Category Archives: The Life of Jesus

Fulfillment of the Law

Bible, Church, Church and State, Natural Law, The Life of Jesus, ,

As Moses departed from the people of Israel, he promised that God would send another prophet just like him (Dt 18:15).  This prophet would not only lead them into the True Promised Land, but would give them a new law.  So the Jews were constantly on the lookout for this “new Moses” and the early Church repeatedly preached Jesus as the Mosaic prophet they were looking for (c.f. Acts 3:22, 7:37).  It is no surprise then that Our Lord, just after beginning His public ministry in Matthew’s gospel (addressed to the Jews), climbs a mountain and delivers the Sermon on the Mount.  For just like Moses who had to climb Mount Sinai to bring the law from God down to the people, the new Moses, God Himself, speaks directly from the mountain about the Law.

Chronologically and culturally removed from the Sermon on the Mount, it is often confusing for us when the Bible speaks of “the Law”.  What exactly does that mean and, more specifically, what does it mean when Our Lord tells those gathered that “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17)?

The Old Law

In his treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas enumerates three kinds of precepts of the Old Law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial.  By placing all of the Old Law within these three broad categories, we are able to better understand both our relationship to the law and the manner in which Christ can say that He did not abolish it but came to fulfill.

When most people think of the “Old Law” the Ten Commandments immediately come to mind.  It serves as the foundation for all the moral precepts contained within the Old Law.  The Decalogue is in a certain sense superimposed upon the Natural Law, making the precepts of the Natural Law specific.  Some of the precepts are easily discernible based on the natural law—“thou shall not kill…thou shall not bear false witness”.  Other precepts require wisdom and reflection such as “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”  Still others, especially those of the first tablet require Divine instruction.  Nevertheless, they do all relate to what can be known from the natural law.

Second, there are the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law.  These pertain to Divine Worship.  This would include things like sacrifices, sacred things such as the tabernacle, Old Testament “sacraments” such as Seder Meals and circumcision, and observances that distinguished them as worshippers of the True God (not eating pork, etc.).

Finally, there is judicial law.  Judicial law is similar to civil law in that it determines the way that a People is governed.  It maintains the sovereignty of the People, it governs relations within the People, and governs how citizens interact with non-citizens.  Much of the book of Leviticus lays out in detail how Israel is to govern itself in these areas.  Israel was to be a “light to the Gentiles” but must remain a distinct People because “salvation comes from the Jews.” 

Fulfillment of the Law

With three types or precepts of the Old Law, there are also three ways in which Christ fulfilled them.  When we speak of “fulfillment” we must first grasp intention.  The moral precepts, reflected in the Ten Commandments, are the direct intention of God with respect to how we are to relate to Him (1st-3rd Commandment) and to each other (4th-10th Commandment).  As St. Thomas says, there can only be dispensation of the law when the letter of the law frustrates the intention of the Lawgiver.  Therefore, there is no abrogation of the moral precepts of the Old Law.

Christ, nevertheless, fulfills the moral precepts in Himself.  He perfectly follows the moral law.  In so doing, He wins graces for His followers such that they are empowered to do the same thing.  It is as if He gives us the power to “re-read” the Decalogue not in terms of rules but as a prophecy.  “in Christ you shall not make false idols…in Christ you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” etc.   

Christ likewise fulfilled all the ceremonial precepts.  The purpose of the ceremonial precepts was to prefigure and act as a foreshadowing of the mystery of Christ.  All of the sacrifices find their meaning and fulfillment in His sacrifice on the Cross.  He is the true tabernacle.  Baptism becomes the “new” circumcision.  All dietary laws are abrogated because the Bread of Life has become man’s true food.

The judicial precepts had as their purpose setting apart the Jews for the sake of the Messiah.  In Christ there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew so that the judicial precepts are no longer binding (Heb 7:12).  The catholicity of the New Israel means that the theodicy of the Old Israel has ended and the principles of the New Covenant can guide men in civil life, regardless of the form of government they take.  Church and State work together, each within its respective sphere, to bring men to salvation, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s” (Mk 12:17).

 We see then how Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law.  He fulfills the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the Law, but each in a unique way.  The moral by empowering men to live according to God’s law.  The ceremonial by giving us Himself on the Cross and through the Sacraments.  And the judicial precepts through the Church.    

Christ Living in Me

Grace, Prayer, Spiritual Life, The Life of Jesus, , , ,

In the midst of his battle against the Arians, St. Athanasius once pithily said, “that which Christ did not assume, has not been healed.”  The point that the Father of Orthodoxy was making was that Our Lord assumed the entirety of our human condition in order to redeem and renew us (2 Cor 5:17).  He did not just generically redeem our actions, in lived them in order that they might be sanctified.  He became a worker, in order to redeem our work.  He entered a family in order to redeem family life.  He had friends in order to redeem friendship.  He ate in order to redeem eating.  He suffered in order to redeem suffering.  He died in order to redeem death.  The list can go on and on, but the point is that whatever He did, He did as the Divine Redeemer, taking both ordinary and extraordinary actions and supercharging them with sanctifying power.

Realizing Our Beliefs

This principle helps us to understand why He lived the “Hidden Years” of His life, seemingly doing nothing but living an ordinary life.  He did not just one day, as Pope Benedict XVI is fond of saying, pick up the mantle of Redeemer.  It was Who He was the moment He took flesh to Himself.  We might be tempted to file this away as an interesting reflection on the truth of the Incarnation, as something that we simply believe, without taking the time to realize it.

The necessity of allowing our beliefs to be realized is at the heart of theology.  What I mean by this is that it is not enough to merely intellectually assent to some truth (that is belief), it must become realized by becoming an active principle by which we live our lives.  St. Thomas Aquinas is not a saint because he wrote the Summa, he is a saint because he lived the Summa.  He modeled his life after the Church’s first theologian, St. Paul.

St. Paul believed in Christ’s full redemption and made it the principle by which he lived his life.  By way of the Galatians, he instructs us to do the same thing when he said “it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; the life that I live in the flesh I live in faith in the Son of God…”

We must first fully grasp that when St. Paul says this, he means it literally.  He is not talking about how he tried really hard to imitate Christ and got so good at it that he acts a lot like Him.  He means it quite literally that it is no longer his own life that animates him, but instead the life of Christ.  By exercising his faith in Christ as full-time Redeemer, he has become another Christ in the world and calls us to imitate him in order that we too might say the same thing.

Linking Our Lives to Christ’s

In short, the secret is that we must link our lives to Christ.  This happens not in some abstract way, but by linking each moment of our everyday lives to the moment in Christ’s earthly life that “matches” it.  This might still sound a little too abstract, so let’s take an example.

Let’s suppose that I just found out that a friend of mine has told a group of people something that I wanted to remain a secret.  I feel betrayed.  Rather than wallowing in that, I go to Christ in His moment of betrayal and speak with Him about the situation.  When He experienced His betrayal, being God, He also foresaw this moment in which I would be betrayed.  He submitted to it in order to redeem this moment for me.  He has already won for me whatever graces I am most in need of. I simply need to show up with my divinely bestowed claim ticket to receive it.  Still, it is His life, not just in the abstract, but really which moves me to respond in accord with the Divine Will. 

Returning back to Athanasius’ point, you cannot find a single moment of your life that does not link up to Christ’s.  Studying His life in the gospels is obviously helpful in making the connection, but it is not absolutely necessary.  You can just as easily tell Our Lord, “I unite myself to that moment in Your life when you were hungry and ask for the grace not to be hangry in my situation” as go to Him when He is hungry after fasting in the desert.  In either case, my willingness to go where Christ has already “remembered” me is the cause of the redemption and sanctification of the present moment.  This is why every saint counsels the necessity of meditating upon the life of Christ.  *****

Doing this occasionally is very fruitful, but once it becomes habitual, you will become a saint.  The life of Christ and your life become practically indistinguishable as you draw all of your movement from His life such that Christ re-lives His life in you.  This is what St. Paul was talking about.  He started by exercising Faith in the Jesus as the Son of God Who died for him and then carries all of that to its logical conclusion by uniting His  life at each moment with Christ’s.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me!    

***Seeing each moment of Christ’s life as a mystery in which I participate through prayer and receive graces He has already won for me specifically is at the heart of adopting this habit.  It is Blessed Columba Marmion who has worked out the theology surrounding this, but I have summarized his thought in a previous post.

Looking with Lust

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

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

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

Christ the True Moralist

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

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

Love and Responsibility and Lust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catching Zeal

Apologetics, Evangelization, God's Love, God's Will, Grace, The Life of Jesus, Virtue, , , , , ,

In summarizing His mission to the Apostles, Our Lord tells them plain and simply that He “came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled” (Luke 12:49).  He came to set the world ablaze with divine charity and, so ardently does He desire the conflagration that He would offer Himself as tinder.  To set the world aflame with a single kindle would take a highly combustible fuel, a fuel mixed with equal parts of the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  In fact, we could say that everything Jesus said and did was for those two ends.  It drove Him to clean the Temple and it drove Him up the hill of Calvary.  When it was bottled up, it erupted out of the tomb and propelled Our Lord to ascend into Heaven.  It is this fuel that drove Himself in the Eucharist (c.f. Lk 22:15) and it is this fuel that shines forth from all the monstrances on the earth. 

This fire can never be extinguished.  When asked by St. Catherine of Siena what His greatest pain was, Our Lord said it was the pain of desire:

“My child, there can be no comparison between something finite and something infinite. Consider that the pain of My body was limited, while My desire for the salvation of souls was infinite. This burning thirst, this cross of desire, I felt all My life. It was more painful for Me than all the pains that I bore in My body. Nevertheless, My soul was moved with joy seeing the final moment approach, especially at the supper of Holy Thursday when I said, ‘ I have desired ardently to eat this Pasch with you, ‘ that is, sacrifice My body to My Father. I had a great joy, a great consolation, because I saw the time arrive when this cross of desire would cease for Me; and the closer I felt Myself to the flagellation and the other torments of My body, the more I felt the pain in Me diminish. The pain of the body made that of desire disappear, because I saw completed what I had desired. With death on the Cross the pain of the holy desire ended, but not the desire and the hunger I have for your salvation. If this love that I have for you were extinguished, you would no longer exist, since it is only this love that maintains you in life.” 

