Sola Dei Caritas

Do Earthquakes Like Japan's Suggest the End of the World?

2011-03-11T12:15:00.000-05:00

Matthew's Gospel reads:

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs. (Matt. 24:3-8)

The common interpretation is that Jesus was giving us signs to look for as harbingers of the end of the world. I don’t think that this is correct.

For one, it would be very inconsistent with His firm, explicit instructions from the same discourse not to worry about or to look for when the end is coming. In fact, in this quoted passage, He actually seems to be cautioning His listeners that reading into these kinds of events can lead one astray.

However, another interpretation of His words exists which is consistent with these messages, namely, one could understand the passage such that Jesus is telling His disciples precisely that these kinds of events are not signs of the end. Remember, He is speaking here to a group of mainly Jews living in an age and with a theological outlook wherein every negative event was taken as a sign of God’s anger. These are the people who asked Jesus whose sin was responsible for a man’s blindness, and who assumed that the fall of the tower in Siloam was yet another punishment. Moreover, He knows that within a generation the terrible disasters of Nero and the destruction of the Temple were to come. It is this people to whom He’s trying to give His message not to see the end of the world behind every falling rock or crashing tower and so be led astray.

Thus, it seems probable to me that His message was, rather than that the terrible events He lists are signs of the end, that they are just simply everyday events which will happen time and time again as the years carry on. “Over the thousands of years until my return,” He says in a sense, “there will be many earthquakes, wars, and famines. These are normal. They don’t mean the end is near.”

And indeed history has been filled with wars, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other such events, and there will be more in the future. I have seen claims there more occurring now than in the past. I don't have the data to evaluate that claim, but if it is true, so what? Geology and climatology are defined by long cycles of increased and decreased activity. If we are in a cycle of increased activity, all the more reason to pray and be vigilant that we may be ready when Christ calls us by name and demands of us an accounting – but no reason to read in these things that the end is near. I dare say Christ told us not to.

Should You Give Up Facebook for Lent?

2011-03-08T12:42:00.002-05:00

With ash wednesday just a day away many are finalizing plans for their Lenten sacrifices. The past few years Facebook has become a popular object of these sacrifices. This can certainly be a good idea, Facebook so often being a distraction from God and from the productive, meaningful, spiritual lives that He calls us to.

At the same time, Facebook is a very easy, convenient option for our Lenten sacrifice - perhaps too easy. To be sure, for many a break from Facebook would lead them closer to our Lord, not to mention all of the "real life" people that He's put into their lives. Yet for others, Facebook is an important means by which they come closer to God and maintain their spiritual lives.

Of course, the easy example of this is that person who does not have very many, if any, spiritual friends to see in his or her day to day life. Such people may in fact get all the Christian fellowship that they do via Facebook friends who may either live too far away or simply not have the opportunity to get together very frequently. Of course, a laudable Lenten effort in such a case might be to try to see one another more frequently. This is a great idea! Yet as Christians we can never let the perfect be the enemy of the good (indeed, the good is an incomplete or particular manifestation of the perfect), and so giving up Facebook with such an approach in mind must be considered prayerfully and carefully.

Yet not everybody who derives spiritual benefit from Facebook does so simply because of a lack of good Christian friends in the being around. How many times have you found a good article on a Facebook link? How many times has an inspiring quotation on Facebook set your spiritual life on the right path a given day? How many times has seeing posts from your spiritual friends prompted you to live life for God that day - when perhaps otherwise you may not have thought of Him? How many prayer requests have you made, and responded to, on Facebook?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to encourage you not to sacrifice Facebook if that is something which will genuinely benefit you spiritually. By all means, if that's the case then case do it! What I am trying to do is to encourage you to make a careful consideration of the spiritual positives and negatives that Facebook affects in your life and prayerfully discern weather it would be a legitimate Lenten sacrifice for you, or simply an option that is easy to sign on to.

It's just like the old giving up chocolate for Lent: everybody seems to make this sacrifice, but in reality it's really only meaningful to a some. I myself, for example, would really not benefit from giving up chocolate or candy for Lent, yet in trying to figure out what sacrifice I should make its just right there and seems like such a common thing to do. That must mean it's a good thing to do, right?

As people of Christ, we're always very rightly concerned with not giving in to the trends of the world, but we also need to be concerned with guarding ourselves against theological or spiritual trends. Such trends may concern themselves with things which are objectively good, such as abstaining from meat or chocolate or some other thing, but as trends, they don't take in to account our particular souls and our particular spiritual needs. The place I'm at and the needs of my soul maybe very different from where you are at and what you need. Indeed for some, it may be that giving up Facebook or chocolate or any particular thing may be an "easy out" compared to some other sacrifice which would be a genuinely challenging and enlivening effort to make.

This is why the Church presents to us both the universal truths - the doctrines and dogmas - as well as the diverse array of different spiritualities as shown to us by the saints. It's why She gives us the Catechism while still encouraging us to get individual spiritual directors. The truth, of course, does not change and so can be presented in black and white in a Catechism. However, Grace builds upon nature, and each of our natures is going to be a little different.

So I encourage you to consider just what you need this Lent, and in particular just what God is calling you to - not by trend, but by name - and then follow Him with generosity.

Did Thomas Aquinas teach that women were just defective men created solely for reproduction?

2011-01-31T11:12:00.003-05:00

A question came to me recently from some friends who were reading Women, Sex, and the Church, a collection of essays treating various Catholic teachings on sex and marriage as they relate to women. In one of the essays, a woman categorized as a "dissident theologian" is quoted, wherein she asserts that St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Universal Doctor of the Church, taught that women A) are merely "defective" and "misbegotten" men who B) God only created so that there would be someone to carry babies during their 9 months of gestation. The question, of course, is just what St. Thomas taught on this subject?

The first step in considering this question is to locate the reference to which this theologian is referring. This does not prove difficult, the passage in question being located right where one would expect it to be in the first part of Aquinas' monumental Summa Theologica in his treatise on man. Specifically, the issue comes up in article 1 of question 92 of the first part. Here, Aquinas is answering the question of whether or not woman should have been created in the beginning at the same time as man. He responds that yes, she should have been. Let us look at the particular texts in question.

The first comes from the article's first objection and it's response:

Objection 1. It would seem that the woman should not have been made in the first production of things. For the Philosopher says (De Gener. ii, 3), that "the female is a misbegotten male." But nothing misbegotten or defective should have been in the first production of things. Therefore woman should not have been made at that first production.

Reply to Objection 1. As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2). On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intentionas directed to the work of generation. Now the general intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God formed not only the male but also the female.

We do see the "defective and misbegotten" text in question here. It is first introduced as a quote from Aristotle to support the idea that woman should not have been created. Aristotle, the objection asserts, declared that woman is simply a misbegotten man, and so she should not have been created in the first place, since nothing that is defective ought to have been created in the beginning, when all was perfect. In brief, Aquinas' reply is that woman is only misbegotten in her individual nature but not in her universal nature, and so it would have been fine for her to have been created at the beginning by virtue of her universal nature.

However, the soundness of Aquinas' reply is not at issue here. Rather, it is the question of woman being "misbegotten." Specifically, we now see, it is the issue of her being misbegotten in her individual nature. What exactly does this mean? Fortunately, St. Thomas provides an explanation of why a woman is said to be misbegotten. The male seed, he says, produces a perfect male likeness, and therefore he reasons that the production of a woman entails some kind of defect. Aquinas then bases the rest of his response on this fact. This is important because the "fact" is in error: the male seed does not produce a perfect male likeness. It can produce either a male or a female, because sperm can contain either an X chromosome - leading to a female child - or a Y chromosome - leading to a male. Of course we know this now, but in Aquinas' day (and Aristotle's, for that matter) this was not understood.

It helps to try to look at things from the perspective of people of Aquinas' day. They knew a little bit about the biology of reproduction, but not very much. The microscope had not even been invented, and the theory of chromosomes was still nearly 700 years away. What these people did know was that children developed in women after men deposited their "seed" during intercourse. Women were thus understood as being responsible for giving a child it's body (as it grew and developed, taking what material it needed from her own) while the role of males was to give the initial seed. What this seed was, exactly, nobody really knew. The philosophers considered that it was the form of the child - the "plan" that directed how the material from the mother should be organized. Whereas a blueprint indicates how girders, wood, and so forth are to be arranged to create the intended building, the man's seed would indicate how the the woman's biological material was to be arranged to form a child.

In any case, one element of their reasoning was a fairly fundamental principle which we follow even today: you can't give what you don't have. To us, it means that a person who wants to teach must first learn, that a person who wants to bring peace to friends must first gain personal peace, and other similar platitudes along with more basic things like the simple fact that I can't give you $100 when I only have $50 in my pocket. To the people of Aquinas' time, it made sense that a male could only give maleness. Therefore, a father's seed could only give the "blueprint" to make another male. Think about it. It has been obvious even since the first human beings that we get our "form" from our parents: we look like them! It's easy to see, then, how people could reason that when a father gives his seed he is giving that "blueprint" that made him.

What all of this means for the "biology" behind Aquinas' reasoning is that men didn't have the capability of giving the form of a woman in their seed. Therefore, a woman would have to come about by some defect in the form that a mother did receive. Further helping us see just how strongly an erroneous understanding of biology influenced Aquinas, he goes on to list what were at the time considered some possible causes of this defect, even including a 'moist wind!' The individual nature of a woman, he therefore says, is misbegotten. In other words, in and of herself (individually), a woman is not the result of the perfect transmission of a father's seed.

Now, we could simply end matters here recognizing that working with a more accurate concept of reproductive biology, Aquinas would have had an entirely different answer. Were we do to so, however, we would miss something very important about Aquinas' point. To see exactly what, we need to follow his reasoning through even from his faulty foundation, for next he goes on to address how woman, in her general human nature, is not misbegotten. Nature, he points out, requires both men and women. In other words, humanity by its very nature is made up of men and women. There must be both, or there would be neither - for nobody would ever be conceived. Now this is from a purely natural standpoint, even apart from considering God's role in things. It is only at the very end that Aquinas brings God into things, pointing out that God directs nature and so God of course determined that humanity would consist of men and women. In no uncertain terms, he says that God always intended that there be women.

Further, we can see from other places in his writings that St. Thomas did not consider women to be of lower value, worth, or dignity than men. For example, he teaches that the highest act a creature can perform is the intellective contemplation of God (in layman's terms, a way of defining Heaven) which women can of course also participate in. In his reply to objection 1 in the 4th article of question 93, he rejects the idea that the image of God is not found in women and teaches that both men and women possess and intellectual nature, which he says is the image of God. Other examples could be cited.

It is important then to consider just how St. Thomas understands women to be defective or misbegotten men. He does not mean it as we might use the terms to describe a defective CD player, for example. Should I go to the store and purchase a CD player with as a broken motor, it would be defective in and of itself insofar as it would not work. Understood in this way, a defective male would be an impotent man, or a man who had some other problem, but a male who, like the CD player, did not "work." On the other hand, consider the chocolate chip cookie. As the story goes, Ruth Wakefield was one day baking chocolate cookies only to discover she did not have the proper ingredients. Substituting semi-sweet chocolate chips, she unexpectedly created what is today the most popular cookie of them all. The chocolate cookie, while having a value and worth all its own, was a defective or "misbegotten" chocolate cookie.

The key point this analogy seeks to illustrate is that the "defect" of the woman is not a defect in the sense of a valuelessness, a badness, a brokenness, or even necessarily an inferiority. Rather, it is a difference from what was originally intended (by the seed): a defect from the male seed's expected ultimate end. Ironically, we can see a parallel in the way prenatal development really does function: it is generally accepted that everybody begins as a female until the Y chromosome starts to trigger the proper physiological changes to produce a male, and so in a similar sense to Aquinas' ancient one, all men are in a sense "misbegotten" women. God, of course, intends that souls He intends to be women be women and those He intends to be men be men, and this is an even more important point. Aquinas' conception of the defect here is purely a material, biological one (and, of course, one based on faulty biology in the first place). However, he firmly insists (over and over in the course of other questions, in fact) that God's intent is that women be conceived. In St. Thomas' eyes, then, God does something akin to altering nature itself so as to bring women about.

The second issue - whether or not Aquinas taught that women were made only for the purposes of bearing children - is an easier one to tackle. The theologian is referring to the main portion of Aquinas answer in the question we have been considering. He writes:

It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in otherworks, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation.

It is only necessary to note three brief points.

First, Aquinas' primary meaning here is, again, natural and not supernatural. Just as in discussing misbegotten and defectiveness he was thinking in terms of the natural order of things (that is, as regards how women come about according to nature rather than to God), here he is also speaking primarily about women's natural purpose. He goes on to illustrate his point by considering the ways that plants and animals reproduce. Some plants, he says, reproduce on their own without the need for others. Plants, however, are not very high creatures and their sole purpose for existence is to make more plants, and so always have the entirety of their reproductive abilities contained within themselves. Animals, however, have other purposes, and humans above all have that highest of purposes: contemplating God. Given this, he says that man should be separated from reproduction so as that he only exists as a reproductive entity during certain times - namely, intercourse In other words, it's important that human beings aren't in a constant state of reproduction (like some plants) so as to most befit creatures whose ultimate purpose is in the spiritual. Given this, mankind's reproductive function is split up amongst different people, and so, he says, nature demands that women exist to take on part of the reproductive function. For this reason, when considering how woman is a helper for man, he ties it very particularly to reproduction.

Second, in other places he explicitly states that women have purposes apart from reproduction. For example, in the very next article he writes, "Thirdly, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 12), the human male and female are united, not only for generation, as with other animals, but also for the purpose of domestic life, in which each has his or her particular duty..."

Third, as has been pointed out already, St. Thomas teaches how God made humanity, in His image and likeness, as man and woman. Women, he says, have the image of God in them just as do men, and they are able to practice that highest intellective contemplation of God just as are men. This is a particularly important point, for it is discussed in his treatment of the end of man's origin. In other words, he teaches these matters as part of a discussion about why God made man in the first place. Thus, it is very clear that Aquinas considered women to have been created in the Image of God to receive His happiness just as were men.

St. Thomas was not perfect - though he was close. On some issues (perhaps most famously the Immaculate Conception) he came to erroneous conclusions because of limitations in the understanding of scientific issues in his day. The case we have examined here is one such instance. One ought always to turn to the official teaching of the Church when seeking certainty on a given matter, for it is that teaching which is Divinely guarded and protected from error by Lord. However, when seeking to understand this teaching better, the reasons for this teaching, or its deeper working, St. Thomas is the first source to which to turn. Not only did he write about virtually everything, but his is the official theology of the Church - the official "way of understanding" things, as set forth by the popes. His Summa Theologica was even placed on the altar at the council of Trent alongside the Bible! A valuable source indeed!

The Meaning of Christian Priesthood

2010-07-28T02:19:00.000-04:00

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and God created man in His own image, and God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good. Yet in spite of such glorious and auspicious beginnings, man could not carry on more than a brief moment before the terrible ignominy of sin had torn asunder his relationship with the loving Creator to whom he owed his very being. Since that time, the life of every human being has been driven by the great, often misunderstood longing to cross the threshold that sin has wrought and return to the loving embrace of Our Father. The means to this reconciliation, somehow revealed by God to those first transgressors, has been handed down since the time of Cain and Abel, and so all men everywhere have always known that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus has the priest always been the constant fixture in all cultures, punctuating every period of human history. He – or in those places where men had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, she – has, in every place stood daily at service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, until, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son to become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Therein lies the distinctiveness, the dignity, and the importance of the priesthood of Christ, which is the priesthood of the Church of God. Men have sought since time immemorial to turn to God, and have employed the services of the priest for just as long. However, only when God Himself became a priest in the person of Jesus Christ could such a ministry achieve its intended end. Jesus Christ is our high priest, and He now continues His ministry through the hands of those men whom He calls to serve in His person at His Altar. While Christ serves in the Holy of Holies of Heaven, the men of the ordained priesthood perpetuate His ministry on earth, making present to the people of God His one, eternal offering to the Father. They serve not as priests in their own right, but by participating mystically in His one eternal priesthood, and as such, a true appreciation, and any real understanding at all, of the ordained priesthood can only be found in an appreciation and understanding of Christ Himself.

What, then, can be said of Jesus Christ? St. John tells us that if one were to write down everything that He did, the world itself could not contain what was written. He healed countless. He drove out demons. He taught men about God, and He taught men to know God. He admonished sinners, and He comforted the suffering. He raised a man from the dead. Countless volumes truly have been written about this man, what He did, and it’s meaning for each of us. Yet in all that has ever been told about Him, perhaps the most significant thing, that which most clearly and truly shows us Jesus Christ, is the shortest sentence ever penned regarding Him: “Jesus wept.” In His very being, Jesus Christ is Sacrifice - offering. He is not a sacrifice, but Sacrifice itself. He is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity: the totality God, surrendered. God pours out all that He is, and the result is Jesus Christ.

It only makes sense, then, that if Christ is Sacrifice, His life would be one of Sacrifice. Indeed, His earthly life itself began with a tremendous sacrifice. For though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. God, the Almighty, the Infinite and uncontainable, chose to be contained within a limited, meager human body – a body which has not even being apart from that which He gave it. No human being can or ever will be able to comprehend just how great a sacrifice this truly is. The Incarnation, as a friend once said, is overwhelming.

Yet it does not end there. Even having made perhaps the greatest sacrifice imaginable in joining Himself to mutable flesh, Christ did not even deign to grant Himself the full dignity that the human body commands. He chose to be born unsheltered, in unsanitary conditions, and placed in a manger, lowering himself below even the animals over which He had given man dominion. In His later life, he never lifted Himself above this, preferring that foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man have nowhere to lay His head. He did not even grant His death the dignity due to it, permitting without objection that He be subjected to disgrace and humiliation as men spat on his mutilated body, hung Him naked to die in shame before a gawking crowd, and denied the very being of Being Himself.

This is the priest. It is the life of the priest, and it is the priest himself. The priest lives a life of sacrifice, and the priest is a sacrifice. He offers himself to God, following in the example of Christ. He gives his life over to God to dispose of entirely as the Divine Will dictates, surrendering all right to it himself. As Christ stepped down in the Incarnation, so does the priest leave the comfort of the natural world to enter forever into a means of life totally foreign to him. As the priest perpetuates the ministry of Christ on earth, in his sufferings he fills up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of the Church. The priest continues all of the other ministries of Christ’s earthly life as he heals, casts out demons, teaches men about God and brings them to know God, consoles the suffering with the consolation he has received from Christ, and even raises men from the dead in the Sacrament of Penance. Yet, all of this is encompassed in his one ministry of sacrifice.

The ultimate fulfillment of this ministry comes when the priest surrenders even his own identity that Christ Himself may stand at the altar and continue His one, eternal offering to the Father. The Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life,” and through the ministry of the priest, it is made present. The entire life of the priest and all of the sacrifices that he has made humbly give way and are eclipsed and overshadowed by that Sacrifice of sacrifices, the Holy Eucharist. As Christ utterly failed to recognize His sufferings - always pointing to the Father - so does the priest refrain from recognizing his own, directing the entire people of God to “proclaim the mystery of faith” as he elevates God Himself for all to adore.

This tremendous privilege of holding God Himself in his hands points to the fact that the life of the priest is not devoid of joy. Indeed, the life of Christ was a life of joy, a joy which is not incompatible with but rather flows from sacrifice. Christ spoke of His joy in so offhand a way that it can be understood to lay nowhere other than in the core of His being, and thus we see the full nature of the priesthood: joy in sacrifice. Thus, the priest rejoices in the gift of new life that he both holds in his hands and imparts to he whom he holds in the Sacrament of Baptism. He rejoices in the repentance of the penitents that come to him seeking God’s forgiveness. He rejoices in the Love he witnesses taking hold of his flock. The priest even recognizes God’s love in the goods of the earth and the fellowship of other persons of faith that Our Father has provided for us. Above all he rejoices in that gift, paralleled on this earth only by the gift given to the Blessed Virgin that she might hold her Savior in her womb, of holding his Savior in his hands, recognizing all the while as did she that in spite of the enormity of the gift, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it. It is thus crucial that the mother of Jesus, who is the mother of all the living and of priests in particular be both an example and a constant guide for the priest, for she understands more than any other the life which he must live and the love and respect with which he must embrace the Savior in his hands.

So it is that the life of the priest is to die, a life of death replete with the paradoxical mysteries that give life to our faith. It is a gift of suffering. It is a high calling to lowly service; the priest comes not to be served, but to serve. It is an identity found in the surrendering of one’s identity. In the Latin rite, it is to father thousands by means of celibacy. To be called to serve God at His altar on high is a tremendous gift, yet it can only be received by hands bound closed. If one is called to this life, he is lifted to the heights of Heaven, and yet in this lifting, he must decrease, that He may increase.

Inception Review - 3 Stars our of 5

2010-07-19T11:37:00.010-04:00

Inception is director Christopher Nolan’s latest big budget summer blockbuster, following on the heels of what is widely regarded as one of the best films of the past several years in his The Dark Knight. In that case Nolan went to work on a previously existing property, but Inception has been regarded as an original, albeit inspired work. While this is not entirely true (the main idea of the film is taken almost wholesale from Star Trek Deep Space 9’s 1999 episode Extreme Measures), as a whole it’s fair to say that Nolan has put together a concept that hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to tickle the main stream public’s minds.

This concept can perhaps best be described as a cross between Ocean’s 11 and The Matrix, a sci-fi caper film about an all-star team of dream-thieves trying to pull off an unthinkably large job. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is, by his own claim, the best extractor around, which means that he’s really good at infiltrating people’s dreams to “extract” information from their minds. The film gives the impression that this is normally done on the payroll of large corporations trying to gain a competitive edge, and owing to some initially unexplained legal problems, living abroad and performing these kinds of jobs is the only thing Cobb can do at this point in his life. When powerful energy tycoon Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers to take care of his problems so he can return home to finally see his children again, Cobb agrees to undertake what all of the other extraction experts repeatedly tell him is impossible: planting an idea in someone’s mind (technically termed “inception.”)

So is the setup, and so begins an Ocean’s 11 style round of team building and heist (or in this case, anti-heist?) plotting. Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Third Rock from the Sun fame is already onboard as Arthur, Cobb’s sidekick and details-man. Added to the crew are Tom Hardy, who absolutely shines as Eames, a type of in-dream disguise expert, and Dileep Rao, who puts on a very enjoyable performance as the chemist Yusuf, who must create a sedative strong enough to keep the victim (Cillian Murphy as energy-monopoly heir Robert Fischer Jr.) under while the team attempts to incept his mind. This leaves one critical role open, one which would in the past have been filled by Cobb himself if some heavily-guarded personal issues didn’t prevent him. Instead, fresh young grad student Ariadne (Ellen Page) is recruited to design the landscape of the dreams they’ll use to pull a fast one on Mr. Fischer.

