Category Archives: Incarnation

Looking with Lust

Anthropology, Contraception, Human Dignity, Incarnation, Sexual Ethics, The Life of Jesus, Theology of the Body, , , , , ,

Our Lord would most accurately be labeled, at least according to modern standards, a total prude.  He reached a puritanical pinnacle by inventing a totally new category of adultery which he dubs “adultery in the heart” that occurs when a man looks at a woman with lust.  This divine priggishness makes it practically impossible for men and women to even be around each other, or at least that is how it seems.  The modern mind, trapped in a world without virtue, can only see two options: puritanical or prurient.  But Our Lord is really offering a third option, one that ultimately leaves us with the power to love freely and not free love-ers.

Anyone encountering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time must immediately be struck by the unbelievable idealism of the mode of life Christ is putting forth.  He would be the world’s most moralistic man except for one important detail.  Whenever Our Lord issues a command, He never simply leaves us to our own devices, but also seeks to give us the power to fulfill His commands.  His coming to “fulfill the law” isn’t just a matter of prophecy but a matter of grace.  Through the power of His grace we are able to fulfill even the most idealistic of His commands, the command not to look upon a man or woman with lust included.

Christ the True Moralist

Herein lies a major point of misunderstanding about Christ the moralist.  His commandments are such that they both contain the path to freedom while simultaneously leading us to freedom.  He is the Truth and the Way.  What Christ is commanding is really an offer that will free us from looking upon another person with lust.  The power to see the other person as a person and not merely an object of pleasure.  This power then opens the gates of freedom that enable us to love purely as the only true path to happiness.

This pathway to love however also requires us to properly understand what it means, and more importantly what it doesn’t mean, to look at someone with lust.  Lust is not just looking at person of the opposite sex, but is a gaze that is filled desire to use the other person.  In this regard it is helpful to turn to Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings in Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility and Lust

The former Fr. Wojtyla sought to explain how attraction is felt between members of the opposite sex.  In encountering a person of the opposite sex, a man or woman has a natural response to the sexual value of the other person.  These responses come in two forms: sensuality or the reaction to the sexual value in the other person’s body, and sentimentality or the reaction to their perceived masculinity or femininity.    This spontaneously felt response, without the governing of reason, finds its culmination in the desire to possess the value.  Notice that it is the value itself that we desire to possess regardless of the person who possesses that value.  The other person becomes an object of use, rather than a subject to love.  John Paul II labels this phenomenon subjective egoism because it is based completely on how the person feels in response to the other person.  Lust then is the expression of the desire to possess the value, it is the choice to use the other person.

This distinction between interest and expressing the desire is important because merely acknowledging the sexual value of the other person (we might call this interest) is not the same thing as lust.  Interest is perfectly natural and in a very real way something that happens to us rather than something chosen.  It is not just the seed of lust but also the seed of love.  Once the interest is piqued, desire is sparked.  Desire sees the person as an object to be enjoyed but still is not sinful as long as the will resists that desire to use the person.  This too is an important element of love, but it must always be purified such that it is directed to the whole person.

A few examples might help.  A man sees a woman and is drawn towards some perceived sexual value in her body.  His emotional response brings him pleasure and he must now make a decision.  Will he continue to linger on the fact that she is “hot” and the pleasure that looking at her brings or will he remind himself that it is a person and that using her (even though all he is doing is looking at her) is wrong?  If it is the former, then he has lusted.  If it is the latter then he has, even in a very primitive way, expressed love for her by willing her good in choosing not to treat her like an object for his own enjoyment. 

Notice that what is being suggested is not repression.  The attraction is natural and there can be no love without it.  What has to be “repressed” is the urge to use the person.  The man may feel the attraction and move to meet her, but in order not to be lust, he must go to her as a person and treat her as such.  The attraction is still there, but it must move the man towards its proper end—the woman who has stirred his heart and not just her body.  In being free from lust, he is now free to love the woman and not his own emotional response to the sexual value of the woman.

Adultery in the heart has everything to do with what is happening interiorly in the man and it is from this that Christ offers freedom.  How this happens can be shown by two further examples. 

Imagine a married man meets another woman with whom he has regular contact and she awakens sexual interest in him.  He begins to develop sexual desire for her and so now he chooses to avoid her because he fears that he may lust after her.  To avoid the near occasion of sin is a good thing, but it is not yet freedom.  Freedom comes when there is no threat of lust, that is, when the man is chaste. 

Like all virtues, chastity governs the spontaneous arising of the emotions attached to attraction.  The man is simply able to acknowledge the woman’s beauty without being stirred to lust.  He is free now to see her as a person who is beautiful without any desire to possess either her or her beauty.  He can simply appreciate it as beautiful and move on.  The truly chaste married man only feels attraction for his wife. 

Likewise, the chaste unmarried man will feel the emotions of attraction, but they will be moderated such that they do not move him to use the person.  Instead he is drawn towards the person and able to pursue her purely based on her personality and not solely on her attributes.  He can see her in truth and not be blinded by those attributes.  He is completely free in his love for her.

Our Lord’s prudery then is nothing less than an offer for authentic freedom.  Our Lord practiced chastity to the perfect degree and has offered us each a share in His virtue in order to free our hearts to love to the full.

Devotion to the Mother of the Eucharist

Communion of Saints, Eucharist, Incarnation, Mary, , , , , , , , , ,

When St. Luke wrote his account of the human origins of Our Lord, he wanted to make an important connection to Our Lady as the Ark of the New Covenant.  Likewise, St. John saw the need to make this connection more explicit in the Book of Revelation when he describes seeing the Ark of the Covenant in heaven and then describing it in terms that could only apply to Our Lady (c.f. Rev 11:19-12:5).  It was during Our Lady’s fiat at the Annunciation that she embraced her vocation as the true Ark of Covenant.  The Bread of Life, the True Bread Come Down from Heaven, was baked within her womb.  Her womb then became the first tabernacle as she embraced her title as Mother of the Eucharist.

Our Lady is Mother of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who took His body and blood from her, created a soul for Himself and united it to His divinity in her womb.  In this way, the title is not surprising.  For that same Divine Person in an analogous way repeats the act on the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Each time Christ takes flesh on the altar, an echo of Our Lady’s fiat is heard as the Church gives birth to Our Lord in His Eucharistic presence. 

Mary, Model of the Communicant

Mary’s Annunciation then is the model for all of us in receiving the Eucharist.  With her Amen, Our Lord took flesh in her womb.  In so doing, she received an abundance of sanctifying grace.  Because she was perfectly disposed she received not just a spiritual but a physical participation in the divine life of the Trinity.  The difference is not just one of degree however.  According to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ gives Himself so that we might live by Him, but in Mary He not only did this but also deemed to live by her and receive life from her. 

We ought to imitate her disposition as Christ seeks to unite His flesh with ours.  We ought to conceive in our hearts the “Son of God the most high” (Lk 1:32).  The Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) is the template of after Communion  thanksgivings.

Mary, the Perfect Communicant

Our Lady is more than just a model Communicant through the Annunciation.  She is the perfect communicant because she received Our Lord most perfectly in the Eucharist.  We can often abstract Mary’s life so much that we forget that she lived as a Christian just as we did.  After the Ascension, she lived with a priest and would have received the Eucharist regularly from the hands of St. John.  It is her reception of the Eucharist, first prepared for by her fiat at the Annunciation, that was perfected in Ephesus with St. John.  It is this we must study and seek the grace to imitate.

Not all receptions of the Eucharist are the same.  The Eucharist contains ex opere operato sanctifying grace.  In fact, because it contains the source of all grace, Christ Himself, it contains enough grace through a single reception to perfectly sanctify the communicant.  What stops this from happening is the personal disposition of the recipient.  The more fervently one hungers for the Eucharist, the greater the infusion of Divine life through sanctifying grace. 

