Better that we stand with our Lutheran principles of reform, within the organic development of the church, the body of Christ, preserving the usual ceremonies, for the most part similar to the ones previously in use, and for the sake of good order in the church the traditional lectionary.

Mr Marrin's article, and "accompanying story" to which he refers, follows.  

Diekmann says hold fast to hope - Vatican II figure Godfrey Diekmann

Vatican II participant appeals for restored priorities, transformed lives

Vatican II, regarded by some as one of the most revolutionary councils in church history, is now the subject of video retrospectives and historical overviews that pronounce who won, or where the pendulum has come to rest. If anyone is watching or reading, the easiest verdict is that the council is fading in both time and influence, its prophets either gone or all but silent.

With at least one notable exception.

Even at 90, Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann carries his 6-foot-3-inch frame straight and tall behind the aluminum walker he is pushing swiftly down the long monastic corridor at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. His face -- large, sculpted and serene -- glows above his black turtleneck.

He is a man on a final mission, made all the more urgent by a doctor's verdict last August that he could die or be incapacitated at any moment by a, host of heart troubles that have left him too fragile for any further medical remedy.

Diekmann, regarded by many as one of the giants of the American church and a key participant in the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), has been using his borrowed time since Benedict August to reassert that the most important goal of the Second Vatican Council was to recover for everyone full and confident access to an intimate life with God through Jesus Christ. The key to opening up the institutional church to this life was to restore an understanding of the church as the body of Christ. This single reform held revolutionary implications for every aspect of the church's governance, worship, spirituality and mission. (See accompanying story.)

The body of Christ

For Diekmann this is no worn cliche but Christianity's best-kept secret, a startling revelation conveyed in the prayer offered daily during the preparation of the wine at Mass: "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

In his 63 years teaching patristics -- the rich treasury of writings from the first centuries of the church -- Diekmann has struggled to convey to his students the meaning of the patristic adage: "He became human that we might become divine."

"My main point in teaching was to make my students realize what Christianity is -- that it's not just being good with the grace of God helping us, but it means real transformation, that you are sharing the divine nature. This must be taken seriously.

"What does it mean to say that we are members of the body of Christ?" Diekmann asked. "It means that in some absolute, almost contradictory way, we are sons and daughters of God, and not just as a figure of speech. The very fact that we casually keep on talking about being adopted children of God is proof that obviously we don't have the faintest idea what this is about, because adopted, by itself, in present usage, can only mean a matter of the law.

"We acknowledge that Christ, of course, is the tree Son of God. But we are now also tree sons and daughters of God, but by a gift -- by adoption -- and this is actually sharing the life of God. That is a staggering thing, and for many Catholics it is completely new."

For Diekmann, these "glad tidings" so exceed the claims of ordinary religion, are so stunning in their implications, even theologians fail to comprehend them. The language of Western philosophy has never been able to adequately express what the Eastern church has always celebrated through symbol, music and ritual in its liturgy, Diekmann said.

For all the controversy that swirled about Vatican II, this is what it was basically about -- to re-animate the church and its members as the body of Christ.

Diekmann believes that we cannot overstate the importance of this restored ecclesiology and must not allow it to languish. It was the soul of the 40-year pastoral liturgical movement that helped prepare the church for the Vatican Council, and it is the one image of the church that has the power, lacking in other images, to inspire us to embrace the gospel's call to become participants in the life of God.

Resistance to the council

The main source of conflict during and after Vatican II was that the ecclesiology being displaced, a highly centralized and hierarchical model based on Robert Bellarmine's image of the church as a "perfect society," was well entrenched in 1959 when Pope John XXIII surprised everyone by convening the council.

The pre-Vatican II church most older Catholics remember, enshrined by the Council of Trent in 1563 and bolstered by Vatican I in 1870, was a proud if isolated medieval cathedral/fortress at the height of its triumphalist stature. The Catholic church was the oldest, largest, wealthiest, authoritarian institutional religion on earth. For many, it was also divinely ordained, infallible and changeless.

Diekmann shares the view held by many church historians that such a structure was rooted not in the New Testament but in Emperor Constantine's decision in 313 to advance Christianity as the state religion. The church went from being a countercultural force and catalyst to being guardian of the status quo. Bishops became territorial, or diocesan, governors, a corruption of their original servant roles and a blow to collegiality, or shared authority among all bishops. "From the time of Constantine until Vatican II, you had an uninterrupted development of clericalism and centralization," Diekmann said. By unplugging this ecclesiology, the Catholic church set a bold precedent for institutional change worldwide.

The laity, the Catholic church's now nearly 1 billion adherents, had the most to gain by the council's recognition that baptism entitles every member of the church to "conscious, full and active participation" in the worship and life of the church. Every Christian shares in the risen life and redemptive activity of Christ -- priest, prophet and king -- through the use of his or her own charisms.