And herein lays both Inception’s greatest asset and at least one of its greatest stumbling blocks: to accomplish their task, Cobb and his allies will have to enter into layer after layer of dreams, dreams within dreams, so as to plant the idea deep in Fischer’s mind and make it seem to develop on its own. This is a fantastic concept, and one which is the foundation of a very exciting and intriguing second half from Nolan. At one point, there are as many as 4 different simultaneous action sequences taking place, each a dream contained within another dream and influenced by what’s going on in the next one up the chain. It’s not only thrilling, but it’s also tremendously coherent, which so often the critical, missing element that ruins films attempting to be so intricate. In fact, Nolan has here put together an altogether coherent work, with even the most intense action appearing on screen in an understandable way (a major problem in some of his previous work, for example the almost unintelligible combat scenes in Batman Begins).

Unfortunately, where this weave of narratives hits in excitement and lucidity, it misses in continuity and consistency. As the story moves along and our heroes enter into deeper layers of dreams, things inevitably don’t go as planned, which is of course the kind of conflict that plots are made of. The problem is that over and over again what is at one moment an improvisation to deal with the change of circumstances is in the next scene and from then on foreword treated as though it were a part of the scheme in the first place. It’s difficult to explain exactly why this is so damaging to the story without giving away spoilers, but suffice it to say it has the end result of taking any real importance away from the dramatic conflict that is supposed to be driving the story. The conflict never builds; it just remains flat, with many details being introduced at various points in the story to introduce tension which ultimately prove not to be of any consequence when the time comes at which they should make things more difficult.

This may not be such a problem were it not for two things. First, Inception isn’t meant to be in the mold of other summer blockbusters, where the audience is offered some fantastic visuals and exciting action in exchange for turning off their brains for a few hours. Fantastic visuals and exciting action Inception does offer, with almost perfectly pulled off effects and plenty of good chases, fights, and race-against-the-clock moments. However, it’s also meant to be a thinking-man’s film, asking us to pay attention and to try to figure it all out. This is refreshing. Unfortunately, spending any time thinking about it rapidly leads one to see these inconsistencies. Second, the layered dream-within-a-dream second half is really all the film has to offer. The first hour is a slow moving, predictable collection of bad plot conventions. It’s also far too expositional, with Page’s newcomer character asking all the right questions to set up long explanations of how dream-sharing works. Good films show while bad ones explain, and there’s an awful lot of explaining in the first half of Inception.

All that said, Inception was an enjoyable ride, once it got going. It kept my mind engaged, and as it neared the end I found myself more and more approaching the edge of my seat. I’d certainly recommend it to anyone looking for an exciting couple of hours to spend at the movie-house, and it will give most people at least some interesting thoughts to dwell on as they walk into the lobby. I was very open to the possibility of this being a great film, and in some ways it does deliver. Unfortunately, its problems won’t let it be anything more than average – not great, terrible. Perhaps the greatest drawback is one which, ironically, the film points out itself. “Everybody needs a catharsis,” Cobb says at one point. Ultimately, Inception just never gives us one.

(If you'd like some examples of the consistency problems I mentioned, click the link below. Warning: Spoliers)

!!!Spoilers!!!!

A few brief examples:

The goal is for the team to get into Fischer's dreams and convince him to break up his recently deceased father's corporate empire. To do this, they originally plan three dream levels, which then have to be designed and planned well before the mission is ever attempted. Once they do enter into a dream with Fischer, they find out that he's actually been trained to fight off dream-thieves, so something roughly equivalent to "mental antibodies" begin to attack them. This prompts some changes in the mission, which once down in the second dream level all of a sudden are presented as a part of the plan which had been devised in the first place.

At the second level, Cobb decides that in order to ward off Fischer's defenses, they should try a ruse called "Mr. Charles," where they tell the victim that he's dreaming and use that to gain his trust while trying to lure his defenses to attack one another. Arthur explains to Ariadne that this is a big risk, and in fact some of the characters even try to convince Cobb not to use the Mr. Charles ruse. Now the whole plan, as we find out, is for Fischer to get the idea that Browning (his father's lawyer/confidant/something or other) was keeping a message from his father from him, and this third dream level was designed to make Fischer think he was in Browning's dream. The problem is that it's through the Mr. Charles ruse that they get Fischer to enter "Browning's dream." The only reason they're able to do this is because Fischer realizes he's in a dream and thinks that Cobb et al are his "security." This new ruse, which the team even tried to stop Cobb from using, turns out to be an essential part of the original plan.

When we finally get to the end and Fischer enters the strongroom to discover what Browning was keeping from him, his father is there. Earlier, Fischer had mentioned that his father's last words to him were that he was disappointed he couldn't be like him. To plant the idea in his head through the use of a catharsis (which was the original plan), the dream version of his father tells Fischer that he was disappointed that he'd tried to be like him (rather than being his own man). There's only one problem: Eames, the one who's brought on the team to disguise himself as other people, is standing behind Fischer the whole time watching all of this. So who's this father? Remember, we find out that in dreams only the dream-sharers - the real people hooked up to the machine - can consciously control what they do. Everyone else in there is a projection of the subconscious, which Cobb explains is not controllable. This is why Mal keeps giving them so many problems. There's nobody left to play the role of the father, even if they had the skill to.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Her Universal Call

2010-07-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

Today we celebrate Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who is a very big deal to me. She is my favorite expression of the Blessed Mother, and I have at many times in my life recognized a very special call from her.

As particular as this may be to myself, the fact is that as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our mother has a very special call to all of us. Of course, she is the patroness of the Carmelite order, but she's much more than that. There is a universal quality to her message. The most obvious evidence of this may be that the Brown Scapular, which is of course a gift of hers, is one of the most popular devotions in the Church. All kinds of people from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds go about their days with the Scapular draped over their torsos.

Less well known, but perhaps more intriguing, is that Mary has chosen to invoke Mount Carmel in some of the other prominent messages she has given to the world. It was on July 16th, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, that Mary made her final appearance at Lourdes. When she made her final appearance to the three children of Fatima, Mary appeared as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It would appear that the message of Mount Carmel is one that the Virgin wants to leave us with. What, then, is this message?

I can do no better than to quote, via Wikipedia, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCD, in saying that she offers us:

a special call to the interior life, which is preeminently a Marian life. Our Lady wants us to resemble her not only in our outward vesture but, far more, in heart and spirit. If we gaze into Mary's soul, we shall see that grace in her has flowered into a spiritual life of incalcuable wealth: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted oblation to God, continual contact, and intimate union with him. Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone, where no human creature has ever left its trace, where love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind reign supreme. [...] Those who want to live their devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to the full must follow Mary into the depths of her interior life. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, the life wholly dedicated to the quest for God, wholly orientated towards intimacy with God; and the one who has best realized this highest of ideals is Our Lady herself, 'Queen and Splendor of Carmel'."

This coming Sunday, we will hear the Gospel reading of Mary and Martha. Upon receiving a visit from Jesus, Mary (not the Virgin Mary) sits at His feet and listens to Him, while Martha runs about trying to prepare her house for Him, to feed Him, to clean up, to serve Him. As we know, Christ concludes this story by explaining that Mary had chosen better. This is one of the most important Scriptural texts about the importance of prayer, and it is precisely this message that Our Lady of Mount Carmel gives us: listen to Jesus.

Interior prayer is that "one thing necessary" that Christ speaks to Martha about. This does not of course exclude action, for Christ in fact commands action, but all of our action must stem from this life of interior prayer. So many people want to serve Our Lord, and this is so laudable a choice. Especially in this day and age, it is in many ways a heroic choice simply to serve the Lord. However, so few people actually take the time to listen to Him so that they might actually know what He wishes them to do! I cannot claim to be at all innocent of this. I, like many, go about making great efforts to serve the Lord while in reality doing nothing more than what I assume He would want. Ultimately, we are only asserting our own wills as the Lord's when we do this.

If we wish truly to serve the Lord and to do His will, then we must commit ourselves to a deep life of interior prayer. For some, this is a call to enter into the interior life in a radical way, by joining a contemplative order or even perhaps ultimately entering the eremitical life. For most of us, it means - at first - simply taking the time out of our days to engage in silent prayer for some period of time. (Do not fear silent prayer - it is not at all complicated or difficult. As a convert, I was very intimidated by the idea of mental prayer as it seemed like such a nebulous concept and I didn't quite know anything about it. I will shortly post an explanation of how to get started with it for those who may feel the same way!)

Later, this should blossom into the great gift of recognizing one's living in the presence of God at all times. This can sound frightening, challenging, necessitating greater sanctity than one feels he possesses, or even as though its "going overboard," but it is none of these things. Each of these objections can be answered simply by pointing out that the Lord is everywhere and everything. If God is what awaits us when we end this life and Heaven truly is the final goal of all people, how can it be suggested that living in constant relationship with Him now is somehow overzealous? Those who do not wish to have God a part of every moment of their lives now will have a very difficult time when they find that He is all that there is in the life to come! Beyond that, if God is everywhere, then what difficulty can there be in allowing Him to be a part of each moment of our lives?

Fear not, for this goal is not one that is beyond you. To live in His presence at all times simply means to recognize what is already a reality. We do not need to bring God into our lives at every point, but rather simply open ourselves to seeing Him where He already is. Once we begin to realize this it is and incredibly natural experience to live one's interior life at all times, turning to the Lord in our hearts for each and every moment and decision and letting Him direct every action. It is well within our grasps, for this Our Lord calls us to and He grants willingly us by His abundant Grace - and of course! - we have Our Lady's constant loving help at our sides.

Do You Understand the Good Samaritan?

2010-07-12T16:58:00.004-04:00

The parable of the good Samaritan is quite possibly the most well known of all Jesus' parables, the only other likely to challenge it in notoriety being of course the parable of the prodigal son. So ubiquitous is this parable that the phrase "good Samaritan" has come to stand on its own as universally recognized part of the English language.

It came as a great surprise to me, then, when upon listening to the parable during this past Sunday's Liturgy I realized that I did not actually understand the parable! Of course, as I walked into the church to prepare for Mass I certainly thought I understood it - even recognizing that in all of the Scriptures there are depths of meaning in it that I have yet to reap. It seems like a rather straightforward parable, doesn't it? Having been told that he must love his neighbor, a lawyer asks Jesus whom his neighbor is, which the Lord answers with His tale of the good Samaritan teaching that our neighbors whom we should love are the poor, the suffering, the needy, and by extension, everybody.

There's only one problem: the wounded, dying man isn't the neighbor in this parable: the Samaritan is.

It was this thought that occurred to me as I listened to the Gospel being read and which at first led me to some degree of confusion. Jesus concludes the parable by getting His questioner to recognize that it was the Samaritan who was the neighbor of the dying, penniless man on the side of the road. I had always understood Jesus' message to be that the dying man who was in need of help was the neighbor, people like whom we as His disciples were called to love. From the conversations I have had with others, this seems to be how most folks interpret this Gospel at first hearing.

The realization that the Samaritan is identified as the neighbor the lawyer asked about leads to a variety of new questions. Most significantly, it seems as though Jesus is teaching that our neighbors - those we are called to love - are those who do good to us, those who help us and show mercy to us. The message of the parable is, after all, that the priest and Levite (whose indifference Jesus juxtaposes with the Samaritan's compassionate help) are not neighbors. Should then we only love as ourselves those who do good to us, and not those who do not? Following upon this, what do we make of Jesus' instruction to the lawyer to "go and do likewise?" In fact, it is by considering this instruction that we can come to understand the greater depth of what Jesus is in fact teaching here.

First, we need to consider what exactly Jesus was telling this lawyer to do. The instruction comes in response to the man's statement that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy," that is, the Samaritan. Christ then says that he must imitate the Samaritan. Here we find an important aspect to this parable that has been lost to history: Jews and Samaritans at this time held bitter hatred for one another, similar - if not even in greater measure - to the hatred that currently exists between Jews and Muslims. So strong was it that this man could not even utter the answer "the Samaritan," but had rather to convolutely admit that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy" That this Jewish man would be asked to imitate a Samaritan would have been both shocking to him and a very difficult pill to swallow.

In fact, this hatred is at the very heart of the lawyer's question. Christ's teaching to "love thy neighbor as thyself" was actually not a new teaching. It was found in the book of Leviticus, which in the 18th verse of the 19th chapter commands that "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The understanding of this existed was that one's fellow Jew was one's neighbor. That the man asked who his neighbor was "to justify himself" indicates that he asked Jesus this so that the Lord might affirm him in his practice. Jesus offers the parable so as to help the man see that all people - even a Samaritan - should be loved. Rather than simply saying as much and being swiftly rejected, He presents the story of the compassionate Samaritan so as to appeal to this man's sense of decency and compassion.

On this note, it's secondly important to consider that Christ actually changes the lawyer's question around on him. He had asked who he should love, and while Christ in a roundabout way gives him the hard answer that he should love all people - even Samaritans - His more direct answer teaches who it is that loves. The man wanted to know who his neighbor was, but Christ taught him that it is more important that he himself should be a neighbor. The Greek text of Jesus' question actually carries the sense of "who became the neighbor" of the dying man? This lawyer - and all of us - are called to become neighbors to those around us, whether they love us or not.

Yes, then we are called to love all people, not only those who do good to us as did the Samaritan to the victim on the road. My initial confusion emphasizes the very purpose of Jesus' parable and His decision to answer the lawyer in the way He did. I, like the lawyer, should be less concerned with who to love than simply with loving. We need not worry who our neighbors are, but rather, we should worry about how to be neighbors.

Sometimes, our focus is misdirected so that we do not even ask the right question. Christ, in His Wisdom, often chooses not to answer our misplaced questions but rather to give us the answer to the questions that we should be asking!

The Courage Christ Calls Us To

2010-07-07T00:57:00.001-04:00

This is a short video of the 2010 public high school graduation of a young man I know named Truman. He was the valedictorian of his class and, more importantly, a person of faith in Christ. In a world where faith is taboo and Christian morality is considered the greatest evil of all, he used his graduation day speech to stand up for Christ, and for life. The risks that he took and the ire he has no doubt received are staggering, and so I'd ask you all to pray for him. Yet more than that, take his as an example of what we are called to. I know that I would be hard pressed to match his courage - yet it is the very courage of the apostles and martyrs which first built the Church. It is the courage of the Holy Spirit. I am inspired by this - I hope you are as well.

Saint Maria Goretti - the Real Story

2010-07-06T12:41:00.002-04:00

Today, the Church remembers Saint Maria Goretti, the young 12 year old girl who was martyred when she refused to submit to the sexual advances of Alessandro Serenelli. The young man, on whose family's property Maria and her mother lived, had propositioned her for sexual favors on several occasions. She had denied him each time until finally, he set his mind to have his way with or without her cooperation. When she said no to him even after having been threatened at the end of a dagger, Alessandro stabbed her over a dozen times.

Typically, Saint Maria is remembered for purity and chastity. Her most well known patronage is that of rape victims. There is on occasion discussion as to whether or not she presents an ordered image of purity, with some expressing concern that her story would seem to place a burden of impurity on rape victims, who are of course victims rather than moral agents themselves. This is certainly an understandable concern.

On this subject, it is important to note several things. First, when she was attacked, Maria expressed as much concern for Alessandro's purity as for her own, and certainly the act of rape would constitute an offense against his purity. Second, whether Maria had the right understanding of purity or not - recall that she was in fact only twelve years old at the time and can hardly be blamed for having an imperfect concept of it - there is certainly a great deal we can learn from considering just how greatly she valued purity. Even if she erroneously thought to impute to herself that affront against purity which would be found in a rape, the point is that she understood that her purity was more important than her physical life. This is a tremendous lesson which we must take to heart. Now, could there ever arise a scenario in which one would need to sacrifice his life to preserve his purity? I cannot conceive of one myself. However, the concept itself is true: ultimately, our purity does have more value than our lives, for our earthly lives will cease while our souls - in which is found purity - will subsist forever.

All of this said, I do not think that purity is the real message of Maria Goretti. Rather, it is forgiveness and compassion, and respect for the dignity of every person that Saint Maria and her story teach us more than anything, and in my opinion the single most important message she can give to those of us who are already dedicated Catholics. While her lessons of purity are sorely needed by most of our current culture, for the dedicated, practicing Catholic purity is a given - a struggle, perhaps, but not something about which we need a great deal of convincing.

Forgiveness and compassion, on the other hand, seem to be sorely lacking amongst even the most sincere of Catholics. To forgive was perhaps Christ's most frequently spoken teaching, and yet it is something we so frequently fail to do. All the worse is this as we have been taught that we would be forgiven based on how we forgive others!

The photograph at the top of this post may seem rather out of place for a post on the subject of a twelve year old girl, but it is in fact at the very core of all that Maria can teach us. It is the photo of an aged Alessandro Serenelli, kneeling in prayer before an image of Maria Goretti, whom years before he had sought to rape and ultimately brutally murdered. After Maria appeared to him in prison, he had a conversion of heart which led him to be one of the most sincere of Christ's followers. He spent the last 33 years of his life in a Franciscan monastery as a lay brother.

There is so much that we can learn from Maria and Alessandro. While dying in the hospital of her wounds, Maria is said to have spent the last 20 hours of her life praying for her attacker and asking the Lord to forgive him. As has already been said, she appeared to him after her death to bring about his conversion. That she would wish to do this was not only a matter of her heavenly perfection, for during those hours in the hospital she also told people that she wanted to have Alessandro in Heaven with her. How many times have we been angry at others - so often for things which are morbidly insignificant compared to rape and murder - and not been able to consider being with them in Heaven? Consider the person the person who has done the most evil to you and caused you the most pain. Indeed, as a follower of Christ, you are called not only to be willing to spend eternity with him or her, but indeed to desire it and even - yes and even this! - to work for it. Oh, how terrible this can seem - yet Maria Goretti provides us with a tremendous example to follow.

Even Maria's mother forgave Alessandro - and attended Mass with him. There are no limits to forgiveness. How many of us could grudgingly - or even easily - forgive an offense against us yet could not approach forgiving something done to one we love? Yet we must, and with the grace of God, we can.

I leave you with the testimony of Alessandro Serenelli, written about 9 years before his death and ultimately born from the compassion and forgiveness of that person whom he had hurt the most:

"I'm nearly 80 years old. I'm about to depart.

"Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself.

"My behavior was influenced by print, mass-media and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.

"There were a lot of generous and devoted people who surrounded me, but I paid no attention to them because a violent force blinded me and pushed me toward a wrong way of life.

"When I was 20 years-old, I committed a crime of passion. Now, that memory represents something horrible for me. Maria Goretti, now a Saint, was my good Angel, sent to me through Providence to guide and save me. I still have impressed upon my heart her words of rebuke and of pardon. She prayed for me, she interceded for her murderer. Thirty years of prison followed.

"If I had been of age, I would have spent all my life in prison. I accepted to be condemned because it was my own fault.

"Little Maria was really my light, my protectress; with her help, I behaved well during the 27 years of prison and tried to live honestly when I was again accepted among the members of society. The Brothers of St. Francis, Capuchins from Marche, welcomed me with angelic charity into their monastery as a brother, not as a servant. I've been living with their community for 24 years, and now I am serenely waiting to witness the vision of God, to hug my loved ones again, and to be next to my Guardian Angel and her dear mother, Assunta.

"I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life."

How the Confiteor "Really" Goes

2010-07-02T09:30:00.000-04:00

You know the Confiteor, right? The prayer in which we acknowledge our sins in preparation for the Liturgy at the start of Mass? Of course you do:

I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and words, in what I have done and have failed to do, and I ask the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

But wait - did you know that that's not really the whole thing? This is actually only a shortened version that was introduced into the Liturgy with the release of the reformed Missal in the early 1970s. The version of it that is said in the Extraordinary Form (the "old Tridentine Mass") is longer, richer, and in my opinion more beautiful. It also really makes you feel guilty for your sins - in a good way. In other words, it at least makes me recognize more fully that yes, my sins are in fact bad - they're sins - and not simply flaws or imperfections. Of course, the point isn't to be riddled with guilt or to become scrupulous, beset with anguish over my many tiny sins. Rather, the point is to realize that I am responsible for my sins and that I have a true need for repentance. This is the "full" version - go ahead and try to recite it without starting to recognize that, hey! - I should take repentance more seriously:

I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, my brethren, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed (strike the breast 3 times), through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I beseech blessed Mary ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, all the saints, and you, brethren, to pray for me to the Lord our God. Amen.

Wow! Here's another question for you: have you ever gone home and actually prayed for the congregation's sins after Mass? Have you ever even made a quick mental prayer for them all in the moment after the Confiteor is recited? If so, then very good for you indeed! I would suspect, however, that most of us have not. I confess to personally never thinking about it again after this part of the Mass has moved on. After all, praying for an entire congregation of people we don't know is not only hard to remember, but if we wanted to pray for everyone individually, as we ask in the prayer, it would take quite a while.

The original form of this was actually a little different, and it may shed some light on this whole subject. You see, originally this Confiteor above was said only by the priest. He asked the congregation to pray for him, both in general, and as he began the holy work of offering the Mass. Then, after this, a second Confiteor was said asking the priest to pray for the people, this time replacing "brethren" with "Father."

Comparing the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite

2010-06-30T17:40:00.000-04:00

As we move forward into the second decade of the 3rd millennium, there is, in the midst of discouragement, a lot of hope for the Church. The primary sign of hope is an ever growing - even rapidly growing - mass of dedicated, orthodox young people seeking to live for Christ and His Church. It is also the case that many of these are found to be more traditional in their approach to prayer and Liturgy. This has prompted a good deal of discussion over the Liturgy and how it is best celebrated. In particular, with Pope Benedict's Summorum Pontificum authorizing more widespread use of the "traditional Latin Mass" or the "Tridentine Mass" as it is variously called, it's not uncommon to find oneself in a discussion over the merits of this "older" Liturgical rite. I thought it worthwhile to take the time to try to bring a little bit of light to the subject. Before I begin, there are a few preliminary points worth mentioning.

First, it's very important that we speak of both rites of the Mass with the reverence and respect due to the Holy Sacrifice. Whichever rite is celebrated, it is still the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the greatest act in which a human person can participate. It would be grievously problematic to speak contemptuously of either. It is my belief that part of this involves what we call these various rites. While no disrespect may be intended in using terms such as the "Traditional Latin Mass," the "Tridentine Mass," the "Novus Ordo," or the "Pauline Mass," they are not consistent with the way the Holy Father wishes us to view these Liturgies. He has declared that from henceforth the "Tridentine Mass" is to be referred to as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, and the "Novus Ordo" as the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Pope Benedict's reasoning for this is very important: both of these Liturgies are fully and entirely an expression of the Liturgy of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, differentiated only by their form. This is critically linked to a key concept that Benedict has stressed throughout his ecclesiastical career: that the Church's traditions and Liturgies exist in a unbroken continuity and that we must view things through a hermeneutic of continuity rather than one of rupture. When we give the Mass a name like the "Novus Ordo," we are speaking of it as if it were something new and thereby do not give it the full respect it deserves as an authentic development of the Liturgy instituted by Christ. Similarly, when we say something like "Traditional Latin Mass" about the Extraordinary Form, we present it as though it is something old and replaceable, or indeed, replaced.