Having actually participated in the sacrifice on Calvary, she knew more than anyone what was being offered, even if in an unbloody manner, on the Altar.  Having made the oblation with Christ, she could continually make that same oblation in a spirit of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and thanksgiving (the 4 principal purposes of the Mass according to Pope St. Pius X).  Furthermore, as Venerable Mary Agreda tells it in Mystical City of God, after being told by Our Lord about His enduring presence in the Eucharist,

“she burned with the desire of seeing this Sacrament instituted, and if She had not been sustained by the power of the Almighty, the force of her affection would have bereft Her of natural life…Even from that time on She wished to prepare Herself for its reception, and asked Her Son to be allowed to receive Him in the holy Sacrament as soon as it should be instituted. She said to Him: ‘Supreme Lord and life of my soul, shall I, who am such an insignificant worm and the most despicable among men, be allowed to receive Thee? Shall I be so fortunate as to bear Thee once more within my body and soul? Shall my heart be thy dwelling and tabernacle, where Thou shalt take thy rest and shall I thus delight in thy close embrace and Thou, my Beloved, in mine?’  The divine Master answered: ‘My beloved Mother, many times shalt thou receive Me in the holy Sacrament, and after my Death and Ascension into heaven that shall be thy consolation; for I shall choose thy most sincere and loving heart as my most delightful and pleasant resting place.’”

In short, the Eucharistic Presence of Our Lord would have been one of those things “she held in her heart”, especially because she knew what a great consolation it would be.  You can imagine how difficult it would be for Our Lady having spent every day save three with Our Lord for 30 years, having seen Him often during His three years of public ministry, to no longer have Him present with her.  With that in mind her hunger to receive Him the Eucharist must have exceeded all the saints throughout history combined. 

Likewise when Our Lord “earnestly desired” to give the Church the Eucharistic sacrifice, He was expressing a great desire to unite Himself to each one of us individually, but none so much as His Mother.  He knew that the Eucharist would not only sustain her, but would unite Him to her in a deeper and deeper way with each fervent reception.

This is why Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says that “Each of Mary’s Communions surpassed the preceding one in fervor and, producing in her a great increase of charity, disposed her to receive her next Communion with still greater fruit. Mary’s soul moved ever more swiftly Godwards the nearer she approached to God; that was her law of spiritual gravitation. She was, as it were, a mirror which reflected back on Jesus the light and warmth which she received from Him; concentrated them also, so as to direct them towards souls” (Mother of the Savior and the Interior Life).  It is this same habit, the habit of receiving Our Lord with greater love and devotion at each Mass, that we must strive after.  Let us sit at the foot of Our Mother Mary and ask that she obtain for each one of us this most important grace.  As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange put it, “In everything she was the perfect model of Eucharistic devotion. If we turn to her she will teach us how to adore and to make reparation; she will teach us what should be our desire of the Blessed Eucharist. From here we can learn how to pray at Holy Mass for the great intentions of the Church. and how to thank God for the graces without number He has bestowed on us and on mankind.”

The New Eve and the Immaculate Conception

Apologetics, Bible, Church Fathers, Grace, Incarnation, Mary, , , , , ,

In a previous post, we mentioned how St. John gives us all we need to make the dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady explicit.  But this is not the only dogma that he gives us the foundation for.  He also helps us to ground the other controversial Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

One of the things that makes Christianity unique among all the world religions is that it is grounded in history.  Its central premise is that the eternal and transcendent God took human flesh in a specific time and place and effected our salvation.  The Incarnation is a historic event that, because it occurred in the “fullness of time”, was not some haphazardly chosen moment, but one providentially decreed from the foundation of the world.  The events leading up to the Incarnation were meant to reveal God’s plan and toe prepare the way for it.  This means that these events, especially those detailed in the Old Testament, are charged with prophetic and theological meaning.  From this emerges the principle of typology which reveals the unity of salvation by moving from “type” to fulfillment in the “antitype”.  Because the movement is from prophecy to fulfillment it is always from lesser to greater.

Typology is not a trick biblical scholars apply to the bible but instead is a principle that is applied in the Bible itself.  The New Testament abounds in examples, but one in particular, because of its relationship at hand bears special mention—Christ as the New Adam (c.f. 1 Cor 15:45, Rom 5:12-21).  St. Paul is essentially alluding to the fact that Christ is the new and greater Adam, serving as a counter-image our first father in the flesh.  Although created by the infusion of God’s breath (i.e. the Holy Spirit), the first man failed in his test and brought sin and death into the world.  The Second Adam, who also was made flesh by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit did not fail the test and defeated sin and death. 

The New Eve

In a very real sense this type-antitype relationship is the most fundamental of all because it is the first one used in the Bible.  The first thing that God does after the Fall, is to promise a New Adam, one who would crush the head of the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gn 3:15).  This promise however is not just for a New Adam, but also another “Woman” (Eve’s name given by Adam) who would serve as a New Eve.  The New Adam would be born of this woman’s seed (an allusion to the Virgin Birth since, biblically speaking, the seed always came from the man) and she and the Serpent would have a relationship of enmity.

This New Eve is revealed to us by St. John in his gospel, a theme that he makes rather explicit.  The beginning of John’s gospel would immediately evoke the beginning of Genesis as if what he is about to write about fulfills the Creation account found in Genesis.  Both open with “in the beginning” and both go on to depict days of creation and re-creation.  In John’s account we find the use of “next day” twice and then skips two days and starts again “on the third day”.  If you are counting, that gives us six days—“the beginning” (1), “the next day” (2), “the next day” (3) and “on the third day” (6).  And just like on the sixth day of creation, we are told on the sixth day of re-creation there is a marriage taking place.  We are told nothing about the bride and groom of that wedding, but only that Our Lord and His Mother are there (John 2:1).  We are then told of a conversation between the Mother and her Son in which He addresses her in a rather strange way—as “Woman”.  This address, combined with the parallels to Genesis, would call to mind both Eve and the promise of the New Eve.  This New Eve would, by her words, overturn the damage done by the words of the first Eve and set in motion the work of the New Adam in defeating the Serpent. 

This connection would already be pretty clear, but Our Lord wanted to make sure it was crystal clear when, hanging on the Cross, He once again addresses her as Woman (John 19:42).  This time He makes both the image and the vocation clear.  Just as Eve of old was the mother of all the living according to the flesh, the New Eve was to be the mother of all the living according to the Spirit.

Mary as the New Eve was not something hidden away in the Scriptures or a product of popular piety but something that dates back to the Apostolic age.  We find this as the first title that the Church Fathers gave her.  For example, St. Irenaeus whose favorite theme was re-creation or recapitulation used that title when he made account of the Apostolic preaching saying,

“And just as through a disobedient virgin man was stricken down and fell into death, so through the Virgin who was obedient to the Word of God man was reanimated and received life… For it was necessary that Adam should be recapitulated in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve recapitulated in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin’s intercessor,  and by a virgin’s obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin.” 


Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching, 33

St. Irenaeus most certainly was qualified to give account of Apostolic preaching for he was a disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of St. John.

