Tag Archives: St. Augustine

Scriptural Bingo

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In Book VIII of his Confessions, St. Augustine details his conversion.  After begging the Lord to finally free him from enslavement to sin, he began to weep with bitter sorrow because he felt powerless to overcome it.  He suddenly hears the voice of a child, almost in a sing-song voice, say “Take and read, take and read.”  He reasoned that the voice had a divine source and immediately opened a book of the Epistles of St. Paul.  Happening upon Romans 13:13-14, “let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires”, the saint was immediately converted to Christ with “all the darkness of uncertainty vanishing away” (VIII, 29).

Augustine had learned this approach from St. Antony of the Desert whom he had read about.  Antony entered a church and upon hearing the words of Christ to the Rich Young Man to sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt 19:21) did exactly as he was told.  We might be tempted to think the men superstitious, playing a form of Scriptural Bingo.  Except, that is, for the fact that we are talking about two saints.  Let us then examine exactly what is going on there.

Faith in Sacred Scripture

In his Encyclical on Sacred Scripture, Providentissimus Deus, warned that “a thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom” in Scriptural interpretation represented a great threat the belief in Sacred Scripture as the true Word of God.  Scripture itself became victim to the cult of the expert and Scripture Scholars, rather than the Church, became authentic interpreters.  The average Catholic comes to think Scripture above his paygrade so that, confused by the experts, he sets it aside.  Faith in Sacred Scripture as the authentic Word of God, addressed not just to experts but to every man, was toppled.

The saints, including Antony and Augustine, believed in the public revelation contained in Sacred Scripture.  But because it is God Who speaks, they also believed that Scripture was a vehicle of private revelation as well.  This does not make them closet Protestants but fully Catholic.  They believed that God also revealed Himself and His will to them personally through Sacred Scripture.  To grasp this fully, we have to do some theology.  “Doing” theology means that we take something we believe and work out the implications of it so that it becomes a real principle in our lives.  We move from just believing it to real-izing it.

Real-izing Our Belief in Sacred Scripture

Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit is the true author of Sacred Scripture.  To real-ize this we must first set aside the question of how inspiration works.  It is not that this is an unimportant question, but that there is a tendency to over-play the hand that man plays in it.  However it worked, we have to know that the Holy Spirit inspired the Sacred Author to say exactly what He wanted to say and how it was to be said.  In other words, the Holy Spirit is the One Who is speaking, even if He is using a human mouthpiece.  From this we can draw a couple of principles

  • Every single word is both inspired—“all Scripture is inspired by God”  (2Tim 3:16) and true—“He cannot deny Himself”(2Tim 2:13)
  • Because it is God Who is doing the speaking Scripture is “living and active” (Heb 4:13)

This second principle likewise bears some explanation.  Because it is God Who was speaking through St. Paul, He had foreknowledge of the fact that St. Augustine would read Romans 13 on the fateful day.  The words contained within their meaning exactly what Augustine needed to hear to move his heart, opening it up to receive the grace of conversion.  It is as if God Himself in that very moment spoke directly to St. Augustine telling him what to do.

The words therefore are more than a dead letter, they are also active.  This means that like all of God’s words they are performative.  They effect what they command.  Augustine was not just reading something directed to him personally, the words themselves contained the power for him to “make no provision for the flesh.”  It is the words themselves that move Augustine to convert.  Whenever God commands, He also equips. 

Augustine as Everyman

What happened to Augustine is really not unique in that regard.  It is the same thing that is supposed to happen to each one of us every time we open our Bibles.  Each time Christ told the Apostles “have no fear”, He wasn’t just telling them to calm down, but He was also taking away their fear.  But not just their fear, but everyone who ever laid the eyes of faith upon Mark 6:45-52 while in a state of anxiety.

The Apostles knew Christ’s words had power because He had commanded a storm to cease with a single rebuke.  We too must come to believe that same power flows from the same Word found in Sacred Scripture.  This is what I mean by faith in Sacred Scripture.  Once you real-ize that it truly is living—directed to you personally from the seat of Eternity—you can expect it to be active by causing something to change in you. 

The problem is that there are forces at work trying to undermine this by turning Scripture into an academic subject and subjecting it to literary criticism without having faith in it living power.  Ultimately this undermines faith by echoing Satan’s “did God really say?”.  God really is speaking through Sacred Scripture, not just to mankind but to me here and now.  Pray for the grace of an increase in faith in Sacred Scripture!    

What is Actual Grace?

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Our Lord told the Apostles that they were given the power to understand the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.  For the rest of the people, He relied on the power of parables to teach them about these same mysteries.  To explain one of the most central mysteries of our Faith, grace, Our Lord repeatedly relied on the image of a seed.  Just as there is a hidden cooperation between soil and seed, there is a mysterious cooperation between human freedom and Divine power. 

While this action remains in the realm of theological mystery, this does not mean that we need to remain fully ignorant or passive to how grace works on and in us.  If that was true, then Our Lord would not have bothered using natural things to describe these supernatural realities.  Understanding the “mechanics” of grace turns out to be vital (in the truest sense of the word) to our sanctification and personal redemption. 

Shedding Light on the Mystery

The problem is that most of us labor under a vague understanding of grace as a concept.  As the Latin term gratis implies it involves a gift given freely.  But we must take the term also in the sense of being pleasing to someone—as in “I am in his good graces.”  Fully understood then grace is a free gift that makes us truly pleasing to God.  This bestowing of “pleasing-ness” happens in two ways that have been traditionally categorized as Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace. 

Just as in the natural life, God must both bestow existence and continue to sustain that existence, it is also in the supernatural life.  God bestows supernatural life through Sanctifying Grace and continues that life through the power of Actual Grace.  This distinction is clearly laid out in Chapter 3 of the Book of Revelation when Our Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).  Our Lord’s knocking and our opening is the action of Actual Grace while the dining together that is the sign of a shared life is Sanctifying Grace.  In order to be brief, we will limit our discussion to Actual Grace here and will cover Sanctifying Grace another time. 

“Without Me You Can Do Nothing”

Men and women, even in their fallen state, are still capable of morally good actions naturally.  What they are not capable of are supernaturally good (i.e. meritorious) actions.  For this, they must both have supernatural life (Sanctifying Grace) and the sustained supernatural power that we call Actual Grace.  When Our Lord says “without Me you can do nothing” He is primarily referring to the supernaturally good actions we are moved to do by actual grace.

As an aside, some of the Doctors of Prayer in the Church say that at a certain point actual graces are no longer needed in the person in the Unitive Way because the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are fully operative.  This makes sense, but because all of us must journey through the Purgative and Illuminative Way first, we can assume that every supernatural act that we perform must first be motivated by actual grace.