Second, in no way do I consider the Ordinary Form to be superior to the Extraordinary Form - nor the other way around. It is my belief that each is superior in its own ways and inferior in others. All people considering this question should keep in mind that the decision to reform the Liturgy in the first place was made in an Ecumenical Council under the mantle of the Holy Spirit. The decision was not made for no reason, but because to at least some degree, a reform was necessary. This does not in any way imply that the Liturgy in use at the time of this decision was bad. Rather, it simply means that 500 years of doctrinal development and cultural change - some for the better, some for the worse - left the Liturgy in need of some adjustments. Indeed, these two factors have prompted the reform of the Liturgy at various points throughout history, some reforms being more substantial and others more of the character of minor tweakings.

Catholics are certainly free to debate whether a major reform was necessary in the 1960s. Some may believe that it was not. Personally, I am of the belief that a reform may well have been necessary for one simple reason: the world changed more in the 50 years leading up to the Second Vatican Council than it had in the 1,000 years preceding that. While the Church must not change in its substance with the world - truth is not defined by culture - It does need to update some of its external approaches to better proclaim the Gospel in the individual ages in which it may find itself - the way truth is received by persons does change with culture. This is nothing new, of course; the Church has been updating it's approach based on the contemporary culture for 2,000 years. While this article is primarily focused on the Church's Liturgy, it is helpful to point out that I firmly believe that the Second Vatican Council was the antidote to many of the things that have plagued the Church for the past 40 years. John XXIII - now ranked among the Blessed, let us not forget, believed that some changes were necessary in order for the Church to effectively save souls in the 20th century. My belief, which may be the subject of a later discussion, is that without those decisions made at the Council, the Church would find herself in a far worse position today than she does. The Council's saving effects are, in my belief, only now becoming manifest because on the one hand, it takes time for any changes to bear fruit, and on the other, unfortunately the Council was not properly implemented.

I happen to be one of the results of this Council. I wouldn't be Catholic if it weren't for Vatican II and it's reforms of the Liturgy. I would suggest that many others, such as the well known scholar Dr. Scott Hahn (himself responsible for countless conversions) wouldn't be either. All that being said, it is time to bring this aroung to the Liturgy and to examine some of the different aspects of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Liturgy.

Latin versus the Vernacular

It is important to recognize the value of having a sacred language. Indeed, to this day the Jewish people cling to Hebrew as a tie to God Himself, and it is considered by many to be one of the reasons that the Jewish race and culture has survived to this day. A Sacred language also helps to add an important sense of mystery and holiness to Liturgical celebrations. It helps people to realize that what they practice and experience in the Liturgy is tied to the transcendent, and that it is set apart from what they do in the rest of their lives. This is related to the importance of having a common language. With a common language, it doesn't matter where one gos in the world, as the Liturgy will be the same. God is universal, and His Church is universal, and so there is great benefit in being able to attend Mass anywhere in the world without needing to speak the local language. It also ties the people of God together. For these reasons and others, I think that the use of Latin as a sacred and a common Liturgical language is wonderful and critical to preserve.

However, I also think that the restriction of the Liturgy to Latin alone is harmful. In the first place, this was never really the intent of the Church. Latin was originally introduced into the Liturgy precisely because it was the vernacular language at the time. Everybody knew it. It was the English of the first millenium. Latin was made the language of the Church so that everybody could understand the Liturgy. As the centuries went on, the Church expanded and the collection of languages used by Catholics became more diverse, it was helpful to maintain the use of Latin as a common language, and indeed, that sense of the sacred became imbued in it.

However, something can also be lost in excluding the vernacular from the Liturgy. When there is only Latin, the only option for most is to follow along in a missal. Not only can this be distracting (I know college professors who don't want students to bring their textbooks to class for just this reason), but more importantly, "faith comes through hearing" (as St. Paul wrote). This is why in we're not supposed to be reading along in a missal or missalette. It's one of the most common (albeit minor) Liturgical abuses today. It's better for people to hear all of the prayers, acclamations, and so forth than for them to have to read along with them. Now, prayers and acclamations can be learned. The chief problem lies in the reading of the Scriptures in Latin. Traditionally, the readings were read only in Latin with no vernacular repetition. Eventually the Church granted permission for the Gospel to be repeated in the vernacular (and this is what most older Catholics today likely remember from their childhood), but this is clunky and seriously detracts from the prayerful flow that is so important to the Extraordinary Form. One of the tremendous advantages of the Extraordinary Form is that it has the sense of a single, uninterrupted ritual of prayer, an advantage which is hampered by being unable to present some of the more appropriate portions in the vernacular.

The Ordinary Form permits all, part or none of the Mass to be said in either Latin or the vernacular, and so Masses can be offered entirely in Latin for those who would most benefit from it, entirely in the vernacular for those who would most benefit from it, and for the vast majority of us, as a combination of each, allowing the advantage of attention and hearing to be complimented by the advantages that Latin has.

Problems with the Presentation of the Sacrificial Nature of the Mass

Theologically speaking, this is one of the most areas in which I believe the Ordinary Form has the greatest advantage. The basic problem here is that the text of the Extraordinary Form can be somewhat confusing and/or ambiguous when it comes to the fact that the Mass is a Sacrifice. This may come as a surprise as this is usually the very opposite claim that is made against the Ordinary Form! To illustrate my point, consider this text (translated into English) from the Extraordnary Missal:

Accept, O Holy father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host, which I, Your unworthy servant, offer to You, my living and true God, to atone for my numberless sins, offences, and negligences; on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians living and dead, that it may profit me and them as a means of salvation to life everlasting. Amen

The problem with this otherwise profoundly beautiful prayer is that it takes place well before the Consecration of the Host. In other words, at this point the priest has bread and wine on the altar - not the Body and Blood of Christ. Certainly, there is a sense in which we do offer the unconsecrated bread and wine to God not unlike the offerings of the firstfruits in Levitical law. The Ordinary Form more explicitly refers to this point in the "Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation" prayer (which many people may be unfamiliar with if they have not attended a daily Mass), and in fact this is the point: the Ordinary Form makes it clear that at this point in the Liturgy, we are making a secondary offering to God, one of the bread and the wine, whereas the Extraordinary Form can easily give the impression that that more important Sacrifice is taking place with unconsecrated bread and wine. The language is very strong for bread and wine, with references to offering it in atonement for sins, for the dead, and so on. Bread and wine do not take away sins: the body and blood of Christ do.

This is of course only one example of the larger difficulty. In the Extraordinary Form, the concept of sacrifice appears 16 times. 12 of these occur before the consecration. In other words, the fact that what is going on here is a Sacrifice is mentioned 3 times more when bread and wine are present than when the Body and Blood of Christ is.

In the Ordinary rite, a much less confusing ratio can be found. Eucharistic prayer I is an almost identical copy of the Extraordinary Form's, and so the same problem can be found: a total of 12 mentions with only 3 coming after the Consecration. However, if one uses Eucharistic prayer IV, there are 4 mentions before and 4 after the Consecration. Eucharistic prayers II and III are less desirable, but the former of these is directed to be used only for daily Masses.

This may seem convaluted to some, but t I honestly think is a real problem. We don't offer the Father bread and wine in the Mass. The Mass is the Mass because we offer the Father the Body and Blood of Christ. Consider that many of the great spiritual writers have taught us that there is a far greater danger in presenting truth mixed with falsehood or ambiguously than in presenting pure falsehood. Pure falsehood will be recognized and rejected, but mixing truth and falsehood or presenting truth in a confusing manner can often leave a question as to just where the truth lies. In view of this, I see a real potential danger in presenting the truth that a Sacrifice is occuring in such a way that it can leave a question as to just what is being Sacrificed.

In fact, this is precisely one of the reasons that the bishops at the Second Vatican Council asked for a reform of the Liturgy. Even prior to the Council (as early as the 1950s), one very well respected Liturgist lamented that it was "well known" that the people of that time had lost the idea that the Mass was a Sacrifice, citing some of the problems mentioned here. Correcting these was one of the goals of the Liturgical reform.

Some of these prayers are worse than others. For example, another part of the offertory reads, "Come Thou, the Sanctifier, Almighty and Everlasting God, and bless + this sacrifice which is prepared for the glory of Thy holy Name." Clearly, the intent of the prayer is good and proper. The problem is that it sounds (or reads) to the average Mass-goer as though the Sacrifice has already been prepared - even while it is merely bread and wine. Whatever the intent, the way it is presented is problematic.

At the same time, the Extraordinary Form has a lot of tremendous material in the Mass of the Faithful (what is known as the Liturgy of the Eucharist in the Ordinary Form). it is much longer (in a good way), more beautiful, more rich in symbolism and and conveys the majesty of what is taking place. The extended invocations of the saints are much appreciated.

Lectionary and Liturgical Calendar

This one's pretty simple. Catholics get to hear a lot more of the Scriptures in the Ordinary Form. The Calendar is also much more clearly organized, with clearer delineations between levels of Liturgical celebrations. In the pre-Vatican II calendar, there was hardly a day without some kind of special celebration. In the current calendar, memorials and feasts of saints seem to carry more meaning because they are not an everyday occurrence.

"Participation"

First and foremost, the ability of the people to hear the Consecration is, in my opinion, of tremendous importance. In the Extraordinary Form, the Consecration is to be said silently. While it's easy to think of what would hopefully rare and unusual problems with this (e.g., some have complained that they want to be able to hear the Consecration to ensure that the priest is doing it properly and that they truly are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ), I simply think it is right for the people to hear it. Christ gave His Body and Blood for all, not for the apostles only. The words "This is My Body" should be heard by all, in my opinion. In fact, this is tied closely to the fact that the priest offering Mass acts in persona Christi - in the person of Christ. It is Christ who offers the Mass, and the faithful should be ever aware of this, realizing just what they are watching and, hopefully, deriving great spiritual benefit from it.

Another concern is that of the way that each form engages the participation of the faithful. There are two sides to this issue. On the one hand, all of the time the celebrant spends "on his own" in the Extraordinary Form lends itself wonderfully to silent prayer. This is very profound, and certainly greatly desirable. On the other hand, that prayer is a prayer which is in a certain sense detached from the Mass itself. The greatest prayer of all is taking place at the altar. The faithful should be engaged in this, treating it with the greatest of all reverence.

Of course, the participation called for in the Ordinary can be taken too far or overdone. At times, there is almost no room for one to join his or her personal prayer to the intentions of the Mass. This is, of course, more of a problem with the way the Mass is celebrated and not with the Ordinary Form itself, which calls for times of silence. I believe that at its core, the idea of bringing the faithful into a more "focused" - for lack of a better term - worship in the Mass is a good thing. It must simply be done in the right way.

Some Miscellaneous Points

The ad orientem celebration (when the priest offers Mass facing "away" from the people) is, in my opinion, by far the single most important difference one is likely to see when attending the Extraordinary Form. It cannot be understated what benefits come from this. First and foremost, it rightly orients the mind of the priest, bringing him to recall at every moment that each word he utters is in prayer to the Almighty and not as a statement for the faithful to hear. Second, it rightly orients the congregation, bringing them to recognize that the priest is praying to God and, indeed, offering sacrifice to Him. Of course, this can be done in the Ordinary Form, but almost never is. It is beautiful, it puts the Sacrifice, the transcendence of God, and the role of the priest all in wonderfully striking perspective. I believe it should be the exclusive posture for celebrating Mass.

The Extraordinary Form also has many other beautiful prayers, symbols, and actions that help to express the depth of what is actually taking place. More than that, because the Mass is an objective reality and not merely a collection of symbols, these truly accomplish what they represent. For example, the Extraordinary Form contains a tremendous amount of preparation. Before the Mass even begins, the priest stops before approaching the altar to ask forgiveness for his sins and to prepare to approach the altar. How wonderfully this demonstrates how serious an action he is about to undertake, and indeed, how important is it that the priest truly does prepare himself for the holy things he is about to do. It really is very beautiful and theologically profound.

In the end, I would love to see a Liturgy that combines the great elements of each of the two forms we have now. Nonetheless, we must always remember how great what it is that we do have. Whatever form of Mass you find most spiritually enriching, go!

God bless!

The Philosophy of Gender

2009-04-28T00:33:00.005-04:00

As part of a discussion, I have been prompted to write a post regarding the philosophy of gender. That is, what is the masculine, and what is the feminine? Let us begin by distinguishing between gender and sex.

First, gender and sex are not the same thing. Sex is biological. The sex of a person identifies the person as male or female - testicles or ovaries. Now the way the terms are normally used today, sex and gender are both understood to refer to this biological classification. What's important here is what we mean here in discussing gender, rather than what the words may mean in the dictionary, or philosophically, or whatever else.

Gender - as we're using the word here - refers to a person's quality of being masculine or feminine. Now consider how we think about masculinity. What makes a thing masculine? Typically, people associate the masculine with men, and the feminine with women. They define the terms on the basis of males and females. Things are said to be masculine insofar as they are like, or related to, men. Things are called feminine if they are like, or related to, women. Now this makes sense, and it's entirely consistent with the way most of us have grown up thinking. It's just obvious, right?

Well, if we think about it, we will realize one very important hidden assumption in this way of thinking. Namely, this definition is based upon the idea that the biological distinction between men and women is a primary characteristic of existence. In other words, in calling things masculine or feminine based on whether things are reminiscent or related to men or women, we're implicitly asserting that the distinction between men and women is something upon which other things can be based. That doesn't mean everything can be based on this distinction, but that at least some things can be - namely, those things which are called masculine or feminine.

At first glance, this seems fine. However, there's a real problem here when we consider God. God is called "He," after all. God calls Himself "He" in the Scriptures. Now God is not a male. First of all, God is spirit - He has no biology! Second, God created maleness and femaleness. So God is not male, but rather, He is masculine. That God is masculine is something that the monotheistic religions agree on. In other words, it's not controversial. It's a pretty well established fact. Yet if God is masculine, and masculinity is based upon men, well then we obviously have yet another problem, because first, we have already recalled that God created maleness, and He cannot be based upon something He created for He existed "before" He created it, and because second, that would make God dependent upon and defined by something, which He, the eternal Almighty, the uncaused cause, the one necessary existing thing, is not.

The reality is that masculinity and femininity are not defined by that which is male or that which is female. Rather, masculinity and femininity are based, in some way, upon God. Yet God is masculine, not feminine. In this we seem to have another problem, for how can we establish what is feminine if that which it is based upon is masculine?

The solution to this problem, and the answer which really gives us what we need to fully understand this issue, is that gender is relational. It is a matter of the relation between things. Let's simply forget about the words "masculine" and "feminine" for a moment, and simply consider God. God is God. Everything else is not. The important relation here is between that which is not God, and that which is. Now let's replace our term, recalling that we call God masculine. That which is not God, then, we can call feminine. Note here that we're dealing with relations, not identities. This is a very important distinction, because it's the difference between saying that men are gods and women are not - not something that we're trying to do!

Therefore, let's consider the relations between God and that which is not. How does God relate to that which is not? We could certainly list perhaps an infinite number of items, but let's keep it simple for now. First, God is separate from that which is not God. He is apart from it, not a part of it. In other words, God is not in creation, but "stands" apart from it. Second, God enters into that which is not God to effect His purposes. He has to do this, obviously, if He is to interact with creation, for we just recognized that He is not a part of or in it. That is, God enters into creation, either as the Holy Spirit acts in the world or as the Second Person of the Trinity became Incarnate and so literally united to creation.

We could go deeper, but let's stick with these basic relations for now. Not only are these simple ideas, but if we think about it they are really two very fundamental aspects of the relationship on which other ideas can be built. Now these relations can be expressed by the terms immanent and eminent (or transcendent). The quality of eminence or transcendence is the quality of being apart from a thing, being beyond it. We often speak of God as transcendent, and by this we mean that He is beyond the world; God transcends creation. The quality of immanence refers to being in or with something. I am immanent to creation, for I am a part of it.

These are the two basic concepts we want to keep in mind as we discuss the relation of gender. Recalling that God is masculine and Not God feminine, apply these ideas and then consider the relations between men and women. When we considered God, we focused on two of the more obvious and important relations between He and Creation. Where men and women are concerned, let us consider what may be the most obvious important relations between them: the creation of new life through their union. We see here very similar ideas regarding immanence and eminence that we saw with God. In that ultimate of human relations, procreation, man is really apart from the "creation," that is, the baby. He enters into the woman from without and accomplishes His purpose, the fertilization of her egg, that is, the "creation" of new life. The woman, on the other hand, is with the child. Throughout the entire process she is always, in a very important sense, connected to the child, one with the child. The child is in a real way truly a part of her. The man is beyond the child, while the woman is with the child, and the child in the woman.

It is important here to make a realization: if the feminine is the Not God to the masculine's God, then in their relation to one another, women are like femininity, and men are like masculinity. As God relates to creation, He is eminent to it. As man relates to a newly created child, he is eminent to it. Now creation is really immanent to itself, just as woman is immanent to the child. This is the real meaning of masculinity and femininity, at least in the sense in which we say that we are all feminine to God, and in the sense that we are the bride of Christ, and so forth: the masculine is that which is eminent, and the feminine, immanent.

In fact, we can see some extremely interesting examples of this throughout history. Consider pagan religions, which worshiped idols. The gods of the pagans were immanent: they were a part of the world, not transcending it. It is no coincidence at all that the pagans almost always had priestesses. Their gods were immanent, and so their sacrifices were offered by women, that is, by the feminine. The Jews, who worshiped an eminent God, had priests to offer sacrifice. They had men, who are eminent in their human relationships, to offer to their eminent God.

Why Have Faith in a God We Cannot See?

2009-04-14T19:22:00.004-04:00

In a recent conversation, the following question was posed:

"Why are we called to be *faithful*?

....

Faith in the unseen is central to Christianity.

In a sense, it is also central to science, as we scientists proceed by believing that
the world is rational and, by experimentation, we will find the hidden laws that
govern this universe.

Yet, what I don't comprehend is:

Why are we asked to believe in a Person, with whom we cannot have an explicit, clear, obvious conversation. Any relationship - professional, friendship, love - starts by establishing a clear line of communication. I can trust my best friend because I know him; I have talked to him, listened to his opinion and had lunch with him many times.

Unfortunately I do not hear the voice of God in an unambiguous manner.
I can possibly attribute some of my feelings to His voice, but can never be 100% sure. This is an almost insurmountable obstacle to my journey.

In other words, things would be immensely simpler if God's voice were audible
by all in a clear, unambiguous fashion.

What do you think? I am curious to hear your thoughts!"

My response is as follows:

Davide, thanks for starting the discussion.

I like the fact that you began by pointing out that faith is necessary for science in a certain sense. I think this is a very important, and often overlooked point. It is also a point which can lead us into a greater understanding of the question that you posed. Let us consider this notion of faith in science for a moment.

As you said, the scientists must began with the assumption that the world is rational and can be understood. To this, I would add that the scientist must believe that his senses, and indeed the senses of all other scientists, accurately depict this rational world. In other words, when the scientist's eyes report to him that a frog is green, he must believe that the frog actually *is* green. Considering this, we see that there are actually a number of beliefs at play here: the belief that the scientist's eyes accurately capture the frog, the belief that the scientist's nerves accurately transmit the information captured by the eyes, and the belief that the scientist's brain accurately processes and interprets the information received by the nerves. The scientist must also believe that this is true of all other scientists, for his work is based upon theirs, and so if there is any problem in how any of these other scientists gather and process information, then the information that he receives from them would be inaccurate. Thus, I suppose we could add to our list the need to believe that those processes which package and transmit information *out* of the scientist are just as accurate as those which gather and process the information.

Now when we think about this, we can even extend these concerns to the everyday. Whether one is a scientist or not, each person must believe that the world is rational and that the human processes of interacting with the world are rational and are accurate. We see then that we all believe in a great many things, and indeed we all accept these things on nothing more than faith, for they are not verifiable because of the fact that any attempt to verify them would rely upon the very system that we are seeking to verify.

If, then, we are to have any real basis for science, or for anything else for that matter, it is necessary that we rely upon something outside of the system. However, in this case the system is the world itself; it is not possible to examine the system from the outside. If only it were possible to approach the system from the outside, then we could have greater confidence in a great many things, but it is not.

Given the dead end that we have arrived at, let us now turn from this consideration of science to consider the other side of the issue, religion. Whereas science is that endeavor in which man observes the world around him so as to understand it, religion is that endeavor in which man seeks to interact with that which is beyond the world around him. That is, science is concerned with the natural, religion with the supernatural. While there are many differences between the two, perhaps the biggest, or most obvious, pertains to how one knows anything in each. The scientist seeks out knowledge, observing, experimenting, and analyzing. In religion, there is none of this, because religion is not concerned with anything which *can* be observed or analyzed. As has already been stated, science concerns itself with nature - the world around us - while religion concerns itself with the *supernatural* - that which is beyond the world. In religion, man does not observe, but rather, he receives revelation: the supernatural is revealed to humanity.

CS Lewis addresses this point in a helpful way. He says to consider a man who is studying a rock. That rock can do nothing to reveal itself to the man, and the man must do all of the work in coming to understand the rock. Moving up the chain, Mr. Lewis says, we come to something like a bacterium. Still, the man must do almost all of the work in understanding the bacterium, which can do hardly much more than the rock to explain itself. Now if the man were to study something greater than a bacterium, such as an insect, the insect could do perhaps slightly more than the bacterium, but still most of the work is on the man's part. As we move up the chain, the ability of the studied to reveal itself to the studier increases, and the amount of work the man needs to do decreases. In fact, the amount of work the man *is able to do* also decreases. So, when the man studies a dog, there is some degree to which the dog must cooperate if the man is to understand it. If the dog does not wish to be examined, the he may bite the man. When we get to another human being, we find that nearly equal work must be done on the part of the student and the studied. If I wish to get to know you, Davide, you must cooperate to a large degree. I cannot know all but some of the most superficial details of your life if you do not wish to cooperate, and if you do not reveal things about yourself to me. Now, what if the man wished to learn about something *greater* than himself, such as an angel? Now we find that the angel must do a great deal of the work, and the man's capabilities for actively studying have diminished a great deal. Ultimately, this chain ends with God, and when it comes to God, the man can do *nothing* to know God, just as he had to do *everything* to understand the rock. God must do everything, and here we find revelation: God reveals Himself to man so that man may know him.

When we approach things this way, we see that the whole concept of revelation makes a fair bit of sense. If God is a higher form of life than me, then of course He will need to reveal Himself to me, rather than my observing and studying Him, and this thought is all the more profound when we realize that the difference between a human being and God is infinitely more than the difference between a human being and an insect or a rock. Revelation is, by all logic, necessary if we are to know anything about a being that is greater than us, like God. Of course, God has revealed Himself to us, and so we do have some knowledge of Him.

