Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ April 16, 2017
Sunday of the Resurrection, or Easter Day (Year A)
When a computer shuts down, it goes black, before a restart command sets it up for new, better, more advanced usage. Simple as this example may be, try thinking that perhaps this process may be similar to what happens when the deathly crucifixion, remembered on Good Friday, is totally rebooted into a glorious new life with the resurrection celebrated at Easter.
HOPE OF NEW LIFE:
As we human beings muddle along through life, things happen. It is what it is. How do we accept confusion or difficulties? How can God, in the presence of the resurrected Jesus, give us what we need to move forward and to do God’s good work with our lives, in spite of unexpected things that happen to us? How can we be open to God's possibilities?
Through a personal story, I want to introduce you to how I learned to understand God's place in my life. After six prior years of living in Albuquerque’s altitude of 5000 feet above sea level, midway through my Perkins Master of Divinity studies in Dallas, I endured a multi-month treatment for skin cancer. For many weeks, the surface of my face was tomato red. Every day, it seemed to me, I encountered people who were alarmed by the visage they saw.
However, a blessing came when I was given permission to “sit in” on the year-long, undergraduate, Art History survey course at SMU. In the dark lecture hall, no one could be dismayed by my face.
As the Lenten season moved to the Great Fifty Days of Easter, Professor Mary Vernon threw slides onto a floor-to-ceiling screen of the large, multi-panel Isenheim Altarpiece, now displayed in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, France. I saw the crucifixion scene, familiar from my research on historic theologians and the art they liked. One was the great Karl Barth (1886-1968), who had a copy of Matthias Grunewald’s crucifixion above his work desk in Basel, Switzerland. Additionally, I learned some interesting new information. The painted, distorted and mutilated body of the crucified Jesus, showing great abuse and damage, was originally painted for a hospital caring for people with terminal skin diseases. This picture linked me directly to the many unknown souls of that hospital, and also to Jesus. In my suffering with people repelled by my appearance, I was not alone. As humans, none of us ever suffers alone. God is always there with us.
ACCEPT OF NEW LIFE:
God did not let the story end there. Next, Professor Vernon opened the altarpiece to show the festival scenes of annunciation, nativity, and resurrection. Once again, here was the body. Totally incidental now were the crucifixion's human-inflicted nail and spear piercings. This time the risen Christ glowed radiantly out from the screen. The purity of the skin of Jesus was overwhelming. It was perfect without a blemish! In Grunewald's painted message, the resurrected Jesus brings a new awareness, that in sharing humanity with Christ, because we are made in the image of God, we are individually perfect and unblemished in the mind of God.
In 2017, with Good Friday behind us and the Great Fifty Days of Easter ahead of us, we are compelled to open any tomb-like restrictions that may limit us. Grunewald’s artistic rendering of the Bible message brings us face-to-face with God’s true reality. Every Easter, the computer of our life and the life of the world is rebooted. We are never imperfect or alone. As you celebrate, let your heart sing, “Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ April 9, 2017
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday (Year A)
The religious liturgies for the coming Sunday, called Palm Sunday on most calendars, mark the beginning of the final days of Lent. The Book of Common Prayer titles this day as The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. On this Sunday, two separate events are featured in one worship service.
If we can reflect thoughtfully on this conflation of activities, we can become fully, actively involved as participants, based on the original meaning of the term “liturgy”. There is nothing fancy about the definition of this word; “liturgy” merely means the work or duty of the people.
PALM SUNDAY:
This Sunday, our work is cut out for us. (BCP pp. 270-273) While the selected scripture texts center on Jesus, we will only receive their proper meaning, when we take on the duty of being present with Jesus.
As our church community gathers on Palm Sunday, our work is to be part of the crowd welcoming Jesus, our King, to Jerusalem. Imagine the bustle and excitement of being there. In Lectionary Year A, Matthew 21:1-11 is read to bring us into this time of hope and expectation. Holy Week begins with joy.
"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest." (Matthew 21:9, BCP p. 271)
PASSION SUNDAY:
Our duty, our liturgy as God's people, is to move our thoughts through and across the last week in the life of Jesus until, in mid-service, we reach the final fateful hours, as we hear the Passion Gospel.
