The Body Theologic

Ronald Knox on Evangelicalism

2010-08-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

To be tied to no dead hand of tradition, bowed down by no cumbrous legacies of antiquity, leaves the mind more free for speculation, and the heart for adventure. But in disclaiming the dead, you are yourself disclaimed by the dead. If you are not prepared to blush for Alexander the Sixth, it is childishly inconsistent to take pride in the memory of Saint Francis. You may claim a kind of sentimental connection with the Christianity of earlier ages, but not a historic, not a vital continuity. The Fathers of the early Church may be your models and your heroes, but they are no genuine part of your ancestry.

- The Belief of Catholics, Chapter 2

Cardinal Dulles on the Scriptural Basis of the Filioque

2010-02-15T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm quite glad that I ran across Cardinal Dulles' article on the Filioque. It has a very interesting section about the scriptural basis of that phrase in the creeed. The full text of the article can be found here.

In appraising the importance of the filioque, one must compare it with two other positions regarding the origin of the Spirit. The first, the so-called "monopatrist" position, affirms the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone. This was the formula preferred by Photius and his strict disciples, although it has little basis in the earlier Eastern tradition. The other Eastern formula, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, is found in many Eastern fathers, including Epiphanius, Ephrem, Cyril of Alexandria, and John Damascene." This formula was also employed by the Patriarch Tarasius at the Second Council of Nicea (A.D. 787).11

The first Eastern alternative, "from the Father alone," if asserted in a rigid and exclusive way, has many disadvantages in comparison with thefilioque. It may be asked, most fundamentally, whether the monopatrist position can account for the terminology of the New Testament regarding the Holy Spirit. Admittedly we do not have any New Testament text which teaches formally that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, but a number of texts, read in convergence, seem to imply this. John 5:19, for example, says that the Son does only what He sees the Father doing-a statement which seems to refer to the externally existing Son and hence to imply that the Son, together with the Father, breathes forth the Spirit. In John 16:14 Jesus says that the Spirit of Truth will take from the Son what is the Son's and declare it to the believing community. This "taking" is often understood as referring to the procession. Then again, in the Revelation to John, the river of the water of life is said to flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:l). Read in conjunction with Ezekiel 36:25-26, John 3:5, John 4:10, and 1 John 5:6-8, this river of living water may be understood as the life-giving Spirit.

What is merely suggested by these texts is impressively confirmed by the titles given to the Spirit in the New Testament. He is repeatedly called the Spirit of the Son (Galatians 4:6), the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:17), the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1:11), and the 'Spirit of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1: 19). It is not enough to declare that the Son sends the Spirit, as most monopatrists do, since it must be explained how the Son gets the power to send the Spirit as His own. Correctly insisting that the temporal truth must have an eternal ground, Karl Barth holds that the Spirit of the Son eternally proceeds from the Son.12

The Filioque: What Is at Stake? by Avery Cardinal Dulles

Faith & Works

2009-12-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

The Protestant notion of "faith alone" has always been a little strange to me, even when I was a protestant. It didn't seem to take into account the way that God's grace transforms us to be more like Him.

Can someone who has faith, but doesn't love, be saved?

The answer is obviously no.

To say otherwise is to invert Paul's hierarchy of virtues: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

We know that love is necessary. But a good protestant might object that the sort of faith we're talking about isn't simple belief, but a "loving faith." That's fair enough.

But then the challenge is why use the phrase "faith alone" when we really mean "faith + love?" In fact, the phrase is even more suspicious than that. Consider that this is the only time the phrase "faith alone" appears in scripture…

"You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone." James 2:24

Here is what the Catechism says about Faith…

1814 Faith is 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. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God."78 For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by faith." Living faith "work[s] through charity."79

1815 The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it.80 But "faith apart from works is dead":81 when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.

1816 The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks."82 Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."83

79 Rom 1:17; Gal 5:6.
80 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1545.
81 Jas 2:26.
82 LG 42; cf. DH 14.
83 Mt 10:32-33.

The Euthyphro Problem in a Monotheistic Context

2009-12-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

Plato's dialogue Euthyphro presents a logical problem about the meaning of piety (or more broadly, the Good) in a polythestic society. The basic question: "Is something good because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is good?"

In its original polytheistic context, it was a way for Plato to point to the fact that there is some external moral standard that even the gods must bow to.

Occasionally, modern skeptics or atheists will attempt to use the same line of argument to make the idea of a monotheistic God problematic. This modern adaptation follows the these lines.

"Is something good because God approves it, or does God approve it because it is good?"

1. If we answer that something is good because God approves it, then it would seem that the good is merely arbitrary, and that tomorrow God could declare cannibalism and adultery good. Clearly a God of this sort wouldn't be a God worthy of worship.

2. If we answer that God approves something because it is good, then it would seem that there is something superior to God that even God must obey. This sort of God clearly isn't omnipotent, and thus isn't the sort of God that monotheistic religions worship.

But the problem with this line of argument is that it presupposes a contrast between God and the Good which isn't possible in the classic monotheism of Augustine, Aquinas, etc. In their conception, there can be no contrast between God and the Good because God is the Good. The self-identity of God as the Good renders the question itself nonsensical.

"Is something good because the Good approves it, or does the Good approve it because it is good?"

The question no longer poses a problem. The answer is simply, yes, it is good because the Good approves it, and yes, the Good approves it because it is good.

This classic conception of God as the Good is shared across the monotheistic religions, but it was originally worked out specifically in relation to the idea that Christ is the Logos. The word Logos has many meanings in the philosophical tradition, but they include things like Reason, Moral Law, Wisdom, etc.

Because of this, arguments which depends on a contrast between God and the Good can only succeed with a sort of super-voluntaristic understanding of God's sovereignty which override an understanding of God's unchangeable nature as the Good itself.

Women's Ordination and Gregory the Theologian

2009-11-14T07:13:00.000-08:00

As a fairly conservative Catholic who believes that the male-only priesthood is correct, one of the things that bothers me is the really bad arguments that conservatives often make in order to justify the Church's practice.

The problem with most of the arguments I've heard is that they imply that Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood.

Now, this might not sound so bad to a lot of conservatives, but having recently been studying how the early Church hammered out Christology, it strikes me as incompatible with one of the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine.

"That which is not assumed is not healed" -- Saint Gregory the Theologian

If Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood, then following St. Gregory's principle, women cannot be saved. Obviously this is heretical. But it seems the natural conclusion of the arguments conservatives typically use.

So, the trick is to find a way to articulate the necessity of an all-male priesthood without saying that Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood.

Perhaps rather than focusing on manhood/womanhood as if they were things that could be assumed independent of each other, we should speak of Christ assuming Human Nature as a whole, including the sexual differentiation that encompasses both manhood and womanhood.*

Of course, that might mean no longer attempting to use Christ's incarnation as male to explain the all-male priesthood. On the other hand, perhaps there is a way to do so without running afoul of St. Gregory's principle. I'm just not sure what it might be yet.

* The medieval mystics, notably Julian of Norwich, managed to conceive of Christ as both male and masculine while simultaneously feminine (though not female).

Created Grace

2009-02-01T12:00:00.001-08:00

Contra certain converts, the Eastern Orthodox tradition does seem to have a place for the Latin concept of "created grace."

'There is nothing strange,' Palamas writes, 'in using the word "grace" both for the created and the uncreated and in speaking of a created grace distinct from the created.' In what sense can one use the same word 'grace' about fundamentally different realities? We have seen that Palamas was aware of the many meanings of the word; he defines the matter thus: 'All that flows from the Spirit towards those who have been baptized in the Spirit according to the Gospel of grace, and who have been rendered completely spiritual, comes from the Source; it all comes from it, and also remains in it.' A Study of Gregory Palamas by John Meyendorff, pg. 164

Love as Justification and Faith

2008-03-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

The fact that the horizon of the love given to us always greatly exceeds our own, and that the disparity can never be wiped out in this life, justifies everything presented as the 'dogmatic' aspect of faith: It may remain immeasurably beyond our capacity to realize this love which is the truth, yet it is no inexistent 'idea', but the full reality from which (In Christ and the Church, his unspotted bride,) all our striving and strength stems; that is why our act of faith in an ever greater love is necessarily identical with our act of faith in an ever greater truth which we cannot understand gnostically with the help of reason since it is pure love, a gift which remains for us an inconceivable miracle.

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, Chapter VII

Praying With the Church Episode 6

2008-02-24T05:39:00.000-08:00

The latest episode of the podcast is out. Praying With the Church Episode 6: Why Penance? + The Sign of the Cross

Attunement to Being

2007-12-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

It is not by means of one isolated faculty that man is open, in knowledge and in love, to the Thou, to things and to God: it is as a whole (through all his faculties) that man is attuned to total reality, and no one has shown this more profoundly and more thoroughly than Thomas Aquinas According to Thomas, what is involved is an attunement to Being as a whole, and this ontological disposition is, in the living and sentient being, an a priori concordance (con-sensus as cum-sentire, 'to feel with', here prior to the assentire, 'to assent to').

Hans Urs von Balthasar - Seeing the Form, vol 1 of The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, page 243-44

Praying With the Church Episode 5: Prayer as a Discipline & the Act of Love

2007-10-15T13:46:00.001-07:00

The latest episode of the Praying with the Church podcast is now released. Praying With the Church Episode 5: Prayer as a Discipline & the Act of Love

Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity

2007-10-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

I think that often, Protestant/Evangelical reactions against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist are not reactions so much against the doctrine itself as a against a perception of the doctrine as "cutting up" Christ for our analysis. This is ironic, because from the Catholic perspective, the whole point of saying that Christ is substantially present, body, blood, soul & divinity in the Eucharist is to say that Christ's entire person meets us and nourishes us. In this understanding, taking away any part of this presence is a terrible deprivation because it does not allow us to meet the Lord in the entirety of His Divine/Human person.

Ben Myers on Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth

2007-08-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Ben Myers posted a review of Gerd Ludemann's book on "The Pope's Jesus."

While I appreciate the fairness of the review to Benedict, I do take issue with a few things, mostly from this portion of the article.

Lüdemann’s longest chapter (pp. 95-120) is devoted to Benedict’s use of the Fourth Gospel, and it is here that some of the central problems in Benedict’s methodology are brought into view. Benedict privileges the Fourth Gospel and freely uses it as a source of historical information about Jesus, but he offers “no convincing arguments against the scholarly consensus that the Johannine discourses have nothing to do with what Jesus himself actually said” (p. 120). Of course, some scholars are more optimistic about identifying historically authentic layers in the Fourth Gospel; but it is nevertheless rather baffling to hear Benedict assert that “[t]he Jesus of the Fourth Gospel and the Jesus of the Synoptics is one and the same: the true ‘historical’ Jesus” (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 111).

Such methodological shortcomings should be taken seriously in any evaluation of Benedict’s book. Indeed, the fact that Benedict presupposes the divine “inspiration” of the biblical texts is already a significant obstacle to historical understanding. Lüdemann is surely right to insist that the texts cannot be properly understood on the basis of any “supposed divine inspiration”: “Whoever has given a little finger to the historical-critical method must give the whole hand” (p. 151). Of course, I myself think it is still possible to confess the “inspiration” of the canon – but this confession should arise subsequently from an encounter with the witness of the texts, and should not be introduced as a methodological presupposition which guarantees the texts’ reliability in advance.

(Bold is my emphasis. Italics are in the original.)