Given this, let us return to the questions of understanding the world, for something has changed. We are no longer at a dead end in our thinking, for indeed we now have something which we did not before: input from outside of the system. In God's revelation to us, we have knowledge which is *not* within the system of the world, and we can use this knowledge to help overcome our previous problem. God has revealed that He is rational, and He has further revealed that He created us with rationality. Further, God does not reveal Himself, per se, through those things which must be observed and so catch us in a cycle of circular reasoning. Rather, He reveals Himself to us, by Grace, in our inner being. In other words, He does not reveal Himself through obtained knowledge, but through infused knowledge. Certainly, we do find God revealing us in ways we can observe - through the Scriptures, for example - but ultimately, each individual's knowledge of Him is not based upon any of these things, but upon His own personal work in the soul of the individual. Many read the Bible, while only some believe. Many study the historical reliability of the story of Christ, while only some come to faith. The difference is in God's interaction with the inner soul of the individual. These external things are only ancillary to that. We now have reason to trust our eyes and our lobes, and a basis on which to believe that the frog is green - so long as we believe in God.

But alas! So fast as our problem seems to have been solved, we are confronted with another which is even greater than the first! Before, we could not be certain of our observations of the world, and then we came to see that thanks to God's self-revelation to us, these observations had been given a foundation. Now, we find that that foundation relies again on belief - this time, not a belief in our nerves or the fundamental rationality of the world, but in God. This problem is worse because we realize that even if there were in fact something outside of the system containing God which could give us foundation to believe in Him, then we would have to believe in *that,* and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

We see that belief is necessary. We cannot function without it. Ultimately, we will have to believe in *something.* The question is about what we choose to believe in. Given this, let us consider St. Thomas' Aquinas' treatment of belief. The question is posed, 'Can the object of faith be something seen?' That is, is it possible to have faith in something which one can observe? Thomas replies:

"I answer that, Faith implies assent of the intellect to that which is believed. Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First, through being moved to assent by its very object, which is known either by itself(as in the case of first principles, which are held by the habit of understanding), or through something else already known (as in the case of conclusions which are held by the habit of science. Secondly the intellect assents to something, not through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby it turns voluntarily to one side rather than to the other: and if this be accompanied by doubt or fear of the opposite side, there will be opinion, while, if there be certainty and no fear of the other side, there will be faith.

Now those things are said to be seen which, of themselves, move the intellect or the senses to knowledge of them. Wherefore it is evident that neither faith nor opinion can be of things seen either by the senses or by the intellect."

Here we see that St. Thomas confirms our suggestion that faith is a choice. If we submit our minds to something because we see it in itself (what Thomas calls the first principles), then certainly we do not have *faith* in it. I do not have faith in the computer I am using to type this, but I have strict knowledge of it. In this case, if we *do not* submit our minds to it we are delusional. Similarly, if our intellect assents to something which we do not see itself, but which follows from what we have seen (what Thomas calls the second principles), that is not faith either. For example, we can come to the conclusion that the sun is made of helium and hydrogen based upon a large mass of specifically observed information, including the spectrographies of various elements, the way that light diffracts though various gases, through glass, and so on and so on. This conclusion is not faith, for it is based entirely upon the interaction of various pieces of knowledge.

Thus, we arrive at a second important conclusion. First, we realize that we must believe in *something* and cannot function if we rely only on strict knowledge, for without belief we can in fact have no strict knowledge at all. Now we realize that faith must be a choice, and further that this choice must by its very definition be different from knowledge.

Given all of this, let us turn to the question(s) that you posed: "Why are we asked to believe in a Person, with whom we cannot have an explicit, clear, obvious conversation?" The answer might be obvious by now: we cannot interact with God *other* than by belief, at least not right now (more on this below). Any interaction we have with God must be based upon a belief in Him and in that presence He has used to bring us to belief in the inner-persons of our souls. This is, of course, a key point: we believe because He has given us to believe; it is by His Grace that we believe. Thus, the question is not *as* difficult as it may be otherwise. After all, our belief is not simply something we have, of ourselves, chosen to have. It has been given to us by the One whom we believe in. In other words, we could choose to believe because God, in the depths of our souls, presented us with the choice to believe.

It is also for this reason that faith is more certain than knowledge. Knowledge is based upon the belief that everything works as we believe it does: the world is rational, our faculties accurately capture and interpret this rational world, etc. Our faith is not based upon these sorts of things, which themselves depend upon faith (so that we may have an extra-systemic foundation), but upon God's touching our souls in a personal way: knowledge of the world flows from the relationship that we have with God. Because the Holy Spirit has personally touched us and given us faith, we can move forward and view the world in a rational way.

Thus, Christ tells us that it is *better* that the Holy Spirit - which we cannot see - be given us than that He Himself be physically with us: "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." (John 16:7). So long is present to us physically, uttering words, performing physical actions, etc., our relationship with Him depends upon our senses. Not only does this pose the problems with which I began this discussion, but it relegates our relationship with God to the purely "physical." That greater, more perfect relationship with Him - the relationship of the soul - cannot come from talking to the man Jesus, or from walking around with Him. Yet when He left the earth, it made way for this greater relationship, the spiritual relationship.

Consider the difference this makes. The apostles spent 3 years with Jesus Christ the man, talking to Him, getting to know Him as we do our friends, eating with Him, observing Him, listening to His clear and unambiguous words, and so forth. Yet when things became difficult, they abandoned Him. Even the sight of Christ glorified in the Transfiguration was not enough to preserve their love of Him, for of the three who went up the mount to see that sight, only John remained with Him through the Crucifixion. James abandoned Him. Peter denied Him! These men had true *knowledge* of Christ - they observed Him and interacted with Him just as we do with one another, and yet they still abandoned Him, just as we so often turn upon, abandon, and hurt one another though we see how real we all are and how real is the suffering that our offenses cause to our loved ones.

Even after these men had seen Christ *rise from the dead,* they still were not swayed enough. When He had commanded them to preach the Gospel to all nations and ascended to Heaven before their eyes, they returned to the upper room. They did not get to the task He had given them. It was only at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon them and moved their souls, that the apostles got about to the work Christ had called them to. It was the Spirit which made all the difference. They had seen everything, observed everything, physically been at Christ's side and experienced everything from His miracles to His Transfiguration into Glory to His Resurrection and Ascension, all to little effect. When the *Spirit* came, this changed. The relationship *then* became solid, the Love *then* unwavering.

None of this, of course, is to the detriment of observations and evidences. Indeed, this is what makes Christ different from other purported gods. Christ entered into history, and, so far as we believe that our world is rational and our senses can apprehend it, we can examine the evidence for His life, death, and resurrection. Yet, as St. Thomas explains (see Summa Theologica II-II, 2, 10), and as I mentioned above, this is ancillary to the choice of the individual, moved by Holy Spirit, to believe. These things support faith, but they do not cause it. The cause is nothing more than God's Grace moving the soul to believe, and the soul freely choosing to consent to this movement.

Therein lies a critical point which I have alluded to above but which deserves far more explicit treatment. To quote Thérèse of Lisiuex, "everything is grace." Everything is Grace. Everything is Grace. I repeat it due to the utter importance, above all, of this statement. We believe *only* by Grace. God does not ask us to believe in anything; He moves us to. He does not ask us to trust Him though we have never heard His words aubily; He brings us to. He does not tell us to obey Him; He draws us to. Our part is only that we consent to His Grace, or that we do not consent. At one point, a person does not believe, and then God moves the person's soul. He poses a question to the soul in some way that is indescribable and yet is understood perfectly by the soul, even if in our explicit conscious thought we do not realize it. Then, He waits for our response. That response is either to answer yes, or to answer no. Either way, we do nothing. If we answer no, we continue about our life as we had. If we answer yes, we simply allow God to continue to move our soul, to continue to put belief into our soul, and so on. Our continued belief is the same: our soul is constantly touched by God in a very real way, and we continue to permit Him to work in us, or we do not.

The profound point here is that it is not that we believe or that we do not believe. It is not that we examine evidence, reasoning, or otherwise and make a decision from there. It is that in some way that we cannot now understand, God touches us, and we know it is Him, and we either accept Him or reject Him. Consider the five senses. Each receives the world in a different way. Now consider the person born blind. Because of the defect of body, such a person is not only unable to see, but were he not told about sight by others, he would not even know that such a faculty as sight exists. In the same way, our souls have senses, senses which perceive not the physical world, as do the senses of our bodies, but the supernatural world. It is the senses of the soul which can "see" God, which can "hear" Him, and so on. Yet just like the person born blind, we are completely unaware of these unless we are told by others who have them, and indeed, even once told, we cannot use them any more than the blind man can see once he is told that sight exists.

To the *soul,* not the ear, does God call, by His Grace enabling the soul to hear Him. While we may not be explicitly aware of this call, in the greatest depths of who we are, in our very souls, we do hear, and we either respond or we do not. God's first request is simply that He open the ears of the soul, and should we permit that, He begins to work in the soul more and more. When you think, Davide, that God is speaking, it is certainly difficult to be sure, for that connection between our explicit thoughts and the soul is so heavily damaged by our fallen nature. Yet the soul can hear, and we do respond in the affirmative or the negative. As we consent to God more and more, that connection is strengthened, and we come to know God's voice more and more. We see in the examples of the saints some of those who came to hear God's voice more and more clearly.

Finally, when we pass from this world, the sight of the soul can be opened to see God. Here, and only here, can we have knowledge of Him. I said above that we cannot have more than belief *now.* Now, the eyes of our souls are closed, and only by consenting to His call, only by letting Him open those eyes, can we come to *see* Him, for God is Spirit. He cannot be seen by the eyes of the body, but only of the soul. Thus, as we allow God more and more to heal us, we can come closer and closer to being able to actually see Him. Then, we can have knowledge. Now, we must have faith, for now, we have not the capability of seeing God. In a sense, then, we could say that the reason we must have faith, rather than knowledge, is because of sin. Sin blinds the soul. It is by our own choice that we are "relegated" more and more to belief. Christ's healing of the blind man meant far more than just the giving of His physical sight. Just as the blind man was given to see Christ's body because He permitted the Lord to touch his eyes, he - as can we - came to see Christ's *Spirit* by letting the Lord touch the eyes of His soul.

The journey we are on is one, not of getting to know God, but of permitting God to reveal Himself to us. We must at every moment worry, not about how to believe in what we cannot see, but simply of opening ourselves to God's voice - whether we can hear it or understand it or not! God's Grace will give to us all that we need. What we need do, simply, is not get in the way. Our struggle is not a struggle of believing. Rather, it is a struggle to be certain that we are open to God. The pharisees were given to *see* God's miracles, and to hear His voice, yet they did not believe, because they were not open to hearing Him. Those of them who *were* open to hearing God, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, came to Christ. *That* is our effort. *That* is our struggle. We must fight not to put up obstacles to the Lord. If we do that, He will give to us belief, and He will lead us with His voice, and He will bring us to Himself.

God bless,

Shane

How are Prayers to the Saints really Prayers to God?

2007-11-10T23:11:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while - I hope to return to it soon.

This particular piece is the response to a question about why several Catholic events that a woman attended did not involve any prayers to Jesus Himself, but only to saints. The events were things like Bible studies, so that's why I'd say it's ok to just have a few Hail Marys or something. Typically, even in spite of what I said to her, one ought to pray directly to Our Lord during a faith based event, just because of the nature of how we as human beings perceive things. Even though a reality might exist that is different from how things are perceived, nevertheless we God has programmed us to operate according to that perception.

In any case, some others had suggested to this woman that prayer to the saints really is prayer to God. Here is my response:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

You've got the right idea that prayers to saints are really prayers to the Lord in some way. And you've probably also got the right idea that you don't get it. I say this because its the sort of thing that, in my experience, people don't "get" until they've been Catholic for a while, or for cradle Catholics, until they really end up considering the issue for a while. This was true of me as well. I came into the Church in 2005, and I, like you, accepted prayers to the saints and Mary, accepted all the Marian stuff, but still in practice there was a certain degree of Marian piety that I was still uncomfortable with.

The reason for this is, I think, that it's based on some very advanced theological concepts. The thing is, unlike in [much of] Protestantism, Catholicism is so organic a faith that literally everything is deeply tied to everything else. You can't seperate this from that, as Protestants often do. My point is that theology in Catholicism is not merely theoretical - that is, not merely about God academically, but it truly is and stems from and leads to (all at once) the actual practice of the faith. Talk to anyone that's been studying the Summa Theologiae for a while and they'll tell you that they don't just get knowledge from it, but in some way - as cold and technical as it is - they get some sort of increase in their spiritual life as well. It's amazing.

Another way of putting this is to say that the Catholic faith is true, which means that the theological truths it teaches are a part of the fabric of reality, a part of the fabric of who we all really are as human beings and creatures of God, and so the more one prays and leads a spiritual life focused, the more one begins to recognize all the truths of the world and of themselves that underly every moment and aspect of existence. It's sortof like those movies where they show you all the stuff that's really going on in nature at every moment all around you but you never notice, except a lot less gross.

Now, so far as your specific question, that underlying reality that really matters is that everything that we have - even our mere existence - is just some way in which we are sharing in God. It is really God's own existence that in a certain way we participate in, as theologians say. That's why we have existence. It's ours, but it's also God's. Yet it's not in a pantheistic way, as if everything in existence isGod, either.

I'm sure you're familiar with 2 Peter 1:4, where it says that through Christ we are made partakers of the Divine Nature. What he's talking about is the concept of Divination, or Theosis as they call it in the east, which means that through Christ, we in some way share in what it is to be God. Athanasius, for instance, said in one of my favorite quotes, "By the participation of the Spirit, we are knit into the Godhead." This was the center of the faith in the early Church. It was everywhere, and every doctrine - even ones that seem so completely unrelated - were understood around the framework of it.

Now basically, Heaven is to participate in God's existence to the fullest extent that a creature can. That's what 2 Peter 1:4 is talking about. Hell, on the other hand, is to participate in God's existence to the least degree a creature can - to participate in existence alone, and have nothing else at all. Those in Hell suffer so much because they exist, but that's all. Everyone's experienced a moment in their life where they feel like they're just existing and that's all, and it's absolutely miserable. Hell is like that, except people who feel that way aren't even close to just existing and really have so much more - so imagine how terrible Hell is!

But Heaven is to participate more and more and more and more in God. It is to have more and more of what He has. We can never, ever become God, because we can never have existence in and of ourselves - that's what God has. But we can have nearly everything else that God has, not because we deserve it, but because He gives it to us. The first time I heard this it sounded crazy, but the thing is, we only exist by literally sharing that which is God's, His existence. For God to share with us any other part of Himself is no different. It's all just God giving to us that which is His, whether its existence, which we all have, or something more. So those who object to concepts of the saints having different "powers" or whatnot really have no ground to stand on. For a saint to have the "power" to bilocate, for instance, isn't any different from me having the "power" to exist and sit on my couch! The only difference is that that saint has become more open to God and shares more in God than I do.

The key to remember in all of this, though, is that that which we share in of God is not something that God creates, that is, something that He makes to give us that is like what He has. That's not possible, because He is all that really is at all. While those who do object to the saints "powers" are wrong in the way I mentioned above, they're actually correct at the same time because their reason for it is that only God has these things. And it's true! When I exist, or when a person speaks in tongues, or when Padre Pio bilocated, it is literally God doing that in us. It's not some power that is like God, but it is God. If it were something else, that would mean something existed on its own apart from God.

So when I am talking to you, I am talking to God in a certain sense, because you exist by virtue of sharing God's existence. Now when I talk to a baptized Christian, I am talking to God in an even fuller sense, because that person by virtue of baptism shares in more of God. This is why Christ said that what we do to the least of his brother's, we do to Him. It's true! It's why St. Paul said that it was no longer him living, but Christ who lives in him. To become more and more holy is simply to become more and more a partaker in God Himself.

So Mary up in Heaven, who partook of God more than anyone, was so emptied of "Mary" and so full of God that when we talk to her, we really are talking so directly to God, even though we're also talking to the human being Mary. Same goes for any other saint, just to a lesser degree as they were not as holy as she and participated in God to different degrees.

It's the same as with good works. The Council of Trent taught that the good works of a Christian are really the good works of the Holy Spirit living in the Christian, but in some mysterious sense that they are also the good works of the Christian at the same time. It's that Catholic "both/and" that everyone talks about. And it hints at that tremendous underlying reality to everything, namely, that everything that exists really is all at once both itself and God. It is itself, but it is God's own existence that it shares. This is one of those things we're never going to come close to grasping until we see God face to face.

So when we pray to Mary or to any saint, we're talking to them, but we're also talking to God, in the same way as when I talk to you or as when I feed my homeless brother. Yet we're also talking to God through them in an even deeper sense, because they share in God so, so deeply. They are so emptied of self and so full of God - so participating in God. Furthermore, you're praying - you're asking for Divine favors. That's what God does, and in asking them to grant these through their intercession, you're appealing to the Divine in them that they have become partakers of. So you're speaking to God, even though you're speaking to a human being, just like when I feed a human being I'm feeding Christ, but in a greater sense.

Now, I don't imagine that the people at these events considered all this. It's possible that just living the Catholic life led them, as it so often does, to an unconscious grasp of this aspect of reality such that what they did seemed perfectly great to them. It's also possible they just weren't very good Catholics and didn't care too much about Jesus. You'd be a better judge of that than I would, since you were there. But I bet they cared plenty about Him .

I know this is a ton to take at once, but I wanted to try to answer your question as best I could. I also prayed first, so I hope the Holy Spirit worked a little bit here. In any case, God bless.

Women's Ordination

2007-07-02T14:52:00.000-04:00

Apologetics on YouTube!

2007-06-25T23:24:00.001-04:00

St. Aloysius Gonzaga

2007-06-21T13:45:00.000-04:00

Memorial - St. Aloysius Gonzaga
Patron of Youth

If you've ever wondered where Gonzaga University gets its name from - here he is. St. Aloysius was a Jesuit living in the late 16th century. He was well connected, as far as saints go. His cousin was Saint Rudolph Acquaviva. He received first Communion from Saint Charles Borromeo. He was a student of Saint Robert Bellarmine, one of the great saints of the reformation.

This brings up something I have long wanted to point out: scratch a saint, and you will find other saints. If you look through the list of saints, the vast majority of them knew at least one other saint, often times very well. In fact, I don't personally know of a saint who did not know any other saints, though I am sure there were at least a few. There is a tremendous lesson in this. If you want to be a saint - if you want to get to Heaven - hang around saintly people. God makes saints, after all, and the way God works in our lives is through other people. If you find yourself around someone who is very open to God, someone who God seems to work a lot through, well you're in a whole lot better of a position to have God make a saint out of you.

For some of us, this might not be easy. For one thing, we may not know anyone we would think of as saintly. Even if we do, chances are we may have a hard time hanging around them; saintly people do have a tendancy to make others uncomfortable at times. Holiness is, after all, a little tough to stomach for those of us who are attached to sin (i.e., most of us). That being said, try to spend even a little time with them if you know any such people. The more you do, the more you'll find yourself less attached to sin and more attracted to holiness. And if you do desire holiness but just can't seem to get there, well that's the best time to hang around with some saints. Their presence - thanks to the way God works through them - will do wonders for the soul who wants to grow but just doesn't know how or has a hard time. And if you don't know any saints, ask God to send you one. He'll see what He can do!

St. Aloysius - pray for us!

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

2007-06-15T09:21:00.001-04:00

What's it all about?

Why did Christ set up the Church?

2007-06-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

The Church is set up in the way it is for a very specific reason. Did you ever wonder why we have Sacraments and all that? I mean, in some ways, the Protestant system actually makes more sense. As Catholics we believe in a God who essentially has invited us to become His children; we believe in a God who wants Love, not adherence to some checklist like a strict boss or professor. Even though the Scriptures never use the terminology, we agree with the Protestants that what God desires is a personal relationship with us. He wants us to know Him and Love Him. So if what God wants is Love and Faith - a relationship - well then Sacraments seem to be completely unnecessary.

Our conception of the Church as an authority to speak on matters of truth would still be important; having a personal relationship with someone requires that one know the truth about them. Imagine trying to have a relationship with your earthly father without any certainty concerning the facts about him. Do you get him golf clubs for his birthday, or a violin? Does he like it when you make lawyer jokes, or should you refrain. Is he a lawyer? In fact, when is his birthday, anyways? It wouldn't work. The situation is even more difficult with our Heavenly Father, whom is present not only when we are in the same room as Him but always. Is X a sin - does it offend Him - or not? When the Scripture says we should fast in one place but says we shouldn't in another, what does God really want? When half the Christians interpret a verse one way and the other half another, what's correct? What did God really intend to say?

But not Sacraments. For a God who simply wants a relationship they don't seem to fit. Once we know the truth about Him, what is the purpose of having to go through these rituals? Going back to fathers, if I offend my earthly father, the way to repair that relationship is to ask Him for forgiveness - not to go to someone else, like mom, and ask her to offer his forgiveness, as Catholics do in confession. So the Sacraments seem sortof, well, superfluous at best.

But the reality is that by Christ's own choice He set it up that way. The Sacraments aren't some superfluous thing that the Church came up with for some reason - Christ Himself instituted them Himself. Why? Why, if what He really wants is a relationship?

The reason is that Christ is compassionate. God loves us even if we don't always love Him. He wants those who aren't going to have a relationship with Him to have a chance. He wants as few people as possible to reject Him. He wants us in Heaven, so He didn't simply give us some authority to tell us what is true and then leave us to, if we can get ourselves to, have a relationship on our own. Different Christian groups, and even different schools among Catholics, have many different ideas of how Grace works exactly, so it's impossible to give some blanket statement about the technicalities of it, but suffice it to say that basic human experience shows that however Grace works, the vast majority of people in the world don't seem motivated to have a relationship with God even with the help and promptings of Grace. The truth is that left to out own, most people simply don't take advantage of the Grace God has for them and have a relationship with Him. Few Christians from any group ever really do. So Christ gave us Sacraments - things that work ex opera operandi, as that Latin calls it: "in and of themselves."

The Sacrament of Reconcilliation really does reconcile usto God. If someone is an absolutely miserable Christian and the very most they can muster is being sorry because they are afraid of hell, then the Sacrament will save them from it and - even as what may be a completely unintended side effect from their perspective - reunite them to God.

Christ made the Church in the exact way He did specifically so that poor Christians can make it to Heaven. He gave us last rights so that even the greatest sinner can, on his deathbed, at least say he's afraid of Hell and make it to Heaven, even if that person can't bring Himself to actually Love God or to be sorry for His sins in any real way. He wants us there, and so He gave us a Church with Sacraments exactly as He did so that those with the bare minimum can make it. He'll Give us Love when we get to Him.

Of course, He wants so much more, and so we have the fantastic saints who actually gave all they possibly could, and then people like you and me who hopefully do our best even if we're not quite ready for canonization. But He wants those folks who are just sitting in the pews each week and that's really all they're doing in Heaven, too. And that's at least one of the reasons that He did it they way He did.

Wow.

2007-06-12T05:05:00.001-04:00

One of the greatest things I've ever seen, and I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.

