Category Archives: Saints

On Liberty of Conscience

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The character of evil, in imitation of its greatest champion, is such that it is ever on the prowl looking to devour the freedom of each man.  One of the means by which such freedom is protected is liberty of conscience.  This natural right of conscience protects each man from having to act in such a way that he is forced to participate in something that he knows to be evil.  As the prevailing culture moves further and further from its Christian roots, the protection by law of the rights of conscience becomes increasingly important.  Therefore, it is worth examining more thoroughly in order bring into relief why it is so vital.

The Character of Conscience

First, we must clear up some of the popular misconceptions about conscience.  It is not a thing like the proverbial angel on the shoulder, but a mode of judgement.  More specifically it is a judgment of practical reason that is linked to the power of man to do what is right and shun what is evil within the concrete circumstances of human life.  Since it is a power of practical reason, it depends upon a knowledge of the principles that lead to genuine human thriving even if it is only concerned with applying those principles.  It is then the power of man to link truth with goodness. 

Conscience, even if it issues commands to the will, is not an act of the will.  Therefore, we must always keep conscience from becoming synonymous with self-will.  Most people treat conscience as if it were freedom to do whatever they want rather than being beholden to the truth.  It carries about with it a certain obstinacy of “sticking to your guns” no matter what.  Therefore, authority is quick to use its power to command actions in conformity with cultural norms.  This is nothing more than Power attempting to replace conscience. 

Conscience protection is the Catholic’s last line of defense against the growing power of the State.  The next step is to cross over into the field of martyrdom.  So we must fight vehemently to keep it in place.  The necessary principles for this defense were laid out quite articulately over a century ago by St. John Henry Newman.  In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, the saint gives us a defense of the Supremacy of Conscience that fits with a true and Catholic understanding of conscience and its inviolability.

Conscience and Character

Newman notes that all men are by nature bound to observe the natural law.  Our apprehension of this Divine Law occurs within the realm of conscience.  Even “though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.”  Steeped within Catholic tradition, Newman views conscience as the voice of God and not merely the creation of man.  It may be more or less heard correctly by each man, but it still remains what he calls the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”

Based upon the fact that conscience is properly viewed as the voice of God, the Fourth Lateran Council said: “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.”  To act against conscience is to act against God.  Despite the fact that God has implanted this voice of conscience commanding us to do good and avoid evil, the ear of the intellect needs to be trained and given its “due formation.”  This formation must come through reason enlightened by Divine Faith because the latter was given to purify the former.  To fail to form the conscience properly constitutes a great evil, perhaps one of the greatest because it chooses to deny conscience its rightful dignity.

A man has a right to something because he has a corresponding duty.  The right of conscience flows from his obligation to obey it.  But this obligation does not flow from a need to be true to oneself, but to obey God.  As Newman puts it, if conscience is the voice of the Moral Governor then the rights of conscience are really the rights of the Creator and the duties toward Him.  “Conscience,” Newman says, “has rights because it has duties”. This ultimately is what makes freedom of conscience so important and why we must protect it at all costs.  St. Thomas More is the model in this regard.  He was a martyr because he obeyed the dictates of God mediated through His conscience.

As religious liberty goes into decline, conscience protection becomes more and more important.  Pope Leo XIII called it true liberty, the liberty of the sons of God that shows that “the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong.” (Libertas, 30).  When all the power of the State bears down upon a single man and he still refuses to join in evil, it shows that man is bigger than the State and shows that he is made for God. Leo XIII calls it “the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God” (Libertas, 30).

Kindred Spirits?

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Summing up why Sacred Scripture matters, St. Jerome once proclaimed that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”  The famously acerbic Doctor of the Church knew that the Word Made Flesh could be found on every page of the Bible and therefore dedicated his life to studying the Scriptures and producing accurate translations of the books of the Bible.  Living in a time when many of the versions had become corrupt due to poor translation and copyist errors, he learned Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic just so that he could create the most accurate translation of the ancient books.  So gifted was he in this area that the pope at the time, Pope Damasus, asked him to produce an “official” translation in Latin that became known as the Vulgate.  It is this translation that remains the official translation of the Church to our day.

Like much of what the somewhat contentious Jerome did during his lifetime, his work was not without controversy in his day.  Little did he know that this controversy would be felt a millennium later when a former Augustinian monk stumbled upon some of his early thought and used his arguments to justify his own position.  The bulk of Jerome’s work was done when the Church did not have an official canon—official in the sense that the Church had authoritatively spoken as to which books were part of the Bible and which weren’t.  It was not until 382 that Pope Damasus produced a list of the canon that was later affirmed by the Council of Hippo (393) and the Council of Carthage (397).  Nevertheless, there was still widescale agreement among the Faithful as to which books could be used in the Liturgy (which was the home of Scripture) and which couldn’t.  There was still some question about a few books like the Book of James, Revelation, the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians and the Didache, but most agreed that the former two belonged and the latter did not.  But before officially closing the canon, Pope Damasus sought to produce an accurate translation of the entire canon of Scripture so that the Church could have a single collection of the books to rely on.

It is important to note however that the debated books never included what has become known as the Deuterocanon (or Apocrypha in Protestant circles).  This name, Deuterocanon, was used to distinguish books of the Old Testament that could be used for argumentation and evangelization with Jews from those that couldn’t.  For the Jews, once they realized that their books were being coopted by the Christians, had begun to build a wall around their Scriptures and rejected all those books that were not found in Hebrew.  A list that included the seven books (Baruch, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Sirach, Judith, Wisdom, and Tobit) and parts of two others (Daniel and Esther) of the Catholic canon.  But the Church still viewed both sets of books as inspired and we find those books included among all the early lists of the approved Scriptures by the Church Fathers. 

Jerome’s Line of Reasoning

The agreement in the Early Church regarding the Deuterocanonical books was unanimous except for one man—St. Jerome.  For Jerome made a mistake in his thinking, a mistake of which the aftershocks are still felt today.  As he gathered up the various translations of the books, he found that the copies of the Septuagint, that is, the ancient Greek translation of the books of the Old Testament, were various and not wholly consistent.  Translating them without finding an “official” text proved difficult to say the least.  He also found that the Hebrew texts, what he called the Hebrew Masoretic (HM) texts, had been widely circulated for several centuries and were much cleaner and consistent.  From these two facts, Jerome came to an incorrect conclusion.  He thought that the HM texts were the “correct” ones and not the Septuagint.  He called this the principle of “Hebrew Verity”.  And since the Deuterocanon did not appear in the HM texts he also concluded that they were not inspired.

Flash forward 1100 years and Martin Luther, whose theology, especially on indulgences and praying for the dead, is clearly contradicted by these books, is looking for a reason to throw these books out of the Canon.  He stumbles across Jerome’s reasoning and latches on to it.  The story of how he removed the books has been covered previously, so we won’t rehash that here.  What we will cover however is that Jerome was wrong in his line of thinking and therefore Luther merely resurrected his error and passed on a stunted Canon to his Protestant progeny.

Why Jerome was Wrong

We know that Jerome was wrong for two reasons.  The first is related to the findings in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  This sacred library was discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds and contained the earliest translations of many of the books in the Old Testament.  These translations precede any of the earliest translations we had up to that point by almost 1000 years and precede Jerome’s HM text by almost 500 years in some case.  Why this is significant for the discussion at hand is that among the books that were found were the books of the Deuterocanon.  And not only were they in the library, but there were Hebrew and Aramaic translations.  These translations, as well as the translations of the other books that were found, are closer in substance to the Septuagint and not to the HM texts.  In short, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Jerome erred in thinking that just because the HM texts were consistent, they were correct.  The problem was that the parts of the Septuagint were actually preserving the original Hebrew better than the currently existing Hebrew and the Dead Sea Scrolls show this.

While Luther might be excused for not knowing this, the second reason should have convinced him.  The reason we know Jerome was wrong is because Jerome said he was wrong.  In a letter Against Rufinus he said,

“What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the Story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us.”

And this ultimately helps us to uncover not just the error Luther made but his motivation.  For he cites St. Jerome as his authority, but then does not do what Jerome did.  For Jerome, even though he had personal reservations against those books being included in the official canon, still translated them, and ultimately deferred to the authority of the Church.  He knew that his personal opinion could err, but the Church could not, especially when it comes to the Canon of Scripture.  He knew that a fallible list of infallible books leads to an absurdity, one that tugs at the seamless garment of the content of faith until it entirely unravels. 

It is not much of a stretch, especially when we read their writings, to see that Jerome and Luther were kindred spirits with one huge exception.  St. Jerome has the humility of a saint and deferred to the authority of the Church.  Luther had the pride of devil and decided to set himself up as his own authority.

Finding the Lost Ark

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One of the charges often leveled by Protestants against Catholics, especially when it comes to Marian doctrine and devotion, is that it has no grounding in Scripture.  The New Testament, it is argued, says very little that supports these dogmas.  There is perhaps no defined dogma that more demonstrates this than the most recent, the Assumption.  But when we look at Scripture as a whole, however, we find a completely different story.

When St. Paul goes to Ephesus, the same Ephesus where the Beloved Disciple settled would eventually settle with Our Lady, he encounters worshippers of the female fertility goddess Artemis (Roman goddess Diana).  This was hardly unique as many of the pagan religions had similar goddesses.  It is into this historical reality that the Mother of God, who was a real person that could still be touched and seen, lived.  So, the earlier New Testament writings had good reason to remain relatively silent about her role in salvation.  This helped to keep the message of the Good News focused on Christ and avoided any chance that the pagans would wrongly assume that Christianity was simply offering a new pantheon of gods (like when St. Paul speaks at the Areopagus, Acts 17:22-32).  Without great care, especially when she was alive, there would most certainly have arisen a cult that could have eclipsed or put her on par with her Son. 

How St. John Described Our Lady

If it stopped there, then perhaps the objections that Catholics merely resurrected those practices might be valid.  But it didn’t.  For after she left the earth, St. John, the man who next to her Son knew her best, left the Church all that was needed for the foundation of Marian devotion.  With surprising clarity, in what is an otherwise mystical and confusing book, John tells how he met Our Lady during his heavenly sojourn.  He found the Woman clothed with the Sun with a crown of twelve stars who gave birth to the male child who was to rule all nations of the earth (c.f. Rev 12:1-5).  Readers of John’s gospel would also know that when he uses the title “Woman” he is referring to Mary.       

To make it perfectly clear who he is talking about, he introduces this section by mentioning something that would have immediately grabbed his readers’ attention—the Ark of the Covenant.  “And the temple of God in heaven was opened, and there was seen the ark of his covenant in His temple…” (Rev, 11:19).  In other words, in John’s inspired understanding, Mary is the Ark of the Covenant.  And in calling her such, he now links everything that is said of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament to the person of Mary. 

The Ark of the New Covenant

Recall that the original Ark of the Covenant held God’s Word written on Stone in the Ten Commandments.  Now, the true Ark of the Covenant carried the Word written in Flesh.  The original Ark of the Covenant held a piece of the heavenly bread manna.  The true Ark of the Covenant carried the Bread of Life. Finally, the original Ark of the Covenant held the staff of Aaron as a sign of the Old Covenant priesthood while the true Ark of the Covenant carried the new High Priest of the New Covenant. 

This connecting of Mary to the Ark of the Covenant was not lost on the early Church either.  The great defender of Christological orthodoxy, St. Athanasius in homily passed on the traditional link between the two when he said,

“O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness.  For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word?…O [Ark of the] Covenant clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides…You carry within you the feet, the head, and the entire body of the perfect God…you are God’s place of repose.”

Once the connection with the Ark of the Covenant is made, we can link it to another key text in the New Testament: the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth.  David took the Ark of the Covenant into the hill country of Judea where he leapt for joy and the Ark remained there for three months (2 Sam 6).  After the Annunciation, Our Lady, carrying the newly-conceived Son of God, travels into the same hill country where John the Baptist leaps for joy at the sound of her voice.  She also stays there for three months.  It is clear that St. Luke is deliberately evoking images of the Ark of the Covenant to suggest that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.

The eventual resting place of the Ark of the Covenant has been the subject of speculation and rumor for many centuries.  According to 2 Maccabees, the prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave and God would reveal its location at the appropriate time (c.f. 2 Macc 2:1-8).  When his followers despaired that he did not mark the path to it, he prophesied that “the place is to remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows them mercy.  Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will be seen…” (2 Macc 2:7-8).  During the Annunciation, Mary was “overshadowed by the Holy Spirit,” the description of which would have evoked the return the “glory cloud” that overshadowed the Tabernacle (c.f. Ex. 40).  Now this same cloud is seen and announces that God has gathered the people together and shown them mercy.  This overshadowing then marks not just the presence of God, but the presence of the New Ark of the Covenant.  The Feast of the Visitation then is a celebration of the revelation of the place where the Ark of the Covenant can be found—wherever Mary went.