Typology and the Immaculate Conception

With the type-antitype relationship firmly established we can make the link to the Immaculate Conception more explicit.  Recall that this relationship implies that the privileges given to Eve must in no way exceed the privileges given to Mary.  Eve was conceived without the stain of Original Sin, that is, she was conceived with the gift of sanctifying grace.  Mary then too must be conceived, at the very least, with the same privilege or else the type-antitype relationship falls apart.  St. John in canonizing Mary as the New Eve also, even if only in an implicit manner, declared the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Using typology we can even go further when we factor in the revelation that the New Eve will be at enmity with the Serpent.  This term, enmity, means that the hatred will be so deeply seeded that she will never fall into his power.  And just as Eve received grace consonant with her mission to battle the Serpent and make her a “helper suitable” to the first Adam, so too the New Eve would receive a plentitude of grace to make her a suitable helper to the New Adam and His battle against the Serpent by making her immune to his weapon of sin.  The Hebrew term ezer kenegdo that we translate as “helpmate” or “helper suitable to him” implies both a similarity and a complementarity.  And just as God gave to Eve a share in Adam’s humanity, so God gives to the New Eve a share in His divinity, which we call sanctifying grace and a complentarity by which the New Eve gives her seed to His humanity.  She is to be a helpmate suitable to His mission as Redeemer by being like Him in a unique share in His divinity but still subject to His redemptive (or pre-demptive) act.  In short, the New Eve would need to be not only conceived in grace, but also to never have lost it through sin.

We can do no better than to conclude by quoting Saint John Henry Newman’s lucid summary of the connection between Eve and the Immaculate Conception:

“She [Mary] holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve’s endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace…Now, taking this for granted, . . . I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? …If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? …And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”

Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching

The Problem of Evil and God’s Existence

Atheism, God's Love, Incarnation, Passion of Christ, Sin, Suffering, ,

For anyone who has read either of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summas, it is patently obvious that he took objections to the Catholic Faith seriously.  Put more precisely, he felt obligated to address serious objections fully.  So keen was his understanding that he often made his opponents’ arguments more precisely and succinctly than they can.  One can often learn more from the objections and their responses than from the substance of his response.  Christians of today could learn much from the Angelic Doctor in this regard, especially when it comes to the existence of God.  There are most certainly motives of credibility  that honest atheists must take seriously if they are genuinely interested in discovering the truth.  But these can often be overshadowed by what might be called “a motive of discredibility”, namely the problem of evil and suffering, that Christians must also take seriously.

When St. Thomas tackles the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae, he finds this to be the only real objection.  This was not to suggest that other objections don’t matter, but that they begin to fade away once this objection has received a sufficient answer.  St. Thomas articulates the objection like this: “It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word ‘God’ means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist” (ST I, q.2 art 3, obj. 1). 

The Dilemma of Suffering and Evil

Notice that the objector has set up what is essentially a dilemma revolving around God’s infinite goodness.  If God is omnibenevolent then evil cannot exist.  Many have added to this argument by suggesting that the problem is really a tri-lemma in that God could not be infinitely wise, good and powerful if evil exists.  Either he cannot stop the evil (omnipotence), wills the evil (omnibenevolence) or doesn’t know how to stop it (omnisapience). 

St. Thomas, in a certain sense, anticipates the expanded objection when he quotes St. Augustine who said “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil” and adds his own comment that, “This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2 art 3, ad. 1).

What St. Thomas doesn’t say, but that remains just beneath the surface of what he did, is that evil, once properly framed, actually presents an argument for God.  Evil in the metaphysical sense does not exist.  This does not mean it is not a reality or that it causes suffering in people, but this suffering is not a result of the evil per se, but of the deprivation of a good that should otherwise be there.  Blindness is a deprivation of the good of sight and therefore is an evil.  Moral evils like sins and vices are nothing but a lack of the moral good that should otherwise be in and flow from the human heart. 

This distinction, although well known, is important for two reasons.  First, it refutes any dualistic ontological explanations.  Second, and more closely related to our point, is the fact that when good comes from evil, it is always a creation ex nihilio.  Good that does come comes from absolutely nothing.  Only a being Who is all powerful can create out of nothing so that the problem of evil presents no difficulty to the principle of God’s omnipotence.   In fact, a God who allows evil and suffering and brings good out of it is more powerful than a God who simply erects a divine Stop Sign to stamp out any evil beforehand.

Neither does evil or suffering present a difficulty to God’s omnibenevolence.  Especially when we add the principle that God only allows evil to occur when it is the only manner in which a particular good can come about.  Certain goods such as self-sacrifice can only exist in a world in which evil and suffering are possible.  One could see that the world with evil and suffering in it actually manifests God’s goodness more than a world without it (if it didn’t He wouldn’t have allowed it that way). 

Christ Crucified and God’s Wisdom

Once we grasp the preceding two points we see that only a God Who is all-wise could navigate these waters.  And this is why it is Wisdom Incarnate Who ultimately “dwelt among us” in order to prove this point.  When Christ healed the man born blind, the disciples ask Him what the man (or his parents) did wrong to deserve this.  He tells them that his blindness and his healing was so that God’s goodness could be made manifest.  Christ did not alleviate the suffering of everyone He met.  He did not heal those who deserved it either.  He healed only those, like the man born blind, that would glorify God and be better off without it.  There were many people He didn’t heal, but that wasn’t because He didn’t have time or didn’t care.  He was consistently applying His principle.  Those who were left to suffer were glorifying God in their suffering and were better off because of it.  

Those who suffer know that the problem of evil is no mere intellectual problem.  But the Christian must proclaim that there is no mere intellectual solution.  The answer to evil and suffering is not a philosophical proof but Christ crucified.  Christ is the final answer to this problem, because in truth, only by way of participation in His Cross is God’s goodness made manifest to the individual person.  Through suffering and evil God brings the greatest Good, Himself.  Suffering becomes a treasure that never ceases to give a return on investment.  Rather than an obstacle it becomes a launching pad.  Christians who grasp this and live it out become the most effective argument against those who have yet to see it.     

Temptational Judo

Incarnation, Moralilty, Passion of Christ, Sin, Spiritual Life, Spiritual Warfare, The Life of Jesus

Truth be told, we really don’t like thinking about sin, let alone even talking about it.  But ignoring it is like trying to deny the existence of death.  We can pretend that it doesn’t exist for only so long before we must face the facts.  And just as a healthy spiritual life consists in regularly confronting death, so too, despite the vociferous objections of psychologically (as opposed to spiritually) trained clergy, does it include regularly pondering our sins.  Not to relive them, but to relieve the damage we do to ourselves because of them.  So rather than avoid thinking about them, I would like to suggest we spend some time thinking about our sins of thought.

That we can sin in our thoughts is something many of us unconsciously reject even though we confess publicly that “…I have greatly sinned in my thoughts.”  Our Lord too chastised the Pharisees many times for their thoughts—“why do you think evil thoughts in your hearts?” (Mt 9:4).  We tend to think of sin as something external, something that must be consummated if you will.  We absolve ourselves saying “I can’t help what I think, but I would never do it.”  But to even think it is, in a certain sense, to “do it”.  As the Book of Wisdom tells us “perverse thoughts separate us from God” (Wis 1:3).  Our will may not be fixed strongly enough to actually carry through or we may not do it because we fear the consequences or we may just lack the opportunity.  But to think it is to want to do it.

To Think It is to Want to do It

This may seem extremely old fashioned or overly rigid until we realize that the terrain over which spiritual combat with the devil is fought is our minds.  Think of the battle between Satan and Our Lord in the desert—the Tempter wanted to change Our Lord’s mind.  This is a perfect image because the ongoing battle is between which mind we will garb ourselves in—the mind of Satan or the mind of Christ.  And so, we must explicitly make known what we mean when we say “to think it is to want to do it.” 

This battle is one that is fought in fog and confusion.  Not all of our bad thoughts are equally bad nor are all of the thoughts our “own”.  This makes it hard to tell the difference.  But in order to lift the fog we must let the Son shine on our thoughts.  To help us in doing this, St. Alphonsus Liguori puts before us three moments by which to  evaluate what is going on.

