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The Catholic Church in
Llandudno Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish Priest: Fr Antony Jones |
Dear Parishoner,
Does the word TETRAGRAMMATON mean anything to you? And if I told
you that the word Tetragrammaton means “four letters” and that these
four letters are YHWH, would you be any the wiser? Yet it has
been the subject of a special statement issued to the Catholic Bishops
of the world by the Roman Congregations for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments, two of the offices of the Roman Curia
which, under the guidance of the Holy Father, runs the Church.
What I found most difficult in my preparation for the Priesthood was
the smattering of Hebrew we were required to master as a condition of
gaining the theology degree. What makes Hebrew particularly
difficult is not only that you read it backwards, not only that the
letters are so different from ours, but that the vowels, a e I o u, are
all written below the word and appear simply as dots and dashes.
The words standing on the line, consist only of consonants. And
you think Welsh is difficult!
When God revealed his personal Name to Moses at the burning bush, he
declared it to be YAHWEH, a word that means something like “I
Am”. But when it was written down it became just YHWH. The
Jews regarded this personal Name of God to be so holy that they would
not pronounce it, only the High Priest could do that, and he only once
a year. As the word appears some 6828 times in the Bible, it
presented a difficulty as you were not allowed to pronounce it!
So they substituted the word Adonai for it in the Hebrew, Kyrios in the
Greek, Dominus in the Latin and Lord in English. In the English
tradition, when the word YHWH occurs, it is translated as LORD and
printed in capital letters. But in some of the most recent and
most scholarly translations of the Bible, such as the Jerusalem Bible
which we use at Mass, this tradition of substituting LORD for YHWH, a
tradition which dates back to about three hundred years before Christ,
has been ignored, with the word YAHWEH being used instead of LORD.
YAHWEH, a name too holy even to say! What a far cry that is from
the way people today use the Name of God and of his Christ! It is
probably true that the Name of God is used a thousand times more today
as an expletive or swear-word than it is as a prayer. And what
did that second commandment say? “You shall not make wrongful use
of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone
who misuses his Name”. That sounds to me as if a lot of people
are in for an awful shock!
So we come back to that Statement on the Name of God from the Roman
Curia. Rome has now declared that the word YAHWEH is no longer to
be spoken in any liturgical service within the Catholic Church
throughout the world. And, by extension, if it is not even to be
spoken out loud even within the sacred context of the Mass and
Sacraments, how much less should it be used in common speech?
This Declaration from Rome is timely and most welcome, in my
opinion. It reminds us of the importance of the second
commandment. It reminds us of our duty of holding the Lord God in
the highest possible reverence. Maybe we don’t misuse the Name of
the Lord ourselves, but do we hold it in high enough esteem? For
the Jews, a person’s name meant the very essence of the person; and the
very essence of God is something we, as believing Christians, must
prostrate oursleves before. “To Thee my heart, I bow in bended
knee, while failing quite in contemplating Thee”.
Maybe this could be a Lenten exercise for us. Let us question
ourselves with regard to the respect we show to God, and how we use his
holy Name—in our prayers, in our behaviour in church when we enter his
real presence in the Eucharist, in the way we present Him to our
children. The list could go on. Let us show this
blaspheming generation in which we live that we at least do venerate
the Name of God and are true to our word when we pray, “Hallowed be thy
Name”.
The Parish is now delighted to add to its other caring groups the new
Bereavement Team which graduated last Thursday evening with the last of
its preparatory sessions. We are most grateful to Mrs Lian Lynch
for the wonderful course she gave and for her willingness to keep her
eye on us in the years to come. We congratulate Alan and Fleur
Williams, John-Barry Murphy, Sara Dennison, Pauline McGlory and Terry
Cringle who form our new Team and thank them for their willingness to
serve the Church in this important way.
We are in the advance stages of planning a weekly “Young Catholic
Mothers Coffee Break” at Stella Maris on a Friday morning, as well as
an Open House on a Thursday afternoon for any parishioner to drop in,
meet others, play cards, dominoes, watch DVDs together, or do whatever
they want to do, and drink tea. If the forthcoming Parish
Pastoral Council approves of the ideas we will get them into operation
just as soon as we can. It is good for us to meet.
God bless you,
Fr Antony Jones
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