This habitual desire, this “predominant virtue” of Our Lord as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange describes it, is zeal.  Our Lord was not only meek and humble, but also zealous.  And it is this zeal that sets the world ablaze.  But we must be absolutely clear on how the fire of Christ’s zeal is spread. 

Christ’s Zeal

We might initially think that it is spread via imitation of Christ.  We would, of course be correct, but only in a secondary way.  Christ’s virtues are not primarily taught to us, but caught by us.  His Messianic mission was not simply to shed His blood on the Cross, but to have that blood touch every aspect of human life.  Messiah was not just a mission, but an identity and His act of redemption is continuous.  He came not just to show us how to live, but to empower us to live that way.  He does not give us an example, but a share in all of His virtues so that if Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange is right, then He wants us to predominantly share in His zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

We have spoken previously on what zeal is and isn’t  so rather than revisiting that, we should examine how by true zeal we already are.  The Church has long taught that one of the distinctive marks of Catholics is the practice of the Works of Mercy.  But there is always a danger in examining ourselves against these because they can easily be animated by a humanitarian spirit.  When this is the case, they become merely signs of activism rather than evangelism.  Therefore we must examine the spirit in which we perform these acts.  To be truly acts of mercy, they must be zealously done for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  When we feed the hungry we must do so for the glory of God and the salvation of the hungry man’s soul.  Any other reason is superfluous and draws us towards humanitarianism.  This remains a serious temptation because activism often masquerades as zeal. 

Fr. Jean-Baptiste Chautard in his book The Soul of the Apostolate calls this the “heresy of good works” and describes “activistic heretics” as those who, “for their part, imagine that they are giving greater glory to God in aiming above all at external results. This state of mind is the explanation why, in our day, in spite of the appreciation still shown for schools, dispensaries, missions, and hospitals, devotion to God in its interior form, by penance and prayer, is less and less understood. No longer able to believe in the value of immolation that nobody sees, your activist will not be content merely to treat as slackers and visionaries those who give themselves, in the cloister, to prayer and penance with an ardor for souls equal to that of the most tireless missionary; but he will also roar with laughter at those active workers who consider it indispensable to snatch a few minutes from even the most useful occupations, in order to go and purify and rekindle their energy.”

Catching Zeal

If it is not in external works that we catch Christ’s zeal, then how do we catch it?  Fr. Chautard tells us that we become infected in prayer.  All of our exterior works are simply overflow from our interior lives.  The more time we spend in prayer, close to the Heart of Jesus, the greater will be our love for Him.  The greater our love, the more we will desire what He desires—the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  An apostle without an interior life is no apostle at all but simply a social worker.  We must first be committed to a deep prayer life before we should set out into the world to save souls.  Only in slaking our thirst for Jesus can we quench His thirst for souls.

As Fr. Chautard puts it, “I must seriously fear that I do not have the degree of interior life that Jesus demands of me:   If I cease to increase my thirst to live in Jesus,  that thirst which gives me both the desire to please God in all things, and the fear of displeasing Him in any way whatever. But I necessarily cease to increase this thirst if I no longer make use of the means for doing so: morning mental-prayer, Mass, Sacraments, and Office, general and particular examinations of conscience, and spiritual reading; or if, while not altogether abandoning them, I draw no profit from them, through my own fault.”   

It is this principle in action that has left the Church with a co-Patroness of missionaries that never left the convent.  St. Therese of Lisieux is, along with the great missionary St. Francis Xavier, the co-Patroness of Missionaries.  Her great zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls was formed and then poured out in prayer.  In fact, it was revealed to St. Therese that through her prayer she had converted as many souls as St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary to the East.  The point is that zeal must always be formed first in prayer and then exercised in the manner in which God chooses.

A More Perfect World?

Atheism, Lent, Passion of Christ, The Life of Jesus, , ,

One of the go-to arguments against the existence of God is the presence of evil in the world.  The atheistic interlocutor looks at the world, sees evil and concludes that there is no God.  Such a conclusion rests upon a primary assumption, namely that he can conceive of a more perfect world, a world without suffering.  Therefore either God is a cold-blooded tyrant or He does not exist.  Given how often such an argument is given, we must be prepared to meet it, but not in the usual way.  Too often theists respond to the conclusions rather than the assumption.  In this essay we will challenge the notion that God could have made a more perfect world.  Can we really conceive of a world in which there is no evil and, if so, then would that world be more perfect than this one? 

To conceive of a world with no evil, at least on the surface seems relatively simple.  But we must be prepared to admit that the world would be vastly different than our own.  Not just in that it lacked evil, but that its physical properties (if it could have any at all) would be vastly different than are own. 

The Argument of the Head

Evil, properly conceived, is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  In a physical world of many physical beings the avoidance of at least some physical evils is an impossibility.  This topic is treated more fully in another essay, but the gist of the issue is that material things are by definition limited things and this limitation combined with a desire for self-preservation means that there will always be a lack in some creatures.  There is a single piece of bread and two people.  At least one of them (or possibly both if they split it) will experience the evil of hunger.  It is pointless to argue that the world could have an unlimited amount of bread because that will result in the evil of something else being lacking.  A physical world will always experience some lack and therefore some evil.

In a material world, one being’s good can be another being’s evil.  Not all relationships can be symbiotic.  The man who is hungry will experience the evil of thorn pricks from the bush that grows them in order to protect its berries from being plucked.  The virus that causes the flu will embed itself in a host and replicate for its own good but the host will experience sickness.

Usually the objection to the evil in the world is related to moral evils, that is, the evils we bring upon ourselves and inflict upon others.  The man who overeats will experience the evil of heart disease and the man who, in protecting his family from an intruder, will experience the evil of being stabbed.  These moral evils may results from the free will responses to physical evils (looters who raid stores after a storm for example) or strictly out of malice.  Either way, they are the result of the free will of someone.

A good God may give the power to use free will, which is good.  But the creatures that have the power may come in conflict with each other in how they use it.  God gave the power and is in a certain sense the cause of power in the action, but He is not the cause of the action itself.  A man who sells a gun to another is responsible for the man having the gun, but this does not mean He is responsible for how it is used.

While we cannot imagine a material world with no physical evils, we might imagine one in which there are no moral evils.  But this would result ultimately in the loss of free will.  A world in which all the goods are limited always carries with it the possibility of misapprehending and misusing those goods.  God could intervene each time someone tried to do something evil, but this would make free will conditioned and thus not totally free.

Our interlocutor would now be hard pressed to imagine a physical world that includes beings with free will in it that does not also include the presence of some evil.  Even if he can come up with one, he cannot prove it that it is more perfect than our own because perfect implies some knowledge of purpose.  Just as you cannot speak of a more perfect pair of shoes until you know what shoes are for, so you cannot speak of a world that is more perfect than our own until you know what the world’s purpose is.  In fact when we begin to examine the world’s purpose, we find that it is perfectly fitting that it contains evil

To say that the world has a purpose is really to say that the world is not an end but a means.  A perfect world would be one in which it prepares its inhabitants for the Real World that is to follow.  It must be a world that mirrors the goodness of the Real World just enough to invoke desire in its inhabitants, but not so much that they feel completely at home in it.  The Real World is one of an eternal communion of self-giving love.  This world must be a training ground that makes that self-giving love possible.  The limited nature of the physical world such as it is makes it possible for this self-giving love, but not without a willingness to suffer some lack for the sake of the beloved.   This willingness must mean that there are actual evils present in the world, even if not all love leads to also suffering from those evils.

The Argument of the Heart

What has been offered to this point is an argument of the head.  A mere “theistic” response is not adequate and only a Christian explanation will do.  God desired to make an “argument of the heart” in order to drive this point home.  This “argument of the heart” is the Passion and Death of Our Lord.  To show the path to the Real World, God Himself stepped into ours in order to show us the way.  He experience evil firsthand and used that suffering illuminating a path through this world marked by suffering.  

With the Passion and death of Christ suffering becomes a necessary component of the escape plan into the Real World.  In our suffering, we, in both a metaphorical and real sense, share in Christ’s suffering.  His suffering was entirely voluntary so that when we suffer, even involuntarily, it signals to us the depth of the love He has for us.  Without suffering we would not know what it was like for Him and would never grasp His great love.  Not only that, but He Who is the one in which all times are present, is really suffering with us.  The Passion is not just a past event but a current event for Him so that He (re)lives it in our very suffering.  He is the Lamb in the Real World that still walks about as though slain (c.f. Rev 5:6). 

The only acceptable answer to the problem of Evil for a Christian is Christ.  The impassible and unchanging God in exercising His omnipotence and omnibenevolence came into our world and suffered with and for us.  He spoke not just to our heads but to our hearts telling us the depth of His desire to share His life with His creatures.  This argument of the heart is at the very core of what it means to live Lent intentionally.  It is the time of reflecting on Christ’s Passion and coming to a greater knowledge of the truth of the nature of the Real World.

God’s Salt

Bible, Church, Creation, Grace, Martyrdom, Scripture, Spiritual Life, The Life of Jesus, ,

In his extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine says that Our Lord has laid out for us “the perfect standard of the Christian life.”  Prepared from all eternity, it is the most perfect sermon.  We should be hanging on the Word’s every word.  From beginning to end Our Lord has one goal in mind, to give the blueprint for sainthood.  The outline is made in the Beatitudes and the “how-to” follows.  The first words then of the “how-to” section are vital to understanding what it means to be a Christian and therefore merit our close scrutiny.

After defining Christians as those who find their joy in being persecuted, Our Lord tells His disciples they must be salty; “You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?  It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Mt 5:13).  To modern ears the Saline Commandment might strike us as a bit odd, especially because we only think of salt as a seasoning.  But Our Lord had something deeper in mind making this a most perfect metaphor for the Christian mind, something that we can begin to grasp more clearly if we look at salt itself.