The connection between the Ark of the Covenant and the Assumption of Mary is made explicit by John during his heavenly vision.  But the Old Testament also teaches that the Ark was never meant to remain on earth or, God forbid rot in a cave, but to go to its resting place with God in heaven (c.f. Ps 132:8).  This is why when St. John Damascene, when marking the Feast of the Dormition of Mary, connects Our Lady’s Assumption with the Ark of the Covenant: “Today the holy, living ark of the living God, the one who carried her own maker within herself, comes to rest in the temple of the Lord not made by hands.  David—her ancestor and God’s—leaps for joy; the angels join in the dance” (St. John Damascene, On the Dormition of Mary, II).

The quest for the Ark of the Covenant is over.  It has been found and she is Our Mother Mary who brings Jesus with her everywhere she goes.

Preparing for Martyrdom

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Very few men have changed the world as much as Francesco di Bernadone did.  While in prayer one day in a run down chapel in Assisi, Italy, he received a Divine mandate to “rebuild my Church.”    After a false start by literally rebuilding the church he was standing in, he set out to reform the crumbling Church.  In the process, St. Francis as he is better known, became one of the most beloved saints for his radical commitment to Christ and His Church.  But the rebuilding of the Portiuncula was not his only “blunder”.  He also thought he could win the martyr’s crown once by visiting the Sultan and trying to get him to convert.  He failed on both accounts, winning the Sultan’s esteem but not his soul.  Francis may have been called to be a great saint, but not a martyr, mainly because he misunderstood martyrdom.

When pressed, most of us would say that martyrdom consists in dying for the faith.  That of course is part of it, but it is not really the primary part.  The primary part is in the literal meaning of the term martyr.  A martyr is a witness.  And not just any witness, but is a certain type of witness that may end in death, but it need not per se.  That is why we refer to Our Lady as Queen of Martyrs and her spiritual son St. John the Evangelist as martyrs even though they did not die by the sword.  They both attest to the fact that death is not the end or the goal, but a means by which the martyr witnesses to Christ.  Otherwise we would not be able to differentiate it with dying for a cause.  As noble as that might be, it is not the same thing as Christian martyrdom.

Martyrs as Witnesses to What?

The key in grasping the distinction is understanding what it is that a martyr is witnessing to.  He is witnessing to the truth of the Resurrection of Christ and his own personal share in it.  His Master too was once put to death, but by His own power He destroyed death’s hold over Him and all those who are in Him.  “O death where is your victory.  O death where is your sting” (1Cor 15:55).  The Christian martyr may fear the pain leading up to death, but has no fear of death itself.  In fact, her eyes are fixed on the prize, so much so that she is willing to undergo any amount of pain to obtain it.

The hagiography of the martyrs is full of stories of incredibly painful deaths that the martyrs suffered at the hands of their persecutors.  But hardly a single story describes the pain, only the joy.  We might be tempted to think it is merely omitted for the sake of the reader.  Tempted, that is, until we realize that the descriptions of their countenance seems to suggest the exact opposite.  They seem to feel nothing.  They don’t sweat while they are being boiled alive (St. Cecilia), their bodies are riddled with arrows and spears while they continue preaching (St. Edmond), they sing Psalms for 15 days in a starvation bunker (St. Maximilian Kolbe) and they joke while being roasted alive (St. Lawrence).  You might think they felt no pain at all based on the descriptions. 

And herein lies the important truth of martyrdom—they most probably didn’t feel pain.  Or at least, if they did, it was way out of proportion to what was actually happening.  And that is because martyrdom is a gift from God so that the merits of witnessing even to the point of death are given to the martyr.  They are witnessing not to their faith in the Resurrection, but to God’s power that was made manifest through the Resurrection.  The martyr is tried so far beyond human capacities that it becomes so blatantly obvious that it is only by the power of God that a human being could endure these things.  The martyr then is both a witness and an instrument.  Martyrdom is not really about the martyr at all but about God.  It is a very public witness to His power over death as shown by how hard it is to actually kill the martyr.  The witnesses to the martyrdom are left without a doubt that something supernatural has happened, even if they later choose to deny it.

Why St. Francis was Wrong…and Right

St. Francis wasn’t wrong in thinking that martyrdom would fulfill his vocation to rebuild the Church.  He was wrong by not seeing it as the means God had chosen for him to do it.  It was a gift that he tried to seize.  But he was absolutely right in his assessment that it would rebuild the Church.  This is why Tertullian uttered his famous dictum that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” 

God never gives up on man so that when the world goes deaf, He simply speaks in sign language using martyrs.  Trapped in paganism and hedonism, Rome was transformed by the Christian martyrs who witnessed to the power of their God over death (no other god had that) and no fear of pain and suffering.  Roman soldiers thought they were brave until they watched a young girl march to her death with a smile on her face.  After trying to kill her they knew something Divine was happening.  They saw a way out of the maze of their Godless existence.  And the Church grew at 40% per decade into the middle of the fourth century on the preaching of the martyrs.

Martyrs have been and will remain an integral part of the preaching of the Church.  In some times and places they used only words to preach and in other ages, especially those in which the world grew tone deaf to Divine invitations, the preachers were the martyrs. 

One can’t help but see the parallels between our own decadent society and the decadence of Rome that is leading to widescale deafness.  The public witness of many Catholics is falling upon deaf ears so we should expect that God will raise up a generation of martyrs soon.  Our role is to prepare ourselves and the next generation for this eventuality.  Like in all the previous persecution it will come with little warning and those who have prepared well for it will be able to respond to the gift.  Those who haven’t won’t.  But either way, we should expect that they will be coming soon.

St. Catherine of Siena and the Latest Church Scandal

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For anyone who thought that the clergy sexual abuse scandal was something that was left in the past, the recent revelations regarding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick have shown that the cancer has metastasized.  Round two promises to be uglier than round one, especially since the former Cardinal’s actions were widely known throughout the American Church and beyond.  The laity could be excused for harboring a feeling of déjà vu, especially given the overall weariness with feeling like sheep without a shepherd.  They might even be excused for looking for looking for ways to take matters into their own hands; might that is until they read the writings of one of the Doctors of the Church.

St. Catherine and the Dialogue on the Clergy

Best known for her ecstatic dictation of a dialogue with God the Father, St. Catherine of Siena lived in an era marked by clerical corruption.  In fact, she was instrumental in reforming the Church by executing some of the very things the Father dictated to her.  There are large sections in her Dialogue in which God tells Catherine what must be done about sinful clergy.  These words, rooted deeply in the Gospel message are particularly relevant for lay people today and merit special attention given the state of the Church today.

The Father begins His dialogue with Catherine reminding her of the great dignity of priests and prelates regardless of their personal sin.  He tells her that “it is impossible to have a greater dignity than theirs” because He has made them “My Christs” (Dialogue, 113).  This dignity attaches to the office and thus cannot be wiped away no matter how often the clergy attempts to deface it through personal sin.  He is well aware that with this dignity comes a great responsibility and that “by sinning they are abusing the souls of their neighbors” and will one day have to answer for it; “Their dignity in being My ministers will no save them from My punishment…they will be punished more severly than all the other because they have received more from My kindness.  Having sinned so miserably they are deserving of greater punishment” (121).  But from the perspective of the laity there is always a certain dignity such that “To Me redounds every assault they make on My ministers.”  He goes on to say that “a person can do no worse violence than to assume the right to punish My ministers” (116).  What the Father is reminding us is that it is the Church’s role to punish the sinful clergy and not the laity (unless appointed by the Church to do so).  This applies even when the Church seems to ignore it or turns a blind eye.  This, as we shall see in a moment, does not mean the laity need to act like sheep led to the slaughter but that they have an active role in bringing about justice.

This role is revealed to Catherine by the Father when He begins “to show her the wretchedness of their [the sinful clergy] lives” (121).  First He describes how the sin is made manifest in their unwillingness to correct others.  The ministers “let My members grow rotten for want of correction…because of fear of losing their rank and position or because they themselves are living in the same or greater sins.”  It is as if they are blind leaders of the blind (117).

The Sins of the Clergy

And what, besides human respect, are these “same or greater sins”?  The Father “reveals these miserable sins of theirs,” the “stench which displeases not only Me…but the devils as well.”  These sins are the sins which are so hateful to Me that for this sin alone five cities (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar) were struck down by My divine judgment.  For My divine justice could no longer tolerate it, so despicable to Me is this abominable sin…So you see, dearest daughter, how abominable this sin is to Me in any person. Now imagine how much more hateful it is in those I have called to live celibately” (124).

These words may have been spoken in the 14th Century, but they are as relevant today as they were then.  The parallels to our situation today are uncanny so that through St. Catherine God the Father has left us a blueprint for how the laity ought to respond .  Catherine grasps that these sins are revealed by Providential design.  The Father says, “Sometimes I reveal these miserable sins of theirs to My servants (just as I did to you) so that they may be even more concerned for their salvation and hold them out to Me with greater compassion, praying for them with sorrow for their sins and the insult they are to Me ”(124).  God the Father wants the laity to bring these sinful clerics before Him in merciful prayer so that He might be further glorified in His mercy.  Of this response, many of our contemporaries have already spoken.  But Catherine knows the Father is asking for more from us when she pleads, “O eternal Father, be merciful to Me and to these creatures of yours!  Otherwise take the soul from my body, for I do not think I can stand it anymore. Or give me some respite by showing me where I and  Your other servants can find refuge so that this leprosy will not be able to harm us or deprive us of our bodily and spiritual purity” (124).  She begs the Father how it is that she might escape this leprosy that is infecting the Body.  The Father tells her, “charity will make you put up with your neighbors with true patience by enduring pain, torment, and weariness no matter what their source. In this way you will flee and escape the leprosy” (124). In short, the Father is asking St. Catherine and each one of us not only for prayer, but for penance.  He is calling upon the laity in a very specific way “to fill up in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24).

From within the context of the renewed universal call to holiness, God has providentially arranged for the outward show of sanctity of the Church to depend in a very particular way on the laity.  In an age infected with clericalism this is a most important message.  If the laity are truly to be God’s other “Christs” as well, then they must continue His mission of reparation.  This trial by fire is a clarion call in an ecclesial environment that has shunned penance for generations.  Now the future of the Church depends upon it.  The Holy Spirit may have promised it would not fail, but a renewed laity can make it thrive.  That renewal begins with lives dedicated to penance and reparation.  St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Who’s Afraid of a Little Sin?

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With the smoke still rising from the second great war, Pope Pius XII surveyed the moral landscape and declared that “the greatest sin today is that men have lost the sense of sin.” This theme, a loss of the sense of sin, has been a recurring one highlighted by each of the subsequent six pontificates.  In many ways it represents one of the greatest challenges to the Christian in the modern world.  Most of us still believe in sin, but living in the midst of a culture that laughs at any mention in it, we fail to see the ugliness of even the “smallest” sin.  The thought of achieving our freedom and conquering sin is nice, but not something we truly desire.  And so we simply live a stagnant life by merely avoiding the big sins, or at least that is how we reason.  After all, how could we grasp the gravity of sin when it is all around us?  Does a fish know that it is wet?  So how could we even hope to avoid the little sins and climb the heights of holiness?

When we examine the question more deeply we realize that the problem is hardly unique, even if it is more acute in our age.  Preaching a Lenten homily 175 years ago, Blessed John Henry Newman asked pretty much the same question:

“As time goes on, and Easter draws nearer, we are called upon not only to mourn over our sins, but especially over the various sufferings which Christ our Lord and Savior underwent on account of them. Why is it, my brethren, that we have so little feeling on the matter as we commonly have? Why is it that we are used to let the season come and go just like any other season, not thinking more of Christ than at other times, or, at least, not feeling more? Am I not right in saying that this is the case? and if so, have I not cause for asking why it is the case? We are not moved when we hear of the bitter passion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for us. We neither bewail our sins which caused it, nor have any sympathy with it.” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 6, Sermon 4).

The Blessed convert hints at the reason in the framing of the question.  We do not recognize the seriousness of our sins because the Passion of Christ, not just the entire event, but the whipping, the scourging, the being dragged in chains, the carrying of the cross, the falling , the crown of thorns, the nails, and the suffocation, leaves no lasting impression on us.  We might as well be watching a movie.  Disturbing perhaps to think about, but quickly left aside as we move on with life.  It is not that we are uncaring, it is just way too abstract.  And why is this?  Newman again responds saying “For this one reason, my brethren, if I must express my meaning in one word, because you so little meditate. You do not meditate, and therefore you are not impressed” (ibid.).

Why Meditation on the Passion Saves Us

Newman is really reiterating something that all the saints have said.  Meditation upon the passion of Christ is necessary for both our salvation and our perseverance in the quest for it.  Echoing s similar theme, a contemporary of Newman’s, Blessed Columba Marmion said that he was “convinced that outside the Sacraments and liturgical acts, there is no practice more useful to our souls than the Way of the Cross made with devotion.  It is sovereign supernatural efficacy” (Christ and His Mysteries, p.309).

Why would Blessed Marmion make such a profound statement?  Because he realized that the Passion and Death of Christ is an eternal event and that it has lost none of its power to heal and transform us. In his words, “When we contemplate the sufferings of Jesus He grants us, according to the measure of our faith, the grace to practice the virtues He revealed during those sacred hours…When Christ lived on earth there emanated from His divine Person an all-powerful strength…Something analogous happens when we put ourselves into contact with Jesus by faith.  Christ surely bestowed special graces on those who with love, followed Him on the road to Golgotha or were present at His immolation.  He still maintains that power now.”