I am not at all "baffled" by the pope's treatment of John as a legitimate source of knowledge about the historical Jesus, though I am a bit confused by Myers' bafflement. It seems to me rather as if his critique of the use of John introduces the same sort of faith/history dichotomy as Ludemann's, albeit in a less radical form.

That the Gospel of John tells us about the Jesus of faith is, I take it, relatively uncontroversial. Whether it tells us about the Jesus of history is not. But Benedict's basic point (as Myers seems to understand elsewhere in his review) is that the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith are the same Jesus.

This being the case, it would appear that Myers' objection only makes sense if he is privileging the Jesus of history over against John's Jesus of faith. But this is the very thing that he takes issue with in Ludemann.

The relation between scripture and witness in my (and Benedict's?) understanding seems to be quite different from Myer's as well.

In my understanding, the primary witness to Christ is the church as a whole. Included in this, of course, is scripture (written by the early church). But scripture does not stand by itself as witness to it's authenticity and inspiration. The past and present of the community of faith also constitutes a witness to the inspiration of scripture.

Thus it makes sense to me that doing theology and exegesis within the community of faith (rather than engaging in "pure apologetics" or "academic theology") not only can, but should presuppose the inspiration of scripture.

I'm not sure whether this is a Catholic/Protestant difference, or whether certain forms of Protestantism can adopt a similar approach. I suspect that they can.

Mary, Queen?

2007-07-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Queen of Israel

Recently, a friend asked a very interesting question. Why do Catholics (and Orthodox) refer to Mary as a queen? The answer is that, even on Protestant terms of Sola Scriptura, she is one.

In the Kingdom of Israel, there was always one queen, but the kings often had more than one wife. How did this work? For the simple reason that in Israel, the queen wasn't the king's wife, but the king's mother. This can be seen in the relationship between Solomon and Bathsheba, for instance.

So, if the queen of Israel is always the mother of the king, what happens when Jesus is the Heir of David, and King of Israel? By the laws and customs of Israel, Jesus's mother is the queen of Israel, even if she wasn't a descendant of David herself.

Lest it be thought that this threatens the royal prerogatives of Christ, it is worth noting that the queens of Israel had no power in their own right, but only by virtue of their relationship to the son. If the king were to for some reason become displeased with the queen, she had no legal or customary authority by which she could resist him, and as soon as the king died and the kingship passed to another, she was no longer the queen.

Queen of Heaven

All right, you might say, but surely Mary's title as Queen of Heaven is going too far?

If you read Revelation 12, you'll find a mysterious figure: a woman clothed with the sun, standing on the moon, with a crown of 12 stars on her head. The 12 stars indicate the 12 tribes of Israel, or the 12 apostles. What is significant is that a little bit later, we discover that this woman is pursued by a dragon and she gives birth to a son who will "rule the nations." This son is obviously Christ. So Christ's mother is shown in a symbolic way to be a queen, and more specifically, a queen of heaven.

How can this be?

Well, consider how the book of Revelation ends. It ends with the descent of the new Jerusalem, which is obviously meant to symbolize in some way the descent of Heaven to Earth. And Mary, as we saw earlier, is the mother of the King of the New Jerusalem. So it is in that sense that Mary is queen of heaven: not in her own right, but by the grace of her son. She is the icon and greatest example of what we all shall be, kings and queens reigning with Christ our King.

Other Resources

The Catechism on Mary

The Compendium of the Catechism

Evangelical Catholicism's Series on Mary

Hail, Holy Queen by Scott Hahn

Orthodoxy & the Immaculate Conception

2007-06-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

I find myself a bit frustrated with the state of Orthodox apologetics surrounding the question of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. While I am quite sure that there are competent treatments of the question around, I haven't yet found a discussion that didn't make elementary mistakes about the Catholic understanding of original sin (a mistake I've seen even in such an otherwise excellent book as For the Life of the World by Schmemann). I'm not a trained theologian, but I do feel competent to make the following observations.

1. While the Immaculate Conception hasn't been adopted widely in Orthodoxy, it does have a place in Orthodox tradition. St. Seraphim of Sarov, for instance, believed in the Immaculate Conception. So Orthodox apologists shouldn't be so quick to label it a "western heresy."

2. The Catholic Church, both Latin and Eastern Rite, does not teach that original sin involves inheriting actual guilt. Rather, the Church teaches that it involves inheriting a human nature which (among other things) is now prone to sin in a way that it wasn't before the Fall. St. Augustine does appear to have been of the opinion that guilt is inherited, but the Church has rejected this position. See for example CCC 405.

Although it is proper to each individual,²⁹⁵ original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

3. The exemption of Mary from inheriting original sin does not make Mary superhuman. It merely makes her not subject to concupiscence (the tendency to sin), without necessarily preventing her from being able to sin. (Though obviously the Church teaches that she didn't actually sin either.)

4. The occasional Orthodox apologist who argues that the Orthodox churches don't believe in the Immaculate Conception because they don't believe in original sin, should consult some Orthodox Catechisms. Yes, the understanding of what original sin entails is different, but that is not the same as not believing in it at all.

There is a huge amount of agreement between the Catholic and Orthodox churches regarding mariology, so it annoys me to see mistakes like this being made so often. Also, I would like to do some more reading on Orthodox mariology. Anyone have suggestions?

On Vox Nova

2007-06-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying the commentary on Vox Nova, a group blog devoted to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. They do quite a good job of covering social issues that have been mostly overlooked by the Catholic blogosphere.

However, recently there has been some controversy over whether Vox Nova is "too liberal." Personally, I think it is quite refreshing to see a blog that is in the mainstream of Catholic social thought, rather than the "conservative" take that is more common online.

It also looks like they have added another blogger to the site, this time a more conservative one. I am looking forward to reading even more great things from them!

Visitation

2007-05-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

Happy Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

Today the Church remembers the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, and how, as Mary drew near, the Holy Spirit came upon John and Elizabeth so that they recognized Whom Mary brought with her.

It seems to me an appropriate metaphor for the Christian life as the Holy Spirit gives us to recognize the presence of Christ in the Church, especially in the Holy Eucharist.

Here are the readings.

Personal, Communal, Impersonal

2007-05-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

Thought of the day: If your "personal relationship with Jesus" isn't communal, then it really isn't personal, but impersonal.

The Sign of the Woman

2007-05-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Also at the heart of the visions that the Book of Revelation unfolds, are the deeply significant vision of the Woman bringing forth a male child and the complementary one of the dragon, already thrown down from Heaven but still very powerful.
This Woman represents Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer, but at the same time she also represents the whole Church, the People of God of all times, the Church which in all ages, with great suffering, brings forth Christ ever anew. And she is always threatened by the dragon's power. She appears defenceless and weak.
But while she is threatened, persecuted by the dragon, she is also protected by God's comfort. And in the end this Woman wins. The dragon does not win.
— Pope Benedict XVI's Second Catechesis on the Apostle John

Heresy & Orthodoxy

2007-05-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
—GK Chesterton

Patriolatry

2007-05-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who is disturbed by the number of times bibles/crosses and American flags are used together in stock photography?