Thoughts on The Feeding of the 5,000

2007-06-11T05:10:00.000-04:00

All just personal speculation.

From Mark:

"6:39Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. 42And they all ate and were satisfied."

First, the people are seperated into groups - but pretty big groups, not small ones. This is much like how we are seperated into different churches, or as it has been called since the 4th century, parishes. Then, they hand out the 5 loaves and 2 fishes. Now I have for a little while understood this to refer to the 5 'regular' Sacraments and the 2 Sacraments of Service, Matrimony and Orders.

But I noticed something new: Jesus has the apostles hand out the bread, but He *Himself* hands out the fishes, which Mark says He divided amongst the people. Now this is interesting. The bishops of the Church (through the priests) distribute the 5 Sacraments to the people rather indiscriminantly. They don't have to know anything about you, you just go to your parish (or, in the Gospel here, group) and they give you the Sacraments to everyone there. On the other hand, they don't just hand out Marriage and Orders. These are callings from God, which He Himself divides up amongst the people and gives to them, just as here Jesus divides up the two fishes and gives them to the people.

I thought this was very interesting, so I started thinking about the differences between bread and fish. Bread is more or less - especially when speaking of the time of Jesus - standard fare. It's what keeps you alive. It's what you can't go without. There's nothing all that special about it - it's the minimum you need day in and day out to survive. Fish, on the other hand, is special. It has protein, and it gives you the strength to do your work. It has a special flavor to it, and you savor it. Also, some people like one kind of fish, others like others; some like haddock, some like salmon. Now I don't know if Jesus had different kinds of fish, you get the point I'm making. Fish is special, we enjoy it's savor, and what's more we enjoy one type of fish over another. Fish, unlike bread, has to be prepared. You hand out bread to someone and he eats it. He doesn't need to do anything all that special to eat it, except perhaps that if he's sick he needs to be well before he can keep it down. Fish, on the other hand, you have to scale, take out the bones, and cook. It takes a bit of preparation.

In the same way, the 5 Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Pennance, and Annointing are really the standard fare. Obviously they are very special, but in a certain sense they are nothing special, because they are just the regular 'bread' we need day in and day out to survive. Sure, we enjoy them, but in a relatively common way. In other words, everyone has these things in common, and they bring happiness, but when we add our particular vocation to this 'daily bread,' it brings a fullness to the us that wasn't there with these alone, so the way we enjoy the 5 Sacraments is very different from how we enjoy our marriages or our ordination (or consecration). These we enjoy in a very particular way - they add a fullness to our lives, a fullness particular to us, that is not found in the other 5 Sacraments. Now the 'regular' 5 don't require any preperation, other than being in a right relationship with God, just as bread really requires no preparation other than the healing of an inllness. Marriage and Ordination, however, do require special preparation. Just as a man must remove the scales of a fish to eat it, so we must remove the barriers we put between ourselves and others before we can wed or enter a consecrated life. Just as a man must remove the bones from inside a fish before he can eat it, so must we remove many of the undesirable things within ourselves before we can be given to others, for just as a man may choke on the bones of a fish he is given if they are not removed, so will those we seek to serve in life choke on the bones of our own inner sins if we do not remove them as best we can. Just as a man must cook a fish to purify it of disease and to bring it to warmth and readiness to be eaten, so too must we go through a process of gaining warmth for others and readiness to serve them.

Memorial - St. Boniface

2007-06-05T13:04:00.001-04:00

Memorial - St. Boniface
Patron of Germany, Martyr

St. Boniface was one of those great middle of the first millenium saints that made their mark converting pagans left and right (St. Patrick was another).

St. Boniface, you gained eternal glory by dying to preach the Gospel to those who were trapped in the bondage of idolatry, worshipping that which was not God rather than their Creator. Today, millions turn from God for the worship of money, sex, technology, and any number of other idols. Pray for us that we might be willing to die, both to self and in that martyrdom of the body, so that our modern world might find eternal joy in the home of God their Father. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

St. Boniface, pray for us!

Memorial - St. Justin Martyr

2007-06-01T12:48:00.000-04:00

Memorial - Justin Martyr
Patron Saint of Apologists

The saints were seized and brought before the prefect of Rome, whose name was Rusticus. As they stood before the judgement seat, Rusticus the prefect said to Justin: “Above all, have faith in the gods and obey the emperors”. Justin said: “We cannot be accused or condemned for obeying the commands of our Saviour, Jesus Christ”.Rusticus said: “What system of teaching do you profess?” Justin said: “I have tried to learn about every system, but I have accepted the true doctrines of the Christians, though these are not approved by those who are held fast by error”.

The prefect Rusticus said: “Are those doctrines approved by you, wretch that you are?” Justin said: “Yes, for I follow them with their correct teaching”.

The prefect Rusticus said: “What sort of teaching is that?” Justin said: “Worship the God of the Christians. We hold him to be from the beginning the one creator and maker of the whole creation, of things seen and things unseen. We worship also the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He was foretold by the prophets as the future herald of salvation for the human race and the teacher of distinguished disciples. For myself, since I am a human being, I consider that
what I say is insignificant in comparison with his infinite godhead. I acknowledge the existence of a prophetic power, for the one I have just spoken of as the Son of God was the subject of prophecy. I know that the prophets were inspired from above when they spoke of his coming among men”.

Rusticus said: “You are a Christian, then?” Justin said: “Yes, I am a Christian”.

The prefect said to Justin: “You are called a learned man and think that you know what is true teaching. Listen: if you were scourged and beheaded, are you convinced that you would go up to heaven?” Justin said: “I hope that I shall enter God’s house if I suffer that way. For I know that God’s favour is stored up until the end of the whole world for all who have lived good lives”.

The prefect Rusticus said: “Do you have an idea that you will go up to heaven to receive some suitable rewards?” Justin said: “It is not an idea that I have; it is something I know well and hold to be most certain”.

The prefect Rusticus said: “Now let us come to the point at issue, which is necessary and urgent. Gather round then and with one accord offer sacrifice to the gods”. Justin said: “No one who is right thinking stoops from true worship to false worship”.

The prefect Rusticus said: “If you do not do as you are commanded you will be tortured without mercy”. Justin said: “We hope to suffer torment for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so be saved. For this will bring us salvation and confidence as we stand before the more terrible and universal judgement-seat of our Lord and Saviour”.In the same way the other martyrs also said: “Do what you will. We are Christians; we do not offer sacrifice to idols”.

The prefect Rusticus pronounced sentence, saying: “Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the command of the emperor be scourged and led away to suffer capital punishment according to the ruling of the laws”. Glorifying God, the holy martyrs went out to the accustomed place. They were beheaded, and so fulfilled their witness of martyrdom in confessing their faith in their Saviour."

From the Acts of Saint Justin

Feast of the Visitation

2007-05-31T11:34:00.000-04:00

A Perfect Symbol of Today's World

2007-05-29T15:17:00.000-04:00

More to Come Soon

God's Green Earth

2007-05-29T13:01:00.001-04:00

Atheism and Reason

2007-05-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

Back in the early 80s, there was a somewhat popular sitcom called Benson. This Soap spin off followed the daily goings-on of Benson DuBois, the household manager and later budget director for an unspecified state's governor's office. In the second season episode "No Sad Songs," Benson's mother tragically dies while visiting him. Prior to her death however, an exchange takes place between them over a small wooden cross that she carries with her.

Benson's mother says that this cross was made from wood from the True Cross - the actual cross on which Jesus Christ suffered and died. Benson disagrees. His mother bought the cross from a street salesman in New York City, and he insists that it was simply a scam. 'What makes you believe that is from the actual cross,' he asks her? 'Faith,' she replies. She believes that this little item was made from that sacred wood, and so, in here eyes, it was - and that's all that matters. At the end of the episode, a heartwarming scene occurs in which Benson learns to live life with some faith and to trust that everything will be alright without his mother. Upon this realization, Benson picks up the cross and smiles, apparently having decided that his mother was right after all.

The story of this cross is a perfect example of what is unfortunately a very common misunderstanding of faith which plagues today's atheism in which faith is understood to be some kind of subjective experience, rather than simply belief in an objective reality. This false notion is forgivable, because atheists typically get it from the various theists that hold to it today. A perfect example of this can be seen in the Creation Museum, a new attraction which opens this week in Kentucky. The Washington Post reports that, "One sign [in the museum] sets 'Human Reason' against 'God's Word.'" This is the conception of faith that the average atheist associates with the faith of Christianity, and in a broader context, theism in general.

But this is not faith. This is nominalism. "It is because I believe it is" is not the faith of the Christian, at least not until after the time of the Reformation. (I must quickly point out that neither do all Protestants hold to this notion nor does creationism itself necessarily embrace it; the museum is simply a rather good example from which to draw.) Nominalism is the philosophical doctrine that no objective, but that things are essentially what they are called. Benson's mother believed that her cross was from the True Cross, so her faith made it so, at least as far as she was concerned. But the reality (ignoring for a moment that this was a fictional program) was that this wood either was from the True Cross or it wasn't; her beliefs made no difference either way. If the cross was real, then Mrs. DuBois was merely assenting to a fact. If it wasn't, she was deluding herself into a fantasy with no basis in reality.

And this strikes at the heart of the question of theism. Either God exists or He doesn't. Our beliefs on the matter make no difference to the reality of the situation. Where they do make a difference is to us and whether we are conforming our own ideas to reality or trying to conform reality to our ideas. True faith is not some nominalist adherence to what we choose to believe, but is simply a real assent of our own beliefs to what is true.

Thomas Aquinas would have been appalled at any notion of "faith" based on some subjective grounds. To him, faith was simply the assent to truth of a properly ordered human intellect. God's existence was the most fundamental reality of the universe, and so human reason, properly exercised, would believe in Him - not as some subjective idea, but as the logical necessity of assenting to all the evidence available.

Of course, we all recognize that human reason can, and does, err - not because it is reason, but because it is human. Human reason errs from many human causes. Some people are simply not intelligent. Others operate with incomplete evidence, and lest one claim to be omniscient we must acknowledge that human reason always operates with incomplete evidence. Sometimes, a person's reason works perfectly well, but he simply chooses not to accept it for whatever reason.

This third possibility is nominalism. It is the "faith" of Benson's mother, of some theists, and as many atheists would suggest, all the other theists as well. Reason says one thing, but these people wish to reject that and believe another thing anyways. "Reason shows that there is no God," the atheist says, "and so those who believe must either be stupid, unlearned, or simply rejecting reason."

However, this conclusion rests on a faulty assumption, namely, that the atheist is the one with the honesty, the more complete library, or simply the keener mind. Implicitly, it outright rejects - dogmatically - the idea that a person can be intelligent, well-read, honest, and also believe in God. This idea must be held, or else the atheist's foundation collapses. This is why I say that it is dogmatic, even as atheists criticize the alleged inability of theists to accommodate new knowledge due to their theological dogmas. If the atheist accepts that a person of these various qualities can exist and be a theist, then his case against God evaporates because reason can no longer be opposed to Him, as I will explain.

This brings us to a fourth possibility: the possibility that two honest, highly intelligent, and equally well-read persons can disagree on a point of reason. The idea itself is not problematic; in fact most persons would acknowledge that it happens all the time. The implication, which I have already mentioned, is where the atheist's problem arises. Something besides reason must separate some atheists from some theists, because some atheists are just as honest, intelligent, and well-read as some theists on the question of theism, and yet they disagree. Aquinas would say that what separates them is Grace. Sin darkens the intellect, he would say, and Grace restores it to its properly ordered operation.

In any case, the rejection of this "atheistic dogma" leads to the necessary conclusion that reason alone cannot bring man to the truth. Something else is required. Even if one suggests that it is genetic, as some now claim, this still excludes reason from any definitive role in matters of discerning reality. In fact, it makes matters worse because it subjects our ability to understand reality to an uncontrollable biological predisposition, and more importantly, puts the atheist's claim on equal footing with the theist's, since there is no reason to believe that either predisposition is more in accord with reality than the other. A similar situation arises if one attributes the difference to life experiences (nature versus nurture, as it were).

And so we see that in atheism, a faith does exist. It is a faith simply in the idea that God does not exist. To abandon this faith puts one in the position of having to either attribute certain realities to something beyond humanity and nature (and so supernatural), or to embracing a cold and reasonless nihilism in which we cannot know the truth about reality anyways. For the atheist to retain reason, he must embrace something supernatural.

And this brings us back to the "faith" of Mrs. DuBois, only this time it is the atheist insisting that the wood is from the True Cross -reason be damned. The atheist believes that God does not exist simply because he chooses to believe it is so, for it is impossible to accept reason without accepting that nature is not all that there is to the world. And, like Mrs. DuBois, the atheist must sometime choose to accept reason or die clinging to a counterfeit "faith."

Cheese is Funny

2007-05-26T18:34:00.000-04:00

It's real.

Memorial - St. Philip Neri

2007-05-26T00:38:00.000-04:00

Memorial

St. Philip Neri, you brought countless people to God through your gift of understanding exactly what they needed. You recognized that each person is an individual with a unique dignity, deserving of an approach specific to his own situation, personality, and spiritual state. By your prayers and intercessions, obtain for us the Grace to show the Love of God to each soul we should encounter in that way which will most touch his or her heart, and so bring all of God's children home to the eternal glory in which you now rest, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

St. Philip Neri, pray for us.

Longhorns in the Sky

2007-05-26T00:30:00.000-04:00

Well, longhorn skulls, anyway.

What Christianity Isn't

2007-05-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

I want to address something that I've noticed quite a bit recently. It's something I've come across in many different places in my life. Unfortunately, it is the sort of thing that might make some people feel uncomfortable. Therefore, I just want to say that this isn't directed towards anyone in particular. No one person is the inspiration for this. I've seen this amongst friends, family, acquaintances, and all throughout the blogosphere and other Internet forums.

What I am talking about is, essentially, a false form of Christianity. It is, as the title suggests, what Christianity isn't.

Christianity isn't going to Mass. It's not believing all the right things. It's not standing up for the rights of the unborn, or opposing homosexual marriage, or believing that the Ten Commandments ought to be allowed in public space. It's not living morally - abstaining from sex outside of marriage, being polite, staying sober, and so forth. It's not praying frequently, fervently, or with dedication. Christianity isn't feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and in other ways helping the less fortunate. It isn't reading spiritual books. It isn't standing up against those who are hijacking the Christianity for their own causes, or being the lone voice in the wilderness in opposition to some un-Christian practice or idea. Christianity isn't hating sin or cultivating virtue. It isn't standing up for legitimate "modern innovations" in the Church, nor is it defending the "traditional Church." It isn't opposing heresy, preaching truth, admonishing sinners, or imitating saints.

If you think that Christianity is any of those things, you are worshipping an idol. Your idol may be orthodoxy. It may be Ignatian spirituality. It may be sexual purity. You may worship tradition, the prayer, or even the Mass. In fact, you may have a polytheism in which you worship virtue, prayer, morality, orthodoxy, the corporal works of mercy, and all of the other things that are associated with Christianity. The fact is, Christianity is none of these things. We don't worship the Mass - we go to the Mass to worship God. And God, as St. John tells us, is Love (1 John 4:10).

Christianity is Love. It is nothing else. It is singularly, completely, and unreservedly Love. Indeed, all of the things listed above are a part of Love. One who loves his child will admonish her when she does wrong. One who loves God will believe all the right things. One who loves the unborn will defend their lives against the abortion mill that is western civilization. Yet none of these things, apart from Love, has any place in Christianity. Apart from Love, they are simply idols for us to worship instead of God.

Indeed, many people do worship these things. It is very common to worship virtue. The ancient Greeks were quite good at it. Today, many Christians worship these things. Purity apart from Love is not directed toward God, and yet time after time Christians will practice purity, even look to it as a great virtue, while failing to have Love in their lives.

It's a great thing to defend the faith; the Scriptures command us to be ready to (see 1 Peter 3:15). It's a great thing to oppose some terrible sin that our government is committing. It's absolutely necessary to admonish the sinner (such as pro-abortion politicians), but any of this done apart from Love falls far short of being Christian. Apart from Love, it is simply ideology.

Love is what separates orthodoxy from ideology. Love is what separates purity from prudishness. Love is what separates prayer from babbling, virtue from habit, saints from good citizens, righteous anger from sin. Love is what separates Heaven from Hell.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up
my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and
kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not
insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at
wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for
prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but
when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke
like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a
man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to
face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully
known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of
these is love." (1Co 13:1-13)

Love makes Christians Christians. Unfortunately, as I go through life, I see so little of it.

I have to be clear, here. I am a sinner. We are all sinners. I am not talking about sin. Not everybody is Saint Thérèse. I and most other people will certainly fall short of Love in our lives. We will on occasion practice a virtue without Love. We will abstain from sin for selfish reasons. We will do each and every thing on my list apart from Love sometimes. That's not what I am talking about.

What I am talking about is a general attitude that I see wherein these things are so often taken to be all that there is to Christianity. Love is seen as being Christian, but simply as another item on the list rather than the only thing that makes one Christian. In reality, all of those other things are supposed to be subordinate to love. They are supposed to be part of Love - things that we do to Love. They are supposed to be means, rather than ends. Our only end is to be God - Who is Love.

So I encourage you - as humbly as I can - to examine yourself. Examine your motives. Examine why you do all the things you do. If you pray, why do you? If you live a moral sexuality, what is causing you to? How often do you do things - good, Holy, virtuous, pious things - without Love? I can only promise to do the same examination myself, and I will. I think that it's something our world is in such need of right now. If every Christian who is fighting abortion, defending the faith, or trying to restore Christ to our world in every other way would simply stop for a moment and start to Love first and do these things second, our world would turn around in a matter of weeks.

Salvation and the Theological Virtues

2007-05-23T20:19:00.000-04:00

One of the big differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, theologically speaking, is the emphasis on the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. In Catholic theology, all three of these are required for salvation. If a person is lacking any one of them, he or she will not inherit the kingdom of Heaven, as St. Paul would say. The virtues are called theological because they pertain to God, as opposed to something else. The theological virtue of Faith, for example, is faith in God. The theological virtue of Hope is hope in God, as opposed to hope in something else. Hope in some other thing would be called the natural virtue of hope, for it is hope in something natural.. In Protestantism, faith is regarded as necessary - and faith alone.

This difference naturally leads to quite a bit of confusion on the part of Protestants when coming across the Catholic teaching. "Hope and love," they might ask? "The Bible says we're saved by faith, not hope and love." The biggest question, however, is not one that is particular to Protestants, but one that might be on the mind of anyone considering the idea. Namely, why faith, hope, and love? Why does a person need these three particular things for salvation?

To understand this actually isn't all that difficult if one has a Catholic understanding of God Himself. I oughtn't generalize, as there are certainly many Protestants who have this understanding of God as well, but it's much easier to explain the Catholic viewpoint when contrasting it with another view, one not uncommon in Protestantism. This understanding is what I call the "bouncer" God. In this non-Catholic thinking, God is essentially like a bouncer who guards the entrance into the club of Heaven. Unfortunately, thanks to our sins, nobody is good enough to enter except for Jesus Christ. However, anyone who is with Jesus is allowed to enter by virtue of being associated with Him.

As opposed to this, the Catholic understanding of God is familial. God is understood as not only wanting to be like, but as wanting to be the true and literal Father of us all. He wishes only to adopt us as His children and bring us into His home to receive the true inheritance that we have as His children, but He won't force us to. In life, He offers this invitation. We can either choose Him and enter our home - Heaven - to receive our inheritance, or we can choose other things that we would rather have. When we choose something besides God, this is sin. Of course, there is a true justice to this all. The idea of punishment due sin is not lost, because sin is also understood as real, true moral choices; it does deserve punishment. For those adopted as children of God, He forgives as Father. For those remaining children of the devil, He condemns as judge.

In the Catholic understanding, then, salvation is not simply a matter of escaping hell. Rather, it is a matter of choosing Heaven - or more properly, of choosing God. To penetrate more deeply into this question, then, let us consider what is required to choose anything.

If I were to hold a ball out to you, what would be required for you to choose it? First, and most obviously, you would need to believe that the ball was existed, and beyond that, that it was in fact really being offered. Second, you would need to want the ball. I could offer you the ball all day long, but if you did not want it, you would not choose it. Now, believing that it is available to you and desiring it, you would be required finally to do something to claim the ball. You would need to reach out and take it, or perhaps speak up and tell me that you did in fact want it.

Our example here is of a ball, but it may as well have been anything else in existence. To choose anything at all, then, three things are required: one must believe both that the thing exists and that it can be chosen, one must want the thing, and one must make some action to claim it. These three things are referred to in Catholic theology as faith, hope, and love.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the theological virtue of Faith as "the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself" (1814). This is very similar to a description that the book of Hebrews gives for faith: "Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (11:6). This is exactly the conclusion that we arrived at above in regards to choosing things.; one must believe both that a thing exists and that the thing is available to be chosen. Faith requires that one believe in God and in what He says, namely, that He rewards those who seek Him - He can be chosen.

The definition of Hope that the Catechism provides is also consistent with what we have discovered about choosing things. "Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (1817). If faith is the virtue by which we believe in God and His rewards, then Hope is that virtue by which we desire God.

Finally we come to Love. The Catechism says, "Charity [Love] is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God" (1822). This requires a bit more unpacking. In Catholic Theology, it is understood that when a person is made just before God, God's Love is poured into his heart (see Romans 5:5). When one is just before God, and thus in the state of salvation, the Holy Spirit is present in his or her soul (no Christian would disagree with this idea,so far as I know). The Holy Spirit is that which internally causes us to Love God, and so by accepting the Holy Spirit into his heart, one Loves God. In the understanding of choosing things that we established, one must, upon believing in and desiring a thing, make an act of claim on that thing. One must "reach out and grab" the thing, as it were. The same is true of God. In the case of God, it is Love by which one "grabs" God, because it is by accepting Love into one's heart that one accepts the Holy Spirit. This idea could be embellished upon greatly by analyzing St. John's exhortations that "God is Love" from his first epistle.

In the Catholic understanding, God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, offers us Himself. Our life is a prolonged opportunity to choose, either to choose Him or to choose something else. He will not force Himself upon us, and so if we choose something else, He will respect that choice rather than dragging us into His presence anyways. It is by Faith that we believe in God and that we believe He is choosable. It is by Hope that we desire God, and it is by Love that we actually make our claim on Him (for lack of a better term). It makes sense, then, that no person can be saved if lacking any one of these three virtues. Without Faith, of course, one would not even recognize anything to choose. If one did not have Hope, then one would not want God, and clearly no choice is made in which a person does not want the item chosen. Finally, without Love, a person has not made any claim that He in fact does want God. If you believe I am offering you a ball and want it, it will do you no good if you do not actually do anything and simply stand in place believing and wanting it.