Faith enables us to participate in the Passion of Christ simply by bringing it before us in meditation.  It gives us the opportunity to draw directly from its specific, and very personal fruits.  At the root of discipleship is Christ’s command, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me”().  And only by meditating on His Passion can we know what that cross looks like or to have the power to pick it up.  “Follow me” is meant literally by walking right behind Him during His own Passion, something that can only be done by putting ourselves there.

Two Examples

Scripture offers us two contrasting visions of disciples who did and did not meditate upon the Passion of Christ that serve as a caution and a model respectively.

The three-fold denial of St. Peter is well known.  His disavowal of Christ is one of the things that make him very relatable to all of us.  Because we can easily relate to him, we can also fall prey to his blind spot.  Why, exactly, did St. Peter abandon Our Lord?  In short it was an unwillingness to meditate upon the Passion.

Throughout Our Lord’s public ministry the theme of His Passion and Death was always looming in the background, even if it was shrouded in mystery.  He announced it to the Apostles three times (no coincidence) and each time it was denied by Peter.  We should not be surprised that his unwillingness to sit with the mystery of the cross then led to his fall.  It was his willingness to relive the Passion in his mind and his own share in it that gave St. Peter the grace of final perseverance (c.f. Jn 21).

Our Lady on the other hand is the ultimate model of meditation upon the Passion.  Each of the three times it was presented to her in Sacred Scripture, rather than denying it or allowing it to become abstract, “she kept these words in her heart.”  This habit of sitting with the mystery of Christ’s Passion enabled her to assimilate that same spirit and to walk with Jesus on the road to Calvary.  It was this habit, in other words, that won for her the grace of perseverance.  It is for this reason that she can serve as both a model and a guide in our own personal meditation of the Passion of Christ.  It is also one of the ways in which she intercedes for us to obtain the grace of final perseverance.

After one of her many encounters with Mercy Incarnate, St. Faustina reflected that Jesus was pleased “best by [her] meditating on His sorrowful Passion and by such meditation much light falls upon my soul. He who wants to learn true humility should reflect upon the Passion of Jesus. I get a clear under-standing of many things that I could not comprehend before” (Diary, 267).  The habitual meditation upon Our Lord’s Passion is a constant among all the saints and will become a source of unlimited spiritual growth for the rest of us as well.  When we intimately come to know the sufferings our sins cause we will no longer find them desirable, transforming not only ourselves but everyone around us relegating the “loss of a sense of sin” to the past.

Not So Ordinary Joe

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Only by denying the obvious can one fail to see that the collapse of our society is really about the collapse of the first society, the family.  This collapse is directly related to a paradigm shift in which the husband and father has become superfluous, an add-on at best.  It is no coincidence that at the same time devotion to St. Joseph has grown cold.  Conventional piety and conventional wisdom make strange bed-fellows.  The popular understanding of the Holy Family would have us believe that St. Joseph too was simply an add-on to the Holy Family; his presence not vital, but pretense, a mere keeping up of appearances.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Far from being irrelevant this not-so ordinary Joe remains the most powerful heavenly intercessor next to his wife.  It may just be that by restoring St. Joseph to his rightful place within hagiography that this righteous carpenter can help to build a Catholic society once again.

Partial blame for the loss of popular piety might be laid at the feet of tradition itself.   Joseph has often been described as the foster or adopted father of Jesus and this might be partly to blame for diminishing his role as Patron and Protector of the Church.  One certainly cannot fault the reason for referring to him as such—insurance meant to protect the Divine origin of the man Jesus Christ and the virgin birth that accompanied His entrance into the world.  Insurance should not diminish his greatness however. Referring to his “adopted” or “foster” father uses a relatively common occurrence—adoption—to describe something that is utterly unique—the Virgin Birth.  There is a certain accidental quality to becoming an adoptive father.  A woman who already has a son enters a marriage and the man takes the son to be his own.  But there is nothing accidental about Joseph becoming the father of Jesus.  From eternity God pre-ordained that Jesus would be conceived and born from within the marriage of Mary and Joseph.  Jesus was not given just to Mary, but, like all children, was given to Joseph and Mary as husband and wife.  St. Joseph was the right guy in the right place at the right time.  As proof of this, it was his humility (and not thoughts of infidelity as conventional wisdom again would have us mistakenly believe) that caused him to doubt whether he was worthy of so high a calling (c.f. Mt 1:19).

The Mission of St. Joseph

“The right guy in the right place at the right time” put in more theological terms means that St. Joseph had a very specific mission from God; one for which He equipped the Guardian of the Redeemer.  Now we begin to catch a glimpse of the cause of his greatness.  As we attempt to “rank” the saints, we do so according to their proximity to the author of grace Himself, Christ.  Our Lady is the highest of all the saints because she was given grace commensurate with her role as Mother of God.  Her relationship to Christ was utterly unique as His Mother for she is the only person who shared the same flesh with Him.  It is for this reason and this reason alone that she is “full of grace.”  Related, although not to the same degree, is St. Joseph.  His relationship to Christ as His earthly father and all that entails, including safeguarding the Boy and His Mother, affords him greater dignity than all the saints, save one.  As Pope Leo XIII put it,

“Joseph shines among all mankind by the most august dignity, since by divine will, he was the guardian of the Son of God and reputed as His father among men. Hence it came about that the Word of God was humbly subject to Joseph, that He obeyed him, and that He rendered to him all those offices that children are bound to render to their parents. From this two-fold dignity flowed the obligation which nature lays upon the head of families, so that Joseph became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine house whose chief he was. And during the whole course of his life he fulfilled those charges and those duties” (Quamquam Pluries, 3).

The Pope’s point regarding Jesus’ obedience toward St. Joseph is important especially because it might be easy to overlook the implications of this.  For Our Lord to be obedient to Joseph means that Joseph must have received specific divine illumination never to lead Our Lord astray.  In other words, Our Lord would always obey him because he was enlightened with a supernatural prudence and animated by divine charity.  This is why many Church Fathers have suggested that St. Joseph received the grace of impeccability at some point.  In a certain sense it would be fitting that a man whom God the Son made Himself subject to would be preserved from error.  One can hardly imagine living with Jesus for many years, serving Him with a paternal love and not being completely freed from all sin.

A Powerful Intercessor

It is Jesus’ obedience to St. Joseph, the perfect obedience of son to a father that makes St. Joseph a powerful intercessor.  Our Lord refuses nothing St. Joseph asks for.  But this is not the primary reason why we should go to Joseph like the sons of Israel did.  It is St. Joseph’s sanctity, his plentitude of grace that puts Him closest to God and ranks him as the most powerful of saints, save one.  His intercessory power is so great because he is so powerfully united to God that he knows only His will.  Even his way of asking, because of who it is that is doing the asking, brings more glory to God.

If all human fatherhood is an image of God’s fatherhood, then St. Joseph’s is the most glorious of all.  The Father chose him to be His representative on earth; giving to him in a very real way His fatherly authority over the Son.  Joseph’s fatherhood most perfectly resembles God’s fatherhood because they have the same son, united to Him by love; a love that Joseph showed by his toils and sacrifices.  In an analogous way, all Christian fatherhood can find a model in St. Joseph.  In Baptism a child becomes a child of God and God then transfers his royal right to each father.  With St. Joseph families can find a steady refuge, especially fathers.

Given the vital role that St. Joseph played in the first coming of the Lord, we should expect that he will play an equally important role in the second coming.  One of the ways in which he will do that is by healing and strengthening families, especially those that turn to him during these tumultuous times.  St. Joseph, pray for us!

Take and Read

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As a Bible-believing Christian I will confess to finding red-letter Bibles to be a paradox.  Paradoxical, not in their application—words that are written as coming directly from the mouth of Jesus have red text—but in their principle.  The implication being that these words and their red lettering should give us pause as we read them because these are really the word of God, spoken directly from the mouth of the Word of God made man.  Do the words of Jesus according to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John carry a heavier weight than the words of God contained in the letters of Paul or Peter?  The red letters might lead us to believe this to be true, but the truth is that both are equally acts of condescension by God to speak to us in a language we can understand.  It is the Word of God using the voice of man.  It is not just the red letters, but “all scripture [that] is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).  Perhaps the publishers of those Bibles can be forgiven for succumbing to a marketing ploy of sorts, but it also betrays a pitfall that many of us fall into in our use of Sacred Scripture.  Notice that I said use and not just read.  Why I used the former rather than the latter will become evident momentarily.

If we were to parse some of that red lettering, then something will become rather obvious to us.  When the Word of God speaks, things happen.  When He commands demons to depart, they leave.  When He commands storms to cease, everything is calm.  When He commands a crippled man to walk, he grows strong and walks.  He even commands the Apostles to “not be afraid” and fear exits.  To these we could multiply other examples throughout Scripture starting with God speaking creation into being in Genesis and ending with the creation of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.  The Word of God is performative and while this power is earth shattering in the literal sense, it is hardly so in the figurative sense.  We already know this—after all this is what makes God, well, God.

What’s In it for You and Me?

Until, however, we go a step further and ask what difference this makes for you and for me.  For this, we have to call to mind two very important Scripture passages about Scripture itself.  First there is a passage from the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah in which the Sacred Author, operating under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Is 55:10-12).

This is God reminding us of the power of His speech.  But when exactly did He send forth these words of Scripture?  Was it back in the 6th Century BC when these words were likely written, or was it yesterday when we heard it as the first reading at Mass?  God is speaking from the eternal now so that His words speak to all times and places.  When you read these words and I read these words they are spoken to you and to me right here and right now.  In inspiring the author of Isaiah to put these words to sheepskin, God in His Providence knew exactly when and how you and I would encounter them.  He addressed them to you and me directly, not just in a generically but in a deeply personal sense.  Inspiration did not stop in the author but extends to each of the readers.  It is the Holy Spirit speaking directly to us.  This helps explain why we might read the same Scripture passage many times and “get something different out of it” each time.  Those words were spoken not just way back when, but here and now.  It is also why Scripture scholars usually struggle praying with the Scriptures—they read it only as a theology textbook and assume they have exhausted its meaning without plummeting the depths of its personal message.  They may read the Scriptures but fail to use them as God’s preferential means of communicating with us individually.

There is a concomitant passage to Isaiah in the New Testament that helps further illuminate the point.  In the Letter to the Hebrews the sacred author says that “the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.  No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).  Sacred Scripture needs no red letter, nor is it a dead letter, but it is also much more than a read letter too.  Recall that when God speaks, things happen—even if that word is spoken to you and me in the Sacred Scripture.  When we read and meditate on these Scriptures we are changed, not just because we make great resolutions, but because God’s word changes us simply by being heard.  We can easily overlook this but we should expect it to happen.  As the Catechism puts it, “Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book.’ Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.’  If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, ‘open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures’” (CCC 108).

The Witness of the Saints

History is full of examples of saints who were changed simply by an encounter with God through the Scriptures.  The most famous example is St. Augustine.  He was a man who, after a long intellectual battle, found the Christian explanation of reality to be true.  Nevertheless he struggled with the moral demands, famously praying “Lord make me chaste, just not yet.”  One day Augustine was in a garden praying and he heard a voice telling him “Tolle Lege,” that is “Take and read.”  He understood it to mean the epistles of St. Paul that he had left in the house.  When he grasped the book and opened to a (seemingly) random page, his eyes fell upon Romans 13:12-14—“Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”  In that moment the saint found the moral strength to fully convert and live totally for the Lord.  God spoke, and Augustine was changed.

Augustine himself was moved by the example of another Scriptural convert, St. Anthony of the desert who one day heard the Gospel of the Rich Young Man and knew that it was addressed to him.  He sold everything, went into the desert, and was instrumental in preserving the Christian faith during the Diocletian persecution.  We could multiply the examples but the point is that these men saw the Scriptures as a medium of communication between God and themselves.  They ardently believed that the Scriptures held the power of God’s direct speech.  With such a cloud of witnesses, shouldn’t we do the same?

Resolving for a Change

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Without having the benefit of Divine Revelation, Socrates, and by extension, Plato, was able to discover many truths about humanity.  Lacking an understanding of Original Sin and its effects however, he also made a serious mistake in the area of ethics.  This error is on display in the dialogue with Gorgias when Socrates makes the claim that all wrongdoing is a result of ignorance.  He thought that once we know the good, we would automatically do it.  Socrates’ ignorance was the problem, but it was ignorance of the Christian explanation of Original Sin that leaves him in error.  With the fall of man there was not only a darkening of the intellect that caused ignorance but also a weakening of the will that makes even the good we know difficult to do.  No one is immune to this defect in our nature, even the great Apostle to the Gentiles St. Paul, who candidly shared with the Romans his own struggle: “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Romans 7:19).   So universal is the experience that it almost seems to be common sense, which makes it odd that the wisest man in Athens did not catch it.  Odd, that is, until we, especially those who have earnestly set out on the Christian journey, realize that all too often we make the same mistake.