By “nothing” then Our Lord means “nothing that will last for eternity”.  This includes not just our supernaturally good actions, but conversion itself.  This leads to a further distinction between two kinds of Actual Grace: operative and cooperative. 

Operative Grace

The sinner finds himself in a literal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.  Under his own power, he can never turn or return to God.  Justification and sanctification requires Divine intervention.  This intervention however must be done in such a way that it is still an act of the person’s will to repent.  Put in more theological terms, actual grace must prompt the sinner to return to God.  This “knocking at the door” is what is called operative grace.  Operative grace, according to the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification, is the grace that moves that touches the person and movies them towards a desire to conversion.  More specifically it tackles the catch-22 so “that in adults the beginning of that justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God …whereby, without any merits on their part, they are called; that they who by sin had been cut off from God, may be disposed through His quickening and helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace.” 

The whole purpose of this operating grace is to pave the way for the second “type” of actual grace, cooperating grace.  Once that operative grace is consented to, once the person decides that “yes, I desire conversion” they must still move to “open the door.”  This movement towards conversion is the work of cooperating grace.  This grace too, requires the consent of free will and can be rejected. 

Two Saintly Examples

Two famous conversion stories will help to shed light on how these two graces work.  The first is St. Paul’s Road to Damascus encounter with Our Lord.  The story is well known, but we can couch it in terms of actual grace to make the distinction between the two kinds clearer.  The powerful operative grace comes specifically when Our Lord invades Saul’s life saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  St. Paul acknowledges a desire for conversion by asking, “Who are you, sir?”  Now Our Lord offers St. Paul a cooperating grace: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”  St. Paul consents and the actual grace moves him to go to Damascus.

From that moment forward, cooperating grace becomes the motivating force for all the supernaturally good actions in St. Paul’s life.  It sustains the supernatural movement in his life always with his free will consent.  So powerful is this force that it prompts him to tell the Corinthians “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God [that is] with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

A second famous example shows how operative grace might be accepted but how we can run from cooperative grace.  St. Augustine in his Confessions tells how he “had prayed, ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished” (Book 9, Ch. 7).  Consent to the operative grace occurs (he prays), but there is no will to accept the cooperative grace.  This is instructive because it shows how operating grace does not come just once, but many times.  In Augustine’s case the frequency of the invitation was greatly increased because of the prayer of his saintly mother, Monica.  This ought to prompt us to ask God very specifically and repeatedly to send operative graces to those whom we know personally to convert.

To summarize, we can once again turn to Augustine.  Like St. Paul, St. Augustine understood the operations of actual grace from experience earning him the title Doctor of Grace.  There is no better summary of the action of actual grace then his:

“For He who first works in us the power to will is the same who cooperates in bringing this work to perfection in those who will it. Accordingly, the Apostle says: ‘I am convinced of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to perfection until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil 1:6). God, then, works in us, without our cooperation, the power to will, but once we begin to will, and do so in a way that brings us to act, then it is that He cooperates with us. But if He does not work in us the power to will or does not cooperate in our act of willing, we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature.”

Free Will and Grace, 17.33

Saint John Henry Newman and Chastity

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In the days leading up to now St. John Henry Newman’s beatification in 2010, NPR’s All Things Considered turned its consideration towards the question as to whether the Cardinal may in fact have been gay.  Never one to miss the opportunity to promote the LGBT agenda, Fr. James Martin retweeted the article on the eve of Newman’s canonization saying, “This doesn’t imply that the man who will become a saint tomorrow ever broke his promise of celibacy. And we may never know for sure. But his relationship with Ambrose St. John is worthy of attention. It isn’t a slur to suggest that Newman may have been gay.”  Although no one in the Church hierarchy is likely to correct Fr. Martin, it is both a slur and manifestly false to suggest that the saint may have been gay.  A comment such as this is not only disingenuous, but reveals the lavender glasses that color everything that Fr. Martin says and reveals his animus for true Catholic teaching.  In the 2010 NPR piece, Fr. Martin was interviewed and offered that, “It is church teaching that a gay person can be holy, and a gay person can be a saint.  And it’s only a matter of time before the church recognizes one publicly.”  This reveals a serious flaw in his thinking and shows why he is ultimately unfit to minister to those people who struggle with same sex attraction. 

The Saints and Heroic Virtue

The second step in the process of canonization is to be declared Venerable.  This declaration, which, in Newman’s case, occurred in 1991, declares that the man exercised all of the virtues, both theological and natural to a heroic degree.  The point of such an examination is to show how deeply grace had penetrated the man’s life enabling him to practice the moral virtues with ease and the theological virtues eminently.  Among these natural virtues, chastity plays a key role meaning that, in Newman’s case, the Church has declared that he practiced chastity to a heroic degree.  And herein lies the problem with Fr. Martin’s hypothesis, both regarding the new saint and any canonized saint in the future: you cannot exercise chastity to a heroic degree and also be gay.

This may seem rather harsh, until we examine the nature of virtue in general.  The role of virtue in the moral life is to habitually order our faculties towards their proper end.  These powers of the soul “train” the lower faculties to respond in accord with right reason.  The man who struggles with disordered anger, or what we would call the vice of anger, by developing the virtue of meekness not only is able to keep himself from angry outbursts, but actually so governs his feelings of anger that it is only felt when it is reasonable to do so.  A similar thing can be said about all of our other vices or disordered inclinations including Same-Sex Attraction.  Just as meekness roots out any disordered anger, chastity roots out all disordered manifestations of our sexual faculties and orders them towards their proper ends.  The man who is truly chaste would no longer experience SSA.    

Notice that I did not perform any of the usual moral hairsplitting that many people make regarding this topic between homosexual activity and the vice of SSA.  While this may have some value in assessing personal culpability, it has no place when it comes to the virtue of chastity.  To employ such a distinction, such as Fr. Martin does in this case only serves to muddy the moral waters making chastity harder, not easier.  It all stems from an error in thinking that chastity and celibacy are the same thing.  But they are most certainly distinct.  Celibacy has to do with restraining the exterior actions.  Chastity has to do with properly ordering interior inclinations.  A man may be celibate without being chaste, but an unmarried man cannot be chaste without also being celibate.  Fr. Martin seems to suggest that St. John Henry Newman fell into the former category—celibate without being chaste.  To suggest that a canonized saint wasn’t chaste is a slur, especially given that the Church has declared him to be a man of heroic chastity.