The Master of Metaphor

First, we must admit that Our Lord was a master of metaphor and the reasoning for this is simple.  Our Lord did not need to search for a metaphor to describe the Christian, He simply created the metaphor.  Salt may have plenty of practical uses (all of which could be accomplished another way if Our Lord so decreed), but salt is what it is precisely because Our Lord wanted to use it to reveal the truth to His disciples.  In this case the truth of what it means to be a true disciple.  Catholics used to grasp this intuitively because they had a sacramental vision of reality.  Thanks to an unhealthy scientific excess, we have lost that ability and need to regain it.  That begins by resisting the temptation to simply say salt is “nothing but” Sodium Chloride and to probe deeper into its meaning. 

Salt itself is formed by the evaporation of salt water.  The process of evaporation involves two outside elements—sun and air or wind.  Salt cannot escape the sea water without these two things.  Now in sacramental language, the seas water is associated with chaos.  The Sun is Christ and the Wind is the Holy Spirit.  Putting them all together we find that His disciples cannot escape the chaos of the world without Our Lord and the Holy Spirit.  This is to make sure that the “try-hards” recognize that the Beatitudes are absolutely impossible without the infusion of grace.  Salty Christians then are formed.

The Real Saline Solution

We can glean more of Our Lord’s meaning, especially what He means when He calls them “salt of the earth” by examining how salt was commonly used.  Prior to refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food.  By reducing the water molecules in the food through osmosis, bacteria had no medium in which to grow.  What little bacteria did land on the food would die because it attacked their DNA.  In short, salt was used to stop decay.

So too it is with the Christian in the world.  Our Lord is saying that once they become salt, the disciples keep the world from decay.  This role of Christians is one that is easily overlooked but one that is worth examining more closely.

When God saw all of the evil that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham that He was going to destroy it.  But it wasn’t just as a punishment for the evil that He threatened to destroy it, but because there was no salt to keep it from decaying.  He could find no righteous men to preserve it.  Sodom and Gomorrah were fully decayed and their destruction was inevitable.  Had their been salt, they would have been preserved.

Christians are “salt of the earth” precisely because they preserve it and enhance its flavor.  All around us we see signs of decay, but true Christians can slow that decay by their very presence.  It is saints that change the world, not primarily by their actions, but by their sanctity.  The solution to our cultural crisis is simple—be a saint.  It is saints who have turned every culture around and it is saints that will turn ours around.  Saints are those who are committed to God’s will no matter what and those are the ones that He uses to season the world. 

Because of its dehydrating qualities salt was often used in war as a means of destroying crops.  So too God will use some of His salt to destroy the crops of the Evil One.  As His salt we must, each and every one of us, be prepared to be poured out on the ground.  Martyrdom is never really that far away for the Christian and we must be prepared for it to come.  But even if it doesn’t God’s salt must continue to keep the bacteria from spreading from within their own sphere of influence.  The thing about salt is that we immediately recognize its presence as well as its absence.  We must be salty then.

Before closing, let us take to heart Jesus’ words regarding losing our savor.  For salt cannot actually lose its savor without ceasing to be salt.  Despite the fact that we no longer use this language, it is important for us to do everything we can to stay in a state of grace.  If we lose our savor, it can be restored by becoming salt again, but we are at a great risk for being trampled underfoot.  All the saints prayed for the gift of perseverance so let us join their litany to stay salty.

The Divine Quadrilemma

Bible, Defending the Faith, Faith and Reason, History, Paganism, Passion of Christ, The Life of Jesus, , , , ,

The greatest heresy in the history of the Church was the Arian heresy.  At one point during the Fifth Century, nearly 3/4 of the world’s bishops were Arian.  Arius posited that Jesus was not truly God but instead the greatest of God’s creatures.  The popularity of this heresy was due to the fact that it would enable Christianity to be palatable to both Pagans and Gnostics alike.  By denying the equality of the Father and the Son, Christianity would take a decidedly Pagan turn.  This is what made this particular heresy such a threat—it made Christianity more palatable to Pagans and could be a source of unity throughout the recently Christianized Roman Empire.  This blending of Christianity was, of course, rejected by the Council of Nicaea with St. Athanasius leading the charge.  It took a long time for the Nicene effect to be felt throughout the Church, but eventually the Arian Heresy was squashed.  Unfortunately, heresies never wholly die, but are reincarnated in different forms such that we have seen a revival of the errors of Arius in our own day.  This time it comes in the form of a religious eclecticism that attempts to blend all religions together.

In our day there are any number of people who say, “there are many paths up the mountain, but the view is the same at the top of the mountain.”  They present the metaphor usually as a defense of blending religions or choosing a religion that best suits them (as opposed to one that is true).  This religious indifferentism is really a substitution of spirituality for religion.  Spirituality is about self-fulfillment whereas religion is about a relationship with God.  But it is problematic for a more fundamental reason, one that is easily uncovered once we drop the metaphor and actually compare religions. 

To insist that they lead up the same mountain while simultaneously contradicting each other makes this hard to believe.  One says Jesus is God, another that He was a prophet, another that He is the brother of Lucifer, another that we are all gods, and another that says everything is God.  While it may be convenient to use the “same mountain” metaphor, the truth is that there is no way that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Pantheism can be reconciled.  Depending on which you believe you will end up with vastly different conclusions.  They are not different paths on the same mountain, but different mountains all together.  

It may be possible to blend some religions together, but Christianity does not lend itself to any blending whatsoever.  This is because Jesus, in His infinite wisdom, has forced us all to take a stand.  Unlike any other religion, He made the claim to be God Incarnate.  That means that you must either accept that claim as true and relate to Him as absolute Lord or you must treat Him as a crazy, lying cult leader and dismiss everything He said.  If it is the latter, then to say that you like His teachings, that is to label Him as merely a human teacher, is not really an option.

The Quadrilemma

Those familiar with CS Lewis’ Christological trilemma will recognize this as a version of it.  Lewis said that you must treat Jesus as either lunatic, liar or Lord.  Those are the only three options.  You cannot treat Him as a merely human teacher however.  You either submit wholly to Him or you run as far away from His teachings as possible, even if some of them are actually helpful.  Lewis’ trilemma however is not impenetrable because, thanks to “biblical scholars” in our own time, there is now a fourth option that many people are choosing.  They claim that Jesus never actually said He was God.  And in this way, we see how the Arian heresy is coming back into play.

When we focus on whether Jesus actually said He was God (as opposed to whether or not that is true) we move from the realm of faith to that of history.  In other words, this is an attack on the historical reliability of the Gospels.  As an internal witness, the Bible is quite clear that Jesus made Divine claims.  But in order to grasp this, we must first take a necessary tangent in order to examine how He might say it.

The Internal Evidence

If the Incarnation were to have happened in our day and age you might expect Him to say (in English) “I am God.”  But if we look at the translations of the gospels we have today, we do not find such a direct statement, nor should we expect to.  We should expect that Jesus would say it the way a first Century Jew might.  Our Lord’s moments of self-revelation always invoke the Old Testament name for God, the same name He gave Moses and that the Jews treated as unutterable (YHWH).

In Greek, the language of the gospels, the Name is translated as egō eimi or “I am”.  This phrase is used in a number of places, but any time it is used in an absolute sense without any predicate, it refers to the Divine name.   The most obvious examples occur within John’s Gospel where we find he uttering things like: “unless you come to believe that I AM, you will surely die in your sins” (Jn 8:24).  Likewise, when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus in the Garden and announce it is Jesus they are seeking, He answers egō eimi.   In the ordinary sense it simply means “I am he” letting them know they have found who they were looking for.  However, those who hear this response fall to the ground suggesting that they are party to a theophany.

John’s Gospel, written later in the first Century, has a distinctive emphasis on the divinity of Christ because it was, according to Irenaeus, meant to counter some of the early Christological heresies that had arisen (Against Heresies, Book 3, Ch11).  But he is most certainly not the only one who uses this Jewish formulation for identifying Jesus as divine.  These references are found throughout the Synoptic Gospels as well.  First, there is the fact that only one reason is given for His crucifixion—blasphemy.  When on trial before the Sanhedrin, the High Priest asked Him:

“Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One?”  Then Jesus answered, “I AM”; and “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”  At that the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further need have we of witnesses?  You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as deserving to die.”

(Mk 14:55-64, c.f. Mt 26:59-66, Lk 22:66-71)

Notice that Jesus invokes the Divine Name and equates Himself with God by prophesying that He will sit at God’s right hand.  Likewise, He is also accused of blasphemy for setting Himself equal to God when He forgives sins (c.f. Mk 2:6-7, Mt 9:3).

Perhaps His clearest revelation comes in the form of a question to the Pharisees about whose son the Messiah will be.  They tell Him David, which He does not deny but He shakes their limited understanding by quoting from Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet’? If David calls him ‘lord,’ how can he be his son?” (Mt 22:44-45, c.f. Mk 12:35–37; Lk 20:41–44)    By referring to the Messiah as both pre-existing David and David’s LORD, He is admitting to being God Incarnate.

The External Evidence

Those who challenge that Jesus said that He was God often overlook the fact that we have external evidence as well.  They try to attack the timing and historical accuracy of the Bible but forget that we have writings of the Apostolic Fathers that confirm what has been said has been received as such.  These writings show that Christ’s divinity was not something added later on but was understood to be true directly out of the hands of the Apostles.  There are numerous quotations that could be shared, but a few should suffice to show that the gospels are historically reliable.  First there is Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John who was likely ordained by Peter who said, “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians 18:2).  There is also the aforementioned St. Irenaeus, the disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of John who said “…He indicates in clear terms that He is God, and that His advent was in Bethlehem…” (AH, Book 3, Chapter 20). Finally we have Pliny the Younger, a Roman Governor, describing Christians as “singing hymns to Christ as to a god” in a letter to the Emperor Trajan.

Given both the internal and external evidence, we must conclude that Jesus did make the claim that He was God.  This, of course, doesn’t prove that He was, but it does render our potential quadrilemma as a trilemma.  Christianity cannot be mixed with other religions because of the unique demands Jesus makes upon His followers.  He is either Lord or Liar, but you must choose one or the other.

Co-Redemptrix?