And so we come back to the Protestant belief that faith alone is required for salvation. Part of this is simply a matter of terminology. Most Protestants who believe that faith alone is required define faith differently from Catholics. To them, Faith includes in it the idea of Hope, and generally a sense of Love as well, although in many cases this sense of Love may be rather incomplete. This topic itself could fill up and entire post, or book for that matter, and will not be expounded upon further. It will suffice for now to read the words of Saint Paul from 1 Corinthians:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up
my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing... So now faith,
hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (13:1-3;
13)

Thus we see that Faith, apart from Love, profits nothing. Even dying for Christ will "gain nothing" apart from Love. Love is far more important than most people realize, or at least than most people act as though they realize, and is the greatest of these three crucial theological virtues.

Upcoming Later Today...

2007-05-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

...will be two related posts, the first theological, and the second, practical.

Salvation and the Theological Virtues
What Christianity Isn't

St. Thérèse on Love

2007-05-22T14:41:00.000-04:00

"One evening, not knowing in what words to tell Our Lord how much I loved him, and how much I wished that He was served and honouredeverywhere, I thought sorrowfully that from the depths of hell there does not go up to Him one single act of love. Then, from my inmost heart, I cried out that I would gladly be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy so that He might be eternally loved even there. This could not be for His Glory, since He only wishes our happiness, but love sometimes feels the need of saying foolish things. If I spoke in this way, it was not that I did not long to go to Heaven, but that for me Heaven was nothing else than to Love, and in my ardour I felt that nothing could separate me from the Divine Being Who held me captive."

Memorial - St. Rita of Cascia

2007-05-22T03:23:00.000-04:00

Optional Memorial

St. Rita of Cascia is one of the most varied of all the saints. Both wife and mother, and later a nun, she went through the trials of women in all walks of life. There is little that a woman can experience that St. Rita did not, including an abusive 18 year marriage and a terrible illness. Through all of the trials, sufferings, and rare joys in her life, Rita maintained her faith and trust in God. She is a wonderful example for any and all women, regardless of their calling, place on the journey, or situation.

St. Rita of Cascia, you suffered every ailment imaginable, from the abuse of a husband to the death of your children to the pains of bodily illness. Pray for us so that we, too, may live our lives with the faith, trust, and love that you gave to God, regardless of what circumstances we happen to be in or what troubles we may be experiencing. By the Heavenly glory that you have gained in Christ, show us now how to live our lives for God so as to attain to this same glory, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.

Great Deal

2007-05-22T03:03:00.000-04:00

One of the great travesties of our day is the loss of sacred musis in and around churches. It used to be that one of the great roles of music in society was to lift the heart of man up to God. We simply don't have that any more.

Of course, we do have a great deal of Christian music out there. I don't mean to disparage modern Christian music. I like a lot of Christian pop, rock, etc. Much of it is very good, and it certainly provides an alternative to the generally sin-filled offerings provided by mainstream music.

That being said, it isn't quite the same as what I refer to when I say "sacred music." It makes perfect sense to imagine a large group of people sining a modern praise song in honor of God, but it would just seem wrong to play the same thing during a visit to the Holy Sepulchre, or even during a wedding ceremony.

There is something that just tells us that the truly sacred moments in our lives call for music that transcends the norm - for something beyond, something sacred, something very special. It may not be easy to define this, exactly, but we know it when we hear it. This is the sort of music that used to be produced often. It's the kind of music that used to be performed during Mass and other sacred ceremonies.

I must admit, I'm no great expert on this sort of thing. In fact, I know virtually nothing about it. I have, however, wanted to get into it somewhat, and to incorporate it a bit into my life. Unfortunately, I really had no idea where to start. Fortunately, EMI Classics has very recently (within the past 2 months) released a fantastic compilation of some of the best of this sort of music over the past 1000 years. This is a 6 CD set with 100 sacred works, from Gregorian chant to some of the rare sacred music that is being produced today. And even better, it's only $20.

If you're interested, take a look!

Memorial - St. Christobal Magallanes and Companions, Martyrs

2007-05-21T02:28:00.001-04:00

Optional Memorial

St. Christobal Magallanes, you were martyred because the government of your day chose to abuse the power which it had received from God, turning on Him from whom their authority came and on all those who lived in His Name. Today, the governments we are subject to are growing closer to following in a similar, unjust path, while some are already persecuting the Church of our Blessed Lord. Pray for us that we may enact positive and peaceful change in our governments, and that if called to make the same sacrifice that you made for your faith, we will do so willingly and joyfully.

St. Christobal Magallanes, pray for us.

Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fall of Western Civilization

2007-05-20T22:46:00.000-04:00

This coming weekend, the keenly expected third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean films will be released in theatres. It won't be the typical summer release, but rather one of those "special" events where people dress up in costumes and go to the theatres at midnight so that they can see the highly anticipated release as soon as is humanly possible. Even beyond that, the theatres will no doubt be packed this weekend with all manner of swashbucklers and salty dogs. In short, most of western civilization will be going to see this film.

It would do them much good, however, to revisit the first film before doing so. This is not simply for the sake of refreshing their memories of the adventures of the buccaneers, but more importantly because the first film contains a message that most of western civilization is in dire need of hearing, and more importantly, of assimilating.

The first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, tells the story of a crew of pirates trying to escape the curse of an eternity existing in between death and life as immortal half-men, unable to experience anything other than their own miserable, half-human existence. They can go through neither pain nor pleasure, a state which leaves them to a numb, meaningless, empty existence far worse than even any suffering might provide. The cause of all of this is a curse which came upon them after taking forbidden treasure, and their sole purpose is now one of trying to steal back all of the treasure so that the curse can be reversed.

Watching the film, one can't help but feel a bit bad for these fellows. They are in a simply pathetic state of affairs. What used to be men, they now simply go through the motions of men, even fighting amongst each other with no possible outcome to be gained, as they cannot be injured. These men have been without any meaning to their existence for so long that they don't even realize just how self-destructive and stupid their behaviors are. Fighting amongst selves causes enough delay in reaching a goal; in their case, the delay may be forever, if they choose to fight that long. Any member of the audience at once realizes just how stupid these cursed men are behaving.

Unfortunately, our society has been caught in an existence without meaning for so long that we, too, are essentially incapable of recognizing just how self-destructive and stupid our behaviors are. The reality is that western civilization is caught in the very same situation that these forsaken pirates were. Just like the pirates, we have sold our souls for various treasures. Sometimes it is money, but, as Captain Jack points out in the film, "not all that glitters is gold." One of our treasures is wealth. Another is fame. Sex is one of our treasures, as is science, and even progress in general. As a society, we have thrown aside what makes us human for the treasure - and in many cases, the unknown treasure. When it comes to progress, for example, we do not need to know the ultimate prize, simply that it is in some way moving forward.

This is perhaps best exemplified in the case of abortion and contraception. Here, we take the very life out of us and destroy it, all for the sake of our treasure. Modern science makes this parallel frightfully complete. Biology identifies life as that which fulfills 7 characteristics, one of which is the ability to produce new organisms. Contraception and abortion are designed to hinder and negate this ability, rendering us as not quite alive, but clearly not dead, either. In fact in western Europe, where we see this problem most prominently, the population is decreasing at a rate faster than it was during the black plague and the birth rate is in such that humanity is well on its way to virtual extinction on the continent. Without children to prepare for the future and a new generation to leave a legacy and bestow our accomplishments on, lives are reduced to an utter meaninglessness of going through the motions.

And these pirates teach us something else about the sins that plague our society, as well. Their first sin was a sin against themselves. They weren't so much hurting anyone; any claimants to the treasure had long since died. The only thing truly wrong with the treasure was that it was forbidden. That's the reality of all sin, in one sense: God said "no." There may be more too it than that (and there most often is), but even if there weren't, all that matters is that god said "no."

Yet even such a "harmless" sin leads the pirates into greater sins, sins against other people. The emptiness which they find in themselves after the first sin leads to a need, a need to fulfill what can only be fulfilled by more sin, and greater sin. Now they must steal, murder, and kidnap to fill the hole inside of them.

This is the reality of sin. Nobody sins to commit evil. Every sin is an effort - a misguided effort - to get some good. The pirates didn't go after this treasure to make their existence a constant, meaningless process of going through the motions: they wanted easy money. The person who has sex outside of marriage is trying to find love, even if without realizing it. The young man who gets high on drugs isn't looking to destroy his body, he's trying to find happiness in a fallen world. The woman who has 3 abortions isn't trying to snuff out 3 innocent lives, she is trying to protect her career.

And yet all sin leads to this emptiness, an emptiness created by trying to fill a need with self. We already have ourselves - adding more of oneself cannot fulfill. Selfish acts - and all sin is, ultimately, selfish - simply try to fill that hole inside of us with self, leading us to feel more empty than before; discovering the powerlessness to fulfill oneself is a very gnawing experience. And so the sinner, not knowing what to do, tries to take from others in the hope that they can provide what is lacking in themselves. Yet taking from others is simply another act of selfishness, another attempt to fill the hole with self. It is a numbing cycle in which the western world is trapped.

Ultimately, there are two possible endings to this cycle, both illustrated in the Curse of the Black Pearl. When the curse is finally - and unexpectedly - lifted, Captain Barbossa, the leader of the cursed pirates, has just been shot. Because of the lifting of the curse, he is finally able to feel. He is finally able to experience life - and yet all he can experience is death. His initial reaction is one of joy. He has gone for so long without feeling, that though all he is able to experience is the pangs of death, he rejoices in it. This is, ironically, what he was seeking: feeling and meaning, at any cost. Like today's western world, Captain Barbossa delved into sin after sin in his drive for meaning. Ultimately, the meaning that he found was death, and it came unexpectedly. He always expected to be in control of his mortality - to hang onto his invincibility until he was ready to surrender it. Yet death came, unexpectedly, and ironically, as the utter and perfect fulfillment of all of his desires. He sought meaning through sin, and he found the only meaning sin holds: death.

His crew, on the other hand, meets a different end: mercy. They, too, find themselves subject to death unexpectedly as the curse is lifted while in battle with superior British forces. However, death does not come to these men. They are granted mercy by the soldiers. The commanding officer did not need to grant these pirates mercy - and they had certainly committed crimes far exceeding the warrant of death - but he did. All they had to do was accept it. Their choice was to go on fighting to the death, or drop their weapons and accept the fate of capture.

Yet this is a deeper choice than it would seem, and one which ultimately our civilization will have to make. The pirates had gone for a great time without any meaning in their lives, without any feeling. Finally, they had found it, and they were left with a choice: life as prisoners, or death. They chose the former. This no doubt meant much suffering for them, especially in light of the allusion from earlier in the film that freedom is the greatest and most valued privilege of pirates. They would seem to heartily agree with the famous statement of Patrick Henry, "give me liberty or give me death!" But these pirates had something greater than that: meaning. They had sought meaning for so long, as their single goal, and though they had sought it in every corrupt, wrong, and evil way, by the grace of mercy, they had an opportunity to experience it. Even surrendering themselves to the British, the pirates could experience meaning. They could taste the sweet bite of an apple, or experience the warm Caribbean breeze on their faces and an infinity of other things which anybody else would take for granted. They must suffer for this, but ultimately, it was life, and it was meaning, and they chose it.

And so, this is where the western world stands. Indulging in an endless cycle of a search for meaning, a cycle leading deeper and deeper into sin and meaninglessness, one of two things will happen. Either death will come, quickly and unexpectedly, or mercy will. If mercy comes, it will be on the condition of suffering. There is much penance to be done for the sins our civilization has committed, and redemption will not come without suffering and hard work. And yet, if mercy is offered, and if it is accepted, we will have the chance to experience something beautiful, something incredible, and something well worth any suffering: meaning. If we are willing to lay down our weapons of vice and selfishness, we will find such infinite meaning that we had forgotten existed that the sacrifices required for it would seem radically insignificant. Let us pray for this; let us pray.

College in 3 1/2 Minutes

2007-05-20T21:24:00.000-04:00

The Limitations of Knowledge

2007-05-19T05:27:00.000-04:00

"To be learned and able to discuss the Trinity will get you nowhere if you do not have humility, and therefore displease the Trinity. Lofty words neither save you more make you a Saint; only a virtuous life makes you dear to god. It is better to experience contrition than to be able to define it.
To be well versed in Scripture and all the sayings of philosophers will not profit you if you are without God's Love and His Grace. All things are vanity. Nothing matters except to Love God and to serve Him only. The height of wisdom is to set your goal on Heaven by despising the world." - The Imitation of Christ, 1

The Ascension, the Body, and the Beatific Vision

2007-05-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

Today is the official date of the Feast of the Ascension. In some parts of the United States and in some other countries, the celebration has been moved to the 7th Sunday of Easter. However, here in my home archdiocese of Boston, it is still celebrated today. This is the day that, in a certain sense - as Fr. Ventura said at the evening Mass tonight - sums up the reason we're Catholic: to go to Heaven. Jesus ascended into Heaven, and we hope to get there.

GK Chesterton made a similar statement once when he was asked why he was Catholic. Of course, his questioner was expecting some sort of theological reasoning, perhaps a historical reference, or even an emotional appeal to aesthetics or some such thing. However, in classic Chestertonian fashion, the author responded simply, "to get my sins forgiven."

So here we have to answers to the question of why we are Catholic. One is provided by today's celebration, and might be called the more positive of the two: we hope for Heaven! The second might be understood to be more negative, focusing on that which we hope to escape rather than that which we hope to gain. However, in the classic beauty of the Catholic faith, the reality is that the two answers are not really all that different at all, much less opposed as being two different ways of looking at something. In fact, in a certain sense they are very really the same answer precisely.

St. Augustine touched on this point in one of his sermons on the Ascension. He wrote,

"While in heaven [Christ] is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love."

The last statement really stuck out at me when I read it. We can be in Heaven - even now - by Love. This is really an astonishing statement. I'm sitting in a chair right now as I write this, and as much as I might try to love God, I certainly don't feel like I'm in Heaven. I'm in an orange basement, so far as my eyes tell me, and it seem quite far from Heaven, as you might imagine.

To explain this point further, Augustine speaks more specifically of Christ's incarnation, quoting John 3:13:

"He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven."

This statement is very though provoking. It could be the subject of a great deal of meditation. However, the reality is that its not that profound a statement, theologically speaking. It simply states a very basic theological statement, one which any student would learn in his first year of theology: Christ experienced the beatific vision from the first moment of His existence.

Now, the beatific vision is the very essence of Heaven. To be in Heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, consists in"nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence" (ST, I-II, 3, 8). Heaven is - in all that it is - the state of knowing God. Christ states the same in John's Gospel: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God..." (17:3)

So Christ was literally in Heaven while on earth, and St. Augustine says that we can be too, through Love. If you've noticed, however, I have been capitalizing "Love" most of the time in this post. This is because it's not our love that Augustine is speaking about, but the Love of God, and this brings us back to Fr. Ventura and GK Chesterton. We are forgiven our sins, per Chesterton's answer, thanks to the Love of God, and we are brought into Heaven, per Fr. Ventura's homily, by His Love as well. John expressed this in his first epistle, writing that what matters is "not that we loved God, but that He loved us..." (4:10).

It gets deeper than this, though. Love doesn't cause our forgiveness and beatification to Heaven simply as a final cause, but also as a efficient cause. In other words, Love isn't simply that which inspires God to forgive us and show us the vision of Himself, but it is also the means by which He does this. In our justification, God's Love is "poured into our hearts" (Rom. 5:5). It is this very Love which wipes away sin. Sin and Love are incompatible, because sin is the contradiction of Love. By pouring His own Love into our hearts, God eradicates sin. At the same time, it is through Love that we know God - that is, see Him. With Love in our souls (which is what "hearts" refers to in Scripture[excluding passages referring to the organ]), we see God. On the other hand, "Anyone who loves," St. John writes, "...knows God." (1 John 4:7).

To know God is to Love, but to Love not with our own, human Love, but with the Love that God has placed in us. Further, to know God is, according to Christ, the essence of eternal life. Love is that which at once - simultaneously - forgives sin and infuses the vision of God into our souls. Just as Christ was in Heaven while on earth, we too can be in Heaven, even while on earth. In fact, anyone who is in a state of Grace (does not have unforgiven mortal sin) is in Heaven, quite literally.

This makes more sense when we recall that Heaven belongs to the soul, not the body. Our bodies will be glorified and brought into Heaven, but even then, it is not by them which we experience Heaven (at least not directly; Heaven will involve the body, but not as a fundamental quality. See ST, I-II, 3,3 and ST, Sup., 92, 2 regarding this point). Heaven consists in the soul's vision of God.

The practical implications of this are tremendous. So long as we are in Grace, we are in Heaven, even here on earth. Christ experienced Heaven, even as He hung on the cross, and we can experience Heaven even as we bear some terrible pain or sadness. This explains the ability of the saints and the apostles, as recorded in Scripture, to profess tremendous joy even in their sufferings. By this, they were able to rejoice in their sufferings, as St. Paul said (Rom. 5:3). The pain can be overwhelming, but the soul is still in Heaven.

This also has implications for our consciences. Our bodies are afflicted with sin, even when our souls are striving for God. We will become angry without intention, our eyes will be drawn to look upon an illicit image, evil thoughts will pass through our minds. This does not matter. Our body will do these things even while our souls rejoice - in a certain very real sense unbeknownst to us - in the vision of God. Sin enters when we consent to these things, by allowing them in the door of our souls as it were. Make no mistake, to consent to or willingly engage in bodily wrong is sinful. It is also true that gradually, through living virtuously, God's Grace will heal our bodies so that these things will happen less and less, and if you are blessed in a special way, never at all. This must be what we strive for, but we must also not be discouraged if it does not happen this way. Some of the saints, for example Augustine, struggled with their bodies until their death.

And so as we go through life, it is easy to expect that we will have a lot of "cleaning up" to do in Purgatory. For many of us this will be the case. However, it is also possible that our souls may be much cleaner than we imagine. This is important to understand for the sake of perseverance, as it can be a great encouragement. Nevertheless, there is great danger in thinking of it in any way more than this. We all have many sins which indeed are in our souls, which indeed we do consent to and even engage in purposefully, and we needn't any excuses.

Rather, what we need to do is recognize just what it means to be in the state of Grace and strive to stay there. We need to recognize the reality that our souls are in Heaven even now, and live for that. "Is this song fit for a soul in Heaven?" "Is this movie something that is good to see when I can be seeing God?" "Should I spend time experiencing this when God is there for me to experience?"

And this is where all of this should bring us: to prayer. Our souls are filled with God's Love - they can see God - but because of our emphasis on the body, we don't recognize this. God is there, waiting to be experienced, and we don't even realize it. In prayer, we reach beyond the bodily senses of sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound, and reach the senses of our souls, the senses that have direct access to God Himself. We have this power, and we simply don't even realize it because we have never used it. Imagine if you had been fed intravenously your entire life and never had anything put into your mouth so that you didn't even realize there was such a thing as taste for never having used it before. This is the state we are in in regards to our souls.

In prayer, gradually and slowly, we are able to peel off the layers of flesh until we recognize these senses, the senses of our souls. I am not referring to verbal prayer, but mental prayer, to meditation. "Blessed is the man who... meditates night and day," David tells us in the first Psalm. Mary herself, the one creature living in the greatest communion with God, led a life of meditation, as Luke tells us when he says that Mary treasured sayings about Jesus and pondered them in her heart (2:19).

Our souls do not yet see God fully. As we grow in prayer and holiness, we will see God more and more as He is. If it is difficult to pray now, to take the time to do it, or to avoid sin, it will become easier. It can be frustrating when we struggle so much with these things, but we needn't feel this way. As we see God more and more, the choices between sin and God, or between one thing and the prayer by which we know God, will become easier. After all, the more we grow the more we will see Heaven - see God - and the choice between anything and this is really a very simple one when we see the choice we're making.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12). St. Paul wrote these words immediately before writing that Love is the most important thing. I want to end on this point. Love is truly the most important thing in the world. To Love is literally to know God! All of our actions, be they of Love, are actions of prayer and actions of Heavenly contemplation. God is Love! When we Love, we are knowing God. If we Love, we are experiencing God, even if we can't quite see it yet. St. Thérèse understood this, and so she Loved. And she Loved some more. And she Loved and she Loved and she Loved. As John wrote, "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19). He gave us His Love so that we can give it to others. By doing this - by Loving - we are entering more and more into the realm of God. Each simple, Loving action is nothing less than another step further into Heaven itself.

Take a plunge.

Heaven in Her Eyes

2007-05-16T03:26:00.000-04:00

It's so hard to look towards Heaven when we don't know exactly what it is we are looking forward to. It's no surprise that we sin, that we choose lesser things, when we don't even know what is being offered us. "Heaven..." It seems so abstract, so esoteric, so meaningless, really, as merely a word.

This is the face of St. Thérèse of Liseux. It is the face of a person who is filled with the Love of God and nothing else. Look at her. Look her in the eyes. There, you will see your every longing, your every desire, all that you have ever wanted, and in some mysterious way, so much more.

It is the face of someone who is looking to God and desiring nothing but Him, and who can almost see Him already. It is the face of a person who knows how much she is loved by God, and who lives every moment simply to receive that love so that she can share it with others. St. Thérèse understood how she was loved by God, and as a result you can see God - see Heaven - in her eyes.

This is the very meaning of life: to have what is in her eyes in our souls. No matter what we are going through, what mistakes we have made, or what longings and desires we might have, this is waiting for us. This is true joy, the unending joy that cannot be weakened or taken away. It's there for the taking... all we have to do is receive.

Strive for it. Ask for it. Cast away everything else you have, and it will be yours. Oh, how can we desire sex, alcohol, material things - even human love! - rather than that which is in Thérèse's eyes? All that those things can possibly give, and so, so much more, is right there. This is Heaven. This is what we are offered. Go and live every moment looking toward this prize... towards Love....

Carrying Our Crosses

2007-05-16T02:24:00.001-04:00

"Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me," Jesus said," cannot be my disciple." There is a great deal of meaning behind these words, and many Christians do try to pay attention to them. Our lives will contain many burdens we must bear, sufferings we must go through, and personal difficulties we must struggle through. We are called to bear these things as Jesus bore His cross: with humility, patience, love, and even thanksgiving to God our Father. I think we understand this. We don't always like it or do it, but we at least understand it.

However, the problem is that we typically acknowledge this and move on, or we make some half-hearted resolution to do better and then go back to our old ways. What we really need to do is actually carry our crosses, and suffer with Jesus. But this is what we've been trying to do - how can we do it?

There are many answers. The one I want to focus on here is to realize just what it means to carry our cross - and what it tells us. After all, we know we have to carry our crosses, but what does that actually mean? Why do we have to carry our crosses; what difference does it make? We all have some vague idea of it, to be sure. We know that we are sharing in Jesus' suffering when we carry our cross. We know that we are offering a sacrifice of praise to God... but does this mean anything personally to us?

I'm going to say something rather shocking here: Jesus couldn't save us alone, and He didn't. He needed human help. This is an incredibly shocking, if not scandalous, thing to say - but it's the reality, and in fact we are all familiar with this fact even if we don't realize it.