The word "passion" had the original definition of "suffering" to describe the last hours of Jesus. The most important stories, used by the earliest Christians, to explain that Jesus was truly the Son of God were the Passion narratives. Bibles today preserve four versions of the Passion account. Each of the four differ because their work was created to explained the Passion to people in the first century, who were from different Christian groups.
Lectionary planners chose to rotate three of the Passion narratives in the three year cycle of synoptic gospels for The Sunday of the Passion. Year A is Matthew 26:36-27:66; Year B is Mark 14:32-15:47; and Year C is Luke 22:39-23:56. John's Passion (18:1-19:37) is read on Good Friday every year.
LITURGY SUNDAY:
What work are we to do, and what duty are we to accept, as we take part in The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday? Because the Passion narrative is the heart of each of the gospels, let's be sensitive to our opportunity to be active bystanders (you might reflect on this paradox) and accept what we hear with our own open hearts.
While others may see the Passion as a story of suffering, for Christians, the crucifixion completes the human life, that God shares with each of us. Through Jesus, our God is a fully human God, who experiences the worst possible suffering that ends with the emptiness of death. The good news is that our God fully comprehends all aspects of human life, because our God, through Jesus, has experienced it. Our God loves us completely and is with us always.
Sunday, our liturgy is a very personal one. Our duty is to listen, learn, and be loved. Like the earliest Christians, we are to pass God's love onto a world that truly needs to be loved.
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You can experience Matthew's Passion, as it might have been presented in the earliest Christian times, in the attached New Revised Standard Version Bible translation. Structured to be spoken by five voices, consider asking family, friends, and people in your church to share this Passion from Matthew with you. (It takes about 15 minutes to read this text aloud.)
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ March 27, 2017
The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)
Most people reading the Bible today look at scripture in two ways: as it was in the beginning 2000 years ago and how it is for life today. While those are usually our two anchor points for relating to the Bible, this bookended perspective misses some of the richness of how people in the past tried to explain and convey the stories in our sacred texts to people in their own times.
BIBLE WORDS:
No complete original Bible book documents have survived until our time. Across the 2000 year history of the Christian Church, scriptures were first produced by the slow, laborious process of hand-calligraphy to create a single, made-to-order copy. The only way to duplicate these Bibles was to repeat this complicated method over and over.
In the late Middle Ages, the use of fragile, carved wood blocks allowed very limited duplication of letters, words, and pictures. This evolutionary stage of printing was time-consuming and often produced a fuzzy product. The Bible, as God’s book, was still not readily available in easily accessible form for masses of people.
In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg used his skills as a goldsmith to produce a new technology of movable, metal letters as a way of producing a Biblia Sacra (Holy Bible). Of the original 180 copies printed over several years, only 49 have survived to our time. Most of them are incomplete, and the U.S. has fewer than a dozen of these. While technically this was printing progress, unless one could read Latin in addition to his native tongue, the Gutenberg Bible still had a limited impact on the faithful.
A regional translation of the NT from Latin into everyday German was done by Martin Luther in 1522. Luther’s complete Bible (OT, NT, and Apocrypha) was published in 1534. The advances in printing, and the broad distribution of Luther’s work, made it the first Bible available for truly popular use. The growing demand across Europe for scriptures in the vernacular had begun.
Acts of Parliament mandated a series of English translations for use by the Church in England and the common people. Miles Coverdale in 1535 produced the first complete Bible translated into English; and he dedicated it to King Henry VIII. It is important to us today, because Coverdale’s Psalms are the translation we find and use in our current Book of Common Prayer. Parliament also authorized the version that is probably the most famous and beloved English translation of scripture, the 1611 King James Version of the Bible.
BIBLE PICTURES:
When we think about the printed Bible transmission across the ages, it is easy for our minds to think in terms of technology and translations of words. During the Renaissance, the use of metal for making multiple prints had a parallel tradition to create engravings, producing visual illustrations. Every generation struggles with this issue to explain and pass on inherited knowledge of scripture to generations coming in the future.