Deep down, Fr. Martin knows all this.  This is his motivation for trying to change the designation of SSA from disordered to differently ordered.  If it is merely that there is a different ordering, then the chaste person could in fact experience SSA.  But if it is disordered then it will be rooted out as the person grows in chastity.  There is no reason why a person who struggles with SSA (or to use Fr. Martin’s designation of gay) couldn’t become a Saint someday, but it will only happen after they have removed that vice (and all the others) from their lives.  In fact, there may already be some Saint that had this difficulty at some point, but to suggest that we might someday have a gay saint is like saying that we already have a fornicating Saint in St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is a Saint because he became chaste and rooted out all the sexual vices he had in his soul. 

Blinded by the Lavender Light

All of this reveals why Fr. Martin is ill-suited to minister to those who have SSA.  All he can see is gay.  In examining the life of John Henry Newman, it is quite obvious that he deeply loved Fr. Ambrose St. John.  But it is only someone who sees all things in a lavender light that would mistake the love of friendship with erotic love.  The aforementioned St. Augustine, on losing a friend said:

I was amazed that other mortals went on living when he was dead whom I had loved as though he would never die, and still more amazed that I could go on living myself when he was dead – I, who had been like another self to him. It was well said that a friend is half one’s own soul. I felt that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies, and I shrank from life with loathing because I could not bear to be only half alive; and perhaps I was so afraid of death because I did not want the whole of him to die, whom I had love so dearly.

This seems very similar to what Newman said at the loss of his friend “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine.”  Would Fr. Martin have us believe that St. Augustine was gay or bisexual?  Or is it, that he is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging that there is a proper, non-sexual love between same sex persons in friendship?  One of the ways in which chastity is increased in the person with SSA is to acknowledge that to the extent that his love for the other person is real, it is really a disordered love of friendship.  Once this is realized the person is able to develop a healthy and ordered love for the other person.  What makes Fr. Martin unsuited then to help these people is that he would not admit to the true love of friendship.  Otherwise he would not make such a stupid comment about St. John Henry Newman, but put him forward as an example of how those with SSA might purify their love for a person of the same sex through authentic friendship. 

The True Christian History of Abortion

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As the battle over legalized abortion continues rage as specific states more clearly draw their battle lines, there is a growing number of Christians who are attempting to make a Christian argument in favor of abortion.  In truth, there is no Christian defense of abortion and there never has been.  Not surprisingly, the abortion apologist’s arguments fall flat, even though they continually recycle the same talking points irrespective of truth.  Even if there are different variations on the propagandistic talking points, they seem never to grow weary of repeating them.  Given the increased frequency in which we are seeing them, it is important that we have a ready defense.

In order to avoid toppling over a straw man,  we will refer to an example that was printed in the Huffington Post last year entitled “The Truth About Christianity and Abortion”.  We use this one not because it was a particularly convincing argument, but because it invokes almost all the common arguments for Christian support of abortion in one place. 

Before diving into the exact arguments, it is a helpful to remember that there are plenty of arguments against abortion that don’t rely solely upon religious convictions.  Instead you can use philosophical reasoning and science.  Since that ground has already been covered, we will stick to the Christian-based arguments since that is terrain over which these abortion advocates like to stomp.

“There are no specific references to abortion in the Bible, either within Old Testament law or in Jesus’ teachings or the writings of Paul and other writers in the New Testament.”

This first argument, namely that the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion is a bit of a red herring, at least as far as Catholics are concerned.  Not everything we believe need to be mentioned in the Bible explicitly.  If Scripture tells us that the pre-born being in the womb of Elizabeth (somewhere between 20-24 weeks) and the pre-born being in the womb of Mary (somewhere between 0-4 weeks) are both persons (Luke 1:26,41) and that directly killing an innocent person is always wrong (Exodus 20:13) then we could conclude that abortion, that is the direct and intentional  killing of an infant in the womb of the mother, is wrong.  The Bible need not, nor could it list out all the ways that a person might be murdered but can simply articulate the principle in what amounts to a blanket condemnation. 

That being said, the premise that the Bible does not mention abortion is also false.  In the ancient world, they were not nimble enough to play verbal gymnastics like us.  We are fall more sophisticated in the true sense of the word.  Even amongst the pagans, abortion was considered to be baby killing.  In fact, the device that they used to perform the abortion was called embruosqakths, which means “the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.” (Tertullian, On the Soul, Ch. 25). 

They also used chemical potions to cause abortions, although they were far more dangerous to the mother than using the “slayer of the infant.”  This type of abortion is mentioned in Scripture, even if only implicitly.  We shall expound on this in a moment, but these potions fell under the broad Greek term pharmakeia, the same term St. Paul uses in Galatians 5:20 and we translate as “sorcery”.

“Likewise, throughout the history of the early church into the middle-ages, there is little to no mention of abortion as a topic of great alarm – from the days of the Old Testament until modern history. Hence, there is no case to be made for a definitive Christian stance throughout history on the spiritual or moral aspects of abortion.”

While it may have been convenient in supporting the point, the connection of pharmakeia to abortifacient drugs was not an exercise in originality, but something that the early Church did when they spoke against abortion.  The Didache, written during the Apostolic Age (probably around 70 AD) of the Apostles in expounding on the commandment of love of neighbor it said, “You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions [pharmakeia). You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2).  Likewise, the Letter of Barnabas (74 AD), which is a commentary on the Didache says, “thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (19).

We already heard from Tertullian in the 2nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5th Century reads like a who’s who of Patristic teachers: Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome.  It is also included in the twenty-first canon of the Council of Ancyra and among the Apostolic Constitutions.  In other words, it is hard not to stumble upon a condemnation of abortion among the Early Church Fathers, unless of course you don’t actually look.

Given the unbroken teaching to Apostolic times, abortion was a settled issue and we should not expect to hear about it much unless it is challenged (that is why St. John Paul II included the infallible statement of the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae).  The relative silence of the Middle Ages is a non-sequitur for that reason—it was a settled issue within Christendom and thus did not need to be defended or expounded upon much.

The Augustinian Exception?

Among those Church Fathers listed above there is one notable exception: St. Augustine.  He is notable not because of his silence but because of the fact that he is often quoted out of context.  The Huffington Post author does the same thing quoting him as saying:  “The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.”  Not surprising she doesn’t cite the source of the quote which would enable us to establish context, but it comes from a commentary on Exodus 21.  Taken in context Augustine is asking whether, given the primitive embryology of his time, whether abortion before the 40th day after conception could be classified as homicide or not.  In his mind abortion was still a grave evil no matter how old the infant, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be classified as murder.

To cite this is really disingenuous, for the author knows it is based upon an ancient understanding of human development.  She knows that modern embryology has established that there is sensation long before the 40th day after conception.  Anyone who has seen an ultrasound image (or has watched the movie Silent Scream) can easily attest to that truth.  Unless the author of the article is willing to accept the primitive thinking of the 5th Century, then this is actually an argument against abortion.  If Augustine has access to modern technology, then he would have concluded that it was murder at any stage.

