| Gordon: |
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When did you join
Our
Lady Queen of Peace and how has the parish contributed
to your spirituality? |
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| Emilio: |
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I have been attending this parish for some eight or nine
years. It is a former mission parish still in the care of
the missionary Scalabrini priests, and most of the
congregation is from Latin America. Many are poor and
undocumented, and have that deep faith of the poor even
amidst all the problems that they face, especially in these
times of division, fake news, fear and even hatred. They are
an inspiration to me. |
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| Gordon: |
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You have a fascinating background that I hope you will share
with our readers |
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| Emilio: |
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I was born in Cuba and grew up in the Miami area. I studied
to be a priest in the Dominican and Discalced Carmelite
Orders, in Mexico and the Dominican republic respectively. I
am “Americanized” but Latin to the core. I went to Rome to
finish my theological studies, and love all things Italian.
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| Gordon: |
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Please provide a summary of
the theological significance of the “temple cleansing” in
Mark’s gospel. |
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| Emilio: |
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In Mark’s Gospel most of all the so-called “cleansing” of
the temple by Jesus really the enactment of the cessation of
its cult and its eventual destruction, as Jesus himself
predicts in Mark 13:2. Jesus gives the temple a “heart
attack” in Mark, symbolized by the sandwiching-in of his
action within the two fig tree episodes (the cursed tree is
completely dried up). Perhaps the most original thing about
my dissertation on Jesus’ “temple action” is my comparison
with a real temple-cleansing in the Books of Maccabees,
where seven elements are found, too, only in reverse (in the
opposite sense) |
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| Gordon: |
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Please provide an overview of your teaching career. |
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Emilio:
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I really enjoyed most of my fourteen years teaching Sacred
Scripture in the Catholic regional major seminary for
Florida. I got great reviews and was perfectly matched,
given my expertise in Scripture, my deep Catholicism
(“imbibed with my mother’s milk”) and my life-long
cultivation of spirituality and theology. Unfortunately, the
US Catholic Church has taken increasingly narrow-minded,
nostalgic overtones, quiet the opposite of what Pope Francis
is calling for, and the new rector has put in line a new
faculty with a different bent than before, and I was seen as
not fitting in with this new orientation. It was quite a
time of suffering for me, and not just because of my
predicament (out of work at age 60), but I also suffered for
the Church. |
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| Gordon: |
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You are fluent in and a translator of documents in several
languages. What languages are they? |
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| Emilio: |
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I am perfectly fluent in English, Spanish and Italian; I
read French and other languages useful for theology. I can
translate English, Spanish, Italian and theological French
into written English and Spanish. |
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| Gordon: |
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You are also a popular lecturer and conduct workshops What
are some of the topics that you address? |
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| Emilio: |
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have
cultivated a holistic, canonical understanding of the whole
Christian Bible, and can give workshops so that it can be
understood in the theological significance of its main parts
(for this I use the Jewish canon, the one Jesus had). I also
have given talks on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism and
spiritual subjects. I am an expert in Thérèse of Lisieux and
Catherine of Siena and the Spanish sixteenth-century mystics
(Ignatius, Teresa and John of the Cross). |
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| Gordon: |
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Thank you for an
insightful interview. |
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