Mary, Passion of Christ, Suffering, The Life of Jesus, Theology, , , , , , ,

On the Feast of the Annunciation in 1945, a secretary from Amsterdam, Holland named Ida Peerdeman was visited with an apparition from heaven.  The visits from a woman who would identify herself as Our Lady of All Nations would continue for the next fifteen years for a total of 57 times.  It took nearly 50 years, but the apparition was deemed to be “of a supernatural origin” by Bishop Jozef Marianus Punt of Haarlem in 2002.  Although still awaiting official Vatican approval, the apparition of Our Lady of All Nations is remarkable for the content of its messages, one of which had a very specific request.   On July 2, 1951, the visionary was told “Now, look and listen. What I am going to say is an explanation of the new dogma. … From my Lord and Master, the Redeemer received his divinity. In this way the Lady became Co-Redemptrix by the will of the Father. It was necessary to begin with the dogma of the Assumption. Then the last and greatest would follow. … Tell that to your theologians. I do not come to bring any new doctrine. The doctrine already exists. Say this to your theologians: ‘Already, from the beginning, she was Co-Redemptrix.’”  The apparition had requested that the Church declare a fifth Marian dogma, Mary the Co-Redemptrix. 

Whether the apparition receives formal approval or not is still to be seen.  But it cannot be doubted that it remains controversial because of the request for the formal definition of what has become a highly controverted dogma.  At first glance it seems that declaring Mary as the co-Redemptrix takes Marian devotion too far.  There is only one Redeemer and it is Christ Himself.  His Mother may have assisted in this, but to give her such a lofty title verges on heresy.  Admittedly the title, especially in English, does suffer from a linguistical defect.  The prefix “co” in its common usage connotes an equality in the parties.  But it is meant to be a translation of the Latin term cum which means “with”.  So, when we speak of Mary as co-Redemptrix, it is meant to indicate that she is “with the Redeemer” playing an indispensable role in His salvific office.  It should not be viewed as competitive but cooperative.  Jesus Christ is the sole Redeemer of mankind.  If the doctrine of Co-Redemptrix is true, then it must be based on a more nuanced understanding.

Scripture and Co-Redemption

From the outset we must admit that in a certain sense that there are other “co-redeemers” found in Sacred Scripture.  God Himself speaks of Abraham as a co-Redeemer when, through his obedient “yes”, God promises to “bless all the nations of the earth” (Gn 22:17-18, c.f. Romans 4:16-25 where the promise is guaranteed to all who share the faith of Abraham).  Likewise, St. Paul speaks of laboring so that he might “save some by any means” (1 Cor 9:22).  We could cite other examples, but the point is that Scripture is replete with examples of men and women who freely cooperate with God in being instruments of redemption.  This cooperation is always a participation in God’s act of redemption.  It does not diminish the power of God’s redemptive work, but instead magnifies it.  It is one thing to do an activity by your own power, it is quite another, and more praiseworthy, to elevate others to work with you.

Turning to Mary herself, we see her serving as a co-Redemptrix to John the Baptist.  It is the presence of the embryonic Christ child, coupled with the sound of His Mother’s voice that sanctifies St. John the Baptist (c.f. Lk 1:39-45) within his mother’s womb.   This might lead one to think that she is just like Abraham and St. Paul, except for the promise of Genesis 3:15.  When God promises a Redeemer to Adam and Eve, He also promises the “woman” who would be instrumental in crushing the head of the Serpent.  The Woman and her seed would be linked in a single mission.  The seed would be the New Adam, Christ, and the Woman, would be the New Eve, “a helpmate fitting for Him”, Mary.  Summarizing, Pius IX in his Apostolic Constitution declaring the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, said that “God, by one and the same decree, had established the origin of Mary and the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom.”  Mary is, as the Second Vatican Council said, “inseparably linked to her Son’s saving work.”

If Abraham and St. Paul are co-redeemers through participation, then likewise is Mary.  But with Mary her participation is not just a difference in degree, but in kind.  She did not just co-operate with the Redeemer but cooperated in a necessary way.  She does not participate in the work of redemption in some remote way, but directly.  When God set in motion His plan of redemption He made it so that it depended upon her.  She is the only “necessary” co-operator because the body He was to offer, was given to Him by her.  Not only at the Annunciation and the Visitation, but throughout the whole course of His redemptive work, He made it depend upon her.  It was she who offered Him to the Father in the Presentation where His suffering was linked to hers, but also on Calvary.  As Pius XII put it in Mystici Coroporis Christi, “[I]t was she, the second Eve, who, free from all sin, original or personal, and always more intimately united with her Son, offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father for all the children of Adam, sin-stained by his unhappy fall, and her mother’s rights and her mother’s love were included in the holocaust.”

To summarize we would say that the title Mary, co-Redemptrix, is meant to acknowledge that it is through Mary’s continual “yes” that Christ redeemed the world.  She did not redeem the world, but participated in an entirely unique and essential manner in Christ redeeming the world.  That being said, why does it matter whether we define a fifth Marian dogma or not? 

Why it Matters

First, it is a matter of justice, specifically justice towards God in the virtue of religion that we offer fitting honor and praise for the works of God.  If God really did elevate a creature to share in such an intimate way in His redemptive work, then we owe it to Him to acknowledge and glorify Him in this work.  So too with Our Lady.  If she really did play an indispensable role in each of our salvation then the debt of gratitude can be repaid by invoking her under that title.

There is a second, more practical reason as well.  This has been pointed out by many others, including theologian Josef Seifert, but it bears repeating here as well.  The weeds of Protestantism often creep into the Garden of the Church.  Specifically, the Protestant belief in salvation by grace is often professed by many Catholics.  We are saved by grace, but not without our cooperation and the cooperation of other members of the Mystical Body.  “God will not save us, without us” as Augustine said.  We are not saved by our own actions, but those actions initiated in us by grace.  We must still cooperate with them.  This free cooperation in salvation has as its greatest example in Mary, co-Redemptrix.  To define this as dogma would serve to reassert was has become a forgotten belief within the Church.

Before closing, there is one other aspect that merits mention.  Some object for ecumenical reasons thinking that the term co-Redemptrix is just too strong and confusing a term.  Perhaps they have a point and we need to be wedded specifically to that term (although the apparition did use that term specifically).  Provided the term reflects the entirely unique role Mary played and plays in redemption then there might be a more ecumenically sensitive term that could be used.  But this is a double-edged sword.  In Christian-Jewish relations this term would have some traction because it shows the Jews themselves, through both the Patriarchs and the Jewish girl Mary, as co-Redeemers.

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.

Can God Suffer?

Defending the Faith, God's Love, Paganism, Passion of Christ, Pope Francis, Redemption, Suffering, The Life of Jesus, Theology, , , ,

In a recent homily on the Biblical narrative of the Flood, Pope Francis challenged those gathered to have a heart like God’s, especially in the face of human suffering.  The Holy Father said that “God the Father…is able to get angry and feel rage…suffering more than we do.”  So common has this assertion that God suffers become that it is practically becoming an assumption.  But upon closer inspection we come to find that there are a number of faith altering and faith destroying consequences that follow from this false view of God.  Therefore, it merits further reflection why it is that God does not suffer.

The Need for Analogy

We must first admit that our language inevitably fails us when we attempt to speak about God.  In fact, we can say nothing positive about Him.  This is not because we are pessimists, but because we can only speak definitively about what He is not.  He is omniscient because there is nothing He doesn’t know.  He is omnipotent because there is nothing He can do, etc.  To speak of what He is, is impossible because He transcends our categories.  This linguistic limitation can be partially overcome once we allow for the use of analogy.  For example, God reveals Himself as Father because His fatherhood is something like the human fatherhood that we are all familiar with.

The problem with this approach of analogy is that we often get it backwards.  Properly speaking it is human fatherhood that is like God’s fatherhood.   Keeping the primacy of God’s fatherhood in mind keeps us from assuming that it is just like human fatherhood and making God in our image instead of us in His.  Human fatherhood is only true fatherhood to the extent that it images God’s fatherhood as St. Paul is wont to remind the Ephesians (c.f. Eph 3:15). 

More closely related to the topic of God’s suffering is the dictum that God is love.  To say that God is love is to say that God loves fully and for all eternity.  He cannot love any more than He does because it is His nature to love.  We speak of different “kinds” of love from God such as mercy, compassion, kindness, etc. but in God there is no distinction.  He loves fully.  We, however, cannot receive His love fully.  “Whatever is received,” St. Thomas says, “is received according to the mode of the receiver.”  To the sinner, God’s love is received as mercy.  To the suffering His love is received as comfort.  Yet, from God’s perspective it is a completely active and full love.     

To say that God suffers with us reverses the analogy.  The assumption is that because compassionate human love includes suffering, then Divine love must also.  But the fact that it includes suffering does not mean that it must include suffering.  It is the love that is given that makes it love, not the suffering.  In fact you could remove the suffering, the love would still be love.  In fact, it would be a purer love because there would be no need on the lover’s part to succor his own suffering.  Instead it would be a completely free love with no compulsion towards self-interest.  Rather than being somehow cold and indifferent, it is complete and free.  So God, by not be able to suffer, actually loves us more than if He could suffer.  To insist otherwise makes God love us less, the very thing that they think they are avoiding by positing that He must suffer.  As Fr. Thomas Weinandy puts it, “what human beings cry out for in their suffering is not a God who suffers but a God who loves wholly and completely, something a suffering God could not do.”  God is compassionate not because He suffers with but because He is able to fully embrace those who are suffering

Further Consequences of the Suffering God

If reversing the analogy was the worst part about this, then we might simply chalk it up as a misunderstanding.  But the fact that it represents an attack on God’s nature eventually leads us into a theological pitfall that destroys our faith in God.  God, in order to suffer must be capable of change.  But we believe in a God who is immutable.  His immutability comes about not because He can’t change, but because as the fullness of being there is nothing for Him to change into.  No change would make Him more than He is because He is already “I AM WHO AM”, pure act.  He fully alive.  To posit that He can suffer is to posit that He can change and to posit that He can change is to say that He is not the one true God.