“I’m not saying abortion cannot be an important issue to a Christian, but there is no scriptural or historical backing for it to be the number one issue, at the expense of the ‘least of these’ who are suffering now.”

This line of reasoning really sets up a false dichotomy that pits poverty against abortion.  This is recycled secular thinking.  There are those who suffer because of destitution, and we ought to do what we can to alleviate that, but that does not mean you may alleviate it by reducing the number of mouths that need to be fed.  Why couldn’t the same argument be applied to the already born children of the poor, or even the poor themselves?  One definite way to end poverty would be to kill all the poor people.

As far as it being the “number one issue” is concerned, first we must admit that history is not a repeating cycle in which social ills always occur with the same frequency and intensity.  Perhaps destitution was a greater threat to human thriving than abortion was in ancient Rome or in the Middle Ages, but that does not mean it is still a greater threat.  In fact, we could argue that destitution (“poor” is a relative term and actually a Christian value, destitution is an objective measure) is at an all-time low.  What is not at an all-time low however is the number of innocent lives being snuffed out through abortion every day to the tune of about 125,000 per day worldwide (and this doesn’t include the number of abortions caused by birth control pills which could double or even triple that total).  Abortion, because it involves so many, all of which are the most vulnerable and voiceless, is by far the greatest injustice in the world today.  They are “’the least of these’ who are suffering now.”

Why Divine Mercy Sunday?

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Within the Church’s liturgical calendar, there are two feasts which as so integral to Christian worship that the Church attaches an Octave to them.  To enter more fully into the mystery of the Incarnation, Christmas is not just celebrated as a single day, but the Church in her wisdom gives us eight full days to harvest the graces of that most solemn feast.  The octave is capped off with a celebration of the first fruits of the Incarnation, the Feast of Mary Mother of God on January 1st.   Along the same line, Easter is celebrated not once, but for eight consecutive days in order to bask in the glow of the Resurrected Lord and it is through a great gift from Jesus Himself that the Church also crowns and marks its first fruits of the Octave of Easter with the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday.

One of the most common things that Our Lord spoke to St. Faustina about was His desire for a great feast of mercy as it is mentioned 14 times in her Diary of Divine Mercy in My Soul.  St. Faustina describes it most fully in entry 699:

My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the Fount of My Mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity. Everything that exists has come forth from the very depths of My most tender mercy. Every soul in its relation to Me will contemplate My love and mercy throughout eternity. The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness.  It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have

peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy.

We have talked about the significance of the “divine floodgates through which graces flow” being opened in a previous post, so we will not rehash that here.  Instead, in the spirit of opening those gates even further,  we will ask a seemingly small questions: Why was Jesus so insistent upon the day in which the Feast of Mercy was to be celebrated?

Why the Day Mattered to Our Lord

Returning to the parallel with the Church’s “other” octave an answer begins to emerge.  In Our Lord’s mind the crown of Easter is not us going to heaven, but His mercy.  In overcoming death and revealing Himself as “Lord and God” (John 20:28), He now reveals His greatest attribute.  For He tells St. Faustina to “[P]roclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God” and He wants this proclamation to be forever attached to the celebration of Easter.  It is His greatest attribute, because in the end, it will be the attribute that most manifests His glory to creatures.

Mercy is not just about forgiving sins, but it is much deeper than that.  It is a love that not only recognizes the goodness in the other but is the cause of it.  It is mercy that calls the sinner to repentance.  It is mercy that takes the repentant sinner out of his nothingness and raises Him to the dignity of an adopted son of God.  And it is mercy that enables the beloved disciples of Christ to remain as such.  Every saint in heaven, even the purest of them, knows Mercy was the reward for those who fear God (c.f. Lk 1:50).      

This connection between mercy and Easter was known from an early stage in the Church.  St. Augustine, in an Easter homily, calls the Sunday of the Octave of Easter “the summary of the days of mercy.”  But it is Pope St. John Paul II that made the connection most explicit during his homily for the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000.  By examining the readings for what up to that point had been called the Second Sunday of Easter, he said that it was “important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.’”  The Pope looked at the readings, especially John’s account of the first and second encounter of the Risen Jesus with the Apostles in the Upper Room and saw in it a summary of mercy. 

When the Risen Christ encountered the Apostles for the first time in the Upper Room He didn’t just greet them, but because His word is performative, He gave them the gift of peace.  Then He immediately gave them the capacity to spread that same gift to others by empowering them to forgive sins.  In His next encounter He showed them His most Sacred Heart, the same Heart that was pierced by a lance and from which blood and water flowed forth.  It is as if St. Thomas reached into the side of Jesus and brought forth the rays that we see in the sacred image.  When He touched Our Lord’s heart, he believed and proclaimed “My Lord and my God.”  Those of us who have not seen and still believe cry out “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus, I trust in You!”

Summing Up the Devotion

We find the whole message of Divine Mercy summed up in the solemnity.  Not only are the “blood and water which gushed forth as a fount of mercy for us” brought to mind, but in entering into the last time the Apostles were in the Upper Room with Jesus we find that the words “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and the Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Most Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ” are also true.  The celebration makes the link between Divine Mercy and the Eucharist explicit.  For the Mass is the place where Christ empowered the Church to truly say those words so that each of us makes a real offering to the Father.  The entire Eucharistic Prayer can be summed up “for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”   This connection between Divine Mercy and the Eucharist are what ultimately make it such a powerful and true devotion, whether or not Jesus has revealed it or not. 

Private Revelations play the part of the prophets of Israel.  Their message is not something new, but instead are given as counter messages to the signs of the times.  And the times are reading that for modern man peace has become elusive.  So, in the midst of two great wars, Our Lord appeared to St. Faustina with a simple message: “Mankind will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy.”  And so it is that Divine Mercy Sunday is ultimately Christ’s recipe for peace in the modern world.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Bible, Church, Ecumenism, Magisterium, Redemption, Scripture, , , , ,

A mega-church pastor in Atlanta named Andy Stanley has written an article in Relevant magazine asking why Christians persist in protecting monuments to the Ten Commandments when, in truth, they no longer apply to us.  Although keeping up with the ramblings of various mega-church pastors could be a full-time job, this particular article merits attention because it is demonstrative of heresies in general and how they seem to persist, especially when believers are cut off from the preservative protection of the Catholic Church.