Why did I single out those who have “earnestly set out on the Christian journey”?  Because they are the ones who presumably pray, reflect upon their short comings and sins and do spiritual reading.  And, therefore they are the ones that, according to St. Francis de Sales, are the most likely to fall victim to a subtle form of self-deception.  They are the ones who, for example, want to learn from Our Lord to be meek and humble of heart.  They begin by reading about and meditating on humility and meekness.  They expose themselves to the lives of the saints who were meek and humble.  They learn all Scripture has to say about humility and meekness.  They even speculate what it might look like in their own life.

As all learning does is apt to do, knowledge about humility and meekness brings them great pleasure.  Hearing or reading of humility and meekness puts them in a humble and meek state of mind.  It gives them, as Screwtape says, “humble feelings”.  This pleasure serves as a counterfeit of the real pleasure attached to mature virtue.  That is, they become meek and humble only in their imagination.  This imaginary humility and meekness helps them to quiet their conscience causing them to leave aside any self-reflection in these areas.  They are virtues that have been conquered and it is time to move to the next set.  The problem is that meekness and humility, like all the moral virtues, reside in the will and not in the intellect.  You must do humble and meek things repeatedly and with ever greater vehemence to actually become humble and meek.  You must, as St. James cautions, “become not just hearers of the word, but doers” (James 1:22).

Becoming Doers of the Word

St Francis de Sales issues the above mentioned caution, but also offers us a simple solution, a re-solution, you might say.

“Above all things, my child, strive when your meditation is ended to retain the thoughts and resolutions you have made as your earnest practice throughout the day. This is the real fruit of meditation, without which it is apt to be unprofitable, if not actually harmful–inasmuch as to dwell upon virtues without practicing them lends to puff us up with unrealities, until we begin to fancy ourselves all that we have meditated upon and resolved to be; which is all very well if our resolutions are earnest and substantial, but on the contrary hollow and dangerous if they are not put in practice. You must then diligently endeavor to carry out your resolutions, and seek for all opportunities, great or small. For instance, if your resolution was to win over those who oppose you by gentleness, seek through the day any occasion of meeting such persons kindly, and if none offers, strive to speak well of them, and pray for them” (Introduction to the Devout Life II, 8).

In speaking with many Christians who are soberly trying to live out their Christian call, but find themselves stuck, I find a common thread.  They may devote consistent time to prayer, but they do not devote themselves to making concrete resolutions based on that prayer.  I find this because I saw it in my own life first.  I would religiously (literally) devote 30 minutes to meditation every day and would find that, when I wasn’t deceiving myself, that I had made little progress.  That is until I read St. Francis de Sales’ great treatise on living a lay Catholic life, the Introduction to the Devout Life.  It was the quote above that made me realize I was not consistently making resolutions and when I did they were too general.  And while that persisted I was simply a hearer of the word.  But when I allowed that word to penetrate not just my mind, but my will, I began to move again.

The key was making not just a vague resolution like “I will act humble today” but instead “when my co-worker who is constantly challenging me about everything does it again today, I will defer to him.”  We might fail, but it was not for a lack of trying.  The more effort we make even in failing, the more God responds with grace. Before long virtues that were arduous begin to bring some pleasure with them pushing along further.

Over the last few weeks my inbox has been flooded with this or that devotional for Lent.  They are all good, but I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I simply put into practice what I already knew.  What if rather than purchasing another devotional, I practiced greater devotion?  Perhaps, you were wondering the same thing.

Christian Dignity

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There is a certain logic and progression to the Catechism that reveals it to be more than a book of beliefs, but a map for the spiritual journey.  After delivering the content of what we believe (the creeds) and how we are empowered to believe it (the Sacraments), the Catechism examines what being a Christian looks like through an account of the moral life.   It begins with a quote that, at least at first glance, flies in the face of what most of us think of when we consider the moral life of a Christian.  It references a Christmas homily of St. Leo the Great in which the great pope exhorts Christians to “recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God” (CCC 1691).  Of course it mentions “not sinning” but his reasoning for shunning sin strikes many of us as a little off.  He mentions nothing about breaking commandments or risking salvation but instead says sin is beneath our dignity as Christians.  In reading the signs of the times, the authors of the Catechism chose this particular quote because of both its timelessness and timeliness.  We live in an age of defensive Christianity and it is only by embracing our dignity as Christians that we can go on the offense once again.

This last sentence regarding widespread defensiveness bears an explanation.  There are certainly many Christians that live in a defensive stance against the world, trying to protect Christianity from outside influences.  Insofar as that is concerned, this is a good and necessary stance provided it is done with proper moderation.  What I mean by “defensive Christianity” has to do with the stance we take in our individual spiritual lives.  Most of us see a life of grace as one in which we are protected from evil.  Evidence the habit, even within Catholic circles, to focus on “being saved” and “getting to heaven.”  Both are important, but they represent a stunted view of the Christian life.  By placing the emphasis on our Christian dignity and off of merely being saved, we can fly towards Christian perfection and sanctification.

Dignity

Although this may be slightly tangential, it is worth discussing the concept of dignity.  Many people insist that men and women have an inherent dignity because they are made in the “image and likeness of God.”  That is not entirely true.  Adam and Eve were made in the image and likeness of God, but we are not.  Our dignity rests in the fact that we are made in the image of God.  That is, as creatures who have the spiritual powers of intellect and will, we surpass all of material creation in greatness.  This means that we are afforded a certain treatment that we call dignity.

Christian dignity is something more because it restores God’s likeness.   To “be like” God means we have a nature like His, or, more accurately since He is God, a share in His nature.  It is the “likeness of God” that was forfeit by our first parents and, thanks to Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, is restored to us in Baptism.  Christian dignity then stems from our restored likeness to God or as St. Leo puts it “recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature.”

Of course Pope St. Leo is just reminding of something that Pope St. Peter said in his second letter—“that you may become partakers of the Divine nature” (2Pt 1:3).  Catholics have always called this share in the Divine nature sanctifying grace.  But Catholics rarely reflect on the full impact that this has and what our being “born anew of the Spirit” (c.f. Jn 3:6-7) really means.  Because most assuredly if we did then, at least according to the Saintly Pontiff, it would be enough to keep us from forfeiting it through sin.

Reading the Scriptures with the Head and not just the Heart

One of the obstacles has to do with our approach to Scripture.  We can read it with sentimentality rather than taking it literally.  One might be excused with reading St. John’s letters this way when he says something like “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now” (1 Jn 3:1-2).  But one cannot ever read St. Paul in a sentimental manner.  When he says “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:15-17) we should take our sonship quite literally.  This is a repeated theme throughout the New Testament and one of the keys to understanding what it means to be a Christian.  We are quite literally God’s children only because He has given of His own nature to us.  To be adopted by Him means not just that we were created by Him, but that as Father He recreated us by impressing His own nature on us.

There is more to this than simply realizing it.  He gave this gift to us not just as protection from sin (i.e. that we might be saved) but for us to make use of it.  Those in a state of grace are given a super-nature, one that enables them not just to “be like God” but to act like Him.  As the name implies, this supernatural power builds upon our natural power, or more accurately, it transforms and elevates it.  The more we use this super-nature, the more we become like God which only makes us the super-nature more (in theological terms we increase in sanctifying grace).  We become, as Jesus commanded us “perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48).  Notice too how this clears up all the intellectual debates about faith and works and merits.  It is us using God’s nature that He was given us.

This also takes the emphasis off of “getting to heaven.”  Why?  Because we are already there.  Heaven is the place where God dwells and those who dwell with Him enjoy union with Him.  With the gift of sanctifying grace comes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (c.f. Romans 5:2-5).  God comes and takes up residence in our souls so that we may be united with Him.  Again, sentimentality blocks us from understanding what St. Paul means when he says we are “Temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19).  The Holy Spirit truly comes into our souls and dwells there.  With Him come the other two Divine Persons as they cannot be separated, even if their mode of presence is different (like the Incarnation).  That is why St. Paul says we have been given the “first fruits” of heaven through the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:22-23).  It is still first-fruits so that the degree in which we will know God (faith versus the Beatific Vision) is different, but not in kind.  Divine grace truly contains the seeds of heaven, growing day by day.  Our focus should not be simply getting there, but acting like you are already there.  As St Theresa of Avila said, “it is heaven all the way to heaven.”

If all that I have said to this point is true, then why would we ever forfeit it for a momentary delight?  There are no “cheap thrills”; each is more expensive than we could possibly imagine.  We would be more foolish than Esau who failed to see his dignity as the first-born son and sold his birth right for a bowl of porridge (Gen 25:29-34).  This is Pope St. Leo’s crucial point—stop and recognize who you are now, Whose you are now; do you really want to throw that all away?  Recognize your dignity Christian.

The Terror of Demons

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When St. Pius X officially sanctioned the Litany of St. Joseph in 1909, he acknowledged him to be both the Patron of the Dying and the Protector of Holy Church.  It was Pope Pius IX who first invoked him under the title of Patron of the Universal Church and he did so because dedicated his life to safeguarding the two most important members of the Church, Our Lord and Our Lady.  Tradition also names him Patron of the Dying because he died the most blessed of all deaths in the presence of the same two whom he had so vigilantly protected during his earthly sojourn.  But it is the title that bridges St. Joseph’s dual patronage, Terror of Demons, which constitutes his most active roles in the lives of individual Christians.  There is a danger of seeing the litany as merely a catalogue of things that St. Joseph can do; the carpenter who is the jack of all trades.  These last three titles have an interconnectedness that stocks our personal arsenal in times of great trial.  In truth, they arm us for the greatest of trial each of us will face, death.

All of the spiritual masters of old suggest that we reflect upon death regularly, not just to know about it, but to remember it.  They do so not just because it helps keep things in their proper perspective, but because it is the moment when our souls are in the greatest peril of being lost.  During our lives, the great majority of us see the devil as the Cheshire Cat but for all of us he will reveal himself fully  as the prowling lion intent on the ruin of our soul (1 Pt 5:8).  When his time is short, his wrath is greatest (Rev 12:12).

Why the Battle is So Fierce

Why this time of trial is so severe may not be entirely clear so that by adding some clarity we can steel ourselves for those inevitable moments.  Through His death and resurrection, Christ destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).  But He did not take away death, but instead freed us from “the fear of death” (Heb 2:15).  Death itself is the last enemy to be destroyed (c.f. 1Cor 15:26) and still remains the playground of the Devil.  Just as in the rest of life, the devil is given power because it provides matter for our growth in the theological virtues.  On the cusp of death our faith and hope are sorely tried and through their fervent exercise provide a growth in our desire for God, “having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is much better” (Phil 1:23).

By freeing us from the fear of death Our Lord not only gives us a share in His victory but empowers us to make the victory our own.  Thrust into spiritual combat with the devil, the faithful are enabled to defeat the “strong man.”  Our Lord’s victory on the Cross does not merely defeat the devil, but destroys him (c.f. Heb 2:14).  That is, He renders Satan’s power at the time of death ultimately ineffective.  To be defeated by the Word made flesh is one thing, but to be defeated by hairless bipeds is quite another.  Satan’s destruction comes about because he can no longer bind severely handicapped human creatures.  Through the mysterious action of grace each of us can truly say that the victory is mine.

Armed for the Final Battle

The Church was given the power to arm the faithful for this final battle through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  The Council of Trent says that among the effects of the Sacrament is the power to “resist more easily the temptations of the devil who lies in wait for his heel” (Council of Trent, Session 14).  While the Sacrament bestows this power ex opere operato, the effect within the individual believer depends upon his subjective disposition to receive the grace.

By anticipating the fronts on which the attacks are likely to occur, we can be better prepared for the ensuing battle.  It is our faith and hope that are put to the test during this final battle and so we need to examine how these two virtues are tried—faith through doubt and credulity and hope through despair and presumption.  In his book, Spiritual Combat, the 16th Century author Dom Lorenzo Scupoli examines these four areas and gives some tips to make us battle ready.

In his attacks against faith he will attempt to stir up anxiety about what is to come by planting the seeds of doubt about the faith of the Church in our minds.  The battle is not however to have a ready defense so as to argue.  Our Lord’s temptation in the desert reveals the Devil to be a liar and a sophist and able to twist and distort even the most blatant of lies.  Instead we must have the interior habit of faith—a firm clinging to the truth of all that the Church teaches.  The more ingrained that habit is, the stronger will be our defense.  In any regard we are to offer no pearls to the demonic swine.  As Scupoli says, “if the subtle serpent demands of you what the Catholic Church believes, do not answer him, but seeing his device, and that he only wants to catch you in your words, make an inward act of more lively faith.  Or else, to make him burst with indignation, reply that the holy Catholic Church believes the truth; and if the evil one should ask in return, ‘What is truth?’ you reply, ‘That which she believes.’”

The devil will also tempt us towards credulity through false visions.  Knowing the likelihood of an attack on this front, we should turn away from any visions in humility by seeing ourselves as unworthy of visions.  Even if they turn out to be true, God ultimately is pleased with our humility and therefore will not hold it against us.  Instead acts of trust are to be made in the mercy of Jesus and the prayers of Our Lady and St. Joseph.

