Tag Archives: Thomas Aquinas

Religious Liberty and the Coronavirus Quarantine

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One of the more closely related issues to the Coronavirus Quarantine is Religious Liberty.  Some have argued that the State demanding the shutdown of Church’s infringes upon the right to religious freedom.  Arguments have but put forth, at least from a Constitutional perspective, that in general the demand that churches be shut down is not unconstitutional.  We will set the constitutional question aside for the time being and examine it from the Church’s traditional teaching on religious freedom.

From the outset it must be admitted that examining religious freedom from the standpoint of traditional teaching is not without controversy.  Ever since the Second Vatican Council this teaching has been contested thanks to what amounts to a document plagued by ambiguity.  This despite the fact that the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, makes it clear that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (DH 1).  This “traditional Catholic doctrine” can be summarized as follows.

The Traditional Teaching on Religious Liberty

Man has an obligation to worship God, not just in any manner that he wishes, but according to the religion that God has revealed.  More to the point, man has an obligation to be a member of the Catholic Church.  This membership however must be voluntary.  No one can be forced to embrace the True Faith against his will.  Two corollaries follow from this.  First, no one may be forced from acting against his religious conviction in private or in public.  Vatican II affirms this teaching when it says that religious “freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” 

In a discourse in 1953, Pope Pius XII said ‘That which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality has objectively no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.”  Because “error has no rights”, the public exercise of religion is another issue.  Only the true religion has a right public expression and thus a person may be kept from publicly acting upon their religious convictions.  To summarize, a man can’t be forced to act against his conscience but can be kept from acting on it.  The second corollary then is that the State, because it is the custodian of the Common Good may prohibit public expression of false religions.

In Catholic countries the State may tolerate some public expression of false religions only for proportionate reasons in order to protect the Common Good.  St. Thomas gives two reasons in general—to avoid civil unrest or avoid prejudicing non-Catholics toward the Church.  What is clear is that this must be viewed merely as tolerance and not a right.  No one has right to be tolerated.  Either way a non-Catholic religion must not be given the space to flourish and propagate itself. 

In non-Catholic States the obligation to protect and promote the true religion still remains in place, but the level of tolerance of false religions obviously increases because of the Common Good and the threat of civil unrest.  This is where Dignitatis Humanae seems to veer from the traditional teaching of the Church saying both that “religious communities…have the right not to be hindered in their public teaching and witness to their faith, whether by the spoken or by the written word”(DH 4).  It seems to confuse true rights from mere tolerance.  How this can be reconciled with the traditional teaching remains to be seen.

The traditional understanding then differs from the American Model.  The American Model treats all religions as equal.  This is contrary to justice however.  As Leo XIII put it:

“Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engravers upon it.” 

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas 21

This also means that the Church cannot be treated as merely one other social organization.  This means that the constitutionality defense, namely that religious congregations have not been singled out, of the religious quarantine does not fly.  The Church not only should be treated differently than other religious groups, but also from all social groups.  Lumping it in with other “large gatherings” is unjust and does great harm to the Common Good.

Religious Liberty and the Power of the Church

The confusion regarding religious liberty has led to a grave misstep when it comes to the quarantining of the Church’s public worship and Sacraments.  To be clear, the issue isn’t about whether Bishops should comply with the order of the State regarding not gathering.  That question is best left up to the prudential judgment of the Bishops and their charism as Shepherds.  But any compliance must be shown to be voluntary.  It must be “we will comply” and not “we must comply”.  Very few Bishops (if any) have made it clear that this is a voluntary cooperation, “signal proof of her motherly love by showing the greatest possible kindliness and indulgence” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 15) in cooperating with the State.

The Church has an obligation to repeatedly tell the State to stay in its lane and this situation is no different.  Leo XIII, always aware of State encroachment upon the Church, said “Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority” (ibid).  This is because the spiritual common good always has precedent over the temporal common good.