A native of Sinope in modern day Turkey, Marcion was a shipbuilder who rejected the Old Testament.  He desired to strip Christianity of anything Jewish and any connection to the Old Testament.  In his view, Christ came to undo the work of the Creator.  He even went so far as to produce his own set of Scriptures, removing the Old Testament along with any references to the Old Testament in the New Testament and any suggestions that we would be judged by God.  Within the plan of Divine Providence, Marcion of course moved the Church along by encouraging her to make explicit the role of the Old Testament in the life of the Church.

The Law and Historical Christianity

Pastor Stanley and the second century ship builder are, in a very real sense, kindred spirits.  For truly, there is “nothing new under the sun” when it comes to heresies.  They are simply recycled throughout the ages.  That is why Blessed John Henry Newman’s maxim rings true—“to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”  Pastor Stanley’s error is not just theological but historical.  He claims that “the blended model began as early as the second century when church leaders essentially kidnapped the Jewish Scriptures and claimed them as their own.”  This is simply rehashing what Marcion said and he interprets the Church’s clarification as “kidnapping” the Jewish Scriptures.  In other words, he is saying that Marcion was right. 

Interestingly enough, many German Lutherans became Marcions under the Nazi regime for obvious reasons.  To be clear, Pastor Stanley is not suggesting anything like this (he does in fact condemn it).  But his doctrine necessarily leads to that no matter how unwittingly he proposes it.  This is the nature of heresies, they always lead to a dead, and sometimes even deadly, end.  Given enough time, what is implicit will always be made explicit.

The Law and the New Covenant

That is why it is instructive to cut off his error at its roots, especially because it is a common one.  In essence, his thesis comes at the end of his essay—“While Jesus was foreshadowed in the old covenant, he did not come to extend it. He came to fulfill it, put a bow on it, and establish something entirely new.”  The error really comes in equating the Old Covenant with the Law.  There was not a single “Old Covenant” but instead God made a series of covenants with man, beginning with Adam and ending with David, all of which culminated in the New Covenant that is sealed in Christ’s blood.  Nowhere in Scripture does it suggest that Jesus was “establishing something entirely new.”  The new wine and new wineskins are like the old wine and wineskins, even if they are new. 

The question, and it was one that the early Church had to wrestle with (c.f. Acts 10-20), was what role the Jewish law would play in this New Covenant.  That it was to play a role was clear when Our Lord said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).  For Pastor Stanley and many like him Jesus came precisely to destroy the Law.

St. Augustine in his famous treatise on the Sermon on the Mount said that to “not abolish the law but to fulfill it” can be taken in two ways, both of which are applicable to Christ’s words.  First to fulfill means to add what is lacking.  Augustine says, “he who adds what is lacking does not surely destroy what he finds, but rather confirms it by perfecting it.”  For Pastor Stanley, addition comes by way of subtraction.  You need only one commandment—“love one another as I have love you”— but he would have this commandment demolish the foundation of the Law rather than building on it.  No wonder he calls out Chick-fil-A for closing in observance of the Sabbath.  His one commandment says nothing of loving God, a commandment that surely requires more than keeping the Sabbath sacred but most certainly not its exclusion.

Christ also fulfilled the Law by doing everything that was in it.  He did this not just to show it was possible, but to make it possible for us as well.  In Christ, the impossible becomes possible.  Ethics becomes ethos as the Divine Stonemason moves the law from the stone of Sinai to the stone of our hearts.  The Ten Commandments cease mere laws, but prophesies.  Christians “shall keep the Sabbath” and “shall not kill, lie or steal.”

As further proof that Christ does not want to abolish the law, He devotes much of His Sermon on the Mount to how it will be fulfilled.  He does this by precisely using the Ten Commandments as the model.  “Moses said, but I say to you…”  So clearly He has no intention of abolishing the Ten Commandments.  But what about all the other Old Testament precepts?  Some of them, particularly the ceremonial aspects will find their fulfillment in the rites of the New Covenant.  Other precepts, especially some of the moral ones will remain in place.  Still, if we examine the issue honestly, there is still not enough guidance.  This reveals the larger error that Pastor Stanley makes and, unfortunately, many other Christians with him .

The aforementioned quote of Newman is really an indictment that Protestantism is not the Christianity of history.  Sola Scriptura necessitates that view because they are rejected a historical explication of Christian dogma in favor of one based solely on the Bible.  The problem with this however is that it is a dead Christianity because much of the Bible only makes Revelation implicit.  Which aspects of the Mosaic Law are binding and which are not is never explicitly told to the Biblical reader.  Instead what is implicit in Christ’s words must be made explicit.  This explication must happen under the guidance of the Church, led by the Holy Spirit “who guides us to all truth” through the Church.  Once a Protestant turns to the Church Fathers and sees the unbroken line of belief to what the Apostles taught, errors such as Pastor Stanley’s are never made.  Christ did not make something entirely new, he added the necessary ingredients to Judaism to make it Catholic.  But if you reject the Catholic Church outright then you necessarily will think He must have started something new.

Being closing we would be remiss in neglecting Pastor Stanley’s fundamental question as to why Christians should insist on the presence of monuments of the Ten Commandments instead of the Sermon on the Mount.  Perhaps Pastor Stanley’s suggestion is a little self-serving in that he is looking for a place to actually read and study it.  But in theory there is no particular reason why we could not use the Sermon on the Mount instead, although it is, admittedly, a little long.  But the Ten Commandments, especially in a post-Christian culture can be very effective for the same reason that God gave them first.  The law was given so that the people became aware of their inability to keep it and would cry out to God for redemption.  Sometimes the bad news is just as effective as the good news.

The Currency of Eternity

End Times, Faith and Reason, God's Love, Grace, Heaven, Last Things, Mercy, Spiritual Life, , , ,

“This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town and beats high mountain down.”  What is it?  Fans of The Hobbit will recognize this riddle as the last riddle that Gollum asked Bilbo during their inquisitorial skirmish in the dark.  The riddle is met with panic on Bilbo’s part because he has no clue as to the answer and his opponent is growing increasingly impatient and hungry.  In an effort to delay the inevitable, Bilbo blurts out “time!” Gollum is furious because time is the right answer.  Bilbo eventually escapes from his ravenous captor but the readers are left with the inescapable fact that time is not just the answer to the riddle, but a riddle in itself.  St. Augustine once waxed philosophic when he asked, “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know” (Confessions, XI).  But the fact that he included the question within his great spiritual biography shows that this question is more than just a philosophical question.  It has practical applications.

Like Augustine then we must grapple with what time is before we look at how we should best spend it.  Aristotle had what is probably the most succinct definition when he said that time is “the numbering of motion according to before and after.”  His definition captures three important elements.  First, time is a measure of change or motion.  Where there is no change, there is no time.  Second, because it is a “numbering” it must be measured relative to some standard.  We use the movement of the sun as the standard.  But it is the third element, “according to before and after” that merits the most attention.