If the maxim, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is true, you can experience biblical Holy Week by looking at a wall in the Dean’s Lounge of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in the Diocese of the Rio Grande. (318 Silver Ave SW, Albuquerque) There you will see a fascinating, engraved map of Jerusalem actually printed 445 years ago. Fewer than a dozen original prints of this rare map, from the 1572 volume of the Civitates Orbit Terrarum (Cities of the World), have survived until today. The six volumes (1572-1617) edited by Cologne’s Georg Braun and engraved by Franz Hogenberg, contained 546 city plans from all over the known world of the time. All are amazing documents, as they were created without the tools, like our satellite Google Maps, that we take for granted today.
To aid people in understanding the Bible story of the Passion, the imaginations of Braun and Hogenberg combined biblical texts and traveler accounts to create two extremely unusual views of Jerusalem on the same printed sheet. They presented Jesus and the events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday though Golgotha, on the left side. On the right side, you see these same sites updated to near the end of the 16th century, indicating what a visitor then probably would have seen in the same locations.
BIBLE READING:
Thinking of the Bible in both words and pictures frees our minds and strengthens our senses. Imagining Bible stories informs us who we are and how we fully exist within the imagination of God's gift of life. In scripture, this all started, as it was in the beginning: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27)
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ March 20, 2017
The Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year A)
The upcoming Sunday marks a midpoint in experiencing a penitential Lent. It offers us a breathing moment to re-energize our experiences, as we move toward Holy Week.
In my 25 post-seminary years, as a professional liturgical designer, this Sunday offered me a chance to be really creative. If royal purple is the color used in a parish for Lent, the liturgical option for the Fourth Sunday is a rose color. (The same choice exists for the Third Sunday in Advent, both considered as "refreshment" Sundays in seasons of deep thought.) However, few Christians are fortunate to experience this one-day-in-a-season color change, as only a limited number of parishes own this alternative set of colored vestments.
THE BIBLE & LENT & ART:
In many Christian churches, visual clues are important guides in setting the mood for the seasons of the Church Year. As a liturgical artist, everything I did was rooted in biblical texts. The Bible, then and now, is always my "primary source." I read, researched, and reflected before I began working on any visual commission, any biblical presentation or any demanding activity in my personal life. Through my WDRG Study essays, I hope to help you personally add this creative method to your everyday life.
Lent is a serious, not a somber time. It offers the opportunity for an unexpected rich use of symbols. Let your mind move beyond the words of a biblical text, using your own mental conversion process to expand life in new, unexpected, God-given ways.
Early in the career God called me to, I was commissioned to create a pair of banners for Lent. Design and subject matter were completely left to me. For Lenten contemplation, I honed in on the four texts that are known as the Passion Gospels. (Matthew 26:36-27:66, Mark 14:32-15:47, Luke 22:1-23:56, and John 18-19) A rough-hewn cross would hang between the banners over the altar for Lent. Using symbols described in the biblical texts on purple fabric, I painted objects from the events of Good Friday in red, white, and black. Without using words, I told the Bible story with a visual vocabulary.
THE BIBLE & LENT & MUSIC:
Another way of experiencing the Bible comes through music. Don't just sing hymns; let the poetry of the lyrics increase your understanding of the biblical text that inspired the composition into an art form that music brings to life.
In Year A, the Passion Gospel assigned for Palm Sunday comes from Matthew. This text inspired one of the greatest wonders of religious music: Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion.
I first met this powerful work on a student-ticket, final Holy-Week rehearsal setting in The Hague, The Netherlands. Years later, St. Matthew Passion re-entered my life, when our teen-age children were asked to be part of the chorus, and I was charged with creating a 32-page souvenir booklet, for a remarkable multi-congregation, performance series in Dallas. Later, and permanently etched in my mind, was our family’s being seated in the pews of London's St. Margaret's parish church, filled with Tudor-period memorials, next to Westminster Abbey, for a Good Friday presentation. In mid-afternoon daylight, the music began. After an outdoor refreshment break, we returned to our pews for the final part of the Passion. Very gently, evening shadows began creeping around us to change brilliant colored-glass windows into ever-darkening hues. Bach's music moved to the most sacred parts. At the end, everything was muted. We exited in silence. We experienced Good Friday. The vocabulary of music gave us the text of the Bible's Passion Story.