He must also be incapable of suffering, that is, impassible for a subtler reason as well.  Suffering is caused by a lack of some good that ought to be there.  If God, in Himself is lacking some good, then He is not All Good.  If the suffering comes about because of the lack of some good in creation, then He becomes a part of creation itself and is no longer transcendent.  As part of creation He is no longer Creator.  Evil and suffering must be seen as having real existence (rather than a lack of some good) since nothing is immune to it.  Our new God is the god of pantheism or process theology and an ontological dualism becomes the result.

The suffering God hypothesis ultimately means the destruction of the Christian God.  If God is not free from suffering, then no one is.  And if no one is, then there is no possibility of redemption.  God simply becomes one being among many striving for perfection.  If He cannot save Himself from evil, then how can He save anyone else?  The Incarnation becomes totally incomprehensible.  The God-Man cannot offer redemption, nor can He sanctify suffering.  In truth, a suffering God need not stoop to our level because He is already there.  The truth that He could love fully without suffering, yet still chose to add suffering carries the assurance of His total love for each one of us.  If He could already suffer, then it looks like little more than masochism.

In short, ideas have consequences. Serious ideas have serious consequences.  The idea of divine passibility has nothing but negative consequences.  Therefore, despite its present popularity, the assertion that Divine suffering is possible must be wholly rejected in favor of the Traditional teaching of the Church so that the Faith may remain intact.

Temptational Judo

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

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

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

To Think It is to Want to do It

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

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

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

Reversing the Moments

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

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

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

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

The End Times and the Anti-Mary

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Christians of every age have wondered whether they were living in the End Times.  Each of these ages had their own reasons to believe that Our Lord’s return was imminent.  In that regard our own age is no different.  But our times are unique in a very specific way, one that is not often spoken of.  The Second Coming of Christ will be like a negative photographic image of the first.  He came in weakness, He will come in power.  He came in silence, He will come with trumpet blasts.  He came as Redeemer, He will come as Judge.  He came as Lamb, He will return as Lion.  Just as this principle of photographic negative applies to the New Adam, it also applies to the role the New Eve will play as well.  And in this, we find signs that the end is near.

Mary’s First Coming

The future Queen of Heaven and Earth was the Queen of the Hidden Life during her earthly sojourn.  She “kept all these things in her heart” rather than shouting them to the housetops.  The only time she “let loose” of both her mission and her Son’s was in the privacy of her cousin Elizabeth’s home.  And even after the Resurrection she remained in prayer, preferring not to speak and to avoid any chance that a cult were to rise up around the Mother of God.  She who was a true wonder of the world, lived in the temple of her heart in ancient Ephesus while the pagans streamed to the Temple of the virgin goddess Diana in that same city.  She was not only humble, but silent with only a single spiritual counsel—“do whatever He tells you.”

As Queen and Universal Mother she has not abandoned her children.  Throughout the ages she has left her throne in Heaven and appeared to her children to give them an urgent message.  These apparitions have been a regular part of the life of the Church over the past millennium.  In the last few centuries however, they have grown in both frequency and publicity. She is no longer the silent maiden, but the regal Mother voicing her concern for her children.  When we view this in light of the “photographic negative” principle, this makes sense.  If she played a primary, albeit silent, role in the First Coming, we should only expect that she play a more visible and vocal role in the Second Coming.  And the messages of her apparitions seem to suggest that the time is short.  We may not know how short is short, but it is safe to say that she is clearing the way for His second Advent.

Reading the signs of the times and seeing the Marian apparitions in this light means we should treat the messages, especially at Fatima where the most visible public miracle ever occurred, with the utmost seriousness.  But there is another sign that is related to this that ought to give us pause.

The Spirit of the Anti-Mary

We know that one of the signs of the Second Coming is the reign of the Antichrist.  We aren’t told when but we are told how long he will reign (42 months).  Throughout history there have been types of the Antichrist that gave us a glimpse of just how dark those days will be.  But they have all passed.  Eventually the true antichrist will rise and I would like to suggest that this eventuality is closer than we may think.

The Devil is the great ape of God, trying to “be like god” and mimic what He does.  The Antichrist will be his greatest facsimile of the true Christ, for he will dupe many people into thinking he is the real thing.  But being the great counterfeiter, we should expect that he will try to replicate the life of the true Christ is every way, but especially in a specific way—by having the anti-Mary precede him.

Who can doubt that the spirit of the anti-Mary is already rearing its ugly head among us under the guise of feminism?  But only Mary is the true feminist, receptive in everything God has to give.  Feminists reject femininity as receptivity and try to seize everything for themselves, including masculinity.  The “handmaiden of the Lord” was the most liberated woman who ever lived, finding freedom in living out her feminine calling.  The anti-Mary must liberate herself from even her own feminine nature, ending in absolute slavery.  Mary modestly hid her beauty behind a mantle and veil, anti-Mary wears little except a pink cat hat on her head.  Mary humbly “ate the bread of dependence” provided by Joseph at Nazareth and was filled, anti-Mary is gluten free and looks out only for number one.  Mary loved God and submitted to Him in her Jewish religion, anti-Mary hates God for making them a woman and sees religion only as a weapon in the hands of oppressors.  Mary prophetically whispered, “this is my body given for You,” anti-Mary shouts “my body, my choice.”  They speak only of women’s rights, but Mary speaks of a woman’s unique duties.

The diabolical fraud has been perpetrated, clearing the way for the reign of the anti-Mary.  And this is what makes our times utterly unparalleled.  Other times may have had their shadows of the Antichrist, only our age is animated by the spirit of the anti-Mary.  It is this uniqueness that suggests we may be entering into the time of the final battle.  There is a great battle being waged between Mary and the anti-Mary and we must fly to the foxhole of her mantle.  It was with this in mind that St. Louis de Montfort spoke of the Apostles of the End Times as having a particularly Marian spirit and devotion.  It is also why Our Lady has reminded us that even though the anti-Mary is seemingly everywhere, that, in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph.

Spiritual Combat and the Mass

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As Christ panned the landscape from His throne upon the Cross, He saw both friend and foe.  The foes included not just the Roman and Jewish leaders that wanted Him dead, but the demons who had incited them to carry out His execution with the maximum amount of cruelty.  Likewise he saw not just His Mother, St. John and the holy women, but also all of His friends throughout the ages that would willingly join Him.  From the vantage point of the Cross, He saw a great battlefield forming before Him.  He saw very clearly who His real enemies were and asked for forgiveness for their pawns.  The spiritual combat that had begun in the Garden with Adam and Eve reached its zenith when the New Adam and the New Eve finally crushed the head of the Ancient Serpent.  A new weapon, the Cross had been introduced.  For the Cross was a key not only heaven’s opened not just Heaven’s gates but a portal into hell.  No longer outgunned, the Christian grasps the Cross like the hilt of sword and chases the demons back into hell.  Calvary is the terrain over which all spiritual combat traverses.  This truth is almost self-evident.  It is perhaps the “almost” that causes us to miss a very important corollary.  Just as the demons were actively engaged on the field of Mount Calvary, they are still actively engaged in the Mystical Calvary, that is, the Mass. 

Active and Conscious Participation and Spiritual Combat

The Second Vatican Council exhorted Christians to “active and conscious participation” in the Mass.  The “activity” is not on the part of more ushers, lectors and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, but in the hand to hand combat begun on the hill of Calvary and continues over the pews of our little parish churches.  If the Mass is what we profess it is, the sacrifice of Christ made present to us explicitly so that we might participate in it, then it also demands that we take a side in the great battle and engage.  This is the activity of the Mass.  The “conscious participation” is the awareness of what we are actually entering into.  The Mass is a great battlefield in which each and every Christian engages in spiritual combat—not just in some abstract sense, but in actual hand to hand combat.  And, as in all spiritual combat, knowing you are engaged in a battle is, well, half the battle.  Once we become aware of it, we realize how we have known it all along.  Obviously there is a great ideological battle that has taken place that has obscured this truth and so we must begin by setting our minds and hearts firmly upon this truth.

Hand to hand combat is never just a “spiritual” thing but something real and practical.  First there is the battle that occurs remotely.  The great enemy of mankind hates the Mass and will do anything he can to keep us from being there.  Obstacles are thrown up left and right to leaving on time.  Otherwise peaceful families suddenly experience strife.  Family members experience agitation and begin to quarrel.  Accusations are thrown back and forth.  The difficult child becomes more difficult while the impatient parent becomes more impatient.  Clothes and keys can’t be found.  The battle lines have been drawn and Pilate is reminding you that he has the power to make it all go away.  Many will fall by the wayside because, after all, “what is truth?”  Then there are those who, having their peace stolen, will set out on the way, leaving the Cross behind.  Calling to mind what the Divine General did, the true soldier of Christ embraces the Cross and sets out on the Way.  Knowing that he is headed to the Front is not enough however.  He will serve as Simon of Cyrene by offering his cross for those in the first two groups who may not have the strength to carry theirs.

Once the Christian arrives at the Front, he is confronted with a new temptation—“to come down off the Cross” (c.f. Mk 15:30).  In fact this is the primary weapon that the demons use against us.  He will throw every distraction he can before our imagination.  “What are they wearing?” , “Look at her!  Look at him!”, “why doesn’t she pay attention to what her kid is doing?” “What do I need to do after Mass?”, “What is Father talking about?”.  The demons coordinate their attacks, tempting one person to do something and then setting the judgment in the mind of another.  You may have made it to the Front, but they can neutralize you through distraction.  Again in recognizing it for what it is we have won half the battle.  And with recognition, we derail the train of thought and hop back on the Cross with Christ Who has been waiting there for us from all eternity.    This is a battle and each time we join Christ on the Cross we not only draw deeply from the fruit of the Tree of Life but are dealing a blow to the Evil One. 

Take note Pastors, Liturgical Coordinators and Music Directors.  This is why the liturgy should be completely devoid of any novelty.  A well-disciplined army, one that has drilled so often that the battle itself becomes second nature, is a successful army.  The war may be over, but we are trying to limit casualties in the mop-up operation.  Novelty on the part of priests and coordinators only serve to distract and cause the army to fall from formation.  So too with the music, it should be chosen not for its entertainment value, but for its ability to keep us engaged in the battle.