 

The second front by which the demonic sortie is likely to come is by attacking hope.  Our past sins will be thrown at us all with the goal of despairing for our salvation.  Humility and trust in the blood of Christ are the weapons of choice.  Remembrance of past sins is a grace when it is accompanied by sorrow for having offended God and humility.  But when these thoughts unsettle you, they come from the Wicked One.  True sorrow is a gift of the Sacrament of Confession and will bear great fruit in this time of trial.  Genuine humility, borne out in the crucible of the humiliations of life is a steady shield.  To the extent that we develop these virtues now, they will be ready at hand in the time of trial.

Scupoli says that presumption is the final battle arena. Confronted with despair there is always the temptation to begin to list all of our merits.  In the face of this, Scupoli says we should “abase yourself ever more and more in your own eyes, even to your last breath; and of every good deed done by you, which may come before you, recognize God Alone for its Author. Have recourse to Him for help, but do not expect it on account of your own merits, however many and great be the battles in which you have been victorious. Ever preserve a spirit of holy fear, acknowledging sincerely that all your precautions would be in vain, if God did not gather you under the shadow of His wings, in Whose protection alone you will confide.”

The logic of the Litany of St. Joseph now comes into view.  If he is to be the Patron of a Happy Death, he necessarily must be a Terror of Demons.  It is his prayers specifically during our battle that make him the Terror of Demons, chasing them from us by the power of his mere presence.  By captaining the final battle of the members of the Church Militant, he is there to usher them into the Church Triumphant making the Church truly universal.  By fostering our own personal devotion to St. Joseph, we too may come to share in his inheritance.

Spreading Hope

Heaven, Prayer, Purgatory, Redemption, Resurrection, Saints, Suffering,

 

During a September series between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Dodger Stadium, Giants’ rightfielder Hunter Pence wore a necklace that contained the cremains of a devoted Dodgers’ fan, after the Dodgers refused the request to have the man’s daughter spread his ashes on the field.  The plea was one of many that the Dodgers and the rest of the MLB teams receive and routinely refuse yearly.  There is an ongoing campaign to develop a compromise of sorts in that the teams could allow on certain days a small amount of a person’s ashes to be spread on the field.  Setting aside the pragmatic reasoning, this decision ultimately represents an act of charity toward the dead and their loved ones.

The Book of Tobit reveals God’s pleasure in Tobit’s dogged persistence in burying the dead (Tobit 14:14) and it has long been considered a corporal work of mercy in the Christian tradition.  Understanding why God looks favorably upon this act however can help us to see the reason the Church insists that cremated remains not be scattered.

Spreading Faith

Christians have long seen death not as annihilation nor as the releasing of the soul from its incarceration in the body, but as having a fundamental positive meaning.  By being united to Christ’s death and resurrection in Baptism, the believer sees his own death in Christ as the pathway to a share in His glorious resurrection.  Like the resurrection of the Lord, the Christian’s is a bodily resurrection.  Our temporal bodies become as a seed of the body that will rise in glory (c.f. 1Cor 15:42-44).

This motivation helps to reveal the meaning of Christian burial.  If we really believe that our resurrected bodies are found in seed form in our earthly bodies, then our actions ought to reveal this.  Seeds must be buried and die so that new life may spring forth.   Christian burial is a sign of this; a sacrament that point to this reality.

Historically, pagans practiced funeral rites that included cremation, reflecting the widespread belief that there was no resurrection of the body.  Even when the pagans did practice burial (based on the belief that only when their bodies were buried could the soul rest), the Christians still buried their separately from the pagans because of the great difference in their understanding of the future resurrection.  It was this connection between paganism (and later certain secret societies and cults) and cremation that led the Church to remove it as an option for the faithful.

Considering some of the practical difficulties of burial in modern times (mostly exorbitant costs and decreasing space) the Church relaxed some of her restrictions on cremation when the new code of Canon Law was released in 1983.  Burial because of its nature as a sign remains the preferred method, but unless it is chosen for reasons contrary to Christian beliefs (i.e. a lack of belief in the resurrection of the body) then it is permitted when necessary (Canon 1176.3).  Cremation can testify to the omnipotence of God in raising up the deceased body to new life and therefore “in and of itself, objectively negates neither the Christian doctrine of the soul’s immortality nor that of the resurrection of the body” (Piam et constantem, 5 July 1963).

The cremated remains of the person should always “be laid to rest in a sacred place, that is, in a cemetery, or, in certain cases, in a church or an area which has been set aside for this purpose…” (Instruction Regarding the Burial of the Deceased and the Conservation of Ashes in the Case of Cremation, CDF, 2016).  This means that the ashes should never be scattered or preserved as mementos or pieces of jewelry.   To do any of these things would be testimony of pantheism, naturalism, or nihilism.

Based on what has been said so far, one might be willing to concede that the prohibition on scattering ashes should be binding on Christians, but what about non-Christians?  In other words, what if the man whose remains Hunter Pence wore didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body?  How is insisting on his burial an act of charity to both he and his family?

Of particular mention as well is that whether or not someone believes in the resurrection of the body has no bearing on whether it is true.  It may be an article of faith but it is an article of true faith, and so we as Christians have an obligation to do all that we can to bear witness to this truth.  Burial or interment also constitutes an act of charity to the dead as well.  For the dead it creates a “monument” that serves as a reminder to the living to pray for the deceased.  It assures that they will not be forgotten.  One whose ashes have been scattered will soon be forgotten, perhaps not by their immediate loved ones, but to subsequent generations they will be as one blotted out.  By not spreading ashes, we are spreading hope.

Spreading Charity

This highlights the intrinsic connection between the corporal work of mercy, burying the dead, and the spiritual work of mercy of praying for the dead.  This is perhaps the “easiest” of all works of mercy but also the most often neglected.  To pray for the dead is a great act of charity especially considering that only Catholics do it.  Very likely that man whose remains were worn by the Giants’ outfielder and many others like him have no one to pray for him.  We may have no way of knowing how the person has been judged, but we always trust that God’s mercy is more powerful than any man’s sins.  And so we pray and by praying, ironically enough, repair the harm done by our own sins, reducing our own time in Purgatory.  Charity covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).

Many of the souls in Purgatory spend more time there than they should for want of having someone to pray for them.  Therefore the Church Militant devotes a whole month of special focus to relieving their suffering and offers a plenary indulgence for the Holy Souls during the week of Nov 2-Nov 8 each year.  By way of reminder, one can obtain a plenary indulgence (one per day), when in a state of grace and with a complete detachment from sin, receive Holy Communion, pray for the intentions of the Pope and go to Confession within 20 days before or after the act (one Confession can cover all 7 days, but the other acts must be done daily).  One can gain this particular indulgence by, in addition to the above conditions, devoutly visiting a cemetery and praying for the departed, even if the prayer is only mental.

A partial indulgence for the Souls in Purgatory can be obtained when the Requiem aeternam is prayed. This can be prayed all year, but should be especially prayed during the month of November:

Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

 

 

Catholic Culture and the Filet-o-Fish Sandwich

Culture, Eucharist, Evangelization, Sacraments, Saints, Spiritual Life

The Bishops of England and Wales recently made a change to their liturgical calendar, effective the first Sunday of Advent, that added back to the calendar two Holy Days of Obligation—Epiphany and Ascension Thursday.  While this decision obviously only effects those Catholics in England and Wales, their decision is remarkable because it is counter to a trend that has plagued the Church since the Second Vatican Council that has seen the reduction of Liturgical Feasts of Obligation.  One can hope that this will spur other Episcopal Conferences to follow suit.

The Code of Canon Law (1246) has this to say about Holy Days of Obligation:

  • Sunday is the day on which the paschal mystery is celebrated in light of the apostolic tradition and is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church. Also to be observed are the day of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Epiphany, the Ascension and the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Holy Mary Mother of God and her Immaculate Conception and Assumption, Saint Joseph, the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, and finally, All Saints.
  • However, the conference of bishops can abolish certain holy days of obligation or transfer them to a Sunday with prior approval of the Apostolic See.

In Advent of 1991, the NCCB of the United States (now known as the USCCB) issued a general decree defining the Holy Days of Obligation (in addition to all Sundays throughout the year) for Latin rite Catholics in the US as follows:

  • January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
  • Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter, the solemnity of the Ascension
  • August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
  • November 1, the solemnity of All Saints
  • December 8, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
  • December 25, the solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Whenever (1), (3) or (4) fall on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.  The Feast of the Ascension, in most dioceses in the US, has been moved to the following Sunday, effectively reducing the number of feasts of obligation from ten to five.

Plummeting Mass Attendance

When faith is in decline, the power of binding and loosing enables the shepherds of the Church to make the practice of the Faith “easier.”  Although this is often abused (I will avoid that rabbit hole here), the shepherds may alter Church disciplines in order to keep the sheep from falling to grave sin.  Seeing regular Mass attendance drop precipitously from 55% to 41% in the years from 1965 to 1990, the Bishops thought that by reducing the obligation, it might keep at least some from committing the serious sin of missing Mass.

That this approach proved ineffective seems obvious, especially since regular Mass attendance dropped to 22% in 2016.  Likely, it had the opposite effect by contributing to it.  Removing some obligations is always a danger because it challenges all obligations, especially when their removal goes unexplained.  Perhaps, the thinking goes, if those days really weren’t obligatory, then the ones they say are obligatory now aren’t either.  After all, one can still be “spiritual” without religious obligation.

The crisis in Mass attendance was not really the problem, but merely a symptom of a larger disease that the Doctors of the Church failed to properly diagnose.  While the reasons are legion, the issue was the death of Catholic culture.  There may have been some compromises with the surrounding culture, but Catholics always stood out because of their religious practices. Think of the Catholic practice of no meat on Fridays throughout the year (another one that has been done away with) and how restaurants made special accommodations to win Catholic patronage.  Once that practice was no longer obligatory even the meat fasts of Fridays in Lent went ignored.  The point is that these practices, even when done with less than pure intentions, bind Catholics together.

The point is that there can be no culture without cult so that if you take away from the liturgical life of the Catholics, you will most assuredly do harm to the sheepfold.  It is not only, or even primarily, for the natural reason that it creates, for lack of a better term, Catholic “identity.”  It is also for the supernatural reason of Communion.  The more often the believers come together and receive life from the Altar of Sacrifice, the closer they will be to Jesus.  The closer they are to Jesus, the closer they will be to one another.  The closer they are to one another, the greater their witness to the world.  The Eucharist is like the nucleus of a primordial atom drawing each negatively charged man to Itself.

When faith is in decline you should increase the obligations, not reduce them.  Fear of hell, while imperfect motivation, can still keep you from hell.  Someone may come to Mass out of obligation, but Our Lord will not be outdone in generosity giving actual graces to those present to receive Him more purely.  There are always those who will go to Mass regardless of whether it is a Holy Day of Obligation, but there are also a great number who will only go because it is.

Catholic culture has to be built from the ground up and is something that needs to be instilled in the young.  I find it very strange that Catholic schools all treat the few Holy Days of Obligation as “regular” days, instead of true holydays.  Should they really celebrate Labor Day while simultaneously demanding work from students on the day when we celebrate all those “who from their Labor rest?”  Going to Catholic school in the 1980s was certainly a confusing time, but one thing they always did right was give us off from school on all the Holy Days of Obligation.  That has always stuck with me and left me with the awareness that these days were no ordinary days.

The Fullness of Time

This leads to one further point that could come under the heading of unintended consequences.  One of the great heresies of modern times is compartmentalization, that is creating a “wall of separation” between Church and the rest of life.  God can have Sunday (even if only for an hour) but the rest is mine.  The Incarnation made it glaringly obvious that God is with us, not just on Sundays, but all days.  The Son came in the “fullness of time” not just because everything was Providentially ready for His arrival, but also because when time and eternity meets in His Person time is filled.  This is part of the reason the Church celebrates Mass not just on Sundays, but every day.

If you really believe that God is actively participating in every moment at every time, you will reject compartmentalization.  The great Christian feasts mark those moments in history when God stepped into the ordinary.  They not only mark them, but make them present.  It brings God into the humdrum, or rather, shows that there really is no humdrum.  It shows them to be real, as in really,really real and not just something relegated to the past.  Take away these celebrations and you move God to the periphery.  Move Ascension Thursday to Sunday and you make it nearly impossible to fully prepare for your share in Pentecost.  Pentecost was not a single event, but one that unfolds throughout time and also at specific times on each Pentecost Sunday.  The Apostles and Our Lady taught us how to prepare for it by nine days of prayer.  Seven days may be more convenient, but it isn’t how it’s supposed to be done.  It makes it all seem manufactured (work of man) and just ceremonial rather than truly liturgical (work of God).

Likewise with Epiphany—we complain about keeping Christ in Christmas, but meanwhile we don’t keep Christmas in Christmas.  Want to win back Christmas from the clutches of commercialization, restore Epiphany to its rightful place in the calendar.

Please God that all the Bishops will follow those of England and Wales and reinstate all the Holy Days of Obligation!

Idolizing the Saints

Saints

One of the earliest accusations leveled against the Church by the Protestant Revolutionaries was that, by their veneration of the Saints, Catholics were guilty of idolatry.  While there is no real threat of this for anyone with a proper understanding of the role of the Saints within the Church, there is a danger for all of us of idolizing them in such a way that they are no longer real.  As we celebrate the Feast of All Saints today, it is a good time to examine this tendency in greater depth.