Salvifici Doloris - Part V

2007-05-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

V SHARERS IN THE SUFFERING OF CHRIST 19. The same Song of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah leads us, through the following verses, precisely in the direction of this question and answer: "When he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant. make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors". One can say that with the Passion of Christ all human suffering has found itself in a new situation. And it is as though Job has foreseen this when he said: "I know that my Redeemer lives ...", and as though he had directed towards it his own suffering, which without the Redemption could not have revealed to him the fullness of its meaning. "As though Job has foreseen this..." Job may not have literally foreseen what would take place, yet his hope was placed in the God who redeems. This hope was fulfilled in the seeming despair of Christ's "abandonment" to death and the grave. In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed,. Christ, - without any fault of his own - took on himself "the total evil of sin". The experience of this evil determined the incomparable extent of Christ's suffering, which became the price of the Redemption. The Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah speaks of this. In later times, the witnesses of the New Covenant, sealed in the Blood of Christ, will speak of this. These are the words of the Apostle Peter in his First Letter: "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with the perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot". And the Apostle Paul in the Letter to the Galatians will say: "He gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age"(56), and in the First Letter to the Corinthians: "You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body "(57). With these and similar words the witnesses of the New Covenant speak of the greatness of the Redemption, accomplished through the suffering of Christ. The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ. Christ, being "abandoned" to the suffering of the Cross, shares in our self-imposed exile, and shows us how that exile is transformed from slavery into a pilgrimage. To unite our sufferings of Christ is to become a fellow pilgrim with Christ and share his cross as did Simon of Cyrene. 20. The texts of the New Testament express this concept in many places. In the Second Letter to the Corinthians the Apostle writes: "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh .... knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus"(58). Saint Paul speaks of various sufferings and, in particular, of those in which the first Christians became sharers "for the sake of Christ ". These sufferings enable the recipients of that Letter to share in the work of the Redemption, accomplished through the suffering and death of the Redeemer. The eloquence of the Cross and death is, however, completed by the eloquence of the Resurrection. Man finds in the Resurrection a completely new light, which helps him to go forward through the thick darkness of humiliations, doubts, hopelessness and persecution. Therefore the Apostle will also write in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: "For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too"(59). Elsewhere he addresses to his recipients words of encouragement: "May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ"(60). And in the Letter to the Romans he writes: "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship"(61). We are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice because our bodies are not our own: they are Christ's body sacrificed and given to us for our daily bread. This explains the strange saying of St. Ignatius of Antioch, "I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread [of Christ]." The very participation in Christ's suffering finds, in these apostolic expressions, as it were a twofold dimension. If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to man, because he himself in his redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning. This discovery caused Saint Paul to write particularly strong words in the Letter to the Galatians: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me"(62). Faith enables the author of these words to know that love which led Christ to the Cross. And if he loved us in this way, suffering and dying, then with this suffering and death of his he lives in the one whom he loved in this way; he lives in the man: in Paul. And living in him-to the degree that Paul, conscious of this through faith, responds to his love with love-Christ also becomes in a particular way united to the man, to Paul, through the Cross. This union caused Paul to write, in the same Letter to the Galatians, other words as well, no less strong: "But far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world"(63). Participating in Christ's sufferings opens up to us a participation in Christ's on divine life, and in this way also, it is eucharistic. For to suffer with Christ is to receive His Life in His Body & Blood. Likewise, participation in the Eucharist opens us up to the deepest dimensions of human suffering. Indeed, it opens us up to dimensions of human suffering which can only be found in their full meaning through the Cross of Christ. 21. The Cross of Christ throws salvific light, in a most penetrating way, on man's life and in particular on his suffering. For through faith the Cross reaches man together with the Resurrection: the mystery of the Passion is contained in the Paschal Mystery. The witnesses of Christ's Passion are at the same time witnesses of his Resurrection. Paul writes: "That I may know him (Christ) and the power of his Resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead"(64). Truly, the Apostle first experienced the "power of the Resurrection" of Christ, on the road to Damascus, and only later, in this paschal light, reached that " sharing in his sufferings" of which he speaks, for example, in the Letter to the Galatians. The path of Paul is clearly paschal: sharing in the Cross of Christ comes about through the experience of the Risen One, therefore through a special sharing in the Resurrection. Thus, even in the Apostle's expressions on the subject of suffering there so often appears the motif of glory, which finds its beginning in Christ's Cross. The witnesses of the Cross and Resurrection were convinced that "through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God"(65). And Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says this: "We ourselves boast of you... for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be made worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which you are suffering"(66). Thus to share in the sufferings of Christ is, at the same time, to suffer for the Kingdom of God. In the eyes of the just God, before his judgment, those who share in the suffering of Christ become worthy of this Kingdom. Through their sufferings, in a certain sense they repay the infinite price of the Passion and death of Christ, which became the price of our Redemption: at this price the Kingdom of God has been consolidated anew in human history, becoming the definitive prospect of man's earthly existence. Christ has led us into this Kingdom through his suffering. And also through suffering those surrounded by the mystery of Christ's Redemption become mature enough to enter this Kingdom. Our suffering united with Christ's makes us to participate in his pilgrimage from Gethsemane to Golgotha, and ultimately to the Resurrection. It is often said that the Cross is meaningless without the Resurrection. But it is just as true that the Resurrection is meaningless without the Cross. For, how can one arrive at the end of one's journey unless he has traveled? Our pilgrimage ends in the Kingdom of God, which is the perfection of life in us, where Christ is all in all. 22. To the prospect of the Kingdom of God is linked hope in that glory which has its beginning in the Cross of Christ. The Resurrection revealed this glory—eschatological glory—which, in the Cross of Christ, was completely obscured by the immensity of suffering. Those who share in the sufferings of Christ are also called, through their own sufferings, to share in glory. Paul expresses this in various places. To the Romans he writes: " We are ... fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us"(67). In the Second Letter to the Corinthians we read: "For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to things that are unseen"(68). The Apostle Peter will express this truth in the following words of his First Letter: "But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed "(69). Though Christ's glory was, to human eyes, obscured by His crucifixion, it is nonetheless there that the seeds of His glorious Resurrection are shown. Though He was crowned with thorns, His thorns are a crown. And if we share in those thorns, then we also share His crown. The motif of suffering and glory has a strictly evangelical characteristic, which becomes clear by reference to the Cross and the Resurrection. The Resurrection became, first of all, the manifestation of glory, which corresponds to Christ's being lifted up through the Cross. If, in fact, the Cross was to human eyes Christ's emptying of himself, at the same time it was in the eyes of God his being lifted up. On the Cross, Christ attained and fully accomplished his mission: by fulfilling the will of the Father, he at the same time fully realized himself. In weakness he manifested his power, and in humiliation he manifested all his messianic greatness. Are not all the words he uttered during his agony on Golgotha a proof of this greatness, and especially his words concerning the perpetrators of his crucifixion: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do"(70)? To those who share in Christ's sufferings these words present themselves with the power of a supreme example. Suffering is also an invitation to manifest the moral greatness of man, his spiritual maturity. Proof of this has been given, down through the generations, by the martyrs and confessors of Christ, faithful to the words: "And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul . In weakness Christ manifested His power, and if we allow our weakness to be taken up into His, then it too will manifest the divine power and glory of the Cross and Resurrection. Christ's Resurrection has revealed "the glory of the future age" and, at the same time, has confirmed "the boast of the Cross": the glory that is hidden in the very suffering of Christ and which has been and is often mirrored in human suffering, as an expression of man's spiritual greatness. This glory must be acknowledged not only in the martyrs for the faith but in many others also who, at times, even without belief in Christ, suffer and give their lives for the truth and for a just cause. In the sufferings of all of these people the great dignity of man is strikingly confirmed. The Cross is a hidden glory, like a seed that is planted in the ground, hidden in apparent death. But unless it dies, it cannot bring forth life. "If we have died with Christ we shall also live with him." These words of St. Paul have reference to baptism, but the tradition of the Church has also recognized a baptismof desire and a baptism of suffering, whereby we join ourselves to Christ. Even those who have suffered without knowledge of Christ will ultimately find that it is Christ's sufering that gives theirs meaning. 23. Suffering, in fact, is always a trial—at times a very hard one—to which humanity is subjected. The gospel paradox of weakness and strength often speaks to us from the pages of the Letters of Saint Paul, a paradox particularly experienced by the Apostle himself and together with him experienced by all who share Christ's sufferings. Paul writes in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: "I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me"(72). In the Second Letter to Timothy we read: "And therefore I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed"(73). And in the Letter to the Philippians he will even say: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me"(74). Those who share in Christ's sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, he dies nailed to the Cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the Resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's Cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering, which is man's weakness and emptying of self, and he wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self. This also explains the exhortation in the First Letter of Peter: "Yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God"(75). Christ emptied HimSelf in becoming man, and still more in His obedience to the Cross. If we can follow Him in emptying ourselves, then we will find ourselves filled, not with the spirit of this present world, but with the Spirit of Christ, being made partakers of the divine nature. This also explains a rather puzzling phrase which arose in the Christian tradition of referring to the "happy fault [of Adam and Eve] which gained for a us so great a redeemer." Because we are broken, we can be mended. And when Christ does the mending, He remakes us better than before. In the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul deals still more fully with the theme of this "birth of power in weakness", this spiritual tempering of man in the midst of trials and tribulations, which is the particular vocation of those who share in Christ's sufferings. "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us"(76). Suffering as it were contains a special call to the virtue which man must exercise on his own part. And this is the virtue of perseverance in bearing whatever disturbs and causes harm. In doing this, the individual unleashes hope, which maintains in him the conviction that suffering will not get the better of him, that it will not deprive him of his dignity as a human being, a dignity linked to awareness of the meaning of life. And indeed this meaning makes itself known together with the working of God's love, which is the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit. The more he shares in this love, man rediscovers himself more and more fully in suffering: he rediscovers the "soul" which he thought he had "lost"(77) because of suffering. Suffering contains a special call to virtue, in particular to the virtue of hope. We may often have a hard time understanding how hope is a virtue like courage or wisdom or patience. But hope is the desire for the good things which Christ has promised. And in our day, do we not see that many among us do not even have a desire for that which is Good, even if they understand that it is Good? Hope reaches beyond mere desire, though, to be a grasping of those good things by our will, and an orientation of our life towards them. Suffering opens us up to hope by making us reach beyond ourselves. 24. Nevertheless, the Apostle's experiences as a sharer in the sufferings of Christ go even further. In the Letter to the Colossians we read the words which constitute as it were the final stage of the spiritual journey in relation to suffering: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church"(78). And in another Letter he asks his readers: "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?"(79). In the Paschal Mystery Christ began the union with man in the community of the Church. The mystery of the Church is expressed in this: that already in the act of Baptism, which brings about a configuration with Christ, and then through his Sacrifice—sacramentally through the Eucharist—the Church is continually being built up spiritually as the Body of Christ. In this Body, Christ wishes to be united with every individual, and in a special way he is united with those who suffer. The words quoted above from the Letter to the Colossians bear witness to the exceptional nature of this union. For, whoever suffers in union with Christ— just as the Apostle Paul bears his "tribulations" in union with Christ— not only receives from Christ that strength already referred to but also "completes" by his suffering "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions". This evangelical outlook especially highlights the truth concerning the creative character of suffering. The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world's redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering. In so far as man becomes a sharer in Christ's sufferings—in any part of the world and at any time in history—to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world. "Completing" the suffering of Christ: it sounds heretical. Is there something that Christ did not do in his suffering? No. He has done it all. But still his suffering must be "completed" in some way. Notice the way that Paul says that it is in his "flesh" (or body) that he completes the suffering of Christ. Why is this? Because the suffering of Paul's body is the suffering of the Body of Christ. Indeed, it is in a certain way, Christ's own suffering for His Body. This is why the suffering of Paul can be effectual for the benefit of the Church. Does this mean that the Redemption achieved by Christ is not complete? No. It only means that the Redemption, accomplished through satisfactory love, remains always open to all love expressed in human suffering. In this dimension—the dimension of love—the Redemption which has already been completely accomplished is, in a certain sense, constantly being accomplished. Christ achieved the Redemption completely and to the very limits but at the same time he did not bring it to a close. In this redemptive suffering, through which the Redemption of the world was accomplished, Christ opened himself from the beginning to every human suffering and constantly does so. Yes, it seems to be part of the very essence of Christ's redemptive suffering that this suffering requires to be unceasingly completed. Christ is open to suffering, because in HimSelf he has fulfilled every suffering. And, if we are in him, our suffering completes in us, His body, the suffering which he has already completed for us. Thus, with this openness to every human suffering, Christ has accomplished the world's Redemption through his own suffering. For, at the same time, this Redemption, even though it was completely achieved by Christ's suffering, lives on and in its own special way develops in the history of man. It lives and develops as the body of Christ, the Church, and in this dimension every human suffering, by reason of the loving union with Christ, completes the suffering of Christ. It completes that suffering just as the Church completes the redemptive work of Christ. The mystery of the Church—that body which completes in itself also Christ's crucified and risen body—indicates at the same time the space or context in which human sufferings complete the sufferings of Christ. Only within this radius and dimension of the Church as the Body of Christ, which continually develops in space and time, can one think and speak of "what is lacking" in the sufferings of Christ. The Apostle, in fact, makes this clear when he writes of "completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church". The suffering of Christ took place at a particular time and place, but Christ is not limited to that time and place. In the Eucharist and in His Mystical body, He continues to be present to us here and now. And in them, we are made present to his suffering. It is precisely the Church, which ceaselessly draws on the infinite resources of the Redemption, introducing it into the life of humanity, which is the dimension in which the redemptive suffering of Christ can be constantly completed by the suffering of man. This also highlights the divine and human nature of the Church. Suffering seems in some way to share in the characteristics of this nature. And for this reason suffering also has a special value in the eyes of the Church. It is something good, before which the Church bows down in reverence with all the depth of her faith in the Redemption. She likewise bows down with all the depth of that faith with which she embraces within herself the inexpressible mystery of the Body of Christ. The mystery of the Body of Christ is to be ever present with Christ. Present at His Incarnation, at His Baptism, and at His Passion. All these things are present, but Christ's passion, as the source of our redemption, is present to us in a special way. May we enter more deeply into it's heart.

Grace

2007-04-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which Earth has given and human hands have made; it will become for us the Bread of Life.

Blessed be God forever!

It occurred to me today that in a certain way, the Eucharist is the archetype of the Catholic understanding of grace.

First, there is a prevenient "goodness" (grace) of God which enables us to act for God. Then there is our actions or "work", our offerings to God. And finally, there is the grace of God in taking this offerings, pitiful though they may be, and transfiguring them, or (to use Eastern terminology) "divinizing" them.

Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.

Blessed be God forever!

Praying With the Church Website

2007-04-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

The Praying With the Church podcast now has an official website, www.pwcpodcast.com.

Fr. Groeschel on Liberalism/Conservatism

2007-03-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

"I used to be a liberal, if liberal means concern for the other guy,” Father Groeschel said. “Now I consider myself a conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person.” - From a very good article on Fr. Groeschel in the New York Times

This reminds me of some things that Michael & Katerina have been saying lately.

A Thought

2007-03-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

Modern secularism is the enemy of love, not because it undermines love by opposition to chastity, but because — surrounded by opulence — it does not see its radical poverty, and consequently cannot imagine the joy of obedience.

St. Bernardine on St. Joseph

2007-03-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

[St. Joseph] was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Josephs wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: "Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord." - St. Bernardine of Siena

Passivity

2007-03-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

16. To look at Mary and imitate her does not mean, however, that the Church should adopt a passivity inspired by an outdated conception of femininity. Nor does it condemn the Church to a dangerous vulnerability in a world where what count above all are domination and power. In reality, the way of Christ is neither one of domination (cf. Phil 2:6) nor of power as understood by the world (cf. Jn18:36). From the Son of God one learns that this “passivity” is in reality the way of love; it is a royal power which vanquishes all violence; it is “passion” which saves the world from sin and death and recreates humanity. In entrusting his mother to the Apostle John, Jesus on the Cross invites his Church to learn from Mary the secret of the love that is victorious.