THE BIBLE & LENT & PERSONAL DEVOTION:
Lent is the perfect season to let scripture open your senses. In our home, as we prepare for Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion, the background music is a CD recording of Bach's masterpiece. This year is special, as the Passion narrative from Matthew will be the gospel on Palm Sunday.
Look around you in church this Sunday. As you listen to the epistle to the Ephesians, written by an early follower of Paul's, you will be refreshed, living in the power of the cross and of Christ Jesus. "For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light--for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true." (5:8-9)
These original 3-inch sketches show the Instruments of the Passion, the symbols of the Crucifixion. Painted on fabric, this pair of 15-foot long Lenten banners were commissioned for Perkins Chapel at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ March 13, 2017
The Second Sunday of Lent (Year A)
How does one get any message across? It may take a major effort, and even then, the critical core can be lost. The importance of this idea is shown in the three scriptures for the Third Sunday in Lent in Year A: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; and John 4:5-26(27-38)39-42. Each carries a single message. Do you get it?
In his long letter to the Romans, Paul made assumptions about what the people there needed to know, in a community he had never visited. He worked hard, trying to explain so much; and his thoughts remain true in our Bible today.
In the Lenten part of the Year A WDRG Study, we have talked about how people living today can approach the reading of this magnificent Bible letter. When Romans returns to our Year A Lectionary again in the Season after Pentecost, specific themes will be explored. The complexities captured in this epistle suggest that it is advantageous for us to have time to let the words simmer in our brains, as we have the opportunity to read aloud the entirety of Romans more than once this year.
MESSAGE IN THE EARLY MOMENTS:
Even as the earliest Christian communities were forming, communication skills were important in spreading the good news. When information could not be passed directly from person to person, using the format of a letter was necessary. Paul was a master at doing business this way, and we are most fortunate that seven, of what must have been a larger quantity of letters, have survived to be included in our Bible. Romans is placed first in our NT, although it was the last of the epistles Paul wrote that did not disappear across the ages.
The NT contains other letters using the style of Paul; many claim to have been written by Paul. In ancient times, in order for an author to have authority, it was a common practice to borrow the name of a well know personality to provide credibility. Copyright laws were non-existent; there was no barrier against plagiarizing the work of others. This does not make all of the texts in the NT any less valuable, but it provides the reader with a chance to go beyond the simplest reading of any scripture to ferret out the intention and background behind a text.
MESSAGE ACROSS THE CENTURIES:
Communication complexities expanded as the Bible spread across centuries and around the world to reach us today. Any one attempting to read the Bible literally will miss the true meaning that the original writer tried to communicate. Keep this in mind, as you listen carefully to all three scriptures next Sunday. When we don't read the Bible literally, we are freed to read the Bible honestly.
MESSAGE USED FOR NON-CHRISTIAN PURPOSE:
Lent is always an interesting time for thinking about how the Bible is presented in our everyday lives. We are in the holiest time of the year for Christians, with Easter on the horizon, and for Jews, with the remembrance celebration of Passover.
While the commercialization of Christmas and Hanukkah obviously has pushed the religious focus of those events into the secular background of our lives, we may not pay attention to the same co-opting by retail business that happens every spring. What is favorite example? Jelly beans? New Easter bonnets?
Look warily at newspaper, magazine, television, and Internet reports of "new" discoveries about biblical subjects and fictional dramatizations of the lives of OT and NT personalities. All the worldly fanfare around religious events tempts us to take an easy road that is really a detour. The actual Bible message, tried and true across 2000 years, is just waiting for us to read it directly from what scholars call a "primary source," the Bible.
Paul won over the hearts of early Christians, because he spoke God's truth with God's love. The breaking news in our lives today is handy in Paul's Letter to the Romans. Read it, knowing full well, that the Bible is the news story with the power to change your life and the world. As Christians, we believe the breaking news that Paul knew. Jesus Christ is truly the risen Lord.