Diekmann recalls the speech given by Cardinal Leo Suenens during the council on the charisms flowing from baptism: "Each one by baptism has his own charism and contributes something to the church, first of all to the local church, or ecclesia, to which you belong, and then to the entire church. In God's plan you are indispensable. This is terribly important -- the importance of laity of themselves."

The idea of lay charisms was little understood at the time of Suenens' speech in the 1960s, even as the idea of the body of Christ was rejected by some in the 1920s as too dangerous, too much like the Protestant idea of the "priesthood of the faithful."

While many council reforms are coming more slowly than supporters had hoped, Diekmann the historian believes in taking the long view. What the council adopted in principle still needs to be fully implemented: "But the momentum of 1,600 years cannot be reversed in a mere generation," Diekmann cautioned. "The doctrinal foundations have been firmly placed by Vatican II, and, contrary to increasingly pessimistic evaluations, the substructures of renewal are being placed, often by trial and error if not by official initiative."

Even apparent crisis and controversy can be interpreted positively. The shortage of ordained clergy, for example, has opened the way for non-ordained men and women to serve as parish administrators and has prompted creative extensions of the sacramental work of Christ through lay leadership and outreach. Diekmann said he is joyful in the freedom of the Spirit evident in such adaptive situations. He points to early church writings as an untapped treasury of solutions and models for today's needs. The revolution will continue; there is no turning back. The full application of Vatican II's vital ecclesiology will come because it is the will of the Holy Spirit.

Astonishing series of miracles

Diekmann's confidence is rooted in his own experience at Vatican II, where he served as a member of the preparatory commission for the document on the liturgy. The council was for him and many other witnesses an astonishing series of miracles -- unforeseen events, opportune moments, dramatic interventions and come-from-behind victories that advanced the daring new ecclesiology, first in the liturgy document, then into the debate on the nature of the church itself.

One Protestant observer and close friend of Diekmann, the late Albert Outlet of Southern Methodist University, expressed amazement at the council's dramatic reversal of 1,600 years of church history: "My conviction is that never before in the entire history of Christianity has there been such an obvious intervention of the Holy Spirit as there has been here," Outlet said.

There were setbacks as well. The one Diekmann regards as doing the most damage to the intended impact of the council was the misapplied emphasis given to the phrase "the people of God" in the aftermath of the council.

An Old Testament designation, the phrase was used as the title of Chapter Two of the "Constitution on the Church," and there only to indicate that the whole church is more important than any one part, including the pope or the bishops. Unfortunately, it was later received widely as the operative image for the church, supplanting the body of Christ.

This led to de-emphasis of the most important message flowing from the council. The bold assertion of divine life through baptism, real incorporation into God's own nature, was conveyed as only a special closeness to God within the fellowship of the church. What the council had powerfully proclaimed it failed to effectively teach.

Liturgical buzzword

The idea of fellowship, or koinonia, became the buzzword of many liturgical reformers eager to replace the formal, vertical, divine worship in the old liturgy with the new, theologically horizontal and less formal celebration of a meal with the human Jesus in community. The result was a false evaluation of the transcendent and immanent dimensions of the liturgy. The former emphasis on transcendence became a one-sided stress on immanence -- we become pals with God. Both dimensions are essential. This misunderstanding created divisions within the reform effort and became a source of untold confusion and criticism in the wake of the council, and this has continued to distract and delay implementation of its deeper purposes.

For now, Diekmann is less interested in arguing than in appealing for an openness to the life that is meant to flow freely through the church to each member of the body of Christ. Any structure that blocks that life limits ministry within the church and blocks the urgent mission of the church to proclaim the gospel to the whole world.

As Diekmann anticipates his own face-to-face encounter with God, he has seized every opportunity to alert others to his concern that the gospel of divine life is not reaching the church or the larger world clearly and fully.

When Cardinal Joseph Bernardin attended graduation ceremonies at St. John's University in June of 1996, just months before his death, he asked to see Godfrey Diekmann.

"Before Mass he called for me. He said, `You know I'm sick and I'm not sure I can finish with the Mass. I don't want to just make conversation, but I asked for you so you could tell me what is closest to your heart.' And for 35 minutes I talked about being sons and daughters of God, how that is the essence of Christianity, how that is the glad tidings. He took all of that it in, he listened. Then he said, `You are perfectly correct that we haven't done enough to make that clear.'"

In recent interviews and letters to his many friends, Diekmann's long story of the miracle of the council is being distilled to a kind of mantra he seems intent on proclaiming until the time silence, claims him:

"Baptized Christian, remember of whose body you are a member."

By PATRICK MARRIN Special to the National Catholic Reporter Collegeville, Minn.

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Catholic Reporter

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

[Here is the "accompanying story". It is also online here.]