Far from giving the Church an identity based on an historically conditioned model of femininity, the reference to Mary, with her dispositions of listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting, places the Church in continuity with the spiritual history of Israel. In Jesus and through him, these attributes become the vocation of every baptized Christian. Regardless of conditions, states of life, different vocations with or without public responsibilities, they are an essential aspect of Christian life. While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live them with particular intensity and naturalness. In this way, women play a role of maximum importance in the Church's life by recalling these dispositions to all the baptized and contributing in a unique way to showing the true face of the Church, spouse of Christ and mother of believers.

In this perspective one understands how the reservation of priestly ordination solely to men²² does not hamper in any way women's access to the heart of Christian life. Women are called to be unique examples and witnesses for all Christians of how the Bride is to respond in love to the love of the Bridegroom.
- LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD

Interesting Book

2007-03-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

Christ is the head, the foundation, and the hard stone of the Roman Church, which He wedded on His Cross, supporting her with two pillars, Peter and Paul, the one on the right, the other on the left. He confirmed and perfected her foundation, adorned her with rich decorations, and stayed her with His Spirit, who gladley came down on her head, to teach her words of truth - Alleluja! - that she might not err for ever. - Syro-Maronite Liturgy The Traditions of the Syriac Church of Antioch Concerning the Primacy and Prerogatives of Saint Peter and of His Successors the Roman Pontiff, by the Most Reverend Cyril Behnam Benni (London: Burns, Oates & Co, 1871).

Hat tip to Cathedra Unitatis, who found it over on Google Books.

Sacramentum Caritatis

2007-03-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

The Eucharist and Eschatology The Eucharist: a gift to men and women on their journey 30. If it is true that the sacraments are part of the Church's pilgrimage through history (99) towards the full manifestation of the victory of the risen Christ, it is also true that, especially in the liturgy of the Eucharist, they give us a real foretaste of the eschatological fulfilment for which every human being and all creation are destined (cf. Rom 8:19ff.). Man is created for that true and eternal happiness which only God's love can give. But our wounded freedom would go astray were it not already able to experience something of that future fulfilment. Moreover, to move forward in the right direction, we all need to be guided towards our final goal. That goal is Christ himself, the Lord who conquered sin and death, and who makes himself present to us in a special way in the eucharistic celebration. Even though we remain "aliens and exiles" in this world (1 Pet 2:11), through faith we already share in the fullness of risen life. The eucharistic banquet, by disclosing its powerful eschatological dimension, comes to the aid of our freedom as we continue our journey. - Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis

The Source of Her Life

2007-03-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

However, while the whole community offers Christ in the Echaristic sacrifice and themselves in union with him, according to the immemorial tradition of the Church only a bishop or presbyter can validly preside over the celebration. This is not a mere legal requirement which could be changed by the Church at least in emergency situations. The Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ entrusted to his Church but remains his own sacrifice. Therefore only someone sent by Christ and representing Christ as the head of his Church can validly make Christ's own sacrifice present in the assembly so that the whole assembly may offer it as her own. In other words, only those who are in the line of apostolic succession, receiving their sacramental authority from Christ through the apostles and their successors can validly consecrate. The absolute need for the ministerial priest in the Eucharistic celebration then does not express the craving of power by the hierarchy but rather the absolute dependence of the Church on Christ in her central act of worship. The need for the ministerial priest expresses sacramentally the radical insufficiency of the Church: she does not possess the source of her life in herself, but receives it continuously from Christ in a tangible, sacramental way. - Roch Kereszty, Communio, Fall 1996

A Hypothetical Question

2007-03-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

Supposing that the Catholic and Orthodox churches were able to settle their differences. Who on the Orthodox side would be able to say "Yes, our differences are settled, and we and Rome are now in communion?"

Private Judgement

2007-03-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

There is this obvious, undeniable difficulty in the attempt to form a theory of Private Judgment, in the choice of a religion, that Private Judgment leads different minds in such different directions. If, indeed, there be no religious truth, or at least no sufficient means of arriving at it, then the difficulty vanishes: for where there is nothing to find, there can be no rules for seeking, and contradiction in the result is but a reductio ad absurdum of the attempt. But such a conclusion is intolerable to those who search, else they would not search; and therefore on them the obligation lies to explain, if they can, how it comes to pass, that Private Judgment is a duty, and an advantage, and a success, considering it leads the way not only to their own faith, whatever that may be, but to opinions which are diametrically opposite to it; considering it not only leads them right, but leads others wrong, landing them as it may[Pg 222] be in the Church of Rome, or in the Wesleyan Connection, or in the Society of Friends. - John Henry Cardinal Newman

On Interesting Little Bookstores

2007-03-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

So, this past weekend I visited an interesting little bookstore and picked up the following... Christ the Eternal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene The Triads by Gregory Palamas For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann I'm looking forward to reading all of them. The owner of the bookstore was quite nice, and (as it turns out) the priest for the local Greek Orthodox church. He mentioned that Hieromonk Damascene had given a booksigning a couple of years ago, and I was getting his book for quite a steal.

Hope

2007-03-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

A society that breeds suicide is one that has neglected to foster certain traditional Christian attitudes: acceptance of suffering, mercy towards oneself, one's inadequacy, one's mediocrity, an appreciation of life. Young people have not been taught why they are on earth and what they are to do with their existence.
- Xavier Tilliette

Salvifici Doloris - Part IV

2007-03-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

IV JESUS CHRIST SUFFERING CONQUERED BY LOVE 14. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"(27). These words, spoken by Christ in his conversation with Nicodemus, introduce us into the very heart of God's salvific work. They also express the very essence of Christian soteriology, that is, of the theology of salvation. Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering. According to the words spoken to Nicodemus, God gives his Son to "the world" to free man from evil, which bears within itself the definitive and absolute perspective on suffering. At the same time, the very word "gives" ("gave") indicates that this liberation must be achieved by the only-begotten Son through his own suffering. And in this, love is manifested, the infinite love both of that only-begotten Son and of the Father who for this reason "gives" his Son. This is love for man, love for the "world": it is salvific love. We here find ourselves—and we must clearly realize this in our shared reflection on this problem—faced with a completely new dimension of our theme. It is a different dimension from the one which was determined and, in a certain sense, concluded the search for the meaning of suffering within the limit of justice. This is the dimension of Redemption, to which in the Old Testament, at least in the Vulgate text, the words of the just man Job already seem to refer: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last... I shall see God..."(28). Whereas our consideration has so far concentrated primarily and in a certain sense exclusively on suffering in its multiple temporal dimension (as also the sufferings of the just man Job), the words quoted above from Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus refer to suffering in its fundamental and definitive meaning. God gives his only-begotten Son so that man "should not perish" and the meaning of these words " should not perish" is precisely specified by the words that follow: "but have eternal life". Man " perishes" when he loses "eternal life". The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation. The only-begotten Son was given to humanity primarily to protect man against this definitive evil and against definitive suffering. In his salvific mission, the Son must therefore strike evil right at its transcendental roots from which it develops in human history. These transcendental roots of evil are grounded in sin and death: for they are at the basis of the loss of eternal life. The mission of the only-begotten Son consists in conquering sin and death. He conquers sin by his obedience unto death, and he overcomes death by his Resurrection.

God's gift to the world was that He took on in His own person the suffering of mankind. It is not that suffering itself is an unqualified gift, but that God's unqualified gift of HimSelf to us is suffering. This is why suffering can be salvific in our lives as well. To offer our own suffering back to the God who gave his suffering to us allows us to partake in his own self-giving and the self-emptying of kenosis. And this participation also protects us against the final and definitive suffering of eternal death. As the liturgy says, "Dying you destroyed our death; rising you restored our life."

15. When one says that Christ by his mission strikes at evil at its very roots, we have in mind not only evil and definitive, eschatological suffering (so that man "should not perish, but have eternal life"), but also—at least indirectly toil and suffering in their temporal and historical dimension. For evil remains bound to sin and death. And even if we must use great caution in judging man's suffering as a consequence of concrete sins (this is shown precisely by the example of the just man Job), nevertheless suffering cannot be divorced from the sin of the beginnings, from what Saint John calls "the sin of the world"(29), from the sinful background of the personal actions and social processes in human history. Though it is not licit to apply here the narrow criterion of direct dependance (as Job's three friends did), it is equally true that one cannot reject the criterion that, at the basis of human suffering, there is a complex involvement with sin.

Though it is true that we cannot judge individuals guilty of particular sin merely because they suffer, it is also true that sin lies at the root of truly human suffering. Trace suffering back far enough and eventually one finds its origin, often in multiple and complex ways, in the rejection of that Good offered by God's grace. Something as simple as the pressures of parents dealing with the irritability of a child who refuses to eat until he gets his way shows just how complete the involvement of sin is in human suffering. Yet it is not final.

It is the same when we deal with death. It is often awaited even as a liberation from the suffering of this life. At the same time, it is not possible to ignore the fact that it constitutes as it were a definitive summing-up of the destructive work both in the bodily organism and in the psyche. But death primarily involves the dissolution of the entire psychophysical personality of man. The soul survives and subsists separated from the body, while the body is subjected to gradual decomposition according to the words of the Lord God, pronounced after the sin committed by man at the beginning of his earthly history: "You are dust and to dust you shall return"(30). Therefore, even if death is not a form of suffering in the temporal sense of the word, even if in a certain way it is beyond all forms of suffering, at the same time the evil which the human being experiences in death has a definitive and total character. By his salvific work, the only-begotten Son liberates man from sin and death. First of all he blots out from human history the dominion of sin, which took root under the influence of the evil Spirit, beginning with Original Sin, and then he gives man the possibility of living in Sanctifying Grace. In the wake of his victory over sin, he also takes away the dominion of death, by his Resurrection beginning the process of the future resurrection of the body. Both are essential conditions of "eternal life", that is of man's definitive happiness in union with God; this means, for the saved, that in the eschatological perspective suffering is totally blotted out.

Death, though it does bring relief from suffering in one sense, is also the triumph of suffering in another sense. It dissolves that unity which is proper to man in both soul and body, subjecting even man's immortal soul to a kind of suffering. It is not without reason that in the Book of Revelation, the souls of the blessed yearn for a return to embodiment.

As a result of Christ's salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in his Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation. This is the light of the Gospel, that is, of the Good News. At the heart of this light is the truth expounded in the conversation with Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"(31). This truth radically changes the picture of man's history and his earthly situation: in spite of the sin that took root in this history both as an original inheritance and as the "sin of the world" and as the sum of personal sins, God the Father has loved the only-begotten Son, that is, he loves him in a lasting way; and then in time, precisely through this all-surpassing love, he "gives" this Son, that he may strike at the very roots of human evil and thus draw close in a salvific way to the whole world of suffering in which man shares.

Because of the Cross and Resurrection, we have hope. It is often forgotten that hope, along with faith and love, is one of the theological virtues. This is because hope is more than mere optimism. It is a recognition that victory has been definitively achieved, though we await its fulfillment. Hope transforms the world.