We all know Simon of Cyrene, even if not by name. He's the person that the Roman soldiers forced to help Jesus carry His cross. Matthew, Mark, and here Luke, recorded it: "And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus." (23:26) This shows us that Jesus allowed another person to help Him, and this itself is rather significant. Jesus wants us to be able to play a part... He did what we couldn't do, but He also didn't hoard it all to Himself so as that we can't do anything to help.

I have heard it explained rather beautifully by Rosalind Moss, a writer for This Rock magazine and a Jewish convert. Imagine, she says, a mother baking cookies in the kitchen when her little daughter walks into the kitchen behind her and asks to help. Now the mother doesn't need the child's help; she has the ingrediants, the tools, the bowls and cookie sheets, the oven, and the ability to put it all together to make cookies. In fact, the child could never make the cookies on her own. She couldn't even reach the counter! Is the mother going to not allow the poor child to help? Of course not... she loves her child, and she wants the child to feel a part of it and to help if she likes. Jesus is infinitely more loving than this mother, and so He would do no less for us. After all, if, Rosalind says, you could go back to Calvary and hold up Jesus' arms a little bit as He hung on the cross to take some of that burden off of Him, wouldn't you?

We can see that Jesus allows us to suffer with Him, then. This in itself is absolutely fantastic - to share in God's very own work and suffering. Words cannot convey how wonderful this is! If we only consider this, how can we not carry our crosses, realizing what an oppurtunity we are passing up!

But I said more than this. I said that Jesus couldn't save us on His own - without Simon. Why does it matter that someone else helped Him? Why does it matter that Jesus allowed Him to help, even if it is an astounding participation? Let's ask, then, why did they make Simon carry the cross? The answer must be because Jesus was incapable of doing so. This is the way it was depicted in The Passion of the Christ, and it makes a lot of sense. The Romans weren't nice guys, especially when it came to executions. They were ruthless. They didn't just want to be nice to Jesus here. The only reason they ever would have done this is if Jesus was actually incapable of carrying the cross on His own any further.

There's an incredibly important distinction here. Jesus, in His Divinity, certainly needed no help. God doesn't need help with anything. But in His humanity, Jesus did need help. His human body was spent. It couldn't go any further. He needed the addition of Simon's humanity, as it were, to finish the job.

But to say that Jesus - the God-man - needed Simon is different. He was, after all, God and man, so why could He not simply have miraculously lifted His body up and kept it going? The answer is, no, He couldn't, not if He wanted to save us. Jesus became man primarily to be a human representative - a sinless human representative - to God the Father on our behalf. Some human being needed to offer God a perfect sacrifice, but because all human beings were sinful, none could. Christ couldn't offer this simply as God, because then it would be God offering God a sacrifice; there would be no benefit to humanity, because no human would have made the sacrifice. If Christ had performed some miraculous act to offer the sacrifice, then it would have essentially subsumed His humanity, and the sacrifice wouldn't have been an authentically human act. his role as human Mediator would have been destroyed, and the sacrifice would have been no good for us.

So without Simon's help, Christ couldn't have made it up to Calvary to be put on the cross. What's more, up until the point of actually being put on that cross, the sacrifice couldn't necessarily be said to have been offered, even had Jesus died on the way. His sacrifice was a spotless sacrifice, a sinless one of Christ being obedient unto death (cf. Phill. 2:8). Up until being nailed to that cross, Christ hadn't done that yet. He had gone far, but not all the way. He hadn't actually been obedient to death, because He hadn't put Himself in the position definitely to be killed yet. For example, He could have escaped, or tried to. He certainly could have sinned on the cross, too, by rejecting His death even as He underwent it, but there is something a bit different about this. This would be a different way He could have sinned, but there was still the fact that He had not yet actually gone all the way to death, not volunatarilly. Allowing Himself to be nailed to that cross was truly a consummation of sorts to His acceptance of death.

Simon made up what was lacking in Christ's sufferings, then. In fact, this is exactly the choice of words Paul used in Colossians when he explained his sufferings: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." (1:24) This is a wonderfully deep statement, in light of what we have been discussing, and it leads directly to the point of all of this. Note that Paul said that it was in his "flesh" that he made up what was lacking, just as Simon had made up in his flesh. Simon provided what was lacking in Christ's bruised and battered humanity. St. Paul said that he was doing the same.

Let's consider one more thing. Simon was one of the most common names amongst Jews at the time of Christ. Cyrene was an important gentile port city, from which the entire world could be reached. Simon of Cyrene, represents, essentially, the everyman. He is the common Jew, and the gentile from anywhere in the world. The place he took is the place that any person could take. When St. Paul bore his own sufferings well, he took the place of Simon. Paul carried his cross, and in carrying his cross, he was not carrying his alone, but that of Christ. He was adding to Christ's afflictions what was lacking, just as Simon did. And when we bear our crosses, we do the same.

And this is the reality of our crosses. Our crosses are not simply difficulties to suffer through out of praise, but to take part in the true sacrifice of Christ. They are sufferings by which we take part in the ultimate praise, the only praise ever complete enough for God, the praise of Christ's offering on the cross. When we bear our crosses, we bear His, and when we bear His, we become a true part of His sacrifice, His sacrifice of praise, His eucharistion (Greek: thanksgiving). We hold up His arms that little bit - out of love. To be His disciple, we must take up our crosses, for apart from that, His cross would lay on the ground with Him just inside the walls of Jerusalem.

This also means something very important, so much more important than anything else. It means that Jesus didn't just die for us but He died for you - personally. Every step He took on the way of the cross was for you and you personally. In the grand mystery of the Incarnation, His steps were at once for all mankind and exclusively for you. He died because He loves you - not because He loved mankind, not because He loved everyone or because He loved me or us, but because He loved YOU.

Thinking of this, our crosses must seem like toothpicks.

Are You Semi-Pelagian?

2007-05-16T02:18:00.000-04:00

A shocking question, I know. It has the force to harrow one to the bones just considering it!

But seriously, it is an important question. I came to thinking about it last evening at the vigil for Virginia Tech, when we sang "Amazing Grace." It's a beautiful song, really, in terms of the melody and such, and I must admit I have been known to sing it on my way home from school on occasion. The words are pretty nice, too - the message that is intended is fantastic.

But it's semi-Pelagian, or at least could be understood that way.

Pelagianism is a form of theological belief (considered a heresy by the Catholic Church and virtually every other Christian group in existence) which is named after a man named Pelagius who lived in the latter part of the 4th century. Pelagius taught that man could be saved completely by his own actions. According to Pelagius, a person could live a virtuous enough life, staying away from sins and doing enough good works - to earn the right to enter Heaven as, more or less, a payment from God. Man didn't need any Grace. This is the heresy that Augustine fought so strongly against, occupying a rather large portion of his time in fact. It's also the heresy that is probably most likely to strike horror into the heart of any good Protestant.

Semi-Pelagianism is a belief that developed in the middle of the 5th century in what would later become southern France. It held that Grace was necessary, but that man could make the first step toward God, Who would then respond with the Grace necessary for salvation. It rejects the idea that a person can somehow make his or her way to Heaven apart from God's help, but still holds out the idea that a person can at least start to approach God apart from being called. In semi-Pelagianism, the fallen person asks God to save him or her, and then God does it. This idea was rejected in 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which condemned, among other things, the idea that "the beginning of faith and the very desire of faith... proceeds from our own nature and not from a gift of Grace..."

The orthodox Christian position, the one held by all but a few pockets of Christians, is that Grace comes before anything. Grace is what enables a person to realize his or her need for God, to believe in God, to ask God for salvation, and to do anything else at all. There's some disagreement over whether or not the individual must consent to this Grace (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Evangelicalism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, most Baptists, most Pentacostalism) or whether God simply chooses those who will accept it without the cooperation of the individual (Presbyterianism, most Southern Baptists, other Calvanists), but the fact that God has to reach out to man and not the other way around is all but universally accepted.

The potential problem in "Amazing Grace" is the verse, "How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ’d!" This could easily be read to mean that Grace came with the first moment of belief, as if the belief of the speaker prompted the Grace, rather than the orthodox Christian position that the belief was preceded by Grace. This interpretation is strengthend by the fact that the verses immediately preceding speak about some of the benefits of Grace, such as the relief of fear, intimating that the these treasured effects had been gained by merit of the belief.

In any case, I didn't write this for the sake of criticizing this song. I wrote it for the sake of leading us to examine ourselves. Semi-Pelagianism is one of those interesting things in Christianity that nobody believes, but a great number live as if they do. The idea that we go to God for what we need, rather than God calling us to come to Him, is one that at times permeates our lives. This is especially true because of the emphasis that Christianity puts on faith.

We are saved by faith, we must have faith, we must follow God with faith. With this mindset, albeit one based on the truth, it is very easy to fall into the same error as the author of "Amazing Grace" seems to have. We realize that our faith is important - we must have it, and we must exercise it, but beyond that, we must realize that when we exercise our faith or cling to our faith or even simply have faith, we are simply replying "yes" to God's promptings.

This should cause us to rely even more on God. Our faith is not a sort of buzzer by which we can call upon God, hoping He says 'yes.' If anything, our faith is the gift that gave us when we said yes to His buzzer. Saint Paul teaches us that our faith is the gift of Grace, saying, " by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." (Eph. 2:8) The "it" he is referring to is the faith - the faith is not of our own doing, but is the gift of God. We can't even believe apart from God. We utterly rely on Him for everything. Of course, we have to respond, which is gets to what St. Paul talks about in the passage Stephanie brought up, as he says that we must "work out our own salvation." (Phil. 2:12) We have to actually respond with a "yes" when God gives us the Grace to pray, to ask Him for something, to do something good, or even simply to believe.

Yet it is in these moments that we should realize that we couldn't even be doing this apart from Him. When we pray, it is because He loves us enough to enable us to pray to Him. When we goto church, it is because He has given us the Grace to do that, and we should thank Him. When we believe, at each moment that we do, we should thank God and praise Him to High Heaven for the gift of belief, the gift that He gave all of His own Love - all the while realizing that the very praises we are saying are there only as another gift from Him.

He gives us everything. All that we give to God we are simply giving back what He provided in the first place. This is how indebted we are to our God and our Saviour. And this knowledge should lead us to recognize something even more profund. Every moment of faith, and every act of faith, and every good deed, and every prayer, and every second spent inside church, feeding the poor, or placing a few cents into a charity tin at the drive through - each of these moments is another yes to God, another yes just as important as that first moment we came to Christ in the first place. At that time, we said "yes" to His Grace, and at each and every other moment - with every breath we take believing in Jesus Christ - we are saying "yes" to His Grace.

And so how can we fail to pray? How can we not worship God? How can we not keep Him in mind at all moments? For when we do not do these things, we are failing to say "yes." Even if our choices are not at the level of a conscious "no" to the Lord, we are nevertheless passing up an oppurtunity to say "yes." We are passing up an oppurtunity to receive the gift of God, the gift that He offers so freely and at such great cost to Himself. Let us not then be idle in our faith, nor in our works, nor prayers nor our Love, for with each moment passing, our Heavenly, Loving God, Our God Who Loves us more than anyone could and desires the greatest happiness for us, who has given His only Son over to death simply so that we could say "yes" to what we should have been saying "yes" to in the first place, calls to us. Our Divine Spouse awaits, calling - let us go to Him without reserve.

What Easter Means to Us

2007-04-10T02:20:00.000-04:00

The tomb is empty, and Jesus Christ is risen. Today, we celebrate how 2,000 years ago, after tremendous suffering and a horrible death, a man rose from the dead and made it possible for all of us to go with Him. You all know the story. We’ve probably all heard it so many times that it may not have the effect it ought to on us anymore. Most of us have been hearing the story of Jesus’ Resurrection since before we were old enough to remember. Some of us may have heard it only a few times, but the fact is that it is the center of our faith and so, in a way, we think of it all throughout the year. Dare I say, we take it for granted all throughout the year.

But this is the story – the historical, real as World War II or the American Revolution or Columbus’ landing in America story – of a man dying one of the most thorough deaths a person can, being taken down from a cross, lifted all about, wrapped up, carried to a tomb, being put inside, and then three days later rising to be no less alive than any one of us is here today. This is something we should be amazed by, not something we should hear passively as though it were an old war story we’re hearing grandpa tell for the hundredth time or that little book we’ve been made to read to our children at bedtime for so many times we’ve lost count.

Unfortunately, that’s how we react. We don’t mean to. I think I could fairly vouch for everyone here that we all wish we didn’t react this way. We wish the story could astound us, confuse us, and shock us like it did those first disciples long ago. When Mary Magdalene went to the tomb on Easter morning, she was shocked to find Jesus’ body gone. What does she say? Does she assume Christ had risen from the dead? No, even after His having spoken of it so many times, the disciples still didn’t get it. Mary’s first thought was that the body had been taken. Moved. Perhaps stolen. Thomas, upon seeing Christ standing in front of him, still couldn’t believe it. This event was so shocking that many of the Jews of the time simply refused to believe it – they couldn’t bring themselves to – and never joined the Christian Church. Saul of Tarsus refused to believe until he was spoken to by Christ in a mystical vision.

If we want to be like these first Christians, we need to follow Christ’s words and be like children. “Unless… you become like children,” He said, “you shall never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” To children, the story of Christ is not new. To children, the story of Christ is as vibrant and real in their minds as the visit to the grocery store to buy things for Easter dinner. To children, the Resurrection of Christ is filled with wonder and awe.

But those of us who are grown have an advantage – and it is an advantage though it doesn’t seem to be. Our advantage is that we understand that people don’t rise from the dead. We understand, now more than ever in this culture of death, war, and violence, that death is final. We know that when our friends, children, and siblings go to Iraq, they might die – and we know what that means. We have been through the suffering of losing a parent or a loved one, and we know the finality of that. We see in the paper each and every day the death that fills the world – and we know that it is something that one does not return from.

But Christ did. He rose from the dead. The finality of death meant nothing to Him. This is what we celebrate today – a man rising from the dead. This is what our faith is about. This event, an event so real it could have been on the front page of the Jerusalem Times if such a thing existed in His day. Christ was like every other poor soul who got themselves in perhaps over their head and ended up dead for it – except He rose. So how can we become like children? How can we become like those first disciples? Well, for one thing we can think of the pains in our own lives. We can imagine the time when a loved on passed on – go ahead, do it - or when a friend was killed. Remember the finality of it - and then imagine they rose from the grave. Imagine they came back. This was the experience that the disciples had. Their friend – their teacher – risen again, come back from the tomb, from the end.

And so I’d like to ask you to think for a moment about what Easter means to us now, here, today. What else can we learn from the first disciples about us today? What does the Resurrection of Christ mean for us? It means death has no hold over us. It means we can escape our sins and go to Heaven – we know that. It’s another thing we take terribly for granted. But that’s the end of the journey. What about right now, in the midst of the journey itself? What does it mean for us as we prepare for that end, realizing that it could come at any moment?

Like Peter, it means that we can return God, or even to a friend or to family, no matter how much we’ve hurt them or how harshly we abandoned them. Like it did Peter, Easter gives us the chance to forget the past altogether and to simply turn to God and say, “I’m sorry.” It gives us the chance to tell Him we love Him, and for us to realize that He accepts us back, even if we have abandoned and denied Him at the most crucial hour. And, what’s more, Peter didn’t just do this - no he rushed. When he was told that Christ had risen, he immediately got up and ran to the tomb to see for himself. When Christ appeared to the disciples as they fished in his boat, Peter didn’t take the few minutes it would have to row the boat ashore. He lept from it, into the water, and swam to meet Jesus as fast as he could. He wanted so desperately to return to God, and on Easter he could. We can too, and we shouldn’t take our time any more than Peter did, but jump out of the boat, get ourselves wet, abandon a catch we had been struggling to make all day, and do anything else we need to simply to get to Jesus as fast as we can.

Like Thomas, it means we have the chance to literally touch God and to see His reality, and that He is ours. In this special time of Grace, He is there in a special way for us that we may see Him as we consider His wounds, and we may realize just what it is He means to us. Easter Sunday wasn’t the first time Thomas doubted; it seemed to be a bit of a personality trait of his. With Thomas, we can see all that Jesus has gone through and that now despite our abandoning Him, He wants us to come with Him still, and we can fall on our knees and say, “My Lord and My God.”

With John, we can see the Glory of God in some terrible suffering we have had to see a friend or loved one go through. As John stood helpless at the foot of the cross and watched Christ suffer agony upon agony, we too may be helpless to stop the suffering of someone we care about. As John finally saw the glory of God in that suffering, as he finally saw all that that suffering was for and all that that suffering really meant, we too can, on this Easter, see in Christ’s Resurrection the glory of God in the suffering of someone – or perhaps ourselves – and the ultimate joy that is born of that suffering.

With Mary, we can learn to trust God regardless of what He does, or asks of us, to know that His ways and the difficult times He allows us to go through are for our own good if we will embrace Him. Jesus’ poor mother had to stand by and watch as her son was abused, mocked, tortured, and killed – all for having done nothing wrong. No human being could possibly go through more suffering than this poor Woman. Yet she trusted God, knowing He would deliver her son – and herself – from it all, and on Easter morning, He finally did. With Mary, we can learn to trust God and go through with things His way, rather than our own, surrendering our own understandings and even our own desires and opinions to for the sake of what He asks. We can recognize that even if we think there is a better way, even if perhaps we see what God asks as being a bit unfair or a bit harsh, in the end His way is the way of true compassion. His way is the way of love. His way is the way that leads to the Resurrection, and to the unsurpassed joy of Easter morning. With Mary, we can put aside our own confusions, opinions, and understandings, trust in and follow after God, and wait for that Easter morning in our lives when it all suddenly makes sense.

And finally like Christ Himself, we can recognize that the mockery and hatred, the stripes on our backs, and the spittle in our faces that are given us unjustly by those who do not understand needn’t bother us. Christ did not deserve death. He did not deserve to be beaten. He did not deserve to be spit upon or to be mocked or to be reviled. In fact, He deserved the highest glory and honor a person could receive. But He accepted all these things willingly, lovingly. He didn’t hate those who did Him injustice, but loved and prayed for them. He didn’t let them bother Him, and He didn’t compromise for them. He did what God asked of Him, trusting in Him completely, and caring only what God asked of Him. He turned to God in His difficult times and in His easy times, and He didn’t make exceptions. As the ungodly did Him harm, He never forgot the Godly friends He did have, even when they abandoned Him. He realized that John and His Mother were there with Him even in His own suffering, and in the midst of all the mockery, hatred, and violence, He turned to them to love them. He turned to John as a friend, and to Mary as His Mother.

And in the end, none of that mockery mattered. None of the pain Christ endured mattered. Mary’s confusion was erased, and Easter morning answered any of the questions she may have had about why things were as they were. The suffering John went through didn’t matter either in the end, except perhaps to make the ultimate outcome more joyful. Thomas’ doubts were answered, and he found a faith like he had never had before. And Peter – poor Peter. His sins were forgiven, as terrible as they were, and Christ accepted Him back lovingly. On this day, on Easter Sunday, none of these sins, doubts, fears, confusions or sufferings mattered. All that mattered was Christ, a man, risen from the dead, making it possible for us to rise with Him. Let us see that Christ is risen for us today, and that all of this is a reality for us even now – if we only ask for it. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Truly, He is Risen.

Why did Jesus rename Simon?

2006-06-13T02:18:00.000-04:00

The apostle Peter is one of the most well known individuals from the Bible. In fact, he is mentioned in the New Testament more than any other person except for Christ Himself. Peter is a favorite of many because of his personality; he is a man whom modern readers have a very easy time relating to. This is because Peter's personality is timeless. It is not bound by the culture and age in which he lived. He was a working man, a fisherman. He was a passionate man, a trait which sometimes got him into trouble. He was also quick to speak his mind, seldom holding back or taking the time to think. Peter was the man who promised Christ he would follow Him wherever He went, yet he was also the man who denied Him three times. Every Christian can relate to this immediately, and every Christian takes comfort in Christ's forgiveness of the fisherman for even so great a sin. Yes, Peter was all of these things and more, expressing qualities in which perhaps any human in any age could easily identify with. Yet for all of this, for being so many things to so many people, Peter was not the one thing that is most central to his own identity; He was not born with the name Peter.

The man whom gave the first sermon in the history of Christianity was born Simon, son of Jonah. He grew up with his brother Andrew, who also would be an apostle, and together they fished the Sea of Galilee as their trade. However, it was when Christ, the God-man, came to make them fishers of men that Simon first learned that he was to be called by another name:

"Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas" (which, when translated, is Rock.)" (John 1:42)

The word Cephas is Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the apostles, and it means rock. Yet Simon continued to be called by his birthname as he followed Christ, learning from the Saviour's wisdom. It was not until he had spoken that earth-shaking truth revealed to him by the Father, the truth that his rabbi was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God, that Simon would be given that most famous of names, as His Lord said to him, "I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

This name Peter, so common in our age, most certainly resounded as none other ever had in the newly renamed apostle's ear, for it had so different a meaning for he as it does now to us. He did not hear, as we read, the word 'Peter,' but instead the Aramaic word Kepha, the word we say in English as 'rock.' The New Testament manuscripts were written in Greek, andin fact the name "Peter" is nothing more than the Anglicanized Greek word for rock, 'Petros.' Whenever we see the word 'Peter' in our English Bible, if we turn to the same passage in the original Greek it says, 'Petros' - Rock. The significance of this is made more clear by the knowledge that Christ's declaration is the first recorded usage in all of history of the name Peter. To Christ, and to Peter, and to the apostles, he was not Peter in the way we know him. No, he was simply Rock.

The modern equivalent is to be found in the entertainment industry. Former WWF wrestler and current actor The Rock helps us to understand just what this name meant to those who lived with Peter. If one were to speak to this man, one would say something such as, "Hello, Rock, how are you doing?" When fans of his discuss his latest film, they might say, "Rock was particularly good in that last scene!" This is how Peter was spoken of throughout all of the Christian world in his days as an apostle. When news came to Anitoch that he was on his way to visit, the people said "Rock is coming here soon." When it was time to eat dinner at the house where Peter was staying, the children were instructed to "go and tell Rock that it is time to eat." And when the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture through the apostle Matthew, the Lord and giver of life said, "you are Rock, and on this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."

Yet when they wrote, Matthew and the other Gospel writers chose to write 'Petros' instead of 'Kepha.' It very interesting that they did this, because 'Kepha' was Simon's new name, not Petros. Consider English translations of the French Masterpiece Les Miserables. Characters' names are kept in the original language even though all the other words, words such as 'go' and 'run' and 'eat' and 'he' and 'cat' are translated into English. Jean is still called Jean in the English translation, while 'pomme' is translated into 'apple' and 'vous' is translated into 'you.' Even though the French name Jean is equivalent to the English name John, translators keep names in their original language because names are not like other words. A name is just a way of referring to people. A name, in a certain sense, is just a particular sound by which we identify ourselves. Should a man from France named Jean travel to the US and be called John, he may be confused or offended because, though it is equivalent, John would not be his name - Jean would be.