First there is the suggestion.  This is where the evil thought is presented to the mind.  Where it “comes” from is not really that important.  The devil can suggest bad thoughts by manipulating our memory and imagination or it can arise “spontaneously” by following a train of thought or our memory running amok.  There is obviously no sin at this point, although it is knocking at the door.  Next there is the delectation “when the person stops,” St. Alphonsus says, “to look at the bad thought, which by its pleasing appearance causes delight.”  We are still not at the point of sin, unless we reach the third moment, consent.

Reversing the Moments

Working backwards we must admit that the exact point of consent is often difficult to decipher.  It almost has a “how far can I go” type quality to it.  That is why we should flip this around and look at evil thoughts not as a near occasion of sin, but as an opportunity for merit.  In doing so, we enter into the workings of Divine Providence in capturing the grace that God made available when he allowed the temptation to arise.  This is the mind of Christ Who practiced temptational judo in meriting for us salvation.  Ultimately, this is why we do not so much worry about the source of the temptation and see it as coming from the Providential hand of the Father.

It is a relatively short journey for the evil thought to pass from temptation to sin because it is linked by the delectation.  The bait covering the hook of sin is always some pleasure and in this regard sins of thought are no different.  There is something pleasing in the evil thought—some aspect of revenge, venereal delight, or other guilty pleasure.  That is why we cannot remain passive.  Sin ultimately is a willingness to pay the price of evil to buy the pleasure attached to it.  Therefore we can never be passive in the face of a temptation.  Once we have moved to pleasure we have already, in a certain sense gone past the point of no return. 

Vigilance then is the key.  We must, at the moment the temptation arises, reject it completely.  Call it what it is and pray for the grace of perseverance.  Go to Our Lord in the desert and capture the grace He won for you for this very moment.  Let it not be won in vain. 

And this, then, is why reflecting on our sins of thought is so much a part of a healthy spiritual life.  These temptations of thought are the building blocks of holiness.  Each time we say ‘No’ we are conformed more and more to the image of the Son in the desert.  St. Francis de Sales thought that mortifying our thoughts and imagination was one of the keys to holiness.  He thought it absolutely necessary to kill any daydreaming or useless trains of thought because it gives us the power to control our own thoughts and recognize temptations for what they truly are the moment they arise.

The Myth of Santa Claus

Advent, Christmas, Family, Incarnation, , , ,

As children enter their second decade, they enter a yuletide game of cat and mouse with their parents who are trying to stretch out their belief in Santa Claus.  As they grow wiser in the ways of the world, learn how to search order history on Amazon and find their parents’ secret hiding place, it is only a matter of time before the ruse is up.  Or, at least, a ruse is what it feels like.  Parents must grow increasingly clever and deceptive as their child’s hunger for the truth of Santa Claus grows.  Labeling the whole thing a lie, many parents opt to forgo the visit from Father Christmas in order to remain truthful with their children.  Others argue that it is no lie, only a myth meant to convey the deep meaning of Christmas to children.  Just in time to make or break Christmas, we will enter the debate.

A word first about myths.  In an age where we are besieged by facts, there is a tendency to equate facts with truth.  Truth, while it may include facts, transcends mere facts.  It is the conformity of thought with reality.  Reality, in order to be explained and understood, often requires more than mere facts.  This is where myth comes in.

Because of our fascination with facts, we see myths, because they are “made up”, as lies.  They may be, as CS Lewis once said, “lies breathed through silver,” but lies nonetheless.  But myths are not fabricated prevarications but word-sacraments that act as signs pointing to some aspect of reality that would otherwise remain obscure.  The best myths are like flashlights focusing their beams on truth.  But myths can also be false.  In fact, those myths that act as clear signs pointing to something obscure in reality we would call true myths.  Those whose signs point away from the truth or remain so obscure themselves we would call false myths.

The Myth of Santa Claus

Santa Claus then, just because he is made up, is not necessarily a lie. He may be a myth.  But if he is a myth then the question really is whether the myth is a true or a false one.  More to the point, what does Santa Claus as a sign point to?

To answer this we must begin with a little history of the myth itself. His association with the real St. Nicholas of Myra is well known.   But in truth he is only remotely associated with the cult of the 3rd Century saint.  The real St. Nicholas was known for his generous gift giving especially bestowing upon poor families dowries for their girls to get married.  The cult around him emerged as Christians sought his intercession for large purchases and when getting married, some even choosing his feast day, December 6th, as the day to exchange their nuptial vows.  Other than the obvious fact that he is a Christian, there is nothing in his history nor in his cult specifically that would associate him with Santa Claus.

The connection with Christmas came when the Episcopal Minister Clement Moore wrote a poem in 1822 entitled “An Account of a Visit with St. Nicholas” or, as we know it today, “The Night Before Christmas.”  Sentimentality aside, when one reads the poem you get the sense that the children who had hung their stockings in anticipation of St. Nicholas’ arrival (perhaps related to the saint himself filling shoes with gifts in his lifetime) got more than they bargained for when Santa Claus appeared as “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf” with a sleigh full of toys, eight reindeer and magical powers that allow him to travel up and down the chimney.  Advertisers loved Moore’s Santa Claus because thanks to other literary giants of the day like Washington Irving, gift giving became an important part of Christmas.  By the 1840s stores were already using his image to advertise Christmas sales.  Stores began to have men dress up like Santa Claus so that children could visit and tell him what gifts they would like while their parents shopped for said gifts. 

Treating Santa Claus as a myth leaves us with the conclusion that he is not a mythical representation of St. Nicholas of Myra.  It seems that his creation myth repudiates the simple and holy saint, rejecting him as simply not enough.  He obscures rather than makes us better understand the great saint and the intercessory power of saints in general.  Saints do intercede for us and get us things that we ask for, but they are not supply chain experts who manufacture the things themselves nor do they employ little elves as their helpers.  They distribute God’s manifold gifts.  Rather than determining whether we have been naughty or nice to bestow gifts upon us, they give according to whether the gifts themselves will make us naughty or nice.  In fact the True Gift of Christmas came to save the naughty and not the nice who had no need of Him.  Rather than using magic to travel up and down chimneys or ride in a sleigh of magical reindeer, they are “like the angels” and share in the powers of Christ’s resurrected body.  Rather than residing in the North Pole, they look upon the face of God in heaven. 

In short, a child looking upon Santa Claus would conclude very little about St. Nicholas or saints in general.  But perhaps the myth is not really about St. Nicholas but about Christmas itself.  After all, St. Nicholas is really a sign himself pointing to Christ.  Unfortunately, this explanation, while fulfilling our nostalgic longings, also falls flat.

The problem is not so much a battle between material versus spiritual gifts.  When Israel was a child, God bestowed material benefits on them in order to point towards the spiritual gifts He wanted to give them.  The Divine Pedagogy uses things that are seen to reveal things unseen.  Likewise the problem is not that it is only for children.  Signs pass away as one approaches the thing signified.  If we reverse this relationship and start with the thing signified we can then see why Santa Claus is a false myth.

No child will make the connection between Santa Claus and Christ.  Parents have to tell them.  But the meaning of a true myth as a sign should be obvious, otherwise it is a terrible sign.  Sure, the parents may have to remind them, but the sign ought to be enough.  The fact that we struggle to “keep Christ in Christmas”, but have no trouble “keeping Santa Claus in Christmas” shows that the myth has eclipsed the truth.  As further evidence, once the sign passes away and gives way to the thing signified, the children have gotten the message loud and clear: Christmas is about giving gifts.  Otherwise, the gift giving would cease (or at least the felt obligation of it) once the person grasped that Christmas was about the gift of Christ.

Is Santa Claus a Lie?

And this is why Santa Claus ultimately is not just a false myth but also a lie.  True myths may be confused for facts, but they never fabricate the facts.  Fabricating facts is simply a nice way to say lying.  Parents must make up the fact of gifts under the tree to support the myth of Santa Claus.  But, as we said, a true myth does not need the support of facts.  Its truth stands on its own foundation.  Intuitively parents know this because they universally speak about whether their children know the “truth about Santa Claus” or not.  No one speaks of a true myth in those terms.