When the transition back to normal life happens, the question is who decides when the Church may resume Masses?  Is it the State or is it the Church?  The way this has played out so far it appears that it will be the State which sets a dangerous precedent and gives the Church’s enemies great leeway in performing a “soft persecution” in the name of public health.  The Shepherds of the Church must defend religious freedom and not cede any power over to the State.

What Happens to Aborted Children?

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At the heart of the Pro-Life movement is the overwhelming concern not just for the temporal well-being of members of society, but for their eternal salvation.  Christians are, by definition, Pro-Life because they desire that society at its core be built upon conditions that are conducive to the salvation of souls.  That is what makes abortion and particularly pernicious offense against life—it puts not only the soul of the mother and those who cooperate with her in jeopardy, but the eternal destiny of the child in danger as well.  Many Catholics are quick to declare these children martyrs and assume that they are in heaven because of it.  However, this belief is by no means definitive and there are good reasons to think that this might not be the case.  Once our gaze is turned towards these innocent victims and the question of their eternal destination, we find that our zeal for souls drives us to eliminate abortion all the more.

To grapple with this issue, we must start with what we can say with assurance.  Despite not being healed from Original Sin and its wounds, these children are not necessarily destined for hell.  Original Sin is not a condition of guilt but one of deprivation.  Mankind is deprived of the gift of sanctifying grace, a necessity for entrance into the Beatific Vision, at their conception.  This does not make the child guilty, only unequipped.  Hell is a punishment for actual sin, and with no actual sins committed, the child does not merit hell.  This is why Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that mothers can entrust their aborted children “with sure hope [to] the Father and His mercy” (EV, 99, Acta Apostolicae Sedis version).

In the Summa, St. Thomas draws a very important distinction in this regard that is worth discussing.  He says that often “children are punished in temporal matters together with their parents, both because they are a possession of their parents, so that their parents are punished also in their person, and because this is for their good lest, should they be spared, they might imitate the sins of their parents, and thus deserve to be punished still more severely” (ST II-II, q.108, art.4 ad.3).  The “good” that St. Thomas is referring to presumptively would refer to not just towards their temporal welfare but their eternal as well.  But this could refer not only to the good of reward but also the good of receiving less of a punishment than a person might otherwise.

So we can say that the child is not destined to hell per se, but this does not mean that they are destined for heaven either.  There is still the open question of Limbo as an option.   Assuming that John Paul II’s comment about a “sure hope” means hope in the theological sense then the eternal salvation of the child is at least a possibility.  In other words we can now turn to the question about how it is that a child might be equipped for Heaven through the infusion of sanctifying grace.

How then might their salvation be possible?  The first would be through a special miracle akin to the sanctification that is presented in Scripture.  Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah whom St. Thomas said were sanctified “outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mother’s wombs” (Commentary on the Sentences, dist.6, q.1).  Although this means it is theologically possible, the acts of sanctification were extraordinary and a result of the mission of the three children.

Deprived of the ordinary means of salvation through baptism, it is also possible to posit that they received a Baptism in Blood.  In short, the children would be classified as martyrs.  Scripture once again offers us an example in the Holy Innocents.  In adults martyrdom occurs when a person dies for some supernatural reason such as in defense of some Christian virtue or as testimony of faith.  Despite being deprived of the use of reason, the Holy Innocents have long been considered to be martyrs because they died in defense of Christ.  This consideration is based upon both Divine Revelation and the Church’s binding and loosing authority.  The Church may have the authority to declare martyrdom, but it cannot be without reason.    It is not clear that the children are being put to death for a supernatural reason as in the case of the Holy Innocents.  Either way though the Church would need to officially declare them as martyrs in order for us to consider them to actually be martyrs.

There is a third option.  Because “God wills that all men be saved” we might assume that prior to death each child is given an opportunity to be saved.  This would include infants in the womb.  We can posit then that they are each tested in some way and given a chance to accept the gift of sanctifying grace.  The problem with this view is that it would require cooperation with actual grace and the ability to use their reason.

Given the inherent difficulties which each of these the solutions, we can begin to see why Limbo remains as a theological possibility not only for unbaptized children, but children in the womb.  What is clear however is that we need to treat the issue of abortion as a real threat to the eternal salvation of the child in the womb and continue to fight for its elimination in our society.   