Before and After

“Before and after” do not exist in external reality.  All that exists is the present moment.  But time refers not just to the present moment, but also past and future.  Past and future, or before and after to use Aristotle’s classification only exist within some measuring consciousness.  In fact, it is only this measuring consciousness that is able to hold time together in a unified whole.  Time then is founded in reality, but only exists formally in the mind.

This helps us to grasp why two people can experience the passage of an hour very differently.  It is a relative measure to their consciousness of time that enables it to slow down or speed up.  Our psychological attention span is made up of the immediate past that is held in memory, the present moment passing before us and our psychic projection of the anticipated next moment.  This explanation of time also clarifies why time speeds up as we get older.  As our vivid memory of past events “thickens” our experience of time is more past-centric causing us to focus more on time past rather than the present and future.  Time then seems to be moving faster because the perspective is of looking back.  For children the experience is the exact opposite as their perspective is more future oriented and time appears to move more slowly.

All that being said, and admittedly only skimming the philosophical surface, we can begin to examine how this definition of time helps us to better spend our time.  “Spend our time” is more than a mere colloquialism—it reveals an important truth.  Time is the currency in which we buy our eternal destiny.  It is the talent that the demanding landowner bestows upon us and then asks for an account of our return of investment (c.f Mt 25:14-30).  Unless we stir up this sense of urgency no amount of philosophical musing is going to help us.  The great mystery confronting our modern culture is that no one seems to have any time anymore.  It is as if time is disappearing.  The truth however is that we are living in a culture that is particularly adept at wasting time and so it is easy to get caught up in it.  We surround ourselves with diversions that steal from us our eternal currency.

Spending Time

Time—past, present and future—is meant to prepare us for eternity when all three elements blend into one.  The past and the future will give way to the eternal present.  The past will be a blur of mercy.  Mercy in the sins forgiven and sins avoided.  Mercy in the unmerited gifts given and for the Divine friendship that elevated us.  The past simply becomes a measure of mercies received.  By way of anticipation then our past “now” should be measured through the lens of mercy. This is time well spent—in contrition and in gratitude.

Likewise the future which should be spent in hope.  Hope is the virtue that enables us to steadfastly cling to the promises of God.  We should spend our time setting our eyes on the prize and stirring up our desire for it.  A strong hope resists the time thieves and keeps account of time spent.  If you think time is moving too fast, fix your eyes on Heaven.  That is almost certainly going to slow time down to a crawl.

Mercy and hope both pass with the passage of time (but not their memory and effects).  But the one thing that will remain—charity.  And that is what we must do in the present moment.  Charity, that is the love of God and the love of neighbor for God’s sake, is the only way in which we may profit by the time.  At each moment we can gather eternal treasures by giving that moment to God.  Never put off an act of charity for later—do it now.  If what you are doing can’t be offered to God—stop.  Started something without offering it to God?  Offer it now.  Waiting in line?  Offer acts of love and praise to God.

Time may devour all things, but only when it is not well spent.  Let us learn from St. Alphonsus Liguori, the great moral Doctor of the Church, who once asked for the grace to never waste a moment’s time and then pledged never to do so. “Son, observe the time” (Eccl 4:23).

Standing Firm in History

Church and State, Culture, History, , , , , ,

The attendant clatter of a silent statue falling on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was loud enough to be heard throughout the country.  Loud, not just because of the coverage it received in the main stream media, but also because it was joined in chorus by the death knell of one historical vision and the triumphal melody of its replacement.  Although Confederate statues have been toppling over with great regularity, this one is different.  Different because it occurred on the campus of an institution of higher learning, an institution that prides itself on its department of history whose “primary goal is to foster the creation and communication of historical knowledge.” History as it has been understood up until now is, well, history.

We must first admit that there is no such thing as merely communicating historical knowledge.  The essence of history is not found in facts, but in interpretation of specific historical events.  Good historians always allow the data of facts to drive them, but in the end how they view reality itself is always going to color their communication.  Events never occur within a vacuum so that the context itself also matters.  As the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson once quipped, an alien may witness the Battle of Hastings and have more facts than we do, but this knowledge would not be historical because it lacked both an understanding of reality and a context.

The Two Views of History

What are these two views of history that have been grappling for the Western Mind?  What we might call modern history has won out strictly because it is modern.  It is modern because it feeds off of the two great modern ideologies—communism and liberalism.  In the communist view, all of history is marked by a conflict between oppressor and oppressed.  History for liberalism is only subtly different in that it documents the struggle at various stages pitting those who fought against for freedom against the enemies of freedom.  Either way, a reduction occurs in which history is driven by conflict with the bad things always left in the past.  This inevitability of progress assumes everything in the past was backwards and that those who do not see this are evil, ignorant or both.

In this way history parallels the theory of evolution in that there is always progress towards a time of enlightened peace.  Progress will save us.  And like its intellectual counterpart, the evolutionary view of history also suffers under the weight of materialism (even if there is some lingering Deism).  With conflict as the only thread, there is a sit-com-like disconnect of events from each other.  History is simply one episode after another, with very little reference to the previous episode.  Retaining a historical memory really has no value, because, as the great historical student Henry Ford once said, “all history is bunk.  The only history I care about is the history I am making.”

The toppling of Silent Sam gives us a prime example of this viewpoint of history.  The Civil War was a battle between the white oppressors in the South and the Union proxies of the oppressed slaves.  Even the great Karl Marx saw it that way.  Sure there are other things that happened, but it all really comes down to this one thing.  Freedom, of course, won the day and the United States marched on in its messianic mission as the instrument of liberal progress.  Because the statues harken back to those days of un-freedom, they must be literally dumped in the dust bin of history.  Anyone who sets his hand to the handle of the bulldozer and looks back can have no part in progress.  History, like our favorite sit-com, has nothing to do with here and now so why would we need reminders of it?  If you do not understand that then you are, at best, an ignorant fool, or just as likely, a racist xenophobe who wants to put other people in chains.

This view of history has finally eclipsed its previous contender; what one might call the Christian view of history.  Christianity is by definition of historical religion because its Divine Founder “in the fullness of time pitched His tent and dwelt among us.”  Whether you use BC/AD or BCE/CE, the fact still remains that the Incarnation is the center of history.  It is the center of history because it proves once and for all that history does not merely have a direction, but a Director Who regularly makes cameos in His story. History now becomes the field in which the redemption of Creation plays out.

Knowing this, history must always leave room for the supernatural.  There are no accidents.  Where would the world be if St. Joan of Arc was blown off because she merely “heard voices”?  What if St. Pius V hadn’t pleaded with the Queen of Victory at Lepanto?  Or what if Pius VI when imprisoned by Napoleon in France had not prayed while the Emperor mocked him (Napoleon is purported to have said “does he think the weapons will fall form the hands of my soldiers?” which is exactly what happened in Waterloo)?  What if the steady handed, trained assassin had not encountered the hand of God in the chest of John Paul II?