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ March 6, 2017
The Second Sunday of Lent (Year A)
If your mind is spinning from reading aloud the whole of Paul's Letter to the Romans, you have officially graduated into full membership in the Christian faith. You've been placed in bondage to a lifetime scripture search, trying to understand the profound concepts that Paul inundates us with, as he lays out his most complete understanding of what it means to be Christian. Paul's recipients were living about 40 years after Jesus's life on earth; we are separated by 2000 years. Yet, when Paul's message is understood, the power of the Letter to the Romans truly makes us captives in the nicest of ways.
A letter was written to Rome about 47 BCE by pagan Julius Caesar, after a military victory. He proclaimed "Veni, Vidi, Vici," or "I came, I saw, I conquered." After reading the whole of Romans aloud, you also may feel as if conquered. This is not a flippant thought. The attitude expressed in Caesar's epigram gives a clue as to what was going on in Rome about 60 CE, when Paul wrote his epistle, to the people there, who had chosen to become Christian.
ROME IN ANCIENT TIMES:
Nearing the end of his busy missionary life, Paul was looking forward to going to Rome. The Christian community there was already established, and from the few accounts that have survived until today, it must have been a diverse group, with both Jewish heritage and pagan, Gentile background. Paul wrote his letter in Greek, the primary language spoken, that was a unifying bond for all who sought to learn about Jesus in the first century.
Rome itself was the capital of a huge chunk of the civilized ancient world. It was the "go to" place for those in power and those seeking power. Rome had a top-down power structure, with a pecking order where oligarchy set controls and deliberately denigrated people into low and still lower positions in human society. The dignity of the individual was non-existent. Fame was what mattered, and with it came power, power, power. And power was demonstrated by holding down the lives of others.
Despite this grim and depersonalizing situation, Christian communities were created across the vast Roman Empire. All Christians were free; all Christians were equal; all Christians were loved, as adopted children of God. Following the leadership model of Jesus's Galilean disciples in Jerusalem, Paul was called directly by God to extend the good news to all, beginning with fellow Jews and then extending to all the peoples of the world he met as he traveled. Paul's enthusiasm (the word actually means "God inspiring") set up a chain reaction that magnified the growth of the new beliefs as well as the growth of new believers. Read and really listen to what Paul is saying.
"ROME" IN OUR TIMES:
In Year A, the epistles for the first three Sundays of Lent are like shuffling a deck of cards. Lent 1 is Romans 5:12-19(20-21); Lent 2 is Romans 4:1-5(6-12)13-17; and Lent 3 is Romans 5:1-11. Read these texts in the order Lectionary planners placed them. You will discover an interesting juxtaposition that the early Christians fully understood, based on their knowledge of details in the Septuagint, the Greek language Hebrew Scriptures. Today, few of us can set Paul's words into this frame. So how are we to read and understand these Roman Christians and the letter Paul wrote to them?
Set your Bible down. Turn your mind to the national news swirling about us and the current events triggering reports that bombard us. Hold those thoughts, as you reflect on the reading of Romans you have done. Separated by 2000 years of history, humankind is still caught in the thrall of power-plays. What would Jesus say? What would Paul say?
Paul manages to "flip" all of society in the Roman Empire with his words in this letter. In our world today, how can we, as Christians following Paul's guidance, change the direction of the world that seems to be tumbling into unexpected chaos around us? Paul gives us the answer. Though we live in a world of human law, we are to live with God's law of love and compassion. Do that with enthusiasm!
Women of the Diocese of the Rio Grande Study +++ February 27, 2017
The First Sunday of Lent (Year A)
With the passing of Ash Wednesday, we open the door to the new liturgical season of Lent, a most valuable time of learning in the life of every Christian. This biblical "forty days" becomes imprinted on weekday minds until we reach the Great Vigil of Easter.
Lent today is a compact reminder of the several years of time spent by early Christians in learning what was involved to be and to live as a follower of Christ Jesus. These seekers were called Catechumens. They prepared for their baptisms and full admission into the community, just as we prepare, in Lent, for the glory of Easter. We honor and echo their presence among us every time we celebrate the two parts of a Eucharist. Listen for the progression in the service from hearing The Word of God before receiving The Holy Communion.