"Christian, remember your baptism" - 1997 address from Fr Godfrey Diekmann

These remarks were delivered by Fr. Godfrey Diekmann as part of a panel discussion at St. John's School of Theology, Collegeville, Minn., on April 17, 1997. Panelists were asked to speak about the meaning and purpose of the Second Vatican Council and on the state of the reform and renewal in today's church.

Cardinal [Leo] Suenens [of Belgium] stated that Vatican Council II was a council about ecclesiology, about the nature and activities of the church. I believe most theologians would agree. So I suppose the first question that comes to mind is what is the church?

It may come as a surprise to many to discover that Vatican Council I in 1870 and Vatican Council II have given radically different answers to that question. For more than three centuries before Vatican II, the accepted answer would have been that of Robert Bellarmine: The church is a society. There are two perfect societies, that of the church and of the state. That's not a very spiritually inspiring definition, is it? It is a definition in fact which a priori excludes the very possibility of collegiality. It was only in the 1920s that a new, or rather, the biblical, Pauline and patristic understanding of the church, began to surface again in the Western church. And it became the leitmotif of the pastoral liturgical movement, namely, the church as the body of Christ.

The body of Christ. Too bad it was called mystical body of Christ. At that time many were put off by the word mystical: What has that got to do with me? Perhaps at the present time the term would be welcomed.

The concept of church, or body of Christ, only gradually gained acceptance. It was a very sensitive subject. We had to be very careful in speaking of it, or printing an article about it in Orate Fratres or Worship [magazine], principally because, I suppose, of our post-Reformation nervousness about the priesthood of the laity, of the faithful. Only with Pius XII's encyclical on the mystical body in 1943 did it gain respectability. Let me quickly enumerate five of its most inspiring and revolutionary implications.

1. Every baptized Christian is an active, co-responsible member of the body having a distinctive contribution to make. This became the Magna Carta of the laity, the basis of active participation in the liturgy and the great movements of the time; the Jocists, the Family Life Movement, the Catholic Worker.

2. Collegiality: Bishops are not vicars of the pope. They, too, are vicars of Christ. The diocese is not just a geographical division of the universal church; it is the local church, united to all other churches, and in a most special way to Rome, the church of the pope. The bishop's leadership is made manifest above all in the celebration of the Eucharist.

3. The presences of Christ: Not only in the eucharistic bread and cup but "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." This involved a long overdue rethinking of sacraments. Sacraments are not just external signs to confer grace, that terribly mechanistic, automatic understanding of the sacraments that created rightful scandal among our Protestant friends. Sacraments are not things, they are acts. They are acts of Christ. Christ is in our midst, continuing to send the Holy Spirit for the upbuilding of the church.

4. The recovery of the resurrection of Christ as redemptive: We in the West for some 500 years at least had put almost exclusive emphasis on Christ's passion and death as effecting our redemption. How bad the situation was is clear from the fact that [F.X.] Durrwell's book on the resurrection as redemptive, published in 1960, just a few years before the council, created heated controversy. But the apostle Paul said, "Christ died for our sins and rose for our justification," that is, that we might have life, Christ's life.

No wonder Augustine could cry out, "We are sons and daughters of the resurrection, and Alleluia is our song?

5. And what is that life of Christ? It is the life of the risen Christ. It is divine life. We are sons and daughters of God, not by nature but by gift. This is the essence of the Christian glad tidings. To quote a patristic cliche, "God became human that we might become divine." Or, as St. Leo the Great tells us, "Christian, remember your dignity." And that thought, I submit, constitutes the one and only school of Christian spirituality of the biblical and patristic period. There are dozens of schools of spirituality at the present time. This is the only one that I could recognize in the writings of the early church: "Christian, remember who you are," or equivalently, "Christian, remember your baptism."

I should, by right, add a sixth point. Since Vatican II, a new situation has arisen, a rightful demand to achieve and to put into effect the equality of male and female. In this question, also, the doctrine of the body of Christ, as expressed, for example, in Galatians 3, or 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ concept gives us the strongest and clearest biblical warrant for urging the radical equality of men and women. You all know the famous passage: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free person, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

In conclusion, therefore, let me say, the topic of our discussion is the renewal of the church. Those of us who are old enough will remember what an exhilarating and enriching period of spiritual renewal were the several decades of the pre-Vatican II liturgical movement, a movement inspired by the doctrine of the body of Christ. It was a voyage of ever new discoveries. When all is said and done, Vatican II was a church-wide effort to effect spiritual and structural renewal by that same doctrine.

I submit that it is a complete misunderstanding of the council to think that the concept "people of God" was meant to replace that of the "body of Christ," as largely happened after the Vatican Council II. The chosen people of the Old Testament, the Jews, were already spoken of as the people of God. The new dispensation offers something gloriously new, the people of God have become the family of God, true sons and daughters of God.

The term "people of God" was used as the heading of Chapter Two of the document on the church chiefly to pick out, to give prominence to, one important aspect of the body of Christ, namely, that the entire body is more important than any of its members, even pope and bishop, and that applies also to the teaching of infallibility. The total body is greater than its parts.