The exemplar of all Christian historians is the great St. Augustine.  His City of God is a synthesis of human history read through the lens of Christian principles.  History for Augustine, and for us as Christians, is not a record of events but the revelation of a divine plan that embraces all ages and peoples.  He also shows that history, in order to be truly history, must be continuous.  There are no episodes or seasons, but a continuing story.  Memory is a key component of identity.  Both liberal democracy and Communism create regimes for forgetting the past.  Fans of the Jason Bourne series know the dangers of forgetting the past—not that you are doomed to repeat it, but that an amnesic people is defenseless and malleable.

What About the Statues?

Through the lens of the Christian notion of history, what place do Confederate Statues have as tokens of history?  In an age in which the conflict theory of history prevails they are very important.  When we think we have moved on, it is easy to think we should sanitize all versions of the past.  When we see history as the revelation of God’s plan of redemption for mankind however we need statues.  Statues, as the name suggests, are not symbols of honor but signs of someone who stood firm.  They may have stood firm for bad things like slavery.  Or they may have stood firm for good things like the courage to defend your homeland.  Or, as in the case of many of the Confederate statues, it was both.  But as tokens of history they teach us to choose carefully those things we are going to stand firm in.  They also teach us through real life examples that our actions, good and evil, endure.  They will not be erased.  Finally, they remind us that even the greatest of men is still flawed.  We wonder how courageous young men like those depicted in the Silent Sam statue could have such a blind spot and hopefully wonder where our own blind spots are.  Finally, it keeps our hubris in check in thinking we can build some messianic kingdom.

Let the statues stand—if for no other reason that they keep history from falling into the dustbin.

On Finding Wayward Shepherds

Bible, Church, Church Authority, Magisterium, Mercy, Pope Francis, , , ,

In the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul details his encounter with the first pope upon his visit to Antioch.  The Apostle to the Gentiles called St. Peter to task for withdrawing from the Gentiles and eating only with the Jews out of fear of offending the latter.  Knowing that their faith was weak, St. Peter did not want to scandalize them and so, out of a misguided sense of charity, he pretended to agree with them.  St. Paul was, of course, right.  St. Peter failed pastorally to shepherd his entire flock.  The truth can never be a source of scandal and it is no act of charity to water down the faith.

This event is favorite for non-Catholic apologists for arguing against the primacy of Peter.  After all, they reason, if Peter is the infallible head of the Church then how could Paul question him and find in him in error?  Therefore, the Apostles were all equals and the Catholic doctrines surrounding the papacy are false.  Of course, they read far beyond what happened.  Nowhere does St. Paul challenge St. Peter’s authority to rule, only his exercise of that authority.

Putting aside its apologetical value, this particular passage serves as a guiding light for Church management, especially in times when error is being propagated by those in authority.  One can see the great wisdom of the Holy Spirit in inspiring St. Paul to recount this event because it serves as an example for both prelates and their subjects.  From the perspective of the prelate, we are given an example of humility so as not to disdain correction from those who are “lower” than them.  From the perspective of the lay faithful it provides an example of both zeal and courage to correct those in the hierarchy.

What is Scandal?

First, a word about scandal.  In English this word tends to be understood as referring to an action that leads to public disgrace.  But in the theological sense the word has a more precise meaning.  The word comes from the Greek skándalon which means “a stumbling block.”  Specifically it refers to some action that creates a moral stumbling block for another person.  St. Thomas defines it as “something less rightly done or said, that occasions another’s spiritual downfall.”  The Angelic Doctor goes on to categorize scandal into two types: active and passive.  Active scandal, that which has as its reward a millstone, is “when a man either intends, by his evil word or deed, to lead another man into sin, or, if he does not so intend, when his deed is of such a nature as to lead another into sin: for instance, when a man publicly commits a sin or does something that has an appearance of sin.”  Passive scandal is when “one man’s word or deed is the accidental cause of another’s sin, when he neither intends to lead him into sin, nor does what is of a nature to lead him into sin, and yet this other one, through being ill-disposed, is led into sin” (ST II-II, q.43, a.1).

In short, scandal always pertains to an act that is in some way public in the sense that many people know about it.  One should never make public what was strictly done in private as the accuser would then be the cause of scandal rather than the perpetrator.  What happens in private should both remain and be corrected in private.  But in either case it is an obligation of charity to issue a correction.

The Obligation to Correct

Why is there an obligation?  By way of analogy, St. Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Church helps to illuminate why this is:

“As it is lawful to resist the Pope, if he assaulted a man’s person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled the state, and much more if he strove to destroy the Church.  It is lawful, I say, to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and hindering the execution of his will.”

While the saint mentions the Pope specifically, what he says applies to Bishops, Priests and Deacons.  If you saw a prelate beating a man physically you would stop it and you should do likewise if he is beating him spiritually.  St. Thomas Aquinas goes a step further saying that it is an act of charity not just towards the rest of the sheep but also towards the prelate as well because the scandalous behavior puts the prelate’s soul in great danger.  He, who has been given much, will have to answer for much.

St. Thomas says that “like all virtues, this act of fraternal charity is moderated by due circumstances.”  What he means by this is that we must not only be aware of our obligation, but also the manner in which we exercise that obligation.  While criticizing a prelate does not make you “more Catholic than the Pope” the manner in which you do it should make you just as Catholic as the Pope.  That is we should never forget that the operative word is charity.  This means that there are certain rules that ought to govern our interactions.

The Code of Canon Law (Canon 212) says that the faithful may legitimately criticize their pastors but that it must always be done “with reverence toward their pastors.”  This means that the criticism should first of all be done in private so that the pastor has an opportunity to correct himself.  This maintains the dignity of both their office and their person.

There are times however when the pastor does not correct himself or that meeting with him in private is not possible (not everyone can get a papal audience for example).  It may also be that the act or word poses such a danger to the faithful that a public rebuke is necessary.  In other words, it may be necessary like St. Paul to “withstand him to his face.”  St. Thomas says that if the faith were endangered a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly on account of the eminent danger of scandal (ST II-II q. 43 a. 1 obj.2).  This is why it is important to understand what constitutes scandal and what does not.  In any regard it may be necessary to “correct” the pastor in public out of, not just fraternal charity, but justice because the faithful have a right to the content of the faith in a clear and undiluted manner.  But still it must be done with gentleness and reverence for his office.