Hagiography is by nature sensational.  The biographies of the saints, like the biographies of all great men and women throughout history, tend to focus only on those defining moments of their lives.  There is nothing wrong with this per se, provided that we always keep in the back of our mind their ordinariness.  God may have done something extraordinary with them, but it was only because they sought him in the ordinary.  Like their Master, they had “no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him” (Is 53:2).  Studying the lives of the saints is part of a healthy spiritual life, but we must always protect ourselves from the spiritual pitfalls that, if we are not careful, can ensnare us.

By idolizing them and forgetting their ordinariness, a golden maxim of the spiritual life can slip our mind.  In a fallen world, becoming a saint is messy.  It is never as clean as the Lives of the Saints makes it appear.  The Lives of the Saints regale us with their extraordinary penances, vigils, and wonders, but spares us the boredom of their daily lives. Saints had to deal with difficult people, even in their own family, and they didn’t always convert them.  The children of saints were not always angels, sorely trying their patience.  Saints had bad days.  This seems obvious but still is easy to forget.  Forget this and we will either live a life of virtual holiness or give in to discouragement.

all-saints

When we read the lives of the saints we are awed by their extraordinary lives of holiness as we should be.  We cannot help but to desire to imitate them.  But we should never try to imitate them in any of their habits until we have mastered one.  The Saints never ran ahead of Grace.  They always ran with it.  All the initiative that they took was in response to God’s grace.  They are proof not of human greatness but first and foremost of God’s greatness and how grace makes us into something we could never be otherwise.  If we are running ahead of grace we will see what they did, imitate it and live a life of virtual holiness.  Virtual holiness means living someone else’s vocation and not your own.  It may look good from the outside, but it is not real holiness.

Likewise, discouragement is also always lurking, especially when we realize that our lives don’t look like the idealized versions of the saints.  It finds its mark when we compare ourselves to those who are living the life of simulated holiness, pretending their lives are something other than they really are.  Many Catholics I know avoid social media precisely because they are discouraged by the apparent perfection of other Catholics who share only idealized versions of their lives.  I have often wondered whether 100 years from now when we read the writings of the saints of today whether there will be any Facebook posts or Twitter feeds among them.

How do we know the saints lived messy lives?  Because the means by which we are made into saints, i.e. the Cross, is messy.  It is heavy and we will sweat while carrying it.  It has splinters and is rough against our backs, causing us to bleed.  We will fall carrying it and very rarely look graceful doing so.  It is ugly and public, even if in an intimate way.  Jesus didn’t advertise His cross to everyone, but neither did He hide it from those “who looked upon Him Whom they had pierced” (Zech 12:10).  The Cross was for Christ something tangible and real, not something that He simply “spiritualized.”  The Cross for the Saints and those of us wannabe saints is also something tangible and messy.

This is why we should look to the Saints.  They are the ones who picked their crosses back up and kept going.  They ran the race and now sit as a Cloud of Witnesses spurring us on to carry our own.  And they kept going for one reason and one reason only—they trusted the One Who handpicked it for them.

The Son of God had no reason to endure what He endured except that He loved each one of us.  Everything He touched and did was made holy.  He picked up His cross so that our own crosses would be sanctified and sanctifying.  His Cross touches every other cross.  He kept going because He was sanctifying my cross and yours, knowing with joy that we would gain glory because of the path He set out.

rubens-simon-cyrene

Our crosses are participations in His Cross.  Like Simon of Cyrene we are invited to carry His Cross with Him.  It was only when Simon accepted the messiness of the Cross—the humiliation of carrying a criminal’s cross publicly, the worry that he might somehow be lumped in with the criminal or mistaken to be a criminal by someone he knew—that he found its sweetness.  Through his encounter with the Cross he wanted to be yoked to that criminal and even shared it with his sons Alexander and Rufus.

There is one further obstacle that bears mentioning and that is the distinction between what God wills and what He permits.  This is a very important distinction on the theological level, but if the Cross is any proof, it is a distinction that should remain on that level.  What He permits and what He wills are both part of His Providential plan.  He has foreseen all the evils and decided how He would use them.  God is so good that everything that comes in contact with Him, even evil, is put to good use.  Therefore on the practical level we should not be so quick to make this distinction but instead to see all has having passed through His hands.

Once we concede that holiness and messiness can coexist we can only conclude that it is actually the mess that makes us holy.  Whether the mess is one we have made ourselves or one that was imposed on us, it is what God has chosen for us here and now.  Because He wills at all times for our sanctification (1 Thes. 4:3), we should not try to avoid it, hide it, or pretend it doesn’t exist.  Instead “not my will but Thy will be done.”

This doesn’t mean that we passively resolve to take our licks, but amidst all our efforts to clean up the messes we have a continual Yes to God for our current predicament.  This clears the path for a true and lasting peace.  If I have done all I can to resolve the mess and it is still there then I can rest in the knowledge that God has given it to me.  If despite my best efforts, my son with Autism has a meltdown at the most embarrassing time then I can accept it with peace, knowing that God will not let that moment go to waste.  St. Paul was right, we can give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:18).

Christ did not come to take away our messes, but to sanctify them.  Life is messy and God is good.  This is the lesson we learn from the Saints.  Saints embraced their messes, drawing all that God had for them in it.  We would be blessed to do likewise.

Happy Feast of All Saints!

St. Francis and the New Age

Eucharist, New Age, Saints

Despite the fact that the Church marks the life of Francesco Bernadone by a “mere” Liturgical Memorial, he remains one of the most beloved saints.  Better known as St. Francis of Assisi, he has grown in popularity because he seems to be a saint belonging not to his own times, but ours.  As Chesterton says in his great biography “that St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property.”  Francis was a great lover of nature but he was also “spiritual.”  Because he was an ecclesiastical rebel, he was not particularly religious, or at least his modernized version wasn’t.  He became the patron saint of the New Age and like many believers in the New Age he was, “spiritual but not religious.”

To keep the beloved saint from being hijacked by the New Agers, it is important to point out that St. Francis loved those things because he loved the Person who made them.  He loved the poor because Jesus was poor and God is close to those who are poor.  In other words, St. Francis loved those things because he found God in all those things.

At this point, the New Ager might respond “Exactly.  St. Francis found that God is in everything.  That is why we don’t need religion.  We can find Him anywhere.”  And in this, we find the fundamental error in the New Age view of reality.  The New Age view is based upon a profound misunderstanding of what it means to say that God is in everything.  We need an understanding of this not only to refute New Age philosophy but to also develop a deeper understanding of Who God is for ourselves.  St. Thomas thought this idea so important for understanding Who God is, he tackles it at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae (Book I question 8).

To understand this, it is first important to define precisely what we mean by the term essence.  The essence of a created thing is what that thing is; what makes it to be that particular type of thing and not something else.  What the New Age believer says about God is that He is part of the essence of all things.  But because God is simple (i.e. cannot be divided into parts), then everything contains God they argue.  This is where the Church differs from the New Age believer.  Relying on the teachings of Aquinas, the Church says that God is in created things “but not as part of their essence.” Everything is not God.  When we say that God is in everything what we mean truly is that He is present to all things.

We must also make clear what we mean when we say that a spiritual substance is “in” something.  For example, what do we mean when we say that the soul is in the body?  It does not mean that it is found inside the body, but that it acts upon the body.  Death is when the body degrades to the point that the soul no longer can act upon it.  So too with God, we say that God is in something in the sense that He is acting upon it.  When we say that God is in everything what we mean truly is that He is present to all things.

francis_eucharist

He is present in two ways— as efficient cause in that He is Creator of all and as an object of operation in that He acts on them, holding them in creation.

An analogy will help.  When a man builds a chair, we often say that he put his heart into it.  In that way the builder is in the chair.  This analogously is what we mean by God being in creation in the first sense as the creator.  Now suppose that the chair breaks and he glues it together.  Suppose further that in order for the glue to set properly he has to apply weight by sitting in the chair.   This is the second sense in which we mean that God is in all things holding them together.

In both cases though, the man is not part of the chair itself.  This is very important.  He is not part of the chair’s chairness or essence.  He is in the chair as its creator and as the one holding it together.

In short, the Church teaches that God is transcendent in His nature and immanent in His Presence.  He is wholly other because He is God, He is wholly present as Being itself (“I AM WHO AM”).  In fact, it is only because He is transcendent in His nature that He can be present to all things at all times.  The difference between God and the world is not a spatial one, but modal.  God doesn’t occupy another space but His way of being is qualitatively different than creation.

Furthermore, God is not equally in all things.  To reject this doctrine is ultimately a rejection of the Incarnation and Christianity itself.  Christianity is founded upon the belief that God was most fully present in the created humanity of Jesus Christ.

Because man is an intellectual creature, God is more in him than the rest of visible creation.  Man is the only being in visible creation who has the capacity to know and love God.  In that way God is “in” man as an object known is in the knower and the desired object is in the lover.  This presence is not as perfect as the presence of God in man when he is in a state of grace; for grace is the very life of the Trinity and “adheres” to the human soul.  Sanctifying grace means that God acts directly upon the human soul, making all of its actions God-like.

Above it was mentioned in passing that God is most fully present, in the Incarnation.  He is really and truly present in the Person of Jesus Christ.  His human nature was the one thing in visible creation that contains the very essence of God.  The Eucharist, as the extension in time and space of Christ’s personal sacrifice on the Cross, also makes Him fully personally present.  While in the Incarnation His divinity remained hidden within the human nature of Christ, in the Eucharist not only His divinity remains hidden, but His humanity hides under the appearances of bread and wine.  Although hidden under these signs, He is no less present than He was when He walked the Earth.  This is what we mean when we say that the Eucharist contains the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

Herein lies the problem with the effort to associate the New Age with St. Francis of Assisi—the Eucharist.  He may be remembered most for his love of animals and evangelical poverty, but his writings show his greatest love among all of Creation was for the Eucharist.  He believed in the Real Presence, not just intellectually, but with a heart that burned to adore Our Lord in the Eucharist.  In his Letter to All the Friars he implored his spiritual sons to “show all reverence and all honor possible to the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom the things that are in heaven and the things that are on earth are pacified and reconciled to Almighty God.  I also beseech in the Lord all my brothers who are and shall be and desire to be priests of the Most High that, when they wish to celebrate Mass, being pure, they offer the true Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ purely, with reverence, with a holy and clean intention, not for any earthly thing or fear or for the love of any man, as it were pleasing men.”

The Little Way and Purgatory

Divine Mercy, Saints

When the Church canonizes a Saint it is not only their witness of life that is being acknowledged, but the Church is also canonizing their teachings as well.  In other words, the Saints are recognized as credible witnesses in both deed and word.  This makes perfect sense when we admit that sanity breeds sanctity and sanctity breeds sanity.  The Saints show us how the unchanging Gospel is to be understood and lived in ever-changing times.  In this regard, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day we celebrate tomorrow (Oct.1 ) is no different.  When he canonized her in 1925, Pope Pius XI said that “the Spirit of truth opened and made known to her what he usually hides from the wise and prudent and reveals to little ones; thus she enjoyed such knowledge of the things above… that she shows everyone else the sure way of salvation.”

When he declared her a Universal Doctor of the Church, Pope St. John Paul II said that her emphasis on the Gospel message of the Little Way gives her an “exceptional universality.”  Her Little Way is based on an equally radical trust in God’s goodness and her own nothingness.  She saw within herself a great desire for holiness that she insists God would not have placed there unless He planned to give it to her.  Her response was not so much to try harder, but to trust more that He would achieve His purposes in her.

The Little Way is really just the Gospel in a thinly veiled disguise.  The message is the same—trust.  It is a lack of trust in God that leads to the Fall.  “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.  All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (CCC 397).

Every sin reveals a lack of trust in God.  God, Who made us as creatures to be loved, knows best what makes us lovely.  We don’t entirely trust that what He tells us is actually what is best for us and so we try to do it our own way.  If we trusted Him, then we would do what He says.  Once that trust is restored however we are willing to do everything He says precisely because we know He has our best interest at heart.  No matter how vexing or how hard it appears, we will do it because our Father has told us it is what is best.

This perspective of sin’s relationship to the Divine Fatherhood was a favorite of John Paul II’s.   “Original sin attempts to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 228).  The Father’s solution is not simply to say “trust Me,” but shows us how trustworthy He is.  It is Our Lord’s radical trust in His Father that establishes the truth of God’s Fatherhood once and for all.

Little Flower

Based on her own radical trust, Thérèse offered herself as an oblation to God’s merciful love, composing a beautiful Act of Oblation as a Victim of Divine Love

In order that my life may be one Act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Thy Merciful Love, imploring Thee to consume me unceasingly, and to allow the floods of infinite tenderness gathered up in Thee to overflow into my soul, that so I may become a very martyr of Thy Love, O my God! May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear in Thy Presence, free me from this life at the last, and may my soul take its flight–without delay–into the eternal embrace of Thy Merciful Love!