In a word, renewal of the church according to the council demands of necessity the recovery in the popular minds and perhaps in that of theologians the biblical and patristic understanding of the church as the body of Christ. "Baptized Christian, remember of whose body you are a member."

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Catholic Reporter

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

Advent 2019. Away in a Feeding Trough.

Here's the 2019 version of my Advent post.  We'll look at why we even have an Advent, what it is, the various ways it has been and is observed, and what it shows about the proverbial "real" meaning of Christmas.

Why Have An Advent?

Scripture records the birth of Jesus, but it records no direction to celebrate either it or a preparation for it. But it records no prohibition of doing so either. The Christian Church has evolved various practices to commemorate one of its most outrageous claims, that God became Man in Jesus, the Incarnation, and, considering the magnitude of what is celebrated, has evolved a season of preparation for it universally, both Eastern and Western church. These celebrations have taken on various forms in various places, and even various forms over time in the same place. But they all have the same idea, for Christ's church to celebrate to-gether and proclaim one of the world- and life-changing events of Christ. Which is the idea of all of the church's liturgy.

What Is Advent?

Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which means a turning toward, a coming, and translates the Greek word parousia, which designates not the coming of Jesus at his birth but his coming again to judge the world on the Last Day. Advent is in fact a preparation for three comings of, or turnings toward, Christ, and the three will culminate in three distinct liturgies for Christmas, Christ's Mass. No other season or celebration in the church year is like this.

Here are the three. 1) Our Advent preparation for the historical coming or birth of Jesus culminates in the celebration of that event in the mass in the night, Midnight Mass. 2) Our Advent preparation for the coming or birth of Jesus in the heart of believers, in us, culminates in the mass at dawn, as evidenced in the first believers, the shepherds who went to the manger. 3) Our Advent preparation for his second historical coming, in judgement and in glory, which has been the subject of the final Sundays of the church year before Advent, culminates in the mass during the day, which celebrates the eternal generation of the Son in the Trinity in the being of God, in which redeemed Man will fully participate after the end of time.

Advent then precedes Christmas as Lent precedes Easter, a time of repentance and preparation. For both seasons, church vestments etc are purple, the colour associated both with penance, our part, and royalty, his part as King of kings. However, the purple is the darker royal purple rather than the Roman purple of Lent, the colours like the seasons they reflect being both similar yet distinct in kind of event to which they lead.

In some places recent usage has varied, derived from the rite of Salisbury in England. Salisbury is called Sarum in Latin, and the Sarum Rite has a hybrid liturgy of English and French influences following the Norman Conquest in 1066. It's part of a massive change in history.  Duke William II of Normandy, aka the "Conqueror" and King William I of England, the first of the Norman kings of England, created the diocese out of two earlier ones and appointed a fellow Norman its bishop, "Saint" Osmund, the Count of Seez and Earl of Dorset and his Lord Chancellor, with the approval of Pope Gregory VII. Well sort of approval. This was part of the Normans' rather systematic assertion of control over everything -- more on that below.

Old Pope Greg was having a hard sell on his championship of clerical celibacy and the supremacy of church, meaning the Roman Church under the pope, over the state among the Germans.  He even  excommunicated Heinrich (Henry) IV, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, and not once but twice!  So, as not to spread his efforts too thin he cut the Normans some slack. How's that for "apostolic succession"! And oh yeah, Greg's a "saint" too in the Roman church.

William as a duke in Normandy was still under the French king, Phillip I, (duke ranks just below king) but now as king of England, which he was crowned on Christmas 1066, he was on an equal basis. William also messed up our good Germanic language English by making French the language of the ruling class, which it remained for about 300 years, and by the end of his reign (1087) about 90% of England was under a French-born aristocracy with which he replaced the native English one, forever changing English culture. Yeah, the Anglo-Saxon culture was an import too, but hey, we Angles were ASKED by the original English to come over from Germany, and gave the place its name, Angle-land, England. The Saxons and Jutes can speak for themselves. But I digress.

The Sarum rite Scripture readings and other prayers proper to the day are different than the Roman rite, as is the colour of vestments, not purple but blue. This use of blue as the colour for Advent has had a more general usage in the West in recent years, though with the Roman propers. Well, not the traditional Roman propers, but the new ones from its three year cycle from the 1960s, which is the basis of the common new lectionary for all heterodox liturgical churches and which will not be considered here.  One can look them up and put on a little Simon and Garfunkle or other holdovers of the time if one is so inclined.