Angels and the Sexes

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There is perhaps no topic that St. Thomas Aquinas is more closely associated with than angels.  Dubbed The Angelic Doctor, both because of his angelic purity, and because of his thorough compilation of the Church’s teachings on the angels, he is a reliable teacher on the topic.  We can turn to him and find the necessary principles that will enable us to answer any question we might have, including the question as to why angels always appear as men in Scripture. 

One of the things that St. Thomas does is to help us see beyond on modern prejudices because he appeals to universal principles.  There is a modern tendency, especially in an age of exaggerated gender equality, to attribute it to patriarchal repression.  But there is more to it than that and it begins by turning to Aquinas’ negative definition of an angel as that which is “understood to be incorporeal” (ST, q.51, art.1).  Lacking bodies, are neither male nor female by nature.  Nevertheless, because matter makes the invisible visible, the angels use a body to reveal themselves. 

Where the Body Comes From

To say that they “use” a body leads us to a necessary digression.  The angels do not rob a grave nor perform something like a good possession, but instead draw together the matter necessary to create the physical appearance of a human body.  “Appearance” because it is not truly a human body because its proper form of the human soul.  Although they do not have a body by nature, they do, by nature have the power to move matter in accord with their will (assuming Divine approval of course).  Making a body then would be perfectly within their natural powers.

This “body” serves solely the purpose of revealing the angel and allowing him to communicate with humans on their level.  In this way, the angels are in the image of God, given the power to use the material to make the non-material intelligible to us.  This is why we can never look upon their choice of body as an accident of social convention or a concession to patriarchy.  Instead it is chosen for a purpose, namely to reveal the angel, in both his nature and personality, to men.  This purpose helps set the tone for an explanation as to why the bodies are always male. 

Angels, because they lack materiality, also lack, philosophically speaking, potency.  The angel is pure intellect, always being in act of knowing a loving.  If they cease to think and love, they cease to exist.  Likewise, being immaterial, they “live” outside of visible creation.  This means that angels are always the initiators in their interaction with mankind.  Men cannot beckon them (this is why the angel will not tell Jacob his name) nor conjure them up.  They must always come on their own accord.  In “coming” they enter into the physical world from the outside.  They must come from outside of visible creation and enter into the physical world.  Finally, angels are by their mission, the militant protectors of mankind.  They are warriors assigned to battle the evil spirits in their assault upon mankind.

The Body Reveals the Personality

If the angel, in forming a body, wants to convey both his nature and his personality, then how should he present himself?  To convey personality, he must choose one of the sexes and not just an amorphous blob or non-personal type matter.  To convey his nature, he must choose one or the other.  To see which one, another slight digression is in order.

The sexes, male and female, are meant to reveal masculinity and femininity.  The masculine principle is always the initiator, always the one who comes from the outside.  The feminine principle is always passive and receptive.  The masculine is, viewed philosophically, acts as the efficient cause in reducing the feminine from potency to act.  Likewise, the masculine is always the protector and warrior of the feminine. 

Angels, by choosing to appear with men, are revealing that they have initiated the conversation with men, and that they have come from outside of visible creation.  The Heavenly Host is an army arrayed in battle to protect us.  This militancy is best portrayed by being a man.  It is for these three reasons that angels always appear as men in Scripture and why we always speak of the angels that we don’t see as “he”.

In the book of Zechariah, there is a story of how the prophet was visited by an angel.  In that regard, it is no different than many other cases in Scripture of similar visitation.  It is unique however because at first glance it appears that a female angel (actually two) makes an appearance.  There is reason to think however that these angels are actually demons.