Before closing a word about the response of pastors.  Augustine says that Peter “gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects.”  Very often pastors think themselves above criticism from mere lay persons regardless of how qualified those lay persons are.  They remove the emphasis away from the truth as spoken onto the one speaking the truth.  Unfortunately the fraternal charity is not likewise met with pastoral humility.  It is this spirit that causes many lay people to remain quiet not confident enough that they could defend the Church’s position, especially when they are likely to be met with hostility.

In Loss and Gain, Blessed John Henry Newman’s fictional account of the conversion of a man from Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church, the protagonist Redding was drawn to the Church by its consistency.   While he could ask ten Anglican Priests to explain a particular dogma and  get ten different answers, he would get the same answer from ten Catholic pastors.  Those days of consistency are no longer among us, a phenomenon that can only be corrected when the entire Church, lay and clergy, take ownership of the Faith and fear not to correct wayward Shepherds.

Time and Eternity

Heaven, Spiritual Life, Theology, , ,

If Abbott and Costello had been philosophers rather than comedians, one could imagine their “Who’s on first?” routine morphing into “what did God do before He made the world?”  Costello would spin Abbott in circles explaining how there was no time before God made the world because God made time with the world.  Back and forth they would go until Costello told Abbott that God was outside of time.  Exasperated with more questions than answer, Abbott would finally ask “who’s on first?”  The two comedian philosophers would not be alone in puzzling over time and eternity.  Even the great Christian philosopher and saint, St. Augustine’s “mind burns to solve this complicated enigma” and begged God not to “shut off and leave these problems impenetrable” (Confessions XX, XXII).  He realized he was not faced with a mere intellectual abstraction but a question that had great practical consequences.  After all, time is the means by which earn our wings to fly into eternity and thus grasping the relation has bearing on how we live.

Let us begin by tracing some of Augustine’s thoughts about time.  Asking what time is often elicits a response akin to “I could have told you if you didn’t ask.”  That is, it is so fundamental to our lived experience that we are defined by it, making defining it difficult. For this reason we should do the intellectual legwork and come to examine it.

Augustine and Time

Time, St. Augustine says, exists only in the sense that it is tending towards nothingness.  What he means is that the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist.  The present, however we might measure it because of its fleetingness, has barely any duration at all and therefore has no extension.  Nor is the movement of heavenly bodies time because we would know if one day the sun moved twice as fast.  Heavenly bodies can be used to measure time only because they move in time.  Time instead, according to Augustine, is something that is experienced as either a present of things past (in memory), a present of things present (in the eye) or a present of things to come (in the expectation of the imagination).  Time is this succession from past to present to future.

Because time in its constituent elements of before and after is deeply embedded within our vision of reality, we often struggle to grasp eternity because we see it as somehow opposed to time.  We see it as some duration that does not have beginning or end.  This is inadequate because even if time had no beginning or end, it would still be a succession of days that embraces past, present, and future.  Time is but an analogy for eternity.  Plato thought that time is, in essence, the mobile image of immobile eternity.  Time is like a sacrament for eternity—a tangible sign of the invisible reality that, when lived united to divine eternity through sanctifying grace, brings eternal life about.

Eternity in the theological sense is a duration without beginning and end but has no succession of either past or future.  St. Thomas calls it “the now that stands, not that flows away” (ST I q.10, art2 obj 1).  More accurately, eternity is not a duration but a fullness.  It is the absolutely unchangeable God’s total possession of Himself—the fullness of His life.

Living within time, we are never fully ourselves.  What we were as children is not the same as we are now, nor is it the same as it will be when we are older.  Our life is not simultaneously whole as it consists of distinct periods so that there is never a moment in which we are fully ourselves.  Not so with God.  All that He is, He possesses in a single act of being.  When we say that God is “outside of time” this is primarily what we mean—because God does not change, there is no time in Him.

There is a second sense in which we mean God is outside of time. If eternity is, as Boethius contends, “being simultaneously whole” and our life is not simultaneously whole then we can only view time successively.  But God, being simultaneously whole sees the succession of time.  He sees all of time in a single glance as man looking from a high mountain can see an entire river while the man in a boat on the river sees each twist and turn as he comes to it.  This is why God knows what we do before we do it—because he can see all of time before Him—without directly causing those things to happen.

Why It Matters

This all remains terribly abstract unless we ask the question, what difference does all of this make to you and me?  It makes, quite literally, all the difference in the world.  Only God is eternal.  Our reception of eternal life is a participated eternity by which we have an uninterrupted, unchanging vision of God that is succeeded by a love for God that is equally changeless.  As Our Lord says, “this is eternal life, that they may know You and the One Whom You sent” (Jn 17:13).  This participation in God’s eternity is called the beatific vision—in seeing God “as He is” (1 John 3:2) we will see all things in Him.

It is by reflecting on these truths that we can earnestly desire “eternal rest.”  Locked in time, we view rest as cessation of all activity, a passive staring at God.  But rest in the eternal sense is vastly different.  It is a rest that can only come about when we have received the fullness of our being and nothing can be added to it.  In other words, it is a rest of ceaseless activity.  We see God as He is and all things in Him.  We see things as God sees them and judges them.  We may not be able to fully grasp what this is like here and now, but those who grow into the higher levels of prayer in this life can, like St. Paul, experience a foretaste of it in the unitive way (c.f. 2Cor 12:2).

This seeing and judging as God sees is why the saints, especially Our Lady, are such powerful intercessors for us.  They can ask God for those things we are asking for, but always in a manner that is in accord with God’s will.  They have fully “put on the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).  They too are “outside of time” but only in a participative sense.  This means they cannot see everything, but only those things which God has allowed them to see.  That is their participation is in proportion to their knowledge and love of God.  This helps us to understand both why some saints are more powerful than others and why some saints are more powerful as intercessors for certain needs—grace has fully perfected their natural powers in those areas.

In closing, it is also useful to ask about how, if at all, those in hell participate in eternity.  The punishment of hell is eternal in the sense that it never ends but “in hell true eternity does not exist but rather time in accordance with a certain change in sensible pain.”  The awareness of before and after rather than a rest in the eternal now is a constituent element of hell.  This makes the pain all the more acute because of both the remembrance and expectation.  This lack of participation in eternity, by the way, is why the devils did not know who Jesus was.  Angels too naturally experience a “before” and “after” but only in a discrete sense.  There is “this” and then “that” with no connecting moment between the two.   This is different from time and to mark the difference, St. Thomas calls it Aeviternity.  So, the angels are “outside of time” but in a very different sense than God is.  They truly are outside of it, not able to see the succession of it.  Therefore, they cannot know the future (even if they are smart enough to make a really good guess).

Take and Read

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

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

What’s In it for You and Me?

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

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

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

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

The Witness of the Saints

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

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