But what’s the harm?  Maybe it isn’t true, but it creates a nice holiday that everyone seems to enjoy.  No child ever felt betrayed by his parents for playing the Santa Claus game.  But this ignores the fact that lies are wrong, not just because they harm other people, but because they are an offense against God. 

Lies ultimately are an attempt on our part to alter reality.  We try to speak or act a different reality into existence.  They are an offense against God then because they usurp His right to determine reality.  This is why a false myth like this is also a lie—it tells a falsehood about reality and tries to make reality other than it really is.  God could very easily have given St. Nicholas the power to visit homes each year.  As proof of this, St. Nicholas brings gifts of healing and consolation to thousands of people who apply his manna, the mysterious substance that seeps from his bones every year and has been the source of many miraculous cures.  But He didn’t do it because, ultimately, it wasn’t for the benefit on mankind.  If we trace the fruit that has come from Santa’s arrival in the 19th Century, we must admit that He was right.     

The Mystery of the Transfiguration

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One can hardly begin to imagine the amazing things that the Apostles, especially the inner trio of Peter, John and James, saw during their time with Our Lord.  But if you were to ask which event stood out above the others, the answer might surprise you at first.  You might think for St. Peter it would have been the event of the miraculous catch or walking on water, but instead he mentions only one—the Transfiguration.  Given nearly three decades to reflect upon it, the Vicar of Christ in his second encyclical still finds it to be the most formative event in His life, describing himself as receiving honor and glory from God the Father when he was an eyewitness of the majesty of Christ on the holy mountain (c.f 2Pt 1:16-19).  It is this truly awe-inspiring event on the mount of Transfiguration that the Church invites us to celebrate today.

To set the tone, it is worth mentioning that the Transfiguration is one of the few events in the life of Christ which is found in all three Synoptic Gospels.  The Holy Spirit thought that this episode was not only formative in the life of the Apostles but ought also to be for the Christians that were to follow.  For each of the mysteries of Christ’s life are recorded within Sacred Scripture not only for our knowledge but as invitations for our participation.  The Church reminds us of this invitation by including this feast with the liturgical calendar because, as Pope Pius XII reminds us, although these historical events occurred in the past, “they still influence us because each of the mysteries brings its own special grace for our salvation” (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 165).  It is then the Church’s hope that we will lay hold of the special grace attached to the Transfiguration.

What the Transfiguration Reveals

Grasping what made this experience so monumental for St. Peter will help us to drink more fully of the mystery ourselves.  In this single event we find a compendium of Christology.  The Transfiguration reveals the fullness of the Person of Christ—true God and true man.

When asked, most Christians would say that Ss. Peter, John and James witnessed His divinity.  This is true to a certain extent, but what they saw was the glory of His sacred humanity.  A moment’s reflection on the accounts will make this clear.  First, their reaction betrays this belief.  They are clearly awed by the fact that “His face shone like the sun and His garments became white as light” (Mt 17:2), but they are not at any pains to look away.  Instead when the Divine presence is manifested in the cloud, they “fell on their faces” because they know that “man shall not see me and live” (Ex 33:20).  It is the word spoken by the Father that reveals Christ’s divinity to them—“This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.  Listen to Him” (Mt 17:6).

His divinity, according to St. Thomas, was also made known to the Apostles in His power over the living and the dead.  Elijah was(and still is) among the living.  He has never died and lives within some heavenly realm until his return to defeat the Antichrist as one of the two witnesses (c.f. Rev 11:3-12).  Christ had power to summon him.  Christ also was the Lord of the dead, able to bring forth Moses from the realm of Abraham’s bosom.  It was to preach to them of His Exodus, that is His Passion, Death and Resurrection, that He brought them forth.

One suspects that the profundity of the Transfiguration for Peter was not just because it revealed Christ’s divinity to Him, but because it also put flesh around the divinity.  It is the foundation for what has since been explained as the Hypostatic Union.  Although it would take the fullness of Christ’s mission and the gift of the Holy Spirit to realize it, the Apostles now knew that this was a man, but no mere man, that was walking around with them.

The Second Person of the Trinity, the “Beloved Son” is God.  In the fullness of time, He took to Himself a human nature without setting aside His divine personality.  He remained and remains a divine Person that used a human nature (not a human person) as His instrument for our salvation.  In the natural course of events, when a body and soul are fused together in conception, a person is formed.  But in Christ, the body and soul united to the Second Person of the Trinity so that He supplied the personality.  This is why we can accurately say that God became man and not that a man became God.

This uniting of the human nature with the Eternal Word is called the Hypostatic Union.  This union means that the body and soul of Christ enjoy special privileges.  One of those privileges was the Beatific Vision.  This is the direct vision of God that all the blessed in heaven possess; each being able to see all things in their divine relationship.  It is a source of constant joy and glory so that this beatitude overflows from the soul into the body, making it shine like the sun.  This effect, one of the four qualities of a glorified body, is called Clarity.

It is a miracle that is, a suspension of what naturally happens that the effects of the Beatific Vision did not flow into all the regions and powers of Christ’s soul allowing Him to suffer and sorrow.  Otherwise He could not be the “Man of Sorrows.”  Likewise it is a miracle that His Glory did not overflow into His body.

The Transfiguration is a result of God “suspending” this miracle so that the natural clarity of Christ’s body shines forth.  He suspends this miracle to reveal the other three qualities of the glorified humanity at other points in His public ministry.  He shows His natural agility by walking on water, His natural subtlety by passing from Mary’s womb, leaving her virginity intact and His impassibility when He was unharmed by the Jews attempts to stone Him.  But because clarity is perceptible to the human eye, the Transfiguration becomes a testimony to the full humanity of Christ.  It is the testimony of the fullness of divinity and humanity in this single event that leaves the indelible mark on St. Peter’s mind.

The Transfiguration and Us

The Hypostatic Union plays into this in a second way as well.  In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII says “[F]or hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love.” (75).   It was the Beatific Vision that made each one of us present at the Transfiguration.  He performed this miracle then not just for the Apostles, but for each one of us individually.  He simply awaits our active participation in this mystery so that He can give to us the graces He has already won.

Like all of His mysteries, there are personal graces to be found for each one of us; graces we discover through personal meditation upon the mystery itself.  There are also the more “generic” graces attached to the mystery of the Transfiguration as well.  Blessed Columba Marmion articulates a three-fold grace that Christ wants to give us when we ascend the summit of Tabor.  The first is the grace of increased faith.  We can re-echo the Father’s declaration by proclaiming, “Yes Father that is Your Beloved Son.  I believe.  Help my unbelief.”  Secondly, there is the grace of hope.  The Transfiguration reveals to us our destiny.  By sharing the Sonship of Christ, we come to share in His blessed reward.  Finally, there is the grace of charity won by doing whatever He tells us.  The commands of God are always supplemented by the power to fulfill them.  And in this regard, the Transfiguration becomes a great source of salvation here and now.

The Mediatrix of All Graces?

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Since Pope Pius XII declared the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, Marian devotees within the Church have been championing the cause of a fifth Marian dogma. namely Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces.  Whether or not a formal declaration comes soon, Tradition up and through the Second Vatican Council supports this as a definitive belief, although the particulars still need to be worked out.  Yet most people’s response to this is that it simply goes too far.  We may be willing to concede that she intercedes for us or that she is a mediatrix of grace in some ways, but the title of Mediatrix of All Graces tips the dogmatic scales towards Mariolotry.  But before rejecting it wholesale, we might examine exactly what this doctrine means.