The prophet is visited by an angel who points out to him a basket that contains a woman whom he identifies as “wickedness”.  He closes the basket and then the angel raises Zechariah’s “eyes and saw two women coming forth with wind under their wings—they had wings like the wings of a stork—and they lifted the basket into the air.  I said to the angel who spoke with me, ‘Where are they taking the basket?’  He replied, ‘To build a temple for it in the land of Shinar. When the temple is constructed, they will set it there on its base.’” (Zech 5:9-11).  These “two women”, some posit, are angels.  But the destination, Shinar, which is where the tower of Babel was built (Gen 11), later referred to as Babylon, tells us something different.  Throughout Scripture, Babylon is always presented as the city of the devil and thus they are carrying wickedness back to its biblical home. 

Devotion to the Angels and Angel Statues

All of that being said, why does it matter if they appear as both men and women or only as men?  It matters because angels are not just hypothetical beings but real people who play an active role in the world of mankind.  It becomes then a matter of discernment, giving us a principle by which to distinguish between an angel of light and an angel of darkness.  Given all that we have said, it is not surprising that exorcists and demonologists find that only demons appear as women and that they caution us to avoid a feminine spirit.  This is not to suggest that women are evil, (for the demons also appear as men) only that femininity does not properly convey the nature of the angel.  The demons operate on deception and seduction and thus we should not be surprised that these is one of the means they use. 

It isn’t just discernment that matters, but also devotion.  Devotional art ought to portray the object of devotion as it truly is.  It may abstract away certain pieces (like the excess blood of Christ on the Cross) but it must remain true to the object itself.  In other words, devotional art ought to imitate nature because it helps to foster a deeper devotion.  This is why we should be cautious in accepting the modern tendency to depict angels as female in art.  The angels themselves are artists and they have chosen the male body to portray themselves.  Masculine angel art helps to foster true devotion to the angels because it depicts their true characteristics more than a female art would.  In this way, that is because it has claritas, the masculine angel is always more beautiful than the feminine. 

If it is really true that only demons appear as women, then these aesthetic objects may in fact be idols, fostering devotion to devils instead.  Devotion is always directed from the heart to the object.  In this way it has a power of forming our hearts to love the object of our devotion.  A poor depiction of angels, or even one that is really demonic, can eventually do harm to our spiritual life.  This is why it is always better to foster devotion based on what we do know, namely that angels always take on masculine form, then to speculate, and risk offering devotion to something far more insidious. 

What About the Jews?

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Pope Francis has been particularly vocal, especially as of late, in condemning anti-Semitism.  This comes on the heels of a concerted effort by the Church since the Second Vatican Council to improve relations with the Jewish people.  Motivated not only by humanitarian reasons, this renewed interest stems from theological convictions.  In particular, the Church’s condemnation of anti-Semitism is undergirded by her understanding of the Jews as the “Chosen People” so that Pope Francis can truthfully say that “engaging in any form of anti-Semitism is a direct contradiction with the Christian faith.”  But because this nuanced understanding of the Jews is commonly mistaken, it is helpful for us to articulate it clearly.

The Chosen People

Since the Church’s understanding of the Jews as the Chosen People forms the foundation of Jewish-Catholic relations, what exactly were they chosen for?  God chose them to be a people “peculiarly His own”  (c.f. Dt 26:18) for no other reason than that the Messiah was to come into the world through them.  So that the world was never without hope of redemption, God told Adam and Eve about His plan of redemption (c.f. Gn 3:15) and then set out to form a people through which the Redeemer would come.  We might be tempted to assume that once the Redeemer comes, the mission of the Chosen People would come to an end.  They would then need to move with the economy of salvation or be left behind with the pagans.  They might even be viewed as somehow worse than the Gentiles because they openly rejected God’s Anointed One , killing Him on the Cross.  It was this line of reasoning, founded upon its roots in the Marcionist heresy of the 2nd Century, that has fueled fire of Christian anti-Semitism throughout history.

In response to any heresy, the tendency is to overcorrect.  Rather than subscribing to a theory of total repudiation, there are those who propose that the Jews are operating under a parallel covenant.   Christianity is for the Gentiles and Judaism for the Jew.  Those who subscribe to this view reason that God is faith and His “chosen-ness”  cannot be undone.  The Jews remain a (as opposed to the) Chosen People and therefore any effort at evangelization is unnecessary and, quite frankly, rude and uncharitable.  In an age of religious relativism, especially in the face of widespread anti-Semitism, we should expect to see, and, in fact do see, a rise in the popularity of this view.  But this viewpoint is just as erroneous as the first.