16. In his messianic activity in the midst of Israel, Christ drew increasingly closer to the world of human suffering. "He went about doing good"(32), and his actions concerned primarily those who were suffering and seeking help. He healed the sick, consoled the afflicted, fed the hungry, freed people from deafness, from blindness, from leprosy, from the devil and from various physical disabilities, three times he restored the dead to life. He was sensitive to every human suffering, whether of the body or of the soul. And at the same time he taught, and at the heart of his teaching there are the eight beatitudes, which are addressed to people tried by various sufferings in their temporal life. These are "the poor in spirit" and "the afflicted" and "those who hunger and thirst for justice" and those who are "persecuted for justice sake", when they insult them, persecute them and speak falsely every kind of evil against them for the sake of Christ...(33). Thus according to Matthew; Luke mentions explicitly those "who hunger now"(34).

Even in his ministry of healing, which was about relieving suffering, Christ drew near to suffering. This drawing near took its ultimate shape on the cross, where he has been drawn into full identity with human suffering so that, paradoxically, suffering might be brought to an end.

At any rate, Christ drew close above all to the world of human suffering through the fact of having taken this suffering upon his very self. During his public activity, he experienced not only fatigue, homelessness, misunderstanding even on the part of those closest to him, but, more than anything, he became progressively more and more isolated and encircled by hostility and the preparations for putting him to death. Christ is aware of this, and often speaks to his disciples of the sufferings and death that await him: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise"(35). Christ goes towards his Passion and death with full awareness of the mission that he has to fulfil precisely in this way. Precisely by means of this suffering he must bring it about "that man should not perish, but have eternal life". Precisely by means of his Cross he must strike at the roots of evil, planted in the history of man and in human souls. Precisely by means of his Cross he must accomplish the work of salvation. This work, in the plan of eternal Love, has a redemptive character. And therefore Christ severely reproves Peter when the latter wants to make him abandon the thoughts of suffering and of death on the Cross(36). And when, during his arrest in Gethsemane, the same Peter tries to defend him with the sword, Christ says, " Put your sword back into its place... But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?(37)". And he also says, "Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?"(38). This response, like others that reappear in different points of the Gospel, shows how profoundly Christ was imbued by the thought that he had already expressed in the conversation with Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"(39). Christ goes toward his own suffering, aware of its saving power; he goes forward in obedience to the Father, but primarily he is united to the Father in this love with which he has loved the world and man in the world. And for this reason Saint Paul will write of Christ: "He loved me and gave himself for me"(40).

"Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?" This way of putting the question obviously recalls the Eucharistic sacrifice. Though in the Mass Christ does not suffer again, His suffering is the winepress through which His blood is given to us. Therefore, it is in the Eucharist that we are most able to unite our sufferings with those of the Paschal Victim.

17. The Scriptures had to be fulfilled. There were many messianic texts in the Old Testament which foreshadowed the sufferings of the future Anointed One of God. Among all these, particularly touching is the one which is commonly called the Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant, in the Book of Isaiah. The Prophet, who has rightly been called "the Fifth Evangelist", presents in this Song an image of the sufferings of the Servant with a realism as acute as if he were seeing them with his own eyes: the eyes of the body and of the spirit. In the light of the verses of Isaiah, the Passion of Christ becomes almost more expressive and touching than in the descriptions of the Evangelists themselves. Behold, the true Man of Sorrows presents himself before us: "He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all"(41). The Song of the Suffering Servant contains a description in which it is possible, in a certain sense, to identify the stages of Christ's Passion in their various details: the arrest, the humiliation, the blows, the spitting, the contempt for the prisoner, the unjust sentence, and then the scourging, the crowning with thorns and the mocking, the carrying of the Cross, the crucifixion and the agony.

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." These words present to us the inner essence of Christ's suffering. It was a suffering for. For whom? For what? The song itself answers. For our sakes the evil of suffering and death was taken up into the Trinity so that the Trinity might destroy sin, which is its root, and destroy that definitive suffering which ultimately results from sin. "Dying you destroyed our death," as the liturgy tells us.

Even more than this description of the Passion, what strikes us in the words of the Prophet is the depth of Christ's sacrifice. Behold, He, though innocent, takes upon himself the sufferings of all people, because he takes upon himself the sins of all. "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all": all human sin in its breadth and depth becomes the true cause of the Redeemer's suffering. If the suffering "is measured" by the evil suffered, then the words of the Prophet enable us to understand the extent of this evil and suffering with which Christ burdened himself. It can be said that this is "substitutive" suffering; but above all it is "redemptive". The Man of Sorrows of that prophecy is truly that "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"(42). In his suffering, sins are cancelled out precisely because he alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon himself, accept them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain sense he annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good.

In the Garden of Eden, a radical corruption was introduced into human nature. Christ's death and suffering on the Cross begins the cleansing of this corruption. But where the corruption was there is a space that must be filled. By his Resurrection, and in the Eucharist, Christ offers us his fullness to fill our emptiness. The suffering which seemed meaningless by definition is now full of the meaning of God's own divine life.

Here we touch upon the duality of nature of a single personal subject of redemptive suffering. He who by his Passion and death on the Cross brings about the Redemption is the only-begotten Son whom God "gave". And at the same time this Son who is consubstantial with the Father suffers as a man. His suffering has human dimensions; it also has unique in the history of humanity—a depth and intensity which, while being human, can also be an incomparable depth and intensity of suffering, insofar as the man who suffers is in person the only-begotten Son himself: " God from God". Therefore, only he—the only-begotten Son—is capable of embracing the measure of evil contained in the sin of man: in every sin and in "total" sin, according to the dimensions of the historical existence of humanity on earth.

Christ, precisely because He is divine, participates in our human suffering even more than we do ourselves. And it is because of this that his suffering can encompass and overthrow the curse of Adam.

18. It can be said that the above considerations now brings us directly to Gethsemane and Golgotha, where the Song of the Suffering Servant, contained in the Book of Isaiah, was fulfilled. But before going there, let us read the next verses of the Song, which give a prophetic anticipation of the Passion at Gethsemane and Golgotha. The Suffering Servant—and this in its turn is essential for an analysis of Christ's Passion—takes on himself those sufferings which were spoken of, in a totally voluntary way: "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth"(43). Christ suffers voluntarily and suffers innocently. With his suffering he accepts that question which—posed by people many times—has been expressed, in a certain sense, in a radical way by the Book of Job. Christ, however, not only carries with himself the same question (and this in an even more radical way, for he is not only a man like Job but the only-begotten Son of God), but he also carries the greatest possible answer to this question. One can say that this answer emerges from the very master of which the question is made up. Christ gives the answer to the question about suffering and the meaning of suffering not only by his teaching, that is by the Good News, but most of all by his own suffering, which is integrated with this teaching of the Good News in an organic and indissoluble way. And this is the final, definitive word of this teaching: "the word of the Cross", as Saint Paul one day will say(44).

He who had done no violence had violence done to Him. And this was not a passive acceptance of suffering, but an active embrace of suffering for the "joy that was held out for Him." The embrace of suffering on the Cross is also Christ's embrace of us, in all our fallenness. So we must embrace him by embracing his suffering, by "taking up your cross."

This "word of the Cross" completes with a definitive reality the image of the ancient prophecy. Many episodes, many discourses during Christ's public teaching bear witness to the way in which from the beginning he accepts this suffering which is the will of the Father for the salvation of the world. However, the prayer in Gethsemane becomes a definitive point here. The words: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt"(45), and later: "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done"(46), have a manifold eloquence. They prove the truth of that love which the only-begotten Son gives to the Father in his obedience. At the same time, they attest to the truth of his suffering. The words of that prayer of Christ in Gethsemane prove the truth of love through the truth of suffering. Christ's words confirm with all simplicity this human truth of suffering, to its very depths: suffering is the undergoing of evil before which man shudders. He says: let it pass from me", just as Christ says in Gethsemane.

Christ in the Garden prays that his cup might pass from him, but it does not. At his Father's answer, Christ drinks from the cup of suffering, and in doing so the Second Adam reverses the path of the first Adam. He does not take against the Father's will, but receives whatever the Father gives him, even to death itself.

His words also attest to this unique and incomparable depth and intensity of suffering which only the man who is the only-begotten Son could experience; they attest to that depth and intensity which the prophetic words quoted above in their own way help us to understand. Not of course completely (for this we would have to penetrate the divine-human mystery of the subject), but at least they help us to understand that difference (and at the same time the similarity) which exists between every possible form of human suffering and the suffering of the God-man. Gethsemane is the place where precisely this suffering, in all the truth expressed by the Prophet concerning the evil experienced in it, is revealed as it were definitively before the eyes of Christ's soul. After the words in Gethsemane come the words uttered on Golgotha, words which bear witness to this depth—unique in the history of the world—of the evil of the suffering experienced. When Christ says: "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?", his words are not only an expression of that abandonment which many times found expression in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and in particular in that Psalm 22 [21] from which come the words quoted(47). One can say that these words on abandonment are born at the level of that inseparable union of the Son with the Father, and are born because the Father "laid on him the iniquity of us all"(48). They also foreshadow the words of Saint Paul: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin"(49). Together with this horrible weight, encompassing the "entire" evil of the turning away from God which is contained in sin, Christ, through the divine depth of his filial union with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way this suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God. But precisely through this suffering he accomplishes the Redemption, and can say as he breathes his last: "It is finished"(50).

The Son's abandonment to suffering and death is the basis for our redemption. He does not merely serve as a legal substitute for us, but is completely identified with us in such a way that it can be said that He was "made sin" for our sake. This identification began at the Annunciation, when Mary conceived the Divine Word by the divine word delivered through Gabriel. "God became man so that man might become god," as Augustine, Athanasius, Cyril and the other ancient Fathers said. But also the Son was "made sin" so that we, who are sinners, might be made sons.

One can also say that the Scripture has been fulfilled, that these words of the Song of the Suffering Servant have been definitively accomplished: "it was the will of the Lord to bruise him"(51). Human suffering has reached its culmination in the Passion of Christ. And at the same time it has entered into a completely new dimension and a new order: it has been linked to love, to that love of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, to that love which creates good, drawing it out by means of suffering, just as the supreme good of the Redemption of the world was drawn from the Cross of Christ, and from that Cross constantly takes its beginning. The Cross of Christ has become a source from which flow rivers of living water(52). In it we must also pose anew the question about the meaning of suffering, and read in it, to its very depths, the answer to this question.

The question of suffering does not receive an answer in merely theological terms, explaining that suffering must be possible for free will to have meaning (which is true enough) but is answered by the suffering of God HimSelf in such a way that we can hold it before our eyes in the Cross. The cross, as St. Augustine said, is Christ opening his arms to the whole world.

Praying With the Church - Episode 3 - Posture & The Act of Faith

2007-02-22T05:58:00.000-08:00

Episode 3 of Praying With the Church has been posted, as well as prayer 3, The Act of Faith. This episode is a bit longer than normal.

Praying With the Church - Episode 2 - Set Prayers & the Act of Contrition

2007-02-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

Episode 2 of the Praying With the Church podcast is online. This episode's topics: Set Prayers & the Act of Contrition.

Communio

2007-01-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

I am now a proud new subscriber to Communio, a journal of Catholic theology founded by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger in 1972. My first issues came in just a few days ago, and I am looking forward to reading them.

Avicenna

2007-01-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

Cynthia Nielsen at Per Caritatem has a couple of interesting posts up on the medieval Muslim philosopher Avicenna, who, in many ways provided a basis for later Christian philosophers, including St. Thomas Aquinas. Part 1 Part 2 Excellent reading, especially for those of us who aren't all that familiar with Muslim philosophy.

Praying With the Church

2007-01-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are interested, I've started a new podcast, called Praying With the Church. It is available in the iTunes podcast directory, or from presterjosh.libsyn.com. The podcast, as you might expect, is about prayer, particularly in the Catholic tradition, but it applies outside of Catholicism as well. If you listen to it, let me know what you think.