This prayer is often a stumbling block to those who would put the Little Way into practice.  How can she offer herself as a victim of holocaust to Divine Love?  Why must this offering involve becoming a victim (i.e.suffering)?  As Theresa of Avila once said, “Lord if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”

To answer this we have to, like Thérèse, recognize our nothingness or littleness.  This is not so much about humility but an acknowledgment that we are fundamentally broken.  We entrust ourselves to the Divine Physician to heal us.  Like any good doctor we trust, we know that God will often first have to wound us in order to heal us (Job 5:18).  He will choose the least invasive procedure, but He will never be so cruel as to stop the surgery in the middle.

Could God heal us without first wounding us?  While I think we will all be surprised when we find out all the hidden ways God has healed us, the answer no, not completely.  This is because He wants to re-establish that relationship of trust.  To give us everything without us knowing the cost builds, not trust, but mistrust and jealousy.  This is especially true considering how He distributes His gifts unevenly among His children.  The only way to show Himself as Father is to truly father us—raising us as sons and daughters in Christ, disciplining us, and never allowing us to become spoiled.

There is nothing passive in the Little Way.  St. Thérèse offers herself as a living sacrifice, but she knows that like most living sacrifices they tend to crawl off the altar.  Trust takes effort because we are pre-disposed to the lack of trust that comes with our condition as fallen creatures.  Trust is difficult because there is always a voice telling us why we shouldn’t trust.  But small acts of trust bring about larger ones until we are capable of absolute trust.

In Thérèse’s mind there are practical implications of the Little Way; one of which seems shocking at first.  She thought those who practiced it could avoid Purgatory altogether.

Thérèse was deeply distressed by the resignation that most people had (and still have) that they will need Purgatory after death.  In a letter to Sr. Maria Philomena she said

You do not have enough trust. You have too much fear before the good God. I can assure you that He is grieved over this. You should not fear Purgatory because of the suffering there, but should instead ask that you not deserve to go there in order to please God, Who so reluctantly imposes this punishment. As soon as you try to please Him in everything and have an unshakable trust He purifies you every moment in His love and He lets no sin remain. And then you can be sure that you will not have to go to Purgatory.

Notice that she is not saying that Purgatory is unnecessary, but that it can be avoided.  She even says that God is grieved over souls going to Purgatory because they are kept from Him.  The Little Way preaches that God will give us all the means we need to be purified in this life.  To the extent that we trust He is at work, then it will be effective in us.  To the extent that we resist, we will need other means (up to an including Purgatory).  The soul that completely trusts in God knows He is at work and so they abandon themselves to His Providential care.  In other words, she says the infallible way to avoid Purgatory is to graciously receive it here on earth.

St. Thérèse was well aware of the profundity of her understanding of God’s love and her role in preaching the Little Way as a means of sanctification.  She begged God to give her a legion of “little souls” that were follow her.  “I beg You to cast Your Divine Glance upon a great number of little souls. I beg You to choose a legion of little Victims worthy of Your LOVE!”  Through her powerful intercession, may we make of ourselves an oblation to Divine Love.

A Perfect Marriage?

Family, marriage, Mary, Saints

In a letter to the Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffara, the Fatima visionary Sr. Lucia prophesied that “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.  With marriage and the family under attack from so many fronts, her words are truly prophetic.  But it is her commentary on the prophecy that is worthy of consideration.  She added, “Don’t be afraid because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue…however, Our Lady has already crushed its head.”   What she was implying is that it is Mary, specifically in her marriage with Joseph, that crushed the Devil’s head.  To put it more succinctly, it was Christ Who redeemed marriage and the marriage of His parents shared the first-fruits.

In order to see their marriage as the prototype of a redeemed marriage, it is necessary to clear up some misconceptions regarding the Holy Family, most of which have arisen more recently.  The most common misconception is that Mary was an unwed mother, her child somehow being conceived outside of wedlock.

Mary and Joseph were already married at the time of the Incarnation.  Our Lady was not an unwed mother.  For proof of this, we need only look at the words of the angel to Joseph when he tells him not to fear to take his wife into his home (Mt 1:20).  A divorce does not break off an engagement.  Joseph’s consideration of divorce is because they are already married.

If Joseph and Mary share what would be the prototype of marriage, then why would Joseph consider divorcing her in the first place?  When Joseph considers divorcing Mary, the angel appears to him and tells him that the child has been divinely conceived and that he should not fear to take her as his wife.  Some have taken Joseph’s decision to divorce her as a sign that he thought her to have been guilty of adultery, but that he did not want to expose her to the shame publicly.  However, this does not really fit with Joseph being a “righteous man.”  A righteous man would have followed every precept of the law of Moses including the requirement that if a wife was found in the act of infidelity by her husband then he was forced to divorce her and make her crimes known.  Anyone who hid the crime was also guilty (see Lev 5:1).  Therefore, if Joseph did not denounce her then it is because he did not suspect her.

Instead the more compelling explanation is the one that is offered by Aquinas.  He contends that Mary told Joseph what had happened and out of a sense of religious awe he thought himself unworthy to serve as the earthly father of the Son of God and husband of Mary.  Aquinas says “Holy Joseph pondered in his humility not to continue to dwell with so much sanctity.”  This explains the angel’s response to Joseph that he should not “fear to take Mary his wife into his home.”  It is the angel who affirms Joseph’s vocation as head of the Holy Family.

Establishing that they were married at the time of the Annunciation is also important for another reason.  Properly understood we should say that Jesus was given not just to Mary but within the marriage of Joseph and Mary.  God always respects the nature He has created and children are to be given as a fruit of marriage.  Therefore St. Joseph and Our Lady had a true and valid marriage.  There was never any suggestion that Our Lord was illegitimate, despite what some contemporary theologians may say.  The Incarnation was to be brought about through the Holy Family and not just through Mary.  It has been the constant tradition of the Church that prior to their marriage that both Joseph and Mary had taken a vow of perpetual virginity, but in their humility chose to keep it hidden.

This leads one to ask how if the marriage was never consummated that they could have a valid marriage.  Pope St. John Paul II addressed this question in a General Audience in 1996 (21 July) when he said:

“Precisely in view of their contribution to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, Joseph and Mary received the grace of living both the charism of virginity and the gift of marriage. Mary and Joseph’s communion of virginal love, although a special case linked with the concrete realization of the mystery of the Incarnation, was nevertheless a true marriage.”

For a marriage to be valid, consummation is not necessary.  All that is necessary in matrimony is mutual consent and fidelity—both of which is found in their marriage.

st-joseph-and-mary-marriage

This non-consummation presents a further obstacle in that it makes it seem like the marriage was a mere façade.  After all some might say, if they were lacking a sex-life, then it was missing something that is a fundamental part of all healthy marriages.  It is this pattern of thought that reveals exactly why our perception of marriage has gone awry.

Sexual love is not the same thing as genital contact.  Sexual love may include that, but it does not exhaust it.  As proof of how narrow our thinking about this has become, Professor David O’Connor points out in his book Plato’s Bedroom that a modern reader would be scandalized to read a 19th century novel in which a man and woman are “making love” in a room full of other people.  The term “making love” would have referred to the couple creating intimacy through conversation and planting the seeds of enduring love.  Modernity however have taken this much broader meaning and reduced it to nothing but a physical act.

To be clear, this is not meant to imply that the marital embrace is just like conversation and all the other ways in which married couples “make love.”  It is most assuredly a part, but it is a foundational part.  That is why, even if it is not strictly necessary, consummation is an important part of marriage.  But, and this is a big but, it is important not in itself but because of its inner meaning.

The marital embrace is a sacrament—a sign of the couple’s total gift of self to each other.  Because we are fallen, we are unable to make a total gift of ourselves to each other in marriage.  All of our efforts at “making love” will always be tainted, even if in diminishing amounts, with self-love.  The marital embrace is an expression of the desire to make this gift by making a complete and total gift of ourselves physically to our spouses.  This is why contraception is so damaging to marriage—it obscures this sign.

Mary and Joseph on the other hand were capable of making this total gift of self.  In other words, they didn’t need the sign because they were already capable of the thing signified.  Certainly they could have expressed their total gift to each other through a marital embrace, but they didn’t need to like the rest of us do.  As if to offer proof of this, they share the fruit of a consummated marriage, a child.  This child comes about without the act itself.  In other words, their unity of hearts which is shown by the sign of consummation in all other marriages is actually given in the sign of Our Lord.  Summarizing, Mary and Joseph share the fruit of consummated marriage without the act itself.

While the sacrament of marriage had yet to be instituted, the marriage of Our Lady and St. Joseph remains a perfect sign or type of the union of Christ with the Church because it is the Church as a virginal bride wedded to the Virginal Christ.  This is why some Church Fathers have referred to Joseph as the “Virginal Father of Christ.”  This is an especially apt title given that God could not deny Joseph the paternal right to the fruit of his wife’s womb.  Joseph was no mere figurehead, but a husband and father in the truest sense, even if not biologically so.

Looking around society today it seems Sr. Lucia is right—Satan has set his sights on marriage and the family.  This is what makes the Feast of the Holy Family such an important celebration within the Church and serves as an opportunity for us to consecrate our family life to the Holy Family.

Mary and St. Joseph, pray for us!

Holding onto Jesus

Saints, Scripture

Throughout the centuries, much ink has been spent by biblical scholars commenting on Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Jesus in John Chapter 20.  In particular, many have sought an explanation for verse 17 where Jesus says to Mary that she should “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” A number of possible interpretations present themselves and are worth examining.

An immediate question that arises is why Our Lord does not allow Mary Magdalene to touch Him, but when He encounters Thomas in the Upper Room, He allows him to touch Him?  One possible explanation relates to the way that a burnt offering was made to the Lord.  In the Old Testament, the priest must offer the whole lamb and burn it on the altar.  The offering was not acceptable to the Lord until it had risen to the Him as a pleasing odor.  Until the burnt offering was fully consumed and had ascended to God, it was only a priest who could touch it.  Likewise, it is Jesus who is the lamb that serves as a burnt offering to the Father and until He ascends to the Father, it is only a priest who can handle Him.  This of course relates to the fact that Jesus instituted a new priesthood in the Apostles.

It seems though that this particular difficulty is one that has been raised solely by biblical commentators.  This was probably not the intent of the author however.  The verbs that John uses in the two encounters are different, even if they are translated in English in the same way.  He uses haptō, which is translated as “cling” or “hold” in verse 17 and uses pherein and ballein in verse 27 for “examine” and “probe”.  Once we see that it was probably not the intent of the author to contrast the two encounters, two other possibilities present themselves.

First, it has been suggested that since the Greek imperative is used, we should translate it as: “Stop touching me!”  Essentially Jesus is telling Mary to stop clinging onto Him because He will go back to the Father in a short time and wants to meet with the disciples as often as is possible before that happens.  She should go and fulfill her vocation as Apostle to the Apostles by running and telling them the good news in haste.  Based upon Mary’s actions, this seems to be the way she understood what Jesus was saying.

Jesus appearance to ST. Mary Magdalene

Perhaps the more compelling explanation is the one that is suggested by Pope Benedict in the second installment of Jesus of Nazareth(p. 285).  Once Mary recognizes Our Lord she thinks that this is the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus gave during the Final Discourse when He said, “I shall see you again, and your hearts will rejoice with a joy that no one can take from you” (John 16:22).  The reader (and probably Magdalene herself) is surprised by Jesus’ response not to cling to Him.  Our Lord is telling her that the earlier way of relating to the earthly Jesus, who was her “Rabboni” (“dear Rabbi”), is no longer possible.  She is the first to experience what St. Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.  Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”  In essence, Jesus in telling her not to cling to Him is telling her that His permanent presence is no longer by way of appearance.  Now it is by way of the gift of the Holy Spirit that will come only after He ascends to the Father.

What makes this explanation particularly plausible is the fact that even though she saw the angels and the burial clothes, did not understand what Jesus meant when He spoke about His resurrection.  Certainly she is not alone, as Peter also looked in the tomb and did not come to belief.  It is interesting however that there was something about the condition of the tomb that led the Beloved Disciple to believe.  What Peter and Mary both overlook, but what John saw had something to do with the burial clothes themselves.

First, it should have been obvious that the presence of the burial clothes should have been an indication that the body had not been stolen from the tomb.  If Christ’s body had been stolen either by grave robbers or the disciples (as they had been accused of doing), they would not have removed the wrappings.  The myrrh and aloes would have essentially acted like glue so that the clothes could not be quickly removed.  The tomb was guarded and they would have needed to work fast and would have taken both the body and the clothes together.

The reason John gives the details about the burial clothes the way He does is because it clearly supported the truth of the Resurrection.  The Greek participle that is translated as “lying there” seems to suggest that the clothes were flattened in such a manner that the body had passed through them without being unrolled.  It is this fact, namely that the clothes were intact and not unrolled, that led John to fully believe in the Resurrection.

Like everything that John wrote, He is wont to point out the deeper meaning of all of Jesus’ actions.  By leaving the clothes behind, Jesus is pointing to the uniqueness of the Resurrection.  In the story of Lazarus, we see him emerge from the tomb with the clothes because he will need them again when he dies.  Jesus on the other hand leaves them behind because He will not use them again.   As St. Paul says, “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.”