Lent gives us a chance to "hit the reset button" in our everyday lives. We can return to, and improve upon, all the good intentions and resolutions that have faded since the beginning of liturgical Advent and the secular new year. Lent can be a time of giving up. (For me as a child, I gave up bubble gum!)
However, more importantly, in our annual time, Lent can be a few weeks for adding on. As Christians, we can follow the road taken by all learning-to-be-Christians, from the time of Jesus death and resurrection until today. This Lent, become a current Catechumen, striving to understand and embrace Christ Jesus in your everyday life.
TRADITION FOR READING IN LENT:
Lent can be a challenge for lives today; limited time is filled with busy-ness. Well-intentioned church folk encourage reading a good book, and suggestions abound. All can be beneficial. All really should be rooted in what should be your first choice, the Bible. In reading it, you will be following the path of the early Christian Catechumens.
In our WDRG Study, we read aloud and ponder the scripture that in the fourth century became the Christian Bible. Paul, the earliest writer of a text in our Bible, like us, never knew the actual earthly presence of Jesus. Yet God’s miraculous intrusion into Paul’s life left him totally convinced that Jesus was the Christ.
The Sunday epistles that begin Lent in 2017, and then will be revisited in this Year A, in the Season after Pentecost, are from Paul’s last letter of about 60 CE. Unnamed missionaries, other than Paul, had planted a nascent Christian group in Rome. Paul hoped to visit them en route when carrying the good news to Spain. The Roman recipients of this letter did not know Paul personally, but they knew of him. Like Paul, and like us, the Romans also did not know Jesus Christ personally. Through faith, they, and we, believe that Christ Jesus is Lord.
TECHNIQUE FOR READING IN LENT:
You will hear snippets of the Letter to the Romans read in Sunday services. Place this text at the top of your reading list for Lent 2017. Make this epistle truly your own, read it aloud in one hour and thirty minutes. Find a family member or friend to share it with you. The full text is challenging reading, but do not think of it as drudge work.
After a family move about 40 years ago, a new friend told me about a group of moms, all laypersons, overwhelmed because of busy pre-school children. Craving adult thought, and with Lent coming, the moms decided to create their own Bible study. Familiar with gospel stories, these novices chose to read the beginning epistle in the NT, Romans.
The moms did not realize that Romans is placed at the front of the NT letters, not because it was the earliest composed, but because, by chance, it was the longest of the NT letters. This was an ordering tradition carried over from the OT texts of prophets. As a practical matter, without considering importance of content, the longest and largest scrolls were stacked in places of prominence, an tradition transferred over when texts on scrolls became texts on codices or books.
In Romans, the ideas Paul states represent refinement and sophistication in his thinking. Romans is more complex than I Thessalonians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, Philippians, and Philemon, texts scholars all agree were also written by Paul.
These dedicated moms together, in limited time, with no scholarly guidance, trudged forward, reading aloud the full text of Romans straight through in the first weeks of Lent. Letter complexities did not deter them. Curiosity led to a commitment, which led to a truly unexpected impact on all the participants. Their perception of their lives changed. Like the original Roman recipients, these moms heard the letter, as though it had been written just to them.
The best way to hear Paul's message in Romans is to read it more than once. On your first go-round, read it straight through without stopping, as though it might be a long magazine article. Then reread it slowly. Pause where you need your understanding shored up. Use Bible footnotes or references. Discover the details Paul is sharing. What riches you will find! Then read Romans again at a comfortable pace that suits you.
THEOLOGY FOR READING IN LENT:
Though the Romans 5:12-19 (20-21) selection this Sunday is straightforward, expect to have challenges ahead in reading the whole text. Paul directed his thoughts to cosmopolitan, learned, Greek-speaking, Jewish and Gentile Romans, who were steeped in basic Hebrew Scriptures. Almost none of us reading the Letter to the Romans today can claim the same skills and knowledge.
Nevertheless, the truth Paul sent in his letter to Rome 2000 years ago is as valid today as it was then. Romans is the first great theological explanation of Christianity. Paul gives us a master class, as he mindfully pours out his whole heart. Romans is the first great Summa Theologica.