Still Chosen?

In order to understand the proper Christian stance towards the Jewish people, it is necessary to ask an important, although often overlooked question.  If the Jewish people are no longer God’s Chosen People, then how can we explain the fact that they remain a people.  Given their history of suffering and persecution throughout recent history it is nothing short of miraculous that they are still a recognizable people.  This is because, in a very real sense they remain a People favored by God.  This is for three reasons, summarized by St. Paul in Romans 9 and 11, and can be summarized as past, present and future.

First, the Jewish people remain beloved to God because of the great dignity attached to their spiritual patrimony (c.f. Rom 11:28).  Their beloved patriarchs, from Abraham, to Jacob to Moses to David and from “whom according to the flesh is the Christ” (Rom 9:4) came, were faithful to God and His covenant.  Likewise, God is also faithful to His promise for the “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).  So that while the Old Covenant may have passed away, it remains for God to be faithful to those with whom He made the covenant .

Secondly, the Jews remain as a “motive of credibility” to the truth of the Old Testament.  The people that was founded upon the miraculous redemption of the Exodus remains a people even to this day.  This miraculous endurance lends credibility to the miraculous revelation contained in the Old Testament.  The Jews will always remain distinct from the Gentiles because the revelation upon which their faith is built is true.  It may be incomplete, but that makes it no less true.  Their continued presence in the world today testifies to this very important truth.

Finally, there is the future.  The Jews as a people still have a pivotal role to play in salvation history.  They not only testify to the truth of the Second Coming, but also play a role in signaling that coming.  Although “a hardening has come upon Israel in part,“(Rom 11:25) this hardening will not be forever.  One of the signal events of the End Times is the mass conversion of the Jews.  When the anti-Christ is revealed to be the fraud that he is by the two witnesses (c.f. Rev 11:1-14), the Jews will join the ranks of the true Israel.  This eschatological reality will not only affect the Jews, but will, according to St. Thomas, be a sign to the Gentiles that have fallen away from the Faith.  For them we can properly say that “salvation is from the Jews.”

Cardinal Charles Journet, drawing on Romans 9, makes a very helpful distinction that will help us to adopt the proper stance towards the Jews.  This distinction is between “Israel in the flesh” and Israel in the spirit”.  The goal must always be for all men to be incorporated into “Israel in the spirit” because it is only in belonging to this body that a man can be saved.  In St. Paul’s time, as in our own, the goal was conversion of “Israel in the flesh” to “Israel of the spirit.”  But knowing their eschatological purpose when this doesn’t occur through the plans of Divine Providence, Christians must consider “Israel of the flesh” to be a special people worthy of both our respect and our protection.

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.

Our Jealous God

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Public revelation was officially closed with the death of John the Apostle.  This does not preclude, from time to time, God raising up prophets, fashioned in the mold of the Jeremiah, Isaiah and Elijah, to help the People of God apply the contents of that revelation to their current times.  History is rife with them—St. Athanasius, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Faustina to name a few.  The Spirit of Prophecy is a key component in the Mystical Body of Christ even in our own day.  Unfortunately, like the days of Israel of old, the spirit of false prophecy is always lurking at the door.  There will always be those who claim to speak on behalf of God and yet are lending their voices to the enemies of humanity.  It is to one of those groups that I address this post today—the self-styled prophets who claim “God does not care if…”

This spirit of false prophecy is ubiquitous, especially in our “YOLO” culture.  Who among us has not met one of these prophets?   They are quick to tell us, “God does not care if we go to Mass.” Or, “God does not care if we call Him the right name.”  They proclaim, “God does not care how we worship Him.”  And even remind us that “God does not care if you eat meat on Fridays.”  And “God does not care if you smoke weed.”  These are but a few of their prophetic utterances, but you get the point.  These Bizarro John the Baptists repeatedly reassure us that God loves us as long as we are good people and enable us all to relax a little bit, if for no other reason that we have found out that God has sanctioned our drug habit.  They are great prophets of, well, not exactly peace, but at least of “chilling out.”