Therefore it is indeed interesting that the Gospel writers, writers inspired by God Himself, used the Greek word for 'rock,' Petros, instead of the apostle's actual name, Kepha. Throughout the rest of the Scriptures, there are many examples of the New Testament writers preserving the names of Old Testament personalities in their original languages instead of writing their Greek equivalent. For instance, the name "Moses" means 'drawn from'; it was given Him by Pharoah's daughter because she drew him from the river. Just as translating 'Rock' into Greek yields Petros, translating 'drawn from' would result in Anaspaoek. Yet when Matthew and the other Gospel authors described the transfiguration, they did not write, "and standing there with Him were Anaspaoek and Elijah." No, they wrote "Moses and Elijah." Similarly, in his language, Abraham's name meant "father of nations," yet the Gospel writers referred to him as Abraham, not Paterekethnos. They do this because these words were the people's names. Names are not meant, like nouns verbs and adjectives, to be translated for each language in whic they are used; they are meant to be universal identifiers, identifiers that are in fact so deeply connected to the people they identify that they actually become part of their identities.

Yet in the Gospels, the authors do not call Peter by His name. Instead, they call him by what his name means. They do not call him by his identifier, but by his identity. These gospels were written by the power of the Holy Spirit to convey the truth of Christ to all future generations. Every word was carefully chosen by God to teach His people everything that He wished to. In doing this, Peter's name was ignored. That name by which every Christian living in the apostolic age knew him was not selected. Instead, the word which conveys a particular meaning was recorded. It would be as though a historian chose to write 'President' in the place of 'George Bush,' emphasizing the office and identity over the person. As they recorded Holy Writ, the "word settled forever in the Heavens" (Psalm 199:89), the inspired scribes said Petros. It is a part of the eternal word of the Creator, that same Word by which He created the Heavens and the Earth. As they wrote for all God's people for all time, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and even God Himself didn't care about telling us what Peter's name was. They cared about telling us that he was Rock.

Mary's Role in Heaven

2006-06-08T03:00:00.000-04:00

Joh 2:1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Joh 2:2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.
Joh 2:3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
Joh 2:4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come."
Joh 2:5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Joh 2:6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
Joh 2:7 Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim.
Joh 2:8 And he said to them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast." So they took it.
Joh 2:9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom
Joh 2:10 and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now."
Joh 2:11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

There are several very key points here. First, note how it starts off:

Joh 2:1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Joh 2:2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.

John introduces this scene by putting the emphasis on Mary. He says, this is what's going on, and this is who is there. Then he says, "Jesus was also invited..." This doesn't mean Jesus isn't important, but John begins by making sure we are paying attention to Mary. The reader is naturally inclined to be focused on Jesus, and the fact is that Jesus is prominent in this passage as well, so the reader would simply take no notice of Mary while reading this passage. However, John wants to make sure there is attention on her by immediately putting her in the forefront in the beginning before the narrative starts focusing on Christ. This way the reader will not pass her over, whereas if it began by saying "On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and Jesus was there. His mother was there also," Mary would fall into the background too quickly and the reader wouldn't pay any attention to her.

Next we see that Mary intercedes for the wedding guests so that Jesus will grant them something, which ends up being wine. So at a bare minimum this passage is showing us Mary in an intercessory role.

But there's something far, far more interesting about this passage. If we go back to John chapter 1, we see a summary of Christ calling the apostles. He is starting to build His kingdom. The last line of John chapter 1 says:

Joh 1:51 And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Immediately after John records Jesus saying "you will see heaven opened," he writes "On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there."

So John tells us that the kingdom of Heaven will be opened, then he says "on the third day there was a wedding." Again and again and again Heaven is described by Jesus as being a wedding. John, who wrote this very passage, uses the image in Revelation where he describes Heaven as the "marriage supper of the lamb." On top of this, Heaven was opened to all believers on the third day after the crucifixion.

So if we read through John chapter 1 into John 2, we see Jesus building the kingdom, then we are told we will see Heaven opened up, then we are told that there was a wedding on the third day. This happens to be the only wedding in the entire New Testament, a New Testament filled with the use of weddings to represent Heaven. What we are seeing in the wedding at Cana is Heaven. What we see in John 1-2 is a description of Christ building His kingdom, then of Heaven being opened on the third day in which Jesus brings desciples to Heaven.

There's more. John starts his gospel by paralleling Genesis 1:1, when he says, "In the beginning..." He then describes the creation, saying, "all things were made through him..." He then mentions the Mosaic Covenant, saying "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."(17) He then mentions Isaiah and John the Baptist, two of the prophets, quoting John saying, "He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said."(23) John the prophet is leading the way to Christ. Then Jesus comes, and we are told "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (29) Then John mentions the coming of the Holy Spirit in verse 32. Then we see Jesus gather desciples.

Then So really, if we read John 1-2, we see John summarize:

1) The Creation
2) The Law
3) The Prophets
4) The coming of Christ (the Nativity)
5) The descent of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost)
6) The The Building of Jesus' Kingdom

John is paralleling his account to the entire history of the world. Then when this is done, he says we will see Heaven opened and then describes a wedding on the third day.

The wedding is, again, the only description of an actual wedding n the New Testament, even though the enitre New Testament, including John himself, use weddings again and again and again to describe Heaven. He presents this right after saying Heaven will be seen opened, and he places it on the third day, which is when Heaven was opened up. The wedding at Cana is a description of Heaven.

And in that description, John calls our attention to Mary, and Mary intercedes and Christ as a result performs a miralce involving wine, which connects directly to the concept of the Eucharist. Then the master of the feast rewards the bridegroom because the wine the bridegroom has provided is the good wine, the best wine, wine that is better than the previous wines. This is a description of the Father rewarding the Son for His good blood. This miracle, we are told, manifested Christ's glory.

After this, John introduces a new scene, this time keeping Christ in the forefront by introducing it, " After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother..." (12) This further makes the point that John's introduction of Mary first, almost in away describing the main character of a story and describing Christ the way one would describe a lesser character, is not just a fluke (nothing in Scripture could be anyways), but is significant.

Of course if you try to take John 1-2 as a literal timetable of the history of the world, it won't work, because He's already shown up in John 1 before Moses and Isaiah and so forth. The point is that John is drawing a parallel, not giving a summary. Protestant commentators have also noticed this parallel, in fact many of them. Same thing with the wedding. The analogy is not perfect, but Jesus' parables aren't either. Parables and anaolgies are things which are similar to other things; by their very nature, they are also dissimilar, or else they would be the things they represent, which they are not. The sorts of things I am describing here are what are called polyvalent symbolism, something studied in the Scriptures by Catholics and Protestants alike, in which one symbol has multiple meanings.

(By the way, this doesn't really have to do with the post but it is so related I will put it up anyways. We see that after this description, John turns attention to the Passover feast. Then he makes another reference to "three days" and says that also at the Passover feast He did signs which led people to believe, just as His sign at the wedding was described as leading people to believe. This seems to be a comparison between the Heavenly goings-on and the Mass.)

Is Mortal Sin a Sort of "Lightbulb" Salvation?

2006-04-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

In having a dialogue about mortal sin here, the objection was raised that this is a sort of "lightbulb" salvation, where one moment it is on, the next it's off. One moment you are saved, the next you are not. This sort of salvation was said to be unbiblical. There are two problems with this, the first being that Catholic theology doesn't look at it this way. From our perspective, with our human minds, the linear "first you're saved, then you're not, then you are again" is actually correct and biblical, but Catholic theology does not limit God and force Him into our human understanding of time. In reality, how this would work is much more complicated than we could understand. So the short answer is, it's not a sort of lighbulb salvation.

However, the fact is that salvation as an on again off again thing is quite Scriptural. I posted this example over there, and I thought it would be beneficial for you to see here. If you want to see the entire dialogue, read the comments over at the other site. Here you go!

Again, I would not call it lightbulb salvation, but if you want to, I have Scripture for that.

Mat 10:32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,
Mat 10:33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Mat 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Ok, that premise is clear. A little later in Matthew:

Mat 26:33 Peter answered him, "Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away."
Mat 26:34 Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times."
Mat 26:35 Peter said to him, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!" And all the disciples said the same.

Now we have another premise that strengthens the first: Christ equates denying Him with falling away. Not only this, but the parallel is drawn in that Peter denied Christ to save his life, whereas Christ says if one did that he would lose his life. When Peter denied Christ to save his life, he did not physically die, so earthly life could not be what Christ was talking about, though very few, probably mostly modernists and demythologizers, would have tried to say that it was anyways. So we have a few premises:

1) Whoever denies Christ, Christ will deny Him before the Father
2) Peter denied Christ

Conclusion - Christ denied Peter before the Father

or

1) Whoeve would save his life over Christ will lose it
2) Peter saved his life over Christ

Conclusion - Peter lost his life

There are plenty of other ways to put this, and it is even more obvious without having to use my syllogisms because there is a lot more evidence, even in this post, then I have put into the syllogisms. In Luke, Jesus says to Peter:

Luk 22:31 "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,
Luk 22:32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers."

So Peter was going to turn back, and as we know he did. Here is what we know:

A) Whoever denies Christ will be denied before the Father
B) This is the same as falling away
C) Whoever saves his life over Christ will lose it
D) Peter denied Christ and saved his life over Christ

Conclusion - Peter lost his life and fell away, and would be denied before the Father.

If he had died that moment, he would be in according to the Bible.However, Christ says that he would turn back. Turn back from what? From his denial. He did, in John 21, where Christ asks Peter if he loves Him three times. If Peter had died after this, we can be pretty confident that he would have gone to heaven.So here we have a clear, unambiguous case of 'light-bulb' salvation.

The Eucharist - Is it Really Jesus?

2006-03-23T04:33:00.000-05:00

There are many different issues seperating Catholics and Protestants today. Each is extremely important in its own way. Ought we to base our doctrines on the Bible alone? Is a man saved by faith alone, or isn't he? Was Mary conceived without sin? These are clearly very important issues, and issues that are not to be taken lightly. Most of them may have an impact on our eternal destination, but if one really loves God, getting them right is important even if they didn't. With all the complexities of these issues, a person hardly knows where to begin and where to turn to determine the truth.

However, there is one doctrine that really stands out above the rest, and that is the Eucharist. The importance of the Eucharist cannot be understated. If Catholics are wrong, they are guilty of daily committing what is by far the most stupid act of idolatry in the history of man by worshipping a small piece of bread. On the other hand, if Protestants are wrong, they mock and denigrate God, and pass up the chance to be with Him every day, while Catholics have the strongest testimony to the truth of their beliefs possible: God Himself. This question, then, could be a great aid to those trying to decide who just don't have the ability or the time to go through an endless supply of theological books, documents, and arguements.

So then, the pivotal, all important question is simply, is the Eucharist really Jesus Christ? Does the evidence support this view? And is this evidence independent of other areas of disagreement, such as the authority of the Church?

Undeniably and overwhelmingly. In fact, the Bible provides all the information one could ever need to show this.

The last supper accounts provide some of the information. Matthew's gospel records this in chapter 26, starting in verse 20 when the 12 apostles sit down to eat the passover meal. It is critical to remember that this was a passover meal. The passover sacrifice was always to be an ublemished lamb (Ex. 12:5), and its bones were not to be broken (Ex. 12:46, Num. 9:12) Jesus was a passover sacrifice, and in keeping with the statutes of the Passover, He was unblemished, being without sin, and His bones were not broken (John 19:36). It is for this reason that He is called "Lamb of God." This is so important because God required that the Passover lamb be eaten in its entirety after shedding its blood (Ex. 12:8-10, 34:25, Num. 9:12) If the lamb was not eaten, the Passover sacrifice had not been kept. The Lamb of God had His blood shed on the cross, and after it must be eaten for the sacrifice to be kept. This is done through the Eucharist. In fact, the Passover sacrifice was instituted to save the firstborn sons, and sons are exactly what we become when we enter into faith with Christ (Mat. 5:9, 5:45, Luk 6:35, 20:36, John 12:36, Rom. 8:14-15, 8:23, 9:26, 2 Cor 6:18, Gal. 3:26, 4:5-6, Heb. 12:7-8). We must consume the Lamb if we, as sons, are to be saved.

The language that Jesus used at the last supper is also a big help in answering this question. As He said "Take this, and eat it, this is my body," He instructed the Apostles to "do this in remembrance of me." To our modern english ears this sounds as though the Lord simply wished the apostles to recall Him. However, the greek word which is translated as "remembrance" is very insteresting. It is anamnēsis, a word which had two important uses during the time of Christ. To the greeks, the word referred to a process by which an abstract idea moved into the material world. For example, Plato used the word to refer to the forms becoming realities to the people of this world. To the greek speaking Jews, the word had sacrificial meaning. In the greek Old Testament that was used by Christ and the apostles, the word is used to mean "memorial sacrifice" in Leviticus 24:7, Numbers 10:10, Pslam 38, and Psalm 70. In the book of Hebrews, the word is also used in a sacrificial way "There is in these sacrifices a reminder [anamnēsis] of sin year after year." (10:3) Therefore, from one standpoint Christ's words indicate the moving of His heavenly body into the material world, and from another they indicate the sacrificial nature of what He was commanding the apostles to do. In fact, even the word which is translated as "do this," poiein, carries sacrificial meaning. In the greek Old Testament, it is used 70 times in this way, such as in Exodus 29:38: "Now this is what you shall offer (poieseis) upon the altar: two lambs a year old, day by day, continually." Translating Luke 22:19 most literally and according to these etymological facts would mean Jesus said, "This is my body given for you; offer this as a memorial sacrifice of me."

The Bible continues to point to this idea in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul gives his great instruction on the Eucharist. He uses the very same words as does Luke: anamnēsis and poiein. This gives even further insight into the meaning of anamnēsis. Jesus spoke the words of the last supper in Aramaic, not greek. Paul's letter to the Corinthians is one of the earliest writings existing about the Eucharist, even earlier than Matthew. When he wrote to the Corinthians, he had to translate Christ's words into greek. Corinth was a greek city and Paul chose the word anamnēsis realizing that the Corinthians would have understood it according to the greek usage, the passing from a heavenly existence to a material existence. On the other hand, Paul was Jewish rabbi who was very familiar with the Greek Old Testament. He understood the term also in its sacrificial meaning. Paul's use of the word conveys both the sacrificial and the transcendental meaning. (In fact, the Hebrew equivalent of anamnēsis, zikaron, also carried the transcendental meaning.)

Paul's Letter the the Corinthians holds even more evidence that the Eucharist truly is the body of Christ. In chapter 10, he asks, "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf." (16-17) The only way that the cup could be a participation in the blood of the Lord, and the bread a participation in his body, would be if the cup contained His blood and the bread was His body. Paul then writes, "Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons." (18-21) He speaks of eating sacrifices in the same passage as speaking of the Eucharist. He says that eating sacrifices is a participation in the altar, just as receiving the Eucharist is a participation in calvary, the altar of Christ's sacrifice. He then goes on to make the distinction between sacrifices to idols and those made to God, saying that one cannot both participate in the sacrifice of pagans and also participate in the sacrifice to God, which he has just identified as the Eucharist.

In chapter 11 Paul continues to discuss the Eucharist, strengthening the case even further. In verse 27, he says that "whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord." The only way that one might profane the body of the Lord would be if the Eucharist really were His body. Paul then goes on to explicitly say that the Eucharist is the body of the Lord, as he warns that, "anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself." (29) Lastly, in verse 30, he says that many were sick and dying from committing this sin. This is very reminiscent of the Jews who died from touching the Ark of the Covenant, where the Lord truly dwelt, because they were impure with sin.

Even given all of this, the most strong evidence that the Eucharist is truly Christ's body may be found in John chapter 6. This chapter overflows with Christ speaking of eating His body and drinking His blood. Those who reject that the Eucharist really is Christ make one criticism of this passage. They say that the context shows Christ is speaking symbolically. In the beginning of chapter 6, Jesus feeds the 5,000 with his maraculous bread. Then , in verse 34, the people ask Jesus to always give them this bread. Christ then replies that He is the bread of life, and in verse 35 says that those who come to Him will never go hungry. This context, some say, shows that Jesus' references to eating Him are merely symbolic.

However, the passage clearly shows that this is not the case. After Christ speaks of giving the people His flesh, the desciples ask "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (52) Here they are interpreting Jesus' words to mean He will give them His literal body to eat. Instead of correcting them, Jesus uses even more direct and strong language. First, he makes the well-known statement, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." (53) He then continues in verse 57 to say, "Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats me will live because of me." The greek word used in this verse, trogon, is not the standard word for eating, but actually conveys the idea of chewing. Christ does not then simply say that we must eat his body, but that we must chew His body. Chewing is not symbolic. After this, the desciples question Jesus again, asking, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (60) Jesus does not ease their fears by clarifying that He is speaking symbolically, but rather says that the fallen nature of flesh cannot comprehend spiritual truths, and that the desciples must think spiritually, and listen to His words of truth: "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." (61-63)

Some claim that Christ's statement that "the words I have spoen to you are spirit" is a claim that the words are symbolic. However, in asking the question "does this offend you," Christ affirms His previous statements. Moreso, the fact is that the word "spirit" is not interpreted as meaning"symbolic" anywhere else in the Bible. More importantly, and perhaps most importantly of all, immediately after this we are told that many stopped following Jesus after this. If the Eucharist is not the body of Christ, then Jesus allowed many desciples to walk away from Him, and to walk away from eternal life, simply because of a misunderstanding. Twice the desciples voiced their concern over His statement that they must eat, even chew, His flesh, and twice He reaffirmed His words, even letting many leave Him instead of clarifying further. In fact, there are other Bible passages where Christ does correct such a misunderstanding, as He does in Matthew 16:5. He does not even call them back as they start to leave. Instead, He turns to the apostles and asks, "Do you want to leave too?"(67)

The biggest problem with the idea that Christ is speaking symbolically in John 6 is that the statement to eat someone's flesh was a Semitic expression which meant to persecute and betray them. Just as we have expressions today, like "its raining cats and dogs," or "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," the Semitic peoples did, too. This was one of them. In fact, The Bible uses this expression several times. Psalm 27:2 says, "When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. " In Micah 3:2-3, the prophet writes, "Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice, you who hate good and love evil; who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones; who eat my people's flesh..." Isaiah uses the form of speach in chapters 9 and 49 as well. If Christ was speaking symbolically, He would have been telling the desciples that if they did not persecute and betray Him, they would have no life in them. The Jews who followed Christ would not have gotten the symbolic meaning oout of Jesus' statements that we do today.

There is in fact far more evidence that the Eucharist is indeed the body of Christ than I have presented here. The early Church fathers were unaninmous in their belief that the Eucharist was the body of Christ, many of them even using language that is similar to the language of transubstantiation. Those men who learned directly from Peter and Paul, men such as Ignatius of Antioch, deemed the opinions of those who did not confess the Eucharist to be the body and blood of Christ to be heretodox. On top of all of this are the many Eucharistic miracles that have occured over the centuries, such as the breathtaking miracle of Lanciano. In these miracles, hosts have visibly become flesh during consecrations What's more, the blood types of all of them have been the same, AB, the same as the blood that was found on the Shroud of Turin. However, even discounting all of this, the fact is that the Holy Bible itself shows clearly and inarguably that the Holy Eucharist is indeed the body of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God.

Is Mortal Sin Too Harsh?

2006-03-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

The reason that people have a problem with mortal sin is because they look at things from the standpoint of God punishing the sinner. That's not really the best way to look at it, and it’s not entirely theologically correct either.

To make it really simple, let me explain it this way. God is infinite. Men are not. Men are not compatible with God. For a man to live in the realm of God would be like for a man to live in the ocean - we just aren't born with what we need to do that. Now man has devised a piece of equipment to let him survive under water - scuba gear. God has also devised a sort of "equipment" to allow man to survive in Heaven - sanctifying grace. When a person is baptized, he is given the sanctifying grace, which is a bit like "God's scuba gear." Much like the Protestant understanding of things, God gives us this "scuba gear" totally free based on faith. Through Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven, so He does not take away the gear every time we sin. That's a good thing, because as we go through life we commit sins all the time.

But the thing is, this divine scuba gear really is pretty bulky, and it takes up all the room there is on the soul. Just like a scuba diver can't fit a football uniform on over his gear, we can't fit anything else on over God's sanctifying grace - His eternal scuba gear. But sometimes in life, some, or most, people see something they want to put on their souls. Maybe it is the overcoat of fornication, or the three piece suit of murder, or even the casual dress of missing Mass on Sunday. When we want to put these things on our soul, we have to take that scuba gear off, first.

That may sound a bit silly, and it sort of is, the way I explained it. But it makes the point. Mortal sins don't send us to Hell so much because God is punishing us. They send us because in committing them we reject the sanctifying grace that lets us exist in Heaven. We can't do them without rejecting that grace. People don't understand mortal sin because they see it as God rejecting us for one act, whereas in reality, it is us rejecting God. As everyone knows, it only takes rejecting God once to reject Him.

This is where Catholic theology is far closer to mainline Protestantism without Protestants really realizing it. They say that God gives us justification completely free, regardless of if we sin or not, by the merits of Jesus Christ. The thing is, Catholics say that too, we just recognize that we can still reject God. You can reject Him by literally saying it, or by doing something that conveys the same meaning. Does a husband have to actually tell his wife he is mad at her, or would, say, punching her do the same thing? Obviously our actions can convey messages. The mortal sin isn't just in the sin - it’s that the sinner is rejecting God and His offer of salvation. It's the act of saying, "I want this more than I want God."

That's another good way to look at it. Part of the problem is the term salvation. It's a correct term, but it tends to make us look at things the wrong way by our own faults, not the fault of the word. Even St. Paul used the word, after all. But remember that Jesus didn't really talk about salvation. He talked about inheriting eternal life, or inheriting the kingdom of God, or attaining eternal life. St. Paul did, too. This is a much better way to talk about things. Salvation carries the notion of a person being rescued from something, in this case sin and hell. This is truly what Christ does, but its more than that. God created us as free creatures. He deeply wants us to come and live with Him, but He won't force us. He offers us heaven, and we then have to make the choice. That's what life is all about - making that choice. As we start our Christian life, we are on the 'yes' side.

This may be a little off color, but it’s the best thing I can come up with now. When two people are starting to engage in the marital act, the woman may at any time decide she doesn't want to do it and she may ask to stop, even though she already made the major choice to start in the first place. Now some men won't listen to this, and it becomes rape. God doesn't do this. If we decide we don't want to be with Him, even after we've made the choice to at first, He stops. He doesn't force us. He respects us. If we decide, after accepting His invitation, that we'd rather go live somewhere else, He will accept that. That is mortal sin. It is turning down God's invitation after we have accepted it. The thing is, as we walk away from His house, God is always begging us to come back. "Please," He says, "come in - I will really make you feel at home!" But He never forces us. If we reaccept His invitation, this is confession. It is all about our choices, not God simply punishing us.