In all that was said so far it might seem then that the whole purpose of us going to Mass is to avoid distraction so that we can focus on what is going on.  That is to see the battle only in terms of defensive tactics.  The primary purpose of the Mass is to enable each one of us and all of us (that is the Church as a whole) to make the sacrifice of the Cross our own by way of participation.  And this participation involves three different postures, each one based on those found at the Foot of the Cross on Calvary.

The Three Postures

The first posture is the Marian posture.  Those who unite themselves with the Mother of God and adopt this posture are those for whom Mass involves personal suffering.  Think for example of the special needs parent and child.  Or think of the person who had great difficulty in crowds.  Or the person who is undergoing a great personal crisis.  Or even the parents of young children for whom 60 minutes sitting still in one place is a great challenge.  These people are actively suffering with Christ

Those with the Marian stance are not only suffering with Christ, they are in a very real sense, suffering for Christ.  They could just as easily decide that it is simply too hard to go to Mass and skip it.  They may even be justified in so doing.  But their love for Him precludes it.  That is why the second posture, that of the holy women, is also necessary.  The holy women at the foot of the Cross were there not only because they loved Christ, but because they also loved His Mother.  It was not just His suffering that moved them, but hers as well.  Their offering to Christ was one of prayer and support for Him and His Mother.  The holy women (and men) of the Mystical Calvary, rather than giving in to the temptation to judge the Liturgical Marys in their midst, they support them through their understanding glances and prayers. 

Finally, there is a Johannine posture.  Motivated by a deep friendship, the Church’s first mystic was moved to great sorrow for his sins and a loving contemplation of the events unfolding before him.  The Liturgical Johns work hard to remain in this posture throughout the entire Mass, moving from sorrow to thanksgiving as they try to penetrate ever deeper into the Mystery unfolding before them.

Before closing, it is important to mention that although the three postures are mutually exclusive, it does not mean you must select one each time you go to Mass.  Very often God makes it abundantly clear which role you are to play in a given Mass and, even, during a particular part of a given Mass.  In other words, you will always be playing one of those parts, but not always playing the same part.

Who were the Magi?

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Throughout history there has been a universal fascination with the event of Epiphany.  One cannot help but wonder about the experience of the Magi as they traveled a great distance to meet the King of Kings.  But why did they come?

Explanations of the Star

There have been a number of possible explanations offered as to what drew the Magi to Bethlehem.  We know of course that they were following a star, one that they had been looking for.  The first explanation is the one that has been offered by several Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church (such as St. John Chrysostom and St. Thomas Aquinas for example).  We could categorize theirs as wholly supernatural.  From the perspective of faith, the description of the star in Matthew’s Gospel, especially how it stops and starts again, sounds eerily famililar—almost like the description of the shekinah cloud as Israel left from Egypt.  The Star went before them the whole of their journey, so bright that it was even visible in the daytime.  It also traced a rather odd course for a celestial body.  First it went from east to west but then stops over Jerusalem (where it disappeared).  It then moves from north to south as it guides them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and remains over the house where Our Lord was to be found.

In more recent times, some scientists have put forward a more “natural” explanation as an alternative.  In his book, Star of Bethlehem, astronomer Konradin Ferrari d’Occhieppo says that around 7-6BC there was a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Pisces which would have been bring enough to merit consideration for the star.  It would have captured the imagination of the Magi because Jupiter was the star of the highest Babylonian deity and it was lined up alongside Saturn which was the cosmic representation of the Jewish people.  Other scientists have offered similar explanations including a great movie called The Star of Bethlehem.  What is left unexplained in these natural accounts is how the “star” disappeared and reappeared in the same spot and how it suddenly changed its course.

There might be a tendency to reject the natural in favor of the supernatural because it seems take away from the miraculous event it was foretelling.  In either case though it is the same God Who is guiding the star.  All creation finds its meaning in Christ so that God, when He set the world in motion, could have set the heavenly bodies in such a manner as they would converge to form a bright appearance at the moment of Our Lord’s birth.  All of history is His story.

The Meaning of Epiphany

God is omnipotent in His Providence because He reveals Himself to the world through events.  If we examine the meaning of the star as revealing the God Who became man, then the most plausible explanation is one that combines both explanations.  The scientific explanation (either the conjunction of the two planets or another explanation) would have led the Magi to Jerusalem.  They would have gone as far as they could by human reason.  To find the King of Kings they would need revelation.  So, they had to consult the Jews who were the keepers of God’s revelation.  With the star’s reappearance, they were guided by some visible supernatural sign. This explanation would enable us to read literally the text that says that the “star stopped over the place where the child was” (Mt 2:9).  For a star to lead them to a specific house one would imagine that it would have had to be very close; something akin to the Miracle of the Sun witnessed by 70,000 people in Fatima, Portugal 100 years ago.

There is a second meaning of the event as well that comes to the front when we ask who these Magi were.  They were either astrologers or astronomers, although there was not necessarily a distinction between the two in the ancient world.  The planets are named after their deities because they believed that the heavenly bodies ruled over the events of man.  They studied the heavens in order to divine what was to happen on earth.   With or without the knowledge of Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers 24:19, (“there shall come a Star out of Jacob”), they would have considered the bright star to mean something significant.  Once they witnessed the extraordinary action of the star, they would have realized that it was the child himself that was directing it.  As Pope Benedict puts it, they would have come to realize “[I]t is not the star that determines the child’s destiny, it is the child that directs the star.”

The Magi embarked as pagans, but they return Christians.  The seeds of truth found in their pagan religions have led them to the fullness of God’s revelation.  God may have left traces of His truth in creation and in the minds of men, but that all changed at the coming of Christ.  As St. Gregory Naziazen says, astrology came to end because all stars from that point on followed an orbit traced by Christ.  God has personally come to meet man and from that point forward man would be able to approach Him.

Christ is the great demythologizer.  The world is no longer governed by forces in the heavens but instead by the God Man.  They approach a little baby who looks like every other human baby, and yet this little child can move everything within creation to suit His purposes.  Their gods, if they existed, would have to obey this infant.  They are not disappointed when they meet this child without any stately appearance but instead pour expensive gifts upon Him.  The Magi come pagans and leave Christians.

The Gift of Advent

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In what became an international best-seller, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope, St. John Paul II summarized Original Sin as “above all” an attempt “to abolish fatherhood”.  When Adam and Eve seized the apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they didn’t just disobey, but epically failed to see that God in His fatherly love was offering everything they would ever need or want as a pure gift.  Instead of receiving the gift they attempted to appropriate it for themselves.  They wanted to “be like God” on their own terms and not as beneficiaries of the Divine Goodness.  That Satan tempted them to do so should not be all that surprising because these are the same conditions under which he too fell.  Rather than receive the gift from God, he decided he would grasp his greatness as his own.  Satan would “be like God”, but only on his own terms.

There is a flip side of this that can easily be overlooked but is something worthy of deeper reflection.  The abolition of fatherhood really comes about not by outright denial of it, but through a usurpation of sonship.  Lucifer was not so foolish as to think he could somehow eclipse God.  Instead he thought he could eclipse the Son by usurping His throne and ruling with God.  Lucifer’s transition to Satan was when he identified himself as only begotten son and not creature.  Thinking that equality with God was something to be grasped (c.f. Phil 2:6) rather than received, he, according to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, tried to “usurp a similitude with the Most High that was the Son’s by right.”

“You are My Beloved Son…”

Sonship, St. Paul’s great ode to the humility of Christ tells us, is not something that can be grasped but something that the Son must share with us.   Even the Son Himself does not grasp His Sonship but receives it from the Father.  And all that belongs to Him as Son, He gives to us by way of participation.  The Son did not shed His humanity when He ascended on high but instead took it with Him to affirm that mankind was made for this.

Notice that I didn’t say that the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us simply to redeem us.  That He did, but to stop there is to confuse the means with the end.   God redeems us so that He can give Himself to us.  This is a recurring theme in Scripture, but nowhere does it shine forth more brightly than in St. Paul’s canticle to marriage in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33).  In it, the Apostle to the Gentiles draws an analogy between the marital relationship of man and woman with Christ’s relationship to the Church.  Marriage is a Sacrament precisely because this analogy is real.

But St. John Paul II says that we can actually illuminate Christ’s relationship with the Church by looking at marriage (see Theology of the Body, 18 August 1982).  In other words, he suggests that we reverse the analogy by closely examining the spousal imagery.  The Divine Bridegroom wishes to remove every imperfection in his spouse by cleansing her in the “bath of water with the word” so that she is without spot or wrinkle or any blemish (Eph. 5:26-27).  This nuptial bath is an obvious allusion to Baptism, but that is just the beginning.  What the Bridegroom really wants is his bride to be spotless, so that He who is also spotless can unite with her in a one flesh communion (Eph 5:30-32).

The Great Mystery

Within marriage the gift that the spouses give to each other is first and foremost themselves—“I take you…”  So too with Christ.  In Baptism, He claims each one of us for Himself and says “I take you…”  Yes, He gifts us with the fruits of redemption, but the real Gift is Himself.  As John Paul II puts it in one of his addresses from the Theology of the Body “In him, We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses…’ (Eph 1:7). In this manner men who through faith accept the gift offered to them in Christ, really become participants in the eternal mystery, even though it works in them under the veil of faith. According to the Letter to the Ephesians 5:21-33, this supernatural conferring of the fruits of redemption accomplished by Christ acquires the character of a spousal donation of Christ himself to the Church, similar to the spousal relationship between husband and wife. Therefore, not only the fruits of redemption are a gift, but above all, Christ himself is a gift. He gives himself to the Church as to his spouse” (15 September 1982).  It seems as if the Saintly Pontiff, despite his Thomistic roots, thinks that the Incarnation would have happened even if man had no sinned.  God, for all eternity, planned to become one flesh with mankind.

If we take this theme and shine its light on the Parable of the Prodigal Son then we can begin to examine our own relationship to this truth.  The younger son wants to appropriate his sonship and take his father’s gifts by fiat.  But when “he comes to his senses” and returns contritely to the father, he bestows the gifts of sonship on him.  The older son on the other hand also rejects his sonship.  He is simply looking for his father to provide for his needs, like those who go to God only for redemption.  That is non-trivial of course, but to stop there is to never see the generosity of the father who says “everything I have is yours.”  It is servile rather than filial.