Salvifici Doloris - Part 3

2006-12-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

III

THE QUEST FOR AN ANSWER
TO THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING
OF SUFFERING
9. Within each form of suffering endured by man, and at the same time at the basis of the whole world of suffering, there inevitably arises the question: why? It is a question about the cause, the reason, and equally, about the purpose of suffering, and, in brief, a question about its meaning. Not only does it accompany human suffering, but it seems even to determine its human content, what makes suffering precisely human suffering.

The question of "why?" or "for what purpose?" seems to be inherent to the world of human suffering. This "why?" can take radically different forms, from defiance, to humble questioning. But even a true acceptance of pain, united to the salvific suffering of Christ is predicated on the presence of that question. For the question itself is part of the suffering.

It is obvious that pain, especially physical pain, is widespread in the animal world. But only the suffering human being knows that he is suffering and wonders why; and he suffers in a humanly speaking still deeper way if he does not find a satisfactory answer. This is a difficult question, just as is a question closely akin to it, the question of evil. Why does evil exist? Why is there evil in the world? When we put the question in this way, we are always, at least to a certain extent, asking a question about suffering too.

The question of evil and the question of suffering -- though not identical -- are related, for the experience of suffering, like the experience of evil is, in the modern usage, "natural." By this we mean that it is a part of human nature as we now experience it. Yet we are profoundly "not at home" with either suffering or evil. The difference is that suffering has been taken up into the life of God HimSelf and been hallowed as a means of purging evil from this world.

Both questions are difficult, when an individual puts them to another individual, when people put them to other people, as also when man puts them to God. For man does not put this question to the world, even though it is from the world that suffering often comes to him, but he puts it to God as the Creator and Lord of the world. And it is well known that concerning this question there not only arise many frustrations and conflicts in the relations of man with God, but it also happens that people reach the point of actually denying God. For, whereas the existence of the world opens as it were the eyes of the human soul to the existence of God, to his wisdom, power and greatness, evil and suffering seem to obscure this image, sometimes in a radical way, especially in the daily drama of so many cases of undeserved suffering and of so many faults without proper punishment. So this circumstance shows—perhaps more than any other—the importance of the question of the meaning of suffering; it also shows how much care must be taken both in dealing with the question itself and with all possible answers to it.

The existence of the world "shows forth the work of his hands," but evil and suffering often obscure it. Our task then is to pull back the veil so that we may clearly see His splendor.

10. Man can put this question to God with all the emotion of his heart and with his mind full of dismay and anxiety; and God expects the question and listens to it, as we see in the Revelation of the Old Testament. In the Book of Job the question has found its most vivid expression.

The story of this just man, who without any fault of his own is tried by innumerable sufferings, is well known. He loses his possessions, his sons and daughters, and finally he himself is afflicted by a grave sickness. In this horrible situation three old acquaintances come to his house, and each one in his own way tries to convince him that since he has been struck down by such varied and terrible sufferings, he must have done something seriously wrong. For suffering—they say—always strikes a man as punishment for a crime; it is sent by the absolutely just God and finds its reason in the order of justice. It can be said that Job's old friends wish not only to convince him of the moral justice of the evil, but in a certain sense they attempt to justify to themselves the moral meaning of suffering. In their eyes suffering can have a meaning only as a punishment for sin, therefore only on the level of God's justice, who repays good with good and evil with evil.

Job's friends are the symbol of those among us, who, wishing to defend the justice of God, give the easy answer that all suffering is deserved. But the easy answer also strips God of his majesty and wisdom.

The point of reference in this case is the doctrine expressed in other Old Testament writings which show us suffering as punishment inflicted by God for human sins. The God of Revelation is the Lawgiver and Judge to a degree that no temporal authority can see. For the God of Revelation is first of all the Creator, from whom comes, together with existence, the essential good of creation. Therefore, the conscious and free violation of this good by man is not only a transgression of the law but at the same time an offence against the Creator, who is the first Lawgiver. Such a transgression has the character of sin, according to the exact meaning of this word, namely the biblical and theological one. Corresponding to the moral evil of sin is punishment, which guarantees the moral order in the same transcendent sense in which this order is laid down by the will of the Creator and Supreme Lawgiver. From this there also derives one of the fundamental truths of religious faith, equally based upon Revelation, namely that God is a just judge, who rewards good and punishes evil: "For thou art just in all that thou hast done to us, and all thy works are true and thy ways right, and all thy judgments are truth. Thou hast executed true judgments in all that thou hast brought upon us... for in truth and justice thou hast brought all this upon us because of our sins"(23).

The opinion expressed by Job's friends manifests a conviction also found in the moral conscience of humanity: the objective moral order demands punishment for transgression, sin and crime. From this point of view, suffering appears as a "justified evil". The conviction of those who explain suffering as a punishment for sin finds support in the order of justice, and this corresponds to the conviction expressed by one of Job's friends: "As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same"(24).

That God is the Great Judge is indisputable within the Judeo-Christian revelation. God's judgement upon evil is one aspect of the purgative character of suffering. For to suffer under the just judgement of God offers the opportunity of healing. But it is also true that God is more than judge. He is Father, Savior, and Life/Love.

11. Job however challenges the truth of the principle that identifies suffering with punishment for sin. And he does this on the basis of his own opinion. For he is aware that he has not deserved such punishment, and in fact he speaks of the good that he has done during his life. In the end, God himself reproves Job's friends for their accusations and recognizes that Job is not guilty. His suffering is the suffering of someone who is innocent and it must be accepted as a mystery, which the individual is unable to penetrate completely by his own intelligence.

Ultimately, Job receives divine vindication for his protestations of innocence, and it is shown, not that God is not judge, but that Job's friends' conception of God as merely judge is itself an unjust judgement against God's mystery.

The Book of Job does not violate the foundations of the transcendent moral order, based upon justice, as they are set forth by the whole of Revelation, in both the Old and the New Covenants. At the same time, however, this Book shows with all firmness that the principles of this order cannot be applied in an exclusive and superficial way. While it is true that suffering has a meaning as punishment, when it is connected with a fault, it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of a punishment. The figure of the just man Job is a special proof of this in the Old Testament. Revelation, which is the word of God himself, with complete frankness presents the problem of the suffering of an innocent man: suffering without guilt. Job has not been punished, there was no reason for inflicting a punishment on him, even if he has been subjected to a grievous trial. From the introduction of the Book it is apparent that God permitted this testing as a result of Satan's provocation. For Satan had challenged before the Lord the righteousness of Job: "Does Job fear God for nought? ... Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face"(25). And if the Lord consents to test Job with suffering, he does it to demonstrate the latter's righteousness. The suffering has the nature of a test.

Suffering can be permitted as punishment, true, but in the case of Job it was permitted, rather, as a test. Why the test? In the Book of Job it is presented as a bet or wager: a fitting metaphor for the contest between God and Satan. And how Job responds to his suffering is crucial in determining his standing before God, who remains Judge.

The Book of Job is not the last word on this subject in Revelation. In a certain way it is a foretelling of the Passion of Christ. But already in itself it is sufficient argument why the answer to the question about the meaning of suffering is not to be unreservedly linked to the moral order, based on justice alone. While such an answer has a fundamental and transcendent reason and validity, at the same time it is seen to be not only unsatisfactory in cases similar to the suffering of the just man Job, but it even seems to trivialize and impoverish the concept of justice which we encounter in Revelation.

This impoverishment of the concept of justice, is, unavoidably, also an impoverishment of man's conception of God. Though man's conception can never reach to the ultimacy of God, an impoverished view of the moral implications of suffering cuts at the roots from which our understanding may grow more fully into the reality of God's choice of the Cross.

12. The Book of Job poses in an extremely acute way the question of the "why" of suffering; it also shows that suffering strikes the innocent, but it does not yet give the solution to the problem.

Already in the Old Testament we note an orientation that begins to go beyond the concept according to which suffering has a meaning only as a punishment for sin, insofar as it emphasizes at the same time the educational value of suffering as a punishment. Thus in the sufferings inflicted by God upon the Chosen People there is included an invitation of his mercy, which corrects in order to lead to conversion: "... these punishments were designed not to destroy but to discipline our people"(26).
Thus the personal dimension of punishment is affirmed. According to this dimension, punishment has a meaning not only because it serves to repay the objective evil of the transgression with another evil, but first and foremost because it creates the possibility of rebuilding goodness in the subject who suffers.

Even as punishment, however, suffering has meaning beyond mere retribution. It is education. Not education in the sort of detached professionalized meaning given to the term by modern bureaucracies, but in the intensely personal meaning of being taught by our Father.

This is an extremely important aspect of suffering. It is profoundly rooted in the entire Revelation of the Old and above all the New Covenant. Suffering must serve for conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance. The purpose of penance is to overcome evil, which under different forms lies dormant in man. Its purpose is also to strengthen goodness both in man himself and in his relationships with others and especially with God.

Suffering must serve for conversion, for turning the hearts of sons to their Father. But such a conversion requires that the suffering be received not just as pain, but as penance. Penance is both the embodiment and the means of conversion, for it flows from a contrite heart and builds it up by the purification of our desires, disciplining the carnal by submission to that which is truly spiritual (though not disembodied.)

13. But in order to perceive the true answer to the "why" of suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering, which always remains a mystery: we are conscious of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter into the mystery and to discover the "why" of suffering, as far as we are capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love.
In order to discover the profound meaning of suffering, following the revealed word of God, we must open ourselves wide to the human subject in his manifold potentiality. We must above all accept the light of Revelation not only insofar as it expresses the transcendent order of justice but also insofar as it illuminates this order with Love, as the definitive source of everything that exists. Love is: also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The answer to the "why" of suffering is Love, especially as revealed in the Cross. For the Cross shows that God does not remain remote and removed from human suffering but fully enters into it for our sakes, "for us men and our salvation."

Day and Night

2006-12-21T15:39:00.000-08:00

When the father distinguished day from night in his creation of the world, the act that separated them involved a judgment. This one was dark, the other light. But lightness and darkness followed one another more in an alternating sequence than in a relationship of cause and effect. This alternation was a sign that would be furnished to men, a sign according to which they could order their lives: their work and cessation, their activity and rest. the perfection of this ordering was destroyed by the darknesses of sin. But when the Son became man, he did not abolish creation's law of day and night. Instead he simply led it beyond itself by bringing the light of God, so that, with it he could fight against the darkness of hell; he could break through its night with the radiance of this light, not simply to chase darkness out of the world but to fill it with a wealth of meaning.

- Adrienne von Speyr, Light and Images

Speyr was a Swiss convert and mystic who entered the Catholic Church under the direction of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Salvifici Doloris - Part 2

2006-11-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

II THE WORLD OF HUMAN SUFFERING 5. Even though in its subjective dimension, as a personal fact contained within man's concrete and unrepeatable interior, suffering seems almost inexpressible and not transferable, perhaps at the same time nothing else requires as much as does suffering, in its "objective reality", to be dealt with, meditated upon, and conceived as an explicit problem; and that therefore basic questions be asked about it and the answers sought. It is evident that it is not a question here merely of giving a description of suffering. There are other criteria which go beyond the sphere of description, and which we must introduce when we wish to penetrate the world of human suffering.

Pain, because it is so intrinsically personal, and in a certain sense, incommunicable, therefore has about it a sense of "unreality," especially when considered from the obsessively objective perspective of modern science. Yet in another sense it is more real than (almost) anything else, precisely because it does penetrate to the heart of what it means to be a person.