So, several problems with the use of Sarum blue.  One, yes it does have an historical precedent, but that precedent is not a happy one.  Two, the use is inconsistent, being Sarum colour but Roman readings, and not the traditional ones but the ones from the 1970 novus ordo. Three, being inconsistent, it is not historical either but rather a modern pastiche, as post-Vatican II liturgy generally is, of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, in this case literally, so it's contemporary worship with a traditional look that isn't traditional at all.  Four, the blue with its symbolism of the sky unduly weights the symbolism of the liturgical colour toward the second coming, the parousia, which is a theme of Advent but one of three, whereas the penitence and preparation symbolised by purple is common to all three themes of Advent.

The Old Advent, "St Martin's Fast".

In fact, Advent in the West used to be even more like Lent. From the fourth or fifth century or so there was, and as we shall shortly see still is in the Eastern church under the name Nativity Fast, a 40 day time of fasting and penance much like Lent. In the Western church it started on 11 November, the feast of St Martin of Tours, Martin Luther's baptismal namesake, with the day being something like Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, in Lent. The fast started the day after.  This "quadragesima sancti Martini", the forty days of St Martin, died out by the late Middle Ages, and Advent as it is generally known now in the West took shape.

To this day, in some places the traditional main dish for Christmas is goose. In fact, one of my favourite phrases in English, not suitable for reproduction here, derives from this custom, let the reader understand. The Christmas goose may derive from Advent when it was St Martin's Fast. Martin didn't really want to be a bishop, and is said to have hidden himself in a flock of geese from those seeking him to persuade him to accept the post, whose noise nonetheless gave his location away. So goose became the main food for St Martin's Day kicking off Advent.

There is still an echo of the original Advent in the "last Sundays of the church year" in November, which have the general theme of looking forward to end of times and the second coming.

The Eastern Church follows to this day a similar, but not the same, 40 day pattern of a season of preparation and penitence before Easter and Christmas, and our former Western "St Martin's Fast" was closer to it. In the Eastern Church, it isn't called Advent, but the Nativity Fast, and lasts 40 days, just like the St Martin's Fast, but they count them consecutively, from 15 November to 24 December. That's why it also has a similar but not the same nickname: 15 November is the day after the feast, East or West, of St Philip the Apostle, so it is sometimes called "St Philip's Fast". The liturgical colour is neither purple nor blue, but red.  Also, where in the Western church the liturgical year begins with the First Sunday in Advent, in the Eastern church the liturgical year begins 1 September.

The Current Advent.

Anyway, each Sunday emphasises a different aspect of the preparation and the comings noted above. Below are listed the Scripture passages used for the Introits and Scripture readings. Roman usage (which Rome ditched at Vatican II) has the same Introits but varies as noted from ours in the Epistles and Gospels for the Western Advent.

I had never understood this variation and mentioned that once in the combox on a blog. Pastor Benjamin Mayes responded citing Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy, p.438, which states our usage follows the Comes attributed to St Jerome and its final version, The Lectionary of Charlemagne, which Rome later modified to accommodate its new feasts.

What's a comes (pronounced KO-mays)? It's a Latin word meaning companion, here, a companion book of readings for mass to the rite's service book itself. Now we more commonly call such a book a Lectionary, from the Latin for "readings". The list of the readings is still often called by its Greek name, pericope, meaning section, here, the sections of Scripture appointed to be read.

In Latin and Hebrew, the title of a text is usually the first word or two of the text, called the incipit, which means "it begins" in Latin, rather than a separate title. Accordingly, some of the Sundays of the church year are called from the first word of the first proper text to them, the Introit. The Sundays of Advent, Lent, and after Easter are nicknamed from their Introits. This practice has fallen into disuse with many churches following Rome's 1960s revisionism of the lectionary. Or one can as my former synod did abolish Introits altogether!

Another similarity between Advent and Lent is that a little over halfway through these preparation/penitential seasons, the coming joy peeks through in the readings, starting with the Introit, and so the liturgical colours reflect that with the purple yielding for that Sunday to rose or pink, which is also why the so-called Advent wreath has a rose or pink candle among the rest. It's for the third Sunday in Advent, which is called Gaudete Sunday from the incipit of the Introit for it, which means "rejoice" and quotes Philippians 4:4-6. The Lenten parallel with rose vestments is Laetare Sunday, from the incipit of the Introit, Laetare Jerusalem, which means "Be joyful Jerusalem" and quotes Isaiah 66:10-11.

Psalm numbers in the old Roman usage followed the Septuagint, whereas we follow the numbering of the Hebrew Bible. That usage counts what we call Psalms 9 and 10 as one psalm, likewise 114 and 115, and divides both 116 and 147 in two, so between 10 to 148 the numbering is different by one. Since Vatican II Rome generally uses the Hebrew Bible numbering too, but below both will be given in the format: Hebrew numbering (Septuagint numbering).

Here are the names and readings of the Sundays in Advent, with this year's dates.

Ad te levavi. The First Sunday of Advent. 1 December 2019.

Introit Psalms 25 (24):1-3 psalm verse 25 (24):4, Epistle Romans 13:11-15, Gospel Matthew 21:1-9.