If divine sonship cannot be grasped but only received then we ought to dedicate this Advent to meditating upon this truth.  We should study the life of Our Lord and learn from Him so that we might take our place with Him upon His throne.  If we truly are sons in the Son, then we need to act like it.   Likewise we would do well to prepare ourselves for His second coming when He will initiate the Wedding Feast of the Lamb by allowing Him to cleanse us of every spot and blemish.  Light your lamps and go out and meet Him!   “Jesus is the reason for the season” indeed.

Marriage in Heaven

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Matthew the Evangelist relays a conversation that Jesus once had with the Sadducees in which they tried to trap Jesus into admitting that the resurrection of the dead was absurd.  They present Him with a case study of a woman who was married seven times, each ending in the death of her husband.  They ask Our Lord, “Now at the resurrection, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had been married to her.”  If Our Lord said all of them, then He would be admitting there was polyandry, thus rendering the resurrection of the body a sinful state.  Instead Our Lord utters words that have shocked many Christians throughout history: “because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.  At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven” (c.f. Mt 22:28-33).  For some of those who are married, newlyweds and those happily married especially, these words cause much angst.  For the rest, relief.  But for all of us they are relevant because they give us a momentary glance at our promised destiny.

This ought to go without saying, but it has been uttered enough that it bears mention.  When Our Lord says that they “are like the angels” He does not mean that they become angels.  “For angels have not bodies” as St. Thomas says.  Therefore, it makes no sense to speak of resurrection, that is the re-unification of body and soul, if there is no body.  Instead Our Lord is describing the qualities of the resurrected life.  They will have the powers of the angels in thought, movement and glorification, but they will still be embodied spirits.  They will also, like the angels, not marry.

Seeing Marriage for What It Is..and Isn’t

Part of the struggle to grasp what Our Lord is saying stems from the fact that we live in an age in which the definition of marriage remains elusive.  That is, we are unclear what marriage is and what it is for and so endeavor to see how, if at all, it could fit into the scheme of eternity.  Marriage is the one flesh union of spouses tending towards the communion of their persons.  This union is of the whole person, physically, emotionally and spiritually, and not just an emotional bond as is commonly thought today.  This unbreakable personal union also is the foundation of the family which is the natural domicile for the procreating and raising of children.

As the instrument for the procreating and raising of children, obviously marriage is unnecessary in the next world.  While it served this purpose here below as the place where man lived out the command to “be fruitful and multiply,” once the harvest comes there will be no need for more fruit.

As a Sacrament marriage too will pass away in the eschaton.  In fact, all the Sacraments will pass away.  As signs, the Thing signified will be unveiled and made fully present.  Gone will be the need to see Our Lord veiled behind the appearances of bread and wine and it will pave the way to see Him face to face.  Likewise Marriage as a sign will no longer be necessary because the reality will be fully present.

Marriage as a Sign

The nature of marriage as a sign that points to a very specific reality is vitally important.  Specifically, marriage, as an earthly reality tending towards the communion of the spouses points to a parallel heavenly reality.  First, in its bond of love and fruitfulness it points to the Communion of Persons which is the Trinity.  But that is not all.

As a complete gift of self, it signifies the mutual gift of self between God and each man and woman.  As proof that this union is real, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The Incarnation is the definitive marriage of mankind with God.  The Son is forever united to a human nature.  As if further proof were needed, Christ also raised Marriage to a Sacrament by which He bestows sanctifying grace.  This sanctifying grace not only cements the bonds of the spouses, but more importantly it truly unites each of the spouses to God.  In this way it becomes not just a sign, but the thing signified, “the great mystery in reference to [the bond of] Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32).

There is also a third reality that is signified in marriage and it is this one that ought to bring relief to those who despair no longer being united to their spouse.  It is this reality, says St. John Paul II, that is the reason why we are not simply “laundry listing” what we believe in the Creed but implying an intimate connection between the truths and reality.  More to the point, the Saintly Pontiff says that we link the Resurrection of the Body and the Communion of Saints in the Creed.

We are embodied creatures and our bodies too are a sign.  They are a sign that we are made for communion, not just with God, but with one another.  But these signs do not pass away because they bring about the thing signified, that is our bodies are who we are.  In this life we are limited in our capacity of self-giving to the point that we can only give of ourselves fully to one other person.  When time ceases, this limitation will be lifted so that we will be able to give of ourselves fully in all our relationships.  Put more succinctly we will participate fully in the Communion of Saints, a communion of self-giving and receiving of the entire redeemed community.  This is why, by way of anticipation, Our Lady, although only a creature, can have a personal relationship with each of the members of the Church Militant.  It is this redeemed community that is wedded to God, a communion with a communion as John Paul II said.

This is the Good News for spouses.  All in their relationship they have built upon and centered on Christ will endure.  The true intimacy, in Christ, they experienced will not be forgotten but instead will be the foundation of their relationship with each other in the Communion of Saints.  They will experience a level of intimacy beyond anything they could imagine.

And this is ultimately why Our Lord refused the Sadducees trap of treating marriage and the resurrection as some theological theory.  It is also why we shouldn’t treat this as some “pie in the sky” musings.  It ought to inform our relationships here and now.  If only those aspects of our relationship that were built on Christ will last, then we know which ones we should focus on.  If everyone did this in living out the consequence of Marriage as a Sacrament, then there would be peace in many homes.  And that, truly is the Good News.

On Eucharistic Miracles

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One of the earliest documented Eucharistic miracles occurred in the 8th Century in Lanciano, Italy.  A priest who was said to be experiencing doubts about the Real Presence was witness to the consecrated species turning into human flesh and blood. The flesh and blood were gathered and the Church declared that a miracle had occurred.  After more than a millennium, pilgrims still journey to the Church of St. Francis in Lanciano, Italy to offer adoration to the miraculously transformed Eucharistic species, which have been scientifically verified to be human cardiac flesh and fresh blood.  Lanciano was probably not the first, nor was it the last.  The Church continues to witness (and verify) Eucharistic miracles in our own day.  They are among the most “common” miracles; so common, in fact, that St. Thomas even developed a theology around them in order to help the faithful draw fruit from these miraculous gifts of the New Tree of Life.

Miracles

To approach the tree of Eucharistic faith, we must begin with a few important explanations.  The word miracle is often misused making it necessary to offer some clarifying remarks.  We often hear someone speak of the “miracle of life” when what they really mean is how wonder-full it is.  Within the divine plan, life is the natural end of procreation.  It is amazing and awesome, but not a miracle.  There may be miracles that occur that leads to individual conceptions or individual births, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.  Instead, a miracle occurs when the laws of nature are somehow suspended or altered.  There must be a natural ordering that is understood in order for us to even begin to recognize that a miracle has happened.  The supernatural assumes the natural.

Related to the topic at hand, the Eucharist itself is not a miracle.  Within the Sacramental realm it is exactly what is supposed to happen.  It may be a mystery of unbelievable depths, but it is still governed by a set of laws.  When those laws, which we call form and matter, are obeyed the Eucharist is the “natural” result.  The Bread of Life is an act of God’s omnipotence and omnipresence that has no parallel in the natural order, but still it is the norm within the sacramental order.  Through the proper matter and form, the Son is really and truly present under the appearance of bread and wine.

Eucharistic miracles are no different in this regard.  It is only when the appearance deviates from bread and wine that we can recognize a miracle has happened.  Many saints (St. Catherine of Siena and St. Faustina come to mind) received a personal apparition of Christ’s true body (at various stages of His life) which were miraculous but eventually vanished.  These are personal and the Church does not examine these.  The Church is more interested in the more “permanent” apparitions when the species are transformed into actual flesh and blood such as was seen in Lanciano.  These are miracles properly speaking because the Eucharistic presence of Christ “normally” appears as bread and wine, but through Divine intervention the sacramental law is suspended.

St. Thomas says that the change in the outward appearance has a distinct purpose—to show that Christ’s body and blood are truly in this Sacrament.  It is on faith that we know that, what looks like to all appearances bread and wine, is really the body and blood of Christ.  In order to bolster that faith, God miraculously intervenes and changes the appearance.

Our Lord’s Natural Body

At this point it is important to mention a key aspect of Christ’s Eucharistic presence.  Our Lord’s natural body in its glorified condition has only one natural, spatial presence; heaven.  But through God’s omnipotence His body also has a sacramental dimension that gives it a supernatural non-spatial power of presence enabling it to transcend any physical limits and be present wherever His Eucharistic presence is made manifest.  This power also enables Christ in His humanity and His divinity to be truly present even under the smallest particle of the Eucharistic species.

What this means is that the cardiac muscle in Lanciano is no more an actual piece of Christ’s heart than the Eucharist itself is the natural body of Christ.  The cardiac tissue and drops of blood miraculously preserved in Lanciano only “appear” to be flesh and blood just as the Eucharistic species only appear to be bread and wine.  The miracle is in the change of the accidents and nothing more.  There may be ways to scientifically tie them to the humanity of the God-Man such as blood types and DNA connecting it to the ancestry of Our Lord, but they are not actually parts of His natural body.

Some might balk at this thinking that God is deceiving us.  This is why having an understanding of the Eucharistic theology is important.  But St. Thomas also makes an important point (ST III q.76 art. 8) that “this is not deception, because it is done to represent the truth, namely, to show by this miraculous apparition that Christ’s body and blood are truly in this sacrament”.

In essence the flesh and blood become sacraments verifying the Sacrament.  Like the many miracles that Our Lord performed during His earthly ministry there will always be those who flock to simply see the miraculous.  For the faithful however they should flock because they desire to see the signs themselves.  Because no change in the substance occurs with these miracles, the flesh and blood truly contain the Real Presence of Christ.  That makes them worthy of our adoration so that many pilgrims, confirmed in their faith, adore Our Lord in this miraculous Blessed Sacrament.