Medicine, as the science and also the art of healing, discovers in the vast field of human sufferings the best known area, the one identified with greater precision and relatively more counterbalanced by the methods of "reaction" (that is, the methods of therapy). Nonetheless, this is only one area. The field of human suffering is much wider, more varied, and multi-dimensional. Man suffers in different ways, ways not always considered by medicine, not even in its most advanced specializations. Suffering is something which is still wider than sickness, more complex and at the same time still more deeply rooted in humanity itself. A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering. This distinction is based upon the double dimension of the human being and indicates the bodily and spiritual element as the immediate or direct subject of suffering. Insofar as the words "suffering" and "pain", can, up to a certain degree, be used as synonyms, physical suffering is present when "the body is hurting" in some way, whereas moral suffering is "pain of the soul". In fact, it is a question of pain of a spiritual nature, and not only of the "psychological" dimension of pain which accompanies both moral and physical suffering The vastness and the many forms of moral suffering are certainly no less in number than the forms of physical suffering. But at the same time, moral suffering seems as it were less identified and less reachable by therapy.

Human suffering may be embodied in the physical, but it also transcends it. Physicians can heal the body. Psychologists can even help heal the soul to some degree. Yet the root of suffering always remains outside the reach of medicine.

6. Sacred Scripture is a great book about suffering. Let us quote from the books of the Old Testament a few examples of situations which bear the signs of suffering, and above all moral suffering: the danger of death(5), the death of one's own children(6) and, especially, the death of the firstborn and only son(7); and then too: the lack of offspring(8), nostalgia for the homeland(9), persecution and hostility of the environment(10), mockery and scorn of the one who suffers(11), loneliness and abandonment(12); and again: the remorse of conscience(13), the difficulty of understanding why the wicked prosper and the just suffer(14), the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of friends and neighbours(15); and finally: the misfortunes of one's own nation(16). In treating the human person as a psychological and physical "whole", the Old Testament often links "moral" sufferings with the pain of specific parts of the body: the bones(17), kidneys(18), liver(19), viscera(20), heart(21). In fact one cannot deny that moral sufferings have a "physical" or somatic element, and that they are often reflected in the state of the entire organism.

In contrast to some understandings, the Christian view of the human person maintains that he is both revealed by and yet is more than his body. This "more than" is not independent of the body, but is the source of its meaning. Indeed, one formula calls the soul the "form" of the body. This means that mental or spiritual suffering is closely connected with physical suffering, sometimes to the point of bringing it into being where it would not otherwise exist.

7. As we see from the examples quoted, we find in Sacred Scripture an extensive list of variously painful situations for man. This varied list certainly does not exhaust all that has been said and constantly repeated on the theme of suffering by the book of the history of man (this is rather an "unwritten book"), and even more by the book of the history of humanity, read through the history of every human individual. It can be said that man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil. In the vocabulary of the Old Testament, suffering and evil are identified with each other. In fact, that vocabulary did not have a specific word to indicate "suffering". Thus it defined as " evil" everything that was suffering(22). Only the Greek language, and together with it the New Testament (and the Greek translations of the Old Testament), use the verb * = "I am affected by .... I experience a feeling, I suffer"; and, thanks to this verb, suffering is no longer directly identifiable with (objective) evil, but expresses a situation in which man experiences evil and in doing so becomes the subject of suffering. Suffering has indeed both a subjective and a passive character (from "patior"). Even when man brings suffering on himself, when he is its cause, this suffering remains something passive in its metaphysical essence.

Even that suffering which man causes for himself makes him, not only one who inflicts suffering, but one who is the victim of suffering. This victimhood finds its culmination on the Cross, when Christ became both Priest and Victim, the instrument of our salvation.

This does not however mean that suffering in the psychological sense is not marked by a specific "activity". This is in fact that multiple and subjectively differentiated "activity" of pain, sadness, disappointment, discouragement or even despair, according to the intensity of the suffering subject and his or her specific sensitivity. In the midst of what constitutes the psychological form of suffering there is always an experience of evil, which causes the individual to suffer.

The "activity" of suffering is interior, and common to all, yet it is also different for each person because of our many and varied constitutions.

Thus the reality of suffering prompts the question about the essence of evil: what is evil? This questions seems, in a certain sense, inseparable from the theme of suffering. The Christian response to it is different, for example, from the one given by certain cultural and religious traditions which hold that existence is an evil from which one needs to be liberated. Christianity proclaims the essential good of existence and the good of that which exists, acknowledges the goodness of the Creator and proclaims the good of creatures. Man suffers on account of evil, which is a certain lack, limitation or distortion of good. We could say that man suffers because of a good in which he does not share, from which in a certain sense he is cut off, or of which he has deprived himself. He particularly suffers when he a ought"—in the normal order of things—to have a share in this good and does not have it.

Unlike Buddhism, for example, Christianity does not hold that suffering is exclusively the result of egotistical desire. Rather, it holds that there are real goods which are justly to be desired, and deprivation or distortion of these goods (like food, freedom, and love) is the cause of suffering.

Thus, in the Christian view, the reality of suffering is explained through evil, which always, in some way, refers to a good.

This distortion or privation of good is what we mean by evil. The idea is familiar enough: he evil of gluttony is a distortion of the proper desire for food. And the greater the good that is being distorted, the greater an evil it is.

8. In itself human suffering constitutes as it were a specific "world" which exists together with man, which appears in him and passes, and sometimes does not pass, but which consolidates itself and becomes deeply rooted in him. This world of suffering, divided into many, very many subjects, exists as it were "in dispersion". Every individual, through personal suffering, constitutes not only a small part of that a world", but at the same time" that world" is present in him as a finite and unrepeatable entity. Parallel with this, however, is the interhuman and social dimension. The world of suffering possesses as it were its own solidarity. People who suffer become similar to one another through the analogy of their situation, the trial of their destiny, or through their need for understanding and care, and perhaps above all through the persistent question of the meaning of suffering. Thus, although the world of suffering exists "in dispersion", at the same time it contains within itself a. singular challenge to communion and solidarity. We shall also try to follow this appeal in the present reflection.

Human suffering can be the cause of isolation from others because of its unrepeatable interiority. Yet when entered into with love, it can be a way of joining one's interior life to others. The Cross stands as God's entrance into solidarity with us where we are most fragile. And because of the Cross, we can join ourselves in solidarity with His weakness, which is greater than any human strength.

Considering the world of suffering in its personal and at the same time collective meaning, one cannot fail to notice the fact that this world, at some periods of time and in some eras of human existence, as it were becomes particularly concentrated. This happens, for example, in cases of natural disasters, epidemica, catastrophes, upheavals and various social scourges: one thinks, for example, of a bad harvest and connected with it - or with various other causes - the scourge of famine. One thinks, finally, of war. I speak of this in a particular way. I speak of the last two World Wars, the second of which brought with it a much greater harvest of death and a much heavier burden of human sufferings. The second half of our century, in its turn, brings with it—as though in proportion to the mistakes and transgressions of our contemporary civilization—such a horrible threat of nuclear war that we cannot think of this period except in terms of an incomparable accumulation of sufferings, even to the possible self-destruction of humanity. In this way, that world of suffering which in brief has its subject in each human being, seems in our age to be transformed—perhaps more than at any other moment—into a special "world": the world which as never before has been transformed by progress through man's work and, at the same time, is as never before in danger because of man's mistakes and offences.

Human suffering has always been a reality, and yet in particular times and places it reaches greater dimensions. And with modern advances in technology, the threat of war to create suffering on a mass scale is greater than ever before.

Salvifici Doloris

2006-11-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

One of the most neglected writings of John Paul II - unjustly, if understandably - is his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris, or On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering . No one likes to suffer. Most of us don't even like to talk about suffering. Yet John Paul II, following the Apostle Paul and the entire Catholic Tradition, maintains that it is precisely in suffering that Christ displayed his solidarity with humanity, and in which we can grow in solidarity with Christ, who is our life. This is the first of a series in which I will read and reflect upon Salvifici Doloris. Though I do hope that you enjoy it, the series is mostly an exercise for myself to become more acquainted with the Man of Sorrows.

APOSTOLIC LETTER SALVIFICI DOLORIS OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II TO THE BISHOPS, TO THE PRIESTS, TO THE RELIGIOUS FAMILIES AND TO THE FAITHFUL OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE CHRISTIAN MEANING OF HUMAN SUFFERING
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I INTRODUCTION
1. Declaring the power of salvific suffering, the Apostle Paul says: "In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church"(1). These words seem to be found at the end of the long road that winds through the suffering which forms part of the history of man and which is illuminated by the Word of God. These words have as it were the value of a final discovery, which is accompanied by joy. For this reason Saint Paul writes: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake"(2). The joy comes from the discovery of the meaning of suffering, and this discovery, even if it is most personally shared in by Paul of Tarsus who wrote these words, is at the same time valid for others. The Apostle shares his own discovery and rejoices in it because of all those whom it can help—just as it helped him—to understand the salvific meaning of suffering.

How strange it sounds. Joy at suffering? Even granting that Christ's suffering is the means of our salvation, why would Paul rejoice in his own suffering? Because in suffering for the sake of others, for the sake of the Church, Paul found himself united ever more closely with Christ.

2. The theme of suffering - precisely under the aspect of this salvific meaning - seems to fit profoundly into the context of the Holy Year of the Redemption as an extraordinary Jubilee of the Church. And this circumstance too clearly favours the attention it deserves during this period. Independently of this fact, it is a universal theme that accompanies man at every point on earth: in a certain sense it co-exists with him in the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered. Even though Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, wrote that "the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now"(3), even though man knows and is close to the sufferings of the animal world, nevertheless what we express by the word "suffering" seems to be particularly essential to the nature of man. It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way that depth which is proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it. Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense "destined" to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way.

Yes, the whole creation has been groaning in travail. And now it has brought forth the firstborn from the dead. But the travail continues, because He is the firstborn of many brothers and sisters. And this travail is not just general, but particularly human, and yet more than human. Within our temporal world it is a revelation of eternity.

3. The theme of suffering in a special way demands to be faced in the context of the Holy Year of the Redemption, and this is so, in the first place, because the Redemption was accomplished through the Cross of Christ, that is, through his suffering. And at the same time, during the Holy Year of the Redemption we recall the truth expressed in the Encyclical Redemptor Hominis: in Christ "every man becomes the way for the Church"(4). It can be said that man in a special fashion becomes the way for the Church when suffering enters his life. This happens, as we know, at different moments in life, it takes place in different ways, it assumes different dimensions; nevertheless, in whatever form, suffering seems to be, and is, almost inseparable from man's earthly existence. Assuming then that throughout his earthly life man walks in one manner or another on the long path of suffering, it is precisely on this path that the Church at all times - and perhaps especially during the Holy Year of the Redemption - should meet man. Born of the mystery of Redemption in the Cross of Christ, the Church has to try to meet man in a special way on the path of his suffering. In this meeting man "becomes the way for the Church", and this way is one of the most important ones.

Because of the Incarnation, man has been endowed with an even greater dignity than that of a creature made in the image of God. We have been been granted the eternal eikon of the Father in human flesh, that we might participate in the divine nature. Because our eikon is human flesh, each individual man becomes a "way for the Church": a way to perceive Christ. And it is especially so in those who suffer. "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in."