(Roman usage Gospel Luke 21:25-33, our second Sunday Gospel.)

Populus Sion. The Second Sunday of Advent. 8 December 2019.

Introit Isaiah 30:30 psalm verse 80 (79):1, Epistle Romans 15:4-13, Gospel Luke 21:25-36.

(Roman usage Gospel Matthew 11:2-10, our third Sunday Gospel.)

Gaudete. The Third Sunday of Advent. 15 December 2019.

Introit Philippians 4:4-6 psalm verse 85 (84):1, Epistle First Corinthians 4:1-5, Gospel Matthew 11:2-10.

(Roman usage Epistle Philippians 4:4-7 Gospel John 1:19-28, our fourth Sunday readings.)

Rorate coeli. The Fourth Sunday of Advent. 22 December 2019.

Introit Isaiah 45:8 psalm verse 19 (18):1, Epistle Philippians 4:4-7, Gospel John 1:19-28.

(Roman usage Epistle First Corinthians 4:1-5 Gospel Luke 3:1-6, our third Sunday Epistle, the Luke passage not used by us.)

Away in an Animal Feeding Trough, or, The Real Meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is a warm time filled with comfort, family, presents, good food, along with our religious sentiments, for many of us. Christmas as in the event we celebrate was nothing like that. It was rough. Joseph wasn't the glowing saint of paintings and icons, he was a working guy with a pregnant wife about to give birth -- I've been there twice and that ain't easy under any circumstances, and my observation would be it's even less easy for the about-to-deliver wife.  He was in town to follow the law of foreign rulers and get counted in the census, with all the hotels full and no place to put his family up but a stable for animals, and after the baby was born they had to put him in a feeding trough for animals. That's what "away in a manger" was. A manger is a feeding trough for animals, the word coming into English from the French to eat, in turn from the Latin to chew (mandere). Fact is, our word "munch" has the same root.

So the King of kings is put in a feeding trough for animals in a cold stable. You don't make up this kind of stuff. Humans who are gods in myth are emperors and such, not working class kids born in a barn. Top it all off, this child "away in a feeding trough" will one day say "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." Ego sum panis vitae: qui venit ad me, non euriet, et qui credit in me, non sitiet umquam (John 6:35) and give himself to be the food of eternal life, giving his body and blood for us to eat and drink at mass as the pledge and promise of our salvation through the merits of his death and resurrection. Guess it kind of fits then.

For those of you whose Christmas isn't going to be all warm and cozy and filled with cheer, guess what, you're right in there with those at the first Christmas. That was a little rough too. Born in a stable, a feeding trough for a crib, and pretty soon his family will have to having to high tail it out of town. So you're not excluded at all, and you can take it right to him, because he knows all about when Christmas isn't so merry, or happy, as the English say. And he also knows all about how merry and happy don't really get determined by what happens in this life, on Christmas or any other day!

To Thee have I lifted up my soul, in Thee, O my God, I put my trust. Let me not be ashamed, neither let my enemies laugh at me, for none of those that wait on Thee shall be confounded.

Psalm 25 (24):1-3 as used in the Introit for the First Sunday in Advent.  Ad te levavi, to Thee have I lifted up ...

A Thanksgiving That Lasts An Eternity.

I remember things better by the day than the date.

For example, to me my wife Nancy died the night before Thanksgiving, 2140 hours, 1997, rather than 26 November 1997. Dates fall on different days in different years, and the night before Thanksgiving always seems more like the anniversary of it rather than 26 November.  In 2014 that was also the day before Thanksgiving but in 2015 it was Thanksgiving itself, and in 2016 it was the Saturday after, which was her funeral in 1997.

In addition to the obvious, what amazes me about it, then, now, and all points in between, is that it has not produced a crisis of faith in me, let alone a loss of faith. Now, if you haven't gleaned it from some of my posts, crises of faith and loss of faith were pretty much constant for me from Vatican II in the 1960s to professing the faith of the evangelical Lutheran church in 1996.

Vatican II tore up and stomped on pretty much everything that was the basis of my life back then. However, the death of your wife and mother of your children, toss in that their ages were fifteen months and three months at the time, is a tearing up and a stomping on at a whole different level and place.

I've been me for a while now, and "me", no doubt about it, would take that as the final insult after all the rest from a god who probably doesn't exist anyway so forget the whole thing, it's a cruel joke that ain't funny.

But it didn't happen. Not Thanksgiving Eve when she died, not the next day when I spent Thanksgiving afternoon at the funeral home picking out caskets and stuff like that before arriving late for some turkey at the family dinner like everyone else. Not in the first few weeks of not having a clue how this single working dad with two babies will work beyond just getting through each day. Not later as routines emerged that worked but obviously aren't the ones we hoped and planned for. And not later as other difficulties and challenges emerged and still emerge.