The Mystery of the Transfiguration

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

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

What the Transfiguration Reveals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Transfiguration and Us

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

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

The Worker

Anthropology, Economics, Redemption, The Life of Jesus, Theology, Virtue, Work, , ,

Was man made to work or was work made for man?  The modern answer, enlightened of course by the strange amalgam of Marxism and liberalism is that made was made for work.  The Christian, and therefore the true answer, is that work was made for man.  In the beginning God made man and placed him in an earthly paradise.  Despite declaring creation “good, very good” (Gn 1:31), God left it completely incomplete and commanded man to finish it, to “cultivate and care for it” (Gn 2:15), because man himself was completely incomplete.  God commands only what is for our own good so that it is natural for man to work because work is a means of perfecting him.  With the Fall, man became incompletely incomplete so that work, while still essential to his fulfillment, lost its sweetness and became labor (c.f. Gn 3:17-19).  The effects of this curse are still felt today—especially today—when man is plagued by compartmentalization leaving him alienated from himself.  Given the key role that work plays in the integrated life then we must strive to see it in its proper context.

If we are to be honest, absent the Christian message as a whole, the secular response is the best we can come up with.  Even the pre-Christian pagans thought that all men were made to work, or, at least some men were made for servile work so that others didn’t have to.  That is because all they can see is the bad news—the curse of the Fall.  But the Redeemer of Mankind came spending most of His earthly life as a manual laborer redeeming work itself.  He came preaching, as St. John Paul II reminded us, “the Gospel of Work.”  And just as His mother Mary received the first fruits of His redemptive act, it is His earthly father Joseph, the man who worked beside Him those many years, that first reaped the fruits of the redemptive gift of work.  It is for this reason that the Church puts forth St. Joseph as “The Worker.”  If we are to see work in its proper context then we should look to St. Joseph as the model.

First a word about the seeming necessity of compartmentalization.  Most of us spend more time at work than anywhere else.  It becomes a compartment because it seems to only be related to the material.  Man applies his labor and ingenuity on creation in order to produce something that he can use.  The emphasis really seems to be on the finished product so that we can stockpile just enough to take a break (even if indefinitely) and do the really meaningful things including the compartment of “religion and God.”  While we may hear niceties about “praying while you work,” avoiding compartmentalization seems a practical impossibility.

The Finished Product

But this is where the emphasis on work as made for man is important.  The finished product of him work is not just the material thing produced, it is himself.  Good work is that which makes us good men.  Work ought to be judged first and foremost on what it turns us into.  Work that helps us grow in virtue is good work regardless of the actual task.  Seeing work in this subjective sense, the person produced, rather than solely in the exterior production can free us from compartmentalization because it is a means of forming the whole person.  The interior fruits of our labor are carried throughout the rest of our life.

Still man is confronted with the challenge of integrating work with his relationship to God.  There is always a gravity of work that pulls man towards creation, even if it is towards his own virtue, and away from God.  And this is why we need St. Joseph as our intercessor and model.  He, quite literally, worked for and with God.

Working For and With God

All of the work that St. Joseph did was, even if indirectly, for Jesus.  The “righteous man” sought always to serve God especially through his work.  What this means for us is that we can redeem our work by setting our intention.  At the beginning of any of our work we should make of it an offering to God.  Then all that we accomplish becomes a gift to Jesus.  We can also willingly accept, like St. Joseph did, the toilsome-ness of work.  Because work became labor through mankind’s sin, our acceptance of the burdens is an offering for our sins.  It was in this way that St. Joseph shared in Christ’s redemptive act and so can we.

Work also helps us to pay the debt of gratitude to God for the gifts, especially the special skills, He has given us.  Gratitude, properly speaking, carries with it not just the obligation to say “thank you” but also the obligation to repay the benefactor.  The fruit of our labor then becomes a means by which we repay to God this great debt.

There also needs to be a paradigm shift in order to see our work as working with God.  We should see it as a means of not only completely creation, but also as distributing it to all of mankind.  Just because you are getting paid to work doesn’t mean it isn’t also an exercise of charity towards our neighbor.  All workplaces can be charities when we take upon ourselves the spirit of St. Joseph.  This desire not only to give someone what they have paid for but also to go “above and beyond” by making manifest the love of God can sanctify the most secular of work environments.

When Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955 it was in response to the dehumanizing effects of Communism; offering an alternative to their May Day celebrations for workers. In the subsequent sixty-three years we have seen work became a source of further disintegration in the lives of mankind.  By seeing work through the eyes of the Church and the illumination offered by St. Joseph the Worker we can restore work to its rightful place in the lives of all of us.

St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us!

The Darkness of Gethsemane

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There is a darkness, both in the literal and in the figurative sense, which hangs over the week preceding Our Lord’s Passion.  The Church tries to make this darkness present to her children throughout the liturgies marking Holy Week.  It moves from the darkness of Judas’ human heart to the darkness of the Agony in the Garden, culminating in the darkness of the crucifixion.  There is perhaps nowhere else that the theme of darkness is made more manifest that at the end of the Holy Thursday liturgy when the faithful silently watch Our Lord’s Eucharistic presence going out into the darkness.  More than just a mere liturgical gesture, it is an invitation for us to accompany Jesus in His forsakenness and to stand by Him.  It is our moment to participate in His Agony in the Garden as He goes to an altar of repose for us to watch and pray with Him.

Darkness had fallen upon Jerusalem by the time Our Lord entered the gates of Gethsemane with His inner circle.  All four of the Evangelists provide us details of His time of anguished prayer and yet, we find that this event, perhaps more so than any other aspect of the Passion, is shrouded deeply in mystery.  It would seem that Our Lord suffered more during these three hours than all the rest of His Passion combined.  How acute must a man’s suffering be in order to sweat blood?  We could overlook His sufferings here or give them a cursory nod of understanding, but this would be like Judas who, fearful of the darkness comes carrying a torch.  Or we could, as the Church is inviting us, enter into this darkness with Our Lord and, so, comfort Him by our presence.  That a mere creature could comfort the God man is in itself a great mystery.  Nevertheless Our Lord was comforted by having his three closest companions near Him and from the presence of an angel just before His arrest.  It seems that He pre-ordained that He would not suffer this alone.  Still, in order to be most fully present to Him we must begin to grasp the source of His suffering.

Our Lord’s Emotional State

There are few places in the gospels where the Evangelists point out Our Lord’s emotional state.  When they do, it can be quite illuminating for us because it gives a glimpse into the mystery of His interior life.  We know much about what He said and did, but we know little about what He truly thought and felt.  Because Jesus had perfect integrity in His soul, what He thought and felt always had a perfect correspondence.  What this means is that His emotions perfectly followed His reason and will.  When He felt an emotion it was only because He willed to feel it.  The Eternal Son of God knew the sufferings He would endure and His hour was always before Him.  Yet it is only when His hour comes that His suffering comes.  In other words, when the Word of God says “I will to suffer,” His suffering starts and not a moment before.  This suffering is expressed through the two emotions Our Lord describes Himself as having—fear and sorrow.

Immediately upon entering the Garden with Peter, James and John we are told that Our Lord “began to feel fear and to be exceedingly troubled” (c.f. Mark 14:33).  Fear as an emotion is always future directed; towards some evil that is difficult to avoid, but in truth is not yet present.  An obvious cause of this fear is awareness of the bodily sufferings and death that He is going to endure.  This is the natural human reaction to pain and suffering and Our Lord in His human will must choose to endure it.  But to stop there is to pluck the fruit before it is ripe.  He is no ordinary man, but the God-Man and thus He is able to foresee not only His own sufferings, but the sufferings of those whom He holds most dear because of His Passion.  He is able to see the effect His Passion will have upon His Mother whom He will crown as the Queen of Sorrows.  He sees the pain endured by the Beloved Disciple, the same man who slumbers beside Peter, the same man who will suffer a martyr’s death because of His Passion.  In fact it is not just Peter but all the martyrs that He sees.  He wills to endure all of their inner turmoil so that they go to the gallows laughing and without any trace of fear.  He will even endure the mental anguish of one particular martyr, St. Thomas More, who will write about Christ’s Agony in the Garden (The Sadness of Christ) as the real source of martyrdom while he joyfully and jokingly awaits his own execution.  Christ foresees the sufferings of the Church, His Mystical Body, and lives them in His physical body.  Although it is necessary that He drinks this cup, He is well aware of all the suffering that it will cause in the future because He drank it to the dregs.

The Sadness of Christ

All of those things are future directed but there is pain in the evil of the moment as well.  We know this because Our Lord also expresses His sadness—“And He said to them “My soul is sad, even unto death” (Mk 14:35).  Sadness as an emotion is always present-directed; towards a present evil that cannot be avoided.  So acute is Christ’s sadness that it threatens to kill Him right on the spot.  What cup is Our Lord already drinking?  It is the cup of our guilt.

Guilt is, or at least should be, a profound sorrow for having done something wrong.  It is a painful way to move us to make amends for what we have done wrong.  When properly experienced the pain bears a certain proportionality to the pleasure we have stolen.  The problem is that we find all kinds of ways to avoid it because it is painful.  Now think of a man who is genuinely trying to be good and he does something gravely wrong.  For him guilt is really painful.  The more sensitive the conscience the more acutely we can feel the pain of guilt.  Now take a man Who has never done anything wrong in His life and introduce an awareness of guilt such that He experiences it as if He has done something wrong.  Because of His innocence, the pain would be quite unimaginable.  Now, take that experience and multiply it by all the sins in the history of the world and only by a miracle of grace does the soul remain in the body of this man (“sorrowful unto death’).  Hard to imagine for sure, but it is enough to bring the God-Man to His knees and cause blood to mingle with His sweat as His body desperately clings to His soul.  One might think it is His soul that is bleeding.

Now He does this for His Father, Who has been offended not just by our sins, but our seeming incapacity for sorrow.  He does it for you and me not only to save us, but to win grace to have true sorrow for sin.  When this grace is accepted and we express sorrow it somehow lightens His load.  The field of His vision spanned across the unrepentant, the lukewarm and the truly repentant.  It was the vision of the latter that brought Him comfort in His afflictions.  And this is ultimately why we must journey with Him into the darkness of Gethsemane and remain there with Him.