4. This is the origin also of the present reflection, precisely in the Year of the Redemption: a meditation on suffering. Human suffering evokes compassion; it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates. For in suffering is contained the greatness of a specific mystery. This special respect for every form of human suffering must be set at the beginning of what will be expressed here later by the deepest need of the heart, and also by the deep imperative of faith. About the theme of suffering these two reasons seem to draw particularly close to each other and to become one: the need of the heart commands us to overcome fear, and the imperative of faith—formulated, for example, in the words of Saint Paul quoted at the beginning—provides the content, in the name of which and by virtue of which we dare to touch what appears in every man so intangible: for man, in his suffering, remains an intangible mystery.

Suffering must evoke compassion - the co-suffering of love. This is the message of the Cross. Here we can enter the mystery of what it means to be human, and a child of God.

Mediation

2006-11-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

I find it amusing (in a sad sort of way) that many of those who react most negatively to any idea of Ecclesial or Marian mediation have no trouble at all interposing a father/husband as ultimate mediator between God daughter/wife. Take for instance, the horror of some Christians at the idea of Elsie Dinsmore choosing to obey God rather than her father.

This leads me to suspect that it isn't mediation as such that is problematic for this particular group, but mediation between God and men (males). This becomes even more problematic if the one mediating happens to be personified as feminine (the Church) or actually be female (Mary).

Hmm. You'd almost think that I'd been reading one of those "radical feminists." Well, maybe, if St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (aka Edith Stein) counts as a radical feminist.

Acting Theologically

2006-11-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

In considering the question of women's ordination, I've been struck by the inadequacy of most justifications for both the pro and anti ordination positions. It seems that most of the "pro" arguments make the mistake of assuming that an exclusively male priesthood is intrinsically unjust, while most of the "anti" arguments make the mistake of assuming that bride/bridegroom/etc. metaphors necessarily imply their literal embodiment. (Yes, the incarnational principle applies, but it doesn't necessarily mean that little boys should be dressed up like brides for their first communion because they are the "bride of Christ.") However, while mulling all this over, I came upon a thought which I'd never seen articulated elsewhere before: a theology of acting. (Perhaps because I haven't been looking in the right places.)

In this case, I do mean acting in the sense of stage acting rather than the broader sense of taking action.

I think it may not be entirely coincidental that the technical name for the priest's actions in administering the sacraments is acting in persona Christi, or "in the person of Christ." Persona doesn't just mean "person" in the modern sense. It also means "mask" &mdash a mask of the sort that one wears in a play. The priest, therefore is "acting" as Christ.

For a young man to act the part of Joan of Arc would be quite jarring. Why? Because though sex does not determine identity, identity does include one's sex. To watch the young man act the part of Joan of Arc, necessarily involves the audience in actively reconstructing his identity as Joan, whereas watching a young woman act the part does not.

But, someone might say, what of Shakespeare and Greek Tragedy (in which the actual mask was used)? These stages had only one sex on stage, and yet they acted both sexes. After all, it was a young man who originally played Juliet.

Certainly, this is true. My suggestion, though, is that we probably shouldn't be looking to imitate the practices of Greek and Shakespearean acting, especially since they both seem to have had this practice largely as a result of cultural misogyny.

But it would seem that introducing women's ordination would have to presume at least some degree of cultural misandrony. Of course, maybe I'm wrong. :-)

Interpretation

2006-10-31T18:13:00.000-08:00

It is the essence of Romanism that the authority of the living church interprets to the individual believer the meaning of the word 'God' and the word 'Christ.' What the Bible says to the individual is mediated through the declarative activity of the church which is assumed to be infallible.
- Cornelius Van Til

Maybe I'm missing something here, but wasn't the entire reason for the Council of Nicea to interpret to the individual believer the meaning of the words "God" and "Christ" in such a way that if a believer were to disagree with Nicea the believer is understood to be wrong?

Faith & Reason

2006-10-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? - Tertullian

My answer: Rome.

Grace and Merit

2006-09-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

The "classical Protestant" position on merit might be summarized as, "All is grace, therefore there is no merit." To someone who accepts this view, Catholic talk about merit on the part of human persons can seem like a denial of God's free (unearned) gift of grace. Thus the vehemence with which the idea of human merit is sometimes attacked.

But does Catholic talk of human merit actually amount to a denial of the unearned character of grace?"

426. What is merit?

In general merit refers to the right to recompense for a good deed. With regard to God, we of ourselves are not able to merit anything, having received everything freely from him. However, God gives us the possibility of acquiring merit through union with the love of Christ, who is the source of our merits before God. The merits for good works, therefore must be attributed in the first place to the grace of God and then to the free will of man.

- Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

So, we can see that in the Catholic understanding merit is not something one earns on one's own, but has its source in Christ. How does that work?

2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

- Catechism of the Catholic Church

The "merit" that Catholics speak of, then, isn't absolute, but relative. It is like the merit of a child who helps his father clean up toys scattered all over the yard so that it can be mown. Does the child really deserve (absolutely merit) a treat for helping? Of course not. And yet the father, in his grace, freely chooses to associate the child with the father's work, and the merits that derive from it, including the ability to purchase ice cream.

This earned/unearned character of relative merit is most dramatically brought into relief by the case of the Immaculate Conception. The doctrine proclaims that in the first moment of her conception, before she had ever done anything either good or evil, God Chose to associate Mary most deeply with the work of her son and His Son, Jesus Christ, granting her the grace of freedom from the taint of original sin. Mary's association with her son's work of salvation, especially in her unconditional "Yes" to the will of God at the Annunciation, is the source of her merits. And yet these merits themselves are gifts of grace.

The Catholic position might be summarized as, "All is grace, and only therefore is there merit."

Passover & Eucharist

2006-09-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

The following quotations are taken from the Passover Haggadah, New Revised Edition by Rabbi Nathan Goldberg and from the Roman Missal. I found the parallels interesting

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine.

- Blessing before each cup of wine in the Passover

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through you goodness we have this wine of offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink. Blessed be God forever.

- Blessing of the wine before consecration

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

- Blessing before eating the Matzah (unleavened bread)

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread of offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life. Bless be God forever.

- Blessing of the host (unleavened bread) before consecration

It is our duty, therefore, to thank and to praise, to glorify and to extol Him Who performed all these wonders for our ancestors and for us. He took us out from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity, from darkness to great light, and from bondage to redemption. Let us, therefore, sing before Him a new song. Halleluyah. Praise the Lord.

- Recited before a psalm of praise in the Passover

Father, it is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks through yor beloved Son, Jesus Christ. He is thw Word through whom you made the universe, the Savior you sent to redeem us. By the power of the Holy Spirit he took flesh and was born of the Virgin mary. For our sake he opened his arms on the cross; he put an end to death and revealed the resurrection. In this he fulfilled you will and won for you a holy people. And so we join the angels and the saints in proclaiming your glory as we say:

- Recited before the "Holy, holy, holy" in the Mass (varies according to the text used)

The Assumption of Mary

2006-08-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

To many people, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin looks like a case of the Catholic Church indulging it's fondness for odd Marian doctrines. But is that interpretation correct?

Well, let's start with a simple question. To what doctrines might the Assumption be related? The one to which its resemblance is most striking is obviously the Ascension of Christ. But there is an important difference. The Ascension was an action of Christ's own divine power, whereas in the Assumption, it is not an internal power of Mary but the external power of God which acts upon her.

What, then, is the connection between the two? I submit that it is a question of bodies. We profess not just that Christ was incarnate once, but that He remains incarnate. He did not become bodiless to ascend to the Father, but carried His bodily humanity with Him. And we, as members of the Body of Christ, will share in that glorification.

Why the unique privilege of Mary in sharing that glorification? Because she is the one who is most intimately connected with Christ in both body and spirit. In the Body of Christ she is the only one who was privileged to be the earthly origin of His humanity (including His body) by the overshadowing of the Spirit. Where others are related to the Body of Christ sacramentally, she is related both sacramentally and maternally.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

2006-08-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's a bit late, but I thought I'd post a thought on the Transfiguration. I'm sure someone has expounded it before, but...

The light which shone from the transfigured Christ did not shine from above the cave of this world, though that Sun of the Good is its source. Rather, it shone within the "cave." It shone from the Body of Christ. And we are that body! We are the face and hands and feet through whom the divine light is to reach those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Liturgy, Kenosis, and NFP

2006-07-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of the dimensions frequently overlooked in discussions of NFP and birth control is that of askesis or self-discipline. This is odd, because it figures prominently in Humanae Vitae.

21. The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions. For if with the aid of reason and of free will they are to control their natural drives, there can be no doubt at all of the need for self-denial. Only then will the expression of love, essential to married life, conform to right order. This is especially clear in the practice of periodic continence. Self-discipline of this kind is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character. And if this self-discipline does demand that they persevere in their purpose and efforts, it has at the same time the salutary effect of enabling husband and wife to develop to their personalities and to be enriched with spiritual blessings. For it brings to family life abundant fruits of tranquility and peace. It helps in solving difficulties of other kinds. It fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving consideration for one another. It helps them to repel inordinate self-love, which is the opposite of charity. It arouses in them a consciousness of their responsibilities. And finally, it confers upon parents a deeper and more effective influence in the education of their children. As their children grow up, they develop a right sense of values and achieve a serene and harmonious use of their mental and physical powers.

Yet most discussions of NFP and birth control quickly devolve into questions of why NFP is allowed to Catholics and contraceptives are not, as if all that mattered was implementation of a technique. While the question can certainly be answered on that level (natural law, etc.), it implies a thorough misunderstanding of what Christian life is to be.

The Christian life is about coming to participate, through Church and Sacrament, in the inner life of the Most Blessed Trinity.

And NFP, unlike its contraceptive alternatives, proposes a way consistent and complementary to way of fast and feast which the Church sets forward in her liturgical year. Indeed, in a certain sense, one can say that NFP is liturgical, for in its principle of self-denial it gives us the opportunity to enter into the kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ.

Pieta

2006-07-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is a drawing of mine from almost a year ago. It is, obviously, a study of Michelangelo's Pieta. It seemed appropriate given the title of this blog.

Why the title? If it is true that theology arises from doxology, then given the radical embodiedness implied by Christ's incarnation, theology cannot remain purely abstract but must express itself in tangible things like statues or icons. This isn't free of danger, but neither was the incarnation, as the Pieta itself makes quite clear.

Five Theses on Scripture

2006-07-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

Thesis 1: The composition of the canon of scripture (what books belong in the Bible) cannot be determined by recourse to scripture both because of the circular nature of the argument and (even ignoring the circularity) because none of the proposed canons address the issue of canonicity in sufficient detail.

Thesis 2: The composition of the canon cannot reliably be determined by recourse to an "inner witness" because of its radical subjectivity. (Even the LDS church claims an "inner witness" for its canon, as do many Protestants for their canon, etc.)

Thesis 3: The question of the canon can therefore only be answered by recourse to the authority of the Church as expressed in magisterial rulings and patristic sources.

Thesis 4: The Protestant canon was not supported by any Church council or ecclesiastical ruling prior to the Reformation. (I'm 99% sure of this, but if I'm mistaken, please correct me.)

Thesis 5: The Protestant canon can only claim one Church Father (Jerome) as support, but even that isn't unambiguous, as his Latin translation of the Bible does include the deuterocanonicals.

Being Love

2006-07-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

"I am that I am." That is the name which God announced to Moses from the burning bush. God is He whose existence is absolute. Pair this with the description of God from St. John, that "God is love." Taken together, these revelations of God's identity also reveal the identity of man. Man can only truly exist insofar as he loves and participates in the love of God. That is why the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. For only in so doing can man fully become a "being" before God, who is Being itself.