A mediator, in the sense we are using it here, is one who stands between God and man, taking the gifts from God and distributing them to men.  Christ as Mediator, in strict justice, is able to take as much grace as He wants and distribute it to mankind as He sees fit.  One of the ways in which He does so is through secondary mediators.  These mediators no longer act in strict justice but instead as friends of Christ.  When Christ sought to heal the paralytic who encountered Peter and John, He did so through the mediation of Peter (Act 3:1-7).  This, of course, is but one example of many throughout all of history that continues even down to our day when Christians still perform miracles and priests become mediators of grace through the Sacraments.   In this very broad sense Scripture and common sense testify that Mary is a mediatrix (Note: mediatrix is just the feminine form of mediator, like waiter and waitress) in a unique and wholly unrivaled way.  But to go any further we must first set a foundation upon which the doctrine of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces can be built.

The One Mediator

The cornerstone of such a foundation is necessarily built upon the stone that the builders rejected—Christ—“Who is the one mediator between God and man” (1Tim 2:5).  Anything that we say from this point forward can never diminish or overshadow that truth.  Mary may have been supreme and unique in her co-operation with Christ, but it was He Who was the primary operator.  Mary’s mediation is always sub-ordinated to Christ’s and not co-ordinated.  She may be the branch from which all the fruit grows, but He is the Tree.   He is the one mediator between God and man, but through the designs of Divine Providence chose His Mother to share uniquely in His mission as the source of all grace and in a very real sense made His distribution of grace dependent upon her.  Her role as co-operator in His redeeming mission was entirely unique, for He made Himself dependent upon her “[N]ot only because she consented to make sacrifice for the salvation of men possible, but also in the fact that she accepted the mission of protecting and nourishing the Lamb of sacrifice, and when the time came led Him to the altar of immolation…” (Pope St. Pius X Ad Diem Ilium).

It is because Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God that she received a fullness of grace.  This fullness is exceeded only by Christ’s sacred humanity; hypostatically united to the second Person of the Trinity.  She who is “full of grace” is the pre-eminent beneficiary of Him from Whose “fullness we have received grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16).  Her fullness of grace and its cause, namely the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit, makes the Spirit more operative in and through her than all the other saints combined.  We shall come back to this point shortly but it is worth noting that anything that any of the saints can do in the supernatural realm, Mary can do better.

If the source of Mary’s greatness comes from her mission as Mother of God then anything we say about her can only serve to glorify God rather than to eclipse Him.  Many object to the very idea of the Mediatrix of All Graces because it seems to turn her into a goddess.  And if we didn’t know better we might agree because it is such a supreme calling.  But in truth it is meant to reveal the greatness of God’s saving act.  So powerfully did Christ trample sin and death that He is able to elevate a mere creature to an almost full participation in the life of God.  Rather than diminishing the work of Christ, Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, reveals it more fully.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2).  Mary’s heavenly life is the realization of this promise and the Church presents her as such in order to stoke the fires of our faith, hope and charity.

All Graces?

With the necessary foundation in place, we may now begin to build the house.  When we say that Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces what we mean is not just that Mary obtains grace from God by her prayers but that she also transmits them to us by her actions.  We must first admit its possibility based on what was mentioned above.  If angels and saints can be secondary causes of grace then Mary can do so to a greater degree.  This “greater degree” is not just some graces, but all graces.  As Pope Leo XIII, building on a line of tradition that traces all the way back to the Fathers of the Church, says, “no grace is given to us except through Mary, such being the Divine Will” (Pope Leo XIII, Octobri Mense).  We must not see this however as eliminating all other secondary causes of grace or making them “tertiary” causes of grace.  Instead what this means is, say for something like the Sacraments, that she would obtain for us the grace of a good disposition to receive them. In other words we should see her as the mother who nurtures us with the milk of docility to the grace of the present moment.  She is not the cause of our holiness, but she works behind the scenes to set us to receive its increase.  In this way we say that all graces pass through her Immaculate hands.

Before concluding there is one final objection worth examining.  If Mary truly is the Mediatrix of All Graces, then why would there be any prayers that do not invoke her?  As should be clear by now this objection does not fully grasp what it means to say that she is mediatrix of all graces.  But it also confuses our prayer to her with her prayer to God.  This doctrine does not mean that no grace is given without our asking her, only that she plays such an intimate role in our interior life that no grace is given to us without her asking God for it.  In fact, the only reason why we do ask her and not go directly to God is because she gives more glory to God in the asking than we do.  As God’s most perfect creature, whose soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, her asking is more pleasing to God and becomes an offer He can’t refuse.  This is why she is Our Lady of Mercy and never Our Lady of Justice.

Owning Our Hypocrisy

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If a man was to read the gospels with a fresh mind, that is, without any pre-conceived notion of Who Jesus is and what He was trying to accomplish, he would quickly conclude that one of the worst sins was hypocrisy.  And in a certain sense, he would be right.  There is no group of sinners that Our Lord singles out more often than the hypocrites.  Knowing His profound distaste for this particular sin, it is not surprising that we, His followers, should vigilantly avoid it and keep any traces of it from creeping into our lives.  In many ways this should be one of the easiest sins to avoid because it is also one of the easiest sins to identify in ourselves.  We should know when we are posing to be something we are not.  But this may be oversimplifying the case because it has a subtle way of insinuating itself into our spiritual lives and spreading like a weed.  Therefore, it is fruitful for us to examine this vice more closely.

If lying is to signify by words something different from what is in one’s mind, then dissimulation is a form of lying in which the outward deed does not correspond to the inner intention.  To the topic at hand, hypocrisy is a type of dissimulation when a “sinner simulates the person of a just man” (ST II-II q.111, a 2).  Like all offenses against the truth, when practiced enough, one forgets the truth and begins to believe the untruth.  One starts seeing himself as just.  This was why Our Lord was so harsh with the Pharisees—they had become blinded to their hypocrisy and only by shining His light that the Truth could they be set them free.

Hypocrisy’s Deadly Roots

Rightly recognizing its capacity to kill our spiritual lives, we do all we can to avoid it.  The problem however is that we do too much, mostly because we have failed to make an important distinction.  St. Thomas doesn’t say that you must do everything with perfect intention in order to avoid hypocrisy.  That, unfortunately is the way most of us think of hypocrisy.  No, instead he says that hypocrisy consists in the intention of presenting ourselves as just.  An example might help see the distinction more clearly.  Two men enter an adoration chapel and prostrates themselves before the monstrance.   The first man does so in order to be seen by others and be thought a holy man.  His is an act, not of piety, but of hypocrisy.  The second man does so, not because he wants to adore Our Lord, but because he has always been taught that is what you are supposed to do with only a vague awareness of why.  This is far from being a perfect intention, but it is not hypocrisy.

This description helps to clarify why Our Lord spent so much time pointing hypocrisy out.  It can, and usually does, become a sin of those who have advanced a certain amount in their spiritual life.  At first, we have little interest in appearing to be religious and we may even have reason to hide it.  But as our friends change, our vanity can be directed towards our “spiritual” friends and hypocrisy creeps in.  A hypocrite has to see some value in faking it and thus it is a more “advanced” sin.  This makes Our Lord’s command to “go into your room and shut the door” (Mt 6:6) invaluable for avoiding hypocrisy.  We should perform acts of piety as if we have only an audience of One.

Counterfeit Hypocrisy

There is a further dimension of this that merits some explanation as well.  It is a fear of hypocrisy that keeps us from performing certain acts of piety.  This fear causes us to confuse the false piety of hypocrisy with weak acts of genuine piety.  We hold out until we can get fully behind what we are doing.  For example, a person sends you a novena to St. Joseph, asking you to pray it.  Deep down you believe novenas work, but you feel like you mostly would be going through the motions doing it.  If only your faith was a little stronger than you would do it.  Therefore, to avoid “feeling” like a hypocrite you don’t do it.