That's not me. No way I can be like that, guaranteed, take that to the bank, I cannot do that. But it happened. Since other spiritual forces and powers do not bolster faith in Jesus Christ, I think we're going to chalk this up to the Holy Spirit. When they say faith is entirely the gift and work of the Holy Spirit, believe it, they ain't kidding.

Her funeral was the following Saturday. It was right by the service book at the time, all about faith in Jesus Christ for the salvation from sins unto eternal life. You couldn't have been there without getting the message that the only dead people present aren't in caskets but dead in sin unjustified by faith in Jesus Christ through whose merits alone they are counted saved unto eternal life, a promise He extends to all including right here and now.

The sermon concluded as follows, which I hear twenty-some years later as clearly as the moment the pastor said it:

A few days ago, most of us celebrated a thanksgiving that lasted one day, but Nancy began one that lasts an eternity.

Amen.

May your Thanksgiving be a prequel to a Thanksgiving that lasts an eternity!

Thanksgiving 2019.

A Thanksgiving Day as such is not unique to the United States.  Celebrations of gratitude for the harvest at the end of the growing season appear in many times and places. They are found in Asia, Africa, Europe and elsewhere in the Americas.  In the Hebrew Bible (aka the Old Testament) the last of the three great festivals, Sukkot, has such themes.  Here's a little something on the US Thanksgiving, which has, or had, a different focus than any of those.

In 1789, 229 years ago this year (2018), President George Washington proclaimed a national Day of Thanksgiving in the United States for that year.  Why for 1789?  Because that is the year in which provisional independent government ended and a permanent federal government took effect under a document ratified by all the states.  That document was called a Frame of Government at the time but is now known as the Constitution.  The thanksgiving was to God as variously understood for the successful conclusion of the war for independence and the establishment of a permanent government.

74 years later, or 155 years ago, in 1863, as the country was in a civil war, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Day of Thanksgiving for that year.  The thanksgiving was to God that even in the midst of a civil war no foreign wars had emerged, life had otherwise gone on and an end to the conflict was in sight.  This became the model for an annual thanksgiving day.

There is not one thing about Pilgrims or turkeys in either of those proclamations.  Nothing about "family" and big meals, or, watching sports or buying stuff for Christmas, er, the holidays, either. So how did this US Thanksgiving holiday come about anyway?  Here's the story.

The "first" Thanksgiving -- all three of them. 

Guess what! There were two "first" Thanksgivings before the "first" Thanksgiving in 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts!

The second "first" Thanksgiving before the "first" Thanksgiving was two years earlier. On 4 December 1619, English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred, roughly 20 miles up the James River from Jamestown, the first permanent settlement, begun 14 May 1607. The ship's captain, John Woodleaf, led a service of thanksgiving and the settlement charter directed the date to be observed thereafter. Thereafter lasted until 1622 when the native population, not so thankful for their arrival, forced their retreat to Jamestown.

The first "first" Thanksgiving before the "first" Thanksgiving was 54 years earlier. Spanish settlers celebrated thanksgiving for their safe arrival 8 September 1565 at what is now St Augustine, Florida.  This the first recorded thanksgiving in America, but, as this was Spaniards in a Spanish colony, La Florida, which didn't pass to English control until 1763 or become a state until 1845, it doesn't get much airplay among Anglos.

Thanksgivings were held at various times and places in the English colonies, after the harvest, but as days of prayer, not eating! The provisional Continental Congress proclaimed the first national thanksgiving, which was Thursday 18 December 1777, so I guess that's some sort of "first" too although the United States as constituted (literally) now didn't exist until 1789.

The United States Day of Thanksgiving. 

On 25 September 1789, toward the close of the first session ever of the United States Congress, Representative Elias Boudinot of New Jersey (no party designation, he didn't want one) proposed that Congress petition the President to declare a day of thanksgiving for the formation of a permanent government.  There was some opposition, most notably from Representative Thomas Tudor Tucker of South Carolina, of the Anti-Administration party, an early precursor of the present Democratic Party.  They had opposed the Constitution as creating too strong a federal government and opposed Hamilton and the Federalists.  Tucker thought that maybe more time should pass to see if it really worked all that well, that the President should not have such power, that thanksgivings are a foreign custom, and that the idea was too religious.  It passed handily, citing the precedent of the Continental Congress, and a joint delegation of the Senate and House approached the President who quickly agreed.

The first national day of Thanksgiving in the United States as such was proclaimed by President Washington on 3 October 1789 for Thursday 26 November 1789.  Washington took care to respect the states, giving the proclamation to the various state governors, newspapers published it, and the day was, to use a phrase not current then, a smash hit.  Churches took collections for the poor at their services, and Washington himself donated $25 at the one he attended in New York, the capital then.  Those are 1789 dollars; $25 in 1789, adjusted for inflation, is about $661 now.