This ultimately is the lesson that St. Mary Magdalene still teaches us—the newness of life that was at the heart of the mission of the Son.  Although His relationship with the Father (“I ascend to My Father…”) is qualitatively different from our relationship with the Father (“…and your Father), nevertheless He is offering us a share in His natural Sonship.  This newness of life is as adopted sons and daughters of God.  Unlike our human experience of adoption where the adopted child is only a legal offspring of the father and does not share his blood, Jesus gives us His Body and Blood so that we might have the very Blood of God running through our veins.  St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us!

In Defense of Relics

Saints

In November, the Church invites us all to meditate on the Communion of Saints.  It is a time in which we become aware of the link of charity between the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant and the Pilgrim Church on Earth and the Holy Souls in Purgatory.  But, the term “communion of saints” does not only refer to the communion among holy persons but also the communion in holy things that the members of the Church also share (see CCC 948).  One of these holy things that has fallen into dis-use since the Second Vatican Council is relics.  But if what the 1983 Code of Canon Law says about relics, namely that they are among the things necessary to “foster the sanctification of the people of God” (Canon 1186), then it seems fitting to offer an explanation and defense of the use of these sacred objects.

There are a number of reasons why relics have received little attention, not the least of which is a certain amount of Protestantism that has crept into the minds of the faithful.  This is especially true when it comes to the veneration of the saints.  In order to see the spiritual “value” of relics, we must first offer an explanation of the veneration we give to saints.  The two are obviously linked, but history also bears out the importance of the link.

The first attack against the veneration of the saints came by way of an attack against icons and relics during the 8th Century.  There arose within the Byzantine Empire an attempt to exclude icons from religious worship because they were deemed idolatrous.  The pressure of the iconoclasts was only made more acute with the spread of Islam which forbids the use of religious images.  In response to this pressure, the Church called the Second Council of Nicaea (787) and declared that “precious and lifelike figures of the Cross, the holy Gospels, sacred relics and monuments” were all included among valid objects of Christian worship.  To further counter the accusation of idolatry, the Council Fathers declared that “the honor paid to the image passes on to the one who is represented, so that the person who venerates an image venerates the living reality whom the image depicts.”

Once the Church supported the use of relics as a means to pay honor to the one who is represented, the next attack came seven centuries later when the Council of Trent had to defend, not the use of relics and statues, but the veneration of saints and angels themselves against the Protestant revolt.  What this shows is that the veneration of relics and statues is a defending wall against the attacks against the veneration of the saints.  Where relics and statues play a key role in Christian worship, the saints also too are seen as powerful intercessors.  This only serves to strengthen the relationship among all the members of the Church—those both in heaven and on earth.

It was around the time of the Second Council of Nicaea that St. John Damascene made the classic distinction between latria as the worship that we give to God alone and dulia, the veneration that we give to those to whom honor is due.  The biblical principle that animates this distinction is articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans when he says we are to “pay respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:7).  How do we know that the saints are included in those whom we should honor?  Because Our Lord says so in the Book of Revelation when He tells John that “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord’ (Rev 14:13).

We can also offer a logical proof from Scripture as to why the saints are to be venerated.  Throughout Scripture, veneration is offered to the angels (see Joshua 5:14, Daniel 8:17, Tobit 12:16) because of their supernatural dignity which is rooted in the immediate union with God (see Mt 18:10).  Since the saints also have immediate union with God (1Cor 13:12, 1 Jn 3:2) it follows that they are worthy of veneration.

To see why relics play such an important role, we must turn to the other font of divine Revelation, Sacred Tradition.  In so doing we are able to see some of the practical ways in which the biblical necessity of honoring the saints was played out.

We begin by turning to the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (155 AD).  St. Polycarp was a disciple of St. John the Apostle (according to St. Irenaeus, Tertullian and St. Jerome).  In the account of his martyrdom, we find him setting aside his clothes and that the faithful were always “eager who should first touch his skin. For, on account of his holy life, he was, even before his martyrdom, adorned with every kind of good.”  Later we read that the Roman officials refused the faithful St. Polycarp’s remains and later destroyed it.

From this we can conclude the Christians already by the 2nd Century were in the practice of collecting relics of the saints.  A “theology” of relics had already been worked out and they understood their place in a healthy Christian worship.  As the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom says “[F]or Him indeed, as being the Son of God, we adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love on account of their extraordinary affection towards their own King and Master, of whom may we also be made companions and fellow disciples!”

What may not be so clear is the reasoning behind the destruction of Polycarp’s body by the Roman officials.  It wasn’t just that they were trying to make the Christians’ lives difficult, but the Romans acknowledged that the remains of the martyrs were a source of spiritual power.  They did not destroy the remains of any other people that they executed, it was only the Christians.

images

There are additional accounts from antiquity that show that relics were a hallmark of Christian belief (such as the Passion of Ss. Perpetua and Felicity) that make clear that because Christians believed that the bodies of the saints had come to share in Christ’s humanity, they therefore shared in His power to heal.  They turned to the relics for miraculous intercession and received it.

They knew that because those same bodies were no longer animated by the soul of a saint,  it did not mean that they ceased to be holy.  In fact they knew that it is those same bodies that would be raised on the last day.  If they sought to touch the body of Polycarp when he was alive, there was even more reason to do so after his death.  It becomes apparent that the belief in relics also rests upon the foundational belief of the resurrection of the body.  In a time when this doctrine too is little believed (especially that we receive back our same, although glorified, earthly bodies ), relics act as reminders of this glorious truth.

Veneration of relics both strengthens and expresses our hope in the Resurrection by venerating the earthly remains of one who we believe will assured rise to everlasting life.  We know that there is a great “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrew 12:1) that  surrounds us, relics make it possible to worship God in one family in a way that is tangible for us.

The veneration of the saints and their relics is one of the great treasures that Our Lord left to the Church.  Not only do they help us to grow closer to the invisible members of the Family of God, they call to mind the great love and mercy of God who can raise up dust to be His adopted children.  By venerating relics, we can more fully express and appreciate this gift.

The Immaculata and St. Maximilian

Mary, Saints

St. John Paul II once called St. Maximilian Kolbe “the patron saint of our difficult century.”  He is best known as the “Saint of Auschwitz” who offered his life in exchange for the life of another prisoner.  What many do not know about him is that, like many of the saints of the 20th Century, he was also a great Marian saint.  He tells of Our Lady appearing to him at an early age, two crowns in her hands, “one white, the other red. She asked if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr.  I said that I would accept them both.” True to her word, Blessed Pope Paul VI beatified him a confessor and St. John Paul II canonized him a martyr.  From that day on, he was animated by a great desire to know Jesus through His Mother and to do “All for the Immaculata!”

In coming to know her, there was one thing he puzzled over his entire life.  This was Mary’s identification of herself as “The Immaculate Conception” when she appeared to St. Bernadette at Lourdes.  Specifically he asked why she did not simply say “I am immaculately conceived” but chose instead to call herself “The Immaculate Conception.”  He knew well the biblical importance of a name and so thought that she was saying more than just the fact that she was conceived without sin.  He thought she was revealing “something that belongs to her very nature” (Letter, Feb 28, 1933).  But he did not fully grasp what this meant until shortly before he was arrested a second time.  In fact, just a few hours before the Gestapo came to round him and four other friars up on February 17, 1941, Fr. Kolbe wrote what would be his last and definitive teaching on the Immaculata.

What Fr. Kolbe focused on was Mary’s unique relationship with the Trinity.  She is the beloved daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit Who overshadowed her in the Incarnation.  What Kolbe focused on specifically was her relationship with the Holy Spirit. Because the Immaculata is united to the Holy Spirit as His spouse, she is united to God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be said of any other creature (note that she is still a creature though).  He posited that if in human affairs the wife takes the name of her husband to show she belongs to him and is one with him then how fitting should it be that Mary take the name of her Spouse, Who is the Divine Immaculate Conception.

This is an extremely bold claim and one would be tempted to call it a heresy if not for the fact that it was the last spiritual testament of a man whom the Church calls Saint Maximilian.  For the Church not only canonizes a saint for his or her life, but also as a reliable teacher.  To be clear then, what St. Maximilian is teaching has to do as much with the Person of the Holy Spirit as it does Our Lady.

To begin to grasp this, it is first necessary to see if there is something like an Immaculate Conception in God and whether it is appropriate to call the Holy Spirit by this name.  When we speak of divine Conception we must first admit that we can only do so by way of analogy and that to understand this analogy you have to move beyond the idea of physical generation and think of conception in the manner that an artist conceives a painting.  In a spiritual sense “to conceive” has two primary meanings.  First as an intellectual act by which we form an idea.  By way of analogy, this describes the conception of the Son (as Logos) by the Father.  Secondly in the area of the will in which we say “I have conceived a deep affection for him” to describe the experience of a sentiment or passion.  Again, by way of analogy we can speak of the Holy Spirit as being “conceived” through the love of the Father and the Son (St Thomas has a fuller treatment of this in the Summa—ST I qq.44-45 for those who might want to try and tackle it ).

8_14_kolbe2

If we work with this same analogical understanding of God and call to mind that it is the mother’s love that links the father and the son, then analogously we can say there is a certain motherhood appropriated to the Holy Spirit.  This is not by way of generation but by way of love and it links the Father and the Son.  This helps us to understand something of the maternal love that we find in God in the Scriptures.  Understanding this as well, helps us to avoid the trap that many revisionist theologians fall into in which they call the Holy Spirit a “she” or speak of God as Father and Mother.  That is not at all what St. Maximilian is saying.  He is simply saying that in God there is something like the love of a mother.  It also helps us to understand what John Paul II meant when he spoke of Mary sharing in the “the motherhood in the Holy Spirit” in his Encyclical Redemptoris Mater(RM, 43). All of this leads St. Maximilian to conclude that Mary is so completely overshadowed by the Spirit that when she says “I am the Immaculate Conception” she means “I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.”

There is a danger at this point to think what St. Kolbe is proposing is that the Holy Spirit took flesh in Mary—another Incarnation of a Divine Person.  However he went to great lengths to reject that and coined the term “quasi-incarnation” to describe what is going on.  Certainly we all agree that if a spirit of evil is capable of “possessing” a human creature to the point of identifying the latter with itself even in a sort of personal way (this is the anti-Christ) then surely the Spirit of God can take possession of his privileged creature Mary.  It is absolutely a marvelous mystery that a human person can be so taken up into the control of God so that her will is completely united to the divine will, but one must readily admit the possibility. The evil spirit enslaves the poor creature he takes over whereas the Holy Spirit stirs up and strengthens liberty deep in the soul of the one he deigns to possess.  Mary describes herself as the “slave of the Lord” but she is the freest human person that ever lived.

Mystery or not, we can begin to understand something of this “quasi-incarnation” if we look at the Christological heresy that led to the Church giving Mary the title, Theotokos, or “God-bearer”.  The Nestorian Heresy said that there were two persons in Christ.  These two persons were united in will and action.  They were also united by inhabitation.  Nestorius said the Word dwelt in Jesus as in a temple.  This is the same way that Lumen Gentium describes Our Lady’s relationship with the Holy Spirit calling her, “Mother of the Son of God, by which account she is also the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit” (LG, 53).  While we are all temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) by virtue of our baptisms, the Immaculata was so by her very nature.

The point is that the Holy Spirit and Mary are two distinct persons, but that Mary is so fully possessed by the Holy Spirit that He acts in and through her perfectly.  This is where the title of Mary as Mediatrix comes from—her wholly unique relationship with the Holy Spirit Whose mission is one of sanctification.

Even if we are willing to concede everything said so far, why does it matter?  Aren’t these just theological ramblings that could easily lead us down into a heretical rabbit hole?  Not at all.  In truth Christians suffer greatly from not knowing the Holy Spirit.  He remains a great mystery to many of us and that greatly limits His ability to work in and through us.  After all, He is still a Person and to claim to love a Person while not really knowing Him is disingenuous at best.  What if we do not know Him because we are looking in the wrong place?  What if Catholics, in turning away from Marian devotion after the Second Vatican Council, also turned away from the Holy Spirit?  What if Protestants, in rejecting the unique role Mary plays in salvation, have also lost sight of the Holy Spirit, Whom they claim to need no mediator for?

Blessed Paul VI also recognized this danger when he wrote in his 1974 Apostolic Exhortation, Marialis Cultus:

It is sometimes said that many spiritual writings today do not sufficiently reflect the whole doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. It is the task of specialists . . . to meditate more deeply on the working of the Holy Spirit in the history of salvation, and to ensure that Christian spiritual writings give due prominence to His life-giving action. Such a study will bring out in particular the hidden relationship between the Spirit of God and the Virgin of Nazareth, and show the influence they exert on the Church. From a more profound meditation on the truths of the Faith will flow a more vital piety. (MC, 27).

 

The point is that we do not know the Person of the Holy Spirit because we fail to see Him in the one whom He overshadows.  As we develop our relationship with Our Lady, not only does she lead us to her Son, but she does so through the Holy Spirit that dwells uniquely within her.  When we offer her the unique honor due to the Mother of God, we are worshipping the Holy Spirit.  Or as Fr. Kolbe said “[W]hen we honor the Immaculata we are, very specifically, adoring the Holy Spirit.”

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!