It should be clear that to do the novena would not be hypocritical, but what is not clear is that you will never get to the point where your faith is “a little stronger” without doing acts that are weaker.  Faith and the accompanying virtue of piety are habits in our soul and only grow when they are exercised.  By starting with the weak, imperfect acts, they eventually grow to full bloom.  This is not merely going through the motions, but instead adding a little more fervor, a little stronger intention, each time we do them.  With each repeated act, God does His part by strengthening these virtues further because He will not be outdone in generosity.  Before long you not only develop a devotion to St. Joseph, but the Communion of Saints becomes not just a sterile dogma, but a living reality in your life.  This cannot happen however without those first weak baby steps.  “I believe Lord, help my unbelief!”

 

Did Jesus Ever Get the Flu?

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With frigid temperatures gripping much of the country confining much of America to the indoors, flu season has fully blossomed.  In response, many are scrambling to get flu shots so as to build up an immunity to the virus before it hits them.  Setting aside the question of the effectiveness of flu shots in general, I would like to focus on immunity to the flu.  Specifically, to ask whether Our Lord was immune to the flu during His earthly sojourn.  Did Jesus get the flu?

While some of us who are theology geeks might consider it “cool” to speculate on these types of questions, they appear to have little additional spiritual value.  It could be grouped among the other useless musings of the medieval theologians; musings such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  It is hard to imagine, however, that Saint Thomas Aquinas would spend so much time on theoretical questions without them also having spiritual value as well (like he does for this particular question in ST III q.14).  Questions like this one have value because they put the right amount of flesh on the doctrine of the Incarnation.  We can get so stuck on the idea of the Incarnation, that we forget it is first and foremost a real event touching even down to our own time.  Exercises such as these help us to meet Our Lord in the flesh with the right proportion of familiarity and wonder.

Like Us?

Our initial reaction might be to say, Our Lord was human, “like us in all things but sin” (Heb 4:15) and so, while He may never have caught the flu specifically, He almost certainly got sick.  Being fully human would mean He was subject to all kinds of bodily limitations in His human nature, sickness included.

The problem with this hasty response is that “except sin” marks a rather broad exception.  Most of the time we take it to mean that He didn’t do anything wrong.  That is, of course, true, but it does not fully capture the broad scope of the effects of sin, especially personal sin.

To properly frame the issue, let us make what is an important, albeit often misunderstood distinction.  Death in man, because of his composition of matter and spirit, is natural.  It was only a privilege that God gave to Adam and Eve in their state of innocence that they were exempt from suffering and death.  Put another way, man is naturally mortal and it is only by a preternatural gift that the first man and woman could avoid it.  Being “like us in all things but sin” means that Christ took to Himself a passible nature that included a body that was subject to death and suffering. Being “like us in all things but sin” means that His suffering and death were a natural consequence of becoming human and not as a result of Original Sin.

To be absolutely clear the Son, when He took the passible human nature to Himself, was under no necessity to do so, but instead did it voluntarily.  He could just as easily have prevented suffering and death, but He chose to endure them for three reasons.  First, and foremost, He did so that He might make satisfaction for our sins.  The second was so that He might show Himself to be truly human.  His human nature was a sacrament of His divinity in that it was the sign that made visible the reality that He was the Son of God and thus Our Redeemer.  Finally, He did so as to leave us an example of heroic patience.  In short, He did so because it was necessary to complete His mission as Redeemer.

By focusing on the fact that Our Lord willed to suffer, rather than to be the passive victim that Original Sin turns us all into, we can move advance the ball down the field towards a definitive answer.  Our Lord suffered only insofar as it was necessary to make satisfaction for the common sin of human nature.  his was provided that the defects He was subject to did not interfere with His mission as Redeemer.

This helps us to understand why Our Lord experienced hunger, thirst and exhaustion.  In order to make satisfaction for the common sin Our Lord would have to voluntarily assume these common penalties that were imposed on mankind because of Original Sin.  St. John Damascene calls these natural, but not degrading affliction.  This also helps us to rule out a few things.

What Our Lord Didn’t Suffer

First, He did not suffer anything as a result of any hereditary defect.  His constitution was perfect and He was not even prone to certain illnesses.  Second, He would not have suffered any illnesses that would be an indirect result of personal sin—things such as heart disease, diabetes or liver disease.  In summary He did not take on particular sufferings that afflict particular men.

So then, what about the flu and other illnesses?  Since the flu is not a common punishment meted out to human nature in general, then Our Lord would not have suffered it.  One might immediately object that neither was scourging and being crowned with thorns.  Those sufferings were willed because they atoned for the common sins of mankind, especially as they relate to sorrow for our sins and unwillingness to do penance.  Each of the sufferings of His Passion makes these sins visible so to speak and thus cry out for our participation.  These sufferings were a part of His mission as Redeemer whereas the Flu and other such illnesses would have hampered His mission, rendering Him unable to carry out good works.

Our Lord, because His soul was filled with wisdom and grace, could not suffer as a result of failures on either count.  Our Lord, filled with wisdom, would have known how to avoid illness, even if He were subject to it.  Likewise, filled with grace in His humanity and able to heal the sick, He would not have been subject to sickness Himself.

Science and the Immaculate Conception

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One of the most common mistakes that Catholics make regards what is actually celebrated during this week’s feast of the Immaculate Conception.  The general consensus is that it is a feast marking the Immaculate Conception of Jesus.  They this feast with the Feast of the Annunciation which marks the miraculous manner in which the Word took flesh in the womb of the Immaculate Conception.  One thing they are not wrong about however is that, while the feast centers on the circumstances and consequences of Our Lady’s singular grace, the Feast, like all things pertaining to Our Lady really is about Christ.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 was called in response to the Monophysite heresy.  This heresy believed that the two natures of Christ were united such that they really became one, that is, the human was fully absorbed by the divine rendering only a single nature. Its backers proposed the metaphor that the divine nature was like an ocean and His human nature like a drop of water totally lost in the divinity.  This may seem to be unnecessary theological hairsplitting until we follow through to its logical conclusions.  First, with no true humanity, He would only appear to be human like some sort of vision or hologram.  Second, and more importantly, it meant that the humanity of Christ could not be a separate source of activity from the divinity.  He could not really suffer and die as a man and any appearance of those things would be only that, an appearance.

The Council, with the approval of St. Leo the Great, was quick to reject any trace of this and reaffirmed that Christ ss true God and true man, “perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; ‘like us in all things but sin.’. He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God” (quoted in CCC 467).

The necessity of both powers of operation, human and divine, are necessary for Christ’s sacrifice to be efficacious.  Remove either power and atonement becomes a sham.  Mankind incurred a great debt, so great that only God could pay it.  Justice must be served for the moral order of the universe to be restored.  In mercy, God takes the debt as if it is His own.

Christology and the Immaculate Conception

What does all this have to do with the Immaculate Conception?  As true man, Christ was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).  That is self-evident, but it also means His mother was a true mother.  And like all mothers, she supplied to Him her flesh and it was her blood that coursed through His veins.  Put in a more scientific manner, it was her ovum that was fertilized and that ovum became the building block of the human nature that was assumed by the Person of the Son.  She was truly His mother and not merely a surrogate or a human incubator.

Furthermore, we are told that the Son of God come in the flesh is “like us in all things but sin” (Heb 4:15), that is, neither original nor actual sin touched Him.  The impossibility of actual sin we all intuitively grasp, but we may not think about the fact that the human nature He inherited must also be free from original sin and its effects.   Original sin is not sin committed, but “sin” inherited.  It is passed down from our parents.  Since Our Lord had only one human parent, and she was truly His Mother and no mere surrogate, the flesh that Mary passed down to Him had to be free from original sin and its effects.