God’s New Name

Just as Jonah was stopped in his tracks when his message was received, these luminous prophets are often thrown off when they are asked “how do you know God doesn’t care?’  Probing, you find that what they really mean is that if they were God, then they wouldn’t care.  God is really their prophet.  But it is not the audacity of their message that is the most distressing element, but instead the image of God that emerges if we are to worship “I CARE NOT” rather than “I AM WHO AM”.

All of us tend to chill out in our old age, and “I CARE NOT” is no different.  Given all the time of dealing with humanity, He has chilled.  At least that is what our prophets would have us believe.  But the image this God invokes is actually just as scary as the so-called “fire and brimstone” God they are trying to extinguish.  Their God may be laid back, but He is still merely a Divine Auditor concerned only with tallying up our actions.  He may not put as many things in the left-hand side of the ledger, but he still has his ledger.  Presenting him as mellow does nothing to remove this image.  It is a scarier image because we have no way, other than by listening to these prophets, to actually know which belongs in which column.  If “God doesn’t care” does that mean these are good actions then?  Or do we now have an indifferent column?  If he is mostly indifferent about what I do, then how do I even know he cares about me?  Most people will take the God who hates over the God who is indifferent—at least the former also loves.  Indifference and love, bumper stickers to the contrary, cannot coexist.  In trying to avoid sterile moralism, the Prophet of Indifference manages to castrate God Himself.

Why God Cares

These prophets can still challenge us however, even if it is by way of an end around.  They force us to ask the question why God even cares what we do.  As we probe we find that St. Thomas Aquinas asked the same question, framing it in terms of sin as an offense against God.  In Book 3 of the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Angelic Doctor says that “God is offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good.”  In other words, God cares so deeply about each one of us that He takes offense only when we do something that ultimately harms us.  And what are those things?  We call them sins, but they are essentially things that move us off the path that our nature and our supernatural calling has put us on.  There are some things that help us to advance towards this goal (we call these good), some things that stop us (venial sins) and some things that knock us off the path entirely so that we need His help to get back on the path (mortal sins).  In short, God not only cares what we do and don’t do, He says that He does so as a jealous lover.  He knows that giving ourselves to any other lover than Him ultimately ends in frustration that could be eternal.  But choosing Him as our love, we can love all those other things in Him.  “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt 6:33).  This is not to trivialize just how bad sin is—it is still an offense against Almighty God—but to place it within the context of a filial relationship rather than as Judge and defendant.  God, in all eternity, is Father but only with respect to creation is He judge.  It is of His nature to be Father and not to be Judge.  See, He does care what we call Him.

In his sermon entitled “Jewish Zeal, A Pattern to Christians,” Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us of the best weapon with which to combat these false prophets.  He says that Christians should not be taking up the sword in the manner of Elijah when he encountered the false prophets of his day, but instead to capture the spirit of mind that animated his actions.  Zeal, Newman says,

“consists in a strict attention to His commands—a scrupulousness, vigilance, heartiness, and punctuality, which bears with no reasoning or questioning about them—an intense thirst for the advancement of His glory—a shrinking from the pollution of sin and sinners—an indignation, nay impatience, at witnessing His honour insulted—a quickness of feeling when His name is mentioned, and a jealousy how it is mentioned—a fullness of purpose, an heroic determination to yield Him service at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling—an energetic resolve to push through all difficulties, were they as mountains, when His eye or hand but gives the sign—a carelessness of obloquy, or reproach, or persecution, a forgetfulness of friend and relative, nay, a hatred (so to say) of all that is naturally dear to us, when He says, ‘Follow me.’”

Let us go forth in this same spirit.

Did Jesus Ever Get the Flu?

Bioethics, Incarnation, The Life of Jesus, ,

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

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

Like Us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Our Lord Didn’t Suffer

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

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

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