Presidents and governors proclaimed thanksgivings off and on after that.  Then, starting with President Lincoln's designation on 3 October 1863 of the last Thursday of November that year as a day of national thanksgiving, for the next 76 years each subsequent president had year by year designated the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Until FDR.

In 1939 the last Thursday in November would be the 30th, and President Roosevelt was persuaded by business leaders that a longer Christmas shopping season would help the economy out of the Depression with more sales. Gotta remember, once upon a time but not so long ago it was considered inappropriate to start the Christmas season before Thanksgiving.  So, he declared Thanksgiving the next to last Thursday in November that year.

The new Thanksgiving was widely derided as "Franksgiving" -- Roosevelt's first name being Franklin -- and had no force of law, some states observing the new "Democrat" Thanksgiving and some the old "Republican" Thanksgiving. A Commerce Department report in 1941 found no significant difference in sales from the change, but, nonetheless, Congress passed a law designating the fourth Thursday in November, which some years is the last and some the next to last Thursday, as Thanksgiving Day every year. 1942 was the first Thanksgiving under the current law, by which time we were not in the middle of a civil war but the second of two world wars.

So the march to "Black Friday" began with a move to increase store sales on the day after Thanksgiving by moving Thanksgiving itself, a logical choice since many businesses gave the day after off too and then there's a week-end.  The name "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia somewhere in the 1950s to describe the pandemonium of all the shoppers, and by the 1970s the term was in general use in the US.  Stores would open earlier than usual, like around 0600.  Then, as the 21st Century came, with a worsening economy it crept earlier by an hour or two to capture even more sales.  In 2011 major retailers opened at midnight, the first second of Friday, in 2012 some began opening Thanksgiving night and by 2014 it was extended into Thanksgiving afternoon.

Who knows, before too long maybe it'll be just Black Thanksgiving.  The buying spree now begins with "sneak" previews as November begins, and the buying spree has eclipsed both the original intent of Thanksgiving and also the family, big meal, watch football version of Thanksgiving.

You know what, Washington had no more to say about sales, Christmas, Christmas sales, food or football than he did about Pilgrims and turkeys regarding Thanksgiving, when "Washington" referred to a man and not a city. Neither did President Lincoln, whose example, as to a proclamation anyway, had been followed since. Below are the original proclamations of the first United States Thanksgiving Day by President George Washington in 1789 and the 1863 proclamation by President Lincoln that was followed annually until modified for commercialism under FDR in 1939. Amazing stuff. Beautiful stuff. Our stuff.

President Washington's Proclamation of the First U.S. Thanksgiving.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of  November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789

President Lincoln's Proclamation of Thanksgiving 1863.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.  The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible  to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State

Conclusion. 
While yes we don't find food and sports and shopping frenzies spoken of in those proclamations, we also don't find now among our stuff the things of which Washington did speak.  Such as:

- a duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of, to be grateful for the benefits of, and humbly to implore the protection of, Almighty God;

- a duty to observe a day of public thanksgiving and prayer for his favour, particularly in being able to form our kind of government;

- service of a great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all good;

- joining in prayers to the great Ruler and Lord Of Nations to pardon our wrongs, to enable us to perform our duties, to make our government a blessing of wise, just and constitutional law, to guide all Sovereigns and Nations in good government, to promote true religion and virtue, to increase science and such prosperity as he knows best among all mankind.

And where now among our stuff does one find that of which Lincoln spoke?  Such as:

- the fruits of our efforts being due not to ourselves but to God whose gifts they are, who though he punishes us for our sins remembers mercy too;

- that wherever we are, we offer praise and thanksgiving to our beneficient Father who dwelleth in the Heavens;

- that as we do, we also, with penitence for our perverseness and disobedience, ask the intervention of his Almighty Hand to heal the wounds we have caused ourselves, when it is consistent with His purposes.

Where do you find this sort of stuff now?  You don't.  Even though this is what Thanksgiving is meant to be.  And it's characteristic of our other founding stuff.  And not as a matter of Lutheran belief, or any other specific belief as no religion is specified, but as just being American, our stuff. Yet one does not find such talk in the public discourse now.

Instead, one finds:

- those who think such talk has no place in our stuff, and have pretty well succeeded in removing all such talk from our stuff, as part of being "politically correct" speech and therefore presumably thought control, which was once dreaded for a dystopian future but is now ok;

- those who think this is a specifically Christian nation though no such mention is made, and try to restore things that were never there, as well as those who see that there is nothing specifically Christian about Thanksgiving and thus deride it as American "civic religion".

Each equally in their different ways misses what our stuff is all about.  Just as do those who make Thanksgiving about a big family meal, football on TV, and heading to the stores to buy stuff for Christmas, er, "holiday", presents.

May we find something of Presidents Washington and Lincoln in our national celebration this year as we did at the first one in 1789, and as we did at what became the first annual national one in 1863.