We begin to now see the logic of the Immaculate Conception as an explanation for the purity of His blood offering and His freedom from Original Sin.  We have ruled out the possibility that by some miraculous intervention the ovum that was to become a part of Our Lord’s human nature was altered at the moment of Conception.  Mary would no longer be His true mother.  But we have not yet seen why Our Lady must be free from the stain of Original Sin from the moment of her conception.  Why could it not be that she was sanctified at some other time?

When Pope Pius IX declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, he commented on the fact that it was “wholly fitting that so wonderful a mother should be ever resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin.”  In other words, he thought it was not theologically necessary, only fitting.  But there may be a certain biological necessity that would help us to see why this dogma is true.

How Science Supports the Immaculate Conception

Thanks to advances in the field of human embryology, we know that the flesh of Our Lord (in Mary’s oocytes) was actually formed at her conception. Although He takes her flesh at the Annunciation, but the actual flesh He takes to Himself (in the oocyte that matured into an egg) was present in Mary at her beginning.  Just as she carried it around after His birth, Mary was, in a very real sense, carrying around the flesh of Our Lord from the moment of her conception.

For the more scientifically minded, we know that at the moment of conception, although obviously not fully formed, the human person is self-directed and thus needs no outside intervention to develop assuming the proper environment.  That means that even if oogenesis occurs at the meiosis I stage of development, everything that is to be used for the formation of those germ cells is already present.  We should make sure that we see development as a continuous process, begun in a definitive direction at conception, and not a series of independent stages.  The stages are simply mental constructs to help us understand the development itself.

Science then would help to confirm that the Immaculate Conception is necessary, even if theology can only describe its fittingness.  Science is a path not just to facts but to wonder, a sure path to the Truth.  The dust from the earth shattering landing of the Son of God has yet to settle, leaving traces of Him everywhere we look.  Science is no threat to our devotion but a means of increasing it.

This realization can also help to increase our devotion in another way.  According to Josephus, the great Jewish historian, the restoration of the Second Temple of Zerubbabel began in the year 19BC.  This is the same year that tradition also says Our Lady was born.  That is, at the same time that Herod set out to rebuild the Temple, God began construction on the true Temple.  The cornerstones of the Temple of Our Lord’s body were laid at the moment of Our Lady’s Conception, of that truth science confirms.

As Friday’s Feast Day comes around, we can be sure that there will be many Catholics confused as to who the Immaculate Conception refers to; thinking it refers to Jesus’ conception and not Our Lady’s.  But they are not entirely wrong—Our Lady, in whom the true Temple was made, carried around the building blocks with her from the moment of her own conception.

Our Lady, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Living the Mysteries

Incarnation, Prayer, The Life of Jesus

Two weeks after being elected as Pope, St. John Paul II gave the members of the Church a glimpse into one of his secrets to sanctity when he admitted that the “Rosary is my favorite prayer. A marvelous prayer! Marvelous in its simplicity and its depth.”  Its simplicity is marked by its humanity.  Unlike any other method of Christian prayer, it engages the entire person—hands, voice, imagination, memory, intellect and will.  Its depth is unparalleled because of its content—the Mysteries of the Life of Christ offered to us food for contemplation.  As Paul VI said, without contemplation “the Rosary is a body without a soul and its recitation is in danger of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas and of going counter to the warning of Christ: “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Mt. 6:7)…” (Blessed Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, 47).  Unfortunately, for many of us who pray the Rosary regularly, this danger is ever-present.

Why do we refer to the events in which we contemplate as the Mysteries of the Rosary?  What exactly do we mean when we use the word “Mysteries” when referring to the events in the life of Christ?  Once we are able to grasp the meaning and implications of using this term, the Rosary comes alive and becomes a source of grace in the life of every Christian who prays it.

In his book titled Christ in His Mysteries, Blessed Columba Marmion defines mysteries as “human and visible signs of a divine and hidden reality.”  He uses “mysteries” in the plural to differentiate from the Mystery of the Incarnation as a whole in order to refer to the fact that in Christ’s life there were no mere events or circumstances.  Everything He did and said has eternal significance and dimension.

The truth that everything that the Word Made Flesh did during His earthly sojourn was charged with eternal meaning stems from the very nature of the Incarnation; time and eternity meet in each event in the life of Christ.  He may have been performing the simplest human action but it was always the Eternal, Unchanging God Who did it.  It may have been accomplished at a specific historic moment, but it is an act that reverberates through all times.  This means that although the historical duration of His actions are past, “they still influence us because each of the mysteries brings its own special grace for our salvation” (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 165).

Because of this, Blessed Columba says that all of Christ’s mysteries are meant to become our mysteries.  Christ received the fullness of grace in His sacred humanity but it was not for Himself alone.  Instead it is for us—“of His fullness that we have all received grace upon grace”(John 1:16).    What he means is not just that we collectively receive graces from each of His mysteries, but individually.  The Catechism, quoting John Paul II’s Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, says that “All Christ’s riches ‘are for every individual and are everybody’s property” (CCC 521—emphasis added).  This means that I can say not just Christ came for us but echo St. Paul’s conviction that Christ “loved me and gave Himself up for me” Gal 2:20).

Fra Angelico--Crucifixion with Sts Dominic and Thomas

In order to take ownership of what Christ won for me, I have to come to the conviction Christ had me very specifically in mind when each of these events happened.  Cultivating this conviction is the key to applying the events of the Gospel to our lives and to praying the Mysteries of the Rosary well.

This is where it is helpful to look at some of the effects of the Incarnation.  Specifically, how could Jesus, a man in all things but sin, have had me in mind when He did something?  After all, He was, like all of us, constrained by time.  He did not have “time” to think of all people, at all times when He did something.  But this was no mere earthly man, but the “man come down from heaven” (John 6:46) whose soul was united to the Second Person of the Trinity. In Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John’s Gospel, He says that eternal life is that the blessed should know God.  When we speak of the beatific vision, what we mean is eternal union with God.  Christ’s soul had this from the moment of conception because it was more closely united to God than any other soul.  It was united in the Person.  This truth is more than mere theological musing, but has very specific consequences related to our discussion.  In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII says “[F]or hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love. O marvelous condescension of divine love for us! O inestimable dispensation of boundless charity! In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself” (75).  I never ceased to leave His mind during His earthly life even as I never cease to leave it today.

This awareness that I was present to Christ when a specific event was occurring changes the very tenor of my prayer.  I am able to enter the event in the manner that He intended and participate it.  I may speak to Him about the specific grace that He won for me and ask Him to prepare me to receive it.  Without this, Christian meditation is always in danger of becoming merely pious sentiments or intellectual investigation instead of a Spirit-driven response to the Word made Flesh.

This is what make the Rosary such a powerful Christian prayer.  By contemplating the Joyful Mysteries, I am able to be present in the “Hidden Years” of Christ’s life when He wins the graces of everyday life for me.  By contemplating the Luminous Mysteries, I am able to be present in those moments when Christ sought to reveal Himself more fully to me.  By contemplating the Sorrowful Mysteries, I am able to be present in those moments of His sufferings offering Him consolation.  By contemplating the Glorious Mysteries, I am able to share now in the personal fruits of the Resurrection and Pentecost with Mary, the Queen Assumed into Heaven.  The point is that the Rosary grows in depth in proportion to our habit of placing ourselves within the specific mystery, knowing we were already there in Christ’s mind and that He has something very specific He intended to give us personally.

Very often art can teach us deep truths in ways that mere words cannot.  It seems that no artist captures this truth regarding our presence with Christ during His life than Blessed Giovanni of Fiesole, better known as Fra Angelico.  In many of his paintings that depict scenes from the life of Christ, he also includes a well-known saint alongside Him to reveal this deep truth.  May we too strive to take our rightful places